Strange Family Folklore

My great grandfather, Jessee Strange, was born a slave and freed in his 20s. His 12 children were born free, and referred to as "The First Freeborn Generation." In this podcast series, I interview Jessee Strange's descendents in order to document our stories.

All Episodes

Strange Family Folklore

The Daring Uncle Down

October 16, 2021 • Teresa Roberson • Episode 6

In June 2021, we Stranges celebrated our 80th continuous family reunion during which, my Cousin Ted entertained us with seemingly larger-than-life stories of Uncle Daniel AKA "Uncle Down," who was Great-Grandfather Jesse's third child.

Teresa Roberson

Thank you so much for agreeing to tell me some Uncle Daniel, or you call him Uncle Down, stories. We were all really captivated by your stories at our 80th continuous family reunion, when you told us some stories, and it seems like you had to stop yourself from telling more. So, I want to give you the opportunity to tell some of the stories that you didn't get a chance to tell or you can even retell it because not every one of our podcast listeners were at the family reunion.

Cousin Ted

Okay, well, I'll go ahead and get started then. I have about seven or eight, I guess.

Teresa Roberson

Can you first begin to tell us how Uncle Daniel is related to you?

Cousin Ted

Yes. Uncle Daniel is one of my father's brothers.

Cousin Ted is named after his father, Theodore Strange, Sr, who was one of my great uncles.

Teresa Roberson

Okay. Out of how many children?

Cousin Ted

Twelve.

Teresa Roberson

Wow.

Cousin Ted

Yeah, your grandfather was number eleven.

My maternal grandfather, Floyd B. Strange, Sr, is who Cousin Ted refers to as “Uncle Floyd,” throughout this interview.

Teresa Roberson

Right. So, your father and my grandfather were the youngest two.

Cousin Ted

Yes, my father was number twelve.

We lived in North Carolina, which is right across the border. But every weekend, Dad would bring us over to Virginia,so we could maintain our family ties. Plus, in the summertime when we were out of school, we used to had to come down and most of the time we stayed with Uncle Floyd and Aunt Bea and we'd work tobacco down there.

Cousin Ted’s Aunt Bea was my maternal grandmother, Beatrice Strange, who I referred to as Mama Bea.

So, Uncle Down was the next one down the road for quite a while before they started building houses between those home houses where Uncle Down and Aunt Carrie lived and Uncle Floyd's house.

Aunt Carrie was Uncle Down’s wife.

So, I'll go ahead and get started. Every Christmas, Uncle Down used to go upstairs, they had a big wooden trunk upstairs. He used to take one of those old jugs of corn, whiskey, that is. And he would climb into that trunk. 'Cause Uncle Down was a lean, about six-three or six-four tall. And he used to get in that trunk every year at Christmas time, on Christmas Day, and said he's not coming out until New Year's. So that was his thing. That's what he used to tell us. I don't know if he stayed up all the time or not, but he would get into a trunk while we were there. And then he would close it up. And with his jug with him, and we would leave after a while.

Another story is that as a young man, he was ambushed on his way home one night and shot in the head, in the temple by a policeman. He shot him with a .38-caliber pistol and he knocked him off his wagon. It knocked him out briefly, but then Uncle Down get up and staggered home. Once he got home, Grandma Lucy saw what condition he was in and she tried to get him to go to the hospital, but he didn't want to go. But eventually she got him into the mood that he would go to the hospital.

So, they took him to Danville to the hospital and they removed the bullet out of his head. But the indentation on his right temple was there for the rest of his life. And the policeman that shot him, when he realized that he didn't kill him, he took his family and he left the area and never came back. Because Uncle Down had made a promise and the policeman found out about it that whenever he saw him, he was going to kill him on sight. And the policeman believed it and he left there.

But Uncle Down from that day on, he had a .38 in his pocket. And he carried that whether he was working, in church or wherever he was. He had a .38 pistol in his pocket because he had declared that whenever he saw that man again, he was going to kill him.

