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AUTHOR Arnow, Pat, Ed. TITLE Sense of Place in Appalachia. INSTITUTION East Tennessee State Univ., Johnson City. Center for Appalachian Sttdies and Services. PUB DATE 89 NOTE 49p.; Photographs will not reproduce well. AVAILABLE FROMNow and Then, CASS, Box 19180A, ETSU, Johnson City, TN 37614-0002 ($3.50 each; subscription $9.00 individual and $12.00 institution). PUB TYPE Collected Works -Serials (022) -- Viewpoints (120) -- Creative Works (Literature,Drama,Fine Arts) (030) JOURNAL CIT Now and Then; v6 n2 Sum 1989

EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Essays; Interviews; *Novels; Photographs; Poetry; *Regional Attitudes; Regional Characteristics; *Rural Areas; Short Stories IDENTIFIERS *Appalachia; Appalachian Literature; Appalachian People; *Place Identity; Regionalism; Rural Culture

ABSTRACT This journal issue contains interviews, essays, short stc-ies, and poetry focusing on sense of place in Appalachia. In iLterviews, author Wilma Dykeman discussed past and recent novels set in Appalachia with interviewer Sandra L. Ballard; and novelist Lee Smith spoke with interviewer Pat Arnow about how Appalachia has shaped her writing. Essays include "Eminent Domain" by Amy Tipton Gray, "You Can't Go Home If You Haven't Been Away" by Pauline Binkley Cheek, and "Here and Elsewhere" by Fred Waage (views of regionalism from writers Gurney Norman, Lou Crabtree, Joe Bruchac, Linda Hogan, Penelope Schott and Hugh Nissenson). Short stories include "Letcher" by Sondra Millner, "Baptismal" by Randy Oakes, and "A Country Summer" by Lance Olsen. Poems include "Honey, You Drive" by Jo Carson, "The Widow Riley Tells It Like It Is" by P. J. Laska, "Words on Stone" by Wayne-Hogan, "Reeling In" by Jim Clark, "Traveler's Rest" by Walter Haden, "Houses" by Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg, "Seasonal Pig" by J. B. Goodenough, "And This Is The Way To Be Poor" by Barbara Smith, "Polio Summer" by Edward C. Lynskey, and "Direction" by Gretchen McCroskey. This issue also contains book reviews and numerous photographs, including those of Kenneth Murray and William "Pictureman" Mullins. (SV)

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Points ohnewor oproonSSIatedontroSdOest ment dO not necessarily represent official OERI pavtan or policy Sense of Place in,Appalachia Interviews with Wilina Dvkeman & Lee Smith Stories, Essays, Poetry, Photos, ReY iew sr and a S ecial Section o MapsJo Canon Traces Her Routes

i BEST COPY AVAILABLE 1

Kenneth Murray Homeward

entering west virginia the pavement shatters and a whole family leaving hitches along the highway: mother, father. a daughter in arms: I pass a road sign indiscernible by shotgun, so it seems. forever in america. Photographs on the fr0111 and hack home is i. rarer by Alice Anthony. Johnson City. the desperate going 7.0111.

Joseph Barrett Jasqh Barren's tam* has appeared in Southern Humanities Review. Poetry Rants and Rolling Stone. Ile is a native West Virginian who lives in Lexington. Ky. .

I. CONTENTS "A sense of one's place and of history makes distant places less strange and the past more pertinent to the present." Wilma Dykeman Volume 6, Number 2 Summer, 1989 COLUMNS 2-5 INTERVIEWS Wilma Dykeman Editorial Board ESSAYS Sandra Ballard 18 Bert Allen. Ed Cabbell. Pauline Cheek. Eminent Domain Mary Chiltoskey. Robert J. Higgs. Amy Tipton Gray 6 Lee Smith Marat Moore. Rita Quillen. Fred Waage You Can't Go Home Pat Arnow 14 If You Haven't Been Away Staff Pauline Binklev Cheek 9 DirectorRichard Blaustein Here and Elsewhere REVIEWS EditorPat .Arnow Fred Waage 32 Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet Poetry EditorJo Carson by Jo Carson Music EditorEd Snodderly STORIES Greta Hedberg 37 Associate EditorJane Woodside Letcher SubscriptionsRuth Hausman Sondra Millner .11 A Southern Appalachian Reader Support Staff Baptismal. Nellie McNeil and Joyce Charles Moore. Tim Stafford. Kim Randy Oakes 16 Squibb (eds.) Durham. Becky Satterfield. Margaret A Country Summer Grace Toney Edwards 38 Liu. Cathy Whaley . John Rambo Lance Olsen .28 Foxfire Reconsidered Now and Then Magazine POETRY by John L Puckett Now and Thenhas been published three Honey, You Drive Richard Blaustein 39 times a year srice 1984 by the Center for Jo Carson. .2 Appalachian Studies and Services (CASS) at The Widow Riley Tells It Folks U East Tennessee State University. CASS is one Like It Is by Garret Mathews of the State of Tennessee's Centers of PJ. Laska. 8 Excellence. supporting artistic. scholarly Jacqueline Cook 40 and public service projects in the region. Words on Stone When you become a Friend of CASS (S9.00 Wayne Hogan 10 With Fiddle and per year. S12 for institutions and libraries) you Reeling In Well-Rosined Bow will receive a subscription toNow and Then. Jim Clark 15 by Joyce H. Cauthen Submissions of poetry. fiction. articles. Traveler's Rest Possum up a Gum Stump personal essays. graphics and photographs Walter Haden.. 10 (recording) concerned with Appalachian life past and Houses Tim Stafford 40 present are welcomed if accompanied by a Georgeann Eskievich self-addressed stamped'envelope. Rehberg 21 All Night Dog Address correspondence to: Editor. Now Seasonal Pig by Garry Barker and Then, Box 19180A. ETSU. Johnson City. J.B. Goodenough 31 Gary Stafford 42 TN 37614-0002. East Tennessee State University is fully And This is the Way to be Poor in accord with the belief that educational Barbara Smith 35 Some Writing and employment opportunities should be Polio Summer Pat Arnow 42 available to all eligible persons without Edward C. Lynskey 36 regard to age. sex. race. religion. national Direction origin or handicap. Gretchen McCroskey 45 The views expressed in these pages are MUSIC those of the authors and do not necessarily MAPS Small Southern Town represent opinions of East Tennessee State Jo Carson's Routes...... 10,31,34, 36 Ed Snodderly 44 University or of the State Board of Regents.

ISSN No. 0896-2693 Thanks for special help on this issue SBR. No. 260.04348 Ed Cabbell, Bob Henry Baber and © Copyright by the Centerfor 2 M copies. Blair White. Appalachian Studies and Services. 1989. Printed hr McFarlane Graphics. Bristol. VA. ei Nowand Then / 1 stantly up and down the Ohio River? and embraced it. From the Editor There was a pleasant new riverside park, Our poetry editor Jo Carson made us but over on the other side of town, the maps showing her personal sense of After I moved away from hunting- lovely Ritter Park had grown shabbier, in place, finding her routes. Her important ton, W.Va., where I lived for four years,1 the classic rose garden there were weeds. landmarks show the way to her home missed it badly for a long time. When I There had never been weeds there before. but they would not help you much finding got over that, I still felt unreasonably We traveled on to Charleston, the way to her house. We also have the nostalgic about my,years in that part of Fairmont, Snowshoe and Lewisburg. The latest of Jo's "People Pieces" (below) and the country. Friends, even West Virgini- trip made me recall how different my a review of her newly-published book, ans. didn't understand my attachment. I notions of what made,up Appalachia had 'Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet. didn't understand it myself. Huntington been when I lived in West Virginia than When Sandy Ballard and I inter- wasn't that lovable. It was old and they had become living in East Tennes- viewed Wilma Dykeman and Lee Smith crumbling, in the throes of permanent see. My "sense of place" had changed. respectively, we learned about very recession. There was more variety in the region different elements of each of the authors' But I loved it because of Ritter Park than I remembered. We drove up throughsenses of place. Though as journalists we with its creek, large trees and well-kept Eastern Kentucky with its steep moun- try not to impose our own personalities in rose gardens, fora fine YMCA, for its old tains, narrow valleys and coal mining articles, we found that the qt. stions we fashioned downtown movie theaters, for economy to Huntington, a city of brick asked showed something about our own the little grills and the peanut shop. for houses with something of a Midwestern sense of place because we asked about the big muddy Ohio River. a highway of feel to it. The hills in that part of the statethe items that were preoccupying each of barges, for some earthy, politically- are as dense as Eastern Kentucky, but not us. minded women who became my friends. that steep. In the eastern part of the West In the past few issues the themes But for the six years I have lived in Virginia with its higher. grander moun- have restricted us a bit. and we haven't Johnson City. I never had occasion to tains we finally saw new construction and been able to include as much fiction and return to Huntingtonuntil this May. a carefully nurtured tourist industry. poetry as we would have likJ, but "sense My husband, Steve Giles, and I spent a The scenery. the economy and even of place" is a theme that doesn't demand week traveling around West Virginia to the kinds of people in each of the places one kind of subject matter, it demands a interview Vietnam veterans for a book on we visited in West Virginia were com- clear idea of a piece of ground. a time in Appalachian veterans we're doing with pletely distinctive from each other and history. That is the strong suit of the Bert Allen of Milligan College. (This tripdifferent from East Tennessee with its writers in this region. The three stories was thanks to a grant from Berea Col- taller mountains, wider valleys and and 11 poems represent the widest lege's Appalachian Center. by the way.) somewhat more Southern sensibility. Not diversity imaginable, with settings Going back to West Virginia was for that one could mistake any of these placesranging from the coal camps of the 1920s me like rereading a book. In the book for any place but Appalachia. They have to a neighborhood in Pittsburgh. some of the plot, characters and interest- in common hills of one sort or another. We were pleased with the response ing items stand out in memory clearly. lush greenery, hazy skies. fragrant by writers to this theme, and excited by but each page brings forgotten details honeysuckle. But I was struck by the the original thought and high quality of back. The peanut shop downtown had thediversity of the places we visited more work that came in. We hope you will same peanut wallpaper. We ate breakfast than the similarities. enjoy this celebration of the varying in Thabit's and were served by the same I came back to East Tennessee to landscapes of Appalachia. shy woman that used to serve us lunch prepare for this "sense of place" issue of Pat Amow there. Connie Carr. a social worker at the Now and Then with the feeling that any Vet Center. told us the same sort of attempt to present an all-encompassing amazing stories about her work that she view of the region, . sense of place for all Honey, you drive used to tell. Huntington hadn't changed of Appalachia at once, was impossible. If two weeks to yesterday out 58 much. there were collective truths to be had turn up the creek at Richmond's It's not like Johnson City. Six years about the region, we w..uld have to find Bend, away from this place. and an old resident them through singular experiences. And turn down two miles in at the fork, would probably get lost on all the new the mail did bring highly individual turn left at the blue and roads and among the new buildings. This visions. black Buick, is part of the Sun Belt or the New South. Two remarkable essays offer Huntington hasn't changed because intensely personal senses of place. The and come to the end of the road. there's a stagnant economy in that part of experiences described by Amy Tipton 12 miles from where you're sitting. West Virginiaa portion of the Rust Gray and by Pauline Cheek are very Step on it Belt. One of our interviewees said that different from each other, but both end up and we'll wait dinner for you. Huntington was the grimmest city he'd being chronicles of how these women ever seen.I didn't feel that way about it. came to define themselves as Appala- Jo Carson but I could see that the place was not chian, how both came to the discovery 12 faring well. More businesses had closed. its uniqueness, how both were scarred b, Jo Carson's "People Pieces" hare just come We saw no new construction. And where hearing the negative view of their culture, our in a hook. Stories I Ain't Told Nobody were the barges that used to run con- how both came to a sense of pride in it Yet, is hid: is reviewed on page 37.

2 / Now and Then U From the Director Contrary to the expectations of the modern world. The writers whose rationalists ano logical positivists, the intuitions and insights grace the pages of growth of science, industry and bureauc- this latest edition ofNow And Thenhave With this issue ofNow And Then , racy have not le' to the eradication of resolved the dilemma of biculturalism, the Center for Appalachian Studies and distinctive ethoic and regional cultures demonstrating that it is possible to Services at East Tennessee State Univer- here in the Southern mountains of the identify with a particular place and its sity marks the completion of its first year United States or elsewhere. Instead of people and still touch upon universal as an Accomplished Center of Excel- "cultural grey-out" and social uniformity, themes and concerns. By selectively lence. Established in 1984 through Ten- we observe traditionalist enclaves and carrying forward the best of the past into nessee's Comprehensive Educational separatist movements arising to oppose the present, they hold forth the possibility Reform Act, CASS was one of 14 the hegemony of capitalist and socialist of richer and more varied cultural lives original Centers of Excellence. In 1987 systems alike. Tendencies toward stan- for the rest of us. the Center was one of five to receive a dardization and homogenization which Over the next five years CASS hopes merit award from the Tennessee Higher to contribute to a fuller appreciation of Education Commission and the State appear to be inherent in the corporate structure of modern societies also seem to traditional and contemporary culture in Board of Regents for outstanding generate countervalent forces leading to Appalachia. To do this, we need the performance. Last year, independent the reassertion of ethnic, national and re- continued support of people like yourself evaluators concurred that CASS had gional identity and autonomy. A com- who appreciate our accomplishments and succeeded imachieving the goals and aspirations. You can help by becoming a objectives set forth in its five-year plan. mon pattern underlying these movements Friend of CASS. Individual subscriptions Over the past five years we have devel- is the partial assimilation of marginal individuals and groups into more inclu- are $9.00 for three issues per year. oped research resources in Appalachian sive social orders, development of a sense Institutional and library subscriptions are Studies, supported scholarly, artistic and of ambiguous identity, followed by the $12.00. Larger contributions and gifts public service projects focusing on selective reinterpretation of a previously will help to continue the work of the regional themes and concerns and stigmatizing culture, often culminating in CASS Fellowship Program. For further continued the development of courses, symbolic or actual return to an idealized information concerning our activities, conferences and symposia dealing with primordial community and homeplace. write to CASS, Box 19180A, East Ten- facets of Appalachian social and cultural The key themes of Appalachian nessee State University, Johnson City, history. These programs emphasize the regional scholarship and literature Tenn. 37614-0002 or call (615) 929- rich heritage of folk traditions and vital 5348. We've come a long way in a short contemporary literature that are equally migration and homecoming, disassocia- tion and reaffiliation, denial and affirma- thin, but we need your support today part of the expressive culture of this tionhave their counterparts throughout more than ever. Help us keep growing. complex and diverse part of the world. Richard Blaustein

From the Museum until I actually spoke with a Soviet the friendly reception they had received individual that I knew whether he or she in Johnson City. They complimented the Northeast Tennessee was selected as was a Sovietisitor or a local resident scenery 11,..te and wanted to correspond a host site for two different groups of whom I did not know. with us after they returned home. A visitors from the Soviet Union this spring. This question of how to recognize member a the first delegation asked me The first delegation, which included a the Russian v isitors caused me to reflect if we might exchange art exhibits. teacher, a photographer, a alien diplo- on the differences between our two na- I am beginning to believe that we mat and an accountant, toured East tionalities. will have peace, perhaps not by design, Tennessee State University, which was Probably one of the things that stood but through necessity. Sonic of the presenting its International Week at that out most to me was that several of the problems we face, such as those that time. The Reece Museum hosted the Russians could speak English to some threaten the human em ironment, are group for an evening reception and an degree. We Americans could not elobal and will be solved only through informal chat. converse with those who spae no the cooperation of every nation. The The second delegation, compri.,ed of English unless an interpreter was nearby. visitors from the Soviet Union with 29 residents of Tbilisi, Georgia. USSR, They knew more about the history of our whom I spoke are aware of this. We will arrived the following week. The group country than I knew about theirs, and they tear down our fences and speak with each included actors, visual artists and were excited that they arc now being other about these issues and work musicians ranging in age from 13 to 44. given the freedom to learn about their together to solve our problems, certainly Heading the delegation was the Chairman own history. for the sake of peace, but more than this of the Tbilisi Peace Committee. There were few differences other perhaps, for the sake of survival. If we During the visit, the Reece hosted an than language. They discussed their think of each other as people instead of as afternoon reception at which one of our region with pride just as I did mine. governments, we can realize that we are patrons approached me with the question, And those with whom I spoke were as not really all that different. "How do I recognize the Russian visi- concerned as I about global problems. 1Ielen Roseberry tors?"I could not answer. It was not The visitors expressed gratitude for

6 Now and Then / 3 From the Archives

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Hill Station, Va.

Life in Appalachia is not justcoal mining, subsistence farming and handicraft-making for tourists. It is not simply quaintrural scenes or cloud-rimmed mountains. Appalachia has many sides anclinanypeople. Of the collections contained within thearchives. Kenneth Murray's photographs best reflect themany aspeLts of the Ap- palachian region. In the itmoduLtion t s first photographiL book, Donn to Paul, -People of .ippalat,aa. Murray,sets Rath his Grew. Mw of tar-paper sharks adjoms a subdii bum otnew btiLksplit lex els all with four columnsm taint. aluminum house traileis, TVlakes, strip mines, unitary stores. shoppingventers, tout- lane highways, wooden foot bridges.Lountry L tubs and tood stamps -they 're all part of the new `Nlountain Ills photographic LolleLtion panotarnit. landsLipes and land nix aged by suip mining or byyea's ot tieglet.t. His portraits depict the prosperous andlimit. tlic young and old, and the contented and troubled. Kenneth IX/ hurray has become one of AppalaLhia'sleading photo-journalists. M a Linematographei he workedtot NS KP E- TV, Kingsport, enn., and freelanLed for "TheDrl.k Cavett Slurs ." "ABC Nightly New s," "CBS 13iclung News" and I lNESCO. A a photographer he has beenemployed by seei al newspaperk, and has flee-lamed lot national publiLitions including Time, Neat sweek / 'S Nett, out/ tfc,i hi Repott and the Nett. York Times. Murny's photographs haxe been exhibitedthroughout the eastern United States. In I960 he m,,is one ot loutmusts repre- sented at the exhibit. "The AincriLan Coal Muter,-at the Inlet- Continued Williamson, W. Va.

4 / Now and Then Archives national Center of Photography in New York. His photographs were included in the West Virginia exhibit ".44.1.71' at the World's Fair in Knoxville. Tenn. In addition Murray has published three photographic essays: Down to Earth. The American Coal Mine, . and Poi trail of Appalachia. His most recent book is //idllaud Ti ails of Upper East Tennessee and t.- Southwestern Virginia. Murray has recently been a fellow of the Center for Appalachian Studie, and SeRiLes. doLumenting craft traditions in the Clinch RR er Valle). He is a graduate of East Ten- nessee State University. The Kenneth Murray Photo- it - graphs number appro eiri.4,1) 1000 prints dating from the 1970s ifolIugh Copperhill, Tenn. the mid-1980s. The photographs arc 41\ ailable for ltewtng and st.'dy at the archieS. I lov,cxct. duplication and IL publication rights may only he ob- tained from the photographerPot more information on Kenneth Murray Photographs km other collet.- nom held by the at Llin, es. contact Archte's of Appalahm. Box 22450A, East Tennessee State t in- s erstty. Johnson City . T\ 37614

Norma Thomas and xl,tt to Tedesco Eidson, Tenn.

Foundry, Kingsport, Tenn.

Kenneth \lull ay 's hoof s. Po hot Ippalat Ina 0,7 9,-; papo ki and I). 11 1,) I alai Volk

I Ilk\iy.11,1L111.111 1 mill Pli.sI IIIL I lt LI11.111 Stith,' IIII% \( 2.8(105/Mon,: hillis I /JoI Wit 1Hilt 1511 St/id/hit it 1 u`i/H./11/44)9i 1).11)CIlui.k I is aal fable how the Joneshinoul.lh I oto ("owls i1. Jonesholow.:1). 1

Elmer Sturgill fords North Fork Creek with load of hay, Scott County, Va. Photos on 'hoe pa,gcs I K, 'meth Mumy. by permission.

