Appalachian History

The snow’s been collecting on the garden and the blooming season seems very far away. Of course the seed catalogs have started trickling in already (January is ‘seed month’ in the industry) and by Valentine’s Day gardeners have piles of choices.

Appalachian gardeners during the 1930s could count on catalogues from Stark Brothers Nurseries, Thompson & Morgan, and the grandfather of seed catalogs, Burpee’s.

“W. Atlee Burpee, who founded the Burpee firm, was a cousin of the California plant wizard Luther Burbank. In Burbank's lifetime the Burpees bought seed from the little firm Burbank maintained to help finance his experiments. W. Atlee Burpee began his business in 1878. It gained prestige by introducing the sweet pea from England and more prestige by developing new varieties which were shipped back to England.

“The present Burpee, David, a man of medium height and thinning hair, became president of the company in 1915 after the death of his father. Born in Philadelphia in 1893, he attended Cornell's agricultural college, from which he was called home by his father's illness. During the War he set up sample gardens, encouraged people to grow their own food. The War stopped shipments of bulbs, so he grew fine Dutch bulbs in the U. S. Carefully and in person he oversees the operation of the Burpee farms, Fordhook Farms (named for the ancestral Burpee estate in England) at Doylestown, Pa., and Floradale Farm in Santa Barbara County, Calif.

“In person, too, he follows many of the 20,000 experiments made yearly by the Burpee organization. He advocates Federal patents for the protection of flower experimenters. He lives at Fordhook Farms while his younger brother, Washington Atlee Burpee Jr., treasurer of the company, lives on fashionable Delancey Street in Philadelphia.”

Time magazine, Sep. 21, 1931

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The term "Hill-Billies" is first encountered in documents from 17th century Ireland, according to Wikipedia. Roman Catholic King James II landed at Kinsale in Ireland in 1689 and began to raise a Catholic army in an attempt to regain the British throne. Protestant King William III, Prince of Orange, led an English counter force into Ireland and defeated James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. A significant portion of William III's army was composed of Protestants of Scottish descent (Planters) who had settled in Ulster in northern Ireland.

The southern Irish Catholic supporters of James II referred to these northern Protestant supporters of King William as "Hill-Billies.” and "Billy Boys"--Billy being an abbreviation of William; the term "Billy Boy" is still used today, mainly in Northern Ireland. The Catholics and Protestants were at war and the terms were not spoken in kindness. Supporters of King William more generally came to be known as Orangemen.


The first US published reference to the word ‘hillbilly’ appeared in 1800 in the New York Journal. The paper described the species as "a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him."

The image stuck. "In subsequent centuries, even after the mountains came to be cherished for their awe-inspiring beauty and appreciated as places of inspiration and recreation, mountain dwellers themselves never fared as well as the scenery," states the "Encyclopedia of Appalachia," published last spring by the University of Tennesse Press.

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While independent food stores were still common during the Depression era, the chain store boom of the 1920s had already changed the face of retail forever. The Great Atlantic & Pacific (A&P) food store chain led the pack. In 1936 it opened the first “supermarket,” a 28,125 sq ft store in Braddock, PA. By the end of the decade it was operating 15,737 stores nationwide with sales over $1 billion. In 1937, A&P introduced Woman's Day magazine through a wholly-owned subsidiary, The Stores Publishing Company. The magazine featured articles on food preparation, home decoration, needlework and childcare, and sold for 2 cents a copy.

Chain stores in the early 1930s often sold no meats or produce (or perhaps a very small assortment in larger stores) and given a clientele which largely came by foot or by streetcar, they operated generally out of small leased stores in commercial strips. Capital investment was low, and it was easy to relocate or close underperforming stores. Thus, there was often great turnover in store locations, and it was also common for branches to locate within a few blocks of another branch if volume dictated it.

In Appalachia, Cas Walker personified the trend. Born in 1902 in Sevier County, Tennessee, Caswell Orton Walker started out in the Kentucky coal mines. During his twenties he saved up $850 that he used to buy a grocery store in Knoxville, Tennessee, which he built into a multi-million dollar chain. Walker was a working man’s populist. Knoxville grocery store magnate, newspaper publisher, city councilman, briefly mayor, avid raccoon hunter, and host of his own television variety hour, he gave Dolly Parton her first break into the music industry.

