Oral History Interview with Tommy McMullin Part II

1983OH02.8

1983OH02.8

Family Farm Oral History Project

Interview with Tommy McMullin

August 2, 1983

Conducted by Ginny Scott

© 1983 Kentucky Oral History Commission

Kentucky Historical Society

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Kentucky Oral History Commission

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502-564-1792 ( (fax) 502-564-0475 ( history.ky.gov

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The following is an unrehearsed taped interview with Tommy McMullin, a farmer in Madison County. The interview was conducted by Ginny Scott, for the Kentucky Oral History Commission. The interview was conducted at Mr. McMullin’s farm on August 2, 1983, at 8:00 P.M.

An Interview with Tommy McMullin

McMullin: … name was Virgil McMullin. He was a jeweler in Richmond, until we moved to the farm, and then, my mother’s name is Sally Holland McMullin. And my grandfather was…Joe McMullin, and on my mother’s side, that was Holland, of course, it was Lula Holland, was her mother. And that’s about as far back as I can go…

Scott: That’s as far as you can go [laughs].

McMullin: …because I can’t remember too much more.

Scott: Were they from here, your grandparents? Were they from Madison County?

McMullin: No, they was from St. Louis.

Scott: Oh.

McMullin: And they moved here, and that’s on my daddy’s side now.

Scott: Now, what’d they do…what did your grandfather do for a living, do you know?

McMullin: I don’t know.

Scott: I wondered if he owned a farm.

McMullin: No, well, my daddy was raised, I take that back though. My daddy was raised—after he was born they moved to Lincoln County, and they lived on a farm in Lincoln County.

Scott: So he was a farmer?

McMullin: Yeah, he was farming; he farmed then, after they moved to St. Louis—now what he done there, I don’t know.

Scott: Now, where did you grow up? Where were you born?

McMullin: I was born in Richmond.

Scott: In the city limits, in town?

McMullin: Yeah, in town, and we moved…then daddy was a jeweler, and we moved from Richmond in… ’48, that made me three years old.

Scott: You were born in ’45.

McMullin: And, we moved to the farm when I was four, and that was before the interstate went through.

Scott: Now, you moved to this farm?

McMullin: To this farm, right here. I mean, we lived over here in the big house, across the interstate.

Scott: Oh, so the interstate took part of your farm.

McMullin: It split the farm in two.

Scott: Well, do you still own that now? Is that still part of the farm?

McMullin: We still own it, yeah. There’s nine acres over there.

Scott: How much land did they take, Tommy, for the interstate?

McMullin: About seventeen acres.

Scott: How much did they pay you for it? Was it a fair price?

McMullin: Well, I guess it was then. Of course, according to what they took, I don’t remember… seems like it was about $400 an acre. Of course, we had an acre orchard over there, and they took the prime part of the farm, you know, it was the best part. Of course, this was the back of it. Of course, the tobacco patch and the good cropland run from right here back that away.

Scott: Back to the interstate.

McMullin: Yeah, back through the interstate.

Scott: So, for what they took, it wasn’t a fair price, and plus, splitting the farm.

McMullin: Well, they took the best part of the farm, yeah.

Scott: Plus splitting. Well, now is the house still over there, the house is still standing?

McMullin: Yes, the house is over there, and they moved this house, and they moved the barn up here. And they’re both leased.

Scott: Who lives in that house over there?

McMullin: My sister lives over there.

Scott: Oh, she does. I didn’t ( ).

McMullin: My mother lives in town.

Scott: Now, your mother taught school, is that right?

McMullin: Yeah, she taught school.

Scott: How long did she teach at Whitehall?

McMullin: Oh…twenty years, I guess.

Scott: Is that right? Both my kids had her at Whitehall.

McMullin: She used to teach at Kingston, before.

Scott: Before Whitehall?

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: Well, I didn’t know that. She’s a terrific lady, I’ll tell you. There’s not many school teachers around like your mother.

McMullin: Well, she was dedicated.

Scott: Yes, she was. Well, she did a lot of work in politics, too, didn’t she?

McMullin: Yeah, of course, she was with, what’s the teacher’s organization? She was in it, and of course, she married into politics the last time.

Scott: Well, she did a lot of work for the teachers.

McMullin: Yeah, through the, what is the association?

Scott: KEA?

McMullin: KEA, yeah.

Scott: That’s…I talked to her for hours about that.

McMullin: [Laughs]. She was a stout believer in that…

Scott: Oh yes, very strong believer in that [laughing]. She did a lot of good; she got a lot of stuff done, I think, probably wouldn’t have gotten done.

McMullin: Yeah, she’s dedicated, if there ever was one.

Scott: Well, then you remember moving out on the farm, don’t you?

McMullin: Yes.

Scott: Did you have a farm?

McMullin: Yeah, I bought a farm over here, you know, the one between this farm and Madison Village.

Scott: Who’d you buy it from?

McMullin: Brack Chinoe, colored guy.

Scott: Well, did he own the Horn’s place there too?

McMullin: No, that was Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson owned this place here, and then over where the subdivision is.

Scott: Oh, so that was all one farm then at one time?

McMullin: Well, no, it was split up. He just had this piece of property here, and then over there he had, something like, 60 acres, I think.

Scott: Well, do you remember when that subdivision started up there? I guess you do, don’t you? How many acres is that?

McMullin: Sixty, I think.

Scott: Farmland?

McMullin: Yes. I tried to buy it off of him, but it was too high then. I couldn’t…something like $2000 an acre then.

Scott: Well, he sold it for $5000…yeah, he sold it for $5000 per lot, per building lot. And it’s a fifth or sixth of an acre.

McMullin: Yeah. Of course, he’s got a lot of money in the roads.

Scott: Not that much [laughs].

McMullin: No, no, you can make…he’s made money on it.

Scott: Oh yeah.

McMullin: I hated to seem him come out, I tell you that. I hated to see him out here. If I’d known now what I do….

Scott: You’d have paid $2000 an acre, wouldn’t you?

McMullin: Yeah, I might have still been in debt over it, but I’d have bought just to not have it over there.

Scott: Yeah, that sure has been a mess, I know. Well, now, how much was the farm you bought; how much did you buy?

McMullin: Fifty acres.

Scott: Fifty acres. Was that his whole farm…the colored man’s whole farm?

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: So you bought the whole thing. So how big is your farm now?

McMullin: Well, this place here is about 90 acres, and it’s 50 on it over there.

Scott: And then the nine across the road?

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: So, it was a big farm, then, when you moved out here, wasn’t it?

McMullin: Well, mother’s got a place down on Lost Fork, too.

Scott: How much is it?

McMullin: Two hundred and eighty acres.

Scott: Do you farm it too?

McMullin: No, I don’t farm it. I got another place leased, but it’s not it.

Scott: Where do you have leased?

McMullin: It’s Deemer’s place. It’s about 70 acres.

Scott: What do you grown on all this?

McMullin: [Laughs]. It’s just nothing but hay down there. I got a place in Beattyville; I don’t even go over there. Well, I’ve seen it once in four years.

Scott: Do you have it leased out?

McMullin: No, it’s just woods.

Scott: How much is it? How many acres?

McMullin: Four hundred.

Scott: You’re not like the man I interviewed in Estill County. You must own half of this county, Tommy.

McMullin: No, [laughing] we just, we bought this place up there—we were just kind of speculating on it. It went, I thought, cheap enough. Thought we might mine a little coal off of it, but it’s hard to get anything done now on that, so…

Scott: Well, coal is kind of slow.

McMullin: Yeah, it’s slow.

Scott: Well, when you first moved out here, what’d your father grow on this farm, do you remember? What crops did he grow?

McMullin: Corn, tobacco, hay, cattle.

Scott: What kind of cattle?

McMullin: Mostly mixed cattle, Hereford and Angus.

Scott: Beef cattle.

McMullin: Yeah, beef cattle, no dairy.

Scott: Well did he sell any of the corn or hay, or just grow it for the feed?

McMullin: No, just grow it for feed.

Scott: Your mother worked outside the home, outside the farm.

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: Did your father work outside the farm?

McMullin: Well, he did, well…until we moved. He was a jeweler.

Scott: And then when he moved on the farm….

McMullin: When he moved on the farm, he sold the business in town, and moved out here…

Scott: And where was his jewelry shop in town?

McMullin: …and he was poor all the rest of his life [laughing].

Scott: Doesn’t sound like too poor to me Tommy. Where was his shop in town?

McMullin: Well, let’s see what’s there now. About where Pelley’s is; you know where Pelley’s is….

