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Alabama Folklife Association Joyce H.

Cauthen Fellowship, Round 1 Fieldnotes / Final Report Traditional Wart Cures in Northwest Alabama Sarah Carter and Jennifer Jameson Fieldwork dates: 6.27.2012 6.29.2012
CONTEXT by Sarah In 2000, I endured a variety of wart treatments for some unsightly warts on my right leg. My method of ignoring them and pretending they would go away was surprisingly unsuccessful. After having them all frozen at once (about 27), and putting on a variety of dermatologist prescribed wart creams, I was still just as warty as ever. Feeling hopeless about the whole ordeal, my mother suggested I go see the wart healer in my familys home place, Winfield, Alabama. I had heard about wart healers my whole life, but was unsure about the actual process myself. Cleavus Stivner, a distantly-related marvel, was the subject of many of my mother and uncle's childhood stories. Having gone blind later in life, Cleavus was seemingly undaunted and performed tasks of mythic proportions for a sightless person. My Uncle, Duane Hot Hughes, said in addition to Cleavus taking warts off for him, Cleavus continued to practice his business of broom making after he lost his sight. Uncle Hot had memories of hearing his straw-cutting machines cutting brooms long after the light had faded, leaving him in utter darkness. He didnt, of course, see that it was dark outside, but this darkness and the apparent danger of operating potentially life-threatening machinery sightless was a greatly admired trait in my home. Another feat Cleavus was said to have performed is driving while blind. His wife, who did not care much for driving, convinced him to be her chauffeur long after he was able to see the road. Because they had lived in the Possum Flatts area their whole lives (Winfield and surrounding areas), it was sufficient that she should direct Cleavus as he barreled on down the curvy, country roads. When we did finally go to the wart doctor in Winfield, Cleavus was no longer living. I went with my mom, and cousin Kelsey, both with warts of their own, to the home of Ira Baccus, who my uncle knew from his youth pastorate at Winfield Free Will Baptist Church. A deacon himself, Ira (whos name is pronounced by all as Iree), was in his final years but still willing to see us. The Baccus' house was extremely tidy and well-kept. Mrs. Baccus was very kind and chatted with us until Ira could see us. My mother, Deborah Hughes Carter, cousin, Kelsey Hughes Elmore, and I each had warts, so Ira went one at a time. He counted the number of warts each person had, and tied that many knots in a

string. Then, he cut the string in half, and threw it on the ground. He would not touch the string after that point, and we were instructed to pick up the string and bury it. Damp, dark places were the best places to bury the string because the rotting of the string signified the disappearance of the warts. Another thing Ira said was, "Don't think about it anymore. Don't talk about it anymore." After a couple months of not thinking or talking about it, we all conferred and found all parties were healed. Jenn had recently spoken with Joyce Cauthen at the National Folk Festival in Nashville about the upcoming Cauthen Fellowships, and was looking for a research topic. After I casually mentioned my wart healing story to her, Jenn mentioned the opportunity to document it for AFA, and we agreed to write a proposal together. I had no idea that wart healing was as unknown as I found it was, and we decided to try and get as much information on the practice documented as we could. FIELDNOTES by Jenn and Sarah June 27, 2012 | MARY DEAN McDONALD We arrived in Winfield, Alabama in the late afternoon and met up with Sarahs family, Duane (Hot) and Lynn Hughes for an early dinner. When the opportunity for this project arose, Sarah talked with her aunt, Lynn Carden Hughes, about current practitioners of wart healing in town. Because she is such an active member of the community, many people were willing to share their knowledge on the subject and inform about individuals in the area who could give further information. Without her help and community connection, Im not sure how we would have found such helpful interviewees. After that, we met up with Mary Dean McDonald [a pseudonym, her mothers name] at the location of her choice which was the McDonalds in downtown Winfield, AL. She had just come from her Church of Christs Wednesday night service, and she spoke with us about her experience of healing warts for people of her community. Mary Dean is a Caucasian woman in her late 50s/early 60s. Working in banks for most of her life, she is now a childcare professional. Mary Dean learned the art of wart healing from her mother at a very young age, and tested it successfully on children in her neighborhood. She said that her mother learned it from an old woman who passed through town, but does not know any other detail about the