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“Hog killing was a value for rendering out your lard and make your cracklings and we use the scraps to make soap out of. The way we made lye was everybody had an ash hopper. It’s a big square box and you put all your ashes in it that you take out of the fireplace.

“You put it where you tilt it just so water runs in and drips out at one side and it makes lye. We use lye to render the husks from hominy and also to make lye with. And when the men folks decide to tan a hide, to make leather, the lye was used to remove the hair and everything off of it.

“Lye was a very important thing. You’d use tallow to waterproof stuff with. You’d do your washing on a washboard with lye soap. I can remember Octagon soap and powered soaps…they were the first ones I could remember.”

Hazel Farmer
Union County, GA Interviewed by Martha Clement June 2005 http://www.rootsweb.com/~gaunion/farmer.htm

"Grandma's Lye Soap"
John Standley and Art Thorson, 1952

Do you remember grandma's lye soap
Good for everything in the home
And the secret was in the scrubbing
It wouldn't suds and couldn't foam

Then let us all sing right out of grandma's
Of grandma's lye soap
Used for, for everything
Everything on the place
For pots and kettles
The dirty dishes
And for your hands and for your face

Shall we now sing the second verse
Let's get it with great exuberance, let's live it up
It's not raining inside tonight
Everyone, let's have a happy time
Are we ready
All together, the second verse

Little Herman and brother Thurman
Had an aversion to washing their ears
Grandma scrubbed them with the lye soap
And they haven't heard a word in years

Then let us all sing right out of grandma's
Of grandma's lye soap
Sing all out, all over the place
The pots and kettles, the dirty dishes
And also hands and also f.....
(clapping fades)

Well, let's sing what's left of the last verse
Let's have a happy time, everyone
The last verse, al-l-l-l together
Ev-v-v-very one

Mm-m-m-m, thank you kindly, kindly
M-m-mrs, O'Malley, out in the valley
Suffered from ulcers, I understand
She swallowed a cake of grandma's lye soap
Has the cleanest ulcers in the land

Then let us all sing right out of grandma's
Of grandma's lye soap
Sing right out, all over the place
The pots and, the pots and pans, oh dirty dishes
And the hands.

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"The Mountain dulcimer, also known as the Appalachian dulcimer, lap dulcimer, or fretted dulcimer, is basically a fretted zither which was derived from the German shieltholt.

"The word dulcimer is believed to have originated centuries ago. It was derived, it is thought, from the greek word "dulce" (which means sweet) and the Latin word "melos" (which means song). The Appalachian Dulcimer is not to be confused with its biblical counterpart, the hammered dulcimer; rather in its current incarnation, it is believed to have evolved from a northern European instrument, the German scheitholt which like the Appalachian Dulcimer is played with a bow and plucked or strummed as well.

"The instrument is found in many European cultures in various forms. In each of these countries the instrument took on local characteristics. It is believed that the scheitholt made it to Appalachia toward the end of the 18th century, and once again evolved and was modified to suit the needs of the local players.

"It is commonly thought that the Appalachian dulcimer was widely used throughout the mountains and hollows of the Appalachian area. The experts believe that in its heyday and prior to its recent reintroduction to folk music, there were perhaps as few as 1,000 dulcimers throughout the whole region. There are as many shapes and styles of dulcimers as there are players and mountain craftsmen. Except for adhering to a few basic conventions, the builder was free to explore options and possibilities in the creation of the dulcimer."

Anthony J Huvard, luthier

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“Physicians simply cannot make a living in these sections because the livelihood of the individual home maker is so meager and the dispersion of population so great and the ability to go from one home to another so runabout and tedious of accomplishment that a livelihood from the practice of medicine here is a physical impossibility.

“Families living on improved roads, of which West Virginia has many of the finest, do not have as a rule such difficultires in regard to inaccessibility. In other sections the inaccesability is one of major importance only in the wintertime. An unfortunate socio-economic status is pretty generally observed.


