Narrative by Junebug Clark in the summer of 2014 Molasses Making Stir-off - Walking My Girl Home Overall Background: These Molasses Making Stir-off photos were shot by Joe Clark HBSS in the early to mid-1940s. Either on the farm of Fred Whitaker about four miles southwest of Cumberland Gap, or in Cumberland Gap on the farm of Baptist preacher the Rev. Hugh Vancel. More information about these images can be found in scrapbooks in the Clark Family Collection at the University of North Texas Special Collections Library. Specifically in a Detroit news pictorial article published December 13, 1942 titles "stir-off party" where mountaineers make molasses and merriment. Also in life magazine published November 13, 1950 [page 156] titled “Stir-off Time in Tennessee, Fun Starts in Hills as Molasses Boils.’ Also in the library is the NBC Today Show story on Joe Clark HBSS by Bob Dotson. It features Joe Clark returning to Cumberland Gap Tennessee to photograph a molasses stir off taking place in the same location as some of these photographs and attended by some of the same people in the early 1980s. Let me briefly set the scene of the time and era that these photos were made. …

Photograph of a jug of "Wild Spirits" from a still hidden in a tree in the hills of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee.

Photograph of young Roy McCreary crossing a bridge with a walking stick on a path in the Hills of Tennessee, thinking about his future. Beautiful scene in the Hills of Tennessee.

Photograph of Aunt Oma Wright and Aunt Julia McCrary seated by the fireplace in their home in 1942, Cumberland Gap Tennessee. (Aunt Julia is seated in the rocker)

Photograph of children lined up tasting the sweet sorghum molasses off shortened sorghum cane used as a tasting spoon. The envelope containing the negative is annotated "stir-off".

Photograph of Aunt Julia McCreary sitting in a rocking chair reading a book by the fireplace.