Audrey McCarver

Legend of Alabama’s Goat Man

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There are legends, and then there are LEGENDS.

Some legends are born of woman. Some legends are born of imagination. Some are born of a combination of the two. Often, in such a case as the latter, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate fact from fiction.

There are those who are ‘a legend in their own time’; there are those who are ‘a legend in their own mind’. Then, there is Charles “Ches” McCartney, known throughout the South as Alabama’s legendary Goat Man. 

Born in Sigourney, Iowa, on July 6, 1901, Charlie was a student at the local rural school which numbered only 14 students, all ages gathered into a single room.

“Charlie was never very bright,” said a former classmate. “I never really liked him all that much, to tell you the truth it was because he liked to keep to himself.”

At age 14, Charlie ran away from Iowa to New York City where he married a 24-year-old Argentine knife thrower. They had a baby boy and, to make some spending money, Charlie joined her knife-throwing act as a human target. It was also his job to keep the knives sharp.

After this venture failed, they moved back to Iowa and bought a farm, but after only a few years, the woman became unhappy, took the child and fled to parts unknown. The small farm he owned was lost in the Great Depression, but a local historian claims that Charlie gave up the land to satisfy a grocery bill that he couldn’t pay.

While cutting trees for the WPA in 1933, Charlie was struck by a falling tree and injured him so badly that, when he was found hours later, he was taken to a funeral home. As the undertaker was inserting the needle with embalming fluid into his arm, Charlie suddenly woke up and sat up straight on the mortician’s table. The surprised mortician passed out cold.

After this, Charlie could use his left arm very little due to the deformity from the accident. Out of pure shame, he didn’t want to be put on the newly-formed welfare programs created by Roosevelt, so, he decided he wanted to travel the world and preach the gospel.

When Charlie discussed the matter with his wife at the time, she gave him a firm ‘no.’ She was having no part of such foolishness. A week later, Charlie sold her to a neighboring farmer (whom the wife already had her eye on) for two payments of $500 each. Now Charlie was free to do whatever he liked.

Having always been very fond of his goats, he rounded them up and attached several to a wagon he had made from a railroad cart. He took a bed, a pot-bellied stove, lanterns, Robinson Crusoe and the Bible and hit the road. Along the way, Charlie gathered up various items he found along the way.

“He made some money selling postcards he had had made of himself,” said one historian. “Twenty-five cents or three for a dollar.”

He also sold or traded items he gleaned along the way. He was known to preach and pray in return for dollars and dinners. His sermons were liberally salted with cursing and profanity.

“He smelled awful!” was the most often expressed impression people had of Charlie. Having lived with and slept with goats for years and never bathing would be a believable reason. It was often said that people could hear the commotion of the goats and wagon and smell the pungent odor long before he could be seen.

When word got round that the Goat Man was coming, parents would gather up their children and their cameras and go to see him. With few other forms of family entertainment, his appearance made for an enjoyable outing for a family (provided they stayed upwind).

Charlie would camp where tolerant landowners allowed it. Each night he would build a huge bonfire and top it off with cut-up rubber tires he had harvested from his travels.

Ostensibly, this was done to keep the bugs away, but others surmised that this thick, smoky cloud brought the locals to see what was on fire. When they arrived and saw that it was Charlie, well, now, what a fine opportunity to sit a spell, chat a while and buy a few postcards —“25 cents apiece or three for a dollar”. 

He didn’t have a big overhead, living on goat’s milk and items people brought to him. He accepted donations, especially from a little Georgia church that he started near Jeffersonville. And the goats would eat anything.

People remembering the sight of “Ches” McCartney and his smelly, clamorous entourage traveling down a road would be a sight they were not be likely to forget. Sometimes his herd numbered thirty goats, some goats pulled the unsightly sight from the front and some of the billy goats would push from the back.

If an animal was sick, or “off its feed”, he would hoist it up into the wagon for treating. The baby goats were often born in this wagon. One goat was observed with no front legs, and it hopped like a kangaroo.

Once while taking this tremendous load up Monteagle Mountain in a winter storm in southeast Tennessee, Charlie passed stalled vehicles left and right. That night he survived, he said, by taking extra goats into the wagon —a real Three Goat Night.