Scott: Yeah, there on Main Street.

McMullin: Yes, it’s about right in there.

Scott: Did he just get tired of it?

McMullin: I guess, you know how everybody wants to get out on the land, and try to farm. He wasn’t a real good farmer. Of course, he worked at it, but he wasn’t. You know how people from town move to the country, and try….

Scott: Play at it for a while.

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: Well, you grew your own food then?

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: You said you had an orchard.

McMullin: Yeah, we had a big orchard, about an acre, or acre and a half orchard, I guess.

Scott: Sell anything off that?

McMullin: No, mostly we just…lot of apples went to waste, we never did sell any.

Scott: Give them all to the neighbors.

McMullin: Yeah, everybody had apples.

Scott: So his cash crops were tobacco and cattle.

McMullin: Right, cattle, yeah, cash crops.

Scott: Did he raise any hogs?

McMullin: Yeah, raised a few hogs. He tried that. I don’t think he had too good a luck with hogs. He kept a few for a while, and then, I remember, when I was real small that he had hogs, but I think they finally sold those.

Scott: Well, you remember working, I guess, before you had tractors, before your father had a tractor?

McMullin: Yeah. I’m not that old either…37.

Scott: Well, I just turned 39. I don’t know…I think that’s old [laughing], quite frankly. I think that’s ancient. What did you grow all these crops with?

McMullin: Mules.

Scott: Did you have one team, or two teams?

McMullin: No, we had two.

Scott: Two teams.

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: How’d you grow tobacco?

McMullin: How?

Scott: Yeah.

McMullin: Just about like we do now [laughs], about the same way.

Scott: A little bit harder, wasn’t it?

McMullin: Not necessarily. You know, tobacco’s one crop, it’s not like hay. Hay was a lot harder to put up then, but tobacco—there hasn’t been much change in it, since people started growing it. Except suckering tobacco, and….

Scott: And setting it.

McMullin: Well, setting it wasn’t much different. You had a setter, well, now as long as I remember, we had a….

Scott: Yeah, you’re young.

McMullin: …team to pull a setter with.

Scott: Pull a setter with. So you never had to peg it?

McMullin: No, I didn’t peg any. Only time we pegged some, when it was so wet and we couldn’t get in the field.

Scott: Well, you said hay was different.

McMullin: Yeah, we didn’t have a baler when we first started. We had to rake, and we had a big bull rake, and it piled it up in a pile, and you’d take a wagon out there, and take a fork, and throw it up on the wagon, and then take it and make a rick out of it, out in the field.

Scott: How’d you make a rick?

McMullin: Well, we took a, set a pole in the ground, and ricked the hay up around the pole, until it gets high enough. You start out wide at the bottom, and it’s narrow in the top.

Scott: Has snakes in it too.

McMullin: [Laughs]. No

Scott: I remember [laughs] ricking hay once.

McMullin: Now that was hard work.

Scott: Has corn changed that much? Growing corn changed that much?

McMullin: Oh yeah, raising corn’s a lot easier now. There’s not much to it.

Scott: How’s it easier?

McMullin: Well, back then, you know, you planted corn. It wasn’t bad. We had a planter to pull with the mules, and then, you had cultivators, you drive, you had a two team, I mean, a team—one row cultivators is what you had. And, you’d plow, plow your corn. You wouldn’t, I mean you wouldn’t spray the ground. Nobody plows corn now.

Scott: They spray it before, so you don’t have all those weeds.

McMullin: Yeah, you don’t never plow it. You plant it now, you spray your ground, you plant it, then you wait, and then you pick it, and then you can…everything’s automated, where it wasn’t then.

Scott: You don’t have to take a hoe out there anymore?

McMullin: No, no hoe, no thinning corn.

Scott: Did you ever have to?

McMullin: Yeah, I’ve thinned corn…I’ve done that [laughs] and that’s a job.

Scott: Or cleaning morning glories out.

McMullin: Oh, yeah.

Scott: That was part of it too. Well, what do you do with your corn now? Do you put it in silage or do you pick it?

McMullin: No, what corn…now this year I didn’t raise no corn. But usually I’d always have it picked and I’d put in corn cribs. And then, when I had hogs, before I got hurt, see, I had most of it shelled. And I’d take it shelled instead of the ear.

Scott: Did you take it have it shelled?

McMullin: Yeah, took it to town to have it shelled. Or I had a guy one year that come here and shelled it for me.

Scott: What do they have?

McMullin: What?

Scott: What do they have when they come out to shell it?

McMullin: Well, lot of them…of course, I had a sheller. It was just like a corn grinder, but it was a sheller, you know. You can scoop it in there, and then cobs go one way, and the shelled corn goes the other.

Scott: But it has to be shucked first?

McMullin: No, you don’t have to take the shuck off of it. It just shells the corn out, and the cob and the shuck goes one way and the corn goes another.

Scott: We had a sheller, but it wasn’t that fancy. It only did one ear at a time, and you…

McMullin: One ear at a time…oh [laughs] a hand sheller, for the chickens.

Scott: Yeah, that’s the kind—you turned the crank. Right, and for the pigs. We had you know three little pigs or something.

McMullin: No, you couldn’t do that….

Scott: Not with as many pigs as you had.

McMullin: No, not that many.

Scott: Now how many pigs did you have here?

McMullin: Well, when I got hurt, I had about I had around 500, something like that.

Scott: How long do you have to keep them before they go to market?

McMullin: Right at six months; sometimes it’s five and a quarter, and sometimes it’s five and a half, and other times of the year, it’s six.

Scott: Is there good money in hogs?

McMullin: Some years, and some years there’s not. Right now, farmers are losing money on hogs. You know, there’s no way they’re even breaking even.

Scott: Well, what’s this Soil Bank going to do to them? Is that going to hurt the farmers?

McMullin: Soil Bank.

Scott: Corn crops in the Soil Bank, instead of growing corn.

McMullin: Yeah, I believe the government’s goofed on that.

Scott: That’s going to hurt the hog farmers, isn’t it?

McMullin: Well, it’s hurting everybody. See, right now, we’ve got a draught. And if it don’t rain in the next week and a half on this corn….

Scott: It’s gone.

McMullin: It’s gone. It won’t make, it won’t be fit for silage. And they’ve done said they’ve set aside as much as half the state the Texas. And you know how big Texas is. And then, plus, they’ve set up all these sales to Russia, and China, and they’ve already set that up, so the corn’s got to go to them. See, it’s going to leave the person that’s buying it, feed for cattle and hogs; they’re the one’s that’s going to be hurting.

Scott: Well, the price is going to raise, isn’t it?

McMullin: Yeah, the price is going to be sky high.

Scott: Once gets scarce, it’s going to be sky high.

McMullin: That’s right. The government really goofed on this, this year.

Scott: Well, I’ve heard a lot of farmers say that. Well, everyone I’ve talked to, and I’ve talked to some that have four and five hundred acres, you know, in that Soil Bank.

McMullin: Yeah, of course, there’s a lot of…it’s hurting all over the United States right now.

Scott: I think it will eventually. Most of the places I’ve been going, I’ve got roosters crowing in the background—everyone of them—sitting out on the farmers’ porches.

McMullin: I don’t have no chickens [laughs].

Scott: You don’t have any chickens [laughs].

McMullin: No, don’t want no chickens.

Scott: Well, given your choice, Tommy, and I know you quit raising hogs when you got hurt, but given your choice, would you rather raise hogs or cattle, for cash?

McMullin: It’s quicker turnover, I’d rather raise hogs.

Scott: Could you make better money on them, as a whole?

McMullin: Right now, the one year up, and two years down, no, you can’t do it. There’s no money in hogs. I mean, you can have a year or two of good—they’ve been up for the last two, two and a half years—and then, this year, they’re down to nothing. No telling how long they’ll be down. You know, hogs are quick. See, cattle, you keep them a year, to a year and a half, I do, and the hog’s quick turnover. From the time they’re born, you can have them to market in five and a half months.

Scott: Well, if this, with this Soil Bank and everything, and the corn is going to go sky high, and…

McMullin: That just puts a dimmer picture on the hog market, and the cattle market too. Cattle’s down now.

Scott: Eventually it will come right back up, won’t it?

McMullin: Well, if it burns enough of them out, you know, and they’re forced to sell out, of course a lot of them will hang on til….

Scott: The bitter end.

McMullin: Yeah, the very last of it, and try to hold on, and you know, just where they can be there when it comes back up.