"Just as the unit cost of highway construction in these mountainous sections is excessive, so is the unit cost of providing even minimal health protection and medical services to the people in these sections. To them at the moment, preventive health work is entirely, and essential medical service almost entirely, not available.

"It is easy to visualize the immensity of the maternal welfare problem among these people when one realizes that in five counties in 1932, with a total of approximately 2,500 live births reported, only one half were attended at delivery by a physician.”

George M Lyon
Huntington WV doctor
testimony before Congress in 1933
on behalf of a proposed maternal
welfare amendment to the
Economic Security Act.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/s35lyon.pdf

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"I like to garden and travel . . . I'm an outdoors person,” says Lura Stanley. “And so I don't quilt in the summertime. Winter, when you have to stay in, when the roads are bad and the weather's bad. That's when I do my quilting . . . I sometimes quilt all day long . . . But it gets you in between your shoulders, and I have arthritis."

Mamie Bryan quilted during the winter months, setting up her frame in the living room near the fire. Quilting provided a pleasant way to keep busy and productive while her husband was working in West Virginia or out foxhunting at night.

Zenna Todd usually starts quilting during the winter, after Christmas. She sets up her frame in the bedroom and leaves it up until she has quilted four or five tops. It usually takes her about a week to quilt one quilt. "When I get started, I just go at it . . . I'd put maybe eight, nine hours on it. You can do a right much in that length of time."

During the summer Ila Patton had a lot of gardening and canning to do, so she generally quilted in the wintertime. She recalled that because the house was heated by the fireplace or a wood heater, there were three or four quilts on each bed to keep her family warm at night.

Maggie Shockley did her quilting in the winter months, when she had fewer farm responsibilities. She made quilts while her children were small. She typically put her quilt in the frame at five o'clock in the morning, when her husband left for work, and finished it by the time he got home in the evening. When the three boys were in school, she sometimes quilted "about all day long."

Donna Choate recalled that she generally quilted during the wintertime, after Christmas. After making several quilts in one winter, she developed bursitis in her arm, which made quilting painful. Her house [at the time of this interview] was warmer than in the past, so she and her husband did not need as many quilts at night. She had given many quilts to her daughter and grandchildren, keeping "just enough to cover the beds if I have company."

Blue Ridge (VA) quilters
Interviewed by Laurel Horton, July, 1999
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/qlthtml/qltmb.htm

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"In winter I sometimes went out early and walked the fields of our farm alone. I liked to go on mornings of fresh snowfall, when all the meadows were trackless and hushed with white. I would walk up through Captain Jim's old orchard and when I got near the moss-gray trees along the rail fence, I would begin to see the little animal tracks and would follow them up and down along the edge of the woods.

"There were the triangular prints of the rabbits, or the little field mice tracks like delicate lace woven across the snow. Sometimes there might be fox tracks, on track in front of the other in a straight line. After a warm night, there might be skunk tracks, like little human footprints but with a soft white dab where the tail had brushed the snow; and up in the bushes the bird tracks made dark little stitches mending the hill. There were also the round cat tracks, no claws showing, retracted feline tread; and one morning I saw blood on the snow.

"Sometimes I could feel the others close around me, down in their little burrows in the earth: the gray, sleeping wood mice; the little striped ground squirrels; and the soft curled-up rabbits, the snoring old groundhogs, and the ring-tailed raccoons. Then the silence would come down, as though it fell on our meadows from the high whiteness of Pinnacle Rock."

Louise McNeill, (1911-1993)
West Virginia Poet Laureate
The Milkweed Ladies
(1988, University of Pittsburgh Press)
(pp 63-64)

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"Tweetsie is a nickname for a passenger train on the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad. The width of track is 3 feet, therefore is called a narrow gauge road, this road terminates at Boone, North Carolina a distance of 65 miles from Johnson City, Tennessee.

"At the given signal, we leave Johnson City, with five coaches and one observation car. The first five miles seem almost effortless. Then we come to the Watauga River. Watauga, in the Cherokee Indian language, means “beautiful” and beautiful it is. Away from its banks covered with cedars, hemlocks, and laurels stretches a fertile valley called the Watauga Valley. It was in this valley that our forefathers established the first free and independent government west of the Alleghenies.

