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You may not have been responsible for your heritage, but you are responsible for your future. 2

What Is Appalachia?

By Herb Wilburn

What is Appalachian Literature?

The easy answer: literature written for, about, or by people from the Appalachian Mountain region of the Eastern United States. Materials must be chosen with care, for just as with any ethnic or regional genre, the potential pitfalls of stereotypes, racism, and ignorance are a constant danger.

The Appalachian Mountains run from northern Georgia through the Carolinas, the Virginias, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. The people settling Appalachia were predominately of English, Scotch-Irish, and German descent. The harsh topography with its lack of passable roads isolated some areas for generations. The result was a culture that harkened back decades for traditions and customs and led its people to be called "our contemporary ancestors"(1).

The resource-rich region suffered from exploitation by coal and timber barons. The purchase and subsequent absentee ownership of mineral rights in the region are one of this century's great social injustices. The country side has been used and abused by outsiders, its people left with little to show for it.

Appalachia's people have been alternately ignored and rescued by government, private, and public social institutions since the early part of this century. The coal miners, for instance, were fertile recruiting ground for the early union organizers. Later LBJ's War on Poverty swooped down on the area with all the conviction and conscience a bureaucrat can muster. For the most part, the people of Appalachia have suffered and acknowledged all this with quiet bemusement. The best Appalachian humor deals with outsiders and their attempts to save us.

1Attributed to Berea College President William Frost 3

Characteristics of Good Appalachian Literature

The easy answer: literature written for, about, or by people from the Appalachian Mountain region of the Eastern United States. Materials must be chosen with care, for just as with any ethnic or regional genre, the potential pitfalls of stereotypes, racism and ignorance are a constant danger.

To define Appalachian Literature one should use the same criteria as for other regional genres.

"Regional literature is ideally the primary means for regional self-expression and self- identity. In preserving a history of the collective experience of a people, regional literature should provide an understanding of the characteristics of the people and forces that shaped their lives and made the region's experience unique. Regional literature, in addition to allowing those from outside the region to share a region's experience, should give those native to the region a sense of how they became who they are today..."(2)

"In summary, regional literature: (1) is free of stereotyping, (2) deals in-depth with individuals, showing those individuals involved in universal conflicts or learning some universal truth, (3) deals with the land as it impinges on humans, and (4) provides a heightened sense of place."(2)

As with any regional or ethnic genre, one should be alert to negative uses of dialect to embarrass or ridicule, stereotype characters (both protagonists and antagonist), and outright misrepresentations of the region or people. 4

Who are Jack and Molly?

The sources of the old tales of Jack and Mustmag are the mountain people who were the bearers of the tales in an unbroken line of cultural transmission going back hundreds of years, were of the generation of great-grandparents to the present generation of school children. sit it is fair to say that the children in urban schools in Covington and the Greater Cincinnati area who are descended from Appalachian Mountain people "own" this cultural tradition. They are heirs to a folk tradition that is ancient.

In the past twenty years especially, African-American and Native American Appalachian people have vigorously brought forth their unique art, lore and stories. Scholars have shown that folk tales from all cultural traditions bear common motifs. One the most prominent of these motifs is the questing hero, usually a young girl like Molly or boy like Jack who is summoned to begin the great journey toward adulthood. En route the young person must overcome many obstacles, survive many dangers, meet many challenges and learn many lessons. Jack and Molly's qualities include intelligence, courage, cleverness, generosity, integrity, versatility, adaptability, a talent for "figuring things out," and an elemental connection to the natural world and its forces. Jack and Molly are universal archetypal figures. Every culture has its version of their essential story.

Jack and Mustmag as we know them in the Appalachian region are from the ancient Celtic tradition. These characters fit into two categories - - a trickster figure or a fairytale hero. They are in their brightest aspect as Tricksters. They overcome hardship by their wits and integrity. As fairytale heroes they survive with the help of the natural world and using their innate "supernatural powers" or their relationship with the animals and plants. Jack and Molly can both communicate with the natural world. In Appalachia Jack Tales, the stories usually center on poverty, harsh working conditions and being "on their own." Jack and Molly always triumph and are generally rewarded with gold.

The figures of Jack and Molly have many aspects and are the brightest aspect of Trickster. Trickster has his own lore and literature in many cultures. Jack and Molly are rooted in a tradition that is a grand world tradition.

A Trickster is an archetype found in many cultures and spiritual traditions around the Earth. They appear as spirits, gods, animals and people. They usually appear when a person or community is stuck psychically or materially. This entity arrives or even rises out of our own midst to act as a catalyst for change. This catalyst may be tricks played on us, asking the right question at the right time; calamities that make us act in a different way; introduce new ideas or energy into a situation. Trickster can be a dangerously cunning, mean, sometimes foolish, jokester and troublemaker. He is one who can force us to turn our "lead into gold." 5

Jack and the King's Girl

This is the story of Jack and the King’s The next morning Jack made some girl. Now, in this story, Jack is a grown- ashcakes and drank some buttermilk his up boy. No longer is he that little fella Maw had sent with him, and he found that was always in trouble. His some blackberries that he ate for dessert. “bojangle” days are over. Then, on Jack went. It wasn’t long till he reached Bear Mountain. He had to climb His eighteenth birthday was the day Jack over Bear Mountain if’n he was going to set off to seek his fortune. He was a see the world. Up Jack went, climbing might sad to leave home and say over rocks, goin’ round trees, even goodbye to his Maw and two brothers, grippin’ hold of bushes in a couple of Bill and Tom. But he was purty sure that places ‘cause it was so steep! there was lots to see in the world, and this was the perfect day to start seeing it! Jack finally got to the top, and then he started down the other side. This was a So, Jack walked and walked. He went up might easier than going up. When he got hills, and round mountains, waded to the other side of Bear Mountain, Jack creeks, and finally crossed through heard this music, and he being a curious Adney’s Gap. This was all might hard fella, he went to see just what was going goin’, too, ‘cause you see, the part of on. Virginia Jack was raised in was made mostly of hills and mountains, and this Well! What was going on was a party! was long ago, way before there were any And right there in that valley, the King roads—let alone bridges—in the Blue of Virginia and all the Dukes and Ridge Mountains. Duchesses of the Blue Ridge were having a party to celebrate the birthday It started to get pretty dark after Jack of the King’s daughter. They were all crossed Adney’s Gap, so he cut some dancing, eating, talking to one another, pine branches and made himself a bed and having the best of times. under the stars. Then, while he was laying there thinking what a lucky fella So, Jack walks up to the King and says, he was—he fell asleep. Jack didn’t hear “Hello, King. May I come to your the foxes that howled or the owl that party?” Jack asked nicely cause his Maw “whoo’d” all night long. He just slept raised him up to be polite. soundly. 6

“I’d be proud to have you join us,” the the King said, “Y’all are dismissed. Now King said. Jack, you are welcome to stay at the party, but keep away from my “Mighty nice party, King,” Jack replied, daughter!” then asked, “but who is that pretty girl over there?” Jack didn’t answer the King, but went over and got himself something to eat. “That’s my daughter,” the King There was lots of apple cider and ham answered, “and this party is to celebrate biscuits and even some more turnip her eighteenth birthday.” greens. However, while Jack was eating, the King’s daughter came over and “Well, King, she is mighty pretty— asked him to dance the Virginia Reel mighty pretty,” Jack said. with her.

At that moment, the King’s daughter They were going through the arch the looked at Jack and smiled. Jack smiled other dancers had made for them when back, and then he declared, “You know, the King’s daughter said, “I’m might King, I think I’d like to marry your fond of you, Jack.” daughter.” Jack quickly responded by asking, “How “I don’t want to hear any talk like that,” would you like to become my wife?” the King warned. “I won’t let my daughter marry an ol’ mountain boy like “That would be fine,” she answered, you!” “but my Paw would never allow me to marry a mountain boy like you,” “King, I’m bound and determined to marry your daughter!” Jack avowed. “Well, why don’t we just run away?” Jack asked. “Listen, Jack, if I hear any more talk like this from you—you and I will fight!” the “Let’s go!” the King’s daughter quickly King responded, with a touch of finality replied, and off they headed in the in his voice. direction of Jack’s Maw’s house. Jack was still polite when he said, “Now, King, that’d be might unneighborly of When the king discovered they had run you, ‘cause I think the little girl likes away, he ended that party pretty quick, me.” and he got his army out searching for Jack and his daughter. They looked in Just then, the King noticed his daughter, every holler and on top of every again smiling at Jack, and he raised up mountain, but they never even got close and exclaimed, “Jack, I’m mighty to them. powerful! I’m the King, and I have a army!” The King snapped his fingers Well, Jack and the King’s girl got and in marched forty soldiers. They married, but after about three months, stopped directly in front of Jack, showed they both thought they should go back him their muskets and skinnin’ knives, and make friends with the King. So, then marched around him three times till back they went—up hills, round 7 mountains, wadin’ creeks, and crossing Adney’s Gap until they came up to the “Yep, I do,” the old man replied. “He site of the party. left so you and his daughter could have his Kingdom of Virginia.” But when they got there, there was nothing there but an old wooden sign. So Jack and the King’s daughter lived on Beside the sign an old man was smoking the land where they first met, and Jack on a corncob pipe. Jack and the King’s was King for a short piece, but later he daughter walked up to the sign and read “give it up” so we could have a it: GONE WEST OF THE democratic government and be part of MISSISSIPPI, signed the KING. Jack the United States. And that’s the true thought this sign curious, so he said to story of how Jack got married, and how the old man, “You know anything about Virginia became one of the original the King leavin’?” thirteen states.

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THE HAIRY WOMAN

Collected by James Taylor Adams Big Laurel, Virginia

Reprinted with permission from the James Taylor Adams Collection U of Virginia's College at Wise/Blue Ridge Institute of Ferrum College

NOTES: James Taylor Adams (1893-1954) kept typewritten copies of the folktales he and others collected during the last thirty years of his life, while he lived in Wise County, VA. No editorial changes have been made in Adams' manuscript.

Told me August 19, 1940, by Samuel Simpson Adams. He learned it from his father, Spencer Adams, about eighty years ago.

One time there was a ship wrecked another piece. He kept on, broiling it and and everybody on it was drowned except throwing her little pieces of it until she at one man. He swam to a little island and last tasted of it. She frowned and spit it saved hisself. out, but he kept on until finally he got her to eating the broiled meat. He built hisself a little hut and lived there keeping close watch out for a ship At last she ventured up to the hut that might come near enough for him to and they would make motions to one call to. another instead of talking. All she could do was make some jabbering noise. One day he looked out and seed a hairy woman standing behind a tree So they lived together there and she peeping around at him. He kept right still would go off in the woods and come and she kept coming a little closer and back with a deer. She had great long closer. Finally he motioned to her to claws for finger nails and she'd catch come to him, but she run off in the these in the deer and rip it open and tear woods. The next day she come back and it up into little pieces and he would broil he let her get up pretty close again and it and they would eat it. then motioned for her to come to him. But she run off again. It went on for about a year and she had a baby. Half of the baby was hairy The next day when she come back like her and the other half like him. And and he motioned to her she just run off a they lived on there until the baby was little piece and stayed awhile and come about six months old and then one day back. She had some meat with her that he saw a ship and he waved his arms and time and she throwed him a piece. He hollered till he got them to notice him took it and built a fire and broiled it and and they sent a boat with some men in it throwed her a piece. She picked it up and to see who it was and what they wanted. smelt of it and throwed it down. Bit off a piece of the raw meat and throwed him 9

This was his first and would to come back and cried and wrung her probably be his last chance to ever get hands. She grabbed up their baby and away from that island and back home. held it up and motioned to it like she He hated to leave the hairy woman for meant for him to come back and stay he had learned to love her and he loved with her for its sake. But he shook his the baby. But he knew he couldn't take head to show her he couldn't stay with either one of them with her. her but had to go with his own sort of people. Then she give one loud scream He made motions to her to tell her and taking hold of the baby head and he was going away and she cried and feet she tore it in two and throwed the held to him until he got in the boat. They piece that was like him after him and the just had to tear her loose from him. Then last he seen of her she was going back as the boat started off to the ship she toward their hut with the piece of the stood on the bank and motioned to him baby that was hairy like her hugged up to her breast. 10

The Greenbrier Ghost

Do you believe in ghosts? Some folks marry him. Edward and Zona in Greenbrier County, West set up house in a two-story Virginia do. In fact, there's a frame building in Livesay's road sign in Greenbrier Mill where Shue worked as a County that tells how the blacksmith. ghost of Zona Heaster Shue helped convict her murderer. In January 1897, two months after the wedding, Shue asked young In 1886, Edward Shue and his first Anderson Jones to go to his wife lived in a cabin on Rock house and do some chores for Camp Run, in Pocahontas Mrs. Shue. When Anderson County, West Virginia. Shue got to the house, all the doors was a young man with a were closed. On the steps, he strong, well-built body. He saw a trail of blood. That was also a bully who beat his scared him, but he knocked, wife. Shue's first wife finally and when no one answered, divorced him while he was in he opened the door and went the penitentiary for stealing a in. The trail of blood horse. continued across the kitchen floor to the dining room. That After Shue got out of prison, it wasn't door, too, was closed. long before he married again Anderson knocked, then he and set up housekeeping on opened the door and went in. the top of Droop Mountain. He stumbled over Zona His second wife died under Shue's body. She was lying on peculiar and suspicious the floor looking up with circumstances. wide-open eyes. Anderson reached down and shook her In November 1896, in Greenbrier and found her stiff and cold. County, Edward Shue married a third time, to a Anderson ran to the blacksmith shop fifteen-year-old girl named to tell Edward Shue. Shue let Zona Heaster. Some people out a yell and started for his said Zona had fallen madly in house, while Anderson went love with Shue because of his on to get Dr. Knapp. striking appearance. Others said that Shue persuaded When Anderson and Dr. Knapp Zona to visit her uncle on reached the house, Shue had Droop Mountain, and once he placed his wife on the bed and got her away from her was holding her head in his parents convinced her to arms, crying for her to come 11

back. And strangely enough, supper was ready and he then he had dressed Zona, placing began to chide me because I a high, stiff collar around her had prepared no meat. I neck and tying it in place with replied there was plenty, a large veil, folded several bread and butter, apple times and tied in a bow under sauce, preserves and other her chin. During Dr. Knapp's things that made a good examination of the body, Shue supper. He flew into a rage, continued to hold his wife's got up and came toward me. head in his arms. When I raised up, he seized each side of my head with his Dr. Knapp pronounced Mrs. Shue hands and by a sudden dead of heart failure. During wrench dislocated my neck." the visits of friends and relatives to view the body, When Mrs. Heaster told her neighbors Shue never left the head of his of Zona's visits, some believed wife's casket. Zona was that she had been visited by a buried in the cemetery of ghost. Others insisted that she Soule Chapel Church in had only been dreaming. Mrs. Greenbrier County. Heaster insisted that these were not dreams, that she had That was not the end of the story, been wide awake. however. Zona's mother was Furthermore, Zona had not satisfied with the account described her home and other of Zona's death. She lay in spots around Livesay's Mill, bed praying that God would places Mrs. Heaster had relieve her doubts. When she never seen. When she traveled turned over, there stood her to Livesay's Mill, the places daughter Zona! Zona seemed were just as Zona had hesitant to talk to her, described them. however, and did not stay. Mrs. Heaster and her brother-in-law The next night, Mrs. Heaster again were able to convice John A. prayed that she might know Preston, the prosecuting the truth about Zona's death. attorney in Lewisburg, of the Again Zona appeared, and possibility of foul play in this night she talked to her Zona's death. Mr. Preston mother, saying that she would and Dr. Knapp decided to tell her the true story. exhume Zona's body for an autoposy. On the third and fourth nights, Zona told her mother how she had After a lengthy examination, Dr. been murdered by her Knapp discovered the true husband, Edward Shue! "He cause of Zona Heaster's death came that night from the shop —she had died of a broken and seemed angry. I told him neck. 12

Edward Shue was arrested and to life in prison. After a failed charged with murder. The lynching attempt by local case came to court in residents who felt Shue Lewisburg on June 30, 1897. should die as his wife had, of The defense attorneys allowed a broken neck, Shue was sent Mrs. Heaster to testify to Moundsville Penitentiary. because they believed they He died there eight years could easily demolish her later. testimony by making her admit that the visitations You can read about the case of from her daughter's ghost Edward Shue in old were only dreams. Mrs. newspapers in Lewisburg. Heaster was adamant, According to Case's however, in insisting that she Comment, a national lawyer's was wide awake and that the magazine, this is the only case visits were quite real. in the United States where a man has been convicted of The jury found Edward Shue guilty of murder on the testimony of a murder, and he was sentenced ghost.

This account of the "Greenbrier Ghost" was compiled by Avis Caynor from accounts by Dennis Deitz, George Deitz, and G. S. McKeever, as recounted in The Greenbrier Ghost and other Strange Stories, by Dennis Deitz (South Charleston, WV: Mountain Memories Books, 1990). 13

Sop Tale

One time there was a boy who so forgetful that he couldn't remember anything. His mother would sent him to the store for something and he'd forget what she sent him for and get something else or come back without anything.

One day his mother sent him to the store to get a cake of soap and told him to keep saying, "soap," so he wouldn't forget it. So he went down the road saying, "soap, soap, soap."

He went on till he come to a big mudhole in the road and in the edge of the road was some pretty flowers. He got to looking at the flowers and forgot to say "soap" and what he'd been sent after. So he started going right round and round in the mudhole saying, "Here I lost it and here I'll find it, here I lost it and here I'll find it." He kept right on and trampling in the mud. He got so mad that he started cussin'. Then a preacher come along riding. He said, "Oh, ho, my young man, what's the matter? You shouldn't swear like that."

"Oh, I've lost something here and here I'll find it," said the boy keepin' going' right round and round.

"What is it?" asked the preacher.

"I don't know what it is," said the boy, "but I lost it here and here I'll find it."

The preacher slid off of his horse and said he'd help him hunt for it. So he waded into the mud and his feet slipped out from under him and down he came. "Oh, tut, tut!" he exclaimed, "this mud's as slick as soap."

"That's hit," yelled the boy and he took off down the road cryin' "Soap, soap, soap" every breath, leaving the preacher to get the mud off his clothes the best he could. 14

DOWN COME A LEG

Collected by Richard Chase

Damascus, Virginia

One time a stranger was goin' "Send me down a head, through the country, come to a house And I'll have me a man." and saked [asked?] to stay the night. The man told him he didn't have any place to Down dropped the head. put him there, but said he had another house down the road he could stay in. He put on the head, says, Said it was ha'nted and nobody 'uld live in it. "Raise up here!"

Well, the stranger talked the man into It raised up. The man says, given' him ten dollars if he could stay all night in that ha'nted house. "Now tell me what you want."

So the stranger-man went on down So the ha'nt told him, says, there and built him up a fire, and he was settin' there gettin' warm when down the "If you take my body and bury it you chimney come a man's leg. He got it and can have all the money I got hid here." laid it on the floor. He sit there a few minutes more and down came another So the man said he would, and the leg. He got it and laid it out on the floor ha'nt says to him, says, beside the first leg. After a while down come a man's body. He laid it with the "You'll find six hundred dollars two legs. Directly down came an arm. under the hearth there in a little tin trunk. He put it one side the body. Then it wan't Just prize the hearth-rock up and you can long till down come the other arm. He find it." Says, "And if you take that got it and put it on the other side. money without buryin' me, you better watch out, or I'll ha'nt you till the end of Then he sit there and waited and your days." waited and there didn't nothing come down. So the man told him, Sure, he'd bury him right now. So he went and hollered up the chimney, Then the ha'nt laid back down and the man gathered him up and buried him 15 right quick. other house and got his ten dollars off that feller. So then he prized up the hearth-rock and got the six hundred dollars. And And the ha'nt never was seen there next morning he went back up to that no more.

Jack and the Bean Tree

Now this tale is about when Jack was a high as a sure 'nough treel" Now, Jack, real teensy boy. He was a sort of puny you know you oughtn't to lie like that." young 'un then, and he was cryin' one day when his mother was a-sweepin' the And she slapped him pretty keen. But house. She didn't pay him much mind, when she happened to look out and see Just went on sweepin' the floor. it, she came and gave Jack some ripe Happened she swept up a right big-sized peaches and cream, and petted him a bean, so she picked it up and gave it to little till he hushed. Jack to hush him, get him out the way. Well, the next mornin' Jack came a- "Here, run plant this bean," she says. runnin'. "It'll make ye a bean tree." "Oh, mother! My bean tree's done So Jack ran out and planted it, and didn't growed plumb out-a-sight! You can't see cry any more that day. the top!"

Next mornin' he went out real early to "Now, Jack, you look-a-here! I just see how it was gettin' on, came runnin' know that's not so. You surely must 'a back in, told his mother, "That bean lied this time." tree's plumb through the ground and it's done growed up knee high!" And she slapped his jaws, real hard. But she looked out directly and saw it, so she "Why, Jack !" says his mother. "Why, went and got Jack, and gave him a big you little lyin' puppy !" And she slaps slice of cake and some sweet milk. him. Well, nobody said anything about the Well, Jack he cried, but when his mother bean tree for several days, till one day got the house cleaned up she looked out Jack said to his mother, "I'm a-goin' to and saw it was like Jack said, and she climb up that bean tree of mine and see felt sorry, so she gave him some bread how high it goes." and butter and brown sugar, and he hushed. His mother told him he oughtn't to do that, but seemed like he had his head so So the next mornin' Jack came and told set on it she couldn't do nothin' with him. his mother, "That bean tree's done got as Jack said he'd pull her off a mess of beans on the way up and throw 'em 16 down to her. So she fixed him up a little "Fee, faw, fumm! snack of dinner and he pulled out right on up the bean tree. I smell the blood of a English-mum

He kept on goin' - up and up and up. He Bein' he alive or bein' he dead, cloomb all day, till it was way late in the evenin' 'fore he got to the top. Then, just I must have some!" about dark Jack came to a big pike-road up there. Went along it a little piece, The old lady says, "No. You don't smell came to a great big house, walked up and no English-mum. Must be that fresh knocked on the door. mutton you brought in here yesterday."

A very large woman came and opened it, The old giant looked around a little looked down at Jack, says, "Law, more, and fin'ly they eat supper and went stranger! What you a-coin' up here?" on to bed.

"Why," says Jack, "because I wanted to When Jack heard the giant snorin', he come. This here's my bean tree. I just came out the bake-oven and went lookin' cloomb it to see what was up here." around the house. Saw a rifle-gun a- hangin' over the fireboard, so he took "Well, you better get on back down that and went on back down the bean again quick. My old man's a giant. He'll tree. kill ye. He eats all the Englishmen he finds." Jack played around with the rifle-gun a few days till he began to get sort-a tired "Hit's a-gettin' late," says Jack, "and I of it, then he decided he'd go back up can't get back very handy now. I don't and see what else he could find. So he know what I'll do." cloomb up the bean tree again.

