Faye Viola Scott

Faye Scott

I knew   Faye Viola Scott.  She died in April of 1980 and her funeral was held at the small Rollynsburg Baptist church in Talcott,  West Virginia.  Until 1968,  she and my Aunt Danese occupied the house on the family  farm and had for nearly four  decades.  I did not know she was unwell,  and they said it was the shingles that did her in.   I had no idea what shingles were,  no less how they could kill you.  It turns out that as a 20 year old sitting in a hard pew,   there was still a lot I had to learn about shingles, life,  and family relationships, and  now realize that once they are gone,  there are things about them you will never know. 

My own branch of the family  were immigrants.  West Virginia’s greatest export of the 1960’s  were the young educated people who looked for gainful employment in burgeoning suburbs around Washington DC and other expanding urban areas.     Northern Virginia  grew exponentially as the  government fueled cold war  expansion created demand for development and housing and jobs were plentiful and lucrative.  So it was that  my parents ventured into Fairfax County  to jump start their  careers as young teachers.  They loved their West Virginia roots, but thought there might be a little more opportunity in the ever expanding DC suburbs.  Still,  it was only six hours away by road;  possibly a hundred years back in time. 

Farm House circa 1940?

All  return journeys to the  Mountain State   included a mandatory visit to Aunt Faye and Aunt Danese. They were on the visit priority list which  first comprised grandparents, then uncles,  aunts and cousins.  My aunts are part of  the very first memories I have of the farmhouse in which all the antecedent  Scott children were raised.  It always seemed ancient, as whatever paint or whitewash which had originally been put on the home had long worn away,  battered and compromised by  the elements,  time,  and neglected as the males who normally took care of outdoor maintenance passed on,  or became too feeble to climb a ladder.  Its exterior was  dry, gray wood which wanted a slap of paint like a man lost in a desert wants a drink of water.  A thick tin roof protected the structure from moisture and rot and probably allowed it more time than it otherwise would have had.  It survived eras of both coal and wood heat,  which often contributed to the immolation of many such structures.  This was a lucky house.  It was probably constructed in the 1910 as census information clearly shows the family patriarch,  James Kincaid Scott,  in Wolf Creek,  in Monroe County 1870.  It replaced a robust and traditional cabin at nearly the same site.

The Original Scott Cabin Photon Provided by Patrica Young,
Granddaughter of Eva Esta Scott

A steam sawmill was  part of a business  enterprise and no doubt some very high quality timber was cut into various boards  to create  the wood frame house that was the center of family life.  Five bedrooms,  a front living room, dining room and kitchen. The floors were wood, and  a large coal stove burned in the  front sitting room and was vented through a big creek stone hearth and chimney.

Steam Sawmill on The Scott Property
Image Provided by Patricia Young, Granddaughter
of Eva Esta Scott

They picked a most pleasant spot for its construction  at the confluence of Boone  Creek and Hungards creek, each which came out of separate valleys and joined to continue on as one stream.     There was bottom land to farm,  and timber on the hillsides to cut for sale and to be used for building.   Behind the home was a bold spring  which was covered and protected by a small spring house.  The spring was  sequestered  into a basin constructed of creek stones and mortar which could be drawn into the house with a hand pump.  It was cool and sweet water without sulfur or iron,  perfect for cooking or drinking and it could be used in the middle of summer to chill milk, or a ripe  watermelon.

My first recollections are from the early 1960’s  when my dad took me to the farm for a visit.   I was four or five  years old.  My Aunts fussed over dad and me  and seemed so happy to have us.  Another Aunt,  Pearl, was there.  She was an older sister  and had been staying with them  as she was disabled from a stroke.    She spoke to my dad in a way that made absolutely no sense at all,  and then did the same to me.  Total gibberish. The stroke and  had left her unable to speak plainly and only my aunts could decipher her intentions. She would talk in gibberish,  and they would translate.  Until then,  I was unaware that such problems could happen to someone and it was both confusing and a little bit creepy.