Scott: Yeah, pull it back out. Well, what kind of cattle do you have now?

McMullin: Charolais and Hereford cross, and Angus cross.

Scott: All three of them.

McMullin: Well, I have Charolais bulls, and mostly Hereford and Angus cows. Angus cows are what I prefer.

Scott: Do you have any trouble with calves, with the Charolais bulls?

McMullin: Not too bad, no, I watch how I buy bulls. And I don’t buy one that’s too big boned, and background that has, don’t have no calving problems.

Scott: Well, there really is an art to that isn’t there?

McMullin: Well, you’ve got to know what you’re doing.

Scott: I didn’t realize until I started talking to the farmers, you know. You just don’t mix any Charolais and any Angus.

McMullin: No.

Scott: Well, which do you prefer out of them? Do you prefer them crossed, like that?

McMullin: Yeah, I prefer a Charolais bull and an Angus cow.

Scott: Why?

McMullin: Well, they sell better.

Scott: Are they heavier? Do they weigh more?

McMullin: No heavier than a Hereford, I believe a Hereford is…of course, a good Hereford cross, they sell good. But they match up better—Angus do, I think, with a Charolais bull. I believe they match up good, and they just, they’re just top of the market, usually, when I sell them.

Scott: Huh. Well most people have, or used to have, Angus, and all of a sudden, you see everyone has Charlolais.

McMullin: It’s faster growing.

Scott: Faster growing.

McMullin: Yeah, and they sell better. If the packers, if they can get a calf, well—not the packers—the feed lot. If the feed lot can buy calves, that weighs 500 pounds, and when they get them to 1300 or 1400 pounds, when they’re finished, and go to the packing house with them, if they can get that calf out a week and a half or two weeks sooner, over twenty or thirty thousand head, that’s a whole lot of, that’s a whole lot of money saved.

Scott: A whole lot of storage space.

McMullin: Yeah, that’s right.

Scott: Well, which is the best beef? If you were growing one of your own?

McMullin: I don’t know, I’ve tried them all. I usually kill a…last year I killed a Charolais. Year before that I killed an Angus, just a straight Angus. Calf was bottle-raised. And…

Scott: Can’t tell that much difference?

McMullin: I can’t—if it’s fed right, I can’t tell no difference in none of them.

Scott: So in Charolais, weighing more and about the same quality, it’s a better deal.

McMullin: Of course, if you get a solid black calf, you know solid Angus, he won’t grow out near as quick unless he’s awful good, and there’s not that many good Angus around. And if…usually they’ll end up with…more back fat, more fat on the steaks, and your meat, I mean other cuts, and you have a lot of extra waste. And the packers realize that too.

Scott: Charolais is just bigger all around.

McMullin: Yeah, they grow faster, and they’re a little leaner calf than the straight breed Angus or Hereford, and they’ll dress out a little bit better.

Scott: And make better beef.

McMullin: Make better beef.

Scott: Well, do you have any problems with Herefords and veterinarian bills? Some one told me that veterinarian bills were higher with Herefords than any other breed.

McMullin: Well, the only think I’ve seen about the Hereford, of course, any pure bred—if you get into any straight pure bred, I don’t care what it is—you’re going to have more trouble.

Scott: Just a finer breed.

McMullin: Because a hybrid, what I call a hybrid, you know—crossed—not especially a hybrid, but a cross breed is more vigorous and more immune, seems like it, to being sick, than a straight bred is.

Scott: Than a straight bred is. Well, some man had told me he couldn’t afford Herefords any more because of the veterinarian bill, and he’d started cross breeding. And he was using Charolais and Herefords.

McMullin: Well, it’s probably true. He’s probably had a straight breed, and he might have had some inbreeding in it.

Scott: Well, with cross breeds, you just get the best of the two.

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: Best quality of both of them.

McMullin: Anytime you cross breed, just like hogs, if you’ll two-way or three-way cross, the hogs will do a whole lot better.

Scott: Well, now what kind of hogs did you have?

McMullin: Mostly York sows, and York/Hamp cross with Duroc boars—three-way cross.

Scott: I thought a hog was a hog [laughs].

McMullin: No, there’s as much to hogs as there is to anything. Of course, there’s more to a hog, there’s more diseases that hogs can catch, I believe, than any other animal alive.

Scott: Is that right?

McMullin: They’re susceptible to anything that comes down the road. There’s fifteen thousand diseases you gotta know, if you’re going to raise hogs.

Scott: I didn’t know that.

McMullin: Oh, it’s the worst thing in the world.

Scott: Just kinda turned them out and let them go.

McMullin: No, well that’s the old way [laughs]. Of course I had farrowing house, and a finishing floor, and that’s about the only way—when a pig hits the ground, it never touches dirt. You know, it stays on concrete all its life.

Scott: Hmmm. That’s what you have to do to make money on them then?

McMullin: Well, you can make the money the other way, but it’s so long. People that raises hogs and feeds them corn, and no supplement, hogs will get to market, when I’m talking market—240 pounds; they’ll get there in about seven to eight months. Where I can get one there in five to five and a half months.

Scott: So you’re saving all that feed, and making money.

McMullin: Only way to raise hogs is to give them all they’ll eat, all the time, and clean fresh water. That’s all.

Scott: …think your’s had that. I know when we first moved, I’d never seen so many pigs in my life.

McMullin: Oh, I had everything full when I got hurt. This farrowing house was full up here, I had twenty sows in there, all of them had pigs, and I had the nursery, I called it the nursery back there, where I weaned them and put them—it was plum full. Sows outside.

Scott: Isn’t that an awful lot of work?

McMullin: It is. You spend an awful lot of work, you spend an awful lot of time in hogs.

Scott: A lot more than cattle.

McMullin: Yeah, I spent, total, I guess of—you can ask my wife—I’d say when my sows pigged in the winter, of course, your winter pigs are the highest pigs, I’d spend, well when they started pigging, I might be in the house four hours of a night. And a lot of nights, I’d stay all night up there; I wouldn’t come in.

Scott: But you don’t have to do that with cattle, do you?

McMullin: No.

Scott: They’re not nearly as much work.

McMullin: It’s not near as much work as hogs.

Scott: I can see why.

McMullin: Oh, I’ve had…when I got hurt, there was three people up here feeding for me, and they would feed around four hours a day. And they couldn’t keep everything going. Of course, I was more organized than they were, and I knew a little more about it. Oh, a lot of nights, just regular nights, I wouldn’t come in until ten thirty or quarter until eleven.

Scott: Geez. I don’t know if it’s worth it or not. Well….

McMullin: I enjoyed it.

Scott: Yeah, if you farm, you farm.

McMullin: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s right.

Scott: When did you have your accident, or do you care to talk about it?

McMullin: I don’t guess I care. I had it; it’s been four years January.

Scott: Has it been that long?

McMullin: I think, it’s been three; this’ll be four years coming January.

Scott: You seem to have done real good.

McMullin: Well, it took a long time [laughs]. . I’m still not over it

Scott: Well, not as long as a lot of people would have. A lot of people wouldn’t have recovered.

McMullin: Still going to the doctor over it.

Scott: Well, you’re up and running around.

McMullin: Yeah, that’s right; that’s the lucky part.

Scott: Didn’t stop you from farming. How many head of cattle do you have now, or did I ask you that?

McMullin: Oh, I have…I guess calves, and all, I’ve got around a hundred head.

Scott: How many goes to market every year?

McMullin: About forty, forty-five, something like that.

Scott: How much tobacco do you raise?

McMullin: About seven acres.

Scott: Seven acres. How many pounds is that?

McMullin: That’s about eighteen, nineteen thousand.

Scott: How many work hands do you have?

McMullin: Mostly myself, and my nephew takes care of the farm.

Scott: Just the two of you takes care of it.

McMullin: Yeah, he helps…he gets part of the tobacco for helping me. I pay it all—his expense, and give him part of the tobacco, and he helps me all summer.

Scott: You don’t have any tenant farmers?

McMullin: No, no I never did. I used to do it all myself. The only time I’d hire help was when I put my tobacco in. I put most of my hay in myself, but ever once in a while, I’d get some help. It’s easier to get help now than it used to be.

Scott: Why?

McMullin: Well, it’s the way everything is, you know [laughing]. Economy is bad, and everybody’s looking for a job, and it’s pretty easy to get help right now.

Scott: Well, if they cut down on welfare, which looks like they might do, there’s going to be a lot of help around, isn’t there?

McMullin: Yeah, what don’t get stolen.