"You come on in, then, and I'll hide ye The old lady was a-standin' out on the tonight, but you better leave early in the steps, says, "Why, you little scamp! Here mornin'." you are back again. My old man'll kill you sure's the world. He saw his rifle- So Jack went on in the house and the gun was gone. You better not try to giant woman took him and put him in come in here tonight." the bake-oven, set the lid over him. "Well," says Jack, "you hide me this The old giant came in directly, looked time and hit may be I'll not come back around, says, no more."

17

Sop Doll!

Said one time Jack started out to hunt Jack looked it over right good, sayd, him a job of work. He pulled out and "Bedad, I believe I might take the job." travelled on till he got to another settle- ment, ran across a feller told him there The man says, "All right, Jack. I see was a man there wanted to hire some you're no coward. Now I'll give ye half work done. So he told Jack where the of what you make and give ye your man's house was at, and Jack went over rations too. I'll go back to the house and there; stopped by the gate and hollered, get ye some meat and meal for your "Hello!" supper. And you can start in grindin' soon as anybody comes." The man came out, asked Jack what did he want. So Jack told him. Well, when word got out that the mill was opened again, lots of customers The man told Jack to come on in; asked started comin' in and Jack had to grind him what his name was. Says, "Well, right on till it was plumb dark. Jack, I've got a mill on a watercourse down the road a piece, but I've got no Fin'ly got the last turn ground out and time to run it. I've hired several men to shut the mill down. He hadn't no more'n grind down there, but the very first night got the water turned out of the mill race somethin' has always killed 'em. Looked when here came an old man on a sorry- like there was some kind of pizen. Now I lookin' mule, got off and walked in the thought I'd tell ye, Jack, so you'd know mill with a little poke of corn on his all about it 'fore ye took the job." shoulder. He had a long gray beard and he was one-eyed. "Well," syas Jack, "if you don't care, we might walk down there and look that "Howdy do, Jack," he says. "How you mill over." gettin' on?"

So they went on down to the mill. Hil "All right, I guess," says Jack. "I hope was a old log house with a fire place and you're well." ever'thing fixed for whoever tended the mill to cook and sleep down there. There "About like common," says the old were twleve little windows rather high- man. up on the walls, had no window lights in 'em. 18

Then Jack looked at him, says, "I don't So Jack was cuttin' up his meat with that believe I ever say you before." silver knife when all at once got thick dark in there. Jack looked up and there in "No," the old man told him, "I'm a ever' one of them little windows sat a big stranger." black cat. They all were a-lookin' right at Jack, their eyes just a-shinin'. "Well, how in the world did you know my name?" Jack asked him. Well, Jack wasn't scared, much. He went on and put his meat in the skillet, "Oh. I knowed ye time I saw ye," the set it on the fire and stooped down to old man says. "I've come a long way turn it with his knife; paid no attention to today, Jack, and I wonder could you them cats. But just about the time his grind my corn for me. I couldn't get here meat 'gun to fry, Jack heared one cat no sooner." light down on the floor. He went on a cookin', and the next thing he knowed, "Why, sure," says Jack. "You wait here there was a big balck cat a-settlin' right for a minute and I'll go turn the water in up in the fireplace with him. Jack went again." to turn the meat over and that cat stuck out its paw toward the skillet, says, "Sop So Jack started the mill up and ground doll!" the stranger's corn for him; shut the mill down, and when he got back the old man Jack reached out right quick with his says to him, says, "Jack, you're the first knife, says, "You better not sop your doll one ever done me right here at this mill in my meat or I'll cut it off." and I'm goin' to give ye a present." The old cat jerked its foot back and set He reache in his big coar and took out a there awhile. Them other cats stirred silver knife and handed it to Jack. Jack around a little; stayed on up in the thanked him and the old man left. Then windows. Jack built him up a fire in the fireplace and got out the skillet. Now Jack didn't Then Jack saw that big cat reach for his have no lamp, but the fire gave out right skillet again, says, "Sop, doll-ll!" much light, and it happened the moon ws shinin' in all twelve of them windows. Made it pretty near bright as day.

19

This tale seems to point a moral. It was told on November 25, 1940. It is widely current here. Told by Samuel Simpson Adams who learned it from his mother seventy-five years ago. ---

One time thar' was a great ol' big, big sticks an' leaves. sow. An' she had three little pigs. She'd go off an' hunt sumpin' to eat an' bring it The fox went on an' met the little black home to the little pigs. They all lived in a pig. rock cliff way off in the woods. "Aye, little pig, where you goin'?" One day the ol' sow said to the little pigs, "what are you going' to do when I die?" "My mammy's dead an' I'm goin' to build me a house out of iron an' steel." They all tol' her they was goin' out an' seek their fortune. An' she said, "Build "Build hit out of sticks an' leaves an' I'll your house out of iron an' steel an' the come over an' see you." So it went on an' foxes can't catch you." built it's house out of sticks an' leaves.

So it wasn't long till the ol' sow died, an' So the fox went on and met the little red the three little pigs started out. pig.

The little white pig was in front. It met a "Aye, little pig, where you goin'?" fox. The fox said, "aye, little pig, where you going'?" "My mammy's dead an' I'm goin' to build me a house out of iron an' steel." "My mammy's dead an' I'm going to build me a house out of iron an' steel." "Build hit out of sticks an' leaves an' I'll come over an' see you." "Build hit out of sticks an' leaves an' I'll come over an' see you." But the little red pig done what hit's mammy tol' hit an' built hit's house out So it went on an' built hit's house out of of iron an' steel. 20

hit down an' come in an' eat you up." So that night the little white pig heared the fox at its door sayin', "Open the door, "All right," said the little red pig, "jes go little pig, an' let me come in an' warm." 'head an' blow."

"I can't an' I shain't." So the old fox got up on the house an' hit puffed and hit blowed an' puffed an' hit "If you don't let me," said the Fox, I'll blowed, but hit couldn't tear it down get up on top of your house an' blow hit 'cause hit was built out of iron an' steel." down and, come in an' eat you up." So the ol' fox come down an' come back The little white pig wouldn't open the to the door an' begin cryin', "Oh, little door an' the old fox got up on top of the pig, do let just the tip of my nose in. I'm house and puffed and blowed an' down freezin' to death." come the house an' hit went in an' cut the little white pig up. So the little pig got sorry for the fox an' let the tip of hits nose in. Then the fox went on to the little black pig's house. "Oh, little pig," he cried, "that's pinchin' my nose off. Do let my head in." "Aye, little pig, open the door an' let me come in an' warm." So the little pig let his head in.

"I can't and I shain't." "Oh, little pig, this is choking me to death. Do let me in back to my hips." "If you don't let me in," said the fox, "I'll get up on top of your house an' blow hit So the little pig let him in to his hips. down an' come in an' eat you up." "Oh, little pig, do let me all in but my The little black pig wouldn't open the tail. This is pinchin' me in two." door so the old fox got up on top of the house and he puffed and he blowed an' So the little pig let him on all but his tail. down come the house an' he went in an' eat the little black pig up. "Oh, little pig, do let my tail in. Hit's cuttin' my tail plum off." Then the fox went on to the little red pig's house that was made out o' iron an' So the little pig let his tail in. He was all steel. in then. He looked aroun' an' seed the little pig had a pot of peas cooking on "Aye, little pig, "open the door an' let me the fire. An' he begun dacin' [dancing] come in an' warm." roun' an' roun' singing, "I'll have pig an' peas for supper; I'll have pig an' peas for "I can't an' I shain't." supper."

"If you don't let me in," said the old fox, The little pig was scared to death. Didn't "I'll get up on top of your house an' blow know what to do. Hit run to the door an' 21 peeped out. are bitin'."

"What you see, little pig?" asked the fox. "Jes lay right still, they'll quit directly."

"Oh, nothin'," said the little pig. Only the So he kept pourin' in the hot water. king an' all his houn's a-comin'." "Ooh, little pig. Let me out the bugs are Then the fox was scared. eatin' me up."

"Where'll I git; where'll I go?" he cried. "Jes lay right still an' they'll quit directly." An' he kept pourin' in the "Oh, jes jump in that ches' thar an' I'll water. After while the fox quit hollerin' put the led on you," the little pig tol' him. an' he lifted up the led an' he was scalded to death. An' the little pig jis jumped So the fox jumped in the ches' an' the right back an' begun singing', "I'll have little red pig slammed the led on him. fox an' peas fer supper; I'll have fox an' Then he slapped a kettle on the fire an' peas fer supper." het some water scaldin' hot an' begin to pur hit in on him. An' the little red pig lived on thar an' nothing bothered him. "Ooh, little pig," cried the fox, "the bugs 22

Munsmeg

Collected by Richard Chase

Proffit, VA

One time there was an old woman who And they handed her a riddle. (That’s had three girls, Poll and Betz and an old-time sifter–a thing all full of Munsmeg. Munsmeg was the youngest holes. and they treated her mean. She wasn’t pretty like her sisters, and they called her So Munsmeg took the riddle and ran Roughface. down to the spring and she’d dig up water and it ’uld all run out, dip it up, it Well, the old woman died and about ‘uld all run out, dip it up, it ‘uld all run all she had was a cabbage patch and a out. Then a little bluebird lit on a limb big old knife. She left the cabbage to and sang out, Poll and Betz and left Munsmeg nothing but that ol knife. Poll and Betz started in "Stop it with moss and stick it with eatin’ that cabbage, didn’t let Munsmeg clay, have any of it, made her eat mush and You can pack your riddle of water ashcakes. Then directly they’d eat up all away." the cabbage so Poll and Betz decided they’d make some journey-cakes and Then Munsmeg daubed it with moss pack up and go a great journey to seek and smeared it with clay and brought the their fortune. Munsmeg wanted to go riddle back full of water. So her sisters with ‘em but they told her she couldn’t. had to let her go. But when they got So Munsmeg begged and begged and everything fixed up and were about to finally they told her, said, start, they snatched Munsmeg’s sack of journeycakes away from her and grabbed "All right, old Roughface, but you’ll her and fastened her up in an old ash have to fix your own johhnycakes. Here, house, and went on and left her behind. go get you some water in this." 23

Munsmeg tried every way to get out fire. Then he throwed up his head and of that ash-house but her sisters had got to smellin’ this way and that, says, pulled the latch string out, and finally she set in to hollerin’ for somebody to "FEE, FO, FUM! come let her out. An old fox heard her I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN and he came to the ash-house door, says, IRISHMAN!"

"Who’s in there, and what d’ye "Hush up! You’ll wake up these three want?" five fat pullets I’ve got for your supper."

"It’s me, Munsmeg, and I want out." So she told him about the three girls asleep in the loft, and he asked her how "Pull the latch string." he’d know ‘em from the other girls.

"Ain’t none. You push the latch up." "My girls have got lockets on their necks. You can feel of ‘em and tell that "What’ll you give me?" way."

"I’ll take ye to a fine flock of geese." So Munsmeg slipped over quick to where the girls were and changed the Then the old fox pushed the latch up lockets to her neck and her sisters! Then and Munsmeg got out. She took the old she laid down and went to snorin’. The fox over to the place where the geese old giant came and felt for the lockets. were and he thanked her, and she went He grabbed the old woman’s girls and on and caught up with Poll and Betz. slit their throats, and threw ‘em down the scuttle hole to the old woman. Then he So they went on and went on and it got down the ladder and there stood the [got dark and the?] next house they came old woman mad as a hornet. to they called and asked to stay all night. An old woman came to the door and told "Just look now!" she says to him, ‘em to come on in. She had three girls "You’ve gone and killed the wrong there. So they all ate supper and the old ones." woman told Poll and Betz and Munsmeg they could go up in the loft and be with And she lit in to beatin’ the old giant her girls. Poll and Betz went on to sleep with the poker. So while all that was but Munsmeg stayed awake and watched goin’ on Munsmeg took her old knife the old woman through a knot hole in the and cut up the sheets and tied ‘em floor. together. Then she knocked a hole in the shingles and cut the sheet rope out and Now they didn’t know it but that old she and her sisters got away. woman was a witch and her old man was a giant. And directly he came in home They came to the King’s house, and with a lot of people under his arm. He the King invited ‘em in, asked ‘em to eat throwed ‘em down in the floor for the supper and stay the night. He got to old woman to cook up for him, hung up askin’ ‘em who they were and where his hat on the peg, and sat down by the they came from and where they were 24 travellin’ to and Munsmeg told him and fell head foremost right in the spring about what all happened at the old and drownded. giant’s house. So the King told Munsmeg, says, Then Munsmeg went back to the King and he paid her that bushel of gold. "I’d like mighty well to get shet of him and his old woman. They’ve killed a Then the King says to her, says, sight of folks around here. I’ll pay "Now he’s got a fine horse down there, anybody two bushels of gold for him and the old giant has, and if you bring me another bushel for the old woman, to go that horse I’ll pay you another bushel of down there and kill either one of ‘em, or gold. And if you should happen to kill both." that giant, that’ll make three bushels for ye." So Munsmeg went back to the old giant’s house that night and cloomb up Munsmeg went back to the giant’s on the chimney with a poke of salt. The place and looked in the stable. She saw old woman had a pot of meat on the fire that the old giant had his horse belled. a-cookin’ and Munsmeg sprinkled ever’ Well, she hadn’t figured out how to kill bit of that salt down in it. the old giant yet, so she thought she’d try gettin’ his horse. She threw some barley The old giant started in eatin’. in the trough, and the horse threw up his head. The bell went ---- "OLD WOMAN, THE MEAT’S TOO SALTY." "Tingle! Tingle!"

"Why, I never put in but on pinch." and the old giant came runnin’ out. Munsmeg hid under the trough. The "I CAN’T HELP THAT. [FETCH giant looked around, went on back. The ME?] SOME WATER [?]." horse ate that barley up ‘fore Munsmeg could untie the halter rope, so she threw "There ain’t a bit of water up." in another handful of barley. The horse went for it. "GO TO [THE?] SPRING AND DIP US SOME." "Tingle! Tingle!"

"Hit’s too dark." And here came the old giant. Munsmeg hid behind the stable door. The giant "GET OUT YOUR LIGHT-BALL." came in the stable that time but he didn’t notice anything and went on back. So the old woman threw out her light- Munsmeg worked at that knot hard as ball towards the spring, but about the she could but the horse got the barley eat time she got a good piece from the house up and started rar’in’ at the halter rope Munsmeg had stuck her old knife into so Munsmeg had to throw in some more that light-ball and run with it and barley to make him stand. squinched it in the spring water, and the old woman stumped her toe in the dark "Tingle! Tingle." 25

And the old giant came so fast Munsmeg make me howl like a dog and squall like had to hide under the bresh of the horses cats, and my bones ‘uld rattle like pewter tail. But that time the giant had him a dishes, and my blood ‘uld drip like lantern lit and he started lookin’ all honey." around and directly he ran his hand under the horse’s belly felt of his hind The old giant got him a big pole. legs, says, "I’M GOIN’ TO PUT "YOU GOT TOO MANY LEGS YOU[RIGHT?] IN THIS VERY BACK HERE, OLD HORSE." SACK," he says, "AND BEAT YOU TO DEATH." And he put her in and hung And just about that time the horse her up on the kitchen wall and took up switched his tail and there was his club. Munsmeg. She made for the door but the old giant grabbed her, says, "Wait a minute," says Munsmeg.

"NOW I’VE GOT YE." "WHAT FOR?" he asked her.

"What you goin’ to do with me." "I want to pray for my sins. You go out and tend to your horse so I can have "I DON’T KNOW YET. HAIN’T time to pray for forgiveness for all the MADE UP MY MIND." meanness I’ve done."

"Please don’t feed me on honey and The old giant went out to the stable to butter. I just can’t stand the taste of feed and water his horse. And soon as he honey and butter." was gone Munsmeg took her old knife and cut out of the sack. Then she caught "HONEY AND BUTTER IS ALL the old giant’s dog and his cats and got YOU’LL GIT." all his dishes and a big pot of honey and put all that in the poke, and sewed it up So he kept her about two weeks and and tied it back just like it was. Then she made her eat all the honey and butter she hid behind the door. could hold. Munsmeg just loved honey and butter. Then one day he told her, The old giant came back in and got says, his club and drawed back --- hit one lick. His dog howled. "I’M GOIN’ TO KILL YE TODAY." "OH YES, I’LL MAKE YOU HOWL "How you goin’ to kill me?" she LIKE A DOG." asked him. Then he hit another lick. Them cats "DON’T KNOW," he says, "HAIN’T just squalled. The giant grinned. MADE UP MY MIND." "OH, I’LL MAKE YE SQUALL "Please don’t tie me up in a sack and LIKE CATS." beat me to death," she told him. "It ‘uld 26

Then he hit it several licks and broke big river, and there was Munsmeg on the all his dishes. other side, sittin on a millstone with the halter rope around her neck. He grinned again. "HOW’D YOU GET OVER "OH, I’LL MAKE YOUR BONES THERE?" RATTLE LIKE PEWTER DISHES." "I pecked a hole in this rock and tied This time he drawed way back and hit a rope around my neck and floated it an awful hard lick. That pot honey across." broke and it started drippin’ out. That nearly tickled him to death. So the old giant he started pickin’ a hole in a rock and when he got through it "OH, YES," he says, "I’LL MAKE he got a rope and tied one end in the hole YOUR BLOOD RUN AND DRIP LIKE and the other end to his neck and took HONEY." that rock up and threw it in the river. The rope jerked him after the rock and Then he throwed down his club and carried him right to the bottom. And that untied the sack. There was his dog and was the last of the old giant. all his cats killed and his pewter dishes all broken up, and his big pot of honey So Munsmeg went on back to the broke. He was so mad he nearly busted. King’s house and got her three bushels of gold and she was well off the rest of And while he had been a-doin’ all her life. And Poll and Betz got so mad that Munsmeg had run to the stable and about Munsmeg gettin’ all that money saddled and bridled his horse and started they went on back home and raised ‘em ridin’ off. The old giant took out after some more cabbage, and died old maids. her. He trailed the horse till he came to a 27

From _Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee_ (1834) by David Crockett edited by: Angel Price 11/96

Bear Hunting in Tennessee

space I had some pretty tuff times, and will relate some few things that happened to me. So here goes, as the boy said when he run by himself.

In the fall of 1825, I concluded I would build two large boats, and load them with pipe staves for market. So I went down to the lake, which was about twenty-five miles from where I lived, and hired some hands to assist me, and went to work; some at boat building, and others to getting staves. I worked on with my hands till the bears got fat, and then I turned out to hunting, to lay in a supply of meat. I soon killed and salted down as many as were necessary for my family; but about this time one of my old neighbours, who had settled down on the But the reader, I expect, would have no lake about twenty-five miles from me, objection to know a little about my came to my house and told me he employment during the two years while wanted me to go down and kill some my competitor was in Congress. In this bears about in his parts. He said they 28 were extremely fat, and very plenty. I to them, and cut out again for a creek know'd that when they were fat, they called Big Clover, which wa'n't very far were easily taken, for a fat bear can't run off. Just as I got there, and was entering fast or long. But I asked a bear no a cane brake, my dogs all broke and favours, no way, further than civility, for went ahead, and, in a little time, they I now had eight large dogs, and as fierce raised a fuss in the cane, and seemed to as painters; so that a bear stood no be going every way. I listened a while, chance at all to get away from them. So I and found my dogs was in two went home with him, and then went on companies, and that both was in a down towards the Mississippi, and snorting fight. I sent my little son to one, commenced hunting. and I broke for ttother. I got to mine first, and found my dogs had a two-year- We were out two weeks, and in that time old bear down, a-wooling away on him; killed fifteen bears. Having now so I just took out my big butcher, and supplied my friend with plenty of meat, I went up and slap'd it into him, and killed engaged occasionally again with my him without shooting. There was five of hands in our boat building and getting the dogs in my company. In a short time, staves. But I at length couldn't stand it I heard my little son fire at his bear; any longer without another hunt. So I when I went to him he had killed it too. concluded to take my little son, and He had two dogs in his team. Just at this cross over the lake, and take a hunt moment we heard my other dog barking there. We got over, and that evening a short distance off, and all the rest turned out and killed three bears, in little immediately broke to him. We pushed or no time. The next morning we drove on too, and when we got there, we found up four forks, and made a sort of he had still a larger bear than either of scaffold, on which we salted up our them we had killed, treed by himself. We meat, so as to have it out of the reach of killed that one also, which made three the wolves, for as soon as we would we had killed in less than half an hour. leave our camp, they would take We turned in and butchered them, and possession. We had just eat our then started to hunt for water, and a good breakfast, when a company of hunters place to camp. But we had no sooner came to our camp, who had fourteen started, than our dogs took a start after dogs, but all so poor, that when they another one, and away they went like a would bark they would almost have to thunder- gust, and was out of hearing in lean up against a tree and take a rest. I a minute. We followed the way they had told them their dogs couldn't run in smell gone for some time, but at length we of a bear, and they had better stay at my gave up the hope of finding them, and camp, and feed them on the bones I had turned back. As we were going back, I cut out of my meat. I left them there, and came to where a poor fellow was cut out; but I hadn't gone far, when my grubbing, and he looked like the very dogs took a first-rate start after a very picture of hard times. I asked him what large fat old he-bear, which run right he was doing away there in the woods by plump towards my camp. I pursued on, himself? He said he was grubbing for a but my other hunters had heard my dogs man who intended to settle there; and the coming, and met them, and killed the reason why he did it was, that he had no bear before I got up with him. I gave him 29 meat for his family, and he was working pleased him mightily, and made him feel for a little. as rich as a Jew. I saw him the next fall, and he told me he had plenty of meat to I was mighty sorry for the poor fellow, do him the whole year from his week's for it was not only a hard, but a very hunt. My son and me now went home. slow way to get meat for a hungry This was the week between Christmas family; so I told him if he would go with and New-year that we made this hunt. me, I would give him more meat than he could get by grubbing in a month. I When I got home, one of my neighbours intended to supply him with meat, and was out of meat, and wanted me to go also to get him to assist my little boy in back, and let him go with me, to take packing in and salting up my bears. He another hunt. I couldn't refuse; but I told had never seen a bear killed in his life. I him I was afraid the bear had taken to told him I had six killed then, and my house by that time, for after they get dogs were hard after another. He went very fat in the fall and early part of the off to his little cabin, which was a short winter, they go into their holes, in large distance in the brush, and his wife was hollow trees, or into hollow logs, or their very anxious he should go with me. So cane-houses, or the hurricanes; and lie we started and went to where I had left there till spring, like frozen snakes. And my three bears, and made a camp. We one thing about this will seem mighty then gathered my meat and salted, and strange to many people. From about the scuffled it, as I had done the other. Night first of January to about the last of April, now came on, but no word from my these varments lie in their holes dogs yet. I afterwards found they had altogether. In all that time they have no treed the bear about five miles off, near food to eat; and yet when they come out, to a man's house, and had barked at it the they are not an ounce lighter than when whole enduring night. Poor fellows! they went to house. I don't know the many a time they looked for me, and cause of this, and still I know it is a fact; wondered why I didn't come, for they and I leave it for others who have more knowed there was no mistake in me, and learning than myself to account for it. I know i they were as good as ever They have not a particle of food with fluttered. In the morning, as soon as it them, but they just lie and suck the was light enough to see, the man took his bottom of their paw all the time. I have gun and went to them, and shot the bear, killed many of them in their trees, which and killed it. My dogs, however, enables me to speak positively on this wouldn't have anything to say to this subject. However, my neighbour, whose stranger; so they left him, and came name was McDaniel, and my little son early in the morning back to me. and me, went on down to the lake to my second camp, where I had killed my We got our breakfast, and cut out again; seventeen bears the week before, and and we killed four large and very fat turned out to hunting. But we hunted bears that day. We hunted out the week, hard all day without getting a single and in that time we killed seventeen, all start. We had carried but little provisions of them first-rate. When we closed our with us, and the next morning was hunt, I gave the man over a thousand entirely out of meat. I sent my son about weight of fine fat bear-meat, which three miles off, to the house of an old 30 friend, to get some. The old gentle- man at length we got on some high cony was much pleased to hear I was hunting ridges, and, as we rode along, I saw a in those parts, for the year before the hole in a large black oak, and on bears had killed a great many of his examining more closely, I discovered hags. He was that day killing his bacon that a bear had clomb the tree. I could hogs, and so he gave my son some meat, see his tracks going up, but none coming and sent word to me that I must come in down, and so I was sure he was in there. to his house that evening that he would A person who is acquainted with bear- have plenty of feed for my dogs, and hunting, can tell easy enough when the some accommoda- tions for ourselves; varment is in the hollow; for as they go but before my son got back, we had gone up they don't slip a bit, but as they come out hunting, and in a large cane brake down they make long scratches with my dogs found a big bear in a cane- their nails. house, which he had fixed for his winter- quarters, as they some. times do. My friend was a little ahead of me, but I called him back, and told him there was When my lead dog found him, and a bear in that tree, and I must have him raised the yell, all the rest broke to him, out. So we lit from our horses, and I but none of them entered his house until found a small tree which I thought I we got up. I encouraged my dogs, and could fall so as to lodge against my bear they knowed me so well, that I could tree, and we fell to work chopping it have made them seize the old serpent with our tomahawks. I intended, when himself, with all his horns and heads, we lodged the tree against the other, to and cloven foot and ugliness into the let my little son go up, and look into the bargain, if he would only have come to hole, for he could climb like a squirrel. light, so that they could have seen him. We had chop'd on a little time and stop'd They bulged in, and in an instant the to rest, when I heard my dogs barking bear followed them out, and I told my mighty severe at some distance from us, friend to shoot him, as he was mighty and I told my friend I knowed they had a wrathy to kill a bear. He did so, and bear, for it is the nature of a dog, when killed him prime. We carried him to our he finds you are hunting bears, to hunt camp, by which time my son had for nothing else; he becomes fond of the returned; and after we got our dinners we meat, and considers other game as "not packed up, and cut for the house of my worth a notice," as old Johnson said of old friend, whose name was Davidson. the devil.

