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crocks, cover them with a sheet, hitch up his two mules, and depart
down the trail.
Short hauls would last one or two days. Other trips up through the
Blue Ridge Mountains-to hamlets like Franklin, Hayesville,
Murphy, Hiwassee, and Blairsville — took a week or longer, during
which time Q_. solicited business store by store. Most such trips were
uninitiated by his customers; yet the potential gains were great, as Q.
felt he could charge any price he wanted for the ware. (Regular
customers, by contrast, were charged a fixed price and, in return,
entered into an agreement with the wagoner to pay for any ware
damaged in transit.)
At night, 0_. camped out along the road in a "protected zone:" "You
know, a man was protected on the side of the road. He can stay in so
many feet of the road and he doesn't have to ask a man where it's at
either. And he can burn anything [for firewood], any tree in so many
feet of the road." Visitors would drop by late at night to while away a
few hours in conversation and often to bargain on a piece of pottery.
Because of local ordinances concerning peddlers, this situation had
some potential for trouble:
They had [a law] over here in North Carolina —Murphy, all up
through there. I went over there one time with a load of ware and some
people come out there. And I was waiting on a merchant to come. I
told this man, I said, "How much do you want?" He said, "I want about
50 gallons [of] them four gallon churns." I says, "All right." Told him
my price and went to setting it out. I thought he was the merchant that
I was supposed to see.
After I found out that he wasn't, I said, "Look here, I can't sell you
this ware." He says, "Why? I'll pay you for it." I says, "I know, but
there's a law to keep me from selling this in your country —I'm from
Georgia." He says, "They don't nobody know that but you, you're the
only fella knows." And he says, "I'm the sheriff of this county and," he
says, "I want it." I says, "All right, you got it!"
If such circumstances proved an occasional irritant for the
wagoner, serious discomfort came with the advent of cold weather.
On one selling trip over the mountain in the company of his younger
brother, 0_. found himself stranded in a sudden snowstorm. Sleep
came fitfully as the pair huddled overnight in an old storehouse,
though the brothers fared better than one Hall County potter/freighter
whose ear reputedly "froze to the wagon wheel" as he lay slumbering
in the snow.
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