original source. Mary Dean had not used her skill in many years, but still felt strongly connected to it, even though she had not told many of her friends or family about her ability, including any of her sons. Mary Deans process for curing a wart involved saying something and doing something, although she kept the specifics under wraps, as her belief was that as soon as she tells someone how to do it (essentially passing it on), she will lose the ability to take off warts, herself. On what she recites/thinks to cure a wart, and its source: Its nothing to do with a witch pot with smoke coming out of it. Nothing to do with a cross. Its just somethingdont know whatits just something, if that makes any sense. She insisted that those who participate (healer and patient) must truly believe that it will work, for it to be successful. She also imparted that many of the folks who have this skill dont broadcast it it remains rather private, only circulating among her/his immediate community. What surprised us was how the conversation turned swiftly from healing warts to other neighboring folk healing processes such as a few forms of divination such as predicting the sex of a baby. [This was mostly discussed after we had formally ended the interview recording]. Mary Dean felt strongly that healing is a specific gift, distinct only to certain individuals who had the gifting and believed in the process. She was not yet sure she would pass it on to her children, but after the interview decided that she would pass it on to someone. That evening, Aunt Lynn told us that Tracy Estes, a writer with the local newspaper, the Mario Co. Journal Record, had heard about the research we were doing and wanted to write something up about it for the paper. He emailed us a list of questions, and we typed up responses that evening, to send back to him. The next morning we got up early to meet at his office at the Journal Record in downtown Winfield so that he could get a snapshot of us for the story. It was a quick meetinghe simply posed us behind his desk, as if we were typing on his computer. The story was published on the front page on the Journal Record on August 1 (a scanned copy is in our Misc. file). June 28, 2012 | GINA BRYANT On Thursday, we had three scheduled interviews. The first was Gina Bryant at the Winfield Community Center. Gina, a Caucasian woman in her late 40s, is on staff and works with programming at the center. Aunt Lynn had been given Ginas name when she was looking for informants for the project. We met in the Alcoholics Anonymous room at the

community center, and asked Gina to tell us what she could about her and her familys involvement in the healing process of warts. She told us about her grandmother receiving the gift from an elderly African American woman who lived near her mother as a child. Gina was close with her grandmother, and felt honored that her grandmother imparted the gift to her before she passed away. For her, the process involved a certain level of privacy between patient and healer. She kept her method identical to what her grandmother told her, and felt this was essential to the effectiveness of the process. Similar to Ira Baccus method, Ginas steps to taking off a wart include: tying a knot, rubbing the string on the wart(s), repeating that per number of warts, then burying the string after the person has left (her grandmother put a rock over it). Gina alluded to praying a silent prayer and described this step, which could not be articulated to us due to the secretive nature of the practice. Gina says the healing process takes about a couple weeks. Gina, who is a Christian, sees wart healing as an important Southern tradition based on faith. Gina also explained other healing traditions she remembers hearing discussed during her childhood. For chicken pox, she described an African American woman coming and slitting the throat of the family's best chicken over the head of the affected child. For thrush, children were taken to the seventh son who had never seen his father, and have him blow in the child's mouth. She also discussed American Indian traditions she heard from her Cherokee mother: willow bark for poison ivy, sage and sassafras tea for worms (for children). One interesting aspect of Gina's healing is that she is a nurse. She said there is no medical explanation of which she was aware which explained wart healing, saying I can't see any scientific reason that they should go away as a nurse (or as an intelligent human being), but it just works. Additionally, working at the community center enables her to develop and implement programming for a large age range of individuals. She has also healed a large number of individuals of varying ages. She recalled people approaching her at children's baseball games she was attending asking if she could take off warts for their kids. She also healed a wart for an elderly coworker who had already scheduled a doctor's appointment before Gina offered to heal her. Gina's healing gift mirrors her occupational strengths and extend to the whole Winfield community. June 28, 2012 | HAROLD SPANN In the afternoon we sat down in Harold Spanns living room, in a beautiful house with a large porch, tucked away on a country road. His yard, a sort of sanctuary for birds. We set up the recorder

in the living room, surrounded by Smoky and Spicy the dogs, and Cuddles the cat. Harold, a widower with two grown sons, had turned 77 year old just one day prior. He was born and raised in Winfield, but lived in Texas and Virginia, working for the Dept. of Corrections in Richmond, VA. He retired at 52, then moved back to Winfield, Alabama so his sons could go to school in Marion Co. Harold told us that he received his ability to heal warts from his uncle, who passed the tradition along to him when he was quite young. Unlike our other informants, the "healing gift" was not a mysterious thing to be lost when passed on. His uncle simply asked if he wanted to do it, and told Harold he thought he would be able to. Harold had warts on his right hand (age 11 or 12), then his uncle, Jim Spann, said, I can take them off [] Im gonna touch them and then youll look one day and theyll be gonebut you got to believe theyll be gone. One or two weeks later he was washing his hand in the creek and he noticed his warts were gone. Not long after, the mother of a young child asked him if he could take off her childs wart. He tried, and it worked for the child. Word soon got around that Harold could move warts, as he put it. In our other interviews, each of our informants expressed that the tradition was, for them, a relatively secret or private process, but not so, for Harold. For him, it seemed to be more about truly believing in the process than any secretive element. He does say something when seeing a patient, but does not recite a special line or anything. He touches it, he rubs it, he looks at the person and says, Do you believe this can be done? He told us that when he works with a patient, There are things that go thru your mind and in your beliefs about this person. Then when he departs from the person, he says youll forget about this. Typically, theyll report it as gone just days or weeks later. As a Christian man, we asked him about the source of the ability to take off warts. He said, You have different things that go through your mind when you do this. Its not your power, it could be [a] higher power. Thats my feelingthat you dont do this on your own-self. [] Here as a person here, we may have some power, but we dont have all the powers. To me, its God who has the power. Its not power-doin, His power may come through us. [] My mind is on God when Im doing it. He did wonder, though, about the scientific aspect of the healing: I read some articles about it [] I was always interested in why it was that I could remove them. I wondered if it was a chemical in my skin with a chemical in their skin that might cause it to go away. Then I said [laughing], Well, Walmart might have put me out of business they got that over-the-counter stuff. From his Uncle Jim he also learned to "witch for water," which was a service greatly utilized by community members. Harold said that his uncle would hold "a forked branch from a pitted fruit tree" up in the air and count the steps he took before the stick's end was pointed directly at the ground. The

