time. “I have the advantage of you. You can’t do it (tell the future or read the past).” The most frightening thing about Mayhayley Lancaster may have been her independence and fierce confidence. In her later years, she was known to be cantankerous if condescended to or offered advice. An oral history on file at the HCHS recounts her conflict with V.O. Smith, who was often called upon to assess veterinary needs. When Smith suggested her cattle were malnourished, Mayhayley “became indignant and responded, ‘You say I’m not feeding my stock well – G-damn your time, Lon George told you that.’” By Smith’s recorded account, “she continued her tirade about my incompetence as I hastily left.” Heard County cattleman Wayne “Red” Sanders, a young man at the time of Mayhayley’s death, remembers that the Lancaster sisters fed their cows corn fodder. “No nutritional value,” he explained. “Her cows were poor. Her dogs were poor. She and Sallie were poor. She wouldn’t throw out grass seed for the cows or fertilizer for the crops. Her corn was only up to here,” he added, holding his hand flat against his knee. “You couldn’t tell her anything … today the humane society would be after her, but she thought she was doing right.” Sanders, a tall and colorful local character who, even at 78, still conducts daily cross-country cattle trades, continued in animated delight, “She’d cuss you out if you tried to tell her anything – could be mean as hell. My daddy used to say she was the only person ever got anything over on him. She wouldn’t pay him for a mule – said, ‘That mule bit Sallie’s kneecap off!’ and she wasn’t going to give him a thing for it.” Sanders recalls Mayhayley as something of a foulmouthed real estate mogul. “She owned this tract of land – wasn’t nothing on it. Friend of mine wanted to buy it and she refused. She said it was the a**hole of Heard County and she wasn’t going to sell it to him. Now the Franklin City Hall is on that land.” Visitors to her dilapidated cabin 56 | www.newnancowetamag.com
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