DOCUMENT RESUME

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AUTHOR Arnow, Pat, Ed. TITLE Working in Appalachia. INSTITUTION East Tennessee State Univ., Johnson City. Center for Appalachian Studies and Services. PUB DATE 88 NOTE 41p. AVAILABLE FROMNow and Then, CASS, Box 19180A, East Tennessee State University, Johnson. City, TN 37614-0002 ($2.50). PUB TYPE Collected Works - Serials (022) -- Creative Works (Literature,Drama,Fine Arts) (030) JOURNAL CIT Now and Then; v5 nl Spr 1988

EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Coal; Employment; Essays; Geographic Regions; Interviews; *Mining; Occupations; Personal Narratives; Poetry; *Work Experience IDENTIFIERS *Appalachia; Appalachian People

ABSTRACT This journal issue focuses on a variety of Appalachian occupations, particularly but not exclusively, coal mining. The lead article is an interview with John Sayles about his movie, "Matewan." Sayles sees the Matewan massacre as a great movie theme, "like a classic American Western...but with a difference--the violence was collective, and it was political." The afterword to Matewan, the Battle of ,.air Mountain, is the subject of Denise Giardina's novel, "Storming Heaven." In an interview Giardina says, "I see coal as a curse." She envisions Appalachia without coal as Vermont or New Hampshire, clean and prosperous. The magazine also includes profiles of coal miners, a farmer, a rug hooker, and a shoeshine man; poetry about mining and Appalachia; and photos of past and contemporary Appalachian workers. An interview with a traditional farmer explores the place of the worker who resisted modernization because "hillside farming and all didn't suit a tractor." Films about novelist Harriet Simpson Arnow and the Banner Mine disaster, books about making "Ma,.ewan" and southern cotton mills, and television shows about the Mud Creek Clinic and the Frontier Nursing Service are reviewed. (DHP)

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BES1 COPY HVAILHIA.1 "Now, I didn't make no baskets back when I was able to work. Maybe one now and then to use. Just now and then. I didn't have time to look atabasket. Needed one, made it. Or somebody, one of the neighbors wanted one, I'd maybe make one."