Aunt Pearl had married a man named Inez Boyd and even as a child I could easily measure the contempt in the tones used when his name was uttered. They hissed his name. Apparently he wasn’t a good husband and neglected to care for Pearl even in the best of times and abused her most of the time.   With her unable to function,  he became even less sympathetic and possibly more neglectful and abusive.  My Great Grandfather,  Green Lee Scott,  said he had debt with the devil and was paid back with Inez Boyd.  She was lucky to have sisters to care for her.

Faye was the cook.   Her  kitchen stove was a massive  ancient wood burner vented through a stove pipe and stone chimney at the rear of the home.  She had mastered the lost art of feeding and maintaining a wood fire,  which simmered most of the day but was particularly  hot for breakfast biscuits or lunch beans and cornbread.   Water  was brought into the kitchen  by a hand cranked pump which pulled  from the spring which was only 50 yards or so from the back of the house.  It emptied in a large enamel  basin which was big enough to bathe a small child or wash garden vegetables.  There was electricity by the 1960’s, but no indoor plumbing.  The outhouse was on a hillside and featured two seats which were separated by a wall for some privacy.  As was the custom,  there were enameled  thunder mugs under beds for nighttime use and a  nice toilet chair in the master bedroom which was elaborately decorated to make it look a little more elegant than its utility would otherwise indicate.  Whatever went into the nighttime vessels were carried to the outhouse and emptied during the day.

Aunt Danese was a professional.  She was educated to become a teacher and landed a job at the Pence Springs School where she masterfully orchestrated instruction in a multiage classroom.  Pretty sure she had to start a fire in a stove to warm the classroom and had a paddle to enforce discipline.   She  could also drive,  and had a white Rambler sedan which got her to work, church,  and the grocery store.  While both she and Faye spoke in a manner of Applachain people,  Danese’s education made her speech a little more precise and formal.  Whereas Faye might describe a distant object as being vaguely “out jonder”, Danese was more likely to use her classroom diction and specificity in such descriptions.

Aunt Faye had a raspy voice like a smoker.  This is because she was a smoker. She tried to keep it undercover,  but there’s only so much one can do when you really want a cigarette. .   There were plenty of women smoking in those days,   but perhaps not so much when Faye took up the habit.  I suspect it was one of those things that men were supposed to do,  and women were not.  You would never know she was from an occasional visit, because she never imbibed  in front of company.  For longer visits she would apparently need a cigarette and sneakily vanish to  some unknown location.  More than one time us kids would be running about the yard  and invade some back corner of the house  to see the flow of a  billowing gingham dress quickly disappear around the corner  in a puff of smoke.  She moved pretty quickly when startled. 

To be sure,  it was an isolated  life.  In 1952, both Green Lee and their mother, Carrie had passed leaving Danese and Faye as the sole permanent residents in the home.  Uncle Pete and Uncle Ben, the older half brothers  ,  still owned the property. Ben lived there and Pete visited frequently.  Ben died in 1965, and after that,   it was just them and some weak AM radio signals.  On any given day,  only a few cars would pass the house. There was phone service on a party line.  Their ring was “two longs and a short”.   For a child used to single line privacy, this was a revelation,  and even through the 1970’s and 1980’s that level of phone service persisted and provided some entertainment to visiting children,  such as myself,  who realized you could eavesdrop on conversations from other rings.  You know you got caught if the parties on the other line said “looks like we got big ears on the phone”.  I think Aunt Faye had big ears too. 

In April of 1980 I was in my second  year of study at Virginia Tech.  My dad called and told me about Aunt Faye’s death and authorized the use of a credit card to fill up the ‘70 Cadillac Coupe de Ville he had allowed me to take to Blacksburg.  It had a powerful V8 engine which could pass anything on the road except a gas station.  It was during the fuel crisis  and gas was sometimes scarce and expensive.  Generally,  I was allowed to  use the card to get to school, and come home.  Any other use of it entailed personal expenditure,  and my dining hall job and $1.75 an hour did not allow for extravagant use of fuel.  Mostly the car just sat in the Ambler Johnson lot at VA Tech.  While saddened by Aunt Faye’s death,  I looked forward to the short trip from Blacksburg to Talcott to see my family.