And then sometimes we would ask him from time to time, we said, "Uncle Down, how often do you drink?" And he always said, "Son, how many days in a year?" So, that let us know that there were 365 days in a year, so he was drinking every day.

But one thing about him was that Uncle Down was a very strict disciplinarian. When he told you something, he meant it. And we were kids when we were down there, Herbert, your uncles, and all of us were down there and we be down there. Clarence and Olander and all of us and we'd be messing around doing stuff.

Herbert, Clarence and Olander are three of my uncles.

But he should always tell us before we went to the field because he had some watermelon patches in the proximity of Uncle Floyd's tobacco fields. And he kept telling us, "Don't mess with my watermelons." Needless to say, we couldn't hear that. Because we didn't have hearing aids at a time. We couldn't hear what he was saying. Because we used to always go by a patch and get a watermelon first thing in the morning and put it in the water. So that the water could cool it. We didn't have refrigerators in the field and all that stuff. So, whenever we took a break, we'd go out there and pull that watermelon out of the creek, and we'd burst it. By the water running over it, that would cool it. So, that was real good for us.

We'd still do things like messing with his apple cider when he was making cider and stuff. We tampered with everything, like normal, hard-headed children. Whatever he told us not to do, that's what we did. But if you get caught,you in trouble. And you knew that.

Because he had grape vines behind the house that we used to walk under, and it was down like walking through a pathway, but it had grapes growing on the trestles overhead. And we used to walk under those things and just eat those grapes and things. But it was always a pleasure being down there.

But one night, Uncle Down got drunk. And he went out to a barn. A barn that was across the road, that main road. Cascade road. He had two barns on the other side of that road from the house. And he slept in the barn overnight, and it was cold. It was wintertime. So, three of his toes froze off. So, I don't know if you recall him or not. From that day on, after he went to the hospital and they worked on his feet. He lost those three toes. Gangrene sat in on him. And he walked with a limp thereafter.

Uncle Down was a very tough character. He was lean and mean, but he's kind of gentle. You could tell that by the fact that whenever he'd be killing hogs, he'd be down in the fall of the year, a little later than now. You know, around Thanksgiving. They would be killing hogs and once they start to scald them and pick all the hair off them and all that stuff. And as they start to cut the meat up, Uncle Down used to cut some slices off the ham and stuff, and he would just eat them raw. So, sushi wasn't cool then, but he was still eating raw meat at that time. It was back when we were young.

Another story I'll just mentioned is that one night down at the Cascade Primitive Baptist, which is right across the street from your grandfather's house, Uncle Down was tarrying. They were trying to get him. They'd always have been trying to get him to join the church. So, he was on the mourner's bench. They were just praying over him and all that stuff, and he was just tarrying. And then, during all of this excitement and all, he decided he'd give a heartfelt confession. "I love you, Lord. I do love you, Lord. But, Lord, there's one thing I gotta tell you: I do love my liquor!" So, that was his confession. He gave them a heartfelt confession. Because Uncle Down wasn't bashful at all. He was true to whatever he said, that's what he did. He didn't try to be deceitful. He wasn't deceitful at all. Although he was tough, and all these other things, we said and he did love his liquor.

Uncle Down was a very gentle, loving person. But he always stood his ground. He would tell you like is. If you didn't want to know the truth, according to Daniel Strange, don't ask him because he'd tell you the truth.

In fact, the last thing I'll mentioned is that when he'd gotten a little older, he was in a coma in the hospital down in Danville. And the doctors called the family in because they thought he was on his way out and this was gonna be the last time. If you wanted to see him alive, you had to come down to the hospital bed. While all the family, Aunt Cindy and all of them from DC and all these different places that come down, and they were in the room, down there in Danville.

Aunt Lucinda, AKA Aunt Cindy, was my Great Grandfather Jesse’s eighth child.