"On our right stands the marker of the old Watauga fort, while on our left we find Sycamore Shoals. It was here that our progenitors assembled before marching up the Doe River, crossing the Roan Mountain and defeating the defiant British general, Ferguson, at King’s Mountain. This battle, known as the turning point of the Revolutionary War in the south, gained for us a great portion of the freedom that we have so long enjoyed. In this valley today is found the purest strain of Anglo-Saxon blood in America."

Walter R. Allison
Engineer on the E.T. & W.N.C.
Railroad for over 34 years

transcribed from the
K.E. Wilhoit Collection
Archives of Appalachia
East Tennessee State University

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West Virginia's largest and most beautiful caverns, Seneca Caverns, are located in the Appalachian Mountain range. Huge chambers provide majestic views for visitors and photographers, and great hiding places for bootleggers, horse thieves and murderers.

“In Prohibition, people used to make moonshine in caves all the time,” says Katie Maloney, a guide for the Mountain Institute, a Washington DC based group whose programs seek to advance mountain cultures. “There was a bootlegger, a man named Warren. When the police came after him, he escaped into the caves, because he knew them so well. His still was on [this] property.”

She was talking about Gandy Creek near Elkins, WV, but could just have easily been discussing any of hundreds of caves in the region. "There's an area in this cave we're going to called Robber's Roost, because bank robbers would hide there." Those West Virginia outlaws had plenty of company nationally: caves by that name can be found in OH, UT, CO, OR, TX, & OK.

It’s no surprise that as the automobile became widely available and rural electrification lit up America’s backroads, formerly secure hideaways suddenly became public attractions. Seneca Caverns started offering tours in 1930. Others followed: Mammoth Cave National Park opened in 1941, for example. Well lit, heavily visited caves certainly were not conducive to hiding.

Moonshiners caught a break late in 1933. Franklin Roosevelt had defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential race. Roosevelt supported the repeal of Prohibition, and this time a thirsty electorate agreed. On December 5, 1933, the repeal of the 18th Amendment became official.

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King Coal built the company town in West Virginia. Miners worked at the company mine, shopped at the company store and lived in company houses. One of the earliest coal camps on Coal River was established at Montcoal, shown on early maps as "Hecla." Carmel Burnside, who was born there in 1913, said the towns were peaceful and well-kept -- like having strict parents and never leaving the house. "They had a remedy for (violence)," he said. "If you didn't do it right, then they'd run you off."

In the 1930s the Colcord Coal Company operated mines at Montcoal. John L. Lewis came to Montcoal during those years to organize the union, and had to stand, as Mae Bongalis remembers it, on the railroad tracks, because Colcord would not allow him on the property. Bongalis, who grew up in a coal camp on Montcoal Mountain, told of working in the mines as a young girl, and of riding the incline down the mountain and back in order to do business in the valley. The form of the company town was ubiquitous throughout the coalfields, and expressed the social vision of the men who were reshaping the region's economy.


The companies provided housing for miners and their families, docking the rent from their paychecks. Food and other necessities were sold at the company store, often in exchange for ""scrip,"" a form of compensation to miners redeemable only at the company store, which many recall charged higher prices than other local retailers. Many companies also built churches, parks, ball fields, and movie theaters.

The towns were usually segregated by race and ethnicity, with the more luxurious homes of superintendents and doctors placed above the town. In Montcoal, the superintendent and doctor lived across the river on ""Cigar Hill.”

http://tinyurl.com/yl25j4

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In [nurse] training we were all just a bunch of poor girls, most of us lived out in the country. Five of 'em had come [to work at Blue Ridge Sanatorium] because they had TB and couldn't get in anywhere else, and they found out that they could get in at Blue Ridge. So we were just settling in and three of the girls couldn't get their suitcases unlocked. I'd always been a tomboy and I'd always carried a knife, well sometimes. But, I had a scout knife, and I jimmied all those suitcases. So, that's where I got the nickname "Tom." I've been Tom ever since.

