McKinley Brim was quoted as saying, “If a man quit work, I believe he’d just get no a count for nothing…if you retire and have nothing to do, you’ll soon die off, get sick and die off.” Mr. Brim certainly practiced what he preached. He and his wife, Bertie worked hard until their passing, both going to Glory at the age of 95.
William McKinley Brim was born in Patrick County on December 3, 1897, to Beverly Banister Brim, Sr. and Letitia Carter. He was one of eleven children growing up on a tobacco farm in Ararat, Virginia.
Bertie was also born in the Ararat community of Patrick County on June 26, 1899. She was the daughter of Anderson Carter and Lucy Smith and she too belonged to a family with eleven children.
In 1978, as part of the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project, researchers and photographers from the Library of Congress traveled up and down the Blue Ridge Mountains recording images and stories from the past. If you go to the Library of Congress website and type McKinley Brim in the search bar, you will find a wealth of information, including audio recordings of interviews with Mr. Brim, plus many images of life on a Patrick County tobacco farm.
I recently sat down and listened to an interview with Mr. Brim, conducted by Patrick Mullen. When asked what young people did for entertainment after working in the fields all day, Brim replied, “we would climb up in the cherry tree and eat cherries until dark.” He also stated that the young folks would have a “frolic” at one of the neighborhood homes and someone would “pick a banjo.”
As a young man, Mr. Brim went to West Virginia to find work. He said that he took one look down in the mines and decided that it wasn’t for him. He did find work cutting cross ties and building railroad lines for a while, before returning to the farm of his childhood.
During the interview, Mullen remarked on how healthy Mr. Brim’s tobacco, corn, oats, and wheat looked and if he had any planting advice. Brim said that he always planted when the signs were in the “arms,” “twins,” and “breast.” He warned to never plant when the signs were in the “heart” or “head.” This was not the first time I had heard an older person assign body parts to represent astrological signs to signify favorable or unfavorable times to do things, from planting crops to killing hogs. It was the belief of my very wise grandmother that medical procedures should be scheduled when the sign was as far away from the body part as possible. I recall I once had some dental work done that was extremely painful. My grandmother’s reply was, “Well, you should not have had it done when the signs were in the head, you should have waited until the signs were in the feet.”
Mr. Brim said that neither he or his wife saw a doctor while growing up and used the old, trusted ways of their mothers when caring for their own children. He said that when their children were sick, they would boil catnip tea or peppermint tea for their children to drink. They would also boil wild cherry tree bark into a syrup when their children had a cough. These methods must have worked very well, as they raised eight fine children to adulthood, including Mr. Fred Brim, a math teacher and administrator at Patrick County High School.
I have the honor and pleasure of having a classroom next door to McKinley and Bertie Brim’s granddaughter, Vonita Brim. Vonita recently shared some heartwarming memories with me about her grandparents. “As a little girl, I remember Grandpa priming tobacco and the long hours he worked. He also raised sugar cane and at times would cut the stalk for us to taste. On the day they processed molasses, my grandmother made fresh molasses bread for everyone. It was always a long day of work for the adults, but everyone enjoyed the time together.”
Vonita also recalled, “My grandmother was very loving, she took care of the chickens, did a lot gardening and cooking. She did not say much, but I remember when I was becoming a teen, she sat me down and told me that my body was a temple of the Holy Spirit. I didn’t understand fully at the time, but that scripture always stuck with me.”
Vonita remembered how self-sufficient her grandparents were, “They raised their own food in terms of a large garden and killing hogs once a year. I remember a special sweet potato that my grandmother raised which she called a “Spanish” potato. They used to dig up sassafras root and yellow root, both of which were good for stomach issues. The yellow root was very bitter, but the sassafras had a pleasant taste. My grandparents lived very simply, but nature provided everything they needed right there on their land. In the summer, we had the old Concord grapes, white grapes, apple trees, plums, and cherry trees. It was out on the land, they showed us how to harvest wild berries and suck on honeysuckle blossoms. They showed us how to appreciate the land we lived on.”