And while they were there, Uncle Down came out of the coma. He awakened. And he just kind of looked around the room to see. He said, "Why are all ya'll here?" He said, "I ain't going nowhere." And sure enough, he was right. Uncle Down lived seven more years after that night, seven years. Before he passed away, he lived seven more years. They thought he was gone then.

Teresa Roberson

In what year did he pass? Do you remember?

Cousin Ted

No, I don't. I have to look in my book. But Uncle Down was survived by his wife, Carrie. She was the love of his life. And he loved her dearly. They didn't have any children. That's just the quick rundown. You have any questions?

Teresa Roberson

When you talked about Uncle Down, getting into a trunk for Christmas or the holidays, whose house? Was that his own house?

Cousin Ted

That was his house. Yes. Uncle Down and Aunt Carrie lived in the family house. The old family house. That's where his parents lived before him. Was just the two of them, he and Aunt Carrie. Grandma Lucy died in 1942. I think it was. His mother. His daddy died many years before that. In fact, my father was only 12 years old when his father passed.

Teresa Roberson

Because he was the youngest.

Cousin Ted

Yeah. That means daddy died in 1926.

Teresa Roberson

So that's, from my perspective, Great Grandfather Jesse.

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

He died in 1926. You know what's amazing? These days, you hear a lot about police brutality and police shootings. So, when you tell us that the police officer shot Uncle Down, and then skipped town because he was more afraid, basically, of this private citizen.

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

Can you tell us a little more about that? Because that is an unusual thing today.

Cousin Ted

Well, keep in mind that this was a rural community. So, everybody knew everybody. So, the policeman knew that Uncle Down. Even knew where he lived and his family lived or he could find out. And Uncle Down didn't play. He was a man of his word. And they were suspecting him of dealing in whiskey. Hauling whiskey. But he didn't have any whiskey then. This guy just hadn't been able to catch him or anything. So, he had it out for him. So, he laid in wait. There was a driveway that went down off the road 622 to the house. And it was lined on each side with boxwood. As a child, we used to play under those boxwoods. And that man was laying in those boxwoods and he shot Uncle Down.

Teresa Roberson

Okay, so the boxwood is a type of tree or shrubbery?

Cousin Ted

Shrubbery that grows real tall.

Teresa Roberson

Now, this was during the days of prohibition?

Cousin Ted

Yes. There were about three stills on our property at one time down there.

Teresa Roberson

Whose property?

Cousin Ted

Stranges' property.

Teresa Roberson

Ah, okay. See, I didn't know this side of the family.

Cousin Ted

Yeah, we had a lot of moonshine. When I mentioned to you that Uncle Down was in that barn and the toes froze off. The reason why he was in there because he had about 5000 pounds of sugar in there. 'Cause they were using at the still. He was in there with that sugar, making sure nobody else stole it.

Teresa Roberson

How do you get 5000 pounds of sugar without arousing suspicion?

Cousin Ted

Keep in mind, you're familiar with that area, we owned most of that land right in there.

Teresa Roberson

Yes.

Cousin Ted

The barns were on their land. They just kept moving sugar in there.

Teresa Roberson

Oh, so they weren't getting it from one source? They would get sugar from several sources.

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

Again, this is the type of stories I didn't grow up hearing. Again, back with the police officer, was he also Black?

Cousin Ted

No, he was White. They didn't have any Black policemen in that area then.

Teresa Roberson

Okay, so it wasn't integrated?

Cousin Ted

Absolutely not.

Teresa Roberson

Was that police officer on the Strange property?

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

So, I guess it's not trespassing when you have probable cause.

Cousin Ted

They weren't too concerned about that. The probable cause was that he didn't kill him. That's what he'd intended to do.

Teresa Roberson

But I would have thought that the other police officers would have hunted Uncle Down down. They would have searched for him rather than this police officer, uprooting his family and moving away.