Around 1969, the Goat Man retired from the road; new super highways were frightening the goats and it was just time. After decades spent traveling in this fashion all over the South and most of the East, Charlie was calling it quits.

He admitted to having three wives and children with each and admits “there could be more. Who can I know?”

In 1984, Charlie became enamored with Hollywood actress Morgan Fairchild, so he set out to hitchhike to California and woo her and make her his own. He actually made it to Los Angeles, but, upon arrival, he was promptly mugged. This brought his wife-hunting to a halt.

Gene, Charlie’s son, traveled with Charlie for several years and never went to school. Charlie had photos of the lad dressed in clothes made of goat skins. After Charlie was mugged on Signal Mountain and eight of his goats killed, the father and son retired to an old family property near Jeffersonville, Georgia.

On the site, there was a concrete tomb which housed the remains of his father and step-mother. There was no electricity or running water. When the wooden shack burned down, Charles and Gene took up living in an abandoned school bus on the property.

In 1998, when Charlie had been moved to a nursing home in Macon (where he made a new girlfriend), Gene was found in the old school bus shot to death. The crime was never solved.

In less than six months, Charlie McCartney died in the nursing home. He and Gene are buried, side by side, in Jeffersonville. 

In all his decades of travel, he visited forty-nine states, only missing Hawaii.

“My goats couldn’t swim that far,” he said. “And if they could, “they’d just end up eating the grass skirts off the hula dancers anyway.”

Thanks for reading and… keep smiling

By: Audrey McCarver

July 21, 2022

 

Tasty Chicken and Dumplings

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“My mom makes the best chicken and dumplings in the world!” exclaimed my eight-year-old granddaughter. Then, as if to console me, added, “Yours are second best in the world.”

Every Southern born man, woman and child from who were living before the fast-food era probably had a mother or grandmother or friend who made the best chicken and dumplings they ever ate.

Recipes have been handed down through generations and the traditions observed in the preparing and serving of this Southern comfort food which has stood the test of time. 

Eagerly anticipated at church pot-lucks, family get-togethers, home style cafes, this basic meal is not likely to disappear from Southern tables any time soon.

Since taste is so subjective, I feel no one article could be written that reveals the perfect, accepted recipe for chicken and dumplings. So, I will provide the recipe and instructions I grew up with, those of my mother, and her mother, and her mother before that.

To people of the South, there has never been a time when chicken and dumplings was not known. Do we know how this very popular dish came to be?

The actual history of chicken and dumplings is scarce, well, as hen’s teeth. The probable beginning given is that this pleasing plate of plump poultry and delicate, delightful dough had its start in the Antebellum south as a mainstay for harsh economic times. They did their best with what they had.

As is the case with any recipe, add, subtract, substitute, experiment: Make it your own. Here is my favorite recipe:

Chicken and Dumplings

About 4 chicken breasts (or preferred pieces)

Salt and Pepper, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Dumpling pastry

Cover chicken with water and cook until tender, about one hour. Remove chicken from bone and cut into small pieces. There should be enough liquid in the pot to make dumplings; if not, add small amounts of hot water with chicken bouillon cubes dissolved in it, or use canned chicken stock.

You can also use cream of chicken soup, diluted. Keep the liquid hot because the dumplings will take up the liquid and get too dry. Salt to taste.

Put two cups plain flour into a large bowl, add about 3/4 teaspoon salt. Work into the dough about 2 tablespoons of shortening until it is all worked in. Mix just enough ice water to make a dough.

Have a floured surface prepared. Turn out dough on this surface. Knead the dough with the flour until it is not sticky. Halve it for better handling. Keep using flour as you roll out the dough very thin. When dough is thin enough, cut into thin strips and drop into boiling liquid. Put on the lid and cook for 20 minutes.

Next, remove the lid. Turn these dumplings under the liquid and add the other strips. Let cook for another 20 minutes. Add more water if needed. Be sure to add black pepper, but not too much. Time to eat.

