Introducing the Hubbard Branch of the Family Tree

So I've got The Allman Brothers Band on the turntable tonight, the Brothers and Sisters album from 1973, thinking how organic it sounds, not like some manufactured product from LaLa Land but like a bunch of  guys jamming in the other room.  Bluesy and southern, without any of that angry outlaw redneck pathological posing that afflicted many so-called "Southern Rock" bands that followed them.  Ya know, their song "Ramblin' Man" was the first rock song I ever sang in public, back when the song was only a few years old, but that's another story.  The cover of the Allman Brothers record shows kids on a nice fall day and you open it up and there's a whole bunch of people, and a couple of dogs too, all together on a big ol' porch.  White folks and black folks, all part of the family, men & women & babies, oops they caught the little girl from the back cover pickin her nose, but that's ok, there will be a lot of pickin before the day is done.  Dickey Betts is now pickin his dobro, singing Pony Boy, and I feel like telling you about my family.

I've been thinking about my maternal grandfather, William "Buddy" Hubbard.  Us grandkids all called him Grandy.  That's him in that picture up top, little Buddy.  And yes, that's a hog hanging there being gutted, sorry Lili.  He's probably too young to be in school but he sure is being educated right there.  Face right by that tub of guts, close enough to feel the heat off that recently living critter on his cold cheeks.  No flies, too cold for that, but not cold enough to completely eliminate the smell, not at that close range.  He probably helped feed that hog, fattened it up from a little piglet.  A shoat-hog, as my dad likes to say.  Most likely he was there to see the fatal blow delivered, maybe by his dad Monterville or his grand-dad John.  That's his great-grand-dad Edd working the gutting knife.  I bet he made some sausage, the natural casings are there, can't let anything go to waste.  Edd rode with the Confederate Cavalry, at one point serving under General John Hunt Morgan and taking part in "Morgan's Raid."  That means he passed within a few miles of where I grew up in Okeana.  I wonder if it was because the area was a hotbed of Copperheadism?  Copperheads believed the war was begun to preserve the Union but Lincoln overstepped his constitutional powers, and the draft of Union citizens into what had become a war to free the slaves was a last straw for them, and for many others as well.  Watch the movie Gangs Of New York for a depiction of the New York Draft Riots.   Then, as now, there was not complete unity on causes for war, or in its execution.  Anyway, I doubt if Edd ever owned a slave.  I also doubt if he thought very much of a man who had to buy somebody to do the work that he or his kin ought to be doing themselves.  Edd looks like a hands-on kind of guy.  I imagine him working a cavalry sabre.  Yikes.

It's been a good hard day and Grandy got to be included with the men, perched up there on the crossbeam with his brother "Boss" (real name Colonel) , looking over all the Hubbards and their friends and their hog-handiwork, the business of keeping the family fed.  We'll have some good eating through the winter if we're careful.  Virginia Pike was Grandy's cousin.  Her mother Mollie was Monterville's sister.  Grandy's mother Mary (Brummett) died in 1918 in the big Spanish Flu pandemic.   As usual with these old pictures I wonder who took it?  Thanks to Cousin Lanny over at Hubbard Mountain for the pictures and info.  And thanks to everyone who stops in to read my little blog.  Please spread the word and stop back often.  Leave me some comments or sign up as a follower so I know my efforts are not just for my own satisfaction.