Scott: [Laughs]. Yeah, thieving does get kind of bad, when the economy goes….

McMullin: If the people can’t get a job, they’re not going to starve, and if they’re not going to starve, they’re going to steal, or they’re going…. I’ve had several, I used to have a place rented down on Third Street Lane, and I’ve had two or three calves killed, and skinned, down there. You know they just skin them out.

Scott: You’re kidding!

McMullin: Yeah, just skin them out, and take the meat, and leave the head and the skin.

Scott: I didn’t know we’d gotten that bad.

McMullin: Yeah, and it’s going to get worse too, if things get worse. Of course, I don’t look for it to get that bad.

Scott: Well, if they do cut down on welfare, a lot of those people would rather steal than work on the farm.

McMullin: Oh, yeah.

Scott: Well how much is farm labor? How much do they charge an hour?

McMullin: It’s all prices. Some work you do on the farm, you can get by with about between three and three fifty, and when it comes to housing tobacco, cutting and housing—it’s around six dollars.

Scott: How much tobacco can a man cut in a day?

McMullin: Your average cutter, well, your average cutter will cut around seven fifty. A good cutter will cut between eight and a thousand, a good cutter.

Scott: Sticks?

McMullin: Eight hundred to a thousand sticks, yeah.

Scott: So, it’s worth it.

McMullin: Yeah, if they cut by the sticks, and they get seven cents a stick, they can make $70 a day easy.

Scott: That’s good money.

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: That’s more than me and you are making, isn’t it?

McMullin: And most of it’s tax free.

Scott: Yeah, because it’s paid in cash.

McMullin: Yes, you have to most of it, because they won’t help you if you don’t.

Scott: Most of them are drawing welfare, so….

McMullin: Most of my hands I hire, they don’t…they won’t accept a check. You have to pay them in cash.

Scott: Huh. Are they from around here? Are people you hire from around here?

McMullin: Some of them. Some of them are from out of town. They come in, you know to work, some of them from Irvine, some from Jackson County, and….

Scott: Just anywhere they can…looking for jobs.

McMullin: Yeah, they’ll come down about fifteenth of this month, on through September, and you can—they just go through the country hunting help.

Scott: Work to make a little bit of money.

McMullin: Yeah. [Tape interruption.]

Scott: Okay, we was talking about farm hands—you don’t hire anybody to help in the hay now?

McMullin: No, I roll all my hay now. Since I got hurt, I bought a roller.

Scott: Is that easier?

McMullin: Oh yeah, there’s nothing to it.

Scott: Is it any trouble to store, or anything?

McMullin: No, it’s like a lot of the rest of it, if you get a baler that does a good job, and you do a good job of rolling it, it keeps good.

Scott: Don’t have any problem with it rotting?

McMullin: No, not as long as you keep the kids out of the subdivision off of it.

Scott: That wasn’t mine.

McMullin: I seen about fifteen over there one day on top of that hay, and boy, they was tearing it up. And once you break it loose on top, it’ll start rottening down through it, you know.

Scott: As the moisture gets to it.

McMullin: Yes, as the moisture gets down in it; of course, they don’t realize that—they’re having fun. I don’t blame them. It’s just getting caught.

Scott: Yeah, but still…

McMullin: Kids will be kids.

Scott: I’m glad mine’s up now to fifteen. And a little bit bigger, but for three years, he thought that field was the greatest thing that he’d ever found in his life [laughs]. You must have awful problems with that.

McMullin: Yeah, it’s bad. I try to scare them. Of course, I was a kid myself; I know how it’s like. You know, you sneak around, you tried to…

Scott: Try everything.

McMullin: Yeah, you try everything. But there’s people that tried to scare me when I was little, and they did scare me.

Scott: Yeah, they did me too.

McMullin: And, I try to do them the same way, and that kind of helps a little bit of it. They think I’m Mr. Mean, I guess.

Scott: Well, if that keeps them away, gosh, that’s good.

McMullin: If they see me coming, they really move.

Scott: And all ages and sizes of them. Well, there must be what—two hundred and fifty, three hundred kids over there?

McMullin: Lord, I don’t know.

Scott: There’s that many on our street riding big wheels.

McMullin: I had a calf that got shot here a while back, it was over here, and it kept swelling up. And I didn’t know it until it had done gotten down, and I checked it, and there was just a little bitty bullet hole underneath him. He was about a 500-pound calf. But I didn’t know if it was…I’ve seen some over there shooting rifles; I never have caught them, but I’ve heard them, and then go over there, and they’re down in the creek shooting, or something.

Scott: Looks like parents would feel kind of funny about letting their kids go out with a gun in a subdivision.

McMullin: Parents don’t…half of them don’t care.

Scott: Well, have you lost anything else? Do you have a problem with stealing from these kids, or is it just vandals?

McMullin: Just little things, mostly, it’s just vandalism. I don’t have no problem around here. They don’t come up to the barn, don’t seem like it. Most of it’s, you know, just tearing fences down, and going through….

Scott: Having trouble with motorcycles?

McMullin: I did at one time, and I had to lock all my gates. You know, they was going through one gate, and leave it open, and ride all the way through. They even had some up here at the store. They’re start in right here beside the store, and go all the way through. Never did ask, of course, I wouldn’t let them, but they never did ask. They just drove through, and leave the gate open, run all the way back to the subdivision, through the farm. So I had to lock….

Scott: I think somebody put a stop to the riding the motorcycles in the last little while.

McMullin: Over there in the subdivision? Yeah, I heard about that…State Police over there.

Scott: Yeah, they got a bunch of them one day. The little kids…some of them can’t get their drivers’ license until they’re eighteen, because of it.

McMullin: Is that right?

Scott: They were fourteen, fifteen year old boys.

McMullin: That’ll slow them down, won’t it?

Scott: Parents are having fits, but that’s…you know you’re not allowed out on the road on those things.

McMullin: You’re not supposed to be.

Scott: So, a bunch of them have been caught. When you were growing up Tommy, what did you do for recreation? You’re not that old, I know.

McMullin: When I was young?

Scott: Yeah, where’d you go?

McMullin: Oh, I fished and I hunted, and that was mostly what I done. I played a little baseball when I was in Pony League, and Little League, but that wasn’t nothing like being outside and fishing and hunting.

Scott: Being a kid.

McMullin: Yeah, you know, going over the farm, just picking up rocks. Mostly I spent my time fishing and hunting, I guess.

Scott: What did you do when you started dating? Where’d you go?

McMullin: We went to town.

Scott: To the movies?

McMullin: Yeah, movies, that’s about all there was to go to, I guess. I don’t know of anything else, but we’d go to somebody’s house and just sit around and talk, and play cards, things like that.

Scott: Well, what do kids do now?

McMullin: Lord, I don’t know [laughing]. They still go to town.

Scott: Same thing.

McMullin: A few good kids go to town, sit around up there at McDonalds. Of course, when we was growing up, it was Jerry’s in Richmond—it was Jerry’s Drive Inn.

Scott: There on the north end of town, this end of town?

McMullin: Yeah, where the chiropractor is, and now it’s McDonalds. Of course, some of them, you know, like to get out and get high, and drink. Of course, that was the same way—it was that then, but there wasn’t no drugs or anything, you know. Nobody’d ever heard of drugs. You didn’t—no, there wasn’t no drugs.

Scott: When I was in college…you know, a can of beer was illegal then.

McMullin: Well, when I was in college, well not beer, of course everybody drank beer when I was in college.

Scott: Yeah, but that was the illegal thing we did, was a can of beer, not…. I didn’t even hear of drugs.

McMullin: I didn’t either.

Scott: Sure do now, though [laughing].

McMullin: Yeah, that’s right.

Scott: You went to school at Whitehall, I guess, didn’t you?

McMullin: Whitehall.

Scott: And it was already a big school—you didn’t go to a one-room school?

McMullin: No, it was a…see I went to the old Whitehall, when it was down here.

Scott: It blew away.

McMullin: Well, they tore it down.

Scott: The new one blew away, in the tornado?

McMullin: Yeah, well it tore the roof off of it. Yeah, it was…I went to the old Whitehall.

Scott: Did you go to church when you were young?

McMullin: Yeah, Tates Creek Baptist.

Scott: Was that kind of a social thing for young people, at that time?

McMullin: Well, it was for our family, because we went on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night. And then every time there was a revival, we went to the revival.

Scott: Every night.

McMullin: Every night.

Scott: Right. Was that kind of a social thing for the kids though? Did religion draw them there or did the social aspect of it?