We got there, and staid with him that We concluded to leave our tree a bit, and night; and the next morning having went to my dogs, and when we got there, salted up our meat, we left it with him, sure enough they had an eternal great big and started to take a hunt between the fat bear up a tree, just ready for shooting. Obion lake and the Red-foot lake; as My friend again petitioned me for liberty there had been a dreadful hurricane, to shoot this one also. I had a little rather which passed between them, and I was not, as the bear was so big, but I couldn't sure there must be a heap of bears in the refuse; and so he blazed away, and down fallen timber. We had gone about five came the old fellow like some great log miles without seeing any sign at all; but had fell. I now missed one of my dogs, 31 the same that I before spoke of as having In the morning I left my son at the camp, treed the bear by himself sometime and we started on towards The harricane; before, when I had started the three in and when we had went about a mile, we the cane break. I told my friend that my started a very large bear, but we got missing dog had a bear somewhere, just along mighty slow on account of the as sure as fate; so I left them to butcher cracks in the earth occasioned by the the one we had just killed, and I went up earthquakes. We, however, made out to on a piece of high ground to listen for keep in hearing of the dogs for about my dog. I heard him barking with all his three miles, and then we came to the might some distance off, and I pushed harricane. Here we had to quit our ahead for him. My other dogs hearing horses, as old Nick himself couldn't have him broke to him, and when I got there, got through it without sneaking it along sure enough again he had another bear in the form that he put on, to make a fool ready treed; if he hadn't, I wish I may be of our old grandmother Eve. By this time shot. I fired on him, and brought him several of my dogs had got tired and down; and then went back, and help'd come back; but we went ahead on fact finish butchering the one at which I had for some little time in the hurricane, left my friend. We then packed both to when we met a bear coming straight to our tree where we had left my boy. By us, and not more than twenty or thirty this time, the little fellow had cut the tree yards off. I started my tired dogs after down that we intended to lodge, but it him, and McDaniel pursued them, and I fell the wrong way; he had then feather'd went on to where my other dogs were. I in on the big tree, to cut that, and had had seen the track of the bear they were found that it was nothing but a shell on after, and I knowed he was a screamer. I the outside, and all doted in the middle, followed on to about the middle of the as too many of our big men are in these harricane; but my dogs pursued him so days, having only an outside appearance. close, that they made him climb an old My friend and my son cut away on it, stump about twenty feet high. I got in and I went off about a hundred yards shooting distance of him and fired, but I with my dogs to keep them from running was all over in such a flutter from under the tree when it should fall. On fatigue and running, that I couldn't hold looking back at the hole, I saw the bear's steady; but, however, I broke his head out of it, looking down at them as shoulder, and he fell. I run up and loaded they were cutting. I hollered to them to my gun as quick as possible, and shot look up, and they did so; and McDaniel him again and killed him. When I went catched up his gun, but by this time the to take out my knife to butcher him, I bear was out, and coming down the tree. found I had lost it in coming through the He fired at it, and as soon as it touch'd harricane. The vines and briars was so ground the dogs were all round it, and thick that I would sometimes have to get they had a roll-and-tumble fight to the down and crawl like a varment to get fact of the hill, where they stop'd him. I through at all; and a vine had, as I sup- ran up, and putting my gun against the posed, caught in the handle and pulled it bear, fired and killed him. We now had out. While I was standing and studying three, and so we made our scaffold and what to do my friend came to me. He salted them up. had followed my trail through the harricane, and had found my knife, 32 which was mighty good news to me; as a pushed on as near in the direction to the hunter hates the worst in the world to noise as I could, till I found the hill was lose a good dog, or any part of his too steep for me to climb, and so I hunting-tools. I now left McDaniel to backed and went down the creek some butcher the bear, and I went after our distance till I came to a hollow, and then horses, and brought them as near as the took up that, till I come to a place where nature of case would allow. I then took I could climb up the hill. It was mighty our bags, and went back to where he dark, and was difficult to see my way or was; and when we had skin'd the bear, anything else. When I got up the hill, I we fleeced off the fat and carried it to found I had passed the dogs; and so I our horses at several loads. We then turned and went to them. I found, when I packed it up on our horses, and had a got there, they had treed the bear in a heavy pack of it on each one. We now large forked poplar, and it was setting in started and went on till about sunset, the fork. when I concluded we must be near our camp; so I hollered and my son I could see the lump, but not plain answered me, and we moved on in the enough to shoot with any cer- tainty, as direction to the camp. We had gone but a there was no moonlight; and so I set in to little way when I heard my dogs make a hunting for some dry brush to make me a warm start again; and I jumped down light; but I could find none, though I from my horse and gave him up to my could find that the ground was torn friend, and told him I would follow mightily to pieces by the cracks. them. He went on to the camp, and I went ahead after my dogs with all my At last I thought I could shoot by guess, might for a considerable distance, till at and kill him; so I pointed as near the last night came on. The woods were very lump as I could, and fired away. But the rough and hilly, and all covered over bear didn't come, he only clomb up with cane. higher, and got out on a limb, which helped me to see him better. I now I now was compel'd to move on more loaded up again and fired, but this time slowly; and was frequently falling over he didn't move at all. I commenced logs, and into the cracks made by the loading for a third fire, but the first thing earthquakes, so that I was very much I knowed, the bear was down among my afraid I would break my gun. However I dogs, and they were fighting all around went on about three miles, when I came me. I had my big butcher in my belt, and to a good big creek, which I waded. It I had a pair of dressed buckskin breeches was very cold, and the creek was about on. So I took out my knife, and stood, knee-deep; but I felt no great determined, if he should get hold of me, inconvenience from it just then, as I was to defend myself in the best way I could. all over wet with sweat from running, I stood there for some time, and could and I felt hot enough. After I got over now and then see a white dog I had, but this creek and out of the cane, which was the rest of them, and the bear, which very thick on all our creeks, I listened for were dark coloured, I couldn't see at all, my dogs. I found they had either treed or it was so miserable dark. They still brought the bear to a stop, as they fought around me, and sometimes within continued barking in the same place. I three feet of me; but, at last, the bear got 33 down into one of the cracks, that the crack after several hard trials, and so I earthquakes had made in the ground, butchered him, and laid down to try to about four feet deep, and I could tell the sleep. But my fire was very bad, and I biting end of him by the hollering of my couldn't find any thing that would burn dogs. So I took my gun and pushed the well to make it any better; and I muzzle of it about, till I thought I had it concluded I should freeze, if I didn't against the main part of his body, and warm myself in some way by exercise. fired; but it happened to be only the So I got up, and hollered a while, and fleshy part of his foreleg. With this, he then I would just jump up and down with jumped out of the crack, and he and the all my might, and throw myself into all dogs had another hard fight around me, sorts of motions. But all this wouldn't as before. At last, however, they forced do; for my blood was now getting cold, him back into the crack again, as he was and the chills coming all over me. I was when I had shot. so tired, too, that I could hardly walk; but I thought I would do the best I could I had laid down my gun in the dark, and to save my life, and then, if I died, I now began to hunt for it; and, while nobody would be to blame. So I went to hunting, I got hold of a pole, and I a tree about two feet through, and not a concluded I would punch him awhile limb on it for thirty feet, and I would with that. I did so, and when I would climb up it to the limbs, and then lock punch him, the dogs would jump in on my arms together around it, and slide him, when he would bite them badly, down to the bottom again. This would and they would jump out again. I make the insides of my legs and arms concluded, as he would take punching so feel mighty warm and good. I continued patiently, it might be that he would lie this till daylight in the morning, and how still enough for me to get down in the often I clomb up my tree and slid down I crack, and feel slowly along till I could don't know, but I reckon at least a find the right place to give him a dig hundred times. with my butcher. So I got down, and my dogs got in before him and kept his head In the morning I got my bear hong up so towards them, till I got along easily up to as to be safe, and then set out to hunt for him; and placing my hand on his rump, my camp. I found it after a while, and felt for his shoulder, just behind which I McDaniel and my son were very much intended to stick him. I made a lounge rejoiced to see me get back, for they with my long knife, and fortunately were about to give me up for lost. We stock him right through the heart; at got our breakfasts, and then secured our which he just sank down, and I crawled meat by building a high scaffold, and out in a hurry. In a little time my dogs all covering it over. We had no fear of its come out too, and seemed satisfied, spoiling, for the weather was so cold that which was the way they always had of it couldn't. telling me that they had finished him. We now started after my other bear, I suffered very much that night with which had caused me so much trouble cold, as my leather breeches, and every and suffering; and before we got him, we thing else I had on, was wet and frozen. got a start after another, and took him But I managed to get my bear out of this also. We went on to the creek I had 34 crossed the night before and camped, bear. We got up close to him, as the cane and then went to where my bear was, was so thick that we couldn't see more that I had killed in the crack. When we than a few feet. Here I made my friend examined the place, McDaniel said he hold the cane a little open with his gun wouldn't have gone into it, as I did, for till I shot the bear, which was a mighty all the bears in the woods. large one. I killed him dead in his tracks. We got him out and butchered him, and We took the meat down to our camp and in a little time started another and killed salted it, and also the last one we had him, which now made ten we had killed; killed; intending, in the morning, to and we know'd we couldn't pack any make a hunt in the harricane again. more home, as we had only five horses along; therefore we returned to the camp We prepared for resting that night, and I and salted up all our meat, to be ready can assure the reader I was in need of it. for a start homeward next morning. We had laid down by our fire, and about ten o'clock there came a most terrible The morning came, and we packed our earthquake, which shook the earth so, horses with the meat, and had as much as that we were rocked about like we had they could possibly carry, and sure been in a cradle. We were very much enough cut out for home. It was about alarmed; for though we were accustomed thirty miles, and we reached home the to feel earthquakes, we were now right second day. I had now accommodated in the region which had been torn to my neighbour with meat enough to do pieces by them in 1812, and we thought him, and had killed in all, up to that it might take a notion and swallow us up, time, fifty-eight bears, during the fall like the big fish did Jonah. and winter.

In the morning we packed up and moved As soon as the time come for them to to the harricane, where we made another quit their houses and come out again in camp, and turned out that evening and the spring, I took a notion to hunt a little killed a very large bear, which made more, and in about one month I killed eight we had now killed in this hunt. forty-seven more, which made one hundred and five bears I had killed in The next morning we entered the less than one year from that time. harricane again, and in little or no time my dogs were in full cry. We pursued them, and soon came to a thick cane brake, in which they had stop'd their 35

West Virginia's Appalachian Music and Literature

John Henry

Illustration by Mark Clayton

"John Henry," the ballad, tells the story of a steel-driving man who died in his race against the steam drill at the Big Bend Tunnel, near Talcott, West Virginia, on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad around 1870. Some think John Henry was a real person, a large African American man who traveled along the Atlantic Coast "driving a steel hammer" for the railroad.

One day the "Captain" of the job said he had a steam drill that could work day and night and never get tired. The Captain said that he would buy the machine if it could beat his best steel driver. 36

According to legend, a contest was held, and John Henry beat the steam drill by three inches. But he died with his hammer in his hand. 37

16 Tons I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal and Some people say a man is made out of mud the straw boss said, "well bless my soul!" A poor man's made out of muscle and blood .....you loaded...

Muscle and blood, skin and bones... (Chorus)

A mind that's weak and a back that's ______strong I was born one mornin' it was drizzlin' ______rain

Chorus fightin' and trouble are my middle name

You load sixteen tons, and what do you I was raised in a cane-brake by an old get? mama lion

another day older and deeper in debt can't no high-toned woman make me walk no line St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go (Chorus)

I owe my soul to the company store ______

______If you see me comin', better step aside

I was born one mornin' and the sun didn't A lot of men didn't, a lot of men died shine One fist of iron, the other of steel I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine 38

If the right one don't get you, then the I owe my soul to the company store left one will "Sixteen Tons"/ Copyright / Elvis (Chorus) Presley Music ~ All Rights Reserved

______

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go 39

Blue Moon of Kentucky

by: Bill Monroe

Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining. Shine on the one that's gone and proved untrue. Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining. Shine on the one that's gone and left me blue.

It was on a moonlight night, The stars were shining bright. And they whispered from on high, Your love has said goodbye.

Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining. Shine on the one that's gone and said goodbye.

Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining. Shine on the one that's gone and proved untrue. Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining. Shine on the one that's gone and left me blue. It was on a moonlight night, The stars were shining bright. And they whispered from on high, Your love has said goodbye.

Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining. Shine on the one that's gone and said goodbye.

Rocky Top 40

I wish that I was on old Rocky Top Down in the Tennessee hills Ain't no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top Ain't no telephone bills

Once I had a girl on Rocky Top Mountain Dew Half bear the other half cat Wild as a mink but sweet as soda pop I still dream about that There's a big hollow tree down the road here from me Where you lay down a dollar or two Rocky Top you'll always be You stroll 'round the bend and you come back again Home sweet home to me There's a jug full of good old mountain dew Good old Rocky Top Rocky Top Tennessee Rocky Top Tennessee They call it that mountain dew And them that refuse it are few Once two strangers climbed old Rocky Top I'll hush up my mug if you fill up my jug Looking for a moonshine still With that good old mountain dew Strangers ain't come down from Rocky Top Reckon they never will My uncle Mort, he's sawed off and short He measures about four foot two Corn won't grow at all on Rocky Top But he thinks he's a giant when you give him a pint Dirt's too rocky by far Of that good old mountain dew That's why all the folks on Rocky Top Get their corn from a jar Well, my old aunt June bought some brand new perfume If had such a sweet smelling pew I've had years of cramped up city life But to her surprise when she had it analyzed Trapped like a duck in a pen It was nothing but good old mountain dew All I know is it's a pity life Can't be simple again Well, my brother Bill's got a still on the hill Where he runs off a gallon or two The buzzards in the sky get so drunk they can't fly Version: Osborne Brothers From smelling that good old mountain dew

Coal Miner’s Daughter by Loretta Lynn

Well, I was born a coal miner’s daughter In a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler 41

We were poor, but we had love That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar

My daddy worked all night in the Vanleer coal mine All day long in the field a-hoin´ corn Mommy rocked the babies at night And read the Bible by the coal oil light And ever´thing would start all over come break of morn´

Daddy loved and raised eight kids on a miner’s pay Mommy scrubbed our clothes on a washboard ever´ day Why I’ve seen her fingers bleed To complain there was no need She’d smile in Mommy’s understanding way

In the summertime we didn’t have shoes to wear But in the wintertime we’d all get a brand new pair From a mail order catalog Money made from sellin´ a hog Daddy always managed to get the money somewhere

Yeah! I’m proud to be a coal miner’s daughter I remember well, the well where I drew water The work we done was hard At night we’d sleep ´cause we were tired I never thought of ever leaving Butcher Holler

Well a lot of things have changed since way back then And it’s so good to be back home again Not much left but the floor Nothing lives here anymore Except the mem´ries of a coal miner’s daughter

Beginning in the mid-1700's coal mining in Pennsylvania fueled the Industrial Revolution in the United States. 42

It began to support the Colonial iron industry, then Andrew Carnegie's steel mills in the 1800's and finally electric power plants of more modern times.

Pennsylvania is now the fourth largest coal producer in the United States, following Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Over 69.5 million tons of coal were mined in the state in 1995 (about 6.7 percent of U.S. production) in 878 mining operations directly employing 10,165 people.

Two kinds of coal are mined in Pennsylvania- anthracite (hard coal) and bituminous (softer coal).

Over 60.8 million tons of bituminous coal were mined in 1995 and 8.7 million tons of anthracite.

Since 1870, Pennsylvania's Annual Report on Mining Activities has recorded 51,483 deaths from mining accidents-- 31,113 deaths in anthracite mines and 20,370 deaths in bituminous mines.

Modern mining methods, safety training and inspections in the mining industry have dramatically improved the safety record on the industry to the point where it is about equal to agriculture and the construction industry.

The environmental legacy of hundreds of years of coal mining in Pennsylvania is over 2,400 miles of Pennsylvania's 54,000 miles of streams polluted by acid mine drainage from old mining operations. Acid mine drainage is the single largest source of water pollution by far in the state.

Modern laws and regulations require that present day mining cannot begin if it might result in harm to the environment.

Since 1967, Pennsylvania and the federal government have invested close to $500 million to correct problems from abandoned surface and deep mines.

These reclamation efforts are funded by a 35 cent per ton federal fee on coal being mined today, state reclamation funds from fees and reclamation bonds that have been forfeited.

Over $15 billion worth of reclamation remains yet to be done.

We also have problems like the mine fire that is burning under the town of Centralia, Columbia County.

Pennsylvania has invested $20.7 million to construct 13 acid mine drainage treatment plants around the state to treat acid mine drainage discharges.

This legacy has resulted in a series of environmental laws to regulate coal mining operations that began in 1913.

Economically, mining contributes about 1 percent of Pennsylvania's gross state economic product 43

through over $1.5 billion of direct coal sales, a payroll of nearly $350 million, a support service industry with a payroll of nearly $200 million, business tax revenues of over $1.5 million.

Coal Miners In the Past

A lone miner enters the mouth of a slope Two miners push a coal car out of the mine. mine. Mines were supported solely by wooden timbers in the past. While modern roof bolting technologies are used today, wooden supports are still used in coal mines.

A miner uses a hand drill to prepare a hole for setting an explosive charge to dislodge the coal.

Young "breaker boys" were often used to pick 44

slate from anthracite coal. They often shared this job with disabled older miners who were forced by poverty to continue working.

Miners set timbers to support the mine roof. This was back-breaking work, but was necessary to ensure the main passage ways would remain passable.

While these boys may look to be "dressing up" like dad, they are not at play. Many boys accompanied their fathers into the mines at the turn of the century to perform "dead work" for which the miner was not paid. The boys pictured here worked in After blasting the coal, miners hand load Wyoming mines during World War coal into the coal car. Miners I to help their fathers supply coal to were paid by the ton. the war effort. 45

Around a time of great economic change in the 19th century, millions of people immigrated from Europe to the United States. Often these people left their country with only what was on their back or what was in a small bag. Upon reaching America, the first order of business was to find a job. Many immigrants were attracted to the coal industry because of its great need. The coal industry prospered at the time and was a steady source of income. Magyars (Hungarians), Slovaks, Poles, Carpatho- Russians, Italians and other nationalities joined the work- force of the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company in Windber, Pennsylvania. Immigrants were provided with housing by the Berwind- White Coal Mining Company. Each house contained the same number of rooms and was about the same size. They were all designed in an orderly grid-like system across the town. To the right is a diagram for one of these homes. The house shown is a duplex home where two families would live. Duplex homes were often created to save materials. Neighborhoods were situated near the mine where the family would work. This would help the family avoid any need for transportation to or from work. Each day the 46 miners would walk to work, mine for several hours, then walk home. During the day fathers went deep into the mines while young boys in their mid-teens would be chosen for mining in tight situations or would serve as 'breaker boys'. There was a place for almost everyone in a mining community. During the time when most of the men were working in the mine, mothers and sisters worked at home. They typically bought their household goods such as soap, dishes, or linens at the Company Store. To the left is a view of the main Eureka Department Store. It dates from 1899 and stands on the east corner of 15th Street and Somerset Ave. Buying goods outside the 'Company Store' drew frowns from the coal company; therefore, it was important to purchase goods from the company. In addition, workers were able to use 'Mine Credit' or 'Scrip'. They bought items in good faith then later the bill was deducted from their checks. Most often, this led to a dependency on the coal company; however, families still squeezed out enough money to survive. 47

In times of leisure, families would find it relaxing to go to a show at the Arcadia Theater (right). There they could enjoy plays and vaudeville presentations. In the mid 1920's, the theater began to present 'talkies.' These were the first black and white movies with sound. This represented a new leap in the world of technology and entertainment. Residents of Windber could also enjoy some time at the recreation parks and facilities provided for them. They held church gatherings, pageants, dances, and weekly bingo. Residents also had the opportunity to participate in local 'home team' sports. These types of recreation created a pleasant diversion from the long hours spent in the mine. Windber was founded in 1897 by the Berwinds, a family of entrepreneurs who made a fortune in the coal industry. They used this fortune to systematically design a town complete with houses, churches, banks, schools, company stores, theaters, and even some recreation areas. To the left is the Berwind- White Headquarters, later turned into the Windber Borough Building. Windber and its satellite communities were laid out around mine entrances. Residents were assigned housing near their mine entrance. Each neighborhood was provided with its own electrical 48

generator to light the mines, businesses, and homes. Many of the churches in these neighborhoods were built as a direct result of a Berwind- White donation. To the right is Mine Number 40, which became Berwind- White's most efficient mine. Mine Number 40 demonstrated new mining techniques, state-of-the-art coal washing and loading facilities, and was used to test mining equipment. In 1913 the mine established a national record of just over 800,000 tons for the largest single, annual production in a bituminous coal mine. Mine Number 40 also became the largest producer under Berwind-White, in terms of coal mining and sales.