Now and Then / 5 When I was a child I lived in America.Like the characters in the books I read, like the peopl, I saw on TV, I lived in a real neighborhood. Daddydrove off to work every morning; Mother stayed home and cleaned house. Shenever baked cookies, it's true, but she was there when my brother and I bedraggled our way in from schoolevery afternoon. The kids that lived on Hillcrest were American kids. We hada neighborhood bully. We had a budding beauty queen. We had Barbie dolls and GI Joes and sleds and bikes, andwe all got new clothes twice a year, fall and spring. We were oblivious to everything but our immediateconcerns, to all that was peripheral to our fleet hours of play. I would have been as intently oblivious as the rest had itnot been for my mother, who taught me the concept of "around here." Mother, born in Louisiana, movedto California at 14. She wound up in Johnson City on something very closeto a whim when her best friend decided to go to Milligan instead of a college in :one of those small mountainystates in the north. (The irony of ending up in a mountainy state in the southwas not lost on Mother.) I can never remember a time that Mother did not drill away at the idea that wewere different, that since she was not from "around here," and since she did not talkor think or act like she was from "around here," there was no reason my brother and I should either. My daddy, whose people hadgotten to what would become East Tennessee in 1768 (two years before the law saidthey could be there), didn't see anything wrong with her logic. He had been schooledat an early age, of course, to believe that his grammar and accent were "bad," and that if he wanted to make something of himself,he too would have to speak differently, as if he were not from "around here."As he had learned, so would we. Frankly, I never thought I was from "around here." The factthat I knew the difference, or some vague approximation of the difference, andthe fact that all of us kids thought .ge were just regular 'Americans, somehow placedus in a class of EMINENT otherness ;.std betterness, I'm fra'dthan the unfortunateswho could not escape the stigma of "here." To do Mother justice, and to use her phrase, Johnson Citymust have seemed like another planet, a planet on which she didn'twant us to have to live if we DOMAIN chose not to. How could we know therewere other worlds if we did not under- stand the difference between here and there? And where, in allhonesty, could Amy Gray Mother have leanrd anything good about "around here?" Daddyhimself didn't see it, beyond pride in and loyalty to family. And who in the world would eminent domain nl: superior dominion exerted by have a sovereign state over all property within its bounda- wanted to be like those people on The Real McCoys,or Jethro and Ellie May, or ries that authorizes it to appropriate all or any part Lil' Abner orGod forbidHee Haw? thereof to a necessary public use. reasonable com- The first fissure in the crystallineassurance of my difference was opened by pensation being made 2 : a right wider thanangary my California grandmother. Mother and I flew out when I sometimes considered to exist in international law was eight (my brother for one nation to appropriate the territory or property stayed home and went to Tweetsie and killed his goldfish byoverfeeding it.) The of another as a necessary measure of self-protection. flight was as magical as any child could have hoped itwould be. Iwatched the lights and clouds, answered the stewardesses politely, spillednothing on my Happy Hollisters book Mother had boughtme for the trip (in the book, the Hollisters flew to Puerto Rico and solved a mystery that had somethingto do with sugar cane.) Somehow, it was still evening when we landed in California;I remember being surprised to see that everything except the pink air was brown and greynogreen anything, anywhere. That wasn't to prove the biggest surprise. The first thing Grammysaid to me, right after I had only just said hello, took me completely by surprise. "Mygoodness, Amyl" she said. "How Southernyou talk." I was flabbergasted. "We don't sound Southern,"I told her. "We talk just like the peopleon TV. It took me years to understand why they all laughed. That summer, too, right after Mother and I returned,another crack opened. Daddy's family had to move. My grandfather Tipton hada house and store in the Keystone section of Johnson City that had been bought up to makeway for urban renewal. Nobody really wanted to try to explain to me why they had to leave if they wantedto stay, so I would follow around behind them, trying to find the answers in their quietness, their sadness,their muted frustration that was not quite anger. I wanted very much to know what would happen to the old wood andglass counters, to the drink machine with its icy, metallic smell,to the huge scale in the feed room out back, where Daddy used to try to ride the one-eyedpony kept to pull the grocery wagon. I never asked them. After that last afternoon in the store, Daddynever drove us through Keystone again. But the place in;/ grandparents moved towas wonderful! They had kept a farm in Roan Mountaina house, a barn, the family cemetery, 60acres, woodsridge top to field on one side 6 / Now and Then 0, of the road, pasture to river on the other. weren't like me, so no matter what home. And as I got older, I got angry, For a girl in love with Laura Ingalls Grammy had said about my accent (that and frustrated. There was-another "out Wilder, it was heaven, even if the only casual remark nagged me for years), I stillthere," one in which powerful people livestock. around were chickens. I saw didn't act like they did. could do whatever they wanted to my first deer there, my first fox. I Then, at 14,1 read Christylong to whomever they pleased, people against weeded a garden there for the first time. 1 remain my favorite novel other than True whom no one could stand. found horseshoes, and the split shoes of Grit. Christy, a bestseller in the late Things really became skewed when I c'cen, long lost in the stalls of the old 1960s by Catherine Marshall, told the got to high school. Like every other barn.I listened to my grandmother tell story of I9 -year -old Christy Huddleston adolescent I knew, I hated my home- lite-about-a panther tharusedlo-roam-thc- Asbieville tospcmta townbecause it .,:ts my hometown. I woods; I couldn't understand how it had year bringing the light of learning to a wanted out. Period. There was nothing gotten there, and she couldn't understand Presbyterian mission school in the wilds to do, nowhere to go (and in my case, why I thought it had escaped from the of the Tennessee Smokies. I saw in nobody to date, so even teen romance was circus (Walt Disney called them cougars, Christy much of what I believed about out of the picture). Wont of all, it had or mountain lions, or pumas. like the myself. And the book gave further meat finally dawned on all of us that, to a real shoe). to the bones of "around here." "Around extent, we had to admit that we were The montitly drive to the farm was here" really meant "out there," out in the from "here"since we had been born formal, a slow ritual procession into the mountains, where pioneers (that again) "here" and raised "here." What a terrible past. It did not occur to me, then, that had fallen from nobility into darkness and moment of truth that was! instead of you could not be any more "around here" despair. Christy taught me that it was plain Americans, we had become a than my grandparents. Instead, they okay to like folk songsread ballads deformed hybrid. seemed to be like the people I met in the but that everything negative I had heard That horrible revelation caused the books about the frontier.I had never read about-all the other music played by those pressure to be as unlike "around here" as about mountain people, or hillbillies, or from "here" (or "there") was true. possible to intensify. It was the age of the mountaineersthose words were not (Including my grandfather, an idea that uncoAventional; everybody looked like a words I knew. But I knew about farmers, bothered me because I loved him and I hippie, even the kids in the sororities and and frontier settlers, and that was who I loved it when my brother and I would sit fraternities (technically they were called saw my grandparents to be.1 knew one beside him in his spare, neat room, and heservice organizations) who ran the school. of my uncles on the farm read Camus and would take his rosewood banjo from its Difference (within rigid convention) was Sartre and Kierkegaard for fun (big case and scratch out a few notes for us.) the cachet everyone sought. I was books, I thought of them), and that my FromChristy I learned the word moun- different all right.1 was smart, and other uncle played piano in a jazz/dinner- tain.It was always an adjective, some- although I was fairly quiet, I did speak dance music trio.I knew, too, my times of approval (as in mountain crafts), out in class when I got aggravated. And I grandfather sang gospel and played the usually of opprobrium. It was the word got good grades. And I read a lot. And banjo until he got too old. But there was hidden beneath Mother's euphemism. all that added up to more difference than no contradiction. All I had been taught to From the state of Tennessee I learned most of my peers could stomach. watch out for was the mysterious taint of the term "eminent domain." But when I was 16, the smartest, "around here"and none of my people No sooner had my grandparents hippest teacher in the school discovered seemed to me like they were from gotten to Roan Mountain (six months, I me. "around here." believe) than the state sent a surveyor to She taught history and political Of course my relatives who had inform them that the area was going to be science. She was not from "around here." never lived any place but Roan Mountain made into a park, and that they would, She was a feminist. She promoted or Elizabethton did fall into the abyss.I sooner or later, have to sell out and move "creativity." She used polysyllabic probably wouldn't hat, figured that out, again. The sooner or later took eight words. She liked students with brains. though, had they not all sat on the porch years; the summer before my senior year And she gave me a place to belong. In in the summer and compared memuch in high school they were back in Johnson her classroom, everybody else was to my detrimentto proverbial country City, in a house behind Bell Ridge beyond the pale. cousins whom I had never met. In fact, which marked the perimeter of what was From her I learned a new of version my own relatives were the first group to left of Keystone. of "around here":the phrase "to get out whom I firmly attached that amorphous From the beginning there was a of here." phrase "around here." And Mother was duality to those hours I spent on the farm. Despite the fear that I was sealing my right.I wasn't like them, and they Even before I really understood what the own coffin as far as dating was concerned adults were talking about when they came (1 will thank you to remember how young Amy Tipton Gray is employed by Caldwell (as they inevitably did) to the subject that 1 was), 1 finally came out in her class and Community College in Hudson. NE.. as the made every visit end bleakly, I felt like said that I was a feminist.I began writing coordinator of the computerized writing the hours I could spend there had already essays criticizingwell, anything I could center. She is working on a chapbook of been portioned out in meager ration. think of, mainly the big boys with the big poetry, The Hillbilly Vampire, to be publishedAlways happy when I arrived, I was bucks like the ones pushing my family off by Rowan Mountain Press. always depressed by the time we went the farm (although at that time I hadn't 10 Now and Then / 7 Eminent Domain to State. as long as I "got out of here" as that fall when school started. (I ran into soon as I graduated. her because for awhile we would get mad made the connection). It seemed that I Eventually I fell from grace with at each other and not speak for two or could not go too far, the more politicized both of them. into the ranks of the three years. but like family, we always I became, the more she egged me on. unredeemed. It was inevitable. I decided made it up.) She too had "discovered" She also egged me ott'in my hatred I liked State. I decided being.a teacher mountain musicher sister had bought of Johnson City, which under her wasn't such awful karma. But tellingly, the Nitty Gritty "Circle" album about the encouragement soon became a generic even as going to the farm had made me time I was in Galax. She too wanted to hatred of anything "mountain" except both happy and sad. I could not feel the leam to clog. And she too wanted to find the farm. of course. She urged me not to one way about "here" that they wanted out more about the musicians in her go to school at East Tennessee State me to feel. I tried:3nd tried, but only part familyboth of us. coming slowly to see University. to become a lawyer. not a of me detested "here" in the way that they for the first time that maybe all this stuff teacher, to "get out" as soon as I could. had groomed me. I hated it. but I was from "around here" was something that (My uncle the piano player was urging drawn to the woods and the high places. wasn't quite as awful as we had been me to do the same thing. Mother. Probably the most bizarre manifestation taught to believe. (Yes. we still thought however, for what reason I could not of this split would present itself when my "maybe.") fathom. had started pushing the other friends and I would drive our clunkers And she told me about an anthropol- way.) Her words did not fall amongst the (Falcons. Fairlanes. old Chevys) way up ogy class her sister had taken that was tares. I jumped to take her elective in the hills. to Beauty 5'pot. to the Roan. taught by a man who played the fiddle. course my senior year. giving her another to Wataugaanywhere we could get to You had better believe that I hot- chance to reinforce my drive to get out. and come back from in an aftemoon. We footed it to the next class that man taught. And that year I had another teacher. would sit in the sun. mountains all around And in that class; for the first time, I her rival in coolness. who drove me evat us. and talk about where %ye were going began to sort out the conflicts. the duality. farther down that road. But this teacher to move once we grai!uated. which I had balanced blindly for so long. did tell me that teaching was a good and It sneaked upon me. the resolution to I had lived in America until I was fifteen. noble (if underappreciated) profession. this conflict I could not even name. It I lived in a non-place after that. But in and that it was okay if expediencynot sneaked up on me through my stereo. that class. I learned that where I lived was to mention my parentsforced me to go Since high school i had listened to Appalachiaand that Appalachia was electric English folk, Steeleye Span. now and had always been a part of Pentangle. One afternoon in the America. too. Record Bar, looking for new British I came from a place that was two The Widow Riley music. I came on an album of Ken- places at once. tucky fiddle tunes. I think I bought it I could hardly believe what that class Tells It Like It Is because somebody said. "You don't gave me. a gift beyond imagination. like that stuff, do you?" It tumed out Think of it! "Around here- we had a Youknow, this place used to be that I did. Officially. I still made fun living culture. (Meaning I didn't have to wonderful. Now. I don't know what of country music. and I still sat with make fun of country music any more, and it is, the people, or what it is. Daddy during Hee Haw only because that I didn't have to pretend that I was Like, ol' Jiggs Shafer, sat over there it made him happy, but the worm of watching Hee Haw just to keep Daddy for how many years and didn't even doubt had crept to the vine of separate- company). "Around here" we had a sweep the flies out of his place ness from "here" that had shaded me history of exploitationboth inside and I mean, o.k.. he had a business so long. So when I got the chance to outside. (The meaning of which I I told him, Jiggs, you should save go to the fiddler's convention in Galax understood at too precisely.) And heresy those flies, have 'em preserved that summer (I was 20 by then). I of heresies. "around here" wasn't really I mean, how many'people have antique wentjust because I went nearly such a bad place to be fromor to act flies? I mean, five, ten years anywhere I got asked to go only to get like we were from. or even to talk like we flies in your window. Anyway, he out of the house. and just because were from. (Meaning that I could finally could have fixed his business up someone said "Why do you want to go say things like "sulled up" and "trifling But he just let it go. I don't there?"" And at Galax I discovered whelp" and "striped snake" in public if I mean anything derogatory about him that I liked "that stuff' even more than had a mind to.)I learned many. many 01' Jiggs, God bless him, I've known I thought. more things about "here." many more him all my life. But as for making And that somehow, despite every- things that there is time or necessity to anything beautiful, well, forget it thing. many of the songs they sang that tell. But I want to tell the one thing I weekend. many of the tunes I heard. learned that never came up in the text. or P. J. Laska had by some miracle alteady instilled the lectures, or the tests, except perhaps themselves in my brain. Where I by implication. heard them before I had no idea. I learned that more than just land can P. J. Laska lives and publishes poetry in Mo.. Something similar had happened be eminent nained. gantown. W.Va. to my lifelong friend whom I ran into You can't go home ifyouhaven't been away Pauline Binkley Cheek When folklorist and philosopher John Ramsayreturned from a sabbatical year in Denmark he commented thatthe experience had made him more of an American. Although I thought thatI understood what he was saying at the time, I have in the past year come to a far deeperappreciation of his wis- dom. My perspective began to enlarge last spring when I read TheJourney is Home, by Tennessee theologian Nel le Morton. P,eflection upon the significance of that titlechallenged me to confront an issue that has nagged me for almost a quarter of a century, eversince my husband and I moed to Mars Hill, N.C., and chose to identify ourselves as Appalachians. Always wary of being hypocritical and presumptuous, I made this claim withreservations, 'Jr I knew myself to be open to contradiction on several counts. Ilitv:ng aConnecticut Yankee mother and having been born in Durham. N.C.. I could not claim-birthright to ageograrhical location Through the years. therefore, myambivalence has led to this line of rationalization: because I identified intensely with my paternal grandparents. wholived in the Brushy Mountain foothills. I internalized the values of their way of life. This include. to me. a senseof place. a closeness with family and community. mutuality with nature, the Bible. independence. loyalty. worts.frugality, ingenuity. storytelling. handi- crafts and music. Since these have often been termed Appalachian, I 1:It that Imight qualify on the basis of heritage. Furthermore. I argued. my husband Lnd I had made a commitment to the enhancement ofAppalachia, an avowal that we sought to actualize through attendance at every Appalachianseminar. workshop and event we could find and through participation in all the community and regional activities open to afamily of live. As I engaged in oral history projects, wrote poems and articles and made friends through church. Agriculturi.:Extension Service and various cooperative endeavors. I foigot distinctions. Gradually the question of identificationfaded from my mindexcept at those Appalachian Studies meetings where academicians debated interminably thed2finition of "Appalachia" and fostered paranoia over being stereotyr,ed. Recoiling from all the negative connotations of this label. I felt uncomfortable on several scores.Sonic of the attributes denigrated as stereotypical. for example. I w as quite happy to acknowledge aslaudatory. On the other hand. I bristled over the fact that a specialized group "outsiders. "do-gooders." and;or academicians assumed the author- ity of defining both "Appalachia" and "stereotypical Appalachian."Even more I resented the disempowerment of any labeling because it automat ally dehumanizes .t :,abject (including me) into anobject. But. my inner voice queried, am I not guilty of labeling? Am I not adding to this victimization bydesignating my self as "Appalachian writer." a title that might give me advantages or feed my ego at the possible expense of others? My dilemma now having ethical overtones. I reflected upon Nelle Morton'saffirmation of a sense of place in light of Thomas Wolfe's claim that you can't go home again. !tome, roots, ecologicalrelationship with the land. tl» .particu- lar in a global perspectiveall these are essential to my selfhood. yet I hadserious questions as to whether there had to be a particular place of identification,You can't go home if you haven't been away" was the title of one of my early poems, but I had not resolved the issue of how specifkally oneidentities home. After reading Nelle Morton I decided that I could never leave home. Instead I would keep my roots in Appalachia travel as widely as possible to increase my concept of home. Initiation into other world viewswould help me define the distinctive of my own and might enable me to identify universals. The satisfaction I felt over this resolution was short-lived. however. After a semester as astudent among people who were virtually ignorant of Appalachia other than as a ridkulous Laricature.I empathized indignantly with all those Appalachians who have smarted under successiv e waves of romanticist. i.sploitative,missionary, craft-revivalist, war-

Now and Then / 9 You Can't Go Home on-poverty labelers. I was definitely an exile in a foreign land, and my reaction Jo Carson Traces her Routes#1 was psychosomatic. "How can I define myself to these people?" I asked myself. "What is my ethos?" 'Per eA. The answer came when I stood in the ontiolo 000r-S. , of. tes nost.Por midst of a tiny frame building in a remote area in Belize, a developing Central lei Sin L. American country where only five kinGsooter Y vr_14;des percent of the land is cultivated. For two weeks I had been staying with a Belizean teacher, a member of the Bahl faith eager to converse with a Christian. During the day I had been traveling with a lay Methodist minister and a farm woman, mother of 13. to visit all the , GS people who were forming themselves into a mutual self-help agency for rural fami- lies to improve the quality of their lives. On this last day of,my stay people from six diffusely settled communities were meeting for the first time to identify needs. set priorities, assess resources and enrage in prayer. Looking around the A.06e4v;LJ-E, ilitrStAnowIAN room, crowded to overflowing, I was Aso -nrcrAthmo 2- go KNOSVale. moved beyond words. Unlike those 4tso To Oavft'DO se= AssArbos "r OKye - travelers who became ill from culture Z- 5 -ooatsr ctuoThty shock, I knew myself to be at home ChfiZoik- GREAT SPolae.S among brothers and sisters in a global IiisMmuveNt. Go 4niaNce Monty community. Our commonality lay in the E ewevipcieChiertolueS fact that we derive our personhood from AicxburftiA 5 membership in a particular family, a com- (t.c.ev.) GEORGIA mitment to a particular place and transfor- mation through experiential faith. Now I know that for me, Appalachia is not a stereotype, not even an archetype, coemiTto but a prototype. In the 1960s, when I CheSom'S 5Coss ovInfits identified Appalachia as my particular NOV -TO SCALE place, I was creating a symbol for a particular understanding of myself in 11, relationship to other people, to the land and to God. Each time I call myself an Appalachian I am reaffirming the symbol whereby I live out that relationship. By Words on Stone journeying out into the world 'I discover He'd had poetry. my own centering in a global community. And lots of George And so, henceforth, I confidently declare Jones and Merle Haggard that having, been to Belize I am more of a on the radio. world citizen but also more of an Appala- chian. It wasn't enough.