McMullin: Well, it was a little of both. Seems like it was, you know, when school was out, that was about the only place you got to see your friends, was at church.

Scott: Was at church. Well, now has that changed, do you think?

McMullin: Oh, yeah. Vehicles have changed all that seem like. You don’t—people go to church, now, seems like if it’s…I don’t know, kids still enjoy it, seem like it. They’re around people they grew up with, but….

Scott: But not like we did.

McMullin: People’s not close like they used to be. Don’t visit, they don’t—people don’t visit at all.

Scott: What’s caused that? Greed? Are we all that greedy, working for money?

McMullin: No, no, well, it’s a lot of people, I don’t know, you get in the habit of not going some place, and you work, and then you come in and you’re tired and then…..

Scott: You just don’t go and visit like our families did.

McMullin: Well, you know, you get set in working, and coming home, and staying at home, and then, you just don’t get up and go like you used to.

Scott: It’s just habit forming.

McMullin: Yeah, and then you get in the habit of not going, then the first thing you know, you’re not going to see somebody, and you’re seeing them in town.

Scott: Yeah.

McMullin: Once we’d grown up, we, you know, you’d go to town once or twice a week, and that was it.

Scott: And everyone went at the same time.

McMullin: That’s right.

Scott: Well, did you have a car when you were sixteen?

McMullin: No, my parents—I drove their car when I started dating.

Scott: But you weren’t given a car.

McMullin: No, I had…I saved some money. I had some cattle, and I worked out, and I saved some money, and when I was seventeen, I bought me a car. I bought me a truck; didn’t buy no car.

Scott: [Laughs] Didn’t buy a car. That changed then where you went, and….

McMullin: No, I still went about the same place. I didn’t, of course, I might have went a little farther, or a little longer.

Scott: Might have stayed a little longer, right? Well, you didn’t have mom and dad there to have to bring you home.

McMullin: Yeah, that’s right.

Scott: The kids now, seems like the parents go one place and the kids go another.

McMullin: That’s right.

Scott: All the kids have cars, and the family unit kind of….

McMullin: It’s kind of broke up.

Scott: Broke up, hasn’t it, from what we knew as a family unit.

McMullin: That’s right. Families are not close like they used to be; some families are I think are still close.

Scott: Do you think maybe as many as were then, there’s just so many more people now?

McMullin: No, families aren’t as close.

Scott: I don’t think so either. You see all these kids going all their separate ways at sixteen, seventeen years old.

McMullin: Well, parents kept a closer hand on most of the kids when they were growing up, than they do now. Teachers were more strict too.

Scott: Yes. Teachers were like your mother.

McMullin: Well, you had order in the class, you didn’t say nothing. If you said anything, they yanked you up and whipped you. And when you got home, you got a whipping for getting a whipping at school.

Scott: And now, it’s the teacher that…

McMullin: The teacher ends up getting a whipping.

Scott: Right, the teacher gets bawled out. But children had respect for parents, more respect than they have now.

McMullin: I think they do. There’s still a lot of kids that have respect, like they used to. It’s just, I guess, I don’t know how many generations it’s got to go, before it changes, but kids that was brought up with parents that raised them strict, most of them raise their family now strict. And maybe after two or three generations, that’s going to soften up, and that, they won’t be as strict, or grand kids won’t be as strict on their great-grandkids. I don’t know, maybe it will change completely by then. Of course, I was raised strict, and I try to raise mine strict.

Scott: But a little bit more lenient than, I think we’re all a little bit more lenient….

McMullin: I’m more lenient than my parents was on me.

Scott: Yeah, me too. I guess we can see their faults, we can see where they did it wrong.

McMullin: Well, I can’t see too much of what they done wrong, really, unless it was correcting me sometime when I shouldn’t have been—if it wasn’t my fault.

Scott: That’s what I mean, yeah. But we all have those times. But I think we’re all a little bit more lenient.

McMullin: We are. Yeah, the majority of them are.

Scott: Parents are going have to, a lot of parents are going to have to settle down and say, you know, hey, we’re going to have to change things, here. We’re going to lose the family altogether.

McMullin: Seems like, the children that’s raised on the farm is more be inclined to be, I don’t know whether being settled is the word, more disciplined.

Scott: More responsible?

McMullin: Or more disciplined. I don’t know what the word is…you know they’re more, well, you can go to school—of course now, if you say that, it’s exactly like that, of course you’ll say well, one kid out of a room, say well, he’s one from a tenant. It might have been backward and their kids is the terror of the earth. But seem like they’re more disciplined. I don’t know whether it’s because they’re away from other kids more than the ones that are living closer together, or what it is.

Scott: I think it has a lot to do with time. Kids, well kids that grow up in a subdivision, or in a city street, with all that time on their hands.

McMullin: Well, you take one bad apple, they’ll spoil the whole bushel, you know.

Scott: Right. But if you live on the farm, there’s always something to do.

McMullin: Well, that’s true. That’s part of it.

Scott: The time is filled.

McMullin: Yeah, and he’s not looking for some trouble to get into all the time.

Scott: Right, and there’s not nearly the boredom.

McMullin: Well, see, when he gets tired of running out here in the field, chasing a rabbit or something with a BB gun, he’s gone to the pond fishing, and he fishes and he fishes and he fishes.

Scott: So there’s no boredom for him.

McMullin: Yeah, that’s right.

Scott: Not like these kids, these kids on city streets.

McMullin: Well, they don’t sit around and they can’t find nothing to do, or something like that.

Scott: Right. Well, when mine go on the farm, they think it’s the greatest thing in the world. And mine go every summer to stay.

McMullin: Most city kids do.

Scott: Yeah. They just, you know, there’s something to do every minute.

McMullin: And it is a good life, it is.

Scott: Best life in the world. It is the best life in the world. Well, Tommy, what you think about the future of farmers? If, say I go out now, and buy a farm, 250 acres….

McMullin: You won’t make it.

Scott: Can I afford to even buy it?

McMullin: You can’t afford to buy it, much less stock it.

Scott: If I bought one…

McMullin: I haven’t seen a farm sell in the last ten years—I haven’t seen one farm sell that will pay for itself by farming. I haven’t seen one farm sell. And I watch, and watch them close.

Scott: Would it even pay the interest?

McMullin: That’s what I’m talking about. Paying the interest, much less your principle.

Scott: Well, what is going to happen? Young people’s not…unless they inherit it….

McMullin: If it’s not inherited, they won’t, they can’t get into farming, unless they farm for somebody else. They can be a tenant farmer, and that’s going to be it.

Scott: And they can’t make anything, never have anything.

McMullin: They can’t make enough to make a down payment on a farm, and keep that farm in their hands, and pay it. They can’t do it—there’s no way.

Scott: Well, what’s going to happen to all these farms?

McMullin: Well, it’s….

Scott: Lot of people…

McMullin: Doctors and lawyers buy them.

Scott: Corporations.

McMullin: Corporations not buying a lot around here, but they do buy a lot. But people that’s making their money elsewhere are buying farms, using it for tax purposes. Now that’s been going on forever, and that’s the only person that can buy a farm and make it.

Scott: So there’s no chance for a farmer….

McMullin: A farmer to make it.

Scott: Deciding you’re going to be farmer, and going out and buying a farm.

McMullin: You can’t pay, around here, you can’t pay $2500 an acre for a farm, and farm it. And be a farmer, and farm it. You’ve got to have an outside job that’s paying big money that you can count as a tax loss.

Scott: Dump it into the farm.

McMullin: Dump it into the farm, because they’ve got to put their money somewhere. If they don’t, the government gets it. And farm’s the best outlook for them, and they’re the ones that are hurting the farmers right now.

Scott: Small farmers, they’re killing them aren’t they? That’s true.

McMullin: Yes, because they’re putting the government in a position now, that they say, well, they’re abusing the appreciation and the tax write-off that the farmers had, they’re abusing them to the fullest extent, and when they go to doing that so long, the government’s going to put a stop to it, and when they do, the farmer’s going to fall on their face.

Scott: And the doctors and lawyers still got their income to fall back on….

McMullin: That’s right.

Scott: …that the farmer’s not going to have.

McMullin: No.

Scott: Well, a lot of the farms around here are being broken up and sold, just like the one behind you, for a subdivision and one out the road, I noticed.

McMullin: Prime land sold, and gone to a subdivision.

Scott: Did that belong to that big house?

McMullin: Yeah, it was part of the Hanger Farm.

Scott: Are they going to make a subdivision out of it?