That day Dr. Apperson examined me, he examined all of us that afternoon. Dr. Apperson found out my name. He said 'Well, my wife was a Cosby and maybe you all have some kin.' I thought, my Lord, I been made fun of, the Cosby name all my life, now somebody's tried to be kin with me. Then I met Miss Zwicker down the hall, and she put her arm around me and said 'I see that you've been a patient at Catawba.' I told her 'Yes, I was there but they never found any TB.'

And she said, 'Well, I'm glad you came here instead of going to Catawba.' I thought I must have died and gone to heaven; somebody's trying to make kin with me, and somebody else is glad I got here. So I, in forty-two years I never had any reason to change my mind about Blue Ridge. I was always treated good."

Edna "Tom" Cosby worked for over forty years as a nurse at the Blue Ridge (VA) Sanatorium starting September 6th, 1940.

http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/blueridgesanatorium/oral.htm

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Hemlock, WV was once a booming town that boasted two school houses, a post office and a general store. Today, only a few homes and the Mt. Olive United Methodist Church remain.

According to Hemlock area resident Stacy Hinkle, the rough winter weather may have been why many Hemlock natives moved away. “It was pretty rough going with the snow and the higher elevation,” she said, noting that some moved far away and others went just over the mountain to Tallmansville.



“We didn’t have electricity at first,” says neighbor Lillian Wilke, who grew up in nearby Queens. “But even when we did get it the snow would be so heavy in the winter we would be without electricity for weeks.”

Wilke said a few lucky people had radios to entertain themselves through the long winter months. As a child, she remembers how every fall her grandfather would go and buy a keg full of salt fish that the family could eat throughout the winter. Salt fish consisted of cleaned fish soaked in a salt brine and stored in wooden barrels.

Despite the uncertainty of electricity and the rough winter weather, Hemlock area residents were no strangers to socialization.

Wilke remembers when the town would hold Box Socials in which girls would decorate a box and fill it with candies and cookies; whoever bought the box got to eat the goodies with the girl.

http://theintermountain.com/communities/hemlock.asp

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“We were brought up the Christian way: to love everyone and to do no harm to anyone. My parents participated in all aspects of community life. My mother served as the town’s midwife, ushering all the neighbors’ children into the world. The Hogans, who lived next door, had three sons. Two of their sons, Wesley and Bruce, each fathered 16 children, and my mother delivered them all. She never lost any babies! I helped with some of her last deliveries, so from an early age I experienced the miracle of birth.

“I also learned about death because my father worked as the town’s mortician, arranging for people’s earthly departures and preparing them for the next life. When someone died, the family would call my father and he would hurry over to bathe the deceased person and cover the body with a sheet. He’d put quarters over the dead person’s eyes.

“When I was nine, I went along to help him. My father left the room for a few minutes, and while I was waiting for him, the quarters fell off the person’s face and the sheet moved. I ran through the house screaming, ‘Daddy, that man isn’t dead,’ and headed for home. When he caught up to me, he explained that the body moved because the dead person’s muscles were relaxing. The person really was dead.

“Another time, the dead person sat straight up in his casket twice during his funeral service. Again, my father explained that the man’s muscles were just relaxing, but this incident really scared me. I was only nine or ten years old. I began to wonder if people could be buried alive.”

Libby J. Atwater and Willa B. DeLay
http://www.chooseyourwords.net/writing.htm

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On January 10, 1928 Minnie Buckingham Harper (R-McDowell) was appointed to succeed her late husband in the West Virginia House of Delegates, becoming the first African-American woman to serve in a legislative body in the United States. Harper was appointed by Governor Howard Gore to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband, E. Howard Harper.


Prior to her husband’s passing, Minnie Harper had been a housewife. She did not run in the state legislative elections held later that year.

During the early part of the 20th century the southern half of the WV, and McDowell County in particular, attracted a relatively large number of African Americans from surrounding states who were looking for work in the coal mines. Although the work was hazardous and hard, the pay was relatively good, especially given the limited career alternatives available to African-American men. By 1920, the state's African-American population had increased to almost 86,000. McDowell County became known as a place where African-Americans could achieve considerable social mobility in an otherwise segregated society.