Pauline Binkley Cheek calls Mars Hill. Wayne Hogan N.C.. home. but is extending Appalachia to Richmond. Ind.. while she participates in the Peace and Justice program of Earlham- Wayne Hogan is a freelance writer and illus- School of Religion. Her Appalachian trator from Cookeville. Tenn. His poems have Scrapbook was published by Appalachian appeared in MSS, Cotton Boll, Crab Creek Consortium Press in 1983. Review and elsewhere. i3 101'Now and Then Letcher by Sondra Millner Old folks were all the time saying, "Becareful what you ask for. You might get it." And Lord I know it don'tmake no sense. I know every day there was coal being minedin these mountains there were men being crushed and mangled and no half wish of mine could have everchanged that. But there had been plenty of our married times that I wanted in the worst way to seeHenry ruffled. To see him ranting and raving like we all do one time or nother. But not Henry. He musta beenplanted deep. He held steady and rooted. Well on Christmas Eve, 1911, I got my half-wish. I don't recollect running from myshanty to the boarding dock at the railroad tracks.I do know I heard Henry before I saw him, and I felt them screams slamminginto the thick cold air I was pushing my way through. I saw Henry laying there twisting like a half-dead trout throwed up on theriverbank. Screaming. begging God to just take him. One leg was crushed and bleeding through the blankets, the other one gone atthe kneejust showing white bone and blood. Laying there wet and ash colored, cussing God while they pouredwhiskey on his stump and down his throat. He was shrieking in a voice I'd never heard before. It came up out of his guts like rockflying deep out the earth when dynamite blows. It made me cold. Set my body to shaking. Made me jump back from holding him.Screams kept crashing out so I tried to smother them. Pushed his head into my bosom. I wanted topush the pain into my body. Women know painmade for .__pain. We can bend with it and come back up with it.I could take it Lord, but not him. Henry ain't know nothing about bending. I held his soaking head tight to my bosom and the sound wadn't so bad then. My bodycarried the trembling from him and we shook together like the wooden shanties in the bottom when the number eighttrain rolls by. I held so tight on to him for so long that we got old waiting there for that train. The shrieking had drained awaythat evening and left us a moaning, trembling little heap when they pried my arms from round him and lifted him ontothe train. Joe Dandridge hopped up there with Henry. Miss Etrula held on to me. That train grunted its way on toWelch. to the Miner's Hospital, and there wadn't nothing left of me. For a long time there wadn't nothing left of me. Nothing for the boys or the newbaby that came in January. Joe Henry was a early baby and I didn't have it in me to fret much overhim. Birthing him hadn't even pained me like it was sposed to.It was just one more time to get through. Rosetta and Miss Etrula, the midwife, closed in around me. Rosetta'd come over early, gatherthe boys and keep them with her chaps bout all day. James musta first started talking Tally then. MissEtrula faded in and out my house, brewing alfalfa and raspberry-leaf tea, putting on bones and vegetables for stew, calling afterJames to come slop the hogs or bring in buckets of coal and water. Joe Dandridge made it back from Welch before the New Year. Early New Year'smorning, he came with my first word on Henry. The doctor at the Miner's Hospital had pulledlumps of coal out of his leg, sewed up the stump, and once they was sure gangrene wadn't setting in, they said they'd seeabout a wooden leg. Henry might make it home by summer. Henry and Joe were friends before we was married, and my boys always loved to see him,flitted around him like moths around a lantern. Joe stayed a spell, played with the boys, gave them candysticks and kinda eased their scaredness. I had my hands full, my mind and my belly ready to burst and I didn't see then howbad off the boys was feeling. Right fore he left, Joe Dandridge told me Henry wanted me to know he was sorry. I found a side of salted pork in the shed when Joe Dandridge left. The boys and mewadn't wanting for food. Henry had staked out a garden patch and put a hog pen up in the woods behind the shantywhen we first came to Berwind. In the spring, we'd bony a mule for plowing and James would help me put out corn, tomatoes,string beans, pole beans, salad greens, cukes and later on the Tally squash seeds that Rosetta gave me.We didn't trouble with eating off Coal Company scrip cept for staples and a little candy for the boys every now and then. Continued ,

Now and Then / 11 Letcher

One Sunday in November, after the man's sweat. But here I was sitting in a on both sides and had a couple of rickety first hard frost, Henry, Joe Dandridge and shanty rocking, pulled up close to the fire steps putting you back on the dirt and Leo Veneri did their butchering, going like some little flower of a girl that ain't cinder paths that served the rest of from one's house to the others. Our two never faced the world. Sagamore Hollow. I took a deep breath was butchered right up from the far Much of a rock Henry was for me. I and stepped up on their walk. corner of the shed. You can't kill hogs knew I was a better woman than that. I hadn't done no wrong and wadn't too near their pen. Blood smell drives Sitting and waiting for a body that coming to beg. but I had a shamed feeling them bout wildstarts them squealing, couldn't do for herself. I didn't want to knotting up my insides. Like when I was ramming and trying to tear their pens make do by myselfbut deep down, I a youngun and my Momma caught me apart. knew I could. wrong. I'd try to sink back into myself, I spent that day and days after that That winter was cold as a witch's tit. hang my head and start to mumbling. one soaking, salting, scraping and I can't swear to it, since I wadn't outside staring at a spot where I'd be pushing dirt hanging meat. Those nights I tried to to judge how thick the ice was on the around with the tip of my shoe. Momma soak the salt out of my hands. Soaked creek, it sure seemed like the coldest would get more vexed with me for staring them in cold water and covered them in winter in my lifetime. Near the end of at that ground than for the mischief I'd vaseline but they was still raw. And that February, the sun started burning the mist done. blood smell was powerful. It stayed for off before noon and the shiny white tree "Ifen you done wrong, own up to it. days in the air, on my skin and clothes, trunks of ice that grow off the pinnacle on Don't you go hanging your head and frozen in red ridges under my clothes the northern slope of Elk Mountain talking down in yourself. You hang your line. Made it Vrcl for me to keep my started cracking in the middle of the head for God Almighty, but you look food down. But we wadn't going winter night. Anyway, night time was when I every living soul in the eye. You my hungry like some of the Way-South heard them. In Sagamore Hollow in the chile. Ain't got nothing to be shamed coloreds and new Tallys eating on next daytime you couldn't hear Gabriel blow of." month's scrip and at pay day getting his horn with the trains clanking and the I'd heard that speech a hundred times nothing at all but a piece of paper with a coal rumbling at the tipple. And even and caught myself telling it to James red snake stamped on it. Henry told me though that pinnacle was a good mile as `bout every week. I rolled my shoulders he saw grown men look at that snake and the crow flies from my shantytwo or back and pushed open the carved cherry cry, right there at the pay window. three miles if you walk there, the sound wood door that was even more out of Henry was gone. Wadn't dead but of that ice busting up carried sharp clear place in Sagamore Hollow than that gone just the same, and I was waiting. to my bedroom. Just made it seem like useless sidewalk. It had a thick fancy Waiting for him and waiting for the good sense to pull up to the fire and wait. frosted glass on the top. a fine shiny brass Pocahontas Coal Company to come move Miss Etrula started pushing me after knob and pretty carvings that I know me out. We'd been moved out before a while. Telling me to sweep the floors, wadn't meant to be stuck on the front of a strike times or when somebody got wind that I needed to cut them curls off two-story. soot gray coal camp Company of Henry's meetings in the woods v4.tri Howard before he started thinking he was Store. That door was more solid than any the UMW men. Most strike times we a girl. fussing with me to spread some other thing Pocahontas Coal Company moved out ourselves late at night before ashes on them icy front steps for some- built in that hollow. Baldwin-Felts got a chance to bust up our body broke they neck coming to check on I stopped tarrying and marched on in little stuff and make us feel small and me. Now me and her both knew not 10 past covered barrels, bulging sacks raggedy. More times than I want to souls a year came in my house by tit, hanging from the walls, back past shelves remember, I seen the pitiful busted-up front door. ! kept doing what I had to do. crammed full of the food and clothes piles of furniture, clothes still in the Nursed the baby and changed him but miners work theyselves to the bone trying drawers, pots and pans with food stuck to mostly drawed closer to the fire and to get enough of. I musta looked like I the bottoms. all thrown together outside rocked. didn't come by to buy when I passed Mr. of some miner's used-to-be home. Ain't The tiredness was leaving me slow. Wythe propped behind his long counter nothing small about ne, and I ain't never and right when that cold winter started like he was guarding them pretty ruffly been raggedy and Henry ain't never allow breaking. I took the baby and the boys dells hanging up behind him. Made me me to feel that I was. Henry call me a over to Rosetta's and came off my hill for strong. good-looking woman. the first time since Christmas Eve. My This time Henry wadn't there to get legs got acquainted with the slushy dips Sondra 'Winner is a West Virginia native who us packed and off their land fore sun-up. and ditches, and I gathered up my operates a delicatessen in Philadelphia and a He wadn't there to rub James' face with thoughts. snzall farm in Southwestern Virginia. She is a the back of his hand, haul Howard onto The path from our shanties ended by Syracuse University Phi Beta Kappa with an ;miliaria! psychology major and an Afro- his shoulder_and load us onto somebody's the side of the Company Store, and you American Studies minor. She is the mother of wagon like we was just taking us a Sun- had to take a pretty good step up to the three daughters. The novel. Letcher, is the day ride. wooden walkway there. That walkway sully of her grandmother, Letcher I ain't never bit my tongue, never didn't make no sense. It ran in front of Chapter I appeared In Mountain Life and been sickly nor afraid of working up a the Company Store, jutted out a few yards Work.

12 / Now and Then think about that stringy-haired, skinny in one of the rooms upstairs overie as much as he e:d any of them that didn't little Polack girl I saw right before company store. The superintendents they work dholes. He said Bailey's foiks Christmas. That child didn't have nary a left was more than likely born a county or was spread out over half the state, and stocking or proper shoes, and she was all two away and been schooled just enough Henry had worked in the holes with his eyes. mouth wide open, looking =ip at one to want to look down on where they comerelations. of them dolls like she was watching from. Schooled just enough to think any Bailey didn't look up til I was Mother Mary come down from Heaven. man that got dirty working was dirt. standing right across the table from him., Younguns like her get grown believing Once you came up out of their mines, Then real slow, he tapped a long ash from they meant to be poor and that poor folks they didn't treat you like livestock, they his cigar into a china cup, then kinda ain t sposed to have red satin ruffly pretty treated you like ants. Like you was too raised his eyes up at me. I was standing things. small to be seen or heard or even thought over him, looking down on a thin spot in "Can I help you please?" about too often. And it surely wadn't be- the top of his head. He had a head full of Mr. Wythe always kept his mouth yond them to just trample on over you. thick red hair parted in the middle just thawed tighteven when he talked. I'd never had no reason to come in like Henry's. But Henry's hair away Brother Rash told me one time that the Dining HallI didn't do no kitchen smelled like wildroot and laid black aid chinched-mouth folks was stingy. You work, and I wadn't no fancy woman. It wavy on his head like heavy satin. I can't hold your mouth tight without was a pretty room though. That cherry almost laughed at Bailey he was sure squeezing your bottom, and you gotta be door woulda fit on that room, with the red gonna look funny in a couple ef-years, all more than stingy to want to hold onto peacock rugs, tassels on the tablecloths that thick red hair growing around a shiny what oughta come out down there. and tall brass lamps and their sained glasspink bald spot. Probably it'll look like a Brother Rash always kept up some lamp shades. That musta been what the forest of pines growing around a big foolishness, but I've seen a passel of big old church windows in the Old pretty lake. chinched-mouth stingy folks. Country that got Rosetta all blurry-eyed That's one time I caught myselfhe "Now Letcher girl, what you want?" when she talked about it looked like. was grinning too hard, nodding his head, Not even that sneering little man had It was a pretty room, but I wadn't had pushed his chair back and half stood ever called me "Letcher girl" when Henry about to stand there gawking. Wadn't up. was round. I pushed that back in my headnothing Pocy Coal Company had was "Well. how do Miss Letcher, so sorry and didn't answer, seeing as how my gonna make my mouth water. All I to hear bout Henry. Sure was my finest name wadn't nothing but Mrs. Millner to wanted was my Henry back in one piece, brakeman. Wahine for him to be back him. I walked on through the door off to and they ain't have no special ties to the with us soon Miss Letcher." the side where everybody knew he sold Almighty that could give me that. The damned fool had better shut off mason jars of moonshine them wild- A couple fellas with stiff white shirts that mess spilling from his mouth and looking hill folks bought down. Henry and dark vests were hunched over a table come up for air. I spoke low and slow. knew most of them too. Could look at near the door. They looked alike, one "I'm fair-to-middlin Mr. Baiiey. them and know they families from his older than the other, and they got quiet How you do? Thank you for your con- boy days. when I stepped in, looked me over a bit cerns, but seeing as how his leg is gone I On the back end of that dark jar- then tumt back to their low talking. don't believe he'll be jumping offen any hiding room was the door to the Coal Them lamps put out a pretty glow, but more cars and braking for anybody." Company Dining Hall where the mine they wadn't much good for real seeing. He started turning redder, was superintendent, his assistants, the mine Still, I didn't think I knew them two. I already a big ole red-cheeked man. But I boss, tipple boss, weigh master and some- did see Bailey, Henry's tipple boss, wadn't here to vex him. As ornery as I times even the weight foreman and mine sitting in the back by a window that felt it wadn't Bailey's doings, so I smiled foremen came to eat, drink and talk about looked down the hollow. the way the and asked. business; about men like my Henry like tracks leave. A bit of sun was coming "Mind ifen I sit down?" they was talking about oxen or mules to through the window, and he was Bailey started up that trap again. be moved around and worked till they chomping on a long cigar and reading the "Oh scuse my manners Miss Letcher, dropped. paper. I was gladwas only a few have a seat. Want something to eat? Those clean Company men wadn't people there. As I got closer I could see Some coffee? I'll call the girl." like the white men back home where he was reading the Charleston paper.I "No thank you, I'll just be a minute. they'd smile and talk to you like you liked that one myself. I don't think no- You might not be the right one to ask, but couldn't understand and didn't know they body's Coal Company owned it, so you I got to start somewheres. Just want to thought you was half a step above their got some good news every now and then, ask when y'alls planning on moving me livestock. instead of them lies the other paper and my boys out. See I'd want a week or The top Company man. the mine always wrote about, Reds and Rabble- so to send word to my brothers back in owner, came down from Philadelphia rousers. Well, anyway, that was Bailey, Virginia, so they could come get us. And ever month or so with his group, passing the one what asked Henry to work on of course, get word to Henry bout where right on through to their other mines, but Christmas Eve. The Lord works in mys- we'd be." every now and then they'd stay the night terious ways. Henry kinda liked Bailey Now was my time for the red to start

.16 Now and Then / 13 Letcher creeping up the back of my neck cause with every step. I was 23 years old, that fool man was sitting there chomping bring it in. Henry was so set on doing for Henry had just tumt 30 it January, and it on that cigar and grinning away, and I this family, he coulda done a lot for rue just wadn't fair to cripple him up. It hadn't said a thing that was amusing. by letting me in on it.I had to worry with wadn't fair to me. Sometimes your Took his time to answer back too. being Momma and Poppa to the boys and worrying and understanding and crying "Well Miss Letcher, I declare. We'd the new one hadn't never set eyes on a over other folks don't leave time to cry Poppa. done made rangements. Ain't nobody tell for yourself. Well, walking up that hill If he had his strength back or not I you at the Company Office when you with a little of my burden liftedI cried went after Henry's insurance pay!" was going home and posting him a letter for me. Twenty-three years old, thre,, Now Bailey had been round coal and he could call me all the evil, ungrate- chaps, a crippled husband and no family camps long enough not to be such a fool. ful hussies he wanted to. Tell the truth nearby for me to crawl back into. I just Since when did they ever give out that in- Henry ain't never called me nothing let them hot tears bum a path down my badhe'd say I was mule-headed or hot- surance pay lest they died in the hole, cheeks. For me. even then they was apt to take it back for tempered, and both of them was true.I Islowed my walking down and let owings? So how come I was sposed to know he musta thought up a lot of bitches myself think about all the things I'd held go down there begging just to hear them and heifers though. And I'd called him back from thinking before. Like Henry tell how Henry caused everything but a child of God at one time own accident dying. I thought about it and finally so they wadn't paying. T.;ey'd blame or nother. Henry'd,say I wadn't being figured I could live through it without mine explosions on dead men, slate falls, ladylike then. Well this letter sure wadn't losing my mind or my health. I loved cave-ins, gas poisonings, all on the gonna be ladylike either. I didn't feel Henry, but loving him and the boys didn't miners. Never did pay out. I knew that, particularly ladylike. make me disappear. Right then I started and Bailey :houlda known I wadn't Lord, I got back to my shanty fore I feeling good and started getting mad. nobody's fool. knew it and had huffed up big sweat rings That damned Henry had gone off and Bailey kept on talking. under my arms and a long wet mark down got hisself crippied up was still trying to "Joe Dandridge come to see me.last my back. I came through the shed and run everything all by himself, He could month bout yall. Said he'd just left went on in the kitchen, I wanted to put get together with Joe Dandridge and half Henry at the Miner's Hospital. Now Miss my good hat back in the hat box on top of of creation to plan out my life and don't Letcher I ain't saying that it was my faidt, my dresser. A soul can't even breathe in mind not asking me to join in the decid- Kit I felt might poor about Henry. I got they own house. There at my kitchen inghe wadn't even gonna tell me about rid of that motorman, G!over, didn't table sat Miss Etrula looking up at me it tit it was all set. I'd got two letters know he was that hard a drinker, but I with them old heavy-lidded lizard eyes. from Henryreal short and proper, was the one what asked Henry to work, She was half smiling, showing off brown talking about God and give the boys his and I put that drunken Glover on with slimy snuff stuck to her gumsmy old regards. Hell, in Sagamore Hollow Pocy him." hen had more teeth than her. Coal Company was bigger than God, and There he went looking at his coffee "Well Missy, I sees we's feeling Henry ain't mention nothing about their cup and tapping that cigar, only it hadn't might spry today. Out a strolling and all, doings. Henry didn't mind discussing huh?" had time to grow now more ashes on it. matters with Joe Dandridge while I was "So what you saying. Mr. Bailey?" "Oh how do Miss Etrula. I'm just the one that slept in his bed and washed "Miss Letcher, I ain't making no fair-to-middlin, didn't know you was his dirty drawers. the most he'd discuss here." promises, they ain't mine to make, but with me was what I was planting where. there ain't no plans to move Henry's I was wishing to hell she'd go home Everything else, he decided then told me. family out right away. I signed off on his fore I lost track of the piece of my mind I Joe Dandridge coulda parted his lips compensation papers last week and swore wanted to post in that letter to Henry. to let me know we had a roof over our "Don't see why not. I be's here to Joe Dandridge then that he'd be the heads a while longer. He'd stopped by first to know if the Company decides to every morning since Christmas, or ain't the week-before to check on the boys he cause any changes for you and the boys." you noticed? Saw you strutting off down said.I was cooking, and he played with the holler." Well by then my mouth was open, them a spell, chit chatted with me about and I was sweating like a horse though "Miss Etrula I done told you thank the weather, about what I'd heard from my good dress. I musta seemed like a un- you every day since Christmas. I am Henry. Ain't mention no compensation grateful hussy cause I had some quick feeling better now. I can make do fairly papers to me. and Joe knew I could read well. good-byes and thank yous, turnt tail and I just went down to the bottom to and write.I ain't grow up that far back in take care of sonic business." got out of that Company Store in a hurry. the country. I was real happy with the news that I I went on back through the front Hurt or not. Henry was showing his had a roof over my head a while longer room to my room. Lord, that old woman natural colors. Now spore I'd already and maybe even a piece of compensation had stood by me like a mother. I couldn't sent word to Brother Rash to come for change coming my way, but as soon as I go getting fresh with her, but she was one me; and it was time to start breaking started my way back up to the hill nosey old biddy. Didn't make no bones ground for a garden, I coulda been a something sad just started creeping in about being nosey either. planning that knowing I'd be there to "Well I'd a been happy to send by 14 / Now and Then .1 7 Obe after any business. You know he were hot, ready for a fat red ash log that "He just said he'd promised to let work the late shift. Him and me been would burn till evening. Henry and Joe Dandridge know for the getting your mail, picked up your "Well chile, the Dining Hall huh? Coal Company put us out." needings at the store; ain't no trouble is it You knows white mens. Better watch She was digging for snuff in her Missy?" yourself. Don't look good for a married apron, legs spread wide like she was I'd left my hat box on the bed and Colored woman to be lolly-gagging in theshelling beans. All I needed then was for was thankful the boys wadn't home, Dining Hall. Mark my words, that Bailey her to stir up some mess bout me and they'd a squashed it for sure. I hung my man got designs, he'll be sniffing round Bailey, for Henry to get word of that. If shawl on the nail by the front door and here like you a bitch in heat. Pocy Coal he thought I ain't have enough sense to started to chink the fire in the Warm Company don't give nuttin for freecept take care of his compensation business he Morning. That old heifer was gonna keep em thar graveyard plots over on might be fool enough to believe that at it. Crumpecker Mountain " kinda crap. I'd walk the streets of Cinder "No. Miss Etrula. I just had a little I picked up a pine log off the top of Bottom or go down to Keystone and sell talk with Bailey at the Dining Hall. He the stack behind the stove, shoved it in, it in Miss Lucy's fore I'd lay with some was Henry's tipple boss, and he told me slammed the Warm Morning door and tipple boss to keep a tin shanty roof over we could stay here in the house for the threw the poker towards the wood. my head. time being. Said he'd been in touch with "Miss Etrula! I said he done been in "Well, evening Miss Etrula. I got to Henry." touch with Henry. They got it all worked go get my boys from Rosetta's." Miss Etrula straightened up and out!" 1 grabbed my shawl I'd just hung on started clucking her tongue. I started I was back at the kitchen door, hands the nail and slammed out my front door. clinking hard with the poker, stirring up on my hips, ready to ask her to take her ashes and watching little blue streams of mind out the gutter and her raggedy ass fire shoot up from the coals. Them coals home. at

Reeling In

In the days of his dying, my grandfather Terry He told me less about when he ran with a mean bunch of would sit afternoons by his new pond fishing, brothers, his body motionless except the Stones, from Turkey Creek. for the good right arm, casting "S'aotgun." they called him. again and again the red-and-white bobber his middle name being Winchester. out to the pond's center, "Sometimes I feel like I've lived then reeling it in two or three lives." he'd say. through the wash of each slowly spreading concentric wave. And when he'd fall asleep in the chair in the fragrant dusk, Later, in the cool of evening. head thrown back, fingers the air damp and thrilling laced over his belly, taking his ease with thunder, he'd sit after eighty years, two or three lives, on the porch in a gaunt iron chair. I'd close my eyes and see my grandfather, three coats of paint flaking, "Shotgun" Terry, six-foot-four, the sun and tell me again the old story explodir from his blond hair, how he, only twenty, having just married come striding through concentric waves of corn. my grandmother the schoolteacher not an ounce of anything on his back. and anxious to prove him self farming her people's land, - -Jim Clark would be out before sun-up, two fifty-pound bags of seed corn strapped to his back, sowing the Knob on a contour. Jim ant of Byrdstmvn.Tenn., lives in At fiens, Ga., where he He'd do it for days, all day walking is an assistant professor of English and Director of Creative the newly plowed ground, Writing at the University of Georgia. His poems have appeared then do it all over again, shouldering in Southern Poetry Review, Raccoon, Greensboro Review, fertilizer instead of seed. Poem and others.

