My grandmother had three brothers, Uncle Roland, Uncle Tom and Uncle Wiley. Uncle Tom has been to our house, and I went to his funeral. My grandmother was afraid of Roland. He'd come there on a visit and she'd be glad when he left. He had some trouble once with a United States Senator. They both ran a butcher shop there in town. This fellow got mad at this senator and hired on to Uncle Roland. The senator came over there one day, he was a big bully too, and he jumped on him about hiring his man away from him. Uncle Roland said he didn't hire him away, he quit and he come over here and I hired him. He began to cuss him and Uncle Roland began to cuss him back. He went to backin' out of Uncle Roland’s store, just a backin' back. He told him, don't back, I wouldn't shoot ya in the back. So he grabbed his gun and they went to shootin' at one another. They emptied their pistols this fella walked across the street and fell dead. Uncle Roland had a bullet hole through his hat, just missed his head. This fella had a pistol that was a caliber larger than Uncle Roland’s and his bullet had gone into Uncle Roland’s pistol barrel and had it jammed. He had to get that bullet out of his pistol, it was stuck right square in the barrel.

Once this town in east Tennessee hired him for town Marshall, and there was a bunch of mountaineers that'd come in there and just take the town over on Saturday evenin' just shoot all up and down the street and run everybody in. Uncle Roland told 'em that if they'd stand behind him, he'd take the job. Well, the mountaineers would shoot up all of there ammunition and they'd go into the hardware store and take more ammunition. He told 'em, he said now what I want you to do, see the hardware merchants, they was two hardware stores there, and when they come in town before they start their rally lock up the stores and just go away, but hide all the ammunition somewhere where they can't find it, and I'll take care of 'em. So they come in, two surrey loads of 'em so they all come in and they got to shootin' and to rallyin' and made a dive for the hardware store and it was locked. They broke the door down and went in. Uncle Roland know'd they wouldn't find no ammunition, so he walked in on 'em and started a shooting. He killed three of 'em but the smoke from the old black powder they used in the bullets got so thick that the rest of them escaped and left town. Uncle Roland come to stay with us afterwards ‘till the ruckus died down. He told the them to write him when it was safe to go back. He stayed with us fer a while, but would never say why. We figgered he was in some trouble of some kind, but was too afraid of him to ask. One day a man brought a letter to the house fer Uncle Roland, and after he read it, he stuck it in his coat pocket. I figured it was about the trouble he was in, so one day I took the letter out while he was sleepin’, and read it. That was how we found out about the ruckus that went on in that town. Uncle Roland left soon after, and we was glad he was gone.