The Berwind-White Coal Mining Company closed the mine in 1962. Eureka Mine Number 40 and its 'patch town' remain one of the most intact early 20th century establishments in existence today.

Photos of: Mine 40, Berwind-White Headquarters and Eureka Department Store were taken by Jet Lowe, HAER Photographer 49

The West Virginia Coal Mine Wars

1912-1921

Together we stand, divided we fall

Introduction

In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, much of the land of West Virginia was taken over by coal companies. Many people sold their land or were forced to sell their land, not knowing what the consequences would be.

The coal companies set up a system that gave them total control of the town and the people. The houses, hospitals, stores and even the churches were company property. To keep the miners and their families even more dependent, the companies created their own form of money, or scrip, which could only be used in the company stores.

The traditionally independent mountaineers soon became trapped in a dead-end, impossible to leave job. Fortunately, the United Mine Workers of America was created in 1897 and unions were introduced to the area.

The Southern West Virginia counties of Mingo and Logan were kept free of unions due to the iron fist ruling of Sheriff Don Chafin. In order to prevent the penetration of unions, Baldwin-Felts Detectives (gun thugs) were hired to subdue the miners. This was often achieved by carefully watching the miners and enforcing rules such as the prohibition of gathering in large groups, going out at night or anything else that could lead to the discussion of forming a union.

Slowly, union organizers penetrated the companies and secretly got the miners to come together. Great barriers were overcome as men of different races and nationalities worked together to achieve something that they believed in, the right to organize.

Chronology of the Coal Mine Wars

1912 - Miners strike in Paint Creek and Cabin Creek strike and are evicted from their houses; tent colonies are set up.

February 7, 1913 - The Blue Moose Special train passes through the encampment of Cabin Creek and opens fire on the unarmed inhabitants. Cesco Estep is killed in front of his seven-month pregnant wife.

1913 - A reconciliation between the coal operators and the miners leads to the right to organize in Cabin Creek and Paint Creek. 50

1919 - An armed march by some 5,000 miners is organized on Lens Creek with the intention of overtaking Logan county and establishing a union. The march was abandoned some days later when the miners learned that federal troops would be sent in.

1920 - Seven Baldwin-Felts detectives, two miners and the Mayor Testerman are killed in the Matewan Massacre. Sid Hatfield, the Chief of Police of Matewan who was involved in the shooting, is charged with the deaths of the detectives.

August 1, 1921 - Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers are gunned down on the steps of the McDowell County courthouse by C.E. Lively, a Baldwin-Felts detective. Lively is never convicted of the crime.

August 20, 1921 - The second armed march of the miners takes place, with the same intent as the first; to reach Logan County, overthrow the crooked Sheriff Don Chafin and organize a union. What would become known as the Battle of Blair Mountain was composed of some 10,000 armed miners in total, marching from Lens Creek in Kanawha County, to Logan County, some sixty-five miles away.

Conclusion

The Mine Wars end at the Battle of Blair Mountain where Don Chafin and 1,500 men were waiting for the miners. There was sporadic fighting for a week with surprisingly few deaths. The miners eventually disbanded when 2,000 troops, aerial forces as well as chemical warfare troops converged at Blair Mountain.

Although the miners did not succeed in forming unions in Southern West Virginia until the New Deal of 1933 granted the right to organize, the Mine Wars were victorious in that people pulled together to work for what they believed to be a worthy cause. 51

Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina

A novel based on the Battle of Blair Mountain

Introduction Setting

In August of 1921, 10,000 armed Based in fictional Eastern Kentucky miners prepared to storm Blair and southern West Virginia, Storming Mountain, West Virginia in an Heaven begins in 1890 when the coal attempt to free their neighbors who companies moved in and take over the were under the rule of exploitative land, and ends at the Battle of Blair coal camps and company guards. mountain of 1921. The afterward, 2,000 federal troops, a chemical dated 1987, updates the reader that warfare division and aerial since Blair Mountain, nothing has bombardment squads were called in, changed, "the companies still own the as the battle waged for two weeks. At land." the end of the Mine Wars, over a dozen miners were dead and hundreds Characters more injured. Through the voices of four narrators Although the battle took place in this of different backgrounds the story of century, most people, including West the Battle of Blair Mountain is told, Virginians, have forgotten about it, or starting in 1890 and ending in 1987. have never heard of it. Fortunately, in the last few years there have been some books as well as movies made to C. J. Marcum is the first narrator of recount the story. Denise Giardina, a the novel who witnesses first hand the West Virginian who was raised in a cruel and illegal tactics used by the coal camp, has used the Coal Mine coal companies to take the land. He Wars as the background for her becomes a martyr in his fight for fictional novel Storming Heaven. vengeance when he is killed in a shootout between coal company police and the sheriff and miners of the Plot town.

Justice and Payne counties are under Rondal Lloyd is born into the world of the rule of Sheriff Don Chafin who, in coal mining and enters the mines with working with the coal companies, his father at an early age. With the prohibits the right to organize, help and encouragement of Marcum, therefore keeping unions out of these Rondall joins the fight against the counties. After a series of grave operators and eventually becomes a injustices, the miners take up arms union organizer. and march to southern West Virginia with hopes of defeating Chafin and the Carrie Bishop is a nurse who gets coal operators. involved with the plight of the miners. She is a sensible, spiritual person who 52 takes it upon herself to heal everyone’s wounds.

Rosa Angelelli is an immigrant from Sicily who represents all of the minorities that work in the mines. She is the tragic character who loses her husband and four sons to mine accidents.

Conclusion

Through the viewpoints of four different narrators, Storming Heaven shows the social situation between the white, black and immigrant miners, between the miners and the coal operators, and between families as well as the changes and hardships that they endure.

Giardina's portrayal of the injustices committed against the people of Appalachia reflects her own personal views and outrage of the situation.

By using the four narrators whose lives are intertwined, Giardina fictionally depicts the tale of the Mine Wars in a powerful manner that makes the story enjoyable yet haunting, and definitely unforgettable.

Excerpt The Last Girls

By Lee Smith

The river…it all started with the river. How amazing that they ever did it, twelve girls, ever went down this river on that raft, 53

how amazing that they ever thought of it in the first place.

Well, they were young. Young enough to think why not when Baby said it, and then to do it: just like that. Just like Huck Finn and Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which they were reading in Mr. Gaines's Great Authors class at Mary Scott, sophomore year.

Tom Gaines was the closest thing to a hippie on the faculty at Mary Scott, the closest thing to a hippie that most of them had ever seen in 1965, since the sixties had not yet come to girls' schools in Virginia. So far, the sixties had only happened in Time magazine and on television. Life at the fairy-tale Blue Ridge campus was proceeding much as it had for decades past, with only an occasional emissary from the changing world beyond, such as somebody's longhaired folk-singing cousin from up north incongruously flailing his twelve-string guitar on the steps of the white-columned administration building. And Professor Tom Gaines, who wore jeans and work boots to class (along with the required tie and tweed sports jacket), bushy beard hiding half his face, curly reddish-brown hair falling down past his collar. Harriet was sure he'd been hired by mistake. But here he was anyway, big as life and right here on their own ancient campus among the pink brick buildings and giant oaks and long green lawns and little stone benches and urns. Girls stood in line to sign up for his classes. He is so cute, ran the consensus.

But it was more than that, Harriet realized later. Mr. Gaines was passionate. He wept in class, reading "The Dead" aloud. He clenched his fist in fury over Invisible Man, he practically acted out Absalom, Absalom, trying to make them understand it.

Unfortunately for all the students, Mr. Gaines was already married to a dark, frizzy-haired Jewish beauty who wore long tie-dyed skirts and no bra. They carried their little hippie baby, Maeve, with them everywhere in something like a knapsack except when Harriet, widely known as the most responsible English major, came to baby-sit. Now people take babies everywhere, but nobody did it then. You were supposed to stay home with your baby, but Sheila Gaines did not. She had even been seen breast-feeding Maeve publicly in Dana Auditorium, watching her husband act in a Chekov drama. He played Uncle Vanya and wore a waistcoat. They had powdered his hair and 54

put him in little gold spectacles but nothing could obscure the fact that he was really young and actually gorgeous, a young hippie professor playing an old Russian man. Due to the extreme shortage of men at Mary Scott, Mr. Gaines was in all the plays. He was Hamlet and Stanley Kowalski. His wife breast-fed Maeve until she could talk, to everyone's revulsion. But Mr. Gaines's dramatic streak was what made his classes so wonderful. For Huck Finn, he adopted a sort of Mark Twain persona as he read aloud from the book, striding around the old high-ceilinged room with his thumbs hooked under imaginary galluses. Even this jovial approach failed to charm Harriet, who had read the famous novel once before, in childhood, but now found it disturbing not only in the questions it raised about race but also in Huck's loneliness, which Harriet had overlooked the first time through, caught up as she was in the adventure. In Mr. Gaines's class, Harriet got goosebumps all over when he read aloud:

Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippoorwill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die, and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of sound that a ghost makes.

…

This passage could have been describing Harriet; it could have been describing her life right then. Mr. Gaines was saying something about Huck's "estrangement" as "existential," as "presaging the modern novel," but Harriet felt it as personal, deep in her bones. She believed it was what country people meant when they said they felt somebody walking across their grave. For even in the midst of college, here at Mary Scott where she was happier than she would ever be again, Harriet Holding continued to have these moments she'd had ever since she could remember, as a girl and as a young woman, ever since she was a child. Suddenly a stillness would come over everything, a hush, then a dimming of the light, followed by a burst of radiance during which she could see everything truly, everything, each leaf on a tree in all its distinctness and brief 55

beauty, each hair on the top of somebody's hand, each crumb on a tablecloth, each black and inevitable marching word on a page. During these moments Harriet was aware of herself and her beating heart and the perilous world with a kind of rapture that could not be borne, really, leaving her finally with a little headache right between the eyes and a craving for chocolate and a sense of relief. She was still prone to such intensity. There was no predicting it either. You couldn't tell when these times might occur or when they would go away. Her mother used to call it "getting all wrought up." "Harriet," she often said, "you're just getting all wrought up. Calm down, honey."

But Harriet couldn't help it.

Another day Mr. Gaines read from the section where Huck and Jim are living on the river:

Sometimes we'd have that whole river to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water, and maybe a spark—which was a candle in a cabin window…and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft.

His words had rung out singly, like bells, in the old classroom. Harriet could hear each one in her head. It was a cold pale day in February. Out the window, bare trees stood blackly amid the gray tatters of snow.

Then Baby had said, "I'd love to do that. Go down the Mississippi River on a raft, I mean." It was a typical response from Baby, who personalized everything, who was famous for saying, "Well, I'd never do that!" at the end of The Awakening when Edna Pontellier walks into the ocean. Baby was not capable of abstract thought. She had too much imagination. Everything was real for her, close up and personal.

"We could do it, you know," Suzanne St. John spoke up. "My uncle owns a plantation right on the river, my mother was raised there. She'd know who to talk to. I'll bet we could do it if we wanted to." Next to Courtney, Suzanne St. John was the most organized girl in school, an angular forthright girl with a businesslike grown-up hairdo who ran a mail-order stationery business out of her dorm room.

"Girls, girls," Mr. Gaines had said disapprovingly. He wanted 56

to get back to the book, he wanted to be the star. But the girls were all looking at each other. Baby's eyes were shining. "YES!" she wrote on a piece of paper, handing it to Harriet, who passed it along to Suzanne. Yes. This was Baby's response to everything.

Excerpted from The Last Girls. Copyright © 2002 by Lee Smith.

© 2004 Borders, Inc. All rights reserved.

A Parchment of Leaves by Silas House

One Those words flew out of my mouth, as sneaky and surprising as little birds that 57 had been waiting behind my teeth to get tending to, would rush off the porch out. Apparently, they did the trick. I even though Mama had ordered me to could see my announcement making a peel potatoes. The more he come by, the fist around his heart. I was so full of harder it was to stay away from him. myself, so confident. One thing I knowed I could do was charm a man Mama frowned on all of this. Every time until he couldn't hardly stand it. I'd get back from being with him, she'd wear a long, dark face and not meet my I wanted Saul Sullivan, plain and simple. eyes. "It's not fitting," she said. "People That was all there was to it. I didn't love ought to court their own kind." him—that came later—but I thought that I did. I mistook lust for love, I guess. I "There ain't no Cherokee boys to court," knowed that I could fill up some hole I said. "They've left here." that he had inside of himself and hadn't even been aware of until laying eyes on "Just the same," Mama said, and dashed me. Saul looked to me like he needed to water out onto the yard. Her face was lay his head down in somebody's lap and square and unmovable. "Them Irish are let them run their hand in a circle on his all drunks." back until he was lulled off to sleep. I knowed that I was the person to do it. I I couldn't help but laugh at her, even had been waiting a long time for such a though I knew this would make her feeling to come to me. furious. "Good Lord, Mama, that's what they say about Cherokees, too." That whole summer, I kept one eye on the road as I went about my chores. I Daddy made no objections. Him and throwed corn to the chickens without Saul went hunting together and stood even watching them, bent over to pick around in the yard kicking at the dust beans and looked upside down at the while they talked about guns and dogs. road, where I might see his horse come Saul brought him quarts of moonshine trotting down foamy mouthed and big and sacks of ginseng. We were kin to eyed. At first, when I caught sight of everybody in Redbud Camp, and when Saul heading down into Redbud Camp, I they seen that Daddy had warmed to would turn back to the task at hand and Saul, they started speaking to me again. make him think I hadn't seen him Everybody looked up to Daddy, and if coming. He'd have to stop at the gate and he approved of Saul, they felt required to yell out for me. I did this just to hear him do the same. My aunts Hazel and Zelda holler. I loved his full-throated cry: and Tressy even seemed to be taken with "Vine! Come here to me!" I loved to him. They talked about him while they hear my name on his tongue. But as hung clothes on the line, while they summer steamed on, I couldn't bring canned kraut in the shade, when myself to continue such games, and I'd everyone gathered to hear Daddy's rush out to the road as soon as I seen him hunting tales at dusk. coming. I'd throw down the hoe or the bucket of blackberries or whatever I was "Wonder if he's freckled all over," Hazel packing. I'd leave one of my little whispered. She was much older than me cousins that I was supposed to be but had been widowed at a young age, 58 and we had always been like sisters. She blackberries ripe and about to bust on the laughed behind cupped hands. "You vines. The sky was without one stain of know, down there." cloud, and there didn't seem to be a sound besides that of his horse "You don't know, do you, Vine?" Tressy scratching its neck against a scaly- asked, jabbing her elbow into my ribs. barked hickory and the pretty racket of the falls. We sat there where we always "They say the Irish are akin to horses," did, watching the creek fall into the Zelda said, "if you know what I mean." river. The creek was so fast and loud that you couldn't do much talking there. This I had been around horses enough to wall of noise gave us the chance to sit know what this meant, so when they all there and study each other. I spent hours collapsed in laughter, I had to join in. looking at the veins in his arms, the calluses on his hands. He had taken a job I couldn't have cared less if they loved at the sawmill and this had made his him or if they had all hated him and met arms firm, his hands much bigger. When him at the bridge with snarls and we wanted to speak, we'd have to either shotguns. I had decided that I was going holler or lean over to each other's ears. It to have him. was a good courting place on this account. Any two people can set and jaw Our courting never took us past the all day long, but it takes two people right mouth of Redbud. Even though Daddy for each other to set together and just be thought a lot of Saul, he wouldn't allow quiet. And it's good to have to talk close it. Daddy had said that I was his most to somebody's ear. Sometimes when he precious stone. "I'll let you trail from my did this, his hot breath would send a fingers, but not be plucked," Daddy told shudder all through me. me one evening when Saul came calling. That day, he run his rough hand down I didn't care where we went, as long as the whole length of my hair and he come to see me, but I would have smoothed the ends out onto the rock liked to ride off on that fine horse with behind me. I closed my eyes and savored him a time or two without worrying how the feeling of him touching me in such a far we went. I thought a lot about how it way. I have always believed that would feel to just slip away, to just wrap somebody touching your head is a sign my arms around Saul's waist and take of love, and his doing so got to me so off. We never got to do that, though. We badly that I felt like crying out. It always went down to the confluence of seemed better to me than if he had Redbud Creek and the Black Banks leaned me back onto the rock and set River. There was a great big rock there, into kissing. I knowed exactly how cool round as an unbaked biscuit. It had a my hair was beneath his fingers, how his crooked nose that jutted out over the big palm could have fit my head just like water. This was our spot. a cap if he had taken the notion to position it in such a way, and I closed Summer was barely gone before he my eyes. asked me to marry him. I remember the way the air smelled that day—like The closer it got to dark, the louder the 59 water seemed to be. The sky was red at "What do you expect me to do? Mash the horizon, and the moon drifted like a out what you want so bad?" She stood white melon rind in the purple sky there in the doorway, folding a sheet opposite. with such force that I thought the creases might never come out. She worked it "Vine?" I heard him yell. into a neat square, then snapped it out onto the still air and folded it again. I turned to face him. "What?" "I'll tell him to go ahead with it, but you "We ought to just get married," he know it ain't what I want. It's not right. hollered. Your daddy's great-great-granny was killed by white men. My people bout I nodded. "Well," I mouthed. I didn't starved to death hiding in them want to scream out my acceptance, but I mountains when they moved everbody sure felt like it. I turned back to the creek out. I can't forgive that." and was aware of my shoulders arching up in the smile that just about cut my "That was a long time ago," I said. face in half. "Eighty years, almost."

*** "Might as well been yesterday."

I stood within the shadows of the porch "Daddy says we're Americans now," I when Saul took Daddy out in the yard to said, searching for something to say. ask for my hand. I had told Saul that it was customary to ask the mother of a Mama's eyes were small and black and Cherokee girl first, but he felt it would her skin seemed to be stretched tightly be a betrayal of Daddy if he did not tell on her skull. I turned away, as I couldn't him before anyone else. They were look at her. "Tetsalagia," Mama said. I friends, after all. am Cherokee. I knew this much of our old language, as Mama said it to Daddy Daddy leaned against the gate, his face when they got into fights about how made darker and older by the dying their children ought to be raised up. light. I knowed Daddy would say it was "That's his way," she said. "Not mine." all right, but that he'd tell Saul to ask for Mama's permission. I seen Daddy nod "Don't do me thisaway, Mama. Your his head and put his finger to the touch- own sister married a white man." me-not bush that hung on the fence. All of the flowers were gone from it now, "And I ain't heard tell of her since. She's for summer was beginning to die. For forgot everything about herself." some reason, I felt sick to my stomach. "I never knowed much to begin with," I Mama's voice was hot beside my ear. said, more hateful than I intended. "You "It's been decided, then." all act like the past is a secret."

"Not unless you say so." "Well, that's your Daddy's fault. Not mine." 60

uncles got drunk when they were tore In the yard, Saul and Daddy stood with up, but Daddy always just went up on their hands in their pockets. I realized Redbud and listened to the wind whistle that their friendship was gone. They'd in the rocks. never go hunting together or go on with their notion of butchering a hog together Saul strode across the yard, as deliberate this winter. Now they would only be and broad shouldered as a man plowing father and son-in-law, one dodging the a field. I eased past Mama. I didn't want other. Saul would take me away from to be out there when he asked her for my this creek, and Daddy would hold it hand. I didn't want to remember the way against him, whether he intended to or her face would look when she agreed to not. They looked like they were it. searching for something else to talk about. I lit a lamp and made the wick long so that I could see good by it. I carried the "You know you'll have to leave this lamp through each little room, trying to place," she said, like she could read my memorize the house I had knowed all my thoughts. She whispered, as if they life. I made a list of two or three things I might hear us. "Leave Redbud Camp. wanted to take: one of the quilts Mama All the people you've knowed your and her sisters had made, the cedar box whole life." my granddaddy had carved, the walnut bushel basket I had always gathered my "I know it, Mama. I'm eighteen year old, beans in. I was homesick already and though. Most girls my age has babies," I hadn't even left. I sucked in the smell of said, but this didn't make a bit of the place, memorized the squeaks in the difference to her. She put her hand on floor. I run my hands over Mama's my arm, and I turned to face her. enamel dishpan, wrapped my fingers about the barrel of the shotgun Daddy "I don't want you to leave me," she said. kept by the door. I knowed this had been hard for her to put into words; she was not the kind of When I walked back into the front room, woman who said what her heart needed I knowed Saul would be standing there to announce. I listened for tears in her in the door. I didn't run to him. I set the voice but could hear none. She was too lamp down on a low table so that my stubborn to cry for me, but her words face would be lost to the grayness. I just about killed me. "I'm afraid I'll never didn't want him to see the hesitation on see you again." my face. He was so happy he was breathing hard. "It's decided," he said. "That's foolishness," I said. "You know I'd never let that happen." Still I stood in the center of the room, although I knowed he wanted me to There was movement down on the yard, come be folded up in his big arms. and I watched as Daddy headed up the road. I could see that he was hurt over "I know we'll have to live with your my leaving. He was walking up on the people," I said, "so I want to marry mountain to think awhile. Most of my amongst mine." 61

from grief or happiness, for both gave "All right," he said, and then he come to me wild stirrings in my gut. me and picked me up. I cried into the nape of his neck, not knowing if it was

Excerpted from A Parchment of Leaves © Copyright 2003 by Silas House. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from River of Earth by James Still

It was middle afternoon. Euly and I ran along the road to see the town, and to look into the creek beyond. We stole away from Fletch. I had in head seeing the two blind mules Father had told me the foreman kept at his place. We looked at the rows of houses in the valley bottom. Eight houses were high on the hill. At the far end of the camp rooms hung over creek waters, sitting on posts. Our homeseat was near the burning slag pile, low in a nest of houses. The camp was alive with the groan of the conveyor. It rang through the town like a rusty bell. 62

"I used to know who lived in every house," Euly said, "but a pack of strangers have moved in. I hardly know a body."