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One man, Louie Wohinc, dominated central WV’s glass industry in the 1920s and 1930s. At their height, his factories produced 144,000 pieces of glass every 24 hours - all by hand!

The advantages of locally available raw material, inexpensive heating fuels, and readily available labor first attracted the glass industry to central West Virginia in the late 1800’s. The industry had become a cornerstone of business & employment in Weston WV by the late 1920s.

Louie Wohinc was born in 1880 in Lunlana, Austria. When he was 9 years old he began working in a glass factory in Sagor, Austria. Louie came to Rochester, Pennsylvania to join an uncle in the glasshouse there in 1905. He stayed briefly at various glass houses including one in Tiffin, Ohio then Huntington, WV then Shadyside, then Bastow Manufacturing Company, in Weston, WV and finally around 1910 Louie worked at Belgrade Glass Company in Buckhannon, WV where he stayed for the next ten years. Louie spoke no English and had very little money when he came to America, but by the time he got to Ohio he knew that one day he wanted to have his own factory.

After World War I, Louie returned to Weston but was almost penniless. Soon however, he had a job again at Bastow Manufacturing. In Weston he became a champion glassblower of America. His reputation was that he blew more stemware in a single shift than any other man has ever blown. This record supposedly still stands today! Before Louie had been back with Bastow very long, the firm was operating at a loss. In spite of the excellent quality of glassware produced, sales decreased. The directors offered the management of the company to Louie because he had demonstrated his ability to blow glass and had abundant experience with other glass blowers. But up to now he had no sales experience, the one line of training with extreme importance to the success of the factory. Louie was fearless and had limitless energy.

Although Louie became very good at sales, he could not control the policies of the Bastow company and after 6 years he decided to establish his own factory, the Louie Glass Company, in 1926. With his sales experience orders came from every section of the country. With Louie gone, the Bastow Company was seeing their business decline so they asked Louie to take charge again and he did. This gave him products of two large factories to sell. Louie Glass was in great demand. In fact, he was forced to build a third factory and in 1930 he organized the new West Virginia Glass Company, which was located in Weston as well. Mr. Wohinc by this time employed thousands of employees.

Louie Wohinc operated these plants until his death in 1950 as a result of an unfortunate bar fight accident.

http://tinyurl.com/y3gocc

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Listen to Kelly Harrell play "I Wish I Was a Single Girl Again"



When I was a single girl, I went dressed very fine,
Now I am married and have a drunken man to mind.
Oh, I wish I were a single girl again.

When I was a single girl I done as I pleased;
Now I am a married girl with a drunken man to please.
Oh, I wish I were a single girl again.

He goes down to town and stays all day
Drinking and gambling and wasting time away.
Oh, I wish I were a single girl again.

And when he comes home it's a curse and damn,
Wishing I were dead and he had another dram.
Oh, I wish I were a single girl again.

Spring to go to, and cows to milk and feed,
And the four little children a-crying after me.
Oh, I wish I were a single girl again.


Collected by Harvey H. Fuson
"Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands"
London, 1931, p 118


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+culture

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I know an old couple that lived near Hell
If they're not dead, they're living there still
The Devil, he came to the man at the plough
I've come for one of your family now

Whack full day ful lickety fall the dall day

Which of my family do you like best
Your scolding old wife, it's she I like best
Take her away with all of my heart
I hope the two of you never need part

The Devil, he hoisted her up on his back
No peddler was ever so proud of his pack
He's carried along till he came to Hell's wall
She's out with her boot and she's flattened it all

Some Devils came down to put her in a sack
She's out with her boot and she's broken their backs
The Devils cried out from up on the wall
Take her home daddy, she'll murder us all

He carried her home in a tenth of the time
Take her back farmer, I'm changing my mind
What will you give me for taking her in
I offer no more than the wages of sin

If you want to be rid of this scolding old hen
You'll never bedevil my family again
The Devil did cry, the Devil did howl
But he never returned to the man at the plough

traditional Appalachian folksong


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+culture

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Is that so?" I inquired.