Now and Then / 15 Baptismal by Randy Oakes I was nine when they triedto baptize Thelma the first time. The drapes of the baptistery opened, andPreacher Plume and Thelma stepped into the water from opposite sides ofthe pool. They met, and the preacher grasped Thelma's hand. Some kidswere laughing a few pews in front of us. "Them kid' ," my mother said. "They don't knowwhat church is." I wondered whether I knewwhat church was, and I vowed to find out in case my mother asked. Preacher Flume said a few words. He placeda handkerchief over Thelma's mouth and eased her back into the water. His neck muscles bulged. The water churned, but he couldnot raise her. Preacher Plume looked at thecongrega- tion. Thelma kicked. The deacons sprang.into action likea SWAT team. They ran through the door reserved for choir members and rescued Thelma, after brushing aside PreacherPlume. Thelma was not officially baptized. Preacher Plume left within a month, a chastened anddefeated man. He accepted a church in the mountains. Thelma, who suffered from an eating disorder, grew more depressed. By the time the next preacher got his feetwet, she was well over two-fifty. "But she has a pretty face," my mother said."You can take notice of it. All fat women have pretty faces." My father said, "That woman's solid. She's built likea good piano." My father and several other deacons formedan ad hoc committee to find precedents establishing that Thelma might be considered baptized. But two old-school Southern Baptists argued vehemently that Thelma must be loweredand raised by an ordained minister, not byan ordained minister and a pack of deacons. So Dr. Dunn had his chance. I don't know why the pulpitcommittee chose him, for he had a D.D. degree andmost of the deacons considered him uppity. Perhaps they chose him because he was big: at least six inchestaller than Plume. By this time I was 10, and I had moved up to join the noisy boys in the pew in front of my parents. Hissermons were dry, and my parents were angered and insulted by his referenceto his "undergraduate" and "graduate" years. But Pete and Jake and I were too busy speculating about Thelma's chancesto worry about dry sermons. All three of us belonged to established families of the church,and I was allowed to sit with them in church because. I had passed the baptism test. I had been dunked with dignity. I had not kicked. Whenthe minister raised me, I expected cheers from the congregation. Pete and Jake metme sagely after the service. We've been friends since. During the week we spent afternoons in my yard, where my father had recently erected a basketball goal. Wetalked about tests of strength, and we fought often. Jake swore that, if given the opportunity, Hoss Cartwright could beatup both Little Joe and Ben at the same time. Adamwas my favorite brother and he had recently left the show,so I had little stake in the argument. Pete argued that Little Joe could beatup Hoss any day, and besides, anybody who thought about a son fighting his father was a pervert. We discussed the two coaches at the junior high down the street. Coach Frywas short but quick. Coach Stuart was tall and strong. Whowould win in a fair fight if the principal agreed that neither would lose his job? Could the University of North Carolina basketballteam outrun the University of Georgia football team? Could Dr. Dunn raise Thelma? We discussed the matter with theseriousness of deacons. Things were bad at home. Mymother was suffering from nerves because she had heard a rumor thatmy father was planning to leave her. My father, who had worked for the same textile mill for 20 years, had begun making extra money by modeling the company's jeansand overalls in fashion shows around the North Carolina piedmont.He was asked to model the first time because, although he was overweight, he was less overweight than therest of the cheap labor in the mill. We went tosee him model once at a department store.I was glad Pete and Jake didn't go. My father walkedout on a ramp, which was supposed to be a dock. He had Vaseline on his lips so he could smile, butone side of his mouth kept sticking to his front teeth. He got his foot caught in the paper kite he was carrying, and hestepped right through it. But my mother wasn't embarrassed. Continued '-'0

16 / Now and Then .1.9 She kept her eye on the female models, figure how to lift her." Such a comment before he tried her weight, he raised most of whom were fast secretaries was close enough to sex for us to laugh himself on his toes three times. He from the company's main office. our deep, masculine laughs. Sue took deep breaths. My uncle later said My father began wearing denim giggled. that the breaths were chants. Dr. jeans to deacons' meetings. He Sunday came. We didn't see Dr. Dunn plunged Thelma into the water seemed to pose wherever he was. He Dunn before the service. Someone said and raised her in one motion. The gave up his pipe for sissy thin cigars. that he was in the bullpen warming up. congregation gasped, the way fans He asked me to accompany him to the "If he don't do it today, we'll send him gasp at a missed putt or a goalie's save special meeting. I knew he wanted to back to the minors," a disgruntled old in hockey. Were we disappointed? talk to me on the way. He was lonely, man said. "Yeah, or trade him for a After the service Fleck cornered and my mother was making his life good second baseman," another voice my father. "Did you see that? It was unpleasant. I went because the meet- said. "You've got to hand it to him," my like, it was like David and Goliath." ing concerned Thelma. father said. "He could wait for tonight, "But he didn't kill Thelma," my father Dr. Dunn wasn't invited. The for the evening service." "He's grand- said. Fleck walked away mumbling, men agreed to pray for the minister standing," my uncle said. "I hope they "It was like Samson and Delilah." My and for Thelma. Fleck Ross, the oldest taught him something about this in that father signed. deacon, led us in an endless prayer. graduate school of his." Several people Pete, Jake, and I had a party that Several deacons prayed on their knees. snorted. afternoon. It wasn't much of a party, My father thought about it, then My mother had decided not to attend for we weren't supposed to laugh or pretended to pick lint from his new the service. This was the first time I'd talk loudly on Sunday. We drank six- denim trousers. Fleck prayed that known her to stay home on Sunday ounce Cokes and ate potato chips. We Thelma might satisfy God's purpose morning. saw Thelma cross the street. Jake and for her life, that she might fit the The service began. Dr. Dunn came Pete said nothing when we saw my garments woven for His kingdom. He in with the deacons. My father had the father walk down the street. In his prayed for Dr. Dunn, that he might Sunday off, so we sat together. We sang; stiff denim jacket he walked and continue to bear life's burdens. Some- we tithed; Dr. Dunn began his sermon. Itmused. My mother had a headache. one was laughing, a high-pitched was good. I remember this as the most We still get together. Jakl laugh, like the suppressed cries of a uplifting sermon I've ever heard. The teaches mathematics at a high school jungle bird. Fleck resumed. He invitation hymn seemed to take forever. iii'Winston-Salem. His seniors each prayed that Dr. Dunn might bear life's Dozens of people made professions of year can expect the course to culmi- burdens. He paused again. In the rear faith. The service was over. The choir nate in an extensive word problem on of the room sat Fleck's brother Edgar, sang while Dr. Dunn changed for the water displacement. Pete's novel, The giggling like a sc;loolgirl, his hand baptism. During the service Thelma had Fat Lady at the Circus, was published over his mouth. When my father and I sat like a sphinx. Now she was mysteri- by a small Chapel Hill press. It sold left we could hear merry whispers of ously gone. well within the state and received ropes and pulleys. Later I realized as I contemplated some critical attention. Readers The week before the baptism, her empty pew that I had ignored the outside the Smith claimed that the during math class, Jake asked an ap- principal character in this drama. characters were too eccentric. parently disinterested question about Thelma wasn't much, but she was all her But Pete can't fool me. I know water displacement. A few of us, father had left. She worked in the that his novel is an allegory based on churchgoers, laughed. But the teacher company fabric store because she Thelma':, baptism. I teach at a junior was so delighted to be asked a question perspired too much to work in the mill. college in Greensboro, I'm at work on that he didn't mind our noise. Sue, an She attended church; she went home. an article on Pete's book. You might incorrigible teacher's pet and a mem- She lived for some reason unknown to ask, "Why should you concern ber of our church, asked "Are you me at the time. yourself with Pete Draper, a novelist married, Mr. Wexler?" "Of course She and Dr. Dunn met in the baptis- who will be forgotten in two or three he's not married. He's Mr. Wexler." tery. As the curtain opened, the congre- years?" someone said. "No, Sue," Mr. Wexler gation took a deep breath. My father's Now we must invent our tension said with equanimity. "He's just right breathing was labored. He was suffer- and generate mysteries: Pete in his for Thelma," Pete whispered. "lie can ing. A crack team of young aspiring novel, Jake in his word problems, I in deacons waited to assist.I quickened at my critical analyses. We live in ob- my father's side. Life was rich and full. scurity. We search; we compete. We in Real Randy Oakes' work has appeared Dr. Dunn and Thelma. My father and wonder when it happened. Fiction, Pembroke Magazine and other literary journals. His story, "A Young mother. Republican," appeared in the "insiders! Dr. Dunn raised the handkerchief to El Outsiders" issueof Nowand Then. Thelma's face. Then he surprised us:

Cf Now and Then / 17 A 2 When I asked Wilma Dykemanto describe the way she "places" herself as a writer, I wanted to know if shewould identify herself as a Tennessee writer or a North Carolinian,a novelist, a writer of non-fiction, an Appalachian writer, a Southern writeroras something else? I should have anticipated her response. She said, "Iguess I never have really liked any labels or pigeonholes." She smiled slightly as she crossed her legs and smoothed the skirtof her simple, royal blue linen dress and began a list like a litany: "I ama woman, and I live in the mountains, and I live in the South, and I am an American." She went on tosay that whether we attach labels according to these qualities or otherslike social class, economics,or religionthe labels all tenu to "limit and de- emphasize the central thingwhich is that you're just writing andyou want to try to communicate your own special vision." Dykeman's dissatisfaction with labels is one of thereasons she tried different forms of writing. When I had arranged to meet her at the University of Tennesseelibrary, I knew that in this building there were 16 books she had written in addition toa number of books for which she had contributeda chapter or an article. Her credits include three novels all set in Ap- WILMA palachiaThe Tall Woman in 1962, The Far Family in 1966 and Return the Innocent Earth in 1973anda great deal of non-fiction. She has written a volume ona river, The French Broad in 1955, on history, With Fire and Sword: The Battle of Kings Mountain and Tennessee: A DYKEMAN Bicentennial History in 1975, as well as other books about the state and the Appalachian region and two collections of essays. an Interview With her husband, James Stokely, she co-authored Neither Black Nor White in 1957, which she describesas by Sandra L. Ballard "an interpretation of the South beforeevery other person had done one." It was a book for which they conducted over 500 interviews across the South. In 1958 it won the The distinguished author talks about Hillman Award for the best book on world peace,race relations or civil liberties. her writer's sense of place and about Later she wrote the biographies of two Southern statesmen who were involved with race relations: Seeds of some other Appalachian writers Southern Change: The Life of Will Alexander, which she present and past. wrote with her husband in 1962, and Prophet of Plenty: The First Ninety Years of W.D. Weather ford in 1966. She also wrote the biography Too Many People, Too Little Love: A Biography of Edna Rankin McKinnon in 1974, aboutthe advocate of birth control and family planning who came to Tennessee with Margaret Sanger inthe 1930s. Wilma Dykeman declared every time she wrotea biography that she would never do another one. But in each case, she explained, "these were people who mademe think, if I don't write about their lives they probably won't have a biography,at least not now. Each one of them really did have such a special contribution, and I guess mysense of mission has always been strong." Her mission carries her into the classroom where she teachesa course in Appalachian Studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. These courses began when Dr. JohnFisher was the head of the English Department, between 1976 and 1978. She hadrealized that the largest univer- sity in the region did not then have a singlecourse that related to the region. "Now, I don't think it's regionalism," she said, "to know the place whereyou are. The arts have always, historically, had a great sense of place." When Dykeman talked with Fisher about several good writers in this region,writers that he did not know, he asked her if she would initiatea course in Appalachian literature. Her first re- sponse was to tell him that she didn't have a Ph.D. "Then the next thing I saidwas I would do it until he found somebody else." Thatwas about 13 years ago. Knowing the aversion she had expressed to such labelsas "Appalachian writer," I asked how she defined "Appalachian literature" for her classes. She laughed,recogaizing the contradiction between the language she uses to describe her personalstance and that required in her role as a teacher, and told me her definition: "that which has been written in Appalachiaor about Ap- 18 / Now and Then 21 palachia, or by people who have lived or insights that are just as meaningful today too many people felt, 'She has to write still live in Appalachia. You don't have as they were at the time she wrote them." anotherDollmaAer,'or, 'She has to write to have lived here all your life, and you And Horace Kephart'sOur Southern anotherHunter's Horn.'How unfair of don't have to have written just about it Highlandersof 1913 and 1922 is a classic them to put a corset on her this way!" [the region]. It's anything in the context study that Dykeman likes because of the Dykeman spoke with conviction, of Appalachia." perspective of "the outsider who comes in blue eyes flashing. She said that readers When I asked about the writers she and interprets the region." and critics refused to allow Arnow "to includes in the course, she began by She mentioned Jesse Stuart, com- move beyond (her earlier novels) and explaining her view of the twu traditions menting, "I think Jesse Stuart's great write about what was happening to people out of which Appalachian literature contribution was his short stories...of all all around her in another place. See, emerged. the thousands of things he wrote." that's why I hate those labels. If she'd She called one "the Sut Lovingood About James Still, Dykeman been John Updikehe can go to France tradition of old Southwestern humor," remarked, "for years I went around talk- and then write about France, and people which began in the 1850s when Knoxville ing about him," recognizing that "there don't say, 'Oh, he isn't writing about the writer George Washington Harris suburbs.' If you've lived in the created the uncouth character of Sut suburbs of New York, apparently Lovingood, a Tennessee mountaineer you can be universal enough that whose dialect, tall tales and earthy _ you can write about anything." humor have contributed to one stere- Dykeman also includes work by otype of mountain peop c!.(Sut -4( Thomas Wolfe and James Agee in Lovingood's yarns also ii,..uenced her Appalachian literature courses. the development of such characters as "It's interesting how in temperament Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.) and in their own self-destruction, Dykeman called the other they are so much alikeand both so tradition the "parlor" school of Mary much a part of the Appalachian Noailles Murfree, a native of experience in literature, and yet

Murfreesboro, Tenn.,Weho published unlike all these other Appalachian fiction from the 1880s until 1914 writers. But they are very much like under the pseudonym of Charles each other." Egbert Craddock. Her novels, full of Tennessean Mildred Haun'sThe romantic descriptions of the Cumber- HinvA' s Done Gone of1941 is land and Smoky Mountains and another book that Dykeman dis- detailed records of mountaineers' odd cusses with her classes. She and her customs and peculiar speech. husband hart not heard of Haun contributed to the "local color" =vhen they received-her book for a tradition, depicting a quaint mountain wedding present. "It was published people. Dykeint,n believes "these the year we were married." two stereotypes have greatly influ- Set in Cocke County where enced Appalachian literature. You Dykeman has a home, Haun's fiction get John Fox (whose most well- "looks at the dark side of the moon," known novels areThe Little Shepherd of were just very few that knew about his Dykeman said. She singled out Haun's Kingdom Comein 1903 andTheTimlof work." Her students often read his novel use of "the witchcraft and the traditions the Lonesome Pintin 1908) after Mary River of Earthand his short stories and the mythology" as "very skillful, very Murfree, and you begin to get some oi-the because they "have really universal artistic," believing that Haun "really gives Daisy Mae (characters) after Sut Lovin- themes." that part of it in a way that I think no good. The rest of us are sort of caught "Then there's Harriette Arnow, of other writer has. Some of her short between these two stereotypes. But it's course." She asked my response toThe stories that are in the larger collection interesting to follow them down to the Daughter,Arnow's fourth (published by Vanderbilt in 1968) are present clay." novel, published in I970.It was set in really horrifying.!: Sheadded, "It'sthe Of the early writers from the region, Detroit during the 1960s and examined oppression of women in her books that's Dykeman said, "I am a great admirer" of such problems as McCarthyism, the a theme that's really been overlooked." Emma Bell Miles'The Spirit of the Vietnam War, environmental pollution She expres..cd her desire for somebody to Mountainsof 1905. "She had very fresh and civil rights. The novel had received examine this neglected aspect of some of neither the critical nor popular success of the literature of the region. Sandy Ballard has a James Si,!! Fellowship Amow's earlier work, Dykeman believed, With the mention of the "dark side" this summer to work on hei Mogi aphy of because readers had expected another of literature and life, I wondered about Harriette Simpson At now. She will be an novel set in Kentucky. "It was terrible Dykeman's opinion of East Tennessee assistant profess(); in the English Demi tment what happened to her with it.I didn't feel novelist Cormac McCarthy. She began, at Carson-Newman College this fall that it should be dismissed at all. (But) "of course, his fiction is so entirely

22 Now and Then 119 different from mineand his whole exaggerated behavior in Southern fiction, She next thought of Wendell vision." She admits, however, that she she believes, "grows out of real editorial Berry, a writer of poetry, essays, and admires his "magic with words," his encouragement to write in this way. The novels. She described him as an articu- humor, and his imaginative expression of 'Joyce Carol Oates syndrome,' I guess late spokesman for the region, with deep his personal vision. She believes that "his you would call it" results in "book after "Appalachian concems," mentioning his illy dark vision of life is one that book after book" featuring experiences workThe Unsettling of America."A lot balances some of the brighter and more that are "not mainstream." Dykeman of people know about him," she said. "but optimistic viewpoints. readily accepts that "we have anguish. he's not nearly recognized as muchas he "What interests me," she com- We all have anguishand really dark should be. mented. "is the response of some people moments. But, to me, the challenge is to "Another one that I've been reading who see that (dark view) as being more capture those moments that do happen to is this new young writer Denise Giardina. authentic, sc mehow more vital than most people rather than these bizarre Do you know her novelStorming another kind of vision that is more ones. The thing that literature needs to do Heaven? Now and Thenhad a long affirmative. It seems to me that what is to let us really share whatever thatex- review of it" (Volume 5. Number 1. literature is all about is to have a number perience is and relate to it because then Spring, 1988). of different views." Dykeman is quick to we bring something into our own lives Tuming to poets, Dykeman thought admit that she recognizes the "dark" from the literature." Dykeman stated of Byron Herbert Reece, a Georgian elements of life, and she says she with quiet exasperation, "There aren't too "who follows in the oldest tradition. the welcomes the revelations she can have many of us who eat the afterbirth of one ballad tradition. He's the only person I about them thiough reading such novels of our children" (referring to a scene in know who, by himself, wrote a ballad as as McCarthy's Suttree.She has no Oates' work). if it had been written by a whole commu- objections to McCarthy's fiction. What In her Appalachian literature classes. nitywhich is the way a ballad is she objects to is the acceptance of only she includes a wide range of contempo- supposed to be written." His first book that dark view of life as being the rary writers' An the region. In addition Ballad of the Bones.Dykeman said, is "a authentic Southern view. to McCarthy. she discusses the works of link between the past and the present in Much of the graphic violence and Lee Smith. Bobbie Ann Mason, Jayne Appalachian poetry." Anne Phillips and Gail Godwin. Dykeman is currently working on a She added, "You know. (God- book about Sequoyah, the half-Cherokee Traveler'&Rest win's) last three novels are set inventor of the written Cherokee lan- . ; in Asheville." She referred to guage. She thinks of him as more than Nikki Giovanni: "She grew up "just a genius." She also revealed that the When my wife's brother Gem died. in Knoxville and some of her subject of her "night work and day Untharried at age thirty-six, - poems are about when she lived thinking" is a long novel about which she Dead at the hands of an irate husband,. here." offered no further details. One woman who would Fred Chappell is As we stood to leave, Dykeman Have married hini another writer that she thinks "isrecalled when Bobbie Ann Mason was in Pillowed his head very, very good." HisDagon Knoxville recently. A headline about Under a wedding dress .!' andI Am One of You Forever Mason's visit had read. "To know your She wedged "seem like two different worlds. place you have to leave it," and Dykeman He doesn't get just in one mode understands that sentiment. But she Into the coffin: . or one way of reacting to life." A second woman who wouldn't want to move to New York. 1:.:;". Likewise, poet Jim Wayne Would have married him She believes that she has seen enough of Miller, she reminded me. "has a the world to have a sense of perspective Tried to climb into novel coming out now." about the region where she lives. The casket with him, When I asked about More disheartening than the New And a third haunted writers of this region who are York editors who don't understand why The room where he not getting the attention she she still lives here. she sighed, are the Had lain in state would like to see them get. peopleherewho don't understand why Until she had to be Dykeman shifted in her chair. she hasn't left. She has traveled widely, Spirited away a week after leaned toward me. and eagerly she explained, and she finds that one of His removal to began with John Ehle. "The the most exciting things that can happen Traveler's Rest. Washington Posthad an is to be in a foreign place and "all of a excellent review of his novel sudden to have an incredible sense of Walter Darrell Haden just before this last one,The deja vu."To recognize the familiar in the Winter People,but when you unfamiliarto understand that universal read long essays on Southern Walter Darrell Haden teaches English at the University experience is not limited to a particular of Tennessee at Martin. Tenn.. and performed with literature, he's never mentioned.regionthat is what gives us a genuine Patsy Cline in a Grand Ole Opry package show hi 1962 He's just one of the underesti- sense of place. at Ronald Reagan's high school. mated writers of the region." 20 / Nov and Then 0213 ()uses For my grandmother

He is dead exploded fur ce fallen crane. Children planted on the porch. You buried a man you r,,,knized Perfume dyed hair from a mended shirt hand sewn pants. painted smiles greet you. You will buy him a tombstone someday. You clean the women's house quickly changing sheets Dawn crossing the muddy street praying God is looking somewhere else. Helen hangs on your dress You iron anew dress touch the silk. Stella staggers on five year old feet. They pay you too much. 1,1 : Frannie Andy you carry in a bushel but no oneelsewill work heke. to the first house. The children give you their gifts This one is never dirty of finely wrapped chocolate, but she watches your chapped fingers. a trade with the huckster The children are silence in the kitchen corner for potatoes onions.

eyes wishing at cookies. - . . You are a scarecrow chasing flyitigdirt. You walk back laundry Torn rags wave in your hands. pull the small wagon of sack boulders home. You wring the gray mop one more time. Stella trails with a pillow case full. You boil water creating a potion of clean. The brown house always empty of people You search the sky for sun wind. you move from floor to floor singing songs in Polish. You know you are lucky This is the house you can look at many jobs work each day fill your eyes with the richness you the children together still. walk through the rooms You fall asleep at the table again

pretending you belong here. finally capturing the face. /- You collect money from the table you can't remember in the day and a new used dress for Helen. huddled children at your feet watching you breathe.

- Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg

Georgeann Eskievich Rettherg teaches kindergarten and a fourth and fifih grade poetry workshop for the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Her work has been published in Panhandler, Sojourner, Mill Hunk Herald and Now and Then.

24 Now and Then / 21 NEPHOTOGRAPHER'SSENSE 0 AIL :::;' Zia*-4

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William Richardson Mullins, who grew up around Wise and Clintwood in Southwest Virginia,started taking pictu came to be known, traveled through Wise and Dickenson Counties in Virginia and Letcher and PikeCounties in Eas hiked, and he stayed with people he knew. Up until the middle 30s, when electricitycame to the mountains, he dev lamp covered with a red globe. In the 1940s he moved to Letcher County, Ky., wherehe spent the rest of his life. The photos in this group came from a box of 3,700 negatives that surviveda fire that destroyed most of Picture Rucker, have worked to preserve the photographer's work. Appalshop has puttogether a traveling exhibition, "Whe Bob Henry Baber, who helped put the exhibition together for Appalshop (andalso helped Now and Then acquire highly original and dignified interpretations, experimental reportage and poetic vision,out also for what they do not b quaintness that reeked of chamber of commerce commercialism, or a focus that dwelt almostentirely on negative st happened to be a brilliant photographer." The photos on these pages were provided with the generous assistance of BobHenry Baber, Angel Rucker, and 25 PLACE PICTUREMANMULLINS

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es with a tintype camera when he was 14 yearsold in 1900. In the 1920s and 30s, Pictureman Mullins, as he ern Kentucky carrying his equipment with him. His was not afancy operation--he rode a bicycle, walked or hitch- loped his photographs in a primitive darkroom that consisted of a window-withblack drapes over it and a kerosene 'maintained studios in Payne Gap and East Jenkins until his death in 1969 at the age of 82. anMullins'work. Appalshop, the media production center in Whitesb;rg, Ky., alid Mullins'granddaughter, Angel e the Mountain Laurels Bloom," of some 55 photos. the photos), believes that "Pictureman Mullins' photographs are important not onlyfor their attention to detail, mg. In the past many Appalachian photographs havesuffered from either an overbearing sentimeniality and reotypes. Mullins wasn't looking for a 'slant' or 'angle' but was just another memberof the community who also

Appalshop staff members Robert Gipe and Scott Oliver.

26 Nowand Then / 23 One time in a dentist's office, I started readinga Redbook maga- zine and found myself in the middle ofa story crackling with odd, funny characters. The settingwas Appalachian, and the writing was far fresher than the shiny new paneling in the waitingroom. I looked back to see who wrote this renegade Redbookstory. Lee Smith. The first book I read by Lee Smithwas Black Mountain Breakdown, which was about a girl growing up in Southwest Virginia. Itcame out in 1980. It was writing I admired: terse, understated, but expansive in its humor.And though it was set in the mountains withsome of the people fitting the usual conception of mountain folk, the characterswere drawn as individuals, quirky and engaging and irritating. And contemporary. I recognizeda voice from my generation.I could have known these people. And I liked readingabout a part of the country near my home.It was L pleasure to continue reading Lee Smith's novelsas theyappeared: Oral Historyin 1983,Family Linenin 1985 andFair and Tender Ladiesin 1988. Smith's style continues simple but expressive, her characters continue odd and contemporary, even when she's writing aboutwomen of the past in the mountains as she has inOral HistolyandFair and Tender Ladies. Lee Smith Bom in 1944 in Grundy, Va., Smith spent two years n a Richmond prep school and entered Hollins College writing program.Her first an Interview novel,The Last Day the Doghushes Bloomedwas published in 1967, just after she graduated from college. She also workedas a newspaper by Pat Arnow reporter in Richmond, Va., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. Her second novel,Something in the Wind,she described in an interview inAmerican Wayas "just terrible, as second novels often are if they're written too soon."Fancy Strut,published in 1973, was her third novel, basedon ..xpe- riences in Tuscaloosa. In her next novel,Black Mountain Breakdown,-Smithwrote about her own region for the first time. She describes this as the most autobiographical ofher books. Her short stories have been published in various magazines, havewon two 0. Henry awards and were collected inCakewalkin 1982. Smith now lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., with her husband, HalCrowther, who writes for the North Carolinaindependent.They have three children between them: Page. 18. Josh. 17 and Amity. 17. Recently Smith and I talked about how her home has shaped herwriting.

Q: One thing I've noticed in your books,you use a lot of folklore. For instance, one of your characters puts an axe under the bed to cut the pain of childbirth.I was wondering where you got this kind of thing. A:Well, I grew up in Grundy, Vat. which is in Buchanan County inSouthwest Virginia, and I was an only child, which means that I spent less time withother children and more time listening to old people. Although I was an only child,I had a real big family there. They were all real talkers. We would all get together, I mean we had Sunday dinnerat my grandmother's, and then we had all these family picnicsat the Breaks Park, and I just heard a whole lot of that stuff. 1 lived in town. My father ran the dime store, but therewas just one school. And so you go spend the night with people up in hollers. And my grandfather was in politics for 40 years. Hewas a treasurer, and my whole familyall of them were into politics in the Democratic partyandI used to love to go with them around politicking where you justgo, and you eat on Sundays at about five dif- ferent houses, convince them to vote for whoyou want. And then later, in more recent years, I've gotten interested in readinganything I can get my hands on of recorded folklore, oral history, whatever. 1;'smy big passion. 24 / Now and Then Q:How are people taking your books up Q:Are you noticing as you keep coming tains, only a few of them are con- there? back to Grundy that there is more ho- sciously into this kind of thing. We A: Well, I don't know. Nobody ever mogenized culture? just don't sit around and talk like we mentions them hardly.It's real nice. A: Yeah. I think the first thing that I used to. My mother died last spring. My tried to write which was strictly Ap- Q:You mean that if you do it, it's dad still lives in the house I was born palachian was Oral History, and because you choose to do it? You in and grew up in, and since I am an that's because I had a closet full of have to think about it, it doesn't only child, I go back all the time. materials and tapes and books that I come naturally? And so, what I've done for years and found incredibly compelling. I think A:Yeah, telling stories down from gen- years is just write down stuff that it was when all the fast food stuff eration to generation is not any interests me when I'm there. There came in on Route 460 around the longer a way of life. It still happens are lots of people I talk to regularly, bend in the river from my parents' in some families because some who tell me stuff. They'll say, house. Suddenly that, and then those people care about it. We've all "Well, now I've got something else big dishes that you see everywhere, gotten so many of our icons on TV to tell you about, curing such-and- and you know mat everybody's got now.I mean the kids are much such." But my books don't seem to TV, and that means that very soon all more likely to get their role models be an issue. the kids are going to sound like Dan from a TV show than they are from Q:Oh, so they're not reading them their grandmothers. when they come out and getting on Q:Is this a problem with your students? you about them? Are you finding it hard to get them to A: No, no. Everybody's real nice. The write about their personal experience. English teacher had me come and A:Well, no, see, because the students I talk at the high school. I'm going get, they're already interested in back in May for three days to do writing. They don't have to be in my stuff in Richlands and Grundy, and class. They're the ones that are around that whole area. Up in -predisposed to think about their Abingdon. I try to be as faithful as I experience and their families. But can to the region and to the people. the average undergraduate that I Q:Do people are come up and say, encounter when I travel around the "Well, that was my sister," or ... country is predisposed to think about A: No. But what I do. either I make how to make money, and that's a them all up or I put them in whole whole different kind of thing. I do cloth and everybody knows who they think there are a lot of elements in are. but they don't object. our culture that came in with the This one book, Black Mountain Reagan years that are anti-history, Breakdown, was the one where I did and anti- a sense of community the put in a few people. community way we have known it. There is that figures. Everyone would probably materialistic tone and tenor that goes know who they were, but they're Rather. All the stuff with the against all that. very lovingly portrayed, which is the language is going to be lost. I feel like the books that I've way I feel about them. Nobody's I suddenly did see this enormous written, which are particularly ever bothered me about it. homogenization about, oh, 15 years Appalachian books, are the kind of Q:How long have you been in Chapel ago. I guessor 10 years ago. I had documentation that goes on in Appa- Hill? been writing ever since I was a child. lachian Studies. I just try to use A:I've been in Chapel Hill a long but I began to feel like I wanted to things the way they were and put time-16 years. And I've never set record my perceptions of that area. them in their context so that anybody anything in Chapel Hill in terms of And certain kinds of people because that is interested can go there and writing. that that was going to be a thing of find them. Q:Any plans to? the past. Q:I noticed that in the books I was A:No. I don't know why, I mean. I Q:Would you say that a 12-year-old in going through this morning. know that a university town is full of Grundy today is going to have a dif- A:Yeah, there's too much information stories, too, but they may not be ones ferent voice than yours? really. because I'm just fascinated I can tell. You can't choose your A:Oh, absolutely. Yeah. with the way things were and the material so much as it chooses you. Q:Then it won't be much of a mountain processes that the people have used, I'm gonna try real hard.I did voice? like making soap, and it gets in the try real hard with one book, Family A:Well, I don't think it will be as much way of the narrative. But I just love Linen. I got about as far out of the of a one, no. My parents were it. I'm fascinated with all of that. mountains as Martinsville. I got out storytelling parents. A lot of people Q:Do you think of yourself as an Appa- to (Interstate) 81. my age who are still in the moun- lachian writer particularly? 28 Now and Then / 25 Lee Smith

A:Yeah. published than it is now. I have New York, than if it's a good novel Q:I've heard you called a Southern students who are having trouble about life in New York. writer. getting what I think are wonderful Look at Lonesome Dove. Lary A: There's a huge difference betweena novels or stories published, or having IV:cMertry's book.I mean people do Southern writer and the kind of them come-out and having them not like to read about small towns in writer I am. For one thing, so much receive attention. It's just the whole regional states. I don't think that of what I think of as the canon of cultural situation. It's just much that's a drawback at all right now for Southern literature does have Hs do tougher now than it was almost 20 the young writer. with race and racial guilt. I'm 'alkin years ago when I started publishing. Q:Are you continuing to write about the about Eudora Welty or Q:And Appalachia was a little more past now, or are you going to work Faulkner.I mean, we just don't have trendy then, too, wasn't it? on some contemporary themes? that. Or at least when I was growing A:Actually, the first things I did were A:I seem to be writing some stories up, I just didn't have a sense of that. not specifically Appalachian. They right now, so I suppose the next thing And also, I never had a senF.: of an were just sort of, oh, "young-person- that I would have out would be some aristocracy. You know. there was finds-her-way-in-the-world." They kind of a collection of stories, and nobody with big columns on their were typical first-writer things. It they are more contemporary and less house, with lots of money or black was just that, I wish I could get the rooted in place than Fair and Tender mammies. statistic exact, but there's something Ladies. which was my last novel. I I just don't think of myself as a like 70 percent less fiction. serious do worry that I'll get stuck and not Southern writer. I really don't, fiction, being published now than be able to write anything else except because the class system was so there was then. from a first-person woman's voice of different, the money situation was so Q:Even in magazines? 50 years ago in Buchanan county different. even. Well, just the whole A:Oh. yeah. Especially in magazines. because that's what I'm most social structure was quite different; I It's real hard to get serious fiction comfortable with. So I'm trying real think. from the deep South. I have published today because there's hard now to write some stories that spent some timeI lived in Alabama almost no place that will publish it. are contemporary. and was married for a while to a man You know. everything's gotten Q:I was talking about doing this from Mississippi.I see it as very generic and tacky and non-fiction- interview, and one person said she different. filled. That's why I'm so pleased to was not disturbed about the sameness The family roles are different. sec the growth of regional presses. so of your times and places. but was There's not much similarity between that some of our young writers will bothered that all the protagonists a novel that comes out of Appalachia get published. seem to be good-looking blonde or and a novel that comes out of the I have been real lucky. There red-headed women. She said. "Ask South. are a lot of people who like to read her why they always have to be Q:So you're seeing this is a distinctive about a time that doesn't exist any good-looking." region. more. You know, all these people in A:Well. that's interesting. I don't A:I think so. People who arc not from their New York apartments are know. The writer is the last to know. the South maybe find it harder to listening to Garrison Keillor, and I mean I have absolutely no idea. understand the delineation because it sometimes they'll write me a letter or But tell her that I'll write a plain one all sort of sounds the same to them. twopeople I would think would immediately! but it's not the sameeven the lan- never read anything that I've written. Q:A Jane Eyre type. guage is different. And they like it.I think that a lot of A:Right, exactly. And it is quite different. I think people are feeling put off by the way Q:O.K.. I'll pass that along. So. you're of Fred Chapel' as an Appalachian they live, the place they live at and trying some different kinds of writer.I think of Bobbie Ann their dislocation. So I don't think stories? Mason. that being a regional writer automati- A:(es. When you're writing a lot, Though she's from Western Ken- Q: catty cuts you off from a mass which 1 do, you just don't stop to tucky. market. think what you're up to, because A:Yeah, but still it's the same kind of Q:You don't think publishers are you're just compelled to do whatyou language. It's got the same sound. keeling any kind of pressure? do. But several people have men- It's the same kind of people. A.Oh hell no. They love regional stuff. tioned to me friends, not critics Do you have any trouble gaining ac- Q: They love Southern stuff. The particularlythat why don't I write ceptance from the mainstream kind problem is that they just publish so about men more, that I seem to write of publishing and audiences? few titles in serious fiction, period. entirely about women. I'm working A: No. I've been lucky, though. I was It's much easier, I think, to geta on that. I'm going to consciously lucky because I started writing at a novel published if it's a good have at least half of them from the time when it was a lot easier to get regional novel, today, right now, in point of view of men. It's like these

26 / Now and Then pretty red-headed women. I do think letters was more important than the get that trapped. that you can fall into patterns. That's letters. It's like the knitting of a A: Well, I think it happens all the time. one of the big problems with Ameri- sweater, the making of the quilt, and All the time. can writers; we tend to write the that kind of thing, you know, that Q:It probably happens to men as well. same stories over and over. And I something is art even though it's not A:Of course it does. But you do have don't want to do that. So, with the perceived as public art.It's the dif- to write about what you know about, stories that I'm writing now, I'm ference between monumental and I know more about women and gonna follow my face some. I just sculpture and needlepoint. their psychology at different points in sent my agent one of them, and she Q:One is considered fine art and one's their lives than men. called me yesterday and said, "What like folk art. Q:Do you call yourself a feminist? the hell is this!" Because I don't want A:Yeah. I read this wonderful book A:Yeah. I do. Although I have not to do the same thing. It's hard not to. recently of art criticism by two been as actively political as I would Usually you get a thing that you women and they point out in it that like to have been. Oh, yeah, defi- know how to do, and you're tempted we all use the term "old masters." nitely am. to keep doing variations on it.I Where are the "old mistresses?" Q:What kind of stories are you doing mean, Hemingway wrote one book, (The book is Old Mistresses: now? right? Which is a problem in Women. Art, and Ideology by A: Well, the ones I'm trying to do right American writing, I think. More so Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pol- now are not specifically Appala- than elsewhere. lock.) chian. I'm looking at one right now Q:I read about Fair and Tender Ladies Q:Well, they were making quilts. which is about a young couple in that it was inspired by picking up a A:That's right. Or they were painting Raleigh. But it's not the academic packet of letters from a garage sale. miniatures. You know, they were environment, which I just cannot A: Yes. It was a flea market, actually, encouraged to do pastels, miniatures seem to deal with. in Greensboro. and portraits as opposed to big huge Q:Do you read work abouk academic Q:I was wondering if you actually used things. And (there's the issue of) environments? any of those? where you do it. Do you do it in A:I read pretty much everything I can A: No, because they were not Appala- your studio with apprentices, or do get my hands on. chian, for one thing. And I had this you do it at home? Q:But that's not something you'd care whole body of stuff I wanted to use. Another thing I had in mind with to write about? And so I wanted to have my writer Fair and Tender Ladies, I had the A: There's things that I'd like to read be set there. But I was struck. They enormous pleasure some years ago of about, but then when I get ready to were from a woman to her sister, and coming upon Lou Crabtree in a class write my characters seem to be not in she was a woman who had not had that I taught in Abingdon, and she academia.I have also been accused, any particular education. I was just had been at that time writing for 50 in addition of not writing about men, struck how every now and then she'd years. She read this thing in class, of being anti-intellectual.I don't have this real literary image, or and it just knocked me out.I said, know. You just have to write about striking tum of phrase or something. "Do you have any more stuff?" And whltever compels you, I think, to do And I just got real interested in the she said. "Why, yeah," and she came any :rind of decent job at it. Other- idea of somebody's letters being a in the next day with a suitcase full of wise, it's artificial. sort of work of art. You know, this stuff that she'd been writing and Q:At Raleigh, do you just teach writing letters over their whole lifetime.Ir.it writing and writing. I was just so courses? art because there's a critic some- stunned by the idea of writing not for A: Well, I teach other stuff, too. where who perceives it as art? Or, is publication, but writing as Flannery Various kinds of literature, which I it art because it just 10 I don't know. O'Connor has said as a "habit of have no business doing. You know, I It's just some sort of aesthetic thing being." Her book, Sweet Miler: don't have a Ph.D. or anything. I'm that I've had in my mind for a while Stories. was published by LSU (Lou- going to be in Virginia next year, that interests me. isiana State University Press) with a though, at Virginia Commonwealth And I have felt that there are a lot of those things in it. University in Richmond just doing a lot of other interesting stories in Q:It was interestine in Fair and Tender visiting year. issues having to do with women and Ladies, this woman got herself Q:Any chance you might come back to our creativity in particular.I think trapped and couldn't do anything the mountains at some point? there's less of an emphasis upon the else. The letters were her creative A: Yeah. I'd really like to do that. end product in the artistic work that outlet maybe. If she had come out ofQ: To teach, or to live? women do, so often the process is it and gotten published, it would have A:Either or both. what's important rather than the seemed less true to me. Even though product. It's why in that book I was Lou Crabtree actually did. But it's trying to show that the writing of the true that someone that talented could 30 (- Now and Then / 27 A CountrySummer Lance Olsen

The rattlesnakesnear Frenchburg went blind in July becauseof the heat and made theirway into the open. Orva Radcliff toldus she found one, dark gold, burntalmond stripes, six hornysegments the color of coconutson its tail, wrapped around several of the 24empty Coke bottles she had neatly stackedon the backporch. Wynn was in the fields with the cattle when Orva found it,so she had to hoe it herself. The body wouldn'tstop moving when she severed the head. It justkept coming at her. She cut it intwo and the two parts kept coming. Finally she lockedherself in the farmhouse and waitedfor Wynn to return, which he did two hours later. He ran in the front door and ran out the back, loading hisshotgun as he went, and broke three empty bottles when he openedfire, but he killed all four parts of thesnake which were still coiling around themselves searching for their severed head. Shortly after that, SimsonBailey discovered a pair of rattlers loving in thetrunk of his Pontiac, and Sarah Smallwoodpatted her pillow before bed and a baby one,no more than eight inches long, quickly slitheredout and plocked onto the floor and would have reached the bathroomexcept that Daisy, Sarah's dog, snapped itup. The Rooney boy stuck his foot in his shoeone morning and got stung by a wasp withone head and two bodies, and the Clarence girl claimed shesawflying saucer one night over Ned Donahue'spasture and a week later she was pregnant although she said she didn't know whothe father was. It wasn't a good summer for us. These were bad signs. We should have taken more notice of them.We should have taken more precautions. But in all fairness somehow such events only make sense when you're looking backat them from a very long distance. Close up they look like nothingmore than a jumble of bad luck. Then Drusilla Rawlins and her daughter Bobbie Rae stopped going to church. We thought maybethey had zone to Cincinnati to visit Drusilla's sister. Agnes. who owned a very nice beauty parlor and believed theworld was-goinz to end in 1999 when people from Atlantis would show themselves on Christian television stations. ButDrusilla and Bobbie Rae began appearing in Frenchburg, buying groceriesat Piggly Wiggly, and we began to worry. Granger, Drusilla's husband, died five summers before of a heart attack while trying to free. thecarcass of a squirrel he had shot which had gotten stuck between two branches of a birch tree. Halfway up Granger missedhis footing and started falling backward. To steady himself. he hugged the tree. But his feet had gone out from under him and down heslid, chafing his arms and legs. At the bottom he dusted himself off and began to holler. He wrestled with the tree. He punchedit. He kicked it. He punched it again. He threw a powerful and beautiful left hook and a large blood vessel leading into hisheart popped, and he died instantly. He was 47 and had lost all his teethwhen he was 33 because of a gum disease. Drusilla didn't take Granger's death well. "Myhusband." she would tell us, "wasa fool for dying for a squirrel." The same gum disease had also taken all of her teeth. Shewas four years Granger's senior and the tip of hernose almost touched the tip of her chin, and she never smiled because she said she didn't see any point to it. Shortlyafter Granger's death she began talking against marriage and against squirrel hunting. She told us she even went so far as to writeto the Surgeon General of the United States whom she had seen onGood Morning Americaand explained to him marriages shouldcome with the same warning labels as cigarettes and other household poisons. We never saw her letter though, and Didila claimed the Surgeon General never bothered to respond to it. Drusilla also locked her 16-year-old daughter. Bobbie Rae, in the cabin on Amos Ridge with her and vowedshe would never let Bobbie Rae marry. "It isn't worth it," Drusilla said. "It's like having a cat. You keep it and feed it and love it for 16 years justso in the end it'll turn round and die on you andcause you no end of grief. No thank you."