"Recollect the feller who grabbed a mole in our garden?" I asked. "Sid Pindler, his name was. Ab Stevall and Fruit Corbitt come with him. If'n I met air one, I'd know 'em."

"Fruit is the storekeeper," Euly said. "Once I went to buy a box o' pepper and he dropped a piece of horehound candy in the poke." ....

"I hear they's a fortune-telling woman lives in this camp," Euly said. "I'd give anything to have my fortune told."

"An herb doc lives here," I reminded. "Recollect Nezzie Crouch said so. Wonder if they's a granny woman?"

"We're going to buy buttermilk from Nezzie Crouch," Euly bragged, "and I'm going to fotch it every day."

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

Desert Solitaire, drawn largely from the pages of a multi-volume journal the author began in 1956 and kept over several seasons as a ranger in Arches National Monument (now a national park), was published "on a dark night in the dead of winter" in 1968. 63

The book later moved the novelist Larry McMurtry to declare Abbey "the Thoreau of the American West," but it was greeted at first with little acclaim and slow sales. Since then, readers have supported the book through a long history of printings that led to what the author declared to be the "new and revised and absolutely terminal edition" brought out by The University of Arizona Press in 1988. It is that twentieth anniversary edition from which our excerpt, from the chapter titled "Terra Incognita: Into the Maze," is taken:

We camp the first night in the Green River Desert, just a few miles off the Hanksville road, rise early and head east, into the dawn, through the desert toward the hidden river. Behind us the pale fangs of the San Rafael Reef gleam in the early sunlight; above them stands Temple Mountain - uranium country, poison springs country, headwaters of the Dirty Devil. Around us the Green River Desert rolls away to the north, south and east, an absolutely treeless plain, not even a juniper in sight, nothing but sand, blackbrush, prickly pear, a few sunflowers. Directly eastward we can see the blue and hazy La Sal Mountains, only sixty miles away by line of sight but twice that far by road, with nothing whatever to suggest the fantastic, complex and impassable gulf that falls between here and there. The Colorado River and its tributary the Green, with their vast canyons and labyrinth of drainages, lie below the level of the plateau on which we are approaching them, "under the ledge," as they say in Moab.

The scenery improves as we bounce onward over the winding, dusty road: reddish sand dunes appear, dense growths of sunflowers cradled in their leeward crescents. More and more sunflowers, whole fields of them, acres and acres of gold - perhaps we should call this the Sunflower Desert. We see a few baldface cows, pass a corral and windmill, meet a rancher coming out in his pickup truck. Nobody lives in this area but it is utilized nevertheless; the rancher we saw probably has his home in Hanksville or the little town of Green River.

Halfway to the river and the land begins to rise, gradually, much like the approach to Grand Canyon from the south. What we are going to see is comparable, in fact, to the Grand Canyon - I write this with reluctance - in scale and grandeur, though not so clearly stratified or brilliantly colored. As the land rises the vegetation becomes richer, for the desert almost luxuriant: junipers appear, first as isolated individuals and then in stands, pinyon pines loaded with cones and vivid colonies of sunflowers, chamisa, 64

golden beeweed, scarlet penstemon, skyrocket gilia (as we near 7000 feet), purple asters and a kind of yellow flax. Many of the junipers - the females - are covered with showers of light-blue berries, that hard bitter fruit with the flavor of gin. Between the flowered patches and the clumps of trees are meadows thick with gramagrass and shining Indian ricegrass_and not a cow, horse, deer or buffalo anywhere. For God 's sake, Bob, I'm thinking, let 's stop this machine, get out there and eat some grass! But he grinds on in singleminded second gear, bound for Land's End, and glory.

Flocks of pinyon jays fly off, sparrows dart before us, a redtailed hawk soars overhead. We climb higher, the land begins to break away: we head a fork of Happy Canyon, pass close to the box head of Millard Canyon. A fork in the road, with one branch old, rocky and seldom used, the other freshly bulldozed through the woods. No signs. We stop, consult our maps, and take the older road; the new one has probably been made by some oil exploration outfit.

Again the road brings us close to the brink of Millard Canyon and here we see something like a little shrine mounted on a post. We stop. The wooden box contains a register book for visitors, brand- new, with less than a dozen entries, put here by the BLM--Bureau of Land Management. "Keep the tourists out," some tourist from Salt Lake City has written. As fellow tourists we heartily agree.

On to French Spring, where we find two steel granaries and the old cabin, open and empty. On the wall inside is a large water- stained photograph in color of a naked woman. The cowboy's agony. We can't find the spring but don't look very hard, since all of our water cans are still full.

We drive south down a neck of the plateau between canyons dropping away, vertically, on either side. Through openings in the dwarf forest of pinyon and juniper we catch glimpses of hazy depths, spires, buttes, orange cliffs. A second fork presents itself in the road and again we take the one to the left, the older one less traveled by, and come all at once to the big jump and the head of the Flint Trail. We stop, get out to reconnoiter.

The Flint Trail is actually a jeep track, switchbacking down a talus slope, the only break in the sheer wall of the plateau for a hundred sinuous miles. Originally a horse trail, it was enlarged to jeep size by the uranium hunters, who found nothing down below worth bringing up in trucks, and abandoned it. Now, after the recent 65

rains, which were also responsible for the amazing growth of grass and flowers we have seen, we find the trail marvelously eroded, stripped of all vestiges of soil, trenched and gullied down to bare rock, in places more like a stairway than a road. Even if we can get the Land Rover down this thing, how can we ever get it back up again?

But it doesn't occur to either of us to back away from the attempt. We are determined to get into The Maze. Waterman has great confidence in his machine; and furthermore, as with anything seductively attractive, we are obsessed only with getting in; we can worry later about getting out.

Munching pinyon nuts fresh from the trees nearby, we fill the fuel tank and cache the empty jerrycan, also a full one, in the bushes. Pine nuts are delicious, sweeter than hazelnuts but difficult to eat; you have to crack the shells in your teeth and then, because they are smaller than peanut kernels, you have to separate the meat from the shell with your tongue. If one had to spend a winter in Frenchy's cabin, let us say, with nothing to eat but pinyon nuts, it is an interesting question whether or not you could eat them fast enough to keep from starving to death. Have to ask the Indians about this.

Glad to get out of the Land Rover and away from the gasoline fumes, I lead the way on foot down the Flint Trail, moving what rocks I can out of the path. Waterman follows with the vehicle in first gear, low range and four-wheel drive, creeping and lurching downward from rock to rock, in and out of the gutters, at a speed too slow to register on the speedometer. The descent is four miles long, in vertical distance about two thousand feet. In places the trail is so narrow that he has to scrape against the inside wall to get through. The curves are banked the wrong way, sliding toward the outer edge, and the turns at the end of each switchback are so tight that we must jockey the Land Rover back and forth to get it through them. But all goes well and in an hour we arrive at the bottom.

Here we pause for a while to rest and to inspect the fragments of low-grade, blackish petrified wood scattered about the base of a butte. To the northeast we can see a little of The Maze, a vermiculate area of pink and white rock beyond and below the ledge we are now on, and on this side of it a number of standing monoliths - Candlestick Spire, Lizard Rock and others unnamed. 66

Close to the river now, down in the true desert again, the heat begins to come through; we peel off our shirts before going on. Thirteen miles more to the end of the road. We proceed, following the dim tracks through a barren region of slab and sand thinly populated with scattered junipers and the usual scrubby growth of prickly pear, yucca and the alive but lifeless-looking blackbrush. The trail leads up and down hills, in and out of washes and along the spines of ridges, requiring fourwheel drive most of the way.

After what seems like another hour we see ahead the welcome sight of cottonwoods, leaves of green and gold shimmering down in a draw. We take a side track toward them and discover the remains of an ancient corral, old firepits, and a dozen tiny rivulets of water issuing from a thicket of tamarisk and willow on the canyon wall. This should be Big Water Spring. Although we still have plenty of water in the Land Rover we are mighty glad to see it.

In the shade of the big trees, whose leaves tinkle musically, like gold foil, above our heads, we eat lunch and fill our bellies with the cool sweet water, and lie on our backs and sleep and dream. A few flies, the fluttering leaves, the trickle of water give a fine edge and scoring to the deep background of - silence? No - of stillness, peace.

I think of music, and of a musical analogy to what seems to me the unique spirit of desert places. Suppose for example that we can find a certain resemblance between the music of Bach and the sea; the music of Debussy and a forest glade; the music of Beethoven and (of course) great mountains; then who has written of the desert?

Mozart? Hardly the outdoor type, that fellow - much too elegant, symmetrical, formally perfect. Vivaldi, Corelli, Monteverdi? - cathedral interiors only - fluid architecture. Jazz? The best of jazz for all its virtues cannot escape the limitations of its origin: it is indoor music, city music, distilled from the melancholy nightclubs and the marijuana smoke of dim, sad, nighttime rooms: a joyless sound, for all its nervous energy.

In the desert I am reminded of something quite different - the bleak, thin-textured work of men like Berg, Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, Webern and the American, Elliot Carter. Quite by accident, no doubt, although both Schoenberg and Krenek lived part of their lives in the Southwest, their music comes closer than 67

any other I know to representing the apartness, the otherness, the strangeness of the desert. Like certain aspects of this music, the desert is also a-tonal, cruel, clear, inhuman, neither romantic nor classical, motionless and emotionless, at one and the same time - another paradox - both agonized and deeply still.

Like death? Perhaps. And perhaps that is why life nowhere appears so brave, so bright, so full of oracle and miracle as in the desert.

Waterman has another problem. As with Newcomb down in Glen Canyon - what is this thing with beards? - he doesn't want to go back. Or says he doesn't. Doesn't want to go back to Aspen. Where the draft board waits for him, Robert Waterman. It seems that the U.S. Government - what country is that? - has got another war going somewhere, I forget exactly where, on another continent as usual, and they want Waterman to go over there and fight for them. For IT, I mean - when did a government ever consist of human beings? And Waterman doesn't want to go, he might get killed. And for what?

As any true patriot would, I urge him to hide down here under the ledge. Even offer to bring him supplies at regular times, and the news, and anything else he might need. He is tempted - but then remembers his girl. There's a girl back in Denver. I'll bring her too, I tell him. He decides to think it over.

In the meantime we refill the water bag, get back in the Land Rover and drive on. Seven more miles rough as a cob around the crumbling base of Elaterite Butte, some hesitation and backtracking among alternate jeep trails, all of them dead ends, and we finally come out near sundown on the brink of things, nothing beyond but nothingness - a veil, blue with remoteness - and below the edge the northerly portion of The Maze.

We can see deep narrow canyons down in there branching out in all directions, and sandy floors with clumps of trees--oaks? cottonwoods? Dividing one canyon from the next are high thin partitions of nude sandstone, smoothly sculptured and elaborately serpentine, colored in horizontal bands of gray, buff, rose and maroon. The melted ice-cream effect again - Neapolitan ice cream. On top of one of the walls stand four gigantic monoliths, dark red, angular and square-cornered, capped with remnants of the same hard white rock on which we have brought the Land Rover to a stop. Below these monuments and beyond them the 68

innumerable canyons extend into the base of Elaterite Mesa (which underlies Elaterite Butte) and into the south and southeast for as far as we can see. It is like a labyrinth indeed - a labyrinth with the roof removed.

Very interesting. But first things first. Food. We build a little juniper fire and cook our supper. High wind blowing now - drives the sparks from our fire over the rim, into the velvet abyss. We smoke good cheap cigars and watch the colors slowly change and fade upon the canyon walls, the four great monuments, the spires and buttes and mesas beyond.

What shall we name those four unnamed formations standing erect above this end of The Maze? From our vantage point they are the most striking landmarks in the middle ground of the scene before us. We discuss the matter. In a far-fetched way they resemble tombstones, or altars, or chimney stacks, or stone tablets set on end. The waning moon rises in the east, lagging far behind the vanished sun. Altars of the Moon? That sounds grand and dramatic - but then why not Tablets of the Sun, equally so? How about Tombs of Ishtar? Gilgamesh? Vishnu? Shiva the Destroyer?

Why call them anything at all? asks Waterman; why not let them alone? And to that suggestion I instantly agree; of course - why name them? Vanity, vanity, nothing but vanity: the itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things. Let them and leave them alone - they'll survive for a few more thousand years, more or less, without any glorification from us.

But at once another disturbing thought comes to mind: if we don't name them somebody else surely will. Then, says Waterman in effect, let the shame be on their heads. True, I agree, and yet - and yet Rilke said that things don't truly exist until the poet gives them names. Who was Rilke? he asks. Rainer Maria Rilke, I explain, was a German poet who lived off countesses. I thought so, he says; that explains it. Yes, I agree once more, maybe it does; still - we might properly consider the question strictly on its merits. If any, says Waterman. It has some, I insist.

Through naming comes knowing; we grasp an object, mentally, by giving it a name - hension, prehension, apprehension. And thus through language create a whole world, corresponding to the other world out there. Or we trust that it corresponds. Or perhaps, like a German poet, we cease to care, becoming more concerned with the naming than with the things named; the former becomes more 69

real than the latter. And so in the end the world is lost again. No, the world remains - those unique, particular, incorrigibly individual junipers and sandstone monoliths - and it is we who are lost. Again. Round and round, through the endless labyrinth of thought - the maze.

Edward Abbey was originally from Indiana, PA

THE BOOGER FAMILY

By Bob Henry Baber © 2002

Have you ever gone to bed with a cold, or caught one overnight, and woke up, sad to say, with your nostrils encrusted with boogers? Come on. Be honest. I'll admit, I have.

Anyway, one school morning I heard my boy Cody grumbling big time as he came downstairs. 70

One look revealed the source of his discomfort. Perhaps I shouldn't have, but, being an unreformed tease I heard myself laughingly say,

"Well, well, I see that the Booger Family has come to visit the Nose Hotel!"

To say the least, Cody was neither pleased nor amused.

Now, when you're a father it's your job to clean up messes such as green barnacles stuck to a nose. And while doing so it's also your job to tell an appropriately distracting story. So, while working with a warm soapy washcloth and Q-tips, I spoke thusly:

"Let's see. Looks like there's A Big Crusty Father Booger with a mustache, named Wilson Pickett Booger, A Soft Momma Booger in green sweatpants, and Three Little Baby Boogers: the twins: Rufus and Doofus, and their little sister, Iggy Pop. People say she's a smart little booger."

"What are they doing in the Nose Hotel," Cody asked, forgetting for just a second that I was chiseling on his nose.

"I don't know," I said. "Let me have a closer look."

"Well, I'll be..."

"What is it?" Cody asked.

By Jingo these Boogers are Banjo Pickers and they're on their way to an Appalachian Pickin' Contest. Right now it looks as if they're just hangin' out, though, if you see what I mean."

Cody laughed in spite of himself. The he sneezed! A Giant tornado of a sneeze!

"Uh oh, I think the Booger Family just had a Family Blow-out, son!" 71

By this time Cody's Nose Hotel was completely cleaned up, and he was ready to head down the street and off to school.

As he went out the door, I yelled after him, "Wait, I hear them fiddling a familiar song..." I tilted my head to the side, like a dog that's just heard a siren. ",,,yes...yes...that's it: 'Dinah won't you blow, Dinah won't you blow, Dinah won't you blow your no-o-ose. Someone's in the nostril with Dinah. Someone's in the nostril I know o-o-o. Someone's in the nostril with Dinah-- strummin' on a green banjo.'"

Now listeners, if you don't think any of this is true just remember COMING VERY SOON TO A NEIGHBORHOOD AND A NOSE NEAR YOU

IT'S THE BOOGER FAMILY!

--END--

Saints and Villains by Denise Giardina: Chapter 1

From the Reader's Circle Web site: http://www.randomhouse.com/BB/readerscircle/

Sabine taffeta, and Paula Bonhoeffer considered a skirt a convenience to Fraulein Horn, WHEN HE WAS SMALL, he was often who must change the diapers. Dietrich's mistaken for a girl. It was still the featherylight blond hair, worn long and fashion in many well-to-do families to curling in corkscrews at the ends to dress little boys in gowns of lace and frame his round face, added to the effect. 72

And since three of the four youngest trumpeting elephants, the grumbling children were girls, strangers who lions, the sharp cries of monkeys and admired Christel, Sabine, and Baby Suse plumed birds. During the Great War, the in her pram included the fourth cries grew more desperate, then weaker. Bonhoeffer "daughter" in their praise as Sometimes they were screams of agony. well. The oldest brother, Karl-Friedrich, said poor people from Wedding and "Astonishing," people would say when Prenzlauer Berg would slip inside at the children went with Fraulein Horn for night and slaughter the animals, strip the a stroll in the Tiergarten, "that two little carcasses to the bone, and carry away the girls with such different coloring should exotic meat in bloody sacks. At night, be twins"--this because Sabine had dark high in their third-floor room, Dietrich brown hair and black eyes, while spoke with God about the animals, while Dietrich was fair. Sabine remained anchored in the world, watchful. He thought he heard God Fraulein Horn would nod as she pushed answer, but still the animals died. the pram and say, "After all, they aren't identical twins. This one in fact"-- Karl Bonhoeffer was Germany's leading pointing to the blond head--"is a little psychiatrist and a great opponent of boy." Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. His wife, Paula, was the daughter of Prussian "You don't say." aristocracy. So it was fitting they should possess a large household. There was At three he wore lederhosen and his hair Fraulein Horn, the governess. A butler, was trimmed to the bottom of his ears, so Schmidt, and two housemaids, Elli and he was no longer sometimes a she. But Maria. The cook, Anna. The chauffeur, with his large eyes and pale skin he was Keppel. Put during the Great War, even still a beautiful child. Now people said, the Bonhoeffers' bread was more "With that hair, this one should have sawdust than flour. been a girl." The house in the Bruckenallee was near To make up for it, he tried to act as he the Bellevue station, and convoys of thought boys should act. He took charge lorries passed by each day on their way of Sabine and Baby Suse, not in a to meet trains bearing the remains of bullying way, but in the role of teacher soldiers killed in France. Before long the and defender, directing their play and lorries carried familiar dead, first the watching out for dangers beneath the bed relatives of schoolmates, then a and beyond the garden wall. He did not Bonhoeffer cousin from Schwabisch- know that Sabine felt the same. When Hall, then von Hase and von Kalckreuth the twins sat for their portrait at age cousins. Paula Bonhoeffer lost several seven, it was Sabine's hand that rested Prussian nephews. She could not bear protectively on Dietrich's shoulder. the rows of coffins at the Bellevue station, was frantic to keep her children They lived then in the Bruckenallee, near from seeing them, as though they might the zoo. Sometimes at night the children be cursed by the sight. So her husband could hear the animals in their cages, the moved the family to WangenheimstraBe 73

14 in the Grunewald quarter. It was a That night Dietrich paid for his war lust, large house with a garden, so the family like a glutton who suffers stomach pains could grow its own produce, and every after an evening of indulgence. He and evening when lessons were done, the Sabine shared a room overlooking the children of parents who had never garden. The plain oak beds stood side by known menial labor put on their side with a table between. A cross hung gardening smocks and took up their on the far wall--their mother's doing. It hoes. was also Paula who led mealtime and evening prayers, while her husband sat Then the two oldest boys, Karl-Friedrich by with a bemused but tolerant and Walter, were conscripted. Dr. Karl expression. Karl Bonhoeffer was an Bonhoeffer could have called upon his agnostic but believed religions extensive connections and obtained safe observance to be useful and character- commissions for them; he was pleased building for women and children. The though apprehensive when they rejected older boys soon followed his lead and such special treatment and requested openly expressed their doubts about their frontline duties. Dietrich, who was mother's faith, but the twins enjoyed the eleven, noted his father's pride and prayers and the hymns their mother sang wished he were old enough to join his as she tucked them into bed at night. brothers. He secretly followed the They liked to lie on their backs and stare progress of the Kaiser's troops on a map at the cross, iridescent in the moonlight, in his desk drawer, blue-flagged pins for its surface shimmering as though it were the hated Allies, red pins for the underwater. Fatherland. On the night his brothers went away to The secrecy was necessary because of war, Dietrich said, "Mama told us good his mother. In 1914, Christel had come people go to heaven when they die. But skipping down the Bruckenallee what if they don't like heaven? Or what sidewalk calling, "Hurrah, there's to be a if they don't go anywhere?" war!" Paula Bonhoeffer had slapped her daughter's face. When Karl-Friedrich Sabine turned away from the cross and and Walter left for the front, the family shut her eyes. "Don't think about it." and servants walked in a small parade, carrying hampers of food, to the "It's for eternity," he said. "Think what Halensee station to see them off. The that means, Sabine. You can say the parents kissed each of the young men in word over and over and over and over farewell. More than any thing this and still not be at the end of anything." marked the solemnity of the occasion, for in the Bonhoeffer family kisses were He flopped onto his stomach, wrestled bestowed only on birthdays and at the bedclothes a moment, then turned Christmas. Dietrich thought the day a over onto his back again. glorious one until the train pulled out of the station and his distraught mother ran "Say it," he said. "Say 'eternity.'" the length of the platform calling out the names of her sons. "Eternity," Sabine replied. 74

He began a chant. "Eternity eternity Goodnight. eternity eternity eternity ..." Goodnight. "Stop!" Sabine commanded. Goodnight. He fell silent. She heard him breathing loudly. Then he whispered in a terror- Goo-night. stricken voice, "Sabine! I'm afraid I'm going to die!" Goo--

She sat up. "What?" Most nights, he was still awake when she nodded off. "I'm afraid I'm going to die, right this minute. I have to think about every Then Walter was wounded. In his last breath. Talk to me, Sabine." letter home, he wrote

"Shall I read to you?" Dear Family, I've had my second operation. It was disagreeable, because He lay back on his pillow, breathing the fragments of shrapnel were quite heavily. "Yes, please." deep. I have been given two camphor injections. Perhaps that will suffice. I She turned on the light between their refuse to contemplate the pain. Instead, I beds and found a copy of fairy stories think of you, my family, with every left on the table by Fraulein Horn. She ounce of strength that remains. began to read the story of the Wild Swans. By the time the princess sat Karl Bonhoeffer read the letter aloud to spinning shirts from nettles, he was the family gathered in the parlor, Paula asleep. seated with her hands in her lap and the children gathered around her. Then he They fell into a ritual then. Sabine must removed his eyeglasses and looked at read to Dietrich, or tell him good night each of them in turn. "You see," he said, until he fell asleep. As long as he heard "how Walter writes? He does not seek to her voice, he couldn't die. Night after deny the pain of his circumstances, yet night she fought to stay awake so she he is modest. He does not complain. This could keep her brother alive. is how a Bonhoeffer conducts himself. Your brother is a great credit to our "Good night." family and to Germany."