number of steps taken equaled the number of feet which needed to be dug to find water. Sarah asked him, So, you hold it kind of loose? and he responded No, you hold it tight. Ive held it tight and you can hear it squeaking in my hand. Youd have unbelieving people, and Id say, no, you can hear it squeaking. Jim insisted that the two traditions go hand in hand, stating, If you can do [warts], you can do the water [witching.] Whats interesting was the way he spoke about these skillshe sees the removal of a wart as a natural process, while water witching, or divining, is a sort of paranormal or supernatural process. Removing a wartits just a natural thing, but, I mean, its not a mystery as far as the witching for water and stuff like that. Harold's yard is breathtaking. Full of large, flowering bushes and dotted by homemade, squirrel-rigged bird feeders, the yard was still tidy and Harold was kind enough to give us a tour despite the heat. One of the best features was a particular bird feeder which had been surrounded by a foot-long plastic ring making it impossible for squirrels to see the feeders from the ground. In the yard, Harold told us he had been a prison warden for 30 years in Richmond, VA, spending 10 years of that time running a prison farm. When we asked if he plans to pass the tradition on, he told us: Its natural to me. I was hoping it would pass along to one of my sons, but I dont think it didmaybe itll go to one of their grandsons [laughter]Ill have to check them out! June 28, 2012 | CAT MAMA BOX Cat Box had been working in her garden all day when we arrived. It was around supper time, and still close to 100 degrees, but we sat on her porch. Joined by her grandson, Thackary, Mrs. Box was still not convinced that she'd be able to tell us much, if anything, about healing. To her, healing is a very

private, and secret thing. She felt that if she revealed her process, she could lose her gift. She was able to tell us that she tied knots equal to the number of warts, but not what she was thinking or said during the process. The Box's house is clearly the center of their extended family's activities. One of the Box's grown sons was at the house helping Mr. Box fix some farm equipment. A teenage grandson stopped by to say hello and give hugs, and Rita, Cat's daughter, stopped by to join in the interview after work. Rita and Cat said almost all the family lives close, and pointed to a house and piece of property across the street where Thackery's family lives. Among the many things Cat said about healing, she expressed pity at the scarring children today receive when they have warts frozen off. She took warts off her own children, and those in the community. Rita remembered a young girl who was covered in warts coming to the house several times. She said Cat faithfully tied knots, and healed almost every single wart. They both agreed there were hundreds of them. We discussed the spiritual aspect in details because Mr. Box is a Evangelical minister. His usual comment about the whole process is, "I preach the gospel, and Mama does Voodoo." Neither seem to truly feel that there is any Voodoo (in the true cultural sense of the word) involved, but this quotation well summarizes the tension between this type of traditional folk healing and faith helping as practiced by many churches. Sarah's cousin, Kelsey Elmore joined the group in the last section of the interview because she needed a wart healed. It was still lingering after it was frozen off, and, knowing the Box's from being friends with their granddaughter, felt comfortable asking Cat to help. They both allowed us to watch and we observed just what Cat told us, although no documentation was permitted. It was truly a beautiful and intimate moment on the porch, and a privilege to witness the healer/patient dynamic between Mama Box and Kelsey. Mrs. Box counted the wart, tied a knot in the string, and walked around the side of the house with Kelsey. Speaking to Kelsey later, she said Cat buried her string. This was different from when Ira Baccus healed her warts previously. Mama Box told us in the interview, "I don't go in secret and I don't make a show of it either, and that was very much the case with the process we witnessed. June 29, 2012 | KELSEY ELMORE

On Friday morning we met a very pregnant Kelsey, who is Sarah's cousin, at the framing shop where she and her husband worked in downtown Winfield. BAMA posters, and Bear Bryant paraphernalia in gilded frames covered most walls. We sat in the office, and Kelsey told her side of the story of going to see Ira Baccus at age 18 to have a fit of over 100 warts healed. After going to see Ira, her warts were not instantly healedit took about 5-6 months. The warts began to itch one day, then the very next day they were gone. Before seeing Mama Box that Thursday evening, Kelsey, who had a fairly irritated wart on her hand, had tried to get it frozen off by a dermatologist months earlier, to no avail. She told us that having the wart taken off by Cat Box felt natural to her, and not forced or strange to her. She mentioned that she hadnt heard much talk against the tradition, as she grew up within some proximity to it. We also discussed if we felt her current wart healing would be affected by her pregnancy, but we all decided it wouldn't (and it did not!).

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