McMullin: I guess, unless, it’s commercial building site; I don’t know.

Scott: That’s a shame, that’s one of the better farms.

McMullin: Look, it’s all over like that. Fayette County has put a stop to a lot of it. They’ve got a good zoning law over there.

Scott: Well, we need one here, don’t we?

McMullin: Yeah, we sure do.

Scott: Well, since I’ve been out here, which has been six years….

McMullin: Look at this farm here, now look at this farm here—subdivisions all the way around it. Right here, behind me, and on the side—all the way around.

Scott: And how long has that been? It’s not been that long, has it, since it started?

McMullin: This was the first one; I guess it’s been…about eight or nine years.

Scott: Very short time, and it just takes farmland.

McMullin: Well, I can’t farm it to the fullest extent right now. You know, it’s, it’s like hogs now. We had hogs; they’d go over there and spread manure—you know how that smelt over there, you probably remember that—how it stunk. Well, I got more cussing over that than anything in the world.

Scott: Well, I don’t know how many people over there grew up on a farm—I’d say not many of them.

McMullin: I’d always try to catch it with the wind, blowing away, but seemed like every time I would, it would change directions.

Scott: It did, yeah, it changed, it had to have changed, Tommy, the minute you started [laughing]. But if they lived on the farm, or had ever been around a farm, that’s something that you expect.

McMullin: Well, it is a bad odor; I can see it. I probably…

Scott: It lasts for a day.

McMullin: Yeah, but if I lived over there, and I had a public job, and I came home beat, and I had to smell that, why I wouldn’t like it either.

Scott: I wouldn’t like it, but I wouldn’t go to any extent to do anything about it.

McMullin: Well, no, there isn’t really, there isn’t much they could do about it.

Scott: Isn’t anything they can do. Right, except complain.

McMullin: Yeah. But it’s always, it’s….

Scott: Well, are you the same position as most of the farmers in Madison County?

McMullin: What’s that?

Scott: As far as subdivisions being around you. Isn’t that about the same as every farmer anymore?

McMullin: Yeah, you’ve got to get way off to ever get away from it, or, well, it’s everywhere you look though. It’s not as bad. All farms not as bad as right here, but there’s subdivisions around a whole lot of farms here in the county. We’re losing prime land every year to subdivisions. And it’s gone forever—it’ll never be back to farming.

Scott: Looks like somebody would stop and realize that’s the property that’s feeding us.

McMullin: Yeah. But they won’t until it’s too late.

Scott: They just want that money.

McMullin: That’s right. Of course, anybody that sells land, they want to get every penny they can out of it. And I don’t blame them. I mean, if you’re selling a farm and you’ve got it, and you’re selling a farm and you’re quitting, and you don’t care about it, you’re retiring or you’re, course most farmers don’t never retire—I don’t know of a farmer to ever retire from a farm until they’re ninety years old.

Scott: [Laughs] I was going to say, where’d you get that?

McMullin: But they’re trying to get every penny they can out of it. And subdivisions…is the….

Scott: Is the best way.

McMullin: Well, it’s the only way it’s going anymore, if it’s got a good road frontage, it goes to subdivision.

Scott: Well, I noticed in the paper last night, there were five or six auctions, farms in Madison County within the next couple of weeks. And these were all….

McMullin: They’re all split up in small sections, too.

Scott: Right, five or six different tracts. Split up, maybe 120 acres split up into five tracts.

McMullin: I’d like to know how much land is lost in this county for the last…just say the last seven years…how much land’s been lost to subdivisions. And it’s all prime land.

Scott: You’d be surprised.

McMullin: It’s all prime land. It’s not bad, rough land, either. What’s been lost has been good land. It’s close to town, or it lays good, for crops.

Scott: Well, just like this here, five miles out of town, or six miles out of town, and ( ) Acres, and Lexington Heights, Madisonville ( )….

McMullin: Jack’s Creek, look down Jack’s Creek how many farms have been subdivided down through there.

Scott: Well, that one where—Tates Creek Estates—runs off Jack’s Creek down there, shoot, that was a big farm.

McMullin: Fountain Park—that was a big farm. All that, all the way through there was.

Scott: On the right hand side of that road, especially, and that’s just been subdivided in the last…

McMullin: Four years.

Scott: Four years or so. Well, now, did all that farm belong to that white house?

McMullin: The farm on the right, where they’re building on the right field, now the farm on down there by Goggins Lane, it was another farm—it was part of the Parks Farm.

Scott: So that took the left-hand side.

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: That’s a lot of land.

McMullin: Well, there’s people dying everyday and the land is bought up right now that’s not subdivided that’s going to be. There holding until better times, and they’re going to be subdivided.

Scott: That’s right.

McMullin: And I know several farmers like that right now.

Scott: Well, if you hold on to your farm, there aren’t going to be many farms around.

McMullin: Well, there might not be in my generation, but it might be in the next. And, of course….

Scott: Farmers just don’t seem to have a future.

McMullin: No, I don’t see it. I don’t know where it’s going to stop at.

Scott: And the more I think about it, the more people I talk to, I realize farmers just don’t have a future.

McMullin: How many young farmers are there? Unless you inherited, you’re out.

Scott: You don’t stand a prayer.

McMullin: You don’t stand a prayer.

Scott: How much would it cost to…say you had the land, say you had 250 acres, how much is it going to cost you to buy equipment and stock it…buy the equipment you need and run beef cattle.

McMullin: The equipment, unless you bought used stuff, old used stuff, if you went out and bought new equipment, where the government helps you, they give you 5%, well, yeah…a 5% kickback. If you go out and you buy new equipment, a decent size tractor right now is about twenty, and you’ll have another—the tractor will be your biggest expense—you’ll have sixty thousand dollars in equipment, and to stock a 250 acre farm with cattle, that would be another fifty thousand.

Scott: Barns?

McMullin: Oh, if you had to build barns, you’d have to forget it.

Scott: Well, a young farmer going in has to do it all.

McMullin: Yeah, well most of them you had is run-down. A barn’s going to cost you enough barn room to house say, 250 acres, if you had ten acres of tobacco, it’ll cost you fifty thousand for enough barn room to put it out. Plus, that’s not even counting getting your crop in the ground.

Scott: That’s not counting fertilize, fuel….

McMullin: No, it’s not counting seed corn, fertilizer, or nothing…fuel or nothing. That’s just, that’s the…you’ve got close to a hundred thousand right there before you ever put your crop in the ground.

Scott: And you’re just not going to clear that much that first year.

McMullin: No—you’re not going to clear much the second, the third, and the fourth. It’s going to take about nine years before you’ll ever get your head out of water at all.

Scott: Well, how much profit do you make on tobacco?

McMullin: Tobacco’s the best crop a farmer’s got right now, in this part of the country.

Scott: How much profit? Say you have five hundred, or five thousand pounds….

McMullin: Well, if you go by what UK says, you’re making around…it’s costing you around $1.20 a pound to get it to market.

Scott: It’s only bringing a $1.80, or a $1.85.

McMullin: Yeah, of course I cut down on that a lot. You know, if you use your own labor, and you do most of it yourself, and…you can cut that in half.

Scott: So add to that profit.

McMullin: Add to that profit.

Scott: Well, now, the sales this year…it’s going to cost you, what twelve to fifteen cents more to sell it? Is that going to hurt the small tobacco farmer, or the large one?

McMullin: Well, it’s not going to hurt the small one…the small one’s got other income. He’s working at other jobs, a small one is. It’s the medium sized farmer that his basic income is all from farming. He’s the one that’s going to be hurting. The one that’s farming for a living—that’s the one that gets hurt. The one that’s farming on the side, he’s not going to be hurt too bad.

Scott: Play farming.

McMullin: Well, not necessarily. There’s a lot of them work nine to five, and come in at five and work until nine, you know, and they farm on the side. They’ll raise—I know several guys to raise four to five acres of tobacco, and got a few cattle, and….

Scott: And a full-time job.

McMullin: And a full-time job. And they’re the ones that can make it, because they’ve got an income to fall back on.

Scott: Well, it doesn’t sound too good, especially with that tobacco this year, and then the Soil Bank for the corn, no hogs. It’s going to hurt the hogs. It’s going to hurt the cattle eventually.

McMullin: Hogs are done hurt; cattle’s hurting right now. I sold cattle—I sold cattle nine years ago higher than I’m selling cattle right now.

Scott: You’re kidding.

McMullin: Nine years ago.

Scott: Well, why is it Tom, if you go to the grocery and you buy the beef….

