Regular” Baptist minister. He taught all the Smith boys how to handle a gun. Kelly noticed that Tom had a special talent with firearms. He told Mary Polly, “You know Tom favors the Kelly side of the family.”
Kelly started taking Tom out in the woods when he was only eight years old, showing him how to use both a pistol and a rifle. The first time he fired a weapon, the boy could hardly stand up to the jolt. But after Tom grew accustomed to it, he could fire both weapons steadily. By ten, little Tom could hit a target fifty feet away with ease. In his early teens, he continued to shoot in the forest by himself, becoming one of the best marksmen in the area. Tom often supplied the family with rabbit, squirrel, and other small game killed in the woods.
During his excursions into the woods, Tom often carried a small tablet and wrote song lyrics. Then, he figured out tunes. One of his acquaintances taught him how to play the banjo. In the forest, the boy sang his own songs and accompanied himself. After singing a concert, Tom sometimes took a bow and then shook hands with the tree branches.
African-American musicians introduced the first banjos to North America as early as the seventeenth century. They made them from gourds, with a stick neck and strings. Tom Smith’s banjo was the traditional type we would recognize today. After numerous solo concerts in the woods, Tom finally began singing some of his songs at home. Word spread in the hollows that Tom was a good singer, and he began to be asked to sing before groups at social gatherings and occasionally at church services. At the age of fourteen, an incident occurred that forever changed his life. One afternoon, Mary Polly took a big iron pot of bubbling milk gravy off the kitchen fire and began pouring it into a bowl on the round oak table top. Then, suddenly, Tom fell at her feet. He gagged, then yelled. His entire body shook and his head banged the floor.
“You nearly made me spill this good gravy!” Mary Polly screamed.
“I’m sorry Ma, something just come over me all of a sudden,” Tom said weakly.
He pulled himself up using the table leg, without help from his mother. That was the first of Tom’s “fits.” As they continued, and got worse, his mother took him into the village of Hindman to see the doctor. The physician did not know how to treat the problem. In the next few months, Tom saw several doctors, going as far as Hazard and Whitesburg. None of them could help. The fits grew worse, forcing Tom to behave strangely. At this point, some people in the community began calling him “Bad Tom” Smith.
Tom became a frequent topic of conversation among the men in the little village as they sat around the big black pot-bellied stove at the combination general store and post office. Once, Clyde Campbell, whittling on a piece of wood, looked over at Joe Sexton and said, “Have you seed that Smith boy? He’s a biggun, hain’t he? When Tom has one of them fits of his’n, he scares the hell out of me!”
“Clyde, we gotta do something about that boy. He’s full of the devil, that’s what he is! We gotta run him outta here.”
“No, Joe. The only way we’re gonna get shed of that boy is to kill him. We oughta go strang him up on the nearest tree. We don’t want no devil round here!”
Many residents of the Carr’s Fork area suggested that something ought to be done about Tom Smith. None of the threats were ever carried out, however.
One summer morning, Mary Polly told Tom, “I need some salt, flour, and corn meal. Tell Mr. Amburgy I don’t have no money today, but I’ll pay him next month. He knows I’m good for it.”
“Okay ma. I’m on my way.”
Tom was halfway to the country store and post office on Carr’s Fork, a distance of a couple miles, when he met two boys of about his age, John Napier and Cletus Couch. “Howdy,” Tom said.
“Cletus, did you hear that? The crazy boy can talk.”
“Yeah, John, I thought maybe Tom had bit off his tongue during one of his fits. He shore does everything else when having a fit. Tom rolls over, shakes, screams, and hollers. Why don’t you show us one of your fits, crazy boy?”
Embarrassed and angry, Tom turned red in the face. “Cletus Couch, I’ll show you something all right, and hit won’t be no fit. Hit’ll be a fist!”
Without further warning, Tom hit Couch on the chin and knocked him down. Napier swung at Tom and missed. Tom smashed his fist into Napier’s stomach, doubling him over. Tom pulled Napier up and slammed his head into Couch’s. He then proceeded toward the store.
While Tom’s fits did not win any popularity in the tiny community, size and athleticism protected him. Many of the other young people in Carr’s Fork made fun, teased, and called the boy names behind his back, but few dared to do it to his face or take him on physically. Those who did attempt to tangle, like John Napier and Cletus Couch, regretted it.
Tom’s mother eventually learned how to help her son when his fits came on. She held his head, making sure he didn’t swallow his tongue. Then she sang some of his favorite hymns, which always had a calming effect. Soon the fits became less of a hazard. However, they had already made the boy an outcast and a loner.
Like many other mountain children, Tom did not attend school. However, an educated man in the community, called “Professor” Billy Thomas, took an interest in Tom and taught him to read, write, and solve some basic arithmetic problems.
One day Professor Thomas decided to go beyond the basics. He asked Tom, “Do you know who the king of the United States is?”
Tom stood up and said, “There hain’t no sechie thing as a king in the United States. We have presidents.”
Professor Thomas at first looked pleased by Tom’s answer, but then frowned. “That’s right Tom, but I thought I learned you better Anglish than that. Don’t you know there hain’t no sechie word as sechie?”
Young Tom’s social unacceptability in the community led to long periods of solitude. However, the writing continued. In his early teens, he spent hours by himself, using a pencil and tablet to write ballads.
Tom did appreciate the communal nature of church services, however. He always had a nice voice, and joining in the congregational singing was his favorite part. The melody and the way the words flowed together made him feel better. His mother never had to force him to go to the occasional church service on Sunday. He looked forward to it..
At church, Tom was exposed to the Ten Commandments. However, they did not make much of an impression. After he began suffering the fits and became a social outcast, Tom started stealing anything not nailed down. He started by taking the pocket knives of his companions. Tom stole watermelons, roasting ears, fruit, and other produce from neighborhood gardens. He once stole a trout line and all the attached hooks from the North Fork of the Kentucky River. For the next few years of his life, Tom learned the arts of stealing and burglary through on-the-job training.
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