Bud Huntley Recalls the Early Days Squirrels, Snakes and Stills... Oh My! By Allan Zullo No one has spent more time on the Mountain than Bud Huntley. The 79-year-old resident has hunted and fished here ever since he was 12 years old. "Back then, this area was known for three things-squirrels, snakes and stills," said Bud, sitting on the front porch of the stone and wood home that he built in 1965. He and his wife Ophelia live with their dozen hunting dogs (many of them known as mountain feists) near the bottom of the mountain. The Huntleys' driveway on the east side of Fairview Forest Drive crosses a small private bridge over Trantham Creek which fronts their cozy house nestled on a lush three-acre plot they call Mulberry Flats. [Photo: Bud Huntley and his wife, Ophelia... mountain residents since 1965.] During Bud's childhood, the Mountain was virtually uninhabited except for a few shanties used by loggers who carved logging roads along the slopes. What is today Fairview Forest Drive was for decades a dirt road where oxen pulled sleds because it was too steep for wagons. "The forest here was so thick with trees, you couldn't see anything," he said. And that was just perfect for moonshiners. "Back when I was a boy, there were stills in every holler and cove," Bud recalled. "Oh lord, this place was full of 'em. Some of these well-to-do people in Fairview today got their money from kin who sold homemade whiskey and moonshine here. I remember a man named Bum Crawford who made whiskey in a still on this mountain all the time. The feds were constantly after him. I knew another feller who would carry 100-pound sacks of sugar on his shoulder and hike a mile up the mountain to his still. "Moonshiners knew I wouldn't tell on 'em." "There was another feller who had a half dozen stills. He made a fair amount of money. The law was constantly coming around here, asking people where the stills were, but no one would tell 'em." It wasn't that difficult to find a still on the Mountain. "Sometimes me and my dogs would go back into the woods to hunt, and the dogs would go and find a still," Bud said. "People there would hold onto the dogs until I got to 'em. Moonshiners knew I wouldn't tell on 'em. "I was like the little boy who was stopped by the revenuer. The revenuer asked, 'Where's your daddy?' The boy answered, 'He's up there at his still.' The revenuer said, 'I'll give you a quarter if you show me where the still is.' The boy said, 'Okay' and held out his hand. The revenuer said, 'No, I'll pay you when I get back.' The boy shook his head and said, 'Ya gotta pay me now 'cause if you find my daddy's still, you won't be coming back.'" Asked if he ever imbibed as a kid, Bud replied, "Sure, I've tasted it. Why, even my dad was known to make a little from time to time." Bud, who was born near Bat Cave, said he loved to hunt on the Mountain. "Coons and squirrels were everywhere," he said. "I practically lived off the squirrels. There were no bears here back then. "But, oh lord, this place was infested with rattlers and copperheads. I dreaded those snakes. Oh goodness alive. I've been bit by a copperhead. Let me tell you, it hurts. Everyone knew you had to be careful walking around here. That's why everyone carried a gun." Fortunately, there aren't nearly as many snakes today as there were back then. However, Bud said that he's lost five coon dogs to snake bites over the years. Ophelia said she shot a rattler off her front porch about ten years ago. "It was a big 'un," she declared. "I shot it with a .410. I let a lot of others get away and Bud would tell me, 'Don't let 'em get away, 'cause then they might come back and bite me.'" Bud said when he was growing up, the Mountain was brimming with countless cold springs. "Water was everywhere," he said. "Trantham Creek was a lot bigger and bolder back then. Fishing was good. Lots of rainbow trout." However, the creek flooded from time to time. "Once in 1973, we had a terrible storm, raining like the dickens morning, noon and night. And constant lightning that it seemed like it was daylight. Trantham Creek was full up and over its banks. The water reached the second step of our front porch. Well, a big, fat tree fell down and landed in the water and was being swept downstream and I told Ophelia, 'Oh lord, it's going to crash into our bridge and wreck it.' Well, the water was so high that the tree washed right over the bridge. The bridge survived." Bud, who has been laying stone for more than 60 years, said that he bought his property from Judge Walter Allen, who owned about 100 acres. "The judge told me, 'Bud, I want only one neighbor and I want that neighbor to be you.' So he sold me three acres. And then I went about building my home. He was a fine gentleman. We never had a cross word between us in over forty years." (Although the Huntleys live off of Fairview Forest Drive, their property is not part of Fairview Forest.) When a Florida company began developing the Mountain in the 1970s as Arrowhead, Bud was hired to build the stone walls, which still stand at the entrance. "I even made an eight-and-a-half-foot-tall arrowhead out of stone," he said. "But then right after [local developer] Gerald Dean took over and called it Fairview Forest, someone wrapped a chain around the arrowhead and pulled it down." Some of the first residents to Fairview Forest were flatlanders who had no clue how unforgiving the winters could get. "It wasn't unusual to get up to three feet of snow," said Ophelia, who was raised in Cane Creek valley. "When people first moved higher up on the mountain, they didn't know they couldn't drive up with all that snow. People would call out and ask if Bud would take them up. So Bud was running a shuttle service with his jeep to get them up to their homes." Asked how life on the Mountain has changed since she and Bud moved here more than 40 years ago, Ophelia replied, "Oh lord, it's so different now. The biggest change is the noise. It used to be so quiet and peaceful. Now I hear construction trucks going up and down the mountain. But I sure do like it here. I don't know of anywhere else I'd rather be than right here." She says she and Bud love having visits from their two children, six grandchildren and four great-great grandchildren. Bud claims he had a premonition about the development. "Long before anyone thought of developing the land, I had a dream once that this whole mountain was full of A-frames and houses were all lit at night. When I woke up, I was scared to death it would come true. Looks like now it has." Fairview Forest Homeowners' Association   •   101 Fairview Forest Drive   •   Fairview, NC 28730