McMullin: Well, I don’t know who you can blame….

Scott: …it’s higher than it was nine years ago.

McMullin: That’s right.

Scott: In fact, it’s as high as it’s ever been.

McMullin: Well, most of the companies that’s selling it, like Kroger’s, and them, they’re showing, they’re showing a bigger profit. It’s from the time it leaves the guy that finishes cattle out, it’s from the finishing point there, from there to the table’s where the money, it changes. Everywhere it changes hands, is where the money’s made.

Scott: Has unions had anything to do with that?

McMullin: Yes, of course it has. It had to. When you make twelve dollars an hour for cutting up beef….

Scott: You don’t make twelve dollars an hour for growing it.

McMullin: No, [laughs] if you make twelve, fourteen dollars an hour for cutting it up, plus all their fringe benefits, it’s got to hurt. Of course, the unions help—it’s two sides to every coin. It’s helped the person that is working in it, but it’s hurting others. The unions, I believe, are going to be the ruination of the country anyway. They just about have now.

Scott: Well, they started out with such a good purpose…

McMullin: It was a good purpose.

Scott: Like coal-mining areas….

McMullin: It was a good purpose, that’s right.

Scott: They all started out with good purpose, but they seem to be taking the money.

McMullin: Well, they’ve got too big a hold right now. They’re what’s—they’re one reason why we got so much unemployment right now.

Scott: You don’t go on strike if you’re making fifteen or twenty dollars an hour.

McMullin: Well, you don’t have automation. If…if…General Motors was putting their cars together for ten dollars an hour, instead of twenty-one to twenty-five dollars an hour, they wouldn’t have near as much automation.

Scott: Right.

McMullin: Because they would be working more people, on account of they could get a car put together cheaper than they could with a robot. And they look at that robot now, and a long run, we’ll they’re taking twenty-some dollars an hour. If they can, if that robot lasts them—I don’t know nothing about it—but if it’ll last them ten years, it’s all paid for itself. Plus they don’t have to fool with the union on that robot, and everything else.

Scott: No fringe benefits.

McMullin: That’s right—and that’s what’s hurting. They don’t know, the union don’t know that they’ve cut their own throat on that, because companies, their companies is moving out of the country everyday—going to India, going to Japan, going to Hong Kong. They’re going everywhere—they’re moving it out where they can get cheap labor and they can make a—they can show more profit.

Scott: Well, they could turn right around and bring it back here and sell it for a big profit.

McMullin: Bring it back here and sell it….

Scott: …for what we could sell it for.

McMullin: And make more profit, that’s right.

Scott: Yeah. And maybe better quality, you know, because of the….

McMullin: I don’t know if it’ll be any better quality, but it will…they could show more of a profit, and if they can show a little more profit, they can afford to sell it cheaper.

Scott: Sure, sure they can, if they can out-sell what we’re building here.

McMullin: That’s right.

Scott: And with the unions….

McMullin: If they can go to Japan, I mean if they can go China and make a pair of jeans for five dollars, and go through two jobbers time it gets here, and tariff and everything, you sell those jeans for ten here, and if they make the jeans here and it costs them nine dollars, they got a, time it goes through three people to get to the rack, store rack, it’s gotta…they’ve got to charge twelve to fourteen dollars…now which one would they go with, which one would you buy? [tape interruption] [Laughs] I don’t mean to, but it does.

Scott: Well, it’s true. I don’t know if we’re cutting our own throats, or what we’re doing, but something we’re not doing right.

McMullin: Everybody can see the problem, but you can’t, you can’t say, well, let’s go back to the way it was ten years ago, unless they could freeze it all the way back.

Scott: Well, the unions have got those prices—those fifteen to twenty dollars an hour prices for those people, and you can’t tell a man he’s going to have to work for half the money.

McMullin: No, they’re not going to do it.

Scott: They’re not going to do it, and they’ve just gone overboard to begin with, I think. Well, I think we’ve about covered everything. You have tobacco, you have cattle, and you had hogs—you don’t have hogs anymore [laughs] due to the subdivisions and the odors, what have you.

McMullin: I don’t know if I could, we haven’t seem like we covered a lot on farming, I don’t know.

Scott: I think we’ve about covered everything. Can you think of anything that you want to say that we haven’t touched on?

McMullin: No, I just don’t look for a good outcome for farmers—the future on it—I don’t see, I don’t see too much….

Scott: One more thing I’d like to ask you Tommy is the political people here in the county, the elected officials. Have they done anything for the farmers, in this county, say in the last ten years?

McMullin: Well, I think they’ve kept a pretty good handle on the assessment of property, more for farming than it is for outright value of a farm. I think that’s helped the farmer as much as anything.

Scott: Well, who does that?

McMullin: Well, that’s left up to the tax assessor. Of course, if it’s assessed for the farm value, and you know, like, if a farm is assessed like, lot of them are assessed at a third of the value of the land. If they were assessed for the full value of land, that would be…. that would put the farmer out anyway….

Scott: Out of business.

McMullin: …because his tax would be so high on it, there’d be no way he could pay it.

Scott: So then, you feel like they have done something to help.

McMullin: Yeah, I think that’s …I can’t say too much wrong with that. I think they’ve done a good job on that, if it’ll stay that way. Now, I don’t know how it is, if you buy a farm now, and say like, if a person bought one and he paid $200,000 for it, if his tax would be taxed on that now, I don’t know about that.

Scott: I don’t either.

McMullin: And the law has changed on that too. If it’s kept in farming for…I don’t…twelve or fifteen years now, your inheritance tax is not near as much as it is if it’s, if you inherit a farm and then you don’t set it up in that, and it’s subdivided. Now that’s helped a whole lot. A lot of farmland is being held as farm now on account of that.

Scott: Because of the taxes.

McMullin: On account of that. It’s about, well, your tax isn’t, about half I guess, as high as it would be, if it wasn’t.

Scott: If you broke it up, before that fifteen years.

McMullin: Well, if you didn’t sign a, sign something that said that, like if you didn’t sign—I don’t know what they have now, what you’d have to sign—but say like if you inherited a farm, and it was assessed, say at $150,000, if you kept it in farming, you wouldn’t be assessed (what does the tax run on…10%? Scott: 10% I guess) you wouldn’t be—it wouldn’t cost you a third of what it’d be, if you said, “No I might subdivide it in the next five years; I’m not signing it.”

Scott: So that’s why you sign it, you hold onto it.

McMullin: That’s right. Or if you don’t hold onto it….

Scott: Well, I didn’t realize that.

McMullin: If you do end up selling it before that twelve or ten or twelve years is up, you end up having to pay more inheritance taxes.

Scott: Oh, I didn’t realize that.

McMullin: That’s one good thing that’s come out of it. Now, I don’t know whether it’s set up on a state level, or a national level or what. But that has helped out.

Scott: What about state officials? Do they help any, the state government?

McMullin: I think our senators has really worked hard on this tobacco program. I don’t know if they—I don’t know what else they could have done.

Scott: Think they have tried.

McMullin: They have tried. I’ll have to admit that. You know you pet one of them on the back, and you help him out, so he can help you out.

Scott: That’s the way it’s always been.

McMullin: Yeah, I don’t know how much longer that’s going…tobacco program last, but when it does go, farmers in this county are gone. Because now, 80% of your income on a farm is made out of tobacco.

Scott: Especially in this area. Well, all of Kentucky, I guess. It’s about the same.

McMullin: If they would fight whiskey as bad as they fight cigarettes, and tobacco, period, if there was as much money spent on fighting the number one killer—and whiskey is, alcohol period is—if they would spend as much money on it as they do on fighting cigarettes, they would end up with a whole lot better results. Lot fewer people killed.

Scott: Turn their interest toward that, instead of tobacco.

McMullin: Well, I could see that—they want, on account of cancer and things like that—but that’s not…they’re not pushing the fight on whiskey, alcohol period. They’re not pushing it that hard. The only thing they’ve come out with lately, is the thing on drunk drivers, the penalty is a little rougher. But they’re not fighting the source. There’s nothing said about that.

Scott: No, you never hear anything said about it. And tobacco is in the news everyday.

McMullin: It’s in the news everyday. And whiskey’s far outnumbered the number of deaths…from tobacco.

Scott: Yeah, how many we have in Kentucky this year alcohol related?

McMullin: That’s right.

Scott: Like 90% of them.

McMullin: That’s right. That’s right.

Scott: Yeah, it doesn’t….

McMullin: That never did make good sense to me.

