Last year, a beautiful, petite, and cheerful 96-year-old woman and her son stopped by the Mast Store in Asheville and visited with us for a while. Many Mast guests with rich histories and even richer stories pass through our doors every day, but this guest was particularly special because she holds the keys to the history of our beloved Valle. Valle Crucis – the birthplace of Mast General Store.
Blanche Hodges grew up right down the road from Valle Crucis in Vilas, North Carolina. She made the seven mile journey by foot to visit the Original Mast Store, run by W.W. Mast in those days. At age 14, Blanche married Carl Kohnle and moved those seven miles from home to a house right across the road from the Mast Store Annex. Mrs. Kohnle gave birth to six of her eight children in the Valle – the first three were born in that house. Blanche was a tender 15-years-old when she became a mother for the first time.
During her 17 years living across the road from the Mast Store Annex, (then the Valle Crucis Company from 1931 until 1948), Blanche bought all of her groceries, dry goods, material for clothes, and hardware at the Annex - or as she referred to it - "The Candy Store." This was also back when the Annex housed the Valle Crucis Post Office which has since been moved back down the road two-tenths of a mile to the Original Store. But that’s a story for another day.
Blanche grew most of her own food, but would barter at the Annex for the goods she needed. All of the plants grown and animals raised by Blanche and her husband provided for specific things they required for their family throughout the year. You might call it a bartering budget.
The Kohnle Family chickens sold for a dollar at the Annex and, in turn, were tossed into the chicken yard out back – hence the term, “yard bird”. Eggs were sold for only 15 cents a dozen. In the spring, Blanche's husband Carl would sheer their six or seven sheep in exchange for summer clothing material. Their many fruit trees would grow enough produce – apples, pears, and the like - to fill over 350 jars each summer and were bartered for cloth to make winter clothes. Tobacco was grown and harvested to pay taxes. Roots and herbs were dried on the roof and sold for 3 to 5 cents in exchange for candy. Blanche’s favorite? Orange slices, which we still carry at “The Candy Store”.
Every living thing had a purpose. The Kohnle’s two horses harvested hay to feed the three dairy cows. Milk for their Jersey and Guernsey cows was churned into butter – all by hand. Hay was also used to nest potatoes and cabbage, which were buried to be eaten during the winter and spring.
Blanche’s many bees offered the sweetest honey, and her pigs kept her children’s tummies full of ham, bacon, sausage, and livermush all year long. A small pack of “Sooners”, usually foxhounds, kept watch over the homestead, while several cats made fine mousers for the family and kept rodents out of their essential goods.
In addition to raising children, cooking every meal with food she grew herself, and tending to everything that needed tending to, Blanche had her own business. Ever the resourceful and hard-working woman, she’d starch and iron clothes for a family of four each week for $1.50. And remember, all of her work was done over a hot wood stove, sometimes in mid-summer heat, and before air conditioning. Her life’s work was the definition of “sweat equity”.
Blanche put the kids to work too. Her son Mike, now a resident of Asheville, reflected, “I think kids are a bit lost these days because they don’t feel like they have a purpose. I was a happy kid because I had a job to do every day. There was no such thing as being bored and not much time to get into trouble. There were cows to milk and a huge garden to hoe. Every ounce of water used for cooking and cleaning was carried from the natural spring and into the house." Blanche added, "The spring was so cold it could whip cream.”
Mike continues, “We cut trees, hauled logs from the woods, split them into short pieces to fit the stoves, stacked them in the wood shed, and carried them from the shed to the house to be used in the wood stove every day of the year. We also broke beans, canned all kinds of fruit and vegetables like apples, tomatoes, beets, and carrots. If we didn't can it, we dried it. We ate from the garden all year long. Everyone helped with anything that needing doing around the house. Every single member of the family had a purpose.”
Reflecting on her own childhood, Blanche describes her dad, Clingman Hodges, as “the greatest musician”. He mastered the banjo, mandolin, and auto harp . Each morning, he’d awaken the children for school and their mother’s fresh made biscuit breakfast by picking a cheerful tune on the banjo.