28 / Now and Then 31 Bobbie Rae said she didn't find any Pearl told us Bobbie Rae looked a little 14 cardinals scattered on the grass outside problem with this. She was good- under the weather. Her eyes didn't her bedroom window. Their beaks had looking, possessed large brown eyes, sparkle as much as they used to, and been crushed and many of their wings strong muscular legs and blond hair bluish circles spread beneath them. Her had been broken. Next morning Malvina which she put in curlers every night and skin looked cottony. But Drusilla, and Ardell Thompson reported finding a nine years of schooling, but-she did what coming up behind her, said: "We're pile of over 50 robins frying on the tin her mother told her because she didn't seegettin' by." roof of their tobacco bam and Collin and much reason to do otherwise. At least to a certain extent we figuredJudy Ann Waterman discovered the "Why marry when you can be happy that must be true. Drusilla had Granger's carcasses of mockingbirds, wood thrushs instead?" she once asked our preacher, Social Security and GI benefits coming and meadow larks floating in the green Jesse Vinson, who was also our postmas- in, after all, and Ruben Smallwood said scummy water at the bottom of their ter. he could hear a rifle going off sometimes cistern. Turtles, chocolate shells speckled "Because God likes it that way," from over by the Rawlins' cabin, and he with apricot and burnt orange, crawled Jesse said. assumed maybe Drusilla and Bobbie Rae into the middle of roads, attempting to be "It seems awful strange for me for a were taking up hunting again. Harlan hit by cars. fella to go round heaping marriage on Forrest said he saw them down by the When Drusilla appeared in Piggly others like a load of rocks W len he ain't pond near Ned Donahue's pasture once, Wiggly again, Bobbie Rae wasn't with even married himself," Bobbie Rae said. only they weren't swimming. Drusilla her. It was the first time we had seen "I just haven't found the right person was standing knee deep in the water, Drusilla alone since July 4, 1955, when yet," Jesse said. fishing, and Bobbie Rae was sitting on a she was standing outside the tent housing "I'm talking about God," Bobbie Rae boulder, staring off at nothing in particu- the two-headed calf exhibit at the Mount said. lar as though she was waiting for some- Sterling Country Fair, a full set of teeth in Jesse stopped by the cabin every one. When Harlan called hello, neither ofher mouth, nibbling at a huge pink swirl Tuesday and Thursday for the next three them answered. Bobbie Rae lazily of cotton candy and listening to Wilgus weeks during the dog days and had long looked over her shoulder at him and and the Mountain Men singing Mac conversations with Drusilla and Bobbie tumed away again, but Harlafl said it was Wiseman's "I Wonder How the Old,Folks Rae about God's will and the nature of startling how much her cheeks had Are at Home" on a stage 50 feet away. marriage. sunken. That was the last anyone saw of She took pleasure in the damp acrid scent Bobbie Rae, Jesse, told us, served Drusilla and Bobbie Rae until October. of hay and dung and beer and tobacco in him lemonade over ice, and she and The rattlesnakes gained back their the air. She ate her cotton candy and Drusilla sat listening politely to what he eyesight early in September when the listened to the chickens cackling and the had to say. When he was done, Drusilla heat weakened. By that time Wynn girls laughing and the midget with no ears would sit thinking for several moments Radcliff had shot 24 of them in his field shouting about the real live 30-foot South then clear her throat and say: "It must be and Sarah Smallwood had found six American python he had in his tent, and a whole bunch easier to talk about things under her pillow and told us she could no Drusilla watched young couples stroll you've never done than to actually have longer dream at night, and the Clarence past hand-in-hand, children licking red to trouble your head over doing them." girl was sent to Grassy Lick, Tenn., to and white and blue lollipops as large as Bobbie Rae would point out that Jesus live with her aunt and uncle until next their heads, old farmers in baggy faded never married which, she maintained, had autumn. The summer had been dry, and overalls and white t-shirts examining the to say something about something. Then many of the streams had stopped flowing, most modem machinery in various they would all look at each other for a and many of the ponds had shrunk, and exhibits. Into her field of vision drifted a while longer, Drusilla never smiling, and there wasn't a puddle in sight. Some kid, no more than 18, with the tightest Jesse would eventually stand and shake people were of the opinion Frenchburg black jeans she had ever seen and a black their hands and bow slightly from the was being punished. Jesse Vinson said t-shirt and a pack of cigarettes rolled up waist and excuse himself. He gave up on that was just so much hogwash, but he in his right shirtsleeve. His blond hair them after the second week in August and did start holding special rain-prayer was greased straight back, and he wore they gave up on him after the third. meetings after he closed up the post snakeskin boots. Drusilla's palms began When Rita Pearl Thornton, who office on Mondays, Wednesdays and sweating instantly when he stepped up to worked the cash register at Piggly Wiggly Fridays. The birds, driven wild by the her and asked if she wanted to see the and whose son was in the Army and flew need for moisture, began committing Amazing Tasmanian Prophet's Head. helicopters in Panama, asked Bobbie Rae suicide by flying into the sides of barns That was Granger Rawlins from over one day how she was getting along, and houses. One evening Ivy Dorough, in Camargo, and that was love. They Bobbie Rae said: "I been better." Rita who turned one hundred and twelve last paid 25 cents and went in. Sure enough, April and who many people claim was 78 in a roped-off area stood a table over when she was born, called Sheriff Rabel which was draped a crimson sheet on Lance Olsen commutes between Lexington, saying someone was trying to break into which rested a silver platter. On the where he teaches at the University of her cabin. When the sheriff showed up platter rested a small head in a pool of Kentucky, and his cabin in the mountains of half an hour later he found the bodies of blood that looked suspiciously like Menifee County.

32 Now and Then / 29 A Country Summer

catsup. Its green eyes were wide This time they had a large healthy boy how Bobbie Rae was getting on and open and alert. It had no ears. It they named Wilgus, after Wilgus and the Drusilla said, "She ain't feeling so smiled at Drusilla and Granger. Mountain Men. good." Drusilla yelped and unthinkingly took Ten years later, shortly after listening "I'm sorry to hear that," Rita Pearl hold of Granger's arm. to a particularly energetic bluegrass band said. "Is there anything we can do?" "Your wish, oh great ones, is my called The Grant Lick Boys at the Drusilla carefully counted out her command," said the head in a high- Frenchburg Mountain Days Fair, they money and put in on the counter. pitched nasal voice with an accent went behind Sammy's Car Lot which "Naw," she said, "it's just she's that was, from what Drusilla could later burned down and conceived Bobbie sleeping a lot lately." figure, somewhere between French Rae who grew up quiet and dreamy and "You think the doctor ought to and Chinese. indifferent to the world. Bobbie Rae sat have a look at her?" Rita Pearl asked. Granger studied the head a full for hours by herself, staring into space "It ain't a big thing," Drusilla said. minute, his eyes slits, then slapped from her bedroom window or the porch "Bobbie Rae is always sleeping." himself on his thighs and said: rocker. If Granger and Drusilla weren't "Well, you let us know if there's "Shee-it. That ain't nothing but the careful Bobbie Rae slept 14 hours a day, anything we can do," Rita Pearksaid. little fella that was yakking outside and in school she often dozed off at her "I sure will," Drusilla said, and she about the big snake from the South desk. When the teacher, Mrs. Barnett, hoisted up her groceries, turned, and Pole." who had no pinkie on her right hand, walked out. "Oh great ones," the head said, asked Bobbie Rae if she felt all right The rains came a few days later. "you must be mistaken." Bobbie Rae said she was feeling just fine,The weather cooled, and the sky "The hell I am," Granger said. but she didn't see any reason to stay swelled and turned the color of a "You want a mistake? I'll show you awake when there was nothing special to rabbit's neck. The trees shrunk and a mistake." stay awake for. turned the color of pumpkins and He reached into his back pocket, When he was 16, Wilgus married a lemons. The rain stung into the earth pulled out his Swiss Army knife, un- girl over in Jeffersonville and moved into for weeks on end. Streams frothed folded the blade, and let it fly. his own cabin, but Bobbie Rae never orange, ponds filled and overflowed, The knife landed blade-backward showed any interest in such things. Whenwaterfalls jetted over limestone. Jesse a foot wide of the mark and bounced other girls began to think about boys, Vinson said our prayer meetings on off the table but it had the desired Bobbie Rae sat waiting until it was time Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays effect. to go to sleep. When other girls talked had worked. The birds ceased commit- The head yowled and dropped about going to junior high, Bobbie Rae ting suicide and began flying south. through the platter, only to appear a said she'd had enough of education. The turtles crawled back into the moment later attached to a very angry Sometimes to get her moving Granger woods. On the last Saturday in midget yelling, "Hey buddy, fuck would take her hunting with him. One October a terrible thunderstorm broke you!" Sunday afternoon five years ago they loose, the sky rumbling and flashing Drusilla laughed so hard she lost went in search of a couple of squirrels for and the wind so strong it knocked her breath. Granger was the funniest burgoo. They hiked down into the woods down power lines all along Amos man she had ever met. He had to leadat the foot of Amos Ridge and before Ridge. her outside and sit her down on a long found a squirrel perched on a high Next day two Rural Electric Com- haywagon for a few minutes before branch in a birch. Granger carefully took pany men knocked on the door of the she could speak again. When she aim with his .22 and fired. The squirrel Rawlins' cabin. It was still drizzling. finally opened her mouth, she found itfell but its carcass wedged itself between They had been going from house to was filled with six words. two branches and Granger had to climb house, checking and repairing the lines. "Will you marry me, Granger for it while Bobbie Rae sat on a boulder It took so long for someone to answer, Rawlins?" she asked matter-of-factly. and played with her hair. Shortly after at first they assumed no one was home. Granger said he couldn't see why that Drusilla locked Bobbie Rae in the But as they turned to leave Drusilla not, and six months later Jesse cabin and vowed she would never let opened the door. Vinson's father, Hank, wedded them. Bobbie Rae marry. Inside it was dark and moist. All Three months after that Drusilla gave "You can't win a pissing contest the shades had been drawn. A scent of birth to a dead baby boy with his against skunks." Drusilla said. pine and mildew and old cooking hung umbilical cord wrapped around his When she appeared in Piggly Wiggly in the air. The men had to squint and neck who had never even had a without Bobbie Rae, we knew something wait several seconds before they could chance to cry. Drusilla and Granger was wrong and that we should have done make out the rose-shaded lamp in the stopped touching each other, thinking something a long time ago. Rita Pearl corner, the dresser with all its drawers it bad luck, and it took six years Thornton, who worked the cash register, open and clothes spilling out next to before they felt up to trying again. asked Drusilla as casually as could be the wood-burning stove, the chairs and

30 / Now and Then 33 sofa covered in a faded rose material, shoes and socks glowing whitely on the "Shush now," Drusilla said behind the lace doily spread across the floor beneath the chair. They saw the him. "Don't you go and wake her." rickety end table on which at a hand breakfast tray on the side table, its plate The man stepped back and turned mirror with a tarnished silver handle of bacon and eggs, its bowl of cereal, its and looked at his partner without ex- and back, a turtleshell hairbrush, a glass of orange juice still untouched. pression, figuring. Then he looked Swiss Army knife. Drusilla escorted Bobbie Rae lay on her back in bed, back once more at Bobbie Rae, and the them w the bedroom where the naked, eyes closed, hands folded across golden glint on her left hand caught his fusebox was, and as they entered a her bloated belly, a grin on her face attention. He stared at it for a moment, smell of decay and dampness met where her lips had begun to tighten away then at the grinning face. them. They saw the worn blue jeans from her teeth. Her skin was black, and Then he and his partner said they and red and white checkered blouse several wisps of her blond hair had fallen needed to check the lines outside and and small bra carefully folded over onto the pillow beside her head. When said goodbye and left to fetch the the chair next to the wall inside the one of the men reached out to touch her coroner. doorway. They saw the torn tennis wrist, it caved in.

Jo Carson Traces Her Routes #2

jel uF FA LO/e,oUgriktrit Seasonal Pig

To TtivivalettuckZy Rave& Fast is pig in winter anwiN, lome-Stsoe.DuCrti-, 41" 6YP,NrO, ,a,(V,16cA Going full-tilt for the barn And its smell of fresh straw `THeNe11wcADTo Walte.eTttliaN And a promise of hot mash. osnersiteSttuRctoT i'llei3c04ftheE Nowklor-4 PosfOrta AitcA :VAT'sy'swoos, offie-eS Pig in spring is fast Itheir-T 5,40#5, rzoADexammo/ Clearing up the first green OFPic-CS, FouATAloScomes, Art, PRTNei eic.5 600t5 ,THE MECCA THE01.1) goAD-r0 As soon as it appears. 7oAle.s8.012a4(gg-k o It won't gain on him. /412.65)c 1).1. Dow/4;0AAc 11. THEoLDRoAD euviiee-ntim4 Pig in summer is fast: --r44ecmiG8twAY7 Roots up yellow jackets, V5. Sees the vet coming with VA ttoSPitA 5 /time vim*. Hog-snare and tusk-cutters. 'fioLsTora F t%( )13 4-1:5 vosr ID 0..orTAGE off.teZ SR 5A-u,e-xs But slow is pig in autumn 'TN enlev, RoAD-It Tc05150243(Crit F.P. CAS Stepping through the woods *cog- He5"1"t"C"jr t14(16.1?i'19tcal Cej3 '7, C-Hu -TH4 T o goemy 6.4.40.5 Toward the barn, more or less, TsAv.1 o TAto 136,40 _ADDews reG citehlo After the acorns have fallen. 7.1 MAW-./AtinPS 130o k-S Ne.y5 t_. 1300V- (AND TZscoeb Sfft2 sew NEXT J. B. Goodenough ViCOGsve, 14 LLS 'DV-TAIL poST oF't CG

J.B. Goodenough is a Kentucky-horn New 4it.i.101110 06,!.., Englander recently transplanted to Pittsburgh.

, Ile first collection of poems, Dower Land, ts,as releaser! in 1984 by the Cleveland State OfziS01. S 0 University Poetry Center, and her second col- bib Lars, scN sE c PC-ACc: lection is due within the yea fom the St. An- 50 UMW'S dews Press in Noah Carolina. One of the things she V behind is hen she moved was a pet pig. 3 ei Now and Then / 31 A number ofyears ago, visiting California where I had once lived,my wife and I attended an open poetry reading in Los Angeles. Commentsand responses from the group followed each reading. Wewere amazed to be described and criticized as writers of bitter, harsh andcynical "New York" poetry: I had not realized that I wasa New York poet. I grew up in Upstate New York,a far different region, to me, than New York City.But to the California audience, New York was all one big homogeneous dangerous place (Iremember being phoned in Johnson City, Tenn., by a scholar from Harvard who wondered if I'd mind dropping over to Memphis to examine some archives at Memphis State for him).* Here Later, living in New Jersey, I sent to a well- known San Francisco literary magazinesome poems I had written when drunk in San Francisco sidewalk cafes. They were returned with the comment that they were "definitely not San Francisco." Good poems they were not, but with this heritage how could they not be "San Fran- cisco?" As an immigrant to Appalachia myself, meditating on such matters and having recently Elsewhere (Fall, 1987) arranged a series of writers' residen- cies entitled "Regionalism and Inspiration"at East Tennessee State University through a grant from by Fred Waage the Literature Division of the National Endowment for the Arts, I became conscious of the complexi- ties of "regionalism" as a concept in the U.S. Views of Regionalism today. My own experience of being painted in different regional colors revealed the subjectivity of perception underlying any individual'suse of from writers the concept. Gurney Norman, Lexington, Kentucky One of the purposes of the "Regionalism and Inspiration" residencies was to discover how Lou Crabtree, Abingdon, Virginia various writers might distinguish their own regions from "elsewhere," and to find relationships Joe Bruchac, Greenfield Center, NewYork between Appalachian regionalism and other concepts of regionalism. From interviews and Linda Hogan, Idledale, Colorado readings given by these writers, a sense of several directions emerged. Penelope Schott, Griggstown, NewJersey The two native Appalachians in thegroup, High Nissenson, New York, New York Kentucky writer Gurney Norman and Virginia writer Lou Crabtree, seemed to propound in different ways the sense of Appalachia's unique- ness. Crabtree, author of a highly-acclaimed short story collection aboutSouthwest Virginia, Sweet Hollow (published by Louisiana State University in 1984),made a close connection between the Appalachian children, who figure in so many of her stories, andthe region as a whole. Both, she believes, are pure and innocent, less in contact thanmany others with the negative features of our society. By contrast, Norman, whose best-known work is the novelDivine Right's Trip, chronicling a young man's flight from Appalachia to a negative elsewhere and hisreturn to home, seems to locate regionalism in consciousness more than in social behavior. Normanbelieves we all identify with a collective American experience. He givesas an example the emotional reactions across the country to the Challenger space shuttle explosion. Not that Crabtree, as a regional advocate, rejectsor excludes non-Appalachian experience from her thought or work; on the contrary. The "Jake Pond,"which in Sweet Hollow is the small region Toronto is closer to Johnson City than Memphis. .32 / Now and Then 35 containing the larger Appalachian region, photographic equipment as part of a film He believes that American Indians also contains the whole world: "With the crew. Heand the others were so cannot be considered the only true natives cycle of seasons came the cycles of birth, obsessed with their technological task of any U.S geographical region simply of life, of death, for each of the creatures, that they weren't prepared for the river's because of primacy. Anyone who stays as the book of life opened and closed rapids. Lost in an "electronic wonder- on and works with his/her earthfor around the pond." Her current project land," he capsized and nearly drowned. example, the Appalachian small farmer a story called "The Village," with very This distancing, says Norman, is the is native to his/her region All are op- specific inhabitants, but this specifically threat posed by technology. Thus, the posed to the non-native, who considers described place is not in Southwest essence of regionalism is identity with the the earth as a commodity rather than a Virginia or any other named region. She natural world of a particular physical sacred space. is purposely not identifying it geographi- space. The challenge to the artist is to For Bruchac, literary regionalism is cally, so that it can be where the reader employ distancing forms of communica- truth telling, "writing out of what you wants it to be. tion (e.g., print or film), paradoxically to know." His regionalism is a high virtue She strongly criticizes the use of the bring people closer to nature and to the in writing, not a condescending epithet. term "regional" as "insulting" and a dirty "original mind" mythical and sacred con- Unlike the two previous writers, he ac- word when applied to Appalachia by non-sciousness, "to put our minds on the cepts it as an attribute only of those who natives. Regionalism applies to all natural world as a way to recover our are natives in his sense (though that term writers. On the other hand, she does find minds." is potentially applicable to anyone). qualities of character here that are unique, There is a closeness between the Bruchac feels the publishing world is and, she feels, superior to those of qualities Crabtree finds in Appalachian a negative region (with some exceptions). elsewhere. In particular she cites children and those Norman locates in a He believes that the majority of books are closeness of feeling for family, a strong redeemed consciousness. But Norman published for and about the middle class work ethic and a desire for achi.vement, does not reject outside powers in his artis-white male. As a publisher and promoter which results in a capacity for surviN al tic quest. In fact, his main concern now of prison authors, women, Asian- greater than that of other people. Of is the Ohio River Watershed Arts Media Americans and other neglected cultural course, everyone seeks to survive: but Projectan attempt to increase commu- minorities, Bruchac is counteracting this only Appalachians have the personal nication between artists and inhabitants ofurban commercial provincialism. But he qualities that can insure it. In a nuclear this region through the unifying power of is quick to point out that those who write war the Appalachian land and people modern technology. Norman defines the from the heart and who are true (dispos- would survive, she believes. Ohio river watershedhis chosen sessed) natives, are not only members of One might ask if these personal regionpurely geographically, without minority groups, and that individuals with qualities actually do survive distinctively distinguishing between expressions of a strong sense of region, as different as in our constantiy diversifying area. diversity within itmost significantly Toni Morrison and William Kennedy, Crabtree admits their vulnerability. She between urban and rural areas. It have achieved popular success. laments the industrialization of Ap- stretches from Pittsburgh to Memphis. Poet Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw palachia and the diminution of an His purpose here is to communicate the Indian who grew up ncar the Texas - agrarian lifestyle. The growth of facto- commonality of region without impinging Oklahoma border, also feels that "we are ries and decline in self-sufficiency createson the freedom in diversity. Through all informed by the land we live in." In a destructive dependency on outside such communication he feels the possibil- contrast tc Bruchac she emphasizes that powers. If the factories close, destitution ity of reviving meaningfulness in the we are all global people, that if we come will soon follow. question, "What is Appalachia?"by to know a place, we need not have been Gurney Norman locates the Appala- recovering the mythical or primal sense in it a long time to write about it (or to be chian region more internally. So, while of place buried beneath contemporary of it). Her example :s her feeling of proclaiming its uniqueness, he does not empty stereotypes. closeness with the drban Indian commu- consider it as vulnerable as Crabtree does. Despite the similarity of their vision nity of Denver, far removed from the Norman feels the artist (and presumably of the Appalachian region, Crabtree and rural world she grew up in and writes everyone else) must embrace and accept Norman vary greatly in where they locate about. There exists a community of the technological unification of this time it. For Crabtree it is here, surviving, but Indian writers, and they are a community in history. But for him technology cannotthreatened. For Norman it is lost, waiting even though they live in geographically replace the persistent human Leed for to be found through the enlightened use separate places, follow different life spiritual communication. As an illustra- of what to Crabtree are the powers of its courses and don't write from any com- tive parable, he recounts his experience enemy. mon Indian ideology. floating down the Cumberland River with Native American writers Linda Hogan is a rehabilitator of injured Hogan and.Joseph Bruchac take ethnic birds of prey. In this demanding thera- identity as the main factor in their senses peutic activity she feels she comes closer Fred Waage teaches English and creativeof regionalism, Bruchac's native space in to immediate life and avoids becoming writing at East Tennessee State Univer- northeast New York State and his Indian intellectually distanced from experience. sity. He t.as Now and Then's founding heritage attached to that space are central She considers non-Indians who attempt to editor. to his work. become part of Indian culture as similarly 36 Now and Then / 33 Here & Elsewhere