"Good night." When word came of Walter's death soon after, Karl Bonhoeffer called the family "Goodnight." together once more to read the official telegram. The children began to sob, and "Goodnight." Paula, who was receiving the news at the same time as the others, gave a small cry Goodnight. and stood with a stricken look on her face. Her husband raised his hand and 75 said, "For the sake of the children, my On warm nights they could open their dear, we must show strength and windows, lean out, and talk to each forbearance." His wife looked at him and other, their heads dark ovals against the walked out of the house. The next-door faint light of the moon. When they were neighbors, the von Harnacks found her done, they reached out, arms white in the sitting in their drawing room, rocking moonlight. They couldn't touch. back and forth, mute. They put her to bed for several weeks, and when she He thought he was being punished for finally returned to her own house, she Walter's death. still could not speak. This continued for several months, until one morning she For most of his childhood, it was said, as though nothing had happened, "I assumed that music would be Dietrich's think I should like a cup of tea." Her vocation. This was what his father husband took off his glasses and laid foresaw, and so it was accepted. Karl- them on the breakfast table, kissed her Friedrich would he the scientist, Walter on the forehead, and poured the tea. would have been the lawyer, the girls When the children came downstairs with were talented but would marry and raise Fraulein Horn, he said, with a severe families. As for Dietrich, he might have glance that warned off an emotional chosen law as well, or medicine, but he response, "Your mother is feeling better seemed to have an aptitude for neither. and has asked for tea." Dietrich, who had As he grew older his teachers praised his prayed daily to hear her voice once ability in philosophy, but this made little more, watched her closely while she impression on his practical father. He drank, his hands beneath the table to was an excellent tennis player, and conceal their trembling. excelled in track, but these were not important at home. Dietrich was dreamy, After Walter's death, Dietrich was given and a loner. Though he was well liked at his room and Baby Suse moved in with school, he had no close friends. The Sabine, because Karl Bonhoeffer made artist's temperament, Karl told his wife. all family decisions during his wife's It was the same with Mozart, who also illness, and he judged it to be time. The showed great promise at a young age. twins had never before stayed apart. For at ten Dietrich had mastered Because their mother was not there to Mozart's piano sonatas, and soon after tuck them in and help them with their began composing his own work. At the prayers, Dietrich decided he would family's frequent musical evenings--for himself lead their devotions. He would everyone played an instrument--Karl knock on the wall above his bed, and Bonhoeffer often spoke of the Berlin Sabine would knock back. Two knocks Conservatory and a career as a concert meant I'll be asleep soon. Three knocks pianist for his youngest son. meant Think of God. When Dietrich was fourteen, he was taken to the conservatory to play for the famed pianist Leonid Kreuzer. He played a Schubert Lied, his back ramrod- straight, while his parents sat, formally dressed, in the back of an empty 76 auditorium. When he was done, Kreuzer, could not look at his parents, so he stared in the front row, nodded his head. A out the window at the monotonous woman who had been seated beside him blocks of Wilmersdorf flats. At home, rose, went to the stage, and stood with Father called the family to his study. her hands clasped at her waist. "Dietrich played well. Mother and I were "Now the Mozart," Kreuzer said. very proud. But it is Kreuzer's opinion he would never be in the first rank of Dietrich had chosen an arrangement of pianists." the Kyrie from the Mass in C Minor to demonstrate his skill as an accompanist. Dietrich's fingernails scrabbled an He played and the woman answered in a arpeggio on the rough fabric of his chair. throaty soprano. Paula dabbed at her He could sense that Sabine was trying to eyes with a handkerchief. catch his eye but he avoided looking at her. His father spoke quite gently. Later Kreuzer met them in a small room "Would you still wish to study music, down the hall, where they were served Dietrich?" Linzer torte on a silver tray and coffee in white china cups. Dietrich was too "No, Father." nervous to eat. They sat in a circle. Kreuzer leaned forward, raked back long He didn't cry. It would be unthinkable in gray curls with his hand. front of the family, and when he was finally able to escape to the garden, the "There is talent. Ja. Competency. But moment had passed, leaving behind a interpretation--" he made a slicing dull ache in his midsection. He huddled motion with his hand--"missing. The on a bench behind a stand of japonica. Kyrie is about passion, the intense Sabine found him at last, and they sat passion of a tormented soul lusting for side by side without touching. That God. I heard no lust in this performance. evening they played music as usual, and Reverence, ja, but no apprehension of everyone made a great pet of Dietrich. what Mozart was trying to do in this When Sabine and Baby Suse turned out piece." He looked at Karl Bonhoeffer their light and climbed into bed, he instead of Dietrich. "Competency, as I knocked three times on the wall. say. This boy is quite likely to be admitted to the conservatory. He might Several months later, Dietrich teach. Or play with a provincial announced at the dinner table that he orchestra." He shrugged. "Stuttgart or would study theology when he went to Leipzig, that sort of thing. But a major university. Everyone stopped eating and soloist? No, never. What is missing, stared, while he kept calmly cutting his training cannot provide. I can't see him schnitzel. "I've been thinking it over ever with the baton, either. His is not the gift since I decided not to study music. Herr of interpretation." Heininger at the Gymnasium is a pastor's son, and he says I've a gift for it. And On the ride home they were silent. what could be a larger subject, after all, Nothing would be said, one way or the than God?" other, in front of the chauffeur. Dietrich 77

Karl-Friedrich, who had returned from philosophy and science were one. But the war and declared himself a Socialist that hasn't been true for centuries. The (much to his parents' consternation), was best minds of our time concern the first to recover. "You don't even go themselves with the latter two to church," he said. disciplines, because there lie the most possibilities for the improvement of "No," Dietrich agreed. "It isn't necessary. humanity." Theology is an intellectual discipline, like philosophy, only more specific and "There's von Harnack," Dietrich said. therefore more rigorous." Adolf von Harnack was the leading Karl-Friedrich laughed. "Of all the Protestant theologian in Germany, and nonsense! Theology? I can't imagine the next-door neighbor of the anything more fuzzy-minded, or Bonhoeffers, an elderly man pitied by irrelevant!" the other intellectuals in the Grunewald because his field was archaic and his "Karl-Friedrich!" Mother said sharply. nephews were rumored to be Bolsheviks.

"Sorry, Mother. But you don't go to "That's it," Karl-Friedrich said. "Old von church either." Harnack's got hold of you."

"Still I pray every night," she said. "And "I haven't spoken to him," Dietrich said. I read scripture. Certainly you've been "I didn't tell anyone until today, when taught it is rude to mock religion. Has he Herr Heininger asked us in class to not, Father?" declare a field of study." He looked around the table. "I said 'theology.' It just "He has," Dr. Bonhoeffer agreed. "I came out suddenly, but I realized I'd myself participate in Mother's devotions been considering it quite a while." out of respect for her, though I admit to knowing little of such matters myself." Sabine nudged his leg beneath the table and smiled at him. He smiled back. "Or caring little," Karl Friedrich whispered beneath his breath so that "What did your classmates say?" only Sabine heard. Christel asked.

"If theology seems irrelevant," Dietrich "They looked at me as if I'd said I was said to a parsley potato stuck on the end going to take up big game hunting." of his fork, "then it is because it has been improperly presented. I shall change "At least with big game hunting you'll that." have a chance at some solid results," said Karl-Friedrich. "A theologian is about as Then everyone laughed, except Sabine. useful as a maker of paper airplanes." And Karl Bonhoeffer. After considering his son for a time he said, "I'd hate to see "Dietrich," said his father, "you suffered you waste your years at university. There a very great disappointment when a was a time when theology and musical career no longer seemed likely, 78 and I'm sure you're not yet over the hurt. vacations at the Bonhoeffer summer Still you will need to make a decision home in the Harz, they were children of soon, and I urge you not to be rash." the city, unused to the vagaries of nature. On the Inselberg they climbed into a "But why shouldn't Dietrich study blowing snowstorm and lost their way. theology?" Paula Bonhoeffer asked. Their light jackets were not much use "After all, my side of the family includes against the cold, and they stopped often a number of distinguished clergymen." so Dietrich could kneel in the drifts and knock crusts of ice from the skirt of "Great men in their day," agreed Karl Sabine's dress. Then they floundered on, Bonhoeffer, "but it was a different time, arms around each other's waist, free a less sophisticated time." hands clutching walking sticks that propelled them along, a single creature, "When we were small," Sabine said, like some huge ungainly snowbird. "Dietrich used to speak of God to me nearly every night when we went to bed. With no clear path, and night coming on, And we used to talk about eternity they thought it best to simply go down. before we fell asleep." This way took them through stands of dark green fir that forced them time and "Eternity!" said Karl-Friedrich. "Now again to alter their course. Night fell. there's a sleep-inducing subject for you." They sang, Dietrich booming out Horch, was kommt von drauBen Rein? in his "Karl-Friedrich, that is quite enough!" fine voice, Sabine Heula hie, heula ho! his mother admonished. Their feet were numb and each step jarred them to the teeth, and they were But Dietrich was looking at his father as happy, and pressed on, Hansel and though no one else had spoken. Gretel in search of a hearth.

"It's what I want," he said. "And I don't At last they slid down an icy funnel and care about the disappointment of not landed in a heap at the edge of an open studying music. That sort of life would meadow. Through the white curtain of have been too easy. Not this. This will snow a warm light glowed in a cottage be the hardest thing in the world." window. They sat in a drift and knocked snow each from the other, pointing at the He asked to be excused and went to his light and whispering. room. At the door, Sabine stepped forward first Dietrich and Sabine celebrated the and knocked, then Dietrich pulled her passage of their school-leaving back to the shelter of his arm. They examinations with a hiking trip through waited, faces turned to the single ice- the Thuringer Wald. They began at glazed window. The door opened. A Meiningen on a spring day so warm their table, and the faces that hovered around blouses were damp beneath their it, seemed a great distance away. The backpacks, and for sheer joy they large man who had opened the door clopped through mud puddles in their leaned forward and blocked their view. heavy boots. But though they spent their 79

"Ja?" the man said. She placed warm cups in their hands, and they sipped rich homemade beer. "Pardon," said Dietrich, "we have lost our way in the snow. May we find "A story," the youngest girl said. "A shelter here? A bit of food, perhaps?" story."

He stepped away from the door and Sabine was truck dumb. But Dietrich ushered them inside. The faces still pulled his knees to his chin and looked watched them, then moved off, into the fire. "Shall I tell of the Wild accompanied by a strange and Swans?" he said. comforting clatter of clogs on the stone floor. The man led them to a bench. "Ja, ja," the children chorused. Wooden bowls and spoons appeared, then ladles of potato soup. The soup was He began, "Once upon a time, a king lukewarm, with thick, milky bits as hunted in a dark forest." though the bottom of a pot had been carefully scraped to find enough for Of course they knew it, as well as he did. them. Wedges of goat cheese and heels And still Dietrich held them. He told of of black loaves daubed with pork fat the widowed king who lost his way in were laid beside their numb hands. the Thuringer Wald and was tricked into marrying the daughter of a witch. They ate slowly while the faces retreated to the hearth and began murmuring. "Once the wedding was performed," There were as many as in the Bonhoeffer Dietrich said, "the king's eyes were family, but they seemed more worn and opened and he saw what he had done. He brown around the edges. At first feared at once for his children, six boys Dietrich's eyes felt frozen but then and a girl, and sent them away to live in seemed to melt and it was easier to look this very forest, at the foot of the about. Every wall of the cottage was Inselberg. But the wicked stepmother covered with implements, pruning found them out. She wove six blouses of hooks, blunderbusses, washboards, white silk, enchanted blouses with the clocks, crucifixes, salt shakers, bric-a- power to transform Seeking out the brac shelves, jars of flour and beans and young princes, she threw the blouses preserves, mattocks. over them, and each in turn was changed into a white swan, and flew away. Only Sabine leaned against him and the witch did not know of the girl child, whispered, "It's like living inside a who hid and then ran away deep into the drawer." He nodded and smiled. forest.

When they had done eating, the old "One night, as the girl huddled hungry woman of the family approached, and frightened beneath a giant spruce, pulling her shawl about her shoulders. the six swans found her. In their beaks they carried blankets and baskets of "Come, children," she said, "and sit by food, which they laid about her. For a the fire. The young ones want stories. " moment they were changed back to their human forms. And they told--" 80

"Pardon!" A small girl tugged at Dietrich looked startled but went on with Dietrich's arm. "How were they changed the story, told how a handsome prince back? Why did the witch allow it?" married the girl, who remained mute, and how many began to accuse her of Dietrich thought a moment. "Perhaps the witchcraft because of her silence. At last witch didn't allow it," he said. "Perhaps her enemies prevailed and she was to be it was their care for their sister which burned at the stake, but even as the pyre broke the spell ever so briefly." was built, the swans swooped from the clouded sky to the prisoner's balcony. "Of course," said the old woman. "Go on One by one the girl threw the blouses with your tale, go on." over the swans, who became her brothers once more. At last she could speak in her "The brothers asked their sister to weave defense, and so was saved. Only one them shirts of thistle and thorns," blouse was not finished, so the youngest Dietrich continued. "Only in this way brother kept the wing of a swan for the would the spell be broken for good. And rest of his days. she must not speak to a soul until the task was completed. They heard Dietrich out in silence, the youngest with her thumb firmly in her "The girl set about her work. Think how mouth. painful it would have been to weave thistles and thorns, day in and day out." "Well told," the man said at last. The woman nodded, and set down her "Her fingers would bleed," a boy said. darning to refill their cups.

"They would not stop bleeding," "Where from?" the man asked. Dietrich agreed. "Berlin," they answered. "Like the hands of our Lord," the old woman said from her corner. "Ah. Ah. Are there any stories worth telling about Berlin?"

"Nein." The woman paused in her pouring. "They will not have good stories about Berlin. Too many Jews there."

Dietrich sat up. "Why do you say that? Do you know any Jews?"

She crossed herself. "God forbid!"

Sabine caught Dietrich's arm and forced him to look at her, shook her head. "Leave it," she whispered. 81

"But it's wrong," he whispered back. his back to Sabine. She knew he didn't sleep. "Of course it's wrong. But they have taken us in and shared their food with us. "What?" she asked after a time. "Is it And they have precious little for because I asked you to be silent?" themselves. They're worn--out look at them--and so are we just now. You won't "I don't blame you," he said. "But one convince them. It isn't worth a row." never makes up for something like that."

He leaned back against the leg of a table "It's how human beings get on and shut his eyes. The children watched sometimes," Sabine said. "Who has the him carefully. strength to always he right?"

"Tell another story," the boy asked. At dawn the family went out for their day's work in the field. Though the "Whsst," the man said. "'Tis past time ground was frozen, it was April, and for bed. Mother, see to the guests." they must begin to break up the soil. Through a crack between the boards, The old woman gave them a package of Dietrich and Sabine watched them go, bread and butter for the morning, and clogs punching holes in crusts of ice, refused their offer of pay. Then a thin like gunshots, as they made their way boy of around fourteen carried a lantern clutching shovels and mattocks, and before them to the barn and up a ladder disappeared around the glazed curve of to the loft. With apologies, he explained, the meadow. "We've no more room in the house. But I sleep up here always and it is quite warm Use of this excerpt from Saints and in the hay." Villains by Denise Giardina may be made only for purposes of promoting the He helped them spread their blankets, book, with no changes, editing or then retreated to a far corner and was additions whatsoever, and must be soon snoring. They wrapped themselves accompanied by the following copyright tight and burrowed deep, Dietrich with notice: copyright ©1998 by Denise Giardina. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpt from Divine Right's Trip by Gurney Norman

When he was right, when he was clear and cool and up and unhassled, D.R.'s mind was as beautiful to see in operation as anybody's that she knew. And yet he craved other people's 82

words about "truth" and "life" like some poor junkie craving dope. If it was a habit D.R. had, there certainly wasn't any shortage of junk on the circuit they traveled in. As far as Estelle could see there were at least twice as many wisdom pushers as dope dealers in the world, so how come the cops never got uptight about them? If she'd kept notes on all the philosophies, theories, schemes and plans to bring the world to a state of grace and love and enlightenment she'd heard in the last eighteen months she'd have enough recorded bullshit to fertilize the cosmic compost pile. There'd been a time when she was young, way back there a year or two ago, when other people's enthusiasms could excite her a great deal. But because enthusiasm was all it usually amounted to, Estelle didn't get much out of it any more. Because D.R. still did, because he was so willing to devalue what was already in his own head and credit fast-talking assholes with some sort of superior wisdom, it divided them, and left them in different places. If she could have believed that he was over there at the picnic table grooving on the food freak simply because he was stoned on acid and everything he saw and heard seemed groovy, it would have been one thing. But Estelle knew that wasn't what it was. D.R. would have homed in on this dude stoned or sober and that was why it bothered Estelle so much. She knew that left out a lot about D.R. She knew there was a lot more to it than that. But right now she wasn't able to consider much that was in his favor. She was pissed and jealous and weary and depressed. If D.R. had any virtues that redeemed him she preferred not to think about them right now.

In Defense of the Dandelion 83

By: Susan M. Thigpen

"Behold the lowly dandelion who dares to raise its head, In ever growing colonies, across the lawn they spread. They couldn't be more beautiful, if planted there with care. Nothing in life is common if you consider beauty rare."

One morning while going from the car to the office, my attention was caught by a beautiful bloom glowing bright yellow against the gray office wall. There is only a strip of grass less than a foot wide between the building and the gravel, but it was profusely covered with dandelions.

I stopped and plucked the beauty that had caught my eye. When I got inside, I measured it. The bloom was a full two and a half inches wide on a stalk a foot long. If it had been any bigger, it would have been a chrysanthemum! I've bought bedding plants at nurseries that have produced a less successful show of color and yet dandelions provide a free show that would rival an alpine meadow in spring in the drabbest of spaces. It inspired me to write the above pitiful excuse for a poem.

This magnificent bloom started me thinking in depth about dandelions. Dandelions are thought of as villains - pesky weeds - a bane to every decent lawn. But in times past, the dandelion was considered a useful plant. It was used for both food and in home remedies.

Our pioneer forefathers did not have very good means of storing foods over the winter and by the time spring arrived, they craved the vitamins in fresh greens that had been lacking in their diets for months. Dandelions were one of the first spring greens available and they were picked, cooked and eaten with delight. When coffee ran short, they could dig dandelion roots, parch them thoroughly in the oven and grind them for a good substitute. Dandelions are in the chicory family and chicory is often used as an additive to coffee, even to this day. A pale yellow wine was also made from dandelions. As for medicinal purposes, an old book I consulted said that the properties of the dandelion root, which may be taken as an extract, a juice, or in dandelion coffee, are those of a mild laxative, diuretic and stomachic.

I also went to an encyclopedia which told me that the dandelion is a native of Europe and the name dandelion is a corruption of the French "dent de lion", or lion's tooth, which refers to the sharply toothed leaves that are characteristic of the plant.

Granted, the dandelion becomes quite a pest when it reaches the seed stage and blows white silky, hair-like particles everywhere. For those who have put off mowing until this stage, it resembles a snow storm of sorts, blowing up instead of coming down. 84

Folklore legend says that the tallest dandelion stalk a child can find will be the number of inches the child will grow in the coming year. When the dandelion is in the seed stage, you are supposed to make a wish and see if you can blow all the white silky hairs off with one breath. If you do, your wish will come true.

Mountain Remedies

SPRING TONIC - Good For What Ails You

Many old timers around here tell of springtime in their youth and Mama's spring tonic. The recipe varied greatly from one family to another but one thing remained constant, there was no getting around taking a dose of it.

The most common ingredient was spicewood twigs, to this might be added Boneset leaves, dried in the fall or fresh violet leaves. (Violet leaves are now known to contain a high vitamin C content.)

The tonics were usually bitter, foul tasting concoctions that would, "Make your blood rise like the sap in a tree." The more compassionate mothers laced it with honey, though the general feeling was if it tasted good, it wasn't doing you any good. Many of these remedies have been found to have a good medical reason. Ground Ivy was made into a tea for colicky babies. We know today it contains a mild tranquilizer. Its a wonder people survived other remedies such as brown sugar and kerosene for whooping cough.

All in all, unpleasant as spring tonic must have been, everyone I asked remembered it quite clearly though none seemed to remember seeing their mother take it herself!

ONION POULTICE

Onion poultices were used like mustard plasters for chest ailments such as bad colds and coughs. The onions were baked and then mashed into a clean cloth while still as hot as the person could stand it and placed on the bare chest. It is supposed to draw blood to the surface of the skin.

85

CALEB AND HENRY

Subtleties By: Wm. Axley Allen

"You know what my grandbaby told me the other day, Caleb?" When the wrinkled old tobacco chewer drew no response from his neighbor and friend of 65 years he continued. "J.B.’s daughter, 15 year old Maggie, told me, ‘Grandpa, you’re no good at subtleties.’ I asked her what they were. She told me they were when you tell somebody something without really saying it. From the look on her face, she could tell I wasn’t catching on so she went on explaining. ‘Aw, Grandpa, you know, haven’t you ever told somebody something without coming right out and saying it?’ You mean beating around the bush, I asked? ‘Yeah sorta, she replied, but Grandpa, it’s different than that. Haven’t you ever wanted to say something to someone without spelling it out. By just hinting at what you’re trying to say?’"

"Caleb, she talked on like that for an hour. Telling me that you ain't ‘supposed to speak your mind. I tell you, what are they teaching kids now’a days. Why she’s set that you’re supposed to beat around the bush and be "subtle" as she called it. A young fellow came by here the other day and asked me what I miss most about the old days. Couldn’t think of nothing in particular then but I’ve been thinking about it, especially since my talk with Maggie. You know Caleb, what I miss most is straight forward people. Why folks used to say what was on their minds more’n they do now. Weren’t no beating around the bush. Pa would a wore the seat out of my pants if he’d a caught me beating around the bush and not speaking up. Beating around the bush was a trait not thought much of when we was boys, Caleb."

"Lord knows, I taught J.B. better but even he beats around the bush now a’days. I guess he’s just being subtle when he hints around about me moving into town with them and selling this old place. But subtle or not, this here’s home and I told him so, right straight out. These young folks get some strange ideas, Caleb. They think they can change the name from beating around the bush to subtle and it’s all right. Ain’t in my book and it won’t ever be. I like folks who speaks their mind with me and lays it straight out with no beating around the bush."

Just as he was getting fired up enough to take a deeper breath and continue his tirade against subtleties, Caleb raised his chin up off his chest and said, "Shut up Henry, I’m trying to take a nap." Henry smiled and said, "O.K. Caleb." And the two old friends settled back in their rocking chairs for an afternoon nap. Friends for over 65 years and "pretty apt" to stay that way. 86

Caleb & Henry

Still Truckin’ Along

I got to be going (Caleb). Bye now (Henry). I’ll see you (Caleb). You be good now, y’hear? (Henry) Have a good one (Caleb). Later (Henry). Not too much later (Caleb).