What should be served as accompaniment with chicken and dumplings? Bread is already in the dish, so it is not needed. I would suggest beans or peas and a relish tray with cut raw vegetables; carrots, bell pepper, cabbage, celery. Maybe a comfort dessert such as blackberry cobbler, but that is another recipe for another day.

So, if my grandchild thinks my chicken and dumplings are the second best in the world, I consider that a real, heartfelt compliment.

P.S. I am going to reveal a secret. If you just can’t dedicate this much time and effort to making the homemade dumplings, don’t despair. Go to the grocery and buy roll-out pie crust, then follow the rest of the instructions. It will save you some time and still look and taste authentic.

Thanks for listening… And keep smiling!

 Audrey McCarver, July 20, 2022

Sacred Harp Singing

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The tradition of Fa So La singing, so-called Sacred Harp singing, is as deeply embedded in the fabric of Southern culture as chicken and dumplings and “See Rock City” signs.

Known as shape note singing originally, Fa-So-La singing has its roots in the “country parish music” of early eighteenth Century England. Practiced mostly in small rural churches, the singing tradition was handed down from one generation to the next and, by the mid-1800s, it was known as Sacred Harp singing.

Around the mid-eighteenth century, the forms and styles of the English parish music were incorporated in America in a new tune book called Urania (1764), which led to The New Psalm Singer (1770). In 1835, an American named William Walker wrote a very popular book titled Before The Sacred Harp, which is still in use today.

In 1844, B.F. White and E.J. King published The Sacred Harp in Georgia, which came to be the tradition of shape note singing with the largest number of participants. With that, the music took on the name of Sacred Harp singing.

Fa-So-La singing is profoundly associated with books using the shape note system, which was popular in America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This system of using shaped notes was developed to help the singer learn to read the music by sight.

The notes are printed in shapes to help the singer identify them on a musical scale. Two prevalent systems were developed, one using seven syllables (Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti) to represent seven musical notes and the other system using four shapes. Three of these shapes represented two notes with the fourth only being used once.

Fa is a triangle, La is a rectangle, Sol is an oval and Mi is a diamond. The publishing of the book “shape note” singing was very popular, the song books often using existing folk tunes.

Those who participate in Sacred Harp singing follow a specified form. They do not sing for an audience, but for themselves and other singers. The venue is set up with chairs or pews enclosing a hollow square with the sides dedicated to treble, alto, tenor and bass.

Participants always sang a cappella, without instruments, believing that the ‘voice was the instrument given by God at human birth’. There is no designated song leader, rather any participant may direct a song.

That person stands in the hollow square facing the tenor section, or melody singers, and calls out the number of the song to be sung. The song is started with an open palm in the down position and singing commences on the palm up motion. Someone sets a pitch and the singers sing the first verse using the shaped notes.

Then they sing the poetry, every one keeping the time with their palms raising and lowering with the rhythm.

Shape note singing, very popular in New England, spread to cities and urban and rural areas all over the country. However, despite the popularity of the shape note, the “better music” movement brought it under attack, led by Lowell Mason (A Charge to Keep I Have), who wanted a more scientific style of sacred music, which more closely favored the contemporary European music.

Before the Civil war, shape notes and their music disappeared from the Northeast and the Midwest, but still had a stable haven in the rural south. Much later, children in poor regions of Appalachia went to the singing schools and learned to read the shape notes at a very early age. In those regions the music was known as harp.

Today there is a wide resurgence of sacred harp singing which reaches beyond the American South to all areas of the United States and is popular in the British Isles, Australia, Ireland and many other countries.

Usually, most singing conventions are not held in a church building, but some churches host the ‘all day singing and dinner on the grounds’, which was popular in the middle of the twentieth century.

As a child, I often saw this sort of get-together at a church near my home. I recall vividly in my high school, a shy and quiet girl displaying for our class the art of shape note singing. I thought her very brave to stand before thirty teenagers who were disciples of sixties rock and roll and sing a recognizable tune with Fa So La lyrics.

To provide examples of Fa So La singing, I am including links to Terry Fell’s ever-popular Fa-So-La song and the Chuck Wagon Gang’s In Harmony

Thanks for listening… keep smiling!
Audrey McCarver, July 15, 2022