Jesse Joshes, SO, has spent most of his life working his Scott County, Va., farm. During the last 15 years, he's cut back on his farming and begun devoting more time to the only slightly less physically denstiding process of producing fine Appalachian white oak baskets. Jones fells the white oaks he needs, prepares the splits and does all the final weaving. His work has been featured in John Rice Irwin'sBaskets and Basket Makers in Southern Appalachia. Now and Then Contents. Editorial Board COLUMNS 2-3Closed Eyes 17 Ron Johnson With this issue we welcome five new members to our editorial board. They joinRobert J. FEATURES' Reerement Living 17 (Jack) Higgs. Marat MooreandRita Quillen,our charter members. The editorial Where .the Rubber Meets Sheryl Nelms board provides us with a generous supply of the Road Our Minister's Other good ideas, writing and encouragement. Our John Sayler 5 new advisors are: Heaven ...... 23 - Bert Allen,associate professor of Itifarat Moore Randy Oakes psychology at Milligan College, Milligan, Tenn., was the guest editor of our "Appalachian Fighting 'Sack Diamond Jenny *5. . . .29 Veterans" issue. A Vietnam veteran himself, he Denise Giardina Jone HickS has worked with other Vietnam veterans and Tim Boudreau with exprisoners of war. This year he is working at the Veterans Administration Medical Center The Runner 36 at Mountain Home, Tenn., in a project for Lives in Coal 11 Georgeann Eskieuich Rehberg homeless veterans. 37 Ed Cabbelldirects the John Henry Memorial Mary Alice Basconi Onions 3( Foundation in Princeton, W. Va. Through the Kelly Cogswell foundation, he publishes Block Diamonds Another Side ..... 14 Magazine and puts on the John Henry Folk Carol Moore and JenapRockett Festival (this year to be held in Pipestem, W. Va. REVIEWS September 2.4). He teaches Appalachian Studies Photos by Kenneth Murray at Concord College and is working toward his Harriette.Simpson Arnow doctoral degree in history at West Virginia Dr. Enuf is Still here . 17 1908=1986 .24 University. He was the guest editor for our John Hart "Black Appalachians" issue. film-by-Herb E. Sm!th Pauline Cheek'sAppalachian Scrapbook is "I never did change Robert J. Higgs published by Appalachian Consortium Press. She has studied the history of the rug hooking things here" 20Black Coal Miners industry that sustained the economy in the Jane Woodside hi America- 1930s near her home of Mars Hiil, North bY Ronald L. Lewis 26 Carolina. (and has written a story about it that Majestic ...... _22- appears on page 35). She was the guest editor Ed Sniidderly G.E,NeaSrnan and for the "Appalachian Childhood" issue Lany.Makes - Mary Chiltoskeywas the editor of our Letter from a Writer 24 "Cherokee" edition. She has been a teacher and Harriette Arnow CnOvicts,,Coali. and librarian in Cherokee, N.C., for more than 40 Banner Mine Tragedy years. Over the years she has collected folklore, which she has published in books including Hooking Past to Future. . .33 by Robert David Ward and Cherokee Cook lore and Cherokee Plants and Pauline Cheek William Warren Rogers.27 Their Uses. Jim Odom- Fred Waageteaches English at East Appalachian WorkOut. . . .34 Tennessee State University. He is the author of Tony Feathers Thinking in' Pictures two chapbooks: Minestrone and End of the World: California Stories. He has served on the by John Styles 28 publishing staff of the Frimds of the Earth. POETRY Richard-Blaustein published and edited the literary magazine Second Growth and is founding editor of Now Ain't No Pie Jobs 4Storming Heaven and Then. Jenny Galloway Collins by Denise Giardina 29 Discussion at Age Seven. . .4 Laurie Lindberg =1 =1 =1 Georgeann Eskieuich Rettberg Like a Family The Strikers 12 by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall . Staff Joseph Barrett and others . . 30 Director - Richard Blaustein Marie Tedesco Associate Director - William Cook the answer is blowin' Editor - Pat Arnow in the wind 12Mud Creek Clink 31 Poetry Editor - Jo Carson Bob Henry Bober video by Anne. Johnson Research Associate - Jane Woodside Mary Swaykus Support Staff - Carolyn Cerrito, Ruth Working Mother. 13 Frontier Nursing . . . .31 Hausman, Margaret Liu, Terena Rita Quillen Slagle, Kathy M. Smith, Cathy video by Anne Johnson Whaley and assistance from Summer of 1908 13 Jo Ann Crawford Allison Puranik Glenn McKee Kingsport, Tennessee ©Copyright by the Center for Appalachian Fixing Supper 13 by Margaret Ripley Wolfe 32 Studies and Services. 