"Yes, I'm supplyin' at a country church on a Sunday," he replied modestly, as he continued his hair cutting. "I conducts the Sunday Schools, preaches at the mornin' service, holds the young peoples' meeting in the afternoon, and preaches again Sunday night. The Baptist Church in the country, where I was employed regular, was so bad in debt, it lost all its property. The mortgage on it was foreclosed, and it had to be shut down.

"No, ma'am, I don't make any money at preachin'. What I made when I was servin' four country churches wasn't enough to pay my gas and oil bill. Once this winter, I went to a little country church in an ice storm. The regular preacher never come. So I filled in for him. The congregation took up a collection for me, and paid me $10 to show their appreciation. But that was unusual. Another time, I held a big meeting on Lone Duck Creek, in the tobacco farmin' section. The people there are real clever," - a localism for kind hearted. "When I come to go home, I found they'd filled the back of my old sedan with garden stuff, groceries, and canned goods of all kinds.

"But for the most part, the churches where I preach are very poor. The farmers are hard up. They cain't afford to pay a preacher much. Before I came back here and opened this shop ten year ago, I used to go around in Tennessee and Virginia and hold big meetings. But it was inconvenient and expensive taking my family with me. I had 14 children. No ma'am, I never left them behind. I didn't want to be separated from them. I had a good offer just the other day to go 'round holdin' revivals in Virginia, but I turned it down. Seems like I don't want to leave home.

Enoch Ball
W Asheville, NC
Interviewed 1939
By Anne Winn Stevens
Federal Writer’s Project 1936-1940
http://tinyurl.com/ukw8a

appalachia appalchian+history appalachian+culture

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:41 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history

The winters were the worst. Nobody has any idea how bad things were. I had to be ready to get on the bus by five in the mornin’. It was bitter cold because there weren’t any heaters, so some of us would sit on our feet to keep ’em warm. Sometimes I’d take off my mittens and put ’em on my feet to help keep ’em warm in that way.

It took about an hour and a half to get to school, and we were nearly always late. The road from Raccoon Creek, up Bowen Creek, and all the way to Salt Rock was muddy and axle deep. Sometimes we’d get stuck on Green Valley Hill, so the boys, they’d get out and help shove the bus up the hill. One time Ancil Ramey— that was Ripgear’s boy— slipped and fell underneath it, but the bus was sittin’ still at the time, and he was lucky it didn’t roll back on him and maybe kill ’im.

On the way to Barboursville, we’d get off in Salt Rock at DeJarnett’s Store and wait for the driver to make another run. Then he’d come back and pick us up and take us on to school. We didn’t have any money to buy anything at the store either. And once we got to school, they’d let us go and clean the mud off our shoes. Nobody ever complained, though. We were just glad to have a way to go to school.

Margaret Adkins
Raccoon Creek, WV
http://tinyurl.com/srru4

appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+history

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:43 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history

"One Tuesday mornin' I went to work and dey wudn' no empty cars on de tracks to load de coal in. I walked up to where de cars wus, and when de engine started to pushin' down to where we wus er gonna load 'em I went to swing on one to ride down there and my foot slipped and I fell under de [car?]. De wheels run over me and cut off both my legs up above my knees. I wus in de hospital for seven months. When I got out dey sent me to de poor farm. My cousin, Ethel Brown, come 'air and got me and carried me back to West Virginia to live wid her.

"Naw, dey didn' pay me nothin' fer gittin' my legs cut off. Dey aint never give me one cent. Dey give me some artificial legs but I aint never been able to use 'em. You see when you git both yo' legs cut off above yo' knees you can't git about on no artificial legs and crutches. You see when I gits to standin' up on 'em legs and crutches I can throw my legs out in front of me but, wid my legs like 'at, how is I gonna git my crutches off the ground then and how is I gonna git my legs back under me again. You can't do it so you jes falls down. If I had jes one knee joint I could git about on 'em legs all right.

Archie George
Interviewed by William Jenkins
Atlanta, GA 1939
Federal Writer’s Project 1936-1940
http://tinyurl.com/y99dv5

Posted by Dave Tabler at 8:49 AM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: appalachia, appalachian culture, appalachian history