Full Text of the Excerpt

BRENT GLASS:

Was this store down here open then? Was it a company store?

CHARLES MURRAY:

No. It was further on back before we ever moved back here, you know. Oh, this store has been here for . . . I reckon it's been here longer than the mill started.

BRENT GLASS:

Was it a store then, or was it just an office?

CHARLES MURRAY:

It was a store, a company store. I've told different ones when the mill first started that they paid off in terkels.

BRENT GLASS:

Terkels?

CHARLES MURRAY:

Yes [laughter] . I told it for a joke.

BRENT GLASS:

Oh, what is that?

CHARLES MURRAY:

That's some fish in the river. And they'd send a wagon off and get terkel, and they'd come back and pay you off. And you'd go to the store. They'd give you a big terkel; you'd go to the store and buy anything, and you'd give them the big terkel and they'd give you little terkels back.

ZELMA MONTGOMERY MURRAY:

That's just one of his jokes.

CHARLES MURRAY:

That's a joke. [laughter]

BRENT GLASS:

That's OK; I like that.

CHARLES MURRAY:

It was so far back when I told that, but I did it [laughter] as a joke. I'd hear the old people tell it.