1988. Suzanne Clark Edward L. Ayers SBR No 130-024-87 Now and Then/1 edialikg, involvement. in et consulting projects From the and service to public schools. All of this has Editor been like casting When John Sayles' coal. mining bread upon the movie,Matewan,opened in New York waters; the Center and other large cities in the fall of has grown and 1987, I heard wonderful things about f )unshedbecause it. This independently produced movie of the support it brought to life a dramatic moment of has given to its West Virginia coal mining history and faculty members was a crusading union film. and fellows. I was thinking about calling Marat Today, however, Brenda Wilson, coning department, LeowFerenbach, Moore, an ex-coal miner who is now a Johnsoi /City, Tenn., 1973. despite its record reporter for the United Mine Workers of accomplishment, of America'sJournal,hoping she might the Center for Appalachian Studies be able to track t?own the filmmaker From the and Services is at a critical point of for an interview. Before I could get development. Excellence costs money, around to it, she called me. She said Director and the requests for support we are that she had already seenMatewan receiving will soon outstrip our This latest issue ofNow and Thenis three times, it was a great film, and resources unless we can build up a she had interviewed John Sayles and going to press just as we are in the substantial endowment for the CASS midst of putting together our budget wondered if I might like to have that Fellowship Program. Preparing a for Now and Then.You bet. and action plan for the fifth year of the typical book manuscript costs between Center for Appalachian Studies and John Sayles is not the only artist $600 and $1,000; publishing a major gaining recognition for focusing on the Services. At times the work has book or phonograph record can cost seemed endless, but there have been coal mine wars in West Virginia in the between $5,000 to $10,000; major 1920s. Denise Giardina's nationally plenty of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards films can cost much more. during the past few years. There is acclaimed novel StormingHeaven Publishing a magazine of the quality covers that same time and place. nothing more satisfying, from my point of Now and Thenis not an of view, than to work with talented, Giardina, who lives in Eastern inexpensive proposition, either. If you Kentucky, also sees the parallels creative people and to see promising haven't subscribed yet, I urge you to ideas become exciting realities. We between now and then. She talks do so now. Even at the modest cost of about that, and her own activism in an have seen the CASS Fellowship $7.50 per year ($10 for institutions Program support the diverse activities interview with Tim Boudreau on and libraries) every subscription helps, page 9. of regional artists, scholars and public and if you can help us even more by service advocates, resulting in books, It was hard to tear ourselves away giving a gift subscription to a friend or from coal mining stork s in this issue. records, films, radio programs, school your favorite library, that would be residencies and other projects directly Besides the inherent high drama, coal better yet. If you are able to make a mining brings up endless economic and benefitting our region; we have been larger donation and would like to know able to add new courses and seminars social implications for Appalachia. more about the work of the CASS But it is the goal of Nowand Then in family practic- and anthropology; Fellowship Program, please call or we have helped our faculty members to portray the many dimensions of write me in care of CASS, Box Appalachia, not just the most obvious write grant proposals to support 19i80A, ETSU, Johnson City, Tenn. regional writing residencies and a and dramatic. 37614-0002, 615.929-5348. We've This issue is filled with stories and seminar on the cultural and historical come a long way in a short time, but links between Scotland and poems about a variety of occupations we need your help now more than and lifestylesfrom manufacturing Appalachia. We have sought to help ever. Stay with us. our colleagues grow professionally by soda pop to shining shoes, from plowing Ix hind a horse to peeling sponsoring travel to conferences, by Richard Blaustein subsidizing the preparation of onions. manuscripts and by encouraging their This edition is dedicated to all those who work in Appalachia. Now and Then Magazine Now and Then haS been published since addressed stamped envelope. We will be Pat Arnow 1984 thieetimes a year by the Center for careful but not responsible for all materials. O 0 0 Appalichian Studies and Services at East Address all correspondence to: Editor, Now Earl RYates was editor/photographer of Tennessee State Untversity. SUbscriptkrns and Then, CASS, Box 19,180A, ETSU, Throwster, a newsletter of the Leon-Ferenbach -are $7.50 per-year ($10.00 for institutions Johnson City, TN 37614-0002. Company, from 1963 to 1977 He is currently and libraries). East Tennessee State University is fully in employed at HellQuaker in Johnson City ISSN. No. 0896-2693 accord with the belief that educational and 'Subinissiors of poetry, fiction, scholarly employment opportunities should be O 0 and peiaonal essays, graphics and available to all eligible persons without regard The views expressed in these pages are lihoti=c-oricened with Appalachian life to age, sex, race, religion, national origin or those of the authors and doniecessarily are aecompahied by a self- handicap. represent opinions of East Ter see State Univers4 or of the State Boak. vf Regents. 2/Now and Then From the Archives

