Opinion & Comment

Spirit Of Wood Carver Still Exists In Work & Home

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

Going through a box of kitchen utensils the other day, I came across an unusual apple-coring device. Immediately, I remembered U.E. Mason, an aged Appalachian craftsman who lived atop a mountain and whittled to pass the time.

The apple corer, like all of Mason’s handiwork, is marked with a capital “U” and “E” in blue ballpoint pen ink, outlined in red. It sports a hand-carved plunger; a handle made of Osage orange wood; and a blade laboriously snipped from a sheet of tin, hammered to fit, and filed smoothed.

Around my home are several U.E. Mason-made tools and toys: “Play pretties,” he would call the latter. He was a primitive craftsman, using materials from the farm and woodland around his house. He was also one of the loneliest men I ever met.

His wife had been dead for several years when I first trekked up Tar Kill Hill to meet him.

A hard-packed dirt path wound around the steep mountain, and I finally had to park my truck and walk. Tall weeds grew in the middle of the road, which not even the mail carrier would attempt to negotiate. Mason’s mail box was below on the side of the county road, a long walk down and back.

Tar Kill Hill was not only hard climbing, but the mountain was reputed to be haunted. The name is an Appalachian corruption of “Tar Kiln Hill.” Before Mason built his home on the wind-swept summit, it had been the scene of pine pitch burning going back over 200 years. Frontiersmen and, later, Confederate soldiers burned huge stacks of turpentine-rich pine wood to extract tar for waterproofing and other purposes. Ghosts of long-gone Rebels and Long Hunters were said to walk the mountain. Tar Kill Hill had long been part of local lore, and people grew up believing it was “spooked.”

Mason never said it bothered him one way or the other to share his piece of land with alleged spirits. He was always hospitable and looked forward to visitors. If you believe in ghosts, I can see how the spirits might have found Mason to be neighborly. He was a small-framed, quiet old man who wore a checkered jacket and a baseball cap. Most days, after struggling to the top of Tar Kill Hill, I found him sitting on the porch, whittling.

One evening, I stayed late. The sky was clear and cool. We watched a million stars wheel overhead and listened to a whip-or-will whistling. I thought of the old man by himself every night. Not only was it lonely, nights were very dark on Tar Kill Hill. I know this added to Mason’s sadness.

But, he was a talented craftsman. Although an octogenarian, he roamed the bluffs, looking for gnarled tree trunks or exposed roots with which to carve wooden spoons, forks, walking sticks, and other items.

He gave me a wooden cane, whittled from an oddly-shaped yellow poplar root. It was an unusual piece. Mason carved tiny wooden pins with which to attach hand grips, and he decorated the staff with old buttons and his signature swirls and curlicues done with a ballpoint pen.

I am not certain Mason had seen a modern bicycle. He carved toy bikes and motorcycles, modeling them on memory of such vehicles from his boyhood. My most prized of U.E. Mason’s works is a wooden motor bike with a peg kickstand and handlebars made of fence wire.

Mason missed his wife. He talked of her often and about the apple trees he planted for her near the house. The last time I saw him, the apple blossoms were falling in snowy clouds, and young green leaves were showing. We didn’t talk much. He mainly watched the shower of apple blooms and nodded his head absently as I rambled on about the weather, sports, and politics.

This was when he gave me the apple corer: a final gift.

I had forgotten U.E. Mason and those afternoons we spent atop Tar Kill Hill… until I opened the box and found his hand-carved utensil. The apple corer has never been used. My wife and I couldn’t bring ourselves to ruin the shiny patina of the wood or smear the ballpoint pen ink.

I am certain the old man has passed. It’s been 20 years since I last struggled to the top of Tar Kill Hill. My hope is that Mason’s spirit no longer has to walk the mountain alone. If it is a haunted place and people who lived or worked there have to wander for a time after death, I pray that his beloved wife is now at his side, and together they can watch the apple blossoms fall every spring.