Appalachian History

Citizen (Berea, Ky.)
Thursday, July 7, 1910.

"Keep Busy"

It is not money that is the root of all evil. It is idleness. Idleness leads to poverty, Idleness invites disease. Idleness breeds crime.

Everywhere people are to be found who seem to put but little value upon time. They may know the full worth of a dollar, but they do not seem to have learned that a column of hours may be added and the result be dollars. Idleness and the pupil drops out of the class. Industry and he is at the head.

Idleness and there are filth and flies in the house, and the weeds hide the view from the window and door. Industry and the home, though it be a cabin, is a place of beauty and roses.

Idleness and the fence row encroaches upon the field, sprouts take the pasture, and the farmer complains that the soil is exhausted and he can’t make a living. Industry and the fence rows are clean, the sprouts give way to clover, and the farmer’s barns—and his pockets—are full.

Idleness and the mind feeds upon thoughts of disease, and the disease follows. Industry and the thoughts go in other channels, activity proves a tonic, and vigorous health results.

Idleness and the weeds grow. They only need to be let alone. Evil and crime are like weeds, and industry proves a good resistant. Is it not so? Look about and see.

Yes, that is the reason Bud Adler is out of school and no job in sight, while Willie Brown has his diploma and a good position awaiting. And you stopped at the Adler home the other day. There were the weeds up to the porch railing, the farm all run down and the barns empty. And there were filth and flies—no screens. Farmer Adler had no time, and Mrs. Adler had no time. But you found the farmer sitting on the porch whittling and his wife beside him with folded hands.

And what about Mrs. Burchett? She has been having spells of some kind for nearly a year. And the neighbors report her very sick, but the Doctor is your brother-in-law and he tells you there is really nothing the matter with her. It is all in her imagination. The fact is, the Doctor told you that nearly half of our ailments are imaginary to begin with. Didn’t he say “three fourths.” You remember how the Doctor laughed when he told you what he gave Mrs. Burchett on his last visit. A bread pill. He said she didn’t need a thing except to get interested in something, but, if he had told here that, she would have sent for the other Doctor. So he did not tell her.

And the Doctor, your brother-in-law, at the same time called your attention to Mrs. Newgate—a little mite of a woman that had never been strong—and said that she would have been dead long ago if death had ever found her idle long enough to get her scared about herself. But it couldn’t. When she got the house in order she went to the yard or garden, and no weeds could grow there for the flowers. And how happy she was, and how happy her family!

And you don’t have to go out of your own neighborhood to see that idleness leads to crime. Look at the Feltin boys. They didn’t have to work and their parents didn’t see the necessity of keeping them busy; so they drifted and the weeds grew, and two of them are in the “pen” and one in the house of reform. Busy now! Get busy and get wealth. Keep busy and keep health.

There was virtually no work to be had for Papa in Berea, KY, so he had to remain behind in Lee County as long as his job lasted. But at no time, then or later, did he fail to provide for his family, as best he could. Mama, especially, bore a heavy burden, trying to provide shelter and sustenance for her children, while coping with an increasingly serious problem with her left kidney.

When we first moved to Berea, the best affordable housing Mama could find was a flat above a shop a stone's throw or so away from the public school. Life was hard for Mama there, but convenient for us children.

For the first time, Ralph had excellent teachers. Donnie quickly made a lot of friends, and developed here his ability for "horse trading." On one of his trades, he came into possession of a decrepit Barlow knife, and thru a series of trades, wound up with a dismantled bicycle, which he put together, and learned to ride. In all his trades, he somehow managed to make his partner believe that he was getting the better of the deal, and left him feeling happy.

Ruth's inclination toward scholastic achievement took form here. My own proclivity toward prowess in spelling reached fulfillment with one of my teachers. She had weekly spelling bees, and I quickly climbed to the top of the line, and held onto it for so long that she had to make a ruling that after two or three times, the head person got demoted to the foot of the class, and had to start over.

The extended Hopkins families in Kentucky. Not dated.

It usually didn't take me more than one session to work back up to the head of the line. One time the boy next to me tried to bribe me to misspell a word so he could be top boy, but I somehow just couldn't make myself do it. That love for spelling went back to my second grade teacher, who singled me out and gave me such a superb start.