Cousin Ted

Well, Uncle Down hadn't done anything to the policeman. Policeman shot him.

Teresa Roberson

Now, when you're talking about the tobacco field that everybody worked in, was that the Stranges' tobacco field? Everybody owned it? Worked it?

Cousin Ted

Yes. I was talking about the field owned by your grandfather and Uncle Down. Those are the two that had fields up in that area. Uncle Floyd and Uncle Down.

Teresa Roberson

How often did you work in the tobacco field?

Cousin Ted

We worked on that just about every summer while we were home. And then we weren't into the tobacco fields when they had corn. We had to go down and help with corn also. Corn is worse than tobacco.

Teresa Roberson

Why is that?

Cousin Ted

Because it itches. When you topping corn, the husks and things get all in and around your head when you're cutting it up at the top. So, that the ears would fill out full. It gets on you, and you have to wear long sleeves shirts, button-up shirts, trying to keep the husk from getting under your skin because it makes you itch.

Teresa Roberson

Okay. So, Uncle Down would distill moonshine and he also would work tobacco?

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

Now, my mother also told a story about Uncle Down and his horse tricks. Did you ever see that?

Cousin Ted

No, you mean by making them bowed out and stuff?

Teresa Roberson

Yes.

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

Can you tell us more about that?

Cousin Ted

No, I'm gonna let Velma go with that.

Velma is my mother.

Teresa Roberson

Okay. Now what kind of grapes were grown on the property as well?

Cousin Ted

What kind of grapes?

Teresa Roberson

Mm-hmm.

Cousin Ted

They were the seeded grapes. I don't know the brand or any of that stuff because we were kids then. He had trestles. You've seen trestles like you see at wedding parties? They come into these trestles. Well he had something like that built and the vines were growing over it. So, when you walk under the vines, and you could eat grapes on the side and on the top.

Teresa Roberson

What color were they? Do you remember?

Cousin Ted

Purple, Blue. Dark.

Teresa Roberson

Dark blue?

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

The only reason I'm asking that is that my mother will know. She tends to know details like that. I can ask her about that.

Turns out, Mom didn’t know the name of those grapes either. I picture Concord grapes.

'Cause when I was growing up, she had us picking grapes and strawberries. And when I was younger, I mean, I grew up in a military family suburbanite. I do not have a green thumb to save my life.

Cousin Ted

Wow.

Teresa Roberson

So, when I hear stories of when you guys were farming, I think of myself when my sisters and I would pick strawberries and grapes. I don't know if my sisters liked it, but I always act like I was just doing such hard labor. I had no idea.

Cousin Ted

See, my father didn't farm. Daddy raised the crop one year. He made I think he said $12. From then, he didn't farm anymore, but we would go over and work on the farm. He didn't farm. He worked primarily in the Fieldcrest Mills. Textile mills. And my mother worked the Dan River Mills in Danville.

Cousin Ted’s mother was Anna L. Strange.

And then Daddy also worked for the city, over in Draper. Eden, we call it now, but it was three cities, the tri-cities: Leakesville, Spray and Draper. And then they consolidated. We would come over 'cause they wanted to keep us out of trouble, so they put us to work.

Teresa Roberson

That's one way to do it. You can't make trouble if you're working.

Cousin Ted

That's true.

Teresa Roberson

Unless you make trouble on the job. Did they ever have to discipline you?

Cousin Ted

No. We didn't feel like getting into trouble. On those farms you work from sunup to sundown. And you got a lunch break. And when you got up and you ate dinner, you were ready to go to bed.

Teresa Roberson

Now professionally, Uncle Down was known as a farmer.

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

So, tobacco and corn?

Cousin Ted

Yes. Primarily tobacco.

Teresa Roberson

Tobacco is just from late spring to about what October?

