Cozie Tales
She comes from the time when a mountain household kept a
big kettle of water boiling in the fireplace at night,
to keep the panthers from coming down the chimney.

In June, Miss Cozie Taylor celebrated 100 years of life in the mountains,
from the mountains and of the mountains.

By Jean Taylor-Todd

Miss Cozie Taylor (on right) with Cousin Winnie in 1915 as they graduated from high school.

She was country before country was cool. Her thrills have been simple and natural. Peep frogs in spring, budding lilacs, the spread of the wild moss rose, a finished piece of needlework. She's fresh like the spring water she grew up on. And like the apples hanging in her old orchard, she's homegrown, right down to the core. Born the same year as the Sears Roebuck Catalog, she's charming, feisty, and cantankerous. But mostly, she's just plain Cozie.

Meet Miss Cozie Taylor, just turned 100, mountain woman extraordinaire. I have watched her dance many jigs, recite poetry, sing, and tell stories. She has fulfilled multiple roles in my life, from surrogate grandmother to best friend. Having always worked hard, briefly as a school teacher and at splitting mica, she survived chiefly as a farmer and homemaker.

Like many old folks, she loves to talk about “how the old people lived.” Long-ago events seem permanently inked in Miss Cozie's memory.

Born June 10, 1896, she was delivered by Aunt Jane Vance, a local midwife. Never married, Miss Cozie raised three children belonging to her sisters and she took care of her aging parents, all during the Great Depression. She has outlived her siblings. Until her hip injuries in 1994, she had lived her entire life in the house where she was born.

Miss Cozie dedicated her life to working the farm, where self-sufficiency was a must and self-indulgence, a luxury.

They had beehives, and raised cattle and horses, a garden, and crops to sell. Though she never learned to drive a car, she says she rode side-saddle and that she could drive a team of horses “as good as any man.”

At her mother’s spinning wheel in 1977. (Photo by Henry Belada)

Her daddy was a blacksmith who made his own tools. Miss Cozie says he mined lead in nearby Linville Gorge and even made his bullets by pouring melted lead into molds. He raised sheep and sheared them. Her mother then carded and spun wool. Ashes from the fire were saved to make lye soap, then placed in a homemade hopper, where water was poured over them. The runoff became lye.

Miss Cozie describes this part of the Blue Ridge as beautiful, but rough and hard for her and her predecessors. She tells of the wilderness of this country. In particular, how the old people placed an enormous pot of boiling water in their fireplace to keep panthers from coming down the chimney at night while they slept. Horseshoes were hung above their doors, not just for good luck, but to ward off witches. She talks of her daddy and his cousin, as young men, taking a wagon to Abingdon, Va. to bring back salt. They traded whiskey to the Indians for safe passage.

Having spent a lifetime in what is now Avery County, N.C., Miss Cozie was 15 when the county was formed in 1911.

Miss Cozie clasps her slender hands together, grins mischievously, then breaks into a sing-song recitation, toe-tapping against her footboard: “Every time I go to town, the boys start kicking my dog around. Makes no difference if he is a hound - better stop kicking my dog around!”

Having ventured less than 300 miles from her birthplace, Miss Cozie has little use for travel, which she casually refers to as “fool trips.” She firmly believes that “duty begins at home.” In her view, justifiable reasons for travel are limited to funerals, medical needs, and visiting seldom seen relatives.

I spent most girlhood nights with Miss Cozie. In summer, bumblebees built nests in the walls of her house. When we wanted entertainment after laying down, she would tell me to turn on our music box. This consisted of hitting the wall, stirring the enclosed bees to a vibrating hum.

I have seen the “Mona Lisa” in France and Picasso's paintings in Spain. But like Dorothy in “Oz,” I have come to believe that there's no place like home. The greatest masterpiece I have ever seen is a stately mountain woman, tall and proud. With a back as straight as a hickory chair, a wit sharper than an ax, and a penchant for gardening, storytelling, needlework, and home remedies, she's a classic. But mostly, she's just plain Cozie.

(Reproduced by permission of Blue Ridge Country, August, 1996 edition)

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