I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters. There, on the borders of a creek that runs into the Yadkin River, in a cabin that was chinked with red mud, I came into the world a subject of King George the Third, in that part of his realm known as the province of North Carolina.
The cabin reeked of corn-pone and bacon, and the odor of pelts. It had two shakedowns, on one of which I slept under a bearskin. A rough stone chimncy was reared outside, and the fireplace was as long as my father was tall. There was a crane in it, and a bake ketlle; and over it great buckhorns held my father´s rifle when it was not in use. On other horns hung jerked bear´s meat and venilson harms, and gourds for drinking cups, and bags of seed, and my father´s best hunting shirt; also, in neglected corner, several articles of woman´s attire from pegs. These once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine, faded pattern, over whick I was wont to speculate. The women at the Cross-Roads, twelve miles away were dressed in coarse butternut wool and huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters would give me no answers.
(excerpt from the opening of a novel by Winston Churchill)