Clingman was also a great carpenter. He made beautiful coffins for folks in all the outlying counties – each one of them lined with cotton and lace and the wood varnished so bright, they gleamed. “Daddy went blind at age 72, built his own casket that same year, and was laid to rest in it 12 years later,” Blanche recalls with tenderness.
While Blanche’s five sisters and three brothers played musical instruments like their dad, Blanche was a child with music in her feet. In those days, dancing was considered improper by many folks, especially her mother who forbade her children from doing it. Described by Blanche as “kind, patient, and neighborly”, Blanche’s mother was gracious about most things, but not dancing.
One afternoon during her childhood, Blanche recalls going to the outhouse to practice a few special steps she learned from the other school children… it was called the Charleston. The whole family could hear her behind the house tap-tap-tappin’ away the steps of this popular dance, named after the beautiful South Carolina harbor city, on the wood timbered floor. The consequence for Blanche’s disobedience was a swift spanking, but it was delivered with lots of kind laughter by her ma who knew how much her daughter loved to shimmy.
Years later, long after the devastating Flood of 1940 swept through the Valle, Blanche’s mother said, “I knew when the Valle Crucis Mission School started allowing square dancin’ that it would come to no good. I’m certain that flood was brought on by the dancin’.”
Before that same flood swept through Watauga County and took Tweetsie Railroad with it, Blanche would hop on the train and head west to Johnson City, Tennessee for the day to eat at restaurants and enjoy “city life.”
Mountain weather in the summer wasn’t as hot in those days and the winters were much colder. Summer would find local children swimming and fishing in the pool of Dutch Creek Falls. This spot was popular with the locals for many years, but wealthy homeowners have since purchased the land all around the beautiful falls and it has been hidden from sight for decades.
It wasn’t unusual to have snow up to your knees in January. The students who attended the Valle Crucis Mission School wouldn’t be able to make the walk back home in bad snows and would’ve been stranded had Blanche and her neighbors not taken them in for days at a time.
A different kind of precipitation drew a dark veil over the Valle during an otherwise sunny summer in August of 1940. The remnant of an unnamed Atlantic hurricane, affected portions of northwestern North Carolina and eastern Tennessee and left in its wake shattered lives and unimaginable devastation. The memories, though not pleasant, have endured for many generations and have become a permanent part of our mountain heritage.
“My family was spared. The flood waters came right up to the porch of our house and stopped there. All of our haystacks floated down the washed out road, and no potatoes or cabbage were harvested in the Valle that year. The church next door was pulled right off of its foundation. For other families, it was much worse. I remember seeing our neighbor son’s fiddles floating by my house. He didn’t survive the flood. It was all so very sad.”
Blanche saw electricity light up the Valle in 1932 and “Electricity brought so many great things: washing machines! Irons! The vacuum cleaner! It changed our lives in so many wonderful ways,” Blanche reflects. The Wagon Factory on the north side of the Valle serviced all of horse drawn buggies until the late 1920s. Blanche’s older brother, Bynum Hodges, drove the area’s first Model-T through town to church one Sunday and soon Henry Ford’s great invention changed the dirt roads around the Valle forever.
Blanche was a wife by age 14 and a widow at age 44. She never remarried. She has a rich legacy of 8 children, 22 grandchildren, 24 great grandchildren, and 8 great great grands. One granddaughter inherited “music in her feet” and is a champion clogger. You can see the pride in Blanche’s eyes when she talks about her family.
Blanche Hodges Kohnle misses the sound of her daddys' banjo pickin' every morning before school and the joy of her mama's laughter. She enjoys her many flowers – roses and impatiens mostly – that attract the most beautiful butterflies and hummingbirds to her lovely porch in Granite Falls, North Carolina. She’s the matriarch and everyone’s favorite parishioner at Ebenezer Methodist Church and has touched many folks throughout her life as evidenced by the wonderful comments about beloved "Ms. Blanche"
With kind, twinkling eyes, and a warm, generous hug, Blanche offers only one piece of advice… two simple, yet profound words: Love people.