A Foolish Question at Mingus Mill

Ask a Foolish Question--------
When on vacation a few days ago with my son Christopher and his family, we stopped at the Mingus Mill, a grist mill on the North Carolina side of the Smokey Mountains. The “miller” was a man several year my junior and he and I began talking about the days of “taking a turn of corn to mill.” I told him that my Great Granddaddy Marlin Young had been both a miller and a distillery operator. It was not back-holler moonshine still but a government licensed operation, the paperwork for which is still in the hands of my son Patrick for safe keeping. It was not an unusual arrangement since typically the miller took a “toll” for grinding a customer’s corn or wheat, which amounted to 1/8th of the amount ground. By turning the ground grain into whiskey, my Scotch/Irish ancestor leveraged his trades and multiplied his profits – perhaps ten times. It was a smooth running operation until Great Grandma Young got religion and was baptized into the church of Christ. She quickly became uncomfortable with her husband being in that line of work and after seeing a “vision” of a government inspector, whom no one else saw; she exercised her wifely influence and convinced Grandpa Marlin to shut down the still for good.
The “miller” at Mingus Mill asked if I still had the toll box or if the mill still existed and I sadly explained that it did not, rather that it had fallen victim to a “freshet” or flood sometime early in the last century and all we have now is paperwork and a picture or two of the mill. I told him that I did however, remember “taking a turn of corn to mill” when we lived in Smith County and explained that it was in the town of Carthage in the alley behind where Smith County Hardware now sits. Of course in those days Mr. Kent was still running Smith County Hardware and it was located on Main Street. It was not a water mill but was run by gasoline engine and fewer and fewer people, even country people such as we were, still took corn to mill.
The “miller” then asked what I thought were a couple of strange questions; first he wanted to know, “how much did a person take when they took a turn of corm to mill?” and then, “and what did you take it in?” He explained that he had asked that question to several “old timers like you (me), and none of them seem to remember the answer.”
After thinking a minute or two, I told him why he would not likely get the same answer to that question from any two people, even if their memory was clear. First, it would depend on the size of your family, second it would depend on how much they liked cornbread, and third it would depend on how often they got in to town where the mill was located. It is, I suppose, the same reason that milk comes in pints, quarts, half gallons, and gallons and why some folks buy more than one gallon at a time.
As to how we got it to mill, well I assume there was some difference from family to family, depending on how much they took, how far they had to go, and what material they had at hand. As for us, we would first shuck and shell a bushel of yellow corn, pour the corn from the bushel basket into a toe sack (grass sack) and tie the top up with bailing wire. We took along a couple of flour sacks (we did not raise wheat and thus store bought our flour) into which we put the ground meal. Once home, it was dumped into the “meal barrel” which had two sides, one for flour and one for meal, and Mama would use it from there by means of a aluminum cup which stayed right inside the “barrel.”
I have learned that if you would get a good answer to life’s questions, it is first required that one ask questions clearly, and determine before hand if the question is one that should even be asked. Will the answer, once given, provide one with additional knowledge, or simply more unusable information? It is a favorite trick of the pollsters, asking a question rigged in a way to give one an answer that will be self serving. A little like the old joke of asking someone if they have stopped beating their wife. Either a yes or no answer is incriminating.
It is also true of our approach to “interrogating” the scriptures; we start with a question that is sure to yield a satisfactory answer – at least satisfactory to us. Perhaps we would be best served to spend less time in this method of interrogating the scriptures and just allow the scriptures to interrogate us.
Have a blessed day, Bob