"Oh for heavens sake, Caleb, would you just shut your trap and get out of here!" Henry grumbled.

It was a game they had played ever since they were young boys. Each of them tried to have the last word every time they parted. People at The Forks General Store used to count how many replies they could come up with.

The two men were winding up a spring visit to The Forks General Store to get their annual load of fertilizer. As each word or goodbye phrase was said each one took one more step away from each other and toward their beat up old trucks. Caleb’s was old and beat up that is. Henry finally said the last rites over his old clunker and turned loose of enough money to buy a brand new one last fall. Not only was it brand new, but bright red.

Caleb eyed Henry’s truck enviously. "Bet you don’t get ten miles to a gallon."

"Get a right smart more than that." Replied Henry, not giving out a word more than he had to about his new truck. If Caleb wanted to know about it, he would have to pull every word of information out of him, a position Henry was enjoying considerably.

The two old friends knew each other through and through. Their friendship has started when they were small boys on adjoining farms and lasted through teen age courting, marriages, children of their own, and widowhood. Their children shook their heads in amazement that the two old men could argue constantly, never have a good word to say to each other and always remain the closest of friends, hardly letting a day go by without seeing each other. The current point of contention between them now was the new truck.

Caleb refused to give Henry the satisfaction of asking anything else. He hefted himself up in the pickup seat, slammed the door and turned the starter. The engine coughed a couple of times and backfired, emitting a large cloud of black smoke. Caleb glanced in the rear view mirror, and saw Henry just about bent double, holding his stomach, laughing.

"Hrump," muttered Caleb with all the dignity he could muster and easing the old truck into gear, drove off. "That Henry thinks he’s so smug with his brand new truck. Why, I wouldn’t trade this one in for a dozen like his. They don’t make the new ones to last, not like this one. A couple of years and his will be on the junk pile and I’ll still be driving this one." As positive as Caleb tried to be, the truck emitted another puff of black smoke as he changed gears, and he silently held his breath, hoping it wouldn’t break down 87 before he could get home. "Just need to blow the dust out of the carburetor. Haven’t had it up to speed all winter," rationalized Caleb.

About that time Caleb heard a horn honk and Henry passed him on the straight stretch just before the Oak Junction cut off. Henry waved as he passed, a smile as big as all outdoors across his leathery, wrinkled face. That honk and smile added insult to injury as far as Caleb was concerned. It was bad enough Henry was showing off in passing him. "Old fool, just get a new truck and he thinks he’s a teenager again, driving like one at least," growled Caleb out loud as he watched the new red truck disappear over the hill.

As Caleb topped the hill, he spotted the new red truck again, but it wasn’t zooming along in the distance. It was stopped beside the road, the hood up and steam pouring out of it. Caleb slowed down as he approached, relishing the situation tremendously. He was tempted to drive on by - after honking and smiling, of course, - but Henry was his oldest friend and that slightly tipped the scales in favor of stopping against the glory of revenge.

Caleb pulled his old beat up truck right beside Henry and stopped, not cutting off the engine for two reasons - one reason being that Caleb wasn’t entirely sure it would re- start, the other reason being that it was a reminder to Henry that this truck, battered as it might be, was still running!

"Need some help?" Caleb purred, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth he was so cool. Henry was red in the face from embarrassment, and probably from an elevated blood pressure because he knew how much Caleb was going to rub this in.

Henry couldn’t let himself look Caleb in the eye, but continued staring under the hood. "A hose must of come loose. Brand new truck like this, that’s all it could be."

"If you say so, Henry. Come on. Get in. I’ll drop you off at your house. It’s on my way. You can call that fancy dealership to come out and get it. For all that money, they ought to do that much for you." Caleb said, hand draped casually across his steering wheel, still not offering to get out. He couldn’t help adding, "They just don’t make them like they used to."

Henry knew when he was beat. He slammed the hood and walked around to the passenger side of Caleb’s truck and without a word, got in. They rode in silence to Henry’s house and just as silently, Henry slid out of the truck.

I got to be going (Caleb). Bye now (Henry). I’ll see you (Caleb). You be good now, y’hear? (Henry) Have a good one (Caleb). Later (Henry). Not too much later (Caleb).

"Oh for heavens sake, Caleb, would you just shut your trap and get out of here!" Henry grumbled. Things were back to normal again.

Caleb & Henry 88

The Storytellers

It was late of a cold, gray, overcast January evening when the two old men returned home. It had been foggy and misting rain, but now the sky looked like it was threatening snow. It was one of those winter days when people tried to do as little as possible with the exception of necessary outside chores. It was the prefect kind of day for hanging around the neighborhood store and swapping tall tales.

People raised in this neck of the woods seemed to have an uncanny instinct for picking those get-togethers and everyone enjoyed them immensely.

Storytelling is an art passed down from one generation to another. Some places and towns have got so busy that it has almost died out, but on this January afternoon, Caleb and Henry were witness to some prime examples that storytelling is alive and well and still living in the Blue Ridge.

"When I got up this morning, I took one look at the sky and knew where I was going to spend the day." Said Caleb as he eased down in his rocking chair.

"Yep," Henry answered as he poured himself a cup of coffee. "And I sure was glad I was free today to go with you."

"What do you mean 'free'? What else did you have to do? Besides that, even if you did have today all planned out, you know you'd a figured out a way to get out of it. We both know we'd of played hookey to listen to the prime tales we heard today. Yes, siree, a day like today was just made for storytelling. Remember when we was boys and just couldn't wait to be old enough to be included with the men to get to hear the kind of stories they was telling? Remember sneaking up and hiding to listen to them even after our mothers told us not to?"

"Yep." Henry answered again. "You turned out to be a fairly descent storyteller yourself, Caleb. Some of that hiding and sneaking must have taught you something."

"It sure taught me something the time Mama caught me!"

Henry just shook his head. After all these years, he could have guessed Caleb's reply. "Which story did you like the best today, Caleb? Some people have mighty powerful stories, but they just don't know how to tell them. Then there's some folks can say just about anything at all and hold you spellbound just by the WAY they're telling it."

Caleb chuckled, "Yea, I know. Just show me one fisherman that can tell a story without using his hands! Speaking of fishermen, that fellow travelling through, visiting our area from Scotland - I thought his story was the best. You change the word 'salmon' for 'trout' and that could have been any angler on Round Meadow Creek. Maybe it's cause so many of the original folks who settled these ridges come from Scotland. We had to inherit our ways from somewhere." 89

Both old men thought over the salmon story and went into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Henry took off his glasses and wiped tears out of the corners of his eyes. "I always love to hear a good fishing story, and that one will be hard to top." Henry put his glasses back on and looked wistful for a minute. "I sorta liked that fellow's story about the good-for- nothin' horse. Danged if I didn't have a mule one time that reminded me a lot of it. Made me so mad I could have killed it, but I couldn't help but love the fool thing just the same. After it, there just didn't seem to be any other mule with a personality to match it."

"Henry, I noticed you getting all choked up about then. Is that why you went over and started talking with the women-folks?"

"You ought to try it sometime, Caleb. They're darn good storytellers themselves. That widow woman used to live up here when she was a child. You should have heard about it."

"Well, I'm sure you'll tell me all about it. That's one good thing about both of us going - Between the two of us, I doubt if we missed anything."

"OLD JAKE"

by: Wm. Axley Allen

Bootlegging, like the chestnut tree, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Only a few old die-hards persist today. Yet, there was a time when bootleg whisky was one of the few ways a mountain family had of getting cash. Not everyone participated but those who did were an independent bunch. They worked hard to provide for their families the best way they could during times many of us today would find impossible. They were not the lawless hillbilly so many stories have been told about. They were, for the most part, honest, God-fearing family men who did what they had to do. They didn't choose bootlegging because it was easy, on the contrary, it was extremely hard work but it offered a way for an honest man to "take care of his own." The independent nature was often coupled with a sly sense of humor, making them colorful characters indeed. They were men of a bygone era. There was a quality in the product they produced and those who made it took pride in that quality. A pride that I bet is not known by the large corporate distilleries of today.

The articles about bootleggers in The Mountain Laurel will not be making fun of those who made whisky. They may be humorous but it is not our intention to make fun, just the opposite. We wish to pay tribute to the people and the era when independence was alive and times were hard but through it all, humor managed to ease the hardships, if only long enough for a smile. - Editor 90

Must have been 50 or 60 years ago when this story supposedly took place. Seems there was a fellow who had him a still set up down near Lover's Leap. He was notorious as a "bootlegger" but his word was gold. If he told you something, you could count on it and everyone that ever drank his "corn" bragged on it. Word is that even the judge down at Stuart liked it so much that he kept a little "laid back" for his own use.

Well, it seems that whenever the revenue officers in these parts ran up on a slow time finding other stills, they would come looking for "Jake." He was their ace in the hole, a "bonified bootlegger" to fill the slack time and their monthly arrest reports. They were good old boys but they had to make a living too and all hard feelings aside, "Jake" understood. When pickings weren't so lean for them, why they were some of "Jake's" best customers. It's been said that tears came to the eyes of many a grown revenue man when he had to take an ax to one of "Jake's" stills.

Well, on this occasion, "Jake" had his still set up down near "the Leap" and it was a model of "bootlegging art." Just exactly what the revenue boys needed, since they had received instructions from Richmond the day before to dismantle a working still and send it to the capitol for display. The workmanship "Jake" had put into this still was the culmination of a lifetime of experience. He had spared no detail in its construction and it was just the thing for Richmond.

Realizing he was "collar'd", "Jake" pitched right in and helped the revenue boys start taking it apart. "Weren't no use to not be neighborly just because they had a job to do." It's hard work taking down a still that's been built right but by late afternoon, they were finishing up. They had been resting just a few minutes when one of the boys said, "Damn, I wish we'd brought a camera and got a picture of her before we took her down." The other revenuer agreed. If they'd only thought, those pictures would have been a prize up in Richmond. So while visions of promotions were running through their heads, "Jake" spoke up and said, "If it means anything to you boys, I'll put her back up this evening an' ya'll can come back up in the morning an' get yer pictures." The boys were delighted and quickly agreed for "Jake" to set the still back up. It was past "getting off time" and they were in a hurry to get started back down the mountain so after thanking "Jake," they headed back to Stuart.

Bright and early the next morning, they started back up the mountain to get those "pictures." But "Jake" had a surprise waiting for them when they arrived at the still site. There was "Jake" boiling off bootleg as fast as his still would go. It was apparent he had been working all night and also apparent he'd run off a lot more than the couple of "cans" that were setting around the fire.

The boys were upset. Not because "Jake" was violating the law but because he'd tricked them this way. He'd done exactly what they'd told him to do. They just hadn't said don't run off anymore bootleg. Didn't matter much that their pictures were going to show a "bonified bootleggers still" in operation. That was a mild poultice for their wounded pride. They knew if they had told "Jake" not to run off another batch when he got the still put back together, he wouldn't have. They also knew if they hadn't been so excited about 91 sending his still to Richmond and getting some pictures of it in operation, they might have noticed all those big oak barrels of "mash" sitting all around just waiting to be run off.

One thing for sure, when "Jake" got his still put back together, he "noticed." He had worked all night long running off batch after batch, trying as hard as he could to get it all "run `n hauled" before the revenuers got back with their camera.

Well, like I said, the boys were upset because they'd been tricked, not to mention born gullible and they told "Jake" he was under arrest again. "Jake" is the only man in these parts that's ever been arrested for bootlegging two days running on the same still at that! But knowing "Jake," it seems appropriate that he should have that honor.

The boys were in right much of a hurry after they got their "pictures" so they started right in to tearing down "Jake's" still again. "Jake" reckoned they better "wait till she cooled down a bit" and after a couple of pretty loud ouches and sizable blisters, the boys agreed. But shortly, things were cool enough to touch and they got the still taken back down with "Jake's" help and loaded it on their truck along with "Jake" for the trip down to Stuart.

The day of "Jake's" trial, he was to be tried for two counts of bootlegging and since word had gotten out about the circumstances of his second arrest, the courtroom was packed. When the revenue boys walked into the room snickers and outright laughs noted their arrival. Since "court days" were pretty big doings in those days, the town was packed. Everyone wanted to find out how "Jake" would fare before the judge.

Well, as it turned out, he "fared" pretty well. The judge reckoned that "Jake" was guilty on both counts but since the revenue boys had told him to set the still back up and hadn't told him not to run off any more bootleg, if he found "Jake" guilty on the second count, then he'd have to find the boys guilty as accomplices. This wouldn't really be fair to them because they had already suffered enough humiliation by way of being laughed at by everybody in the county. (At this point, he had to threaten to clear the courtroom if the laughter didn't cease. Immediately!) So in the best judgment of the court, they would have to let "Jake" off on the second charge and only find him guilty on the first. This decision met with the approval of everyone including the boys and "Jake", although he could never understand why a man couldn't run off a batch of "corn" for his friends and neighbors without it being the "law's" business.

Well, "old Jake" died several years ago and I guess he never did understand that part of the law. The part that gave somebody the right to go nosing in honest folks lives. I can't help but wonder, now and then, if there isn't a few old, faded photographs stuck in some long forgotten file in the state archives at Richmond that show a "bonified bootlegger's still" down in Patrick County, with wood smoke curling up over the "pot" and a little old bearded mountain man standing there smiling at the camera.

"POSSUM WAR CHRONICLE" 92

Back when I was a child, we had one old hen that roosted across the road from the house. One night, after we were all in bed asleep, we heard her start to cackling and carrying on. We knew something must be after her so Pa jumped up and grabbed the poker from the fireplace and lit out to save her from whatever was attacking her.

Pretty soon, he came back to the house carrying something. I met him in the front yard carrying a lantern, curious to see what it was. As I held the lantern up high for a good look, I could see it was a big old possum. They're bad for killing chickens. Pa had got it first, but as I stood there, looking over it, I noticed something on it's belly, something moving. Well, there hung six baby possums. We didn't know what to do then. It made us all feel so bad to have killed their mother. I remembered our cat had kittens so I carried those baby possums down to the wood shed where the kittens were. They were in the corner nestled in a big pile of leaves, both mama cat and kittens. I held each little possum down for her to smell and then laid them in with her own.

When I went back to check on them the next morning, three baby possums were gone but the three that were left were nursing right along with the kittens. I never could find out what happened to the three that disappeared, but the mama cat adopted the others and raised them as her own.

She would really get fretted with them as they grew older and started following her around. They instinctively would try to ride on her back or curl their tails around hers and ride upside down. She would rub against the corner of the house or a tree or anything to try to pry them off her back. Gradually, they got over wanting to ride and while they were "sorta" tame, they took to making themselves scarce when we were around.

Our house was made of old rough lumber and here and there were knot holes as big as your fist. It got to the point that we hardly ever saw the possums other than a glimpse as they darted into one of their holes in the side of the house.

One night, Pa was sleeping sound as a baby. It was a hot night and he had his feet hanging out from under the covers. As he slept, one of the possums clambered up over the foot of the bed and chawed right down on his big toe. Pa let out a yell that would have been mistaken as an Indian war hoop by an experienced Indian fighter and came straight up out of his bed.

From that day on, Pa declared war on those possums but they were a little more elusive than Pa was crafty, so they managed to survive.

Not long after Pa got to where he could sleep at night again, he was laying with his hand dragging the floor, sound asleep, when (you guessed it) up pops a possum and nails him on the thumb. "Outta" that bed he came and from then on, it was outright no-holds-barred war. He was like a man obsessed. Those possums had to go. 93

Well, have to go or not, those possums weren't the type to give up easy. They held on through shot gun blasts that splintered the house corners and crowbars that pulled the siding and stubbornly refused to give Pa an inch or an open shot.

The possums always acted friendly to the rest of us and I guess they finally decided to move on before Pa tore our whole house down just trying to catch them.

It would have been easier on Pa if he could have seen then go. He'd kept looking hard for them till finally, he realized he hadn't seen hide nor hair of them for over a month. It took a lot longer than that for Pa to get to where he could sleep a full night without waking up thinking a possum was sneaking up on him, though. But, eventually, he did sleep soundly again and I guess, so did the possums.

“MY FIRST CHAW” By: Bob Heafner Published in November, 1983

It was August and the sun was blazing hot. The gravel street on the “Mill-Hill” in Longview, North Carolina was coated with a powdery layer of dust. Jerry Hill and I were sitting on an old abandoned pig pen roof on a vacant lot. A mulberry tree shaded one corner of the tin roof but the part that wasn’t shaded was hot as a wood stove in January.

We sat there discussing various youthful interests such as frogs, caves, spooks and fast bicycles, among other topics when Jerry reached in his pocket and pulled out a lump of dirty looking brown stuff and said, “Want some?” I said, “What is it?” He looked at me with a making fun kind of look and said, “I bet you ain’t never chewed no tobacco.” I said, “I have.” “Oh yeah? Well why’d you have to ask what it was then?” he replied.

The conversation continued with a few more “have” and “have nots” and the next thing I knew, Jerry was splitting the plug in half with a rusty old pocket knife and I was stuffing it into my mouth.

The taste wasn’t all that unpleasant except it burnt my tongue a little and before long, I was reared back spitting like a pro. Well, maybe not exactly like a pro. It seemed there wasn’t enough room in my mouth for the one-half plug of tobacco and my tongue. Each time I’d go to spit, I’d end up swallowing most of the ambeer.

At first I done a lot of chewing, but after a while, I was content to try not to mash it anymore than I had to. Jerry was talking and carrying on when I started feeling a little “woozie” (as Mom would say). Slowly I watched the mulberry tree move all the way around the pig pen. Jerry’s voice seemed far away like he was talking through a tube or a culvert. Somehow I managed to stretch out on the pig pen roof and hang my head over the edge. My hands were gripping the metal edge of the roof so hard that I bet I left dents on that metal that even recycling couldn’t cover up. As I opened my mouth to release my cud, Jerry was taunting me for being sick. I’ll say this for tobacco chewing, it put me in a 94 state of mind where not even taunts from Jerry Hill mattered. It made me sick. Now I don’t mean sick like the cold or the croup. I mean sick like you might not live through it! I never knew a pig pen could spin around so fast and only my grip on the edge of the roof kept me from being slung from there to Hickory. While the pig pen spun and the mulberry tree jumped up and down, everything in my world went crazy. Death seemed eminent and not totally without merit.

My first encounter with tobacco chewing lasted a long time and to this day, the four hours I lay on that dusty old pig pen roof seem like at least a week. My entire body was drawn and quartered by the power of ambeer and so help me, the ten year old that climbed off the roof at sundown that day was glad to still have his insides left because there were a few times up there that he figured they were gone for good.

When I stumbled in the door of the house, Mom took one look at me and told me to lay down while she fixed a “mustard plaster”. This was Mom’s cure for everything and at that point, any more torture would have been unbearable. I “fessed up” about tobacco and she and Dad thought it was funny and “Maybe that’ll teach you a lesson, boy,” was the extent of their sympathy. They were right. To this day, you couldn’t pay me to chew tobacco on a hot, dusty pig pen roof in August!

Flowers - What Does It All Mean?

In days gone by, when a boy gave flowers to a girl, it meant something. Different flowers had different meanings attached to them and relayed a secret message beyond their pretty and sweet smelling appearance.

White Clover - Think of me. Red Rose - True Love

Sweet Pea - Depart or I leave you. Peach Blossom - I am captivated by you.

White Hyacinth - Your beauty is Four-leaf Clover - Be mine. recognized. Goldenrod - Be on your guard Ivy - I cling to you. Fern - You fascinate me. White Rose - I will be worthy of you. Geranium - I wish to console you.

95

MEMORIES OF AN EXTRAORDINARY MOUNTAIN LADY

MISS FLORA CAMANA DEHART, 1889-1973

This is a collection of memories of many little bucket too, picking up chestnuts. people about one remarkable woman, She got up and went and laid down and Flora DeHart. The memories are from asked Addie or Sis to come and drive a relatives, old friends who lived near and stake at where her head and foot were. I people who were from as far away as think Addie did. Gracie and she wanted Kansas. Part of these memories are Miss to know what this was for and she said Flora's own recollections, in her own that she wanted to be buried there. They words, thanks to a tape made and loaned laughed at her (the five year old sister to us by Artis Caudle of High Point, Ella) and told her that there was no North Carolina. She made the tape in danger in her dying and she was just 1969 on a visit to Miss Flora's home. fooling and five weeks from that day, she died! When she got up off the Miss Flora Camana DeHart was born in ground, where the stobs were drawn at 1889 to Jeff and Malinda Graham her head and feet, there were a maple DeHart. She had four sisters - Lizzie above where she laid and a pine below. (who was wife to Ed Mabry of Mabry She laid her hand on the maple and she Mill), Sis, Orie, Addie and one brother, said the maple would die and the pine Green DeHart. She grew up in a hollow would live and the maple lived one across what is now the Blue Ridge month. The pine lived. She was buried Parkway, from what is now Mabry Mill, there." in a log cabin. Her father, Jeff DeHart, was a Civil War veteran. Her parents didn't think it right for their little girl to be buried anywhere else and When a school building was abandoned it became the family cemetery where near their cabin because a new school both the mother and father are buried. had been built, the family moved to the Miss Flora didn't like it and chose to be school house. (There is a photograph of buried at Meadows of Dan Baptist this school-home before it was torn Church Cemetery. down accompanying this article.) Life was hard and people had to make do The following is a direct quote taken on little in Miss Flora's day. She from the tape made in 1969, it tells of an remained at home after the other accident which happened in her youth. children married or left and took care of her father in his last years when he had "Well, my baby sister was five years old become bedridden and had to be spoon and we had a big chestnut orchard. The fed. At the time the Blue Ridge Parkway chestnut trees are died out now. Addie was built, caring for her father required and my other sister, Sis, Dale Hall, so much time that it wasn't until after his mother's niece and I were all picking up death, nearly two years after the chestnuts, picked way after twelve and completion of the Parkway, that she first they all decided to sit down and rest. My saw it, even though it was less than a sister sat there awhile. She had her a half a mile from her home. 96

Miss Flora's nieces and nephews from She still used her kerosene lamps for Roanoke, the Cliftons, were very good to light and only used the electric lights her and her sister Addie, who moved when company came. She had two pet back in with Miss Flora in her later black snakes that sunned themselves on years. They brought food and things her back steps. I've been told by her because they knew it was hard for the niece, Mrs. Turman, of Meadows of sisters to get out and they had such a Dan, that the snakes didn't bother Aunt small budget to live on. The sisters didn't Flora. She said if they got in her way, want to be presumptuous enough to tell she just kicked them aside. them what food they would like, so the Cliftons just showed up with what they Miss Flora was a miracle worker of thought Miss Addie and Miss Flora sorts. She was well known in this area would like. The two sisters never had the for being able to stop blood and take the heart to tell them that they didn't like fire out of burns. This was something her pinto beans, probably for fear of seeming sister, Addie first knew how to do but ungrateful, but after Addie's death, while couldn't tell anyone or she would lose cleaning out the house, they found the power. Addie wrote it down and enough pinto beans stored away to feed placed it in the Family Bible so after her all of Meadows of Dan! death Miss Flora could learn how.

