As you read the stories in this book, take into account that the writer does not consider himself an author or a writer. He does think that he is a "storyteller" as were most all of the people who lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina before, during, and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. The younger generation who came along after WW II were not exposed to these storytellers and have no idea of what life was like during what we old-timers like to call "the good old days."I tell these stories to make the younger generation of today aware of the hardships we older people faced in getting to this point in our lives. What you read in these stories is a part of what aunts, uncles, grandpas, grandmas, and all the others not having all the modern things we have today experienced. If I did not record these events of my life, they would be lost forever. My hope is that, in reading my stories, young people will learn about the past and that older people will refresh their memories of, "the good old days." Charles C. Fletcher