By the 1920s Upper East TennesseeOn March 12, 1929, a strike which est.....,,,shed in Clinton, Tenn., in 1906. had experienced the boom and decline began at Glanzstoff and spread to Collections that contain significant of the timber industry and the Bemberg, eventually resulted in the amounts of strike-related or union- introduction of the railroads. Railroad placement of National Guard troops inrelated materials include records of the industrial agents and local chambers of Elizabethton. International Woodworkers of commerce were actively trying to In an article published by The NationAmerica, Local 5-313, and the entice Northem and foreign industries in 1929, visiting joumalist Sherwood Kingsport Press Strike Collection. to locate in the region with promises ofAnderson ecounted hi., impressions of Union activities ere further abundant natural resources, tax a secret union meeting he attended. documented in the Bemard H. Cantor exemptions and cheap nonunion According to Anderson, when the Papers (1959 -78). The Cantor papers labor. In 1913 Carolina, Clinchfield rumor spread that anyone joining the focus on his work as a labor and Ohio Railroad industrial agent union would be fired, one man arbitration judge in Johnson City. F.M. Runnels wrote to S & F responded: "Well, then we will go back The archives holds a number of Manufacturing, a textile manufacturer to the hills. I lived on birdeye beans materials related to coal mining. The in Pennsylvania, that there was "no before there was any rayon plant and Marat Moore Collection consists of better help in the world than this can live on birdeye beans again." photographs, and audiotapes (with mountain type of girl that works ten Another view of the strike is contained original and edited transcripts) resulting hours per day for practically one-half in the Helen Raulston papers which from interviews of 35 women coal the wages that you are forced to pay." include a transcript of interviews with miners. In this same letter, Runnels suggested three former Bemberg employees who The Council on Appalachian that Johnson City, Tenn., might be the worked through the strike. According Women Records also contains some place for the company to escape "the to Raulston, the local workers were information on women working in the annoyance of strikes." Negotiations by "well satisfied" and the weekly salary mines. In the Broadside Televisior. industrial agents and chambers of of $11.20 was "good wages for people Collection there are a number of video commerce with outside capital did not even used to 20C a week." She tapes which detail mining and union bring more industries to Appalachian maintained that the union was organizing in the mines. communities, and industrial work and responsible for keeping the workers Photographs of miners can be found union activities became a part of agitated. in the Appalachian Photographic community life. While opinions about the strike may Collection and in the Kenneth Murray A joint effort by the Johnson City differ, it has to be admitted that the Photographs. and Elizal-,ctliton Chambers of two giant rayon plants introduced The Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Commerce promising tax exemptions industrial work and the resulting union Railroads Records contain extensive and cheap labor helped to persuade a activity to Elizabethton and Carter materials on the location of industries German company to locate two huge County on a much larger scale than in the region and on the railroad's rayon plantsAmerican Bemberg and the communities had experienced in service to the various industries. In American Glanzstoff Corporations previous years. addition, the archives has slide/tape just outside of Elizabethton, Tenn. The The Archives of Appalachia holds a programs on logging and on coal news was greeted with great number of sources relating to mining in southern Appalachia and anticipation. According to the Johnson Elizabeth ton's rayon plants in scattered issues of the Southern City Staff-News, at opening particular and the industrialization of Lumberman for 1926-1927. ceremonies on October 29, 1926, the region in general. The Helen With the industrialization of southem company officials predicted Raulston Collection consists of two Appalachia, industrial work and union employment of 2,000 persons within 16mm films (and a duplicate on video- activities have been and continue to be the next two months. This promise cassette) of the 1929 strike. Two 1982an integral part of Appalachia's was especially encouraging to a town interviews with three former employeeseconomic and community life. whose population, according to United are included as part of the collection. The archives desires to continue States census figures for 1920, The archives also holds 71 copies of acquiring materials which relate to exceeded that figure by only 749. The the two rayon plants' publ;cation, The industry, work and unions. For more Staff-News reported that at maximum Watauga Spinnerette which includes information on any of these materials, capacity the rayon plants would much information on the employees please contact the Archives of employ 10,000 individuals. and major events at the factories. Appalachia, Box 22,450A, East With the beginning of the Great Another source conceming the rayon Tennessee State University, Johnson Depression in the United States and of manufacturers is an American City, Tenn. 37614, phone: (615) labor problems at the two plants in Bemberg Research Department report 929-4338. 1929, these expectations for which describes the production of Glanzstoff and Bemberg began to rayon. -Norma Thomas and Marie Tedesco wane. The mountain labor proved to In addition the archives has the be dissatisfied with their low wages. records of Magnet a hosiery mill =3 0 Now and Then/3 Ain't No Pie Jobs