Her service was right out of the Baptist playbook.  No surprises there.  Scripture was read, salvation and eternal life were certainly her’s,  as promised,    and we could look forward to someday reuniting in heaven.  All of her suffering and maladies were gone, vanquished by her ascent into heaven and subsequent entry through pearly gates.  All the while poor  Aunt Danese was consumed with grief and sobbed frequently.   As is the custom,  the minister rose to sermonize a bit which included some of the details of Faye’s life which included a listing of  surviving family members such as  her brother Paul Scott,  her sister, Ruby Cyrus, and her longtime companion Danese………..  HAYNES. 

Well there was a surprise. My Aunt Danese had a totally different surname than my Aunt Faye and the rest of us.  While I wanted to immediately ask some questions concerning this revelation,  I was constrained by the pew etiquette and vowed to dig deeper at a more opportune time.   My first thoughts on the matter were that Aunt Danese,  at some point in her life,  had taken husband and some manner of tragedy had taken him away.  Or maybe it was divorce, which common sensibilities of the time required no mention.  Either made sense.

So it was that I came to our family table on the farm with my grandparents,  father, uncle,  and Aunt Willie.  I only remember the gist of the discussion,  but it went something like this:

“Grandpa,  the minister said Aunt Danese’s last name is Haynes.  I always thought it was              Scott''

He said, “No, her last name  is Haynes.”

“So, was she married to somebody named Haynes at one time?”

“No, her name has always been Haynes.”

“So she isn’t really a Scott?  And she really isn’t my Aunt?”

My father said,  “ No, she isn’t, but since they lived together we just always called them                 your Aunts”

 “ Well, how did  she come about living on the farm  in the first place?”

Grandpa said,  “ She got a teaching job and needed a place to live and my father and mom took     her in as a boarder.”

“But she stayed on the farm with Faye for all those years and never married?”

Grandpa, “ Yes”

At this point there's some palpable tension at the table and it’s really starting to dawn on me that there a little more to the story than anyone wants to let on and then it occurs to me that I should go ahead and ask to fifty thousand dollar question:

“ So were they a couple?”

Bit of silence…….

Grandpa said, “Well they didn’t have to sleep in the same damn bed.”

Clearly there was an issue here that had long been considered but not openly spoken about.   For my part,  the main point was the deception of finding out that my Aunt Danese was not remotely related in any genetic sense.   That was just a surprise.   Your family tells you something,  and you believe it.   The cover story fixed any questions about the nature of the relationship,   more particularly,  any sexual part,   and framed it as just a couple of sisters who were doing their best to get by.   My dad always referred to them as “Old Maid Aunts”;  a class of  women who never married and who seemed fine about that. 

Faye on the Left and Danese on the Right

There’s no way historical records can tell us anything about the nature of their partnership  and no letters or  intimate details survive. There are the temporal facts of their life.   In the 1930 census,  Danese Haynes is listed as twenty four  year old “boarder”  on the farm.  Her full name is Margaret Danese Haynes.  There were nine people in the home, including twenty six year old Faye.   Ten years later,  the census shows only six residents which still included a thirty seven year old Faye and thirty four year old Danese.  Clearly,  there were good reasons for  Danese to stay on the farm and her presence there must have been uncontroversial  or  unobtrusive.  To be sure,  out of all the people living on the farm,  she is only one with a regular paycheck.   The economic model of such subsistence farms was land rich, but  cash poor, so any  access to a few dollars must have been welcome. 

Between the Faye and Danese,  they had a functional  combination of guaranteed income and housekeeping.  Problem was,  they didn’t actually own their home.  Legal possession had passed to James Emmett (Pete) Scott  and Bennett Boyd  Scott upon the passing of Green Lee and Carrie.  Pete worked on the railroad and had living arrangements  in Hinton.   At some time in the early 60’s,  Pete indicated he was willing to give up ownership of the farm and offered it to his half brother, Paul.  Paul didn’t have the financial resources available to purchase the 136 acres,  so he approached his two sons, Randy and Jack.  Together they  each borrowed or saved about  two thousand dollars to chip in for the six thousand dollar purchase. Thus the farm passed to the younger generation and  Faye and Danese continued to live there,  but changes were afoot. 