Cousin Ted

Yeah. Even after school, we went down and you pulled tobacco and you had to cure it. And we used to have to stay at those barns at night to cure that tobacco. And then after you pulled corn during the year, they used to have what they call a "corn shucking." And that's when all the neighbors would go from one farm to the next, pulling tobacco and then they would shuck that corn. That was a big thing to have a corn shucking at your house. Whenever you were, your time in the rotation.

Teresa Roberson

Was that more of a festive mood or it was just work?

Cousin Ted

Both. It was a combo. It was festive because it was more than one family. But it was work because there was work to be done.

Teresa Roberson

And where would that take place? Outside? In a barn?

Cousin Ted

Yes. Normally in barns. Sometimes, they had what they call "corn cribs." That's where they will store that corn.

Teresa Roberson

But that wasn't just used for moonshine, right?

Cousin Ted

No. That was used for hogs and flour and all of those things.

Teresa Roberson

Okay, let me back up. We used to make corn flour?

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

For some reason I always thought it was wheat.

Cousin Ted

No, it was corn meal. If you go to Cascade, anytime you going to Cascade have your mom to take you down to where the mill was. There was a mill there. Cascade mill. And they would take their corn down there and grind it into meal or flour.

Teresa Roberson

So, you guys grew up more on corn bread, than you did white bread? Or wheat bread?

Cousin Ted

Yes.

Teresa Roberson

Because it seems like when I would visit my grandmother, my mother was always making biscuits.

Cousin Ted

Yeah, it was a delicacy. We used to have what they call “hoe cakes.”

Teresa Roberson

And what's a hoe cake?

Cousin Ted

A hoe cake is a biscuit about that big, much bigger.

Cousin Ted forms a circle with both hands about six inches in diameter.

They didn't take the time and make those little small dainty things. When you get about 12 biscuits in a pan, they would might have four or five hoe cakes. And then you'd take those big pieces of bread, that's when you'd put your molasses on them and your butter and all and sop them. You've heard of sopping molasses, haven't you?

Teresa Roberson

That's what I used to do with those biscuits. Yes, I know about that. Except at Mama Bea's house, we didn't use molasses. It was always fried apples. Now, I would eat molasses at home.

Cousin Ted

Yeah, but we used to make molasses down at Uncle Jesse's house. They used to grow sugar cane down there. We used to have to sit on those mules. They had a mule and a grinding machine and they would stick the stalks of cane down in there and the mule would walk around in a circle. They used to put kids on that mule. ‘Cause the mule wouldn't move unless somebody was on it. Each child would have to sit on there for so long until they felt like he was gonna get drunk and fall off, so they would take him and then they will put another child on that and they will walk around in that circle. They would keep putting cane down in there and they'd grind it to get the juice out of it.

Teresa Roberson

Now you said, "Until the kid felt drunk"?

Cousin Ted

Yes, until they could notice it, look like the kid's going to fall off the mule.

Teresa Roberson

Oh, because they'd get dizzy?

Cousin Ted

Yes. You'd walk in that circle, you'd get dizzy after a while.

Teresa Roberson

Okay, because I was about to ask how fast was that mule going to be dizzy.

Cousin Ted

He's going very slowly, but you sitting on there, after a while you're gonna fall off that mule. They would know how long you can stand it. So, they would stop the mule, put another child up there and then tell the mule to get up and he just start walking again. Down in a circle.

Teresa Roberson

So, would that would be like an hour or half hour?

Cousin Ted

Yes. In the meantime, somebody is out in the field cutting that cane, bringing it up to the house. Bringing it up to the grinder and then you would walk it, then they would get the juice out of it, squeeze the juice out of it to make the sugar cane and make molasses.

Teresa Roberson

Molasses, right. But you guys didn't have enough sugar cane to make 5000 pounds of sugar, right?

Cousin Ted

Absolutely not.

Teresa Roberson

Okay. I'm still fascinated by that number. Because that's a lot of moonshine with 5000 pounds of sugar.

