| Introduction: Calhoun recluse and individualist Emma Metz has now passed, but her memory lives on in the backwoods of Crummies Creek, her field of flowers now in bloom.
By Bob Weaver 2001
Standing in a field of daffodils, 77-year-old Emma Metz told about
making it on her
own.
"If you can make out without it, you don't need it," she said.
Proud of the
thousands of daffodils she has planted on her 91 acres on the right
fork of Crummies
Creek, she said in a few more days they will be in full bloom.
She
touched each plant,
carefully identifying the varieties, King Alfred, Mt. Hood and Ice
Follies. "Would you
like some?" she asked.
Daffodils, "King Alfred", "Mt. Hood", and "Ice Follies"
Crummies Creek near Bear Fork backwoods
Just before you get to her humble dwelling a sign advises "Back of
Beyond."
Sometimes the stream floods and it comes around her house and washes
through the
flower fields.
"This place is really called Twin Hollows, you know."
Emma used to raise
cows and pigs on her place which she purchased about 1945.
"I
couldn't keep up
with them, keeping the fence" and they would wander off into Bear
Fork.
She would
go after them, sometimes spending two or three days sleeping in the
woods.
She was born in 1923 in this remote hollow which borders the Bear
Fork backwoods.
Her father was a timber man, George Metz who married Effie Parsons.
She has eight
siblings, none of which remained in the area.
"We lived at High
Bank," a small spot
along Crummies Creek.
"Dad helped build this road when he worked for
the WPA."
She
said her family operated a store at the Corder Bridge and at the "Y"
at one time.
Emma received NYA machinist training at Eleanor Roosevelt's economic
experiment
at Arthurdale, Preston County.
NYA was a depression era program that
brought skills
and work to young people.
"They sent me to Springfield, Massachusetts
during World
War II to make parts."
She later went to Ohio and worked at Goodyear
Aircraft for fifty
to eight-five cents an hour, but has rarely been away from the
creek these past 50
years.
She doesn't need electric or a telephone, but a wood stove heats her
cabin. "I haven't
listened to the radio for several years" and she doesn't have a
mailbox.
"I turned
down government help several times. They seemed to have too many
rules signing
up. People have been real good helping me, and I do need some help
sometimes," she
continued.
"I get around pretty slow on some days."
Still a gleam in her eye and a smile on her face as infrequent
neighbors drive down
the creek, she said "You know "God is truth.
A belief in God is a
journey about which
you understand a little."
Emma Metz is still on her journey, holding
fast to beliefs
fostered in early America, fiercely independent and connected to the
earth.
"you believe in God, it's a journey about which you understand a
little"
Fields of Emma's flowers along Crummies Creek
EDITORS NOTE: We have written many stories on the life and times of Emma Metz, all to be found under People, Humor and History.
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