Two of the huskier boys in the school used to get on one of the playground swings, facing each other, and pump up momentum until, with one super surge, they would go up and over the top bar. They tried to get me to do it also, but I didn't figure I had the weight - or the guts - to do it, so I declined. They later became daredevil riders on the bobsled and motorcycle riding in a dome.

I only completed the seventh grade there, and my teacher persuaded me to take the county exams for graduation that were held in Richmond. I passed them, and so went to the [Berea College run] Academy the next year.

Around the time I entered the Academy, the family moved to a ramshackle house on the east side of town. It belonged to a friend Mama made in the church, and she made it affordable for us. It was two story, with outside plumbing, and we had to get our water from the pump of a house two doors north.

But it had a nice woodshed, and a fenced lot where we could raise chickens. The owner had a son my same age, and we became the fastest of friends. While we lived in that house, Papa lost his job, because the oil field in Lee County was playing out.

Uncle Charlie, Aunt Emma and Grandma had left for a new oilfield in Wyoming, so Papa came home long enough to size up his chances in Berea, and finding nothing there, tried to persuade Mama to move with him to Wyoming. But Mama could not have endured another move of that magnitude even if she had wanted to. And she didn't want to; she had assured her children the opportunity for a good education, and adequate medical care for herself. So Papa went off to Wyoming alone.

Meanwhile, Mama had obtained a part-time job as housekeeper for the Churchill family, who had moved to Berea from British India, and established a weaving establishment, The Churchill Weavers, using the high-speed hand looms that he designed and patented.

Not too long afterward, Mama's kidney problem got so bad she had to go to the hospital and have it removed. The doctor said he almost had to cut her in two to do the job, and there was an anxious week or two when we didn't know whether Mama would survive. All the time her only concern was, "what will become of my children?" But she survived, and so did we.


Charles Howard Hopkins
(1907-1999)
http://home.comcast.net/~adhopkins/dadhist.htm



Berea+KY spelling+bees Churchill+Weavers appalachia appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

In winter one must draw the little hickory split chair close to the hearth, for most of the heat from the great glowing fire goes up the chimney. The house may have a small window-sash immovably built in. Often there is none. The woman cooks breakfast before sun-up, and supper after dark, by the smoky light of a tiny kerosene lamp with no chimney. It is difficult to carry lamp chimneys long distances in saddle-bags.

There are many homes where even the moderate luxury of kerosene is not found. A sliver of pine knot gives an even more smoky light, and occasionally a “ladle” is used. It is preferably made by a blacksmith, an iron saucer with a handle to hang it by. Narrow strips of cotton cloth, twisted or plaited together, are laid in the ladle in grease. The end of the rag is hung over the edge and ignited. Its illumination is not measured in candle power.

The Land of Saddle-bags
by James Watt Raine

The Land of Saddle-bags is one of the three most important books from the early twentieth century that, according to Dwight Billings (a contributor to the 1997 reprint), have "had a profound and lasting impact on how we think about Appalachia and, indeed, on the fact that we commonly believe that such a place and people can be readily identified". Originally published in 1924, it was advertised as a "racy book, full of the thrill of mountain adventure and the delicious humor of vigorously human people."

James Watt Raine provides eyewitness accounts of mountain speech and folksinging, education, religion, community, politics, and farming. In a conscious effort to dispel the negative stereotype of the drunken, slothful, gun-toting hillbilly prone to violence, Raine presents positive examples from his own experiences among the region's native inhabitants.

In 1906 Raine became an English instructor at Berea College in Kentucky, where one of the courses he taught was on English and Scottish ballads. He eventually submitted several course proposals - all apparently denied by the college - that would have allowed him to grant credit upon a student’s successfully collecting a certain number of ballads from the student's home territory. However, Raine persisted in his ballad collecting activities.

Raine - an actor, playwright, and author – ultimately headed Berea’s English and drama departments. He was much in demand as lecturer for cultural entertainment programs on through to his retirement in 1939. He died on February 12, 1949, age 88, in Berea, Kentucky.


source: www.berea.edu/hutchinslibrary/specialcollections/saa06.asp
The Land of Saddle-bags, by James Watt Raine, 1997, University Press of Kentucky


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Berea+College Berea+KY James+Watt+Raine The+Land+of+Saddle-bags