Another motor clOwn &left has z inch water cold water seeps into leaky boots feet stay cold and ache way past dinner and finishing up In the shop

Hands swell from concrete too can't weafa weck:ing band evenon Weekends off Discussion At Age Seven The grinder manicures some nails twier My father lifts The torch bums eyes bright red his Millers and coughs out spews hot metal through two shirts the steel mill. He's busy Read the bulletin board at quittin time resting. maybe another job up for bid somebody's got 9 Beale puppies Iris eyes scan school's all day on the 25th the pages of a book good bass boat for sale- he's forgetting. probably'Lonnie's he never got called back Cigarette smoke spirals up through a lamp shade. No jobs posted I sit and wait for him to say could be a lot worse "I don't remember." Remember 83? NO WORK 'TIL FURTHER NOTICE Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg Thinking on the way home of hot suppers and warm kids trying to keep it that way.

Jenny Galloway Collins

Jenny Gil :CâNis Of Letc .; ;214h, 'GeOrgeann_EskieutCh Rettberg ,teaches 'kindergarten anda iin Mountain Review, fourth ark! fifth grade-poetry workshop for the Pittsburgh others.:,She; PubliaSchods: Herwork-km been published In -18" area. Panhandler, Sojourner and the Mill Hunk Herald. ftddenPo 11-41-"-1"it 7 Where the Rubber Meets the Road John Say les talks about his coal mining movie Matewan Marat Moore

On May 19, 1920, a showdown on the main street of a West Virginia coal town made history in the American labor movement. Eleven armed guards from the infamous Baldwin-Felts detective agency came into the town of Matewan after carrying out forced evictions of pro-union families from houses owned by Stone Mountain Coal Company. Mayor Cabell'Testerman and his young chief of police, Sid Hatfield, challenged the evictions. After the guards attempted to arrest the two with bogus warrants, shooting broke out. When the smoke cleared, seven guards, two townspeople and Mayor Testerman were dead. A local jury acquitted Hatfield in the guard murders, but a year later he and a friend, Ed Chambers, were gunned down as they walked up the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse in Welch, W. Va., where they were facing trumped- up charges. The murders of Hatfield and Chambers sent shock waves throughout the coalfields, and triggered the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, when 10,000 coal Ikse cucq miners marched to do battle against company guards and state militia. With the 1987 production ofMatewan,John Sayles, a novelist and 014, "1 independent filmmaker, realized his goal of nearly a decade, making a movie k dew° based upon the Matewan Massacre. Sallies has built a reputation and a loyal following outside Hollywood with his Director John Sayles making the movie thoughtful, offbeat films includingReturn of the Secaucus Seven,Lianna, Matewan. Brother from Another PlanetandBaby, It's You.

