by Okey L. King

I do not believe that I was quite six years old that evening i was playing in the soft sand of the lane that ran just a few feet from the newly built house of Grandpa Tom Pullins. I had a line of toy cars lined up on a road that I had bulldozed with my open hand. Aa I would construct new sections of the road, I would move each car up in its turn. But, my play was interupted when my mother called, "Okey Lester come in here. You have to ge washed up. It's almost time to go."

Without much enthusim, I gathered my cars up in my arms and trudged to the back porch where my mother was waiting with a washrag and a pan of warm soapy water. As she scrubbed me until I ws pink, she said, "We're going o a "belling" in just a little bit."

"What's a Belling?"

"That's something they do to people when they get married." My mother Edna was always quite proper. she didn't speak in the way that most country folk talk, and she walked ramrod straight with her head and shoulders back when she went anywhere. Years later, when she moved to Greenbrier County, many folk there thought that she was "stuck-up," but she wasn't. She always said that her father had said, "If you are going anywhere, look your best and walk with your head up and your sholders back." So, she was determined that I should look by best even at a belling.

It wasn't long before we were all ready to go. Since the place where the belling was to be was close, just on the next little ridge and just down the road a piece, Grandpa Pullins didn't hitch up the horses to the old farm wagon that was the sole means of transportation on the farm. We would walk. Besides my mother, Grandpaw, and Grandmaw, there were my sister Imelda and my older sister Betty. We all walked together in the soft late summer evening as dusk began to gather around us.

Turning left on the dirt road that came up out of Bee Run and ran the ridge, we walked though the soft dust of the red-clay road. I suppose that there were many kinds of good smells, but I don't recall them. There would have been the smell of the garden which was across the ridge road from the front of the house, the odor of sheep, horse and cow manure, and probably the smell of fresh hay that had been cut by a the horse-drawn mower. Along side of the road, milkweed pods were bursting open, and I picked a few heads as I walked along. I liked to open the pods and free the silks.

Soon we reached the Andrew beatty place and entered the road that led to Aus Linivgston's where the "Belling" was to be held. One of the Livingston boys, I believe that it was Henry, had brought home a bride from Ohio, and the people of the neighborhood were taking a chance to celebrate. Since it is just short distance from the Beatty house to the Livingstons, we were soon there.

We were among the first to arrive and we were met by Aus and his wife Nancy. Aus was a tall man with a white beard and Nancy was small with silvery-white hair.

Cars of all descriptions began to pull into the yard with each driver honking his horn. From out of the vehicles, people pulled all sorts of noise-makers. There were washboards, shotguns, pots and pans, and just about anything else that could be used to make a noise.

After a lot of milling around, laughing, joking, and kidding around, someone, I think that it was Uncle Vernon Stone, got up on a car hood and hollered, "Hey, let's get this here thing going." And, we did. We all lined up in the pitch dark night. Uncle Vernon had thrust a cowbell in my hand saying, "Here Okey Lester, make noise real loud with this. Shake her real loud now!"

And, away we went: Bang, bang, boom boom, rattle rattle, crackety crack! In step with everyone else, I shook that old cowbell as hard as I could. What a noise! Uncle Vernon and some of the others had shotguns and they didn't spare the ammunition. As you walked by a window of the old house, you could see the bright yellow flash of the shotguns though the window on the opposite wall. It was enough to get you arrested today before thirty secondes were up. But, on and on we went. Then, suddenly we stopped, and Uncle Vernon yelled, "Henry, get on out here!"

Soon everyone was hollering, "Henry! Get yourself out here! Hurry up Henry!"

Now, let me pause a minute. it was the custom for the bride and groom to treat those who were belling them. The men expected cigars and the women and children expected to get candy. This was a very serious thing. In some of the rougher lumber and coal towns, if the groom faile to treat the bellers, he and his bride were likely to be "riddin upon a rail." That could be pretty tough.

But, soon Henry and his really blushing bride came out into the yard. Henry was tall and dark-headed and his bride was a short blonde-haired girl. I thought that she was beautiful. The men lined up in one line and filed past Henry to get their cigars, and the women and children marched past the blonde-haired girl to get their candy. I still remember the candy bar that I got. It was one of those Nepolitans: flat, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, and sugar-coated. And, I still remember those blue eyes of that blonde girl.

The last belling that I attended ws that of Triva Carol Stone and Buck Shinn. I recieved my first cigar there and i sneaked around the hosue and smoked it. I was lucky. My mother didn't catch me. Carol died this past September from lung cancer.

I believe that the custom of "belling" goes back into antiquity and that it was a device used to drive the evil spirits away in I wonder how it would be if we still gathered around a new couple and "Belled" them. I wonder if any of us would have the nerve to try it.

Reprints only by permission of Okey L. King.