After Miss Addie's death, the Cliftons Miss Flora's niece, Kelly Turman told bought a house out on the road for Miss me she once spilled boiling water on Flora. It was the first time she had such both her feet and called Miss Flora over conveniences as indoor plumbing, the phone. She said Miss Flora half electricity and even a telephone. It took whispered, half mumbled and she Miss Flora a little time to become couldn't tell what she said but in ten adjusted to using a telephone, although minutes time, although her feet were she undoubtedly enjoyed it. At first, if badly burned and blistered, the pain went she got the wrong number, she thought away completely and stayed away until the wrong person had just picked up the her feet had healed. phone. Jack Wilson was one of her neighbors at that time and said he was on Mr. and Mrs. Matt Burnette said also a party line with her. She enjoyed that their small grandson got burned and picking up the phone and listening to they too called Miss Flora. She asked the conversations, innocently, and he didn't child's name, his age, and his parents mind but she wanted to join in the names and in less than a half hour, the conversation at times. child wasn't in pain any longer.

I'm afraid these secrets died with Miss Flora because no one knows of her passing them on to anyone else and no one in the community today knows how to do such things.

Everyone remembered Miss Flora's good nature and how she loved company. 97

Everyone I interviewed remembered "So we went over to the airport and saw what a joy it was to be at "Miss Flora's." the airplane. When Mr. Clifton told the pilots that I haven't never seen an Miss Flora might have been too tied airplane inside, they came and got a hold down with family responsibilities in her of me. So the pilot took me in the plane youth to travel far from home but she and I looked through it and came on sure made up for it in her later years. back down and they asked me if I When all alone in her 70's, Mr. and Mrs. wanted to go to Washington, DC and I Clifton, relatives from Thomasville, said NO! As we went on up to see the North Carolina, came one day and got airplane, we walked up to these two Miss Flora to spend a few days with doors and they came open. I run back them. She had never been to Mt. Airy, and said this place is haunted and I North Carolina (only about 30 miles wasn't going any further. They killed away) so they first took her there where themselves laughing and they finally got they introduced her to the sight of her me through the doors and went on up to first train. Miss Flora didn't want to get the airplane. I had never seen a door that on the train but was finally persuaded to opened when you stepped on the mat. It give it a look see, escorted by the scared me. The plane was nice, it looked conductor himself. Quoting Miss Flora like a school bus inside." from the tape, she said: Miss Flora spent one night in Winston- "So that conductor told me to take a seat Salem, North Carolina with Mr. and and for Mr. Clifton to sit down beside Mrs. Willard Wilson. In the middle of me. I said I ain't going to sit down on the night she heard her first siren, that train. I'm going to get off. The thought it was a woman screaming, and conductor started to lead me through the was so scared she got up, put on her train, but the coaches were all so full, we clothes and sat up the rest of the night. couldn't go a little piece, and we came on back and I took a seat and he went Miss Flora was taken on an even bigger down the steps and the conductor came trip with Mr. W.A. Gilfry of Quinter, back with a ticket and handed it to me Kansas and his sister and brother-in-law, and said here was a free ticket to ride to the Newsomes, of Winston-Salem. They Thomasville. I'm taking you on a train took her, in the Gilfry's words, "On the and I said how would I get back to Mr. grand tour up the Shenandoah Valley, Clifton and he said he was going to meet past Gettysburg, where her father had me there with a car and told Mrs. Clifton fought (in the Civil War), then up the she could go." Pennsylvania Turnpike to New York area, then through New England, down So Miss Flora had her first train ride. the Jersey Turnpike to and hour and half She spent a few days with the Cliftons in ferry ride across Norfolk before the Thomasville and they took her to the seven mile bridge was opened just a Greensboro Regional Airport. Again I week or so later. So she saw the ocean, quote the tape in Miss Flora's own words had dinner at Atlantic City, New Jersey, about what she thought of the airport: etc. We even had her in the UN Building in New York City." 98

Miss Flora commented on this trip on Flora was short, stocky but not fat, and the tape and here are her impressions: very strong - at least in her youth. She said she had often carried a bushel of "We went to Philadelphia and rode in a corn on her back for grinding, to Mabry subway train, went to New York and Mill, which I judge to be not less than went upon, I forget how many stories, 16 1½ miles across often rough terrain. I or 17, and walked out upon top a house understand her father plowed with oxen and viewed New York. We put up in but not sure if she ever did. (I've heard Philadelphia 3 or 4 nights and then on to there were times her sister guided a plow New Jersey, and then on to the Pacific while Miss Flora pulled it.) But she often and went out on the water in a ship for said that no one could "lay a worm," I 20 miles, didn't see nothing but water, think that is the expression for one of never have seen the ocean before. Put up those zigzag (rail) fences, better than in a cabin at Ocean City, Maryland for she. And she often said that the DeHarts one week. The ocean was up to the back could "live on a rock" if they had to. She of the cabin and we went to the ocean meant survive, of course. I think that everyday for 8 days. I liked there right they never had prosperous times in her well but I wouldn't want to live there early days. A Mr. Hubbard once said that because of the water, all those cabins after the father got laid up latter in life, were on high posts. At the back of the Flora and her sister would often have cabin there was all kinds of pieces of gone hungry without help from them. furniture washed up there." She got a $15.00 Civil War pension per Miss Flora was a colorful character and I month from Virginia, I think, and that's doubt seriously if there was a person she about all except help from a nephew and met who she didn't make a lasting niece, both married and living in impression on. The following are some Roanoke. I think they would mostly of Mr. W.A. Gilfry's impressions: bring groceries, etc.

"We got acquainted with Flora DeHart She (Miss Flora) was the completely through a Mrs. Clifton, of High Point, down to earth, pioneer type, always NC who had a mountain place near her. honest, straightforward and if she trusted She lived up on a high hill, past Laurel you, she trusted you implicitly. Her Fork Creek, with a lane lined with large father, by the way, was laid up helpless white pines. It was not their original in his last ten years and Flora cared for farm. It was just a two room affair, as him all that time in that cabin, a thing of well as I can remember, with outhouse, which she was proud, and rightly so. Her spring about 100 yards away, small stove sister, once a nurse in Roanoke also had in one room - which was seldom lit even to return in later years and Flora cared during mid-winter. She just had a coat for her. As things can often be in this on at these times and seemed perfectly wild world, this sister, Addie, finally had comfortable! When we would visit, she to die in almost a blizzard up there. Flora would throw on a log, but it seldom fought her way partly out her road in amounted to much heat. about 17 inches of snow. I think I remember correctly, calling out loudly (as many mountain people do when 99 needing help) and finally someone heard possibly even going back to the her and came to help. Flora got some Elizabethan days, which I understand is frost bitten toes from it and you would not uncommon in our southern think it would have affected her mind. mountains." But. Not Flora. She was strong and healthy, body and mind." I'm afraid that I, like may of you, never had the chance to meet Miss Flora or I have heard from Miss Ada Agee that a talk with her, which I consider to be a snow plow had to be brought in to clear great personal loss. I am so grateful to the way to removed Addie DeHart's the many relatives and friends of Miss body. Flora for sharing their memories with us so the rest of us can get to know her Mr. Gilfry also said, "There were so through their memories. many other things of her sayings and her ways but I will just mention a couple I The last incident I know of Miss Flora's now remember, to show how she was a life was told to me by Artis Caudle of really colorful character and probably High Point, NC. She visited Miss Flora the most interesting person we or anyone in the hospital in Roanoke shortly before else had ever known. She would often her death. When Artis had to leave, she say, `Why is he so scary, you could put a told Miss Flora she wouldn't get to come lightening bug on a corn cob and run back to see her for a couple of weeks. him to Roanoke.' I guess you get the She said Miss Flora looked straight at picture, he would think it a flashlight and her, pointed her finger at her and said, someone after him or "you could eat "I'll see you on Tuesday." On Tuesday, your dinner on his coat tails he was Miss Flora died. running so fast.' And many expressions

Harvest Recipes

It’s harvest time in the mountains. Orchards are full of mouth-watering apples, huge fields are full of cabbage, sugar cane is being cut and prepared for molasses making. Other fields, full of corn are being cut and ground into silage to feed dairy cattle through the winter. Thousands of pumpkins of all shapes and sizes are ripe and chestnut trees have burrs that are popping open to drop their shiny brown nuts to the ground. All of these things are cultivated, add to them the wild chinquapins and fox grapes and it makes for a busy time of year.

All along our roadsides, there are big, commercial produce stands and small family operated ones alike, inviting you to share in our harvest. You can also visit the orchards and buy apples by the bushels. They just don’t come any fresher than that. 100

As for the cabbage crops in this area, mountain grown cabbage is the best, sweetest cabbage grown anywhere in the world. You can buy it here, where it is grown, for a fraction of the supermarket prices, by individual heads or fifty pound bags.

Pumpkins are good keepers, lasting many months just as they are. It’s best to keep them in a cool place (as for most produce). I’m sure you already know the joy of homemade pumpkin pies, but have you ever tried pumpkin bread or pumpkin butter? Pumpkin butter is made like apple butter. Farmers years ago used to grow pumpkins in their corn fields both for eating and for storing away in their barns and cut up in winter months to supplement the hay they fed their cows. Pumpkins gave the cows their extra nutrients needed to keep them healthy through the winter months.

We hope you will come spend a weekend at harvest time. You’re bound to enjoy it and save a lot of money if you take advantage of buying the produce direct from our local harvests. We hope you enjoy these recipes. You might like to try some of them as side dishes for Thanksgiving.

COUNTRY KRAUT

Good country kraut is made in an earthenware crock. (The size of your crock will determine the amount you make.)

Cut up fresh cabbage in the size and shape you like best for kraut. If it is shredded smaller, it will ferment faster. When you have it chopped, add salt to your taste and squeeze it in your hands thoroughly to bruise it. Keep doing this until you have the cabbage packed down tight and it has released enough water to cover it. Then place a flat plate on top of it and sit a milk jug of water (or any heavy object) on top of the plate. This is to keep the cabbage under the juice. It will turn brown if it isn’t under the juice. Cover and sit in a fairly warm place until it is fermented as sour as you like it. Then fill clean canning jars, put on lids and can in a canner for about 20 minutes.

If you like it hot, you can add layers of hot peppers in the cabbage as it is being made. Most country people add the cabbage stalks close to the top of the crock and eat them first as a delicacy. Also: You can stuff the cabbage mixture into green peppers and pickle the peppers along with the kraut in a crock.

FREEZER SLAW

1 med. cabbage head 1 teaspoon salt 1 carrot 1 green pepper 1 teaspoon mustard seed 1 teaspoon celery seed

Chop or shred cabbage, add salt and let stand one hour. Then squeeze all brine from cabbage. Add shredded carrot, green pepper, mustard seed and celery seed to cabbage. 101

In saucepan combine:

2 cups sugar 1 cup vinegar ¼ cup of water

Boil one minute. Cool to lukewarm and pour over the cabbage mixture. Divide into portion sizes you wish in plastic bags and freeze.

PERSIMMON PUDDING

2 cups persimmon pulp, seeded , 3 eggs beaten , 1 ¾ cups milk , 1 ½ cups sugar

Sift together: 2 cups flour ½ teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon allspice

Add this to persimmon mixture and beat well. Melt ¾ stick of butter in baking dish. Turn dish to coat it with the butter. Pour batter in pan. Bake one hour at 300 degree oven.

MOLASSES PUDDING

1 cup molasses 1 cup sugar 1 cup milk a lot of butter

and enough flour to make a decent batter. Add ginger and nutmeg to taste and bake the same way you would a pound cake.

PUMPKIN BREAD

3 ½ cups of flour 1 cup oil 1 ½ teaspoon salt 2/3 cup of water 2 cups pumpkin 3 cups sugar 1 teaspoon nutmeg 2 teaspoon soda 1 cup pecans

Grease 2 loaf pans and pour batter in them. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour and 15 minutes. Put in cinnamon and ginger in equal amounts with the nutmeg.

APPLE BROWN BETTY 102

This recipe is for an apple cobbler. It's quick and easy and delicious! Most old time mountain people planted apple trees before they built their houses on a piece of land. Mountain people know a hundred different ways to fix apples and Apple Brown Betty is one of the best.

Cut up enough apples to fill a 9x9" casserole dish about 1/2 to 2/3 full. (You can also use canned apples in this dish.) Sprinkle the apples generously with white or brown sugar. Sprinkle nutmeg and cinnamon over apples to your taste. Stir the sugar and apples with a spoon. (If using canned apples, you might still need to add sugar if they have been canned in a light syrup.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. While you are waiting for the oven to preheat, in a 3 quart mixing bowl, put one stick of margarine or butter. Cut in 1 cup of sugar until the mixture is crumbly, then add one cup of flour and cut it in also. The mixture should look crumbly.

Pour this mixture over the apples and cut up more butter on top. Take a spoon and poke some of the topping down into the apples. Do not fill dish too full because when the apples start cooking, they will make juice and bubble over in the oven. The baking time is usually between a half hour to 45 minutes. It depends on the size of your dish. Bake until the top is golden brown, but still soft and the apple juice is bubbling up through it.

Apple Brown Betty is best eaten hot out of the oven with a scoop of ice cream and/or caramel syrup on top.

Cat Head Biscuits

by: Sandra Bennett of Thistle Cove Farm

How many hundreds of times have I man through a day of cutting timber to watched my Grandmothers, Aunts and laying railroad line. Her biscuits were Mother’s hands deftly turn raw flour, huge, more like tomcat head size, and for shortening and buttermilk into biscuits? a little girl of 3 or 4, required both hands With the addition of a little sugar and just to lift them from plate to mouth. vanilla that same mixture would turn into melt in my mouth sugar cookies. She always had a churn of butter going so when those biscuits made their way In my earliest memories of Grandmother out of the wood fired oven there was a Hattie Gay’s kitchen I am seated on the mound of butter waiting to be slid 6’ long bench hand carved by between bottom and top. On special Granddaddy, my elbows propped on the occasions she would have some black table, drinking in the sights and smells of strap molasses heated on the stove, into Grandmother’s bustling endeavors. which a pinch of baking soda had been Grandmother made cat head biscuits - whipped. Once the butter melted, the The kind of biscuits that would see a biscuits were torn apart and that hot 103

‘lasses poured over both sides. It was My parents have a snapshot taken of me only when I was an adult that I heard the when I was 6. I stare defiantly into the phrase that fit, “to die for”. camera and am wearing a cowgirl outfit complete with hat, boots and twin six Aunt Bonnie’s hands could turn out a shooters. I’m seated on a pony attached pan of cathead biscuits as well. She, like to a carousel and the owner had her mother, would use fresh ingredients, interrupted my daydreaming long a wood fired oven and make the same enough for whom – Mother or Daddy? – miracle. Aunt Bonnie had the rolling pin to take my picture. that her Grandpa Samp had carved for his wife using a solid piece of poplar I always wanted to be a cowboy and live wood. Even so, Aunt Bonnie never on a farm (never a ranch). I wanted to actually rolled out the dough, but rather tend to animals, fix fences, work a patted them into a round shape and took garden but never hang curtains, vacuum her tin can and cut out the biscuits. She rugs or wash dishes. On top of the said the more you worked the dough, the betrayal of not wanting to be a “girly” tougher the biscuit. The little leftover girl I also made cat head biscuits. bits she would pull into a longish shape, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and tuck My mother has often despaired of me in the bread pan alongside the biscuits. over the years; but she and I are also alike in many ways. I share her tender Mother doesn’t make cat head biscuits. heart toward animals, children and old She likes her biscuits a little less doughy people, her love of books (especially the and a little smaller. They taste just as Bible), putting up (canning) the garden good but, somehow, my eye and my every year and her dislike of wasting mind are at war with each other. It just anything. seems like such a waste of effort to butter and ‘lasses what should rightly, to As importantly, I share her hands. Side my mind, be a ham biscuit biscuit. You by side the older and younger hands know, one of those cute little biscuits speak silently to decades of honest work, made by beating the dough 300 or 400 of loving play, of making a life for our times. families and ourselves. In her case, she tries to keep her nails manicured; I I, as you might imagine, make cat head simply try to keep mine trimmed and biscuits. When Mother and Daddy visit, clean. In the years I’ve lived on our I do try to remember to make a couple of farm, I’ve had nail polish on exactly one ham biscuit size biscuits but my hands time but I do wear good gloves and that reject the betrayal. It is always an helps. Working with the sheep also helps argument to get my hands to pat out as the lanolin works its way into my thinner dough in smaller sizes. Too often hands and, eventually, softens them my hands are the victors and the loss is somewhat. my mothers. When I bring the biscuits to the table, I see in her eyes a slight I don’t think Mother understands my disappointment. Once again, I have love of the farm, the mountains, my failed her and we are each reminded of horses and sheep. She questions why I the differences between us. do the physical labor necessary to keep 104 the farm going. My lifestyle puzzles her Rather it is in what lies below the much, I imagine, as I did when she was surface that bonds us more tightly than trying to tame an unruly tomboy into a death could separate. We are both ribbon and lace little girl. strong women with strong opinions, strong likes and dislikes, strong love and It is not in our physical looks that we are hatreds. It is in our strengths that I find I alike either. She is dark haired, brown- am, after all, my Mother’s daughter. I eyed and turns a lovely golden brown in look at our hands, Mom...our hands and the sun. I am her exact opposite; I am our hearts. blond, green-eyed and sallow skinned.

______

Old Fashioned Cat Head Biscuits

by Susan Thigpen, © 2001

Biscuits are easy. You just have to know lump of lard in the middle of the flour, a few tricks handed down from our having first scooped a hole out in the grandmothers. center of the flour. She poured the buttermilk into this depression in the When I was a little girl, I watched my flour and worked it and the lard into the grandmother make biscuits many, many flour. times. She would go to her pantry where there was a huge flour bin and her bread I remember my grandmother held the making bowl - one of those earthenware bowl under one arm and mixed the big brown bowls with a stripe around the dough with a twisting motion of her top that cost an arm and a leg in antique fingers. She never used a spoon. When stores today. She never measured the dough was mixed, she would start anything, but would scoop out flour with pinching off big pieces of dough and a big tin scoop into her flour sifter that rolling them in the palm of her hand. was painted white with red cherries Then she would place the newly formed painted on the side. Then she would biscuit in a pan that was blackened from sprinkle a little baking soda into the flour many years of use. the pan would always and sift it into the bowl. be full of biscuits, no spaces between and if there was a little dough left, she Then she would go to the spring house would make it into a tiny baby biscuit and get home churned buttermilk. She and tuck it away in a small hole between would sit these things on her kitchen the other biscuits. This would be my table that was covered in a red checked special biscuit. oil cloth tablecloth. Then she would get out her bucket of lard and scoop out a My grandmother made it look so easy. hunk about the size of a walnut with her When she was finished, her bowl was fingers. My grandmother would put this clean, her hands were clean, there was 105 no dough or flour on her, the bowl or the Do not handle the dough any more than table. How she managed that, I have you have to - it makes the biscuits tough. never figured out. It was magic and as The less you handle it and the more far as I'm concerned, it still is! I make a moist the dough, the better your biscuits pretty good biscuit, but I've never will be. Just pat the dough gently until managed to come out clean as a whistle it's about an inch and a half thick. like she did. She would place the pan in her wood cook stove oven and remove it Then cut out the biscuits. Do you know at just the right time so that the biscuits what I use for a biscuit cutter? I use a tin were golden brown, never burned. Those can that I cut both the bottom and top out biscuits were always light, fluffy and of and removed the label. A one pound huge - that's why they are called cat head vegetable can is a good size. Cut out biscuits - because they are as big as a your biscuits and place in a greased pan. cat's head! The pan can be either glass or metal, but be sure it is small enough so that the Now, how do you reproduce those biscuits are all close together, touching - biscuits today? I will give you a recipe Remember, you want the biscuits to rise and some pointers. up, not out to the side. Another reason for this is that when the biscuits bake 2 cups self rising flour with their sides touching, you can pull 1 cup buttermilk them apart easily, but those sides will be a lump of solid shortening the size of a very soft and tender, not hard and brown. walnut. This can be real butter, This is a very important part of making margarine, lard or solid vegetable good biscuits. shortening. This has to be at room temperature to blend smoothly into the Bake in a hot oven 400 degrees just until dough. Do not, and I repeat, do not use a the biscuits are light brown, but you are soft dairy spread - they contain so much sure the dough is done through and water that they won't work for any through. No one likes a biscuit that is baking purposes. still doughy, but neither does anyone like a hard crust either! In a large mixing bowl, put the flour. Most flours today do not need to be You can brush melted butter on the tops sifted. Push the flour to the sides of the of the biscuits when they are done, or bowl to form a depression in the center. before you place them in the oven. This Place the shortening and a little of the is also a hint to keep the biscuits soft and milk in the center and start stirring with moist. This recipe will make around 8 to a big spoon. When the shortening is 10 biscuits, depending on the size of blended, add the rest of the milk, mixing your tin can. A variation of this recipe is just until blended and the dough forms a to use tomato juice instead of milk. the ball. The dough will be a little on the biscuits will be red and you will love the moist side. flavor if you eat them with a slice of country ham in them! They do not rise as Place wax paper on a flat surface like much as buttermilk biscuits. your kitchen table and sprinkle flour on it. Roll the dough out on the wax paper. 106

At this point, all you will need is to eat strawberry jam or molasses. Gourmets - the biscuits - hot right out of the oven Eat your heart out, country cooking with butter, honey, home made rules!

What is Appalachia?...... 2 Hairy Woman……….8 Jack Tales…………. 4 107

Greenbrier Ghost……10 Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire Sop Tale……………. 13 ………63 Bob Henry Baber Down Come a Leg…. 14 The Booger Family ………70 Jack Tales…………. 15 Denise Giardina Saints and Villains Pig and Fox……….. 19 ………72 Gurney Norman Munsmeg…………. 22 Divine Right’s Trip ………82 David Crockett……. 27 Susan M. Thigpen

Appalachian Music and Literature In Defense of the …………….. 35 Dandelion……83

John Henry……….. 35 Mountain Remedies……….84

16 Tons…………… 37 Caleb and Henry…………….85

Blue Moon of Kentucky Old Jake…………………… 89 …………….. 39 Possum War Chronicles…… 92 Rocky Top…………. 40 My First Chaw…………….. 93 Coal Miner’s Daughter ……………. 41 Flowers……………………. 94

Coal Mining……………….. 42 Mountain Lady…………… 95

Denise Giardina Recipes……………………. 100 Storming Heaven …….. 51

Contemporary Appalachia…53

Lee Smith The Last Girls..53

Silas House A Parchment of Leaves ………57 James Still River of Earth..62

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