distanced intellectual exploiters of it, recreates the local reality of someone different they may be in their specific unable actually to become part of it. But extremely different from himself not only external circumstances. Nissenson she believes any good writer is inherently in time but in culture, faith and circum- believes that geographical regionalism is part of some community and thereby stances of life. He cites the international immensely beneficial to a writer: "... if possesses a global sense. The earth itself popularity of this geographically and you have the goods, sooner or later is the basic region of everyone. Thus she temporally regional novel to support his people are going to see you've got the maintains a balance between the unique- view that despite the persistence of goods, and they are going to respect your ness of Indian culture as a "region," and national literatures, we have reached a work." the participation of all humans in a more time of international culture. The way to In the end, the concept of regional- expansive regional experience. universality embodying the shared ism defies anything more than the It is notable that the two writers who consciousness of this culture is, however, dynamic juxtaposition of very different define regionalism in the most encom- for the artist, "not through the universal approaches to it. However, the very fact passing terms are from the Northeast, but through the specific." He explores a of its aliveness and relevance to people of where there is such a great diversity and region of the heart or "landscape of the diverse regions is a sign of its signifi- intermingling of attributes such as soul" shared with others, no matter how cance. national origin and economic status. As II New Jersey novelist and poet Penelope Schott says, "People in the Northeast are convinced that they are the mainstream and that 'regionalism' is the term used byJo Carson Traces HerRoutes #3 provincials to assert themselves in the "BuFF#1.0 Mounnid Neiomsoa. Lot* presence of their superiors." To Schott, cellt.orzeN Northeasterner don't think in terms of regionalism because they see themselves -rtle'sliZeert LEARnIGP Omsterz. et Os as the standard by which other less iaicycLe- on) -1W5 srtess=1" Syr ST V1/4 415114r PtheD THEN. perfect areas are to be judged. 0..10/..80NIS c tam Schott's own sense of a region includes "the world of women, of family, 1/", wAvev. A El of the complex relationships among tAGTeics Pv61-13'g DAN 0 00 cY,) people who love each other and mostly G.y.ceSS ATZE4 imizesear wkwite DO& . er..6s scomve. eLs .1-(1 mean well." Her immediate region of %con, -toes liv'ng experience is her house and its (A.AV

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. .;2:k:" 7 ' . .1. .. *L. "-g" And This Isthe,Way To' Be Poor - - r; .. ' ';;;* W e a r i n g t h e same j e a n s a n d T- s h i rt Pretending you don't want itt change a twenty. And th4 cheap purple earrings - Paying the water bill after three warnings Bought for a quarter at the Salvation Army And disconnecting the telephone again. When you didn't want to touch them Using the food stamps for day-old bread But knew they would match. And year-old canned corn that long since lost its label., Buying Big LeagueChew Smelling not half as viod as the woman in front of you So your kids will think candy And wondering why the hell you came But won't swallow the bubble gum To see teachers, the principal, who smile tight-lipped And won't cry for hotdogs And tell you that Georgie is doing just fine For at least ten more minutes. When you know he can't read a cereal box Buying gas in one gallon shots, And nobody gives a damn. That's poor.

Barbara Smith

Barbara Smiths poetry and short sloth- race been published widely in the region. She teaches at Alderson-Broaddus College in Philipp:. W.Va. 38 Now and Then 35 Jo Carson Traces Her Routes # 5 & 6 10101NO ANO irt-AENT

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Polio Summers All those summers you lived sitting on wire-spoked wheels to negotiate hallways and go out on the deck. Starry nights you bested the Egyptians figuring EMIrfttietter the apogees of the eight sister planets, Nara 0 fog Vri ItAPOILT/stAdtN grew to make a sense bow an inscrutable god, OGMEAlv, psychic in the whole upstairs of space, SENSe OV might roll a compensating grace to the lame, spin straw into an army's bullion to fight wars. Lefer .14ANO I remember telling you bedside how a kid crawled thmugh melons and cokes to capture a garter snake inside ajar, and you asked to see it with your wonderfulgrey eyes that charmed the serpent into coiling, cooing submission. Your fortitude to ride out winter planted in an iron lung, shockingly beyond any physician's prognosis, bought me time in June to understand about death.

Edward C. Lynskey

Edward C. Lynskey's poetry has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, Texas Review, University of Windsor Review, Negative Capability and °Mfrs. His book of poetry. The Tree Surgeon's Gift, is due out this year.

36 / Now and Then 39 Reviews variations on Carson's own. ring as true as so many of the other Stories I Ain't Told The strongest sections are those pieces. But these are rare and arc the where the transaction between narrator more noticeable only becauseof the "got- Nobody Yet and reader is most immediatethe it-rightness" of the majority of the stories. opening 14 pieces of "Neighbors and When it comes to the final endorse- by Jo Carson Kin" and the concluding II in "We Say ment of a book, there is always the Orchard Books of Ourselves." In each piece, which sel- tendency to give reasons why someone New York, 1989 dom goes over a page and is arranged else should read it. Not enough to say $12.95 (hardcover) with the care for line and stanza breaks "Read it because it's good." The tempta- that is found in good poetry, we hear tion espec;9ily with a book that records such distinct vo:zesis to say, Greta Hedberg someone talkingabout Henry'sawful corn bread, splinter furniture,ailments, "Read it for a true picture of the people here, or more generally, of those many Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet is junk, Jim Beam and Jack Danielsthe people from the area loosely k awn es not, as the title alone might suggest, a "whiskey boys." the Appalachians." collection of tales better left untold If this list makes the beck sound like But I would not bothe one to say stories that someone kept mum about for a Sears catalog of"moun.,.,upeople what this book is a true picture of, beyond good reason. No, these brief pieces-49 concerns," it is anything but. People's lives come through these stories, the the individuals it gives voice to.I don't in all and set on the page with the know what defines a region anymore than .appearance more of poems than stories focus of which is not really what people the woman Carson mentions in her only waiting think about, but how they think it. are made of words that are introduction who swore these were stories for a willing listener. As the speaker in In the middle three sections of the from East Te. not East Tennessee. the book's last story says, "When I'm book, beginning with "Observations" and The author herself doesn't confine them dead, it will not matter how hard you 'ollowed by "Relationships" and "Work- to a specific part of tne countrythe press your car to the ground."What she log," there is a subtle shift in tone. attributable perhaps to the change in sub- stories are from East Tennessee, but they has to say belongs to her flesh and blood, ject matter. Whereas the first and last don't have to be. and by implication, all these stories need sections of Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Ido think that you could hear the to be told, and listened to, so thatwhat voices i1. Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet they say and who says it can endure. Yet have a dailiness in their focus, with in many places, but these wouldn't be Though the source of the stories in larger concerns present only by implica- New York City or Southern California or Carson's bock is largely "overheard con- tion. the stories in the middle sections are most parts of Massachusetts or Florida.I versation." and though they were written about some of those concerns: we hear believe you would hear them in places first as performance pieces, the book does the voice of an abused wife, a black who knows that prejudice is still alivtt and where people tend to stay put, often far not read with the flatuess that oral narra- their whole lives: where there has been tive so often has when nailed to the unwell, a man fired from his job of over poverty and hard times and the time to printed page. What saves Stories from 20 years. a worker at a nuclear or,:ration. Because the focus in these pieces is focus on other people, not just on things this fate is the fact that Carson is not or an overgrown sense of self. Such trying to recount what she has heard much more clearly directed to making a statement which the speaker is well aware circumstances give a certain flavor to verbatim but has instead caught the one's outlook, and it is that outlook, so substance. the heart of each conversation, he is making and which the author must finely articulated in Stories, that makes it and given it back in what she terms in a sense endorse to pass on. these less direct than those simply not simply a regional piece of writingbut "chosen words." If these words aren't stories one that gives readers the feel for a exactly as she heard them. the sense of "overheard" in the initial and conducting sections. In "Neighbor and Kin" and people which must sorely precede ark them is. and the character whose story it knowledge of the place. is is as surely articulated as the subject of "We Say of Ourselves," the speaker is often ignorant of how much he is reveal- a deft artist, who in a coupleof pencil strokes can catch the line of a chin or the ing about human naturehis own or others. Many of the voices in the middle squint of the eyes that conclusively makes Greta Hedberg has degrees in Engli.:h from section are aware; the stories are told by the drawing that of a particular person. the University of Michigan and East Thnnes- people who know what they know. Divided into five sections, Stories / see State University. Formed).der editor of Ain't Told Nobody Yet is written almost Usually this self-awareness doesn't the National Storytelling Journal in exclusively in the first persona series ofmatter; there is no sense of self-con- Jonesharough.Tenn.. she has recently moved . voices summing an incident or a life. sciousness. In a few cases it does make with her daughter to Charlollesti:k..Vo. for the strained story, as in "You can And the voices sound different: these aren't 49 stories that are theme and always tell a tourist town," that doesn't

Now and Then / 37 Reviews

A Southern backward glance" at what has gone Jar," so appropriately placed alongside before. The heavy dose of contemporary those already mentioned. But in the Appalachian Reader authors speaks for the literary renaissance midst of this harmonious chorus, a few flourishing in the Highlands over the past voices are strangely silent: Where is Edited by Nellie McNeil andthree decades and making an anthology Harriette Arnow, who speaks so passion- Joyce Squibb like this possible. ately for the Appalachian emigrant, and Appalachian Consortium Press Because the book's eight chapters whose work is touted in the headnote of University Hall treat specific topics, I have dubbed its that chapter? Where is Jack Higgs, who organization thematic. However, the first mentored this volume and who is himself Appalachian State University two chapters actually present literary an eloquent spokesman for Appalachian Boone, N.C. 28608, 1988 movements: "Oral Tradition" and "Local writing? Where is Loyal Jones, whose $14.95 (paperback) Color and Realistic Tradition." Chapter essays, poetry, stories, jokes and ballads, three shifts to a topical emphasis: "Con- permeate the region? Where is Denise .Grace Toney Edwaals temporary Authors Search for a Usable Giardina, whose novel Storming Heaven Past"; and the next five chapters follow signals a powerful new voice in Appala- A Southern Appalachian Reader will suit. The middle chapters take on a hint chian literature? surely be greeted with applause from of political crusade as they describe Finally, the teaching apparatus teachers looking for a text for their "How America Came to the Mountains," requires comment. The editors have Appalachian Studies classes. Organized "Moving Mountains: The Struggle of the written brief introductions to each by a thematic schema, the 5ook fits most Coal Industry," and "The Change Hits chapter, headnotes about each author or readily into the English classroom, Home." The final two chapters demon- piece, discussion questions about each though it can easily move into history, strate the push and pull of "Appalachian piece, composition topics and activities at sociology; anthropology, and even Emigration" and "The Sense of Place in the end of each chapter. The inclusion of psychology. Appalachian Writing." All of the all these items is desirable for a teaching The editors vowed to fill a void by chapters offer lively, sometimes wrench- text. From a teacher's perspective, producing a textbook on the Appalachian ing treatments of compelling subjects, de- however, I would prefer more detail in literary heritage especially for high spite the mixture of literary movements the introductions. When a writer appears school students. College students, and thematic topics. in different sections of the book, I suggest educators and the general public can also Within.each chapter the editors cross referencing to the other sections, enjoy_and profit from the Reader. intermingle literary genres to illustrate the rather than repetition of the same mate- In format, the textbook is roughly topic under review. For example, chapter rial.I find the follow-up questions to patterned after its college-level three contains three short stories, seven each selection thought-provoking but predecessor, Voices from the Hills. poems, a novel excerpt and a magazine certainly not exhaustive. From an Indeed, Professor Robert J. Higgs, co- article. Other genres in other chapters English teacher's view, the composition editor of Voices, is credited as the include ballad, folksonb, folktale, essay topics and activities at the end of each inspiration for the present volume. and drama excerpt. No attempt is made chapter are excellent, and they appear to Editors McNeil and Squibb write, "When to define or characterize the literary be easily adaptable to other disciplinary we complained about the lack of a genres by form; rather each is given as a needs as well.I especially applaud the suitable text [to teach their own classes in thematic revelation about the topic. In assignment of a family scrapbook, begun Appalachian literature], Dr. Higgs re- the English classroom such an omission in the first activity section of chapter one sponded, 'Write one.' His continued might be perceived as a shortcoming; and continued throughout the book to encouragement carried us to publication." however, in cross-disciplinary Appala- culminate with the student's own story at Surely the editors' perception of their chian Studies classes attention to literary the end of chapter eight. Surely the own high school English classes as the form would be distracting. student writer will close her own book major audience for the text influenced The editors have taken care to sound feeling proud of her accomplishment, just their approach and their choice of many dominant Appalachian voices, as I close A Southern Appalachian selections. With an approximately equal among them Cratis Williams, Jim Wayne Reader feeling proud of my region. number of pages given to each of two Miller, Fred Chappell, Wilma Dykeman, parts, they divide the book into "The James Still, Jesse Stuart and Lee Smith. I lil Past" and "The Present," thereby suggest- am pleased to see Ron Short here, and Grace Toney Edwards charm the Appalachian ing a chronological movement. Such a George Ella Lyon, Jo Carson, Ed Cabbell, undies Program and teaches in the English movement does occur, but at iemt 75 Gurney Norman, Marilou Awiakta and Department at Radford University in Radford, Va. lier work often takes her into the public percent of the writing comes from con- Rita Quillen. New author Judy Odom schools where she offer courses in regional temporary authors, who at ;im,n "cast a delights me with her story "The Killing studies for teachers.

38 / Now and Then 41 Reviews something personally meaningful. He have managed to attract the attention of Foxfire could not predict that the compilation of commercial publishing houses. But his student collecting projects would Puckett freely acknowledges that Wiggin- Reconsidered: result in one of the great commercial ton's accomplishments are of genuine publishing successes in recent history. value and significance. We also must rec- A Twenty-Year The royalties gamered from the sale of ognize that the Fore philosophy and Experiment in 5.7 million Foxfire books have provided method of education is still evolving. the means to pursue a variety of progres- The notion of providing students with Progressive Education sive social and educational experiments. experiences that draw upon local history by John L. Puckett Why were the Foxfire books so and culture to enhance self-esteem and popular? What needs were they filling for basic educational competencies is still University of Illinois Press their readers? During the same period winning advocates and supporters. Urbana and Chicago, 1989 that spawned The Whole Earth Catalog, Though the project was harshly $29.95 (hardcover) Mother Earth News and Alex Haley's criticized by some professional folklorists Roots, the Foxfire books helped to satiateat its inception, those of us who have Richard Blaustein the yearning of the rootless for roots, of been pushing for the integration of the transient for traditions. Perhaps this folklore into elementary and secondary John L. Pucketes probing and was nothing more than a latter-day school curricula have been encouraged by occasionally unflattering portrait of the expression of pastoral romanticism. If so,Wigginton's efforts. Various states have Foxfire project deserves the careful maybe we need to cultivate greater under- implemented folklore and folk arts in the scrutiny of anyone concerned with standing and appreciation of the role of schools programs. Mention should also Appalachian Studies, creative approaches romanticism in modem social and cul- be made of the emergence in the past two to pedagogy or modern cultural history. tural life, particularly as manifested in the years of the Appalachian Youth Confer- Major themes of the Appalachian Studies impulse to preserve and revive folk ence held in conjunction with the Appala- movement are subjected to critical re- traditions in response to the expansion of chian Studies Conference. This program examination. These include the reversal applied science, industry, urbanization brings together teachers and students of stigmatizing imagery of Southern and bureaucracy. from the region who study and interpret mountain people, attachment to family, Foffire, however, must be consid- traditional culture and contemporary friends and homeplace, celebration of ered more than a manifestation of modern creative writing with an Appalachian self-sufficiency and rediscovery of pastoral romanticism. It is also an focus. personal authenticity through return to a attempt to change the perceptions of Puckett may be correct in stating that supposedly wholesome and natural students and their communities in Fatfire' s reputation exceeds its actual lifestyle. positive ways. Ideally this empowers educational impact, but the final chapter Ove. c year period, Puckett them to gain some degree of control over of this exciting history remains to be conducted iensive interviews with the their oral lives and destinies (though not written. Read in conjunction with creator of Foxfire, Eliot Wigginton, with necessarily by rejecting modernity and re- Wigginton's Sometimes A Shining Wigginton's students, colleagues and turning to preindustrial subsistence). Moment, Fatfire Reconsidered should administrators, and with residents of This, too, was part of the human-scale, provide a stimulating basis for dFscussion Rabun County in North Georgia. He also decentralized alternative community in courses sealing with the anthropology critiqued the limited scholarly literature concept that blossomed in the late 60s of education, applied folklore or Appala- dealing with Fore and the many and early 70s. By the mid-80s, however, chian Studies. Enthusiastically recom- regional cultural journalism projects it it had become evident that the idealistic mended. has inspired. He explored the philosophi-efforts of Foxfire to build local busi- cal assumptions of Wigginton's peda- nesses run by former students had negli- II gogy, which was stn, ,,iy grounded in thegible impact on the course of economic Folklorist Richard Blaustein directs the Cen- thought of John Dewey and of Appala- growth in the Rabur, County area, which ter for Appalachian Studies and Services at still continued to witness an influx of chian Studies. East Tennessee State University. He reviewed As Wigginton explains in his auto- summer people and real estate develop- Eliot Wigginua s autobiography..ometimes biographical work Sometimes A Shining ers. a Shining Moment.fi». our "Childhood in Ap- Moment, his original intent in developing Not all of Wigginton's educational palachia"issue. a magazine documenting local traditions experiments have been successful either. was to give the bored and alienated Only a few of the cultural journalism students in his high school English course projects inspired by Foxfire have sur- an opportunity to do something real, vivedpore than 10 years. Even fewer