MARAT MOORE: You've had a And I have always been interested inconsciousness in a whole group of long interest in Appalachian the theory of America as the melting people than to show a loner against coal miners, since opening your pothow that does or doesn't work in the mob, which is what you usually novelUnion"Duesin the West this country. find in Westerns. Virginia coalfields. Why did you I saw those themes, and plus, just a MM: But the Matewan Massacre return to this subject in great movie story. Just the facts are so Matewan? was only one chapter in a much like a classic American Western, 30-year struggle. Why did you SAYLES: There is no place in leading up to the showdown, but with focus on that incident and not, America like Eastern Kentucky and a differencethe violence was for example, on the Battle of Southern West Virginia. Back in the collective, and it was political. It wasn'tBlair Mountain which followed 1960s, I hitchhiked through the area, just the sheriff going out there against a year later? and I got a lot of rides from miners the mob. It was everybody who said, who told me about the black lung 'They're not going to take our sheriff SAYLES: At that moment in history, movement and the struggles within the from us.' And then it just kind of blew Matewan was where everything came UMWA. But they all said, This is up, like the opening shot of the film. to a head. Something had to give nothing compared to what it used to When you see the fuse burning down somewhere. And that's when it came. be. You should talk to my daddy, or until it finally explodes. That was the Sort of like Cabin Creek earlier. Or my grandaddy. They could tell you image I had of what happened in Ludlow in Colorado. And it was a time some tales.' Matewan. when the union movement was at a SO when I was writing Union Dues, I Coal mining is, I think, where the crossroads. Matewan was the catalyst started reading about the coal wars. rubber meets the road. It is an to Blair Mountain. It came down to And it seemed that in that struggle, elemental act. In World War I, that one little town that was the hot you had so many American themes in America fought with the coal that spot. And Blair Mountain was more diffused. You had 10,000 coal miners caught between individualism, which is mean, how many movies do you see marching to battle. A lon5fleEd was such an American thing, and the idea about cowboys? And that era lasted flying, and people were scattered out of unionism. To have a union, they for a very short period of time. everywhere. Using that many extras had to sacrifice their prejudices for I felt it was time that this sort of was way beyond our budget. That something bigger than themselves. Andattention should be paid. There are a could be the sequel, if we could ever even though the operators were taking dozen stories you could tell. But it's a raise the money. total advantage of them, that was very harder story to get across, MM: How difficult was it to hard for people to do. dramatically, to show the rise of a finance Matewan? Now and Then/5 SAYLES: Because of the political money I'd made writing screenplays. racism, which was unusual for a union nature of the film, it was hard to get Matewan cost just under $4 million. to do. It was an important risk for anybody interested. About four years The period and the size of it would them to take. The union's message air), the producers actively started have cost a studio from $10 to $15 was, 'Don't let the operators divide trying to raise the money. It was a long million to make the same movie. But you, don't fall into this trap.' Racism haul. They went everywhere. We did for us, by being very labor-intensive was one of the strongest barriers the send it out to the studios, but we and shooting for seven weeks instead union faced. made it very clear that we wanted full of 15 to 20, we were able to get it We.talked to people 'from that area control of casting, editing,everything. done for under four. to do research. One of the nice things So we weren't surprised when it came that happened is that once we got back real quick. MM: Matewan reflects some down there with our various But I knew it wouldn't turn out to besolid research, especially in the departments, the art department the kind of movie I wanted it to be if itdialect of Mingo County. How immediately made contacts with local went through the studio system. They did you go about digging up the people, with miners, to get the kind of might have been interested in it, but it history? set dressing we needed. We needed a would have gotten changed along the SAYLES: Since the script sat on the mule and a cart, and old miners are way. The organizer wouldn't have beenshelf for several years, I had time to collectors. And when we'd get three a Wobbly, and somewhere along the deepen my knowledge of the history hardhats, we'd get three stories to go way, he would have said, 'Yeah, I usedand just about what conditions people along with them.,So we were Collecting had to contend with. Looking at it, you stories while we were collecting other had to wonder how they were ever materials. able to build a union. I read a lot more about the pattern 3t of immigration. In 1920, one-quarter of all coal miners in West Virginia were !Sliiikkl'r Black. The mines in Alabama were tapping out, so those men needed the work and were often offered jobs that they had no idea were scabbing jobs. And 1920 was one of the first years for lynching in American history. There must have been a lot of trepidation. West Virginia wasn't Alabamait wasn't as T dangerous to be a Black man therebut the racial tension was there. They were stuck in a boxcar that was nailed shut, given some bread and water, and then two days later, the door was opened in West Virginia. And when that door opened, not only would miners be throwing things at them because they Union leader Sid Hatfield, were breaking the strike, 1894- 1921(1.) but the company told the Actor David Strathairn playing Sid Hatfield (r.)Blacks they owed $200 for train fare, and if they didn't work tc Josh Mostel playing Mayor Cabell to be a pretty good shot,' and then he pay it, they'd be arrested as thieves. Testerman in Matewan (I.) would have picked up a gun, and he The Italians were a different story. Mayor Cabell Testerman (r.) would have been there at that Most of the ones who came to West shootout at the end instead of being a Virginia were brought right off the MM: Immigration had a great pacifist. boat. They'd never worked in a mine, impact on the region. And the After we got it back from the and very often some guy who didn't theme of Appalachia as a studios, we went to people who had a speak any Italian would be telling them melting potand the struggle to history of investing in small films. The how to put off a shot and then walk overcome ethnic prejudiceis a movie almost came together a couple out. So they were carting out dead major theme of the film. of times and then fell apart. Once we bodies every day in some of those SAYLES: In West Virginia at that were on our way to West Virginia to mines. time, the cperators hired what they shoot and got a call that the loan Reading the UMW Journals from called a 'judicious mixture' of one-third didn't go through. So we made Brotherthat time, I was impressed by what a mountain people, one-third Alabama From Another Planet in between with strong stand the union took against miners, and one-third immigrants from