My grandparents,  Paul and Maycle Scott had never owned a home.  Paul worked as an electrician and generally traveled from job site to site for work. They were lucky when employment was local,  but most of the time it was not. They were never in a permanent location,  so they always rented.  With the purchase of the farm,  they saw an opportunity for a home and began to work toward that end.   Discussions were had about possible living arrangements for all and what that might look like.  Unlike most families today in which it’s uncommon for sisters and brothers to share a home,  it wasn’t out of the question that they might revert to some cooperative arrangement.  After consideration, Faye and Danese made the decision to move to a home of their own.  That would be a good way to ensure privacy.

 They found one on Route  20  and in front of the  railroad track in Talcott.  It was busy with both cars and trains passing their front porch.  It gave them a lot to look at.   While they probably lamented the loss of their longtime country  residence,  there were great advantages to their new location.  Electric cooking and indoor plumbing can go a long way in making life easier,   and they were socially more connected to people in their church and community.  They had gas heat too,  and used it well into the summer.  Sometimes  all summer.    They also had TV,  which on a good day,  would get two channels.  On one occasion I recall a Saturday morning visit with the TV on.  It was professional wrestling and the feature matches were dwarves, which were referred to as midgets.  Judging by Aunt Faye’s comments,  she had developed preferences for particular wrestlers and spoke disparagingly about how dirty some of the villainous characters were.  She made’m sound like they were as bad as Inez Boyd.

We got Parade magazine  in our Sunday paper.  There in the back was an advertisement for a device that made a black and white TV into a color TV for just a few dollars.  Even as a ten year old,  I judged the efficacy of such a device as  pretty sketchy.  It consisted  of a thin sheet of  semi transparent plastic in a prismic ROY G BIV color arrangement which was taped to the front of the picture tube.   I remember thinking,  “that’ll never work.”  I got a chance to assess its utility on  a subsequent visit to my  Aunt’s home as they had acquired one (probably from their copy of Parade Magazine).    I was right.  It did not create a dynamic color image and actually obscured some of the details of the regular picture.  They seemed pretty pleased with it though.

When I was five years old they packed a couple grips and a big picnic basket  and navigated their way across the mountains and  to Fairfax .   Faye’s older sister, Hazel, had relocated to Maryland and it gave them a chance to see her as well.  This might be as far as they ever traveled from West Virginia.   Unfortunately,  I was not on my best behavior, which is to say,  that as a five year old my judgment had not developed to an extent  which allowed me to consider and evaluate personal actions which might result in discipline.  Consequently,  I was frequently disciplined, which could range from a quick swat on the butt to a formal and humiliating lecture and subsequent date with one of my dad’s belts.  As the story goes,  my parents became aware of a behavioral  transgression  when Aunt Faye looked through the  back door  window to our neighbor’s home  where the neighborhood children had assembled.  Faye alerted my parents to the potential problems  by asking,  

 “Are those kids supposed to be coloring that car?” 

Of course the answer was no, you don’t color cars with crayons,  though  it seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time.  Our neighbors, the Huebners,  had left for the weekend.  Vic Huebner’s  pristine white MG  had been pulled into the carport.  Somehow one of the Dean kids saw the car as a blank canvas  which could be vastly improved by any one of the 64 colors of crayola crayons in a newly acquired pack.  Maybe even all 64 colors.  They were busy at work when I joined them.  They explained how happy Vic would be to find his plain ole white car with a nice bit of color.   I was invited to join,  found a  red crayon,  and went to work.

Once Faye tipped off mom and dad it went badly quickly.  In one moment celebrating the collaborative and joyful  endeavor of spontaneous artwork and the next minute realizing that your creation  is not at all appreciated.  Sometimes you can tell your parents displeasure without them uttering a word.   When questioned about my role,   I admitted the participation,  but  only with the red crayon. This did not mitigate or diminish the punishment that followed.  Aside from the spanking and stern words,  I was sequestered in my bedroom and disallowed to play with my friends.  Worse,  their own parents seemed to take the events as more of a laughing matter and I could hear the children playing freeze tag outside. No  whoopn's or isolation for them.  From my window I watched the parents put Mr. Clean to good use to restore the car to its original bland and unimaginative color.  