42 Now and Then / 39 Reviews

credits and looked again on the cover. Folks II There she was, behind the screen door. With Fiddle and A Collection of People and I thought. "Of course that's where she would be.- Well-Rosined Bow: Stories from Southern I smiled as I read. or felt my throat Old-Time Fiddling West Virginia and tighten. And I felt some pride. Some- times I feel foolish, being so proud of in Alabama Southwest Virginia being "Appalachian.-Folks 11reminds me that it's OK to be as proud as I am. by Joyce H. Cauthen by Garret Mathews All our stories, our joys and our sorrows University of Alabama Press 360 Shamrock Court, Evansville. share a commonality: our work. our P.O. Box 870380 Ind. 47715, 1989 families, our extended families and friendships in community and church. Tuscaloosa, Ala. 35487 S6.00 (paperback) The subjects of the stories include a S28.95 (hardcover) (plus S1.00 postage) coach who is also a bus driver: a peace- and loving coal trucker who trades a union Jacqueline Cook job for a non-union one: a husband who Possum up a dies in the mines and a wife who gives birth: trading liquor and guns for the Gum Stump: Garret MathewsFolks 11deserves a Lord: a 12 -year -old preacher and a blind better dress, a more attractive cover and farmer: a special education student who Home, Field and format. It should be larger. looser. more plays varsity basketball: rural Mennonite generous. like the generous author and his Commercial Recordings families, mail-order courtship: a baby wife Mary Anne Stevens who shared the who lives and one who dies: a man who of Alabama Fiddlers, life and work of the people they have breaks horses for a living: religious interviewed for theBThefieltrfelegraph. Past and Present scenes painted on the wails of a boiler- and then compiled into this book. Were I room: a lawyer who could make a living (Alabama Traditions 103) picking through books to read. I might in home restoration. And there are people Brierfield Ironworks well pass it by. givine it a cursory glance. who go away and try other places and And had I done that I would have missed Park Foundation other ways of living and come back a most pleasurable experience of Appala- Route 1, Box 147 again: people who never leave: people chian-related stories and photographs. Brierfield, Ala. 35035 who come from other places and stay: The many brief stories show the Mathews' stories show some of us why S9.50 (includes weal['- of variety in the people of West we are still here. and allow others to postage & handling) Virginia and Southwest Virginia. Those understand that better. of us who already know that variety can Folks 11reminds us that we are a find the added pleasure of having what Tim Stafford people who are proud of who we are, we know shown to us again. Those who although mlstly we don't even think think a "hillbilly" is a hillbilly is a Alabama fiddling has long been about that. we just go on living. hillbilly may enjoy finding out differ- appreciated by traditional instrumental ently. I have a resistance to "folks" from music scholars but not by less specwlized "outside" who say "folks.- but like the Mathews combines terse newspaper listeners. Until Joyce Cauthen came first volume.Folks, Folks 11is another writing style with dialogue in a way that along, there was no complete examination perfect title. Reading the introduction is like sitting right beside him and the of this tradition. Taken together. her about other people Mathews has written people he is talking with. For those of us excellent book and project album. of and reading the updating of the first who remember older times and knew Possum up a Gum Stump.not only fill the Folks.I anticipateFolks and even people like this, there is pleasure in being gap of scholarship on Alabama fiddling. Folks IV.Perhaps Mary Anne Stevens reminded of where we have come from will co-author the next one. but they also erect a new benchmark for and where we are. For those who do not fiddling scholarship in general. know such people and places. there will Thu book and the album do indeed be a pleasure in discovery. at Jacqueline Cook it aches publw oahnonstra- complement one another, and I strongly The photographs bring the people of linn with a focus on cat:en parnetpa- suggest that both be purchased to get a the stories very close. They are psycho- lion ,n policy =Ow at West I. arguna complete picture of Alabama fiddling. It logical portraits. showing entire lives. I Universkl in Morganuiwn. She grew rip to certainly helps tohearsonic of major missed seeing one of the subjects. Mrs. the plates that Garret Mathews is It ruing players in a treatise about-music. such as Sam White. for example, until I read the about in Folks 11. the "brag" fiddlers like Dix !kills. Joe 4/4 40 / Now and Then Reviews

Lee, Tom Freeman. and Y.Z. Hamilton and instruments to amuse themselves and Perhaps most representative of this who Cauthen describes in a chapter of her their neighbors. that really keep the music tradition was Joe Lee, who was a major book and who appear on side one of alive. influence on fiddlers as famous as Possum. The marvelous booklet which Cauthen also examines the institu- Clayton McMichen and Lowe Stokes. accompanies the album shouldn't be tions that helped keep old-time fiddling Lee displays a powerful. improvisatory considered a substitute for With Fiddle alive in Alabama. From the earliest style on the home disc recording of and {fell- Rosined Bow. although it years. the fiddler was called to practice "Georgia Wagoner" and also clearly attempts to encapsulate much of the same his art for informal community functions. demonstrates that his variation was the material. formal celebrations and dances. But even source for the Skillet Lickers' version of Cauthen opens the book by looking after other entertainment displaced the this tune. at the place of the fiddle in Alabama fiddler in these and other arenas. fiddler's Field recordings of contemporary history,. beginning with the settlement of conventions remained popular in the Alabama old-time fiddlers playing less me Alabama ieuitory in the early 19th state. The revival of the convention familiar tunes take up side two. Many of century and progressing through the tradition in the late 1960s brought these players are older musicians who enormous influence of the black fiddler. changes. such as the broadening and for- remember the legendary tiddlers like Black fiddlers were directly influential in malization of compern;911 and the Charlie Stripling. Y.Z. Hamilton and E.D. some cases simh as that of Dix Hollis. the consequent adoption of impressive "con- "Monkey" Brown, butmost, like Leonard first Alabama fiddler to make commercial test" style fiddling. But Cauthen con- Keith. Howard Hamil and Ralph Whited, recordings. He was taught by one of his cludes that fiddlers' conventions "still are representative of the informal fathers former slaves. Through minstrel play a crucial role in the perpetuation of tradition which is really the spirit of old- shows. the influence of black fiddling old-time music." time fiddling in this southern state. extended into parts of Alabama where With Fid,'", and Well-Rosined Bow Alabama is too often left out of slavery .as not entrenched and into the concludes v-ith a look at the fiddler's Appalachian studies. There is a great ref: Moires of all white fiddlers. Cauthen lucidity bedeviled image. Cauthen deal of topographic and ethnic diversity considers minstrels and soldiers "Larly asserts that this unfortunate stereotype of in the state. as Cauthen points out. Like broadcasters" of the Alabama fiddling the tiddler as a. drunken reveler in league Tennessee. Sioinia. Kentucky. Georgia. tradition. with Hell still exists in some places. as do and a half dozen other states that encom- The "electronic broadcasters" of this disparagiAg v ie..s of dancing. largely pass both mountainous and level areas. tradition, those who utilized the new because of the Bible Belt's religious and Alabama sometimes has trouble resolving technology of the phonograph and later social constraints. its identity crisis. in any event, there is the radio, had perhaps just as much Cauthen's extensive use of newspa- surely a strong Appalachian influence in influence. From Lie 1930s onward. these pers might frighten historians w ho check the northern part of the state. and many of developments helped popularize old-time out footnotes before texts. but daily and the same forces which operate in the heart fiddling through its boom years. including weekly papers such as the Chulc Cantu.% of Appalachia are actively shaping the Great Depression and helped present Denim t at and the Sand Mountain several communities in the "Deep South." it through its hard times. including the Bonnet probably do provide the most One of these factors is the continu- 1950s and the onslaught of Ely is and reliable insights into the community ation. revival and reinvention of traditions Rock 'n' Roll. musical traditions of rural areas. espe- such as old-time fiddling. Until a coin- Luckily. quit Piddle' and Well - cially for eras w hich lay, be and the reach prehensiv e overview of old-time fiddling Rosined Bow is tot just a chronological of liv in memory. As it is. in chapters in the United States comes along. Joyce history of Alabama fiddling. Cauthen which document more contemporary feel Cauthen's v.ork in Alabama will reinain able to contrast the informal traditions of dling, traditions. Cauthen relies laeaa%iiy on the standard by w hich all other studies on past "modest masters." including building the nearly 60 interviews she conducted thisobject are judged. Highly recom- instruments and repertoires. with those of between 1982 and 1986. mended. the 'brag" tiddlers who became "sources The past and present traditions of of community pride' in the 1920s and Alabama fiddling are also eloquently II 1930s. The eflixt is a marvelous unlayer- captured by the documentary album Pus- ing of the structure of one kind of popular 31111 np a Gum Stump. Side one of the Thu Staprd is a reCean h a scOcialefig' he Center for Appalachian Sindiei and Serrices music and its spheres of musicianship. album features home and commercial and a ;umber of the bluegrass hand. Dusty You get a sense throughout this book that recordings of the "brag" fiddlers of an the .'or realizes that although commer- earlier generation. The excellent per- cial alA1 popular artists are very impor- formances here remind us again that Ala- tant. it is the huge "third estate" of bama produced some of the best unaer- backporch musicians. who buy records aided old-time fiddlers in the nation.

Now and Then / 41 Reviews

All Night Dog However, the fact that these nostalgic likelihood, readers will find that each tributes are largely autobiographical does story evokes personal memories of by Garry Barker not limit their appeal. All of us who werebeloved pets. self-sacrificing.relatives and Kentucke Imprints born in Appalachia and acknowledge a childhood sweethearts. Berea, Ky., 1988 debt to the people. places and things that Barker is especially effective in sustained and encouragrd'us. will find a $7.95 (paperback) capturing the taste. smell and feel of common bond with Barker's heritage. places that shape our lives the setting Gary Carden Indeed. there is much here that transcends fo, our rites of passage the places regionalism. Although the setting may bewhere we learn our greatest (and often The majority of the selections in this. a rural mountain farm. a dingy Laundro- painful) truths. For example. "Five Garry Barker's third book, have an mat or a Greyhound bus running from Corners" and "WFO" (the two most unabashed subjectivity. In fact. many of Asheville. N.C.. to Lexington. Ky.. unsentimental pieces in the collection) the short stories contain narrative Barker's characters represent universal have a gritty "hands on" experience. The portraits of uncles, aunts, mules and dogs.verities: humanity's search for purpose reader feels that Barker has felt the chill The experience is not unlike looking at and meaning, and the need to give and that comes front riding a motorcycle in a the family photograph album. Here is a receive love. cold rain and that he is no stranger to the faded snapshot of "Duck," the mixed- In this reviewer's opinion. the author gathering places of the rootless and breed dog who lived a life of epic adven- is sometimes guilty of excessive senti- disillusioned: back-roads beer jointi. ture until he was shot by a heedless child ment. His need to pay homage to the past service stations and "convenience_stores." with a new .22. Here is Sam Wilson with and to the people he reveres sometimes We are fortunate in that he has been able Bess. the dependable but eccentric mule. produces a selective nostalgia. a ten- to draw on these experiences in creating Together. they plowed a Mauck Ridge dency to show loved ones at their best. these stories. farm for over 20 years. Oh, and look at The aunts seem too gentle, the uncles too that! Vernon and the Blue Goose! That stoic and the parents too supportive. Like II is what he called that car he bought just those tinted pictures in old albums, the Storyteller and writer Gary Carden teaches at before he went off to college. And here isvivid colors sometimes mask blemishes: Brevard College in Breard. N.C. His essay Aunt Elsie, the gentle. soft-spoken aunt, reality vanishes beneath a veneer of emo- "Inside. Looking Our" appeared in the tion. However. in evaluating the total and "Bill Tom." that pony she loved to "InsiderslOutsiders" issue of Now and Then. ride. collection, this is a minor flaw. In all SOME WRITING with a sense of place Appalachian publishing seems to be alive and well considering thenumber of interesting items that have come into our office lately. Hereare some good ones: SENSE OF PLACE IN APPALACHIA is the 1988 publica- bloodied in the fight for city souls due to waves of new tion of papers presented at a symposium held at Morehead Catholic, Jewish and Greek Orthodox immigrants, most of State University in 1987, edited by S. Mont Whitson, Profes- whom lid not speak their language, found in Appalachiaan sor of Sociology at Morehead. A distinguished group has "unchurched" (in the ways of their sect) population with contributed to this 329-page volume, including Ron Eller, whom their sectarian missionaries were more comfortable. director of the Appalachian Center at the University of Local color writers found that editors considered Appalachia Kentucky; Loyal Jones, Director of the Appalachian Center at an 'exotic' region and churned out streams ofsupetficial Beira College; John Stephenson, President of Berea College; travel sketches gussied up in double distilled Elizabe- Jim Wayne Miller, Professor of Modern Languages at Western thanisms. The two groups gave Appalachia a high profile Kentucky University and many others. The collection includes and by transmuting the atypical into the norm, stereotyped sections on history, literature, religion, an and music, sociol- the region. This was not Rip Van Winkledom, but Brigadoon. ogy and psychology, geography, community and media. Auy From "Sense of Place Among Black Appalachians" by William scholar interested in studying the region should have this book. Turner, Winston -Salem (N.C.) State University: $12.00 (paperback) from University Bookstore, Morehead The vast majority of Harlan County, Ky., Blacks who came to State University, Morehead, KY 40351. the region in the last decade of the 19th century, including From the article "Inside Appalachia.. Familiar Land and those Blacks born in the region between 1900-1930, remem- Ordinary People" by Stuart S. Sprague, Morehead State ber with clarity and fondness the halcyon days of the coal University: boom up to the fourth 2nd fifth decades of this century. One In the wake of the War Between the States, two groups of interviewing them cannot miss their sentimental attachment to flatlanders took an interest in Appalachia. Protestants, Appalachia as a 'place'their only place. For blacks of my

42 / and Reviews

.:: .. generation those born after was and THE WISDOM OF FOLI C METAPHOR, THE BRIER remains a temporary way station to some &her finure-.a CONDUCTS A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT, is a long poem future `out there' in real (Black) Americalthe World, where, by En Wayne Miller, 1988. $3.00 to Seven Buffaloes Press, at least, the paradox is the twoness (being Black...being P.O. Box 249, Big Timber, MT 59011. It rhymes! American), rather than the threeness of being Black, and The crux of his everiment was this: American and Appalachian! he proposed to endeavor to impart to a stump. some fence posts, and a barn the same material his sophomores were to learn, PINE MOUNTAIN SAND AND GRAVEL is a periodical of then, at the end of the instructional term, contemporary Appalachian writing edited by Gurney Norman. to test both groups, make his inferences, Bob Henry Baber and Richard Hague. This is another edition publish, and await the consequences (1988though it actually appeared in 1989) of writing and thinking that comes about as close to new wave as Appalachia THE SOW'S EAR is a new poetry quarterly edited by Errol gets. This issue contains a stimulating conversation between Hess, Larry Richman and Graphics editor Maly Calhoun. "We Gurney Norman and Lance Olsen, "Frankenstein in Palestine, are not going to be quilt-and-corn-shucks regional, but rather or. Postmodernism in Appalachia." You don't want to miss it. regional in that broader sense which allows for quilts and There are also poems by Rita Quillen, Mike Henson, Jim futons, corn shucks and verbal cornucopias," says Richman in Wayne Miller, Bob Snyder, Jim Webb, Baber, Hague and an editor's note. Contributors include Suzanne Clark, Julia others. $7.00 to HC 84 Box 436, Whitesburg, KY 41858. Nunnally Duncan, J.B. Goodenough, Nell McGrndy, Jim Lance Olsen, from his conversation with Gurney Norman in Wayne Miller, Judy K. Miller, Felicia Mitchell, Rita Quillen, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel: Susan Roper and others. $3.00 per issue, $8.00 per year. 245 Postmodernism aims to subvert any overarching story that McDowell Street, Bristol. TN 37620. helps shape and define a given culture's life, whether that From Fries and a Coke by Jack Coulehan: story happens to concern itself with reason, Christianity, the You're just a kid from the Hill romantic ideal, or whatever. Postmodernism is naturally with sickle cells antagonistic to the idea of a center. a staNlizing locus, in any popping and shooting. Sliooting thought or belief. As a result, as soon as we apply postmod- you dead. And so ern ideas to Appalachian literature we will have begun to you ask for fries and a coke question in a wholly new way some of the fundamental as- and you punch the pillow. sumptions that such a culture and such a literature make about themselves. about experience. language, and art. Jr VENUE is "A New Literary Endeavor," publishing "Contem- seems to me that ultimately such a maneuver is going to be porary American Literature" from the Appalachian Literary very healthy indeed, f by healthy we mean revitalizing, reen- League in Charleston, W.Va., 1988. This is the first of what ergizing, reinvigorating... Associate Editor Michael Joseph Pauley says "is intended to be periodical by nature." It's an earnest effort focusing on the Ap- THE BLUE VALLEY is a collection of stones by poet Robert palachian region. The other associate editors for this issue are Morgan. 1989. These are 14 finely-written tales of the North Joseph Barrett and Joanie Barrett. The editorial board, whose Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains from Civil War days to the members have also contributed poetry, are Colleen Anderson, present.Robert Morgan grew up on a small farm in the NorthBob Henry Baber, Joseph and Joanie Barrett, Joe Ferrell, Ter- Carolina mountains and is now a professor of English at Cornellrance Hill. Kirk Judd, Pat Love, Emil Kathryn Pauley, Michael -University. $15.95 (hardcover) from Peachtree Publishers, Ltd.,Joseph Pauley and Bob Snyder. And there are poems by Gary 494 Armour Circle, N.E., Atlanta, GA 30324. Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. For copies, wife-to 4651 Victoria From the story "Blinding Daylight": Road, Big Tyler Mountain, Charleston, WV 25313. He was trying to find his mothers pistol. It was a little 22 From Hecaterion to a Hygienist by Bob Snyder. caliber revolver which she had kept under some clothes in Sometimes, I dream of driving to Marietta, the chest of drawers. Shehad always urged him to carry it straight to the office where you worked, when he went into the woods. 'You might see a snake,' she and you buff each tooth plumb sparkling, would say,'There's been renders all over the mountain.' buzz my gums goodnaturedly once or twice, Or, 'There's been reports of wild dogs out, you better carry give my big novocaine nose a pert shove: this.' And later. when he returned home from his first your hands taste cinnamon and alcohol, tea thing job: There's hippies in the mountains now, crazy medical bitters and country clay, with drugs and liable to do anything. I'd not go back there all the mystical salts and crystals, naked of any wedding ring unless I was armed.' and without whatever would be the taste of deaih. Pat Arnow

46 Now and Then / 43 Small Southern Town

Ed Snodderly t't Hope this song expresses a sense of place for you. Slow days, calm nights, empty main streets. the sound of a voice in a far off field. all seem to bring together thoughts for a song like this. This song gets requested a lot when the Brother Boys play.

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Hear the crickets singing Chorus: Smell the alfalfa hay Above the dew sparkling grass That was cut yesterday As the dim lights of town And the July nights are ending Tomorrow will be the right time for baling Light up the sky. And the willow stands bending And as the small town sleeps And a slow train rumbles And all is so calm through the night Hope the bright stars keep As it creeps into town In this small Southern town. For the hot sun will surely be shining. Through distant fields it's traveled.

The Brother Boys. Ed Snodderly and Eugene Wolf, have recently played in Nashville at the Station Inn and at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop Midnight Jamboree (which is broadcast live on WSM radio). They have also played regularly at the Down Home in Johnson City.Small Southern Town appears on The Brother Boys Album (New Hillbilly Records. Box 5326 EKS, Johnson City, Tenn. 37603). Ed Snodderly. 1989. Drivin Round Music. BMI.

If you are a songwriter we'd very much like to review your songs for future publication. Upcoming themes include Art: Folk and Fine (fry which the subject matter is open), Rural Appalachia and Urban Appalachia. Please provide a copy of the lyric sheet and the song recorded on a cassette. Send them to Ed Snodderly, Music Editor atNow and Then,Box '9180A. Johnson City, Tenn. 37614-0002. If you provide a self- addressed stamped envelope your work will be returned. While we copyrigot each issue of the magazine, all rights remain with the songwriter.

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Alice Anthony Direction

Not too interested in Frost's diverging roads nor in where I'm going, I'm looking back on the road I've been walking.

In an old picture album, I passed the log house my great-grandfather built whe,1 he first crossed over into Virginia.

Listening t., my father talk about Preacher Pendergrass. I stopped by the church of Baptist-Presbyterian feuding.

On a Sunday afternoon drive with a friend I took the school bus route, winding down Gysper Creek to the Holston River.

I am doubling back to look at where I am.

Gretchen McCroskey

Gretchen MX, (AL. poems hat e tipped, cat an Mountain Ways, The New River F-ee Press, {Wind, trtends, Appalachian Heritage and Now and Then. 4 0

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Art: Folk &Fin Fall, 1989, Rural Appalachia

Spring, 1990- Urban Appalachia Stunmer:'1990