Scott: No it doesn’t. But you feel like they do try, at least try to help the farmers some?

McMullin: Yeah, I feel like our senators, they have put out an effort for it.

Scott: Well, what about the federal government?

McMullin: Well, I can’t say much for them.

Scott: Do they care about the farmer, or do they realize…

McMullin: I think they do, but I don’t think they know what they can do for him. I don’t really think they know what they can do.

Scott: Do you think they realize what the problems are?

McMullin: I think they do, but they don’t know what they can do about it. You hear it everyday—I don’t whether they do or not—but you hear that they care, and every time there’s somebody running for president….

Scott: Oh, they always care [laughing].

McMullin: Yeah, they always care.

Scott: But whether or not they care enough to get down with the farmer and find out….

McMullin: They make too many goofs.

Scott: Yeah.

McMullin: Just like this corn deal this year. And the government knows they’ve made a goof.

Scott: I think so now, but it’s too late to turn back.

McMullin: Of course, the whole program was set up to help the farmers…supposed to be.

Scott: Well, was it set up by someone who didn’t know that much about farming? And most of these people up there aren’t farmers.

McMullin: Well, it’s about the goof like Block made the goof—of course it’s more than Block done it—but it’s about like that goof on that Russian corn deal, you know, we had, what was it, three or four years ago. It’s about the same way. They were selling corn to the Russians cheaper than the farmers in the United States could buy it themselves.

Scott: Because you had a surplus.

McMullin: That’s right.

Scott: Had to get rid of it.

McMullin: And the Russians were smart enough, they knew how to work the deal out to help them. They did.

Scott: [Laughs] Well, yeah.

McMullin: That’s how it all—that’s the Russians were smarter…now that’s when they just outsmarted the own people that had it.

Scott: Well, has the federal government this time just outsmarted themselves?

McMullin: Well, they had it…they got—what their intentions were…they didn’t intend for that much corn to be set aside. They didn’t think there would be that much corn be set aside. And they anticipated a good crop year.

Scott: And it’s been one of the worst, so far.

McMullin: And it’s been one of the worst, not just here, it’s all over the United States. You can pick up the grain market report—you can hear that everyday. Price of corn keeps going up, and it’s not met its peak yet—what it’s going to be.

Scott: Well, now they get that corn back in, what, October?

McMullin: They get what?

Scott: They get the corn back—the people set their, put their property in the Soil Bank get that corn back in October, and I’ve heard rumors that it’s not any good, especially grade two corn, is that right?

McMullin: Yeah, grade two.

Scott: And I’ve heard that a lot of the farmers have checked and are unhappy with it already. What’s going to happen when they’re expecting good corn back, and they don’t get enough back to…take care of themselves?

McMullin: I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re going to do. It’s going to be chaos, I’m afraid. I don’t know what they….

Scott: There’s going to be a bunch of hungry pigs [laughs]….

McMullin: There is.

Scott: …running around.

McMullin: I don’t know. They goofed on it like I said before. I don’t know and they realize their mistake but they don’t have a way to correct it right now.

Scott: They’d have to let it ride its course.

McMullin: There are…it’s going to run its course. And when it does, it’s going to hurt everybody.

Scott: Yeah. And like you said, the medium size farmer, the middle size farmers are the ones that are going to be destroyed. Well, can you think of anything that would help? Can you think of anything anybody could do that would help? What would you like to see done, in your middle size farm?

McMullin: Well, I’ll have to…of course I’m like that on, I’m on this tobacco about like a…these companies is bringing in foreign cars, I guess. You know, I’d like to see a cut back on foreign tobacco being brought into the United States. And there’s more and more of it every year being brought in. And the same way, these people hollering about these foreign cars wanting to put a tariff on it, of course, you got to expect free trade, so I don’t know how you’re going to work that out. Of course they say, well, your way to do that is to bring the price of tobacco down to the price of what the foreign—but we can’t do it. You know, what we paid for fertilizer and help….

Scott: You got to bring it all down, don’t you?

McMullin: It’s all got to come down, if we can bring the price of tobacco down. So I don’t have no solutions. I don’t know what we can do. We can put a tariff on this tobacco, that’s being brought in. It’s increasing every year. It started out five years ago at 10% of tobacco that’s used in our products, on cigarettes, and chewing tobacco, and snuff, and stuff like that—10%. Now I noticed next year it’s liable to up close to 40%.

Scott: Where’s it coming from?

McMullin: Argentina and Brazil.

Scott: South America.

McMullin: South America, yeah.

Scott: Well, is it a finer quality, is that…?

McMullin: No, they got a poor quality tobacco.

Scott: It’s just cheaper labor.

McMullin: It’s cheaper.

Scott: Cheaper labor.

McMullin: Well, it’s cheaper tobacco. Yeah, they got cheap labor down there, so they can sell cheap tobacco.

Scott: Back again, like foreign products of every other kind.

McMullin: Yeah.

Scott: It all goes back to that cheap labor.

McMullin: All goes back to cheap labor, and cheap materials. They’re laying down there with prime land that’s never been farmed heavy, and they clear it off and farm like we did a hundred years ago—no fertilizer. It’s good soil; it’ll raise it.

Scott: And they can do it for a number of years, and then….

McMullin: That’s right. It’ll soon work its way down.

Scott: …it’s going to grow back up again.

McMullin: Well, they’ll start fertilizing heavy, and they’ll buy fertilizer, but I don’t know what they can do. On this beef cattle, there’s a lot of beef cattle imported.

Scott: Where is it imported from?

McMullin: Argentina.

Scott: Again, South America.

McMullin: Yeah, South America.

Scott: So a tariff, or a price support, or something.

McMullin: Yeah, you could put a tariff on something like that where it could cost them, of course, it all goes back to free trade. I don’t know how they work it. Lot of people’s bound to have a better solution than I do on it, I don’t know [laughing].

Scott: I don’t know of anyone to have a better solution than somebody who works on a farm twelve to fourteen hours a day. I think that may be the best solution right there.

McMullin: Of course the government’s taxed cigarettes to death. Gasoline don’t get taxed no harder than cigarettes.

Scott: Not as hard. I think I just paid ninety-five cents for a pack.

McMullin: Government taxes. They hollering about it’s not self-supporting, but tobacco’s been supporting itself for 30 years, I guess.

Scott: Must have been. It must have been.

McMullin: Government hadn’t had but very little to do with it. It’s not like the…well, I don’t know what they’re going to do about this milk and cheese—I’m just glad I’m not a dairy farmer. I don’t know how those poor guys ever make it [laughing]. Because one of these days, they’re going to get cut out on that, because the government’s …they’re funding it too heavy right now. And it’s going to be cut back, and the people that’s got dairy farm, dairy they just… I don’t know how they’re going to make it, because they’re not going to be able to afford it.

Scott: I just heard, just had a lady tell me yesterday, that…she hated to go downtown on cheese day, because she saw these people picking up the cheese, and they lived next door to her. They’re picking up five and six boxes at a time, and taking it home and feeding it to the dogs because they have so much stacked up, and she said and yet, out of my dairy check, is paying for that cheese. She said I don’t see how much longer it can go on.

McMullin: Well, I don’t know…

Scott: She said eventually the bottom’s going to fall out.

McMullin: Well, the government’s is, you know, where there’s so many millions and millions of dollars it’s costing the government every year—this price support on it. And you want to hear a cane, you get one of these big dairy farmers, boy, they can really lay the law down on you [laughs].

Scott: I have two of them tomorrow.

McMullin: Is that right?

Scott: Yeah.

McMullin: If they’re real read up on it, and know what they’re talking about, they can really lay it out to you.

Scott: Oh, they were shouting at me over the phone. I had a feeling I’m going to get it tomorrow.

McMullin: Then you’ll know all about it tomorrow.

Scott: Yeah, tomorrow I’ll find out about dairy cattle. Well, can you think of anything else Tommy you’d like to say?

McMullin: No, I guess that about it covers it.

Scott: I feel like I kept you all night; I didn’t mean to.

McMullin: No, I enjoyed it as much as you did. I like to tell my problems to everybody.

Scott: [Laughing] Well, I hope when this gets back up there maybe it’ll be some help somewhere down the line.

McMullin: Well, maybe somebody down the line one of these days can help.

Scott: Somebody to listen—I think that’s the problem, if somebody would just listen.

McMullin: It just don’t look good for us.

Scott: Well, thanks again, I appreciate it.

McMullin: All right.

END OF INTERVIEW

©Kentucky Oral History Commission Kentucky Historical Society

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