Cousin Ted

That's how we learned to drive. We used to drive what they called a "bush car."

Teresa Roberson

What is that?

Cousin Ted

A bush car was a car that they would, once they make the liquor and they will put it on there and they will case it, put it in the half-gallon jars and put it in the cases and put it on a car and bring it up to the road. And then they wouldtransfer it to a road car and the road cars what it actually distributed it. Take it to places. But the bush car was just you carrying from the still up to the road.

Teresa Roberson

So that wasn't a mass-produced?

Cousin Ted

A converted mass-produced car, yeah.

Teresa Roberson

What did it start off as? A truck?

Cousin Ted

Most likely a truck or car. They can take the trunk and all that stuff out of car, and all the backseats and have but one seat in it. That was the driver. Couldn't but one person ride in it.

That's about it. There was a lot of fun. We grew up and we work together. That's why I guess the people in my generation are so close. Much closer than the others because we knew each other. We had to sleep together and work together and play together. We spent a lot of time together. So, we didn't start getting distributed until later on.

Teresa Roberson

What do you think caused that?

Cousin Ted

People's jobs and the relocation. There are more people, more mobile now than they were when I was a child.

Teresa Roberson

But you also served time in the military right?

Cousin Ted

Yes. Twenty-two years.

Teresa Roberson

About the same time as my father.

Cousin Ted

That's correct. I retired in 1984.

Teresa Roberson

I want to say that my father retired in '81.

My father is Karl Wayne Roberson. He confirmed he served in the Air Force for 22 years and retired in 1981.

And then worked civil service and he retired from that. And then he started bagging groceries.

Cousin Ted

Yeah at Fort Bragg. I was stationed at Bragg three times. That's when the Special Forces flew to the Fort Bragg.

Teresa Roberson

Okay. But my father was at Pope Air Force Base. You were Army and he was Air Force.

Cousin Ted

Yeah, they are joined. All of our planes fly out at Pope. We'd have to go to Pope to get on an aircraft go make jumps as an Airborne trooper.

Teresa Roberson

I didn't realize you were a paratrooper.

Cousin Ted

Yes. Yeah, I went to jump school in December of '62. 1962.

Teresa Roberson

I want to say that's before either one of my sisters were born.

Actually, my sister, Renee, was born in January of 1962.

I was born in 1970.

Cousin Ted

Yeah, I was in Vietnam my second time when you were born. I went over in '66 first. Sixty-seven, then '69 to '71.

Teresa Roberson

But do you think joining the military is what first started our family moving away?

Cousin Ted

No, someone had already moved. Your Uncle Charlie had been living in Pennsylvania. Aunt Cindy and Aunt Annie, and Aunt Vi lived in DC.

Uncle Charles, Aunt Annie, and Aunt Viola were Great Grandfather’s fourth, sixth and seventh children, respectively.

Teresa Roberson

But these weren't factory jobs, were they?

Cousin Ted

Not that they had. No.

Teresa Roberson

Was it working for the government?

Cousin Ted

I think some were, but not all. Some did domestic work.

Teresa Roberson

Everyone would just come back at least once a year for the family reunion.

Cousin Ted

That's correct. At least once a year.

Teresa Roberson

Because I know my mother is one year older than our reunions.

Cousin Ted

Right. Yeah, she's one year older than me. I was born on the same year that the reunion started.

Teresa Roberson

Okay.

Cousin Ted

And then we had relatives up in Philadelphia also. That's where my grandmother's sister, Annie. They were in Philadelphia.

Teresa Roberson

I want to thank you for joining me this evening. I appreciate you helping me document our family stories. That's why I call it "folklore" because some people remember things slightly differently.

Cousin Ted

Right.

Teresa Roberson

Or they'll focus on one thing because that's what captivated them. So, it is nice to have multiple points of views.

Cousin Ted

OK, now you enjoy yourself.

Teresa Roberson

Thank you so much.