6/Now and Then CA Greece or Italy or Yugoslavia. It was coming in the camp, but they patrolled hangingfrom,a noose. When the guy an incredible melting pot. The in between the Black sections and the asked the kiu what it was, ne boy operators thought they could put them white sections and the Italian sections. said, 'That's one of them Baldwins, in separate coal camps with armed You couldn't pass between them you know, the state troopers.' guards between them. That was the without a good reason, and'they would It's like Northem Ireland, where the company solution to what they saw as demand to know your name. It was kids feel like they're in a war movie, the cancer of unionism. like South Africa today, where they but the bullets that are flying are real. MM: Union sympathizers were keep the workers separated from their not only targeted as families. The company had the miners MM: Religion plays an Communists, they were under lock and key. important role in Appalachian deprived of their constititional culture and has been central in rights. That's something that MM: In 1985, close to the time union organizing struggles, both people from outside the you were making the movie, past and present, In the movie, coalfields have a hard time coal miners in Mingo County church scenes provide a believing. were engaged in the most bittercounterpoint to the conflict, SAYLES: That's right. In those days, strike since the 1920s against showing fatalistic attitudes foremen were told, 'If you see more A.T. Massey Coal Co. Were you played against the ideas of than three coal miners sitting together aware of this history coming social justice. and talking, break them up and tell us back onto the people of the Tug SAVLES: I wanted to show the what their names are.' There were Valley? battle went on in the pulpit, with some spies. They knew whom they had SAYLES: Yes, we did hear about company preachers arguing against the grown up with, whom they could trust that. One of the UMWA members whounion, saying it was of Satan, and coal to spread the word. was in the movieplayed a Baldwin miners in the pulpit preaching for the People were paranoid because they agent, in factwas on selective strike union as salvation. Like any ideology, had a reason to be. You see scenes in against Massey. And when we were you can interpret the Bible to mean the film where the organizer is crawling filming, one man told us he'd been very different things. through the coal camp because the down to Mingo County visiting his In West Virginia, if you go to a town BaldwinFelts guards were everywhere. family, and his 10yearold nephew of 500 people, you might have 40 Not only would they keep people from was in the backyard with a GIJoe doll churches, all different denominations. James Earl Jones inaCoal Mining Role Veteran actor James Eari Jones has played many leading roles in film and theaterfrom his staning role in Fenlei on Broadway to his portrayal of author Alex Haley in Roots. Young audiences, however, may know him best as the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars. In Matewan, Jones plays "Few Clothes" Johnson, a Black miner once described as "one of the fighten'st union men" in West Virginia.

Lewis was my hero. All my Mends in grade (I was also surprised to find out that zb., many school thought Franklin D. Roosevelt was kids near Beckley didn't know that history. I'd God. For me it was Lewis. I listened to,him on be in the mail there and would ask them if 1 the radio, so even at that age I knew about the they knew about the Matewan Massacre, and United Mine Workers. most of themhad never heaid of It. It's not Actor jail* Earl Jones And stir, Lewis, I think the United Mine something that is taught in the schools. Workers has remained an honorable MM: Todayi-South African miners are institution. It's a union that hasn't lost.sieht of engaged in a life-or-death straggle to MARAT:MOORE:-At this stage in your Its values. keep their, union alive much like the career, you could.have youichoice of MM: The events surrounding the early organising battles of the UMWA. rolisi'WhYsda you choose a minor Matewan;Massacre led to thelargest DO you thinkMatewan'speaks to the role in I low-budget film about the armed confrontation in the United' current situation? Veit Virginia mine wars? 'States since the Civil War: Did this history surprise you? 'JONES:I don't know how anybody gets over JONBS:14y:agent had read the script and being spoiled the way management in South she said, thinmy, thia'Cloesn'tmean any, JONES:It was shocking to me.to realize that Africa his been Spoiled for generations. They money oraltirgaiart, big here's a project, you after the MateWan Maisacie, during the Battle have had, essentially, slave lahor. might be interestecrin.' She was right: Lwanted of BlaiiMiiintain',"One of the top heroes of: .Management wanