Mars Hill author says memoirs are a generational gift: 'Important to know our ancestors'

MARS HILL - Mars Hill resident Jackie Webb said her main goal in writing a memoir about her father was to leave behind a piece of their family history for her two sons.

Webb did just that with "Destiny's Trail: A Hope and a Future," a memoir about her father, Ed McFarland. The book was published earlier this year, 18 years after Webb published a memoir on her mother.

Though McFarland died in 1968 at 52 years old, Webb said she had no trouble recollecting memories about him.

"I have a good memory," she said. "With my mother's, I took notes talking with her a lot about her childhood. My daddy, I just remember, and I'm just doing it out of memories."

McFarland came to Western North Carolina to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Hot Springs. He grew up in Oliver Springs, Tennessee, and moved to Mars Hill at 18 with only a third grade education.

"He joined this camp and met this friend in camp that happened to be my mother's brother," Webb said. "My mother's brother invited him home for dinner one day. That's how he met mother."

The author said the idea to write about her parents came from the urging of friends and family.

Webb worked as Mars Hill College's library sales floor coordinator. According to Webb, while she was working at the library, another author, Joe Richard Morgan, would pay visits to the library to check on the sales of his book.

"I was telling him about her having polio, and that nothing could get her down," Webb said. "He said, 'Well, you should write a book about her.' And I told him, 'Well, I've never done anything like that.' He said, 'Every time you think about a good memory or something, just jot down the subject and put it in a tea cup somewhere. After you've done that for a long time, gather it all together and put it together in chronological order, and then just start writing.'"

Webb's mother, Mabel Marshbanks McFarland, was diagnosed with polio when she was 11. Marshbanks McFarland grew up in Forks of Ivy.

One of Webb's two sons, Robby, a math teacher at Montreat College, urged Webb to take an Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College writing course in 2004.

"The teacher encouraged me and told me, 'You have some good work here,' but I was just doing it for my children," Webb said. "So, the thought stayed in my mind."

According to Webb, the book deals a lot with the Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Also called "Camp Alex Jones," the camp was U.S. Army-operated and carried out by the U.S. Forest Service.

The camp featured work from roughly 200 men who blazed hiking trails, built picnic areas and began work on the Rich Mountain Fire Tower.

As for her father, Webb said she remembers a loving family man who was easy to get along with.

"My daddy was just a plain, simple, easygoing sweet man that loved everybody," Webb said. "My daddy was very tenderhearted. If anyone in the community passed away, back then the body would stay in the home, and someone would sit up with the body until they had the burial. Well he would always volunteer to sit up and offer the family rest.

"He was a perfect daddy to get splinters out of my fingers and my toes. If I was getting ready to go to church when I was a little girl, and I had a knot in my necklace, he would sit out on that front porch and work through that chain until he got the knot out. I just can't say enough about him."

Still, McFarland, who worked as a guard at Craggy Prison, was not one you wanted to cross either, his daughter said.

"If he got something against you, it was a different thing," Webb said.

McFarland later worked as a security guard at Biltmore Estate.

Webb and her family grew up in the Forks of Ivy community of Mars Hill.

"We had a very happy time," she said. "We were raised with no inside plumbing, and before we went to bed, the three of us – my mother, my sister and I – would take our little trip to the outhouse. It was just a nice country life. I was very fortunate."

When her father died, Webb was 24 years old and eight months pregnant with her youngest son, Ryan, who lives in Greeneville, Tennessee, with his wife.

"My daddy would take me to the doctor, and in your pregnancy, when you are eight months, the doctor wants you to come weekly. So he would take me, and every time after the visit, we'd always go to McDonald's," Webb said. "He would order a hamburger, french fries and coffee. He'd always sit there and just very slowly eat his french fries. Then he'd wrap that bag up and throw it in the trash. Then he'd eat his hamburger. Then he'd drink his coffee.

"Afterwards, he would take me for a ride where I'd never been. He'd always take me the long way home. We'd be in Asheville coming home to Forks of Ivy. The last trip, he took me out Leicester Highway ... and end up in Marshall. It just shocked me to death when we got to Marshall. I had no idea where we'd end up."

Webb said she remembers her father telling her they would do the same routine next week. But she never got the chance.

"So, I never did know about his next adventures," she said.

Some of Webb's favorite memories of her father, and how the process changed over the course of writing the two memoirs

But Webb reflected on some of the adventures she did get to experience with her father, including the family's trip to Florida one summer.

"We were in a little '51 Chevrolet, and we piled up the three children, – my older brother, my sister and me – and took a trip all the way to Key West, Florida," Webb said. "We got down there, and his car had started making noises. When we got to the very end, he had it checked, and I told him it wouldn't go another 50 miles. I tried to get him to sell it or buy one, and he wouldn't do it. He made us all get in the car and he headed back to North Carolina.

"He did not stop, except for gas, until we got to Georgia. And my mother – I can remember this – she said, 'Ed, you've got to pull over.' He was just so tired that he was just not driving good. So he talked her into stopping in Georgia, and he got up the next morning and he drove all the way home."

"Grandma Dynamite" is Webb's memoir about her mother, Mabel Marshbanks McFarland, published in 2005. Marshbanks McFarland worked in production at Vanderbilt Shirt Company for 16 years.

As for the nickname, Webb said McFarland was gifted it after she received a speeding ticket while driving with Webb's children.

"It really embarrassed her bad, so they were trying to kid her and they said, 'You're just Grandma Dynamite. You can do anything,'" Webb said.

While writing her mother's memoir, Webb said she would frequently think back on instructions given to her by her writing teacher at A-B Tech.

"When I first started writing that book, she showed me like in one paragraph that I had, that I could take that paragraph and make pages and pages and pages out of it," Webb said. "She said you've got to broaden it. I put a lot of dialogue in it."

The book about her mother took Webb roughly a year and a half to write, she said.

"I would go to bed some nights crying, and other nights laughing," she said. "It's really a bittersweet process."

Despite the 17-year layoff in between memoirs, Webb said she completed the book about her father faster than her mother's.

Webb said finishing the memoir about her father came with a big sense of relief. She spent a little more than a year writing the book, and it was published in March by Pisgah Press.

"The main thing I wish I could stress to everyone is ... my daddy's mother, Grandma McFarland, died when I was 2 years old," Webb said. "My grandpa died before I was born. I know nothing about my family. I can't stress enough the importance of people doing what I've done. They can't say, 'I can't do it,' because if I can do it, any of them can do it."

That tradition of preserving the family history is intact, as Webb's son Robby, who wrote the foreword to Destiny's Trail, is passing down the stories to his children, too.

"He has two sons and a daughter, and he is teaching his children right now all this about his ancestors and their ancestors," Webb said. "Now, I can tell that they're really interested in knowing about their family. So, we've got to tell them about it, and get them interested."

Looking back, Webb said now that the memoir about her father is published and is available for use by her family along with the memoir about her mother, her goal is complete.

"This is for my children, and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren because my mother and my daddy would be completely forgotten in one more generation had I not written these books," Webb said. "It's important for us to know our ancestors. If it's not passed down, they're forgotten."

"Destiny's Trail: A Hope and a Future" is available on Amazon.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Mars Hill resident says memoirs about her parents are a gift to family