Transcripts: Southern Appalachian English

Jim Sutton

(Cataloochee, Haywood County, North Carolina) was age 60 when interviewed.  He had a third- or fourth-grade education and was a CCC employee.

*.doc file for printing

Yeah, my daddy one time, he was an awful horse trader.  He had an old wind sucker.  One morning he got on him.  He said, "I'll trade that thing if I don't get nothing but a bull yearling for him."  That's about the cheapest thing on the market in this country at that time.  So he lit out, and he was gone about three days and nights, come back in.  He had a big horse.  He said "Well," he said, "I sure did fix up that old fellow I traded with.  I let the latch down in his barn."  So he fed him and turned him in the stable, and he had a big sore on his back about as big as a big saucer.  Just as soon as he turned him in the stable he [began] sucking wind.  He'd swapped a windsucker for a windsucker.  Well, George was a right smart boy.  He decided he'd slip down and feed him one morning, went down and had a big wild house cat that stayed in the barn.  He raised a plank in the barn floor, and he thowed that cat on that poor old horse's back, and then the row started.  You've never heared no such commotion in all the days of your life down there.  My daddy, he hollered for mother, says "Come here."  He says, "confound it, that cussed old cat scratched my horse" and said, "he's teetotally ruined him."