And while that was going on, Faye and Danese  came to my room with sympathy  and lamented the fact I had gotten spanked and they just knew I would never use a crayon to color a car again,  and that I was a good boy,  and they knew it and once this all blew over,  they had a nice piece of pound cake for me.  They lobbied my dad for early release and he relented.  True to my word,  I never again colored a car and they made me feel better about myself. 

  

Danese Haynes

 Faye and Danese were very helpful too. Danese eventually became principal of the Pence Springs school and found a secretarial job for my Aunt Donna. This despite my Aunt Faye's doubt that my aunt and uncle's marriage was likely to be productive due to the fact that Donna's family was Catholic. Her advice to my Uncle Jack was not to marry as mixing protestant and Catholic was likely to lead to nothing but trouble. It turns out they were married for 63 years, so that particular issue really wasn't a problem. Plus it turns out, that Aunt Donna was a really wonderful addition to the family. It was natural to help out, so Faye volunteered to watch Jackie Lee while Donna Sue did her secretary job at the school. It wasn't free though. Aunt Faye charged a dollar a day to cover the cost of the bacon she fed Jackie Lee.

    Faye was an artist and her medium was cloth.  Among the most cherished items left behind are some of the quilts she made, often time with others.  They were beautiful compositions of common patterns found in Appalachia and made attractive bed covers which were colorful and soft and functioned to conserve body heat in homes that were drafty and cold.  Often many were layered  to make a warm bed.  I remember being tucked into one of the upstairs twin beds which was quite distant from the wood stove which heated the front room of the house and recognized the additional effort to roll over once covered with several layers of blankets and quilts.  A lot of body heat can be conserved with 50 pounds of bed clothing.  I have since entered modern homes and seen such quilted creations hanging on walls as if they were commissioned artwork acquired at great expense.  Pretty sure Faye would have made you one for 50 bucks and it would have been beautiful.

My Aunt Donna and Uncle Jack were nice enough to pass on some of her personal items including some crochet doilies and tablecloths with exquisite  pulled thread work.  They are delicate, elaborate,  and show meticulous attention to detail and appreciation for quality.   They are the kinds of things that one creates and is proud of;  something you do,  put away in a drawer,  but pull out every once and a while and look at and admire.  I imagine she and Danese on  a very quiet farm  evening. on the front porch after supper,  as the day was cooling and the shadows were getting long, pulling threads into delicate patterns until it became too dim to work without a light   Bet Faye was smoking a Raleigh Filter too.

Aunt Danese lived another 8 years after Faye died.  She cried every day thereafter.   She  had an adopted family and reciprocated with  generosity toward us. She helped my cousin with educational expenses.   My Uncle Jack helped her with her estate and affairs in the later part of her life and he and my Aunt Donna helped her find a nursing home to stay in.  She ended up in a nice private nursing facility ,  which was really just a large house which had some conversions for elder care.  I visited a couple times and the people looking after her were nice and took good care of her.   She would gently cry at the mention of Faye’s name.  She passed away in 1989,  probably from some kind of blood or liver cancer.  

    Faye was born on  February 7,  1903 at the farm on Hungards Creek in Summer’s County, West Virginia and joined an already large family which, according to the 1910 census, included four half siblings from her father’s first marriage to Elizabeth Boyd  and eventually  eight additional from his second wife, Roberta Carolyn Mann.  Carrie Mann was her mother.  She was eight years older than my grandfather,  Paul Scott,  and his closest sister in terms of continuous connection.  Her life partner was Margaret Danese Haynes.  They made a life together that most should envy.  Upon death,  Faye was buried in the Alderson cemetery among the many ancestors of Danese Haynes.  Upon her death,  Danese was buried next to her.

Faye Scott on left next to Randy Scott in white shoes, Steve Scott  between Faye and Danese Hayen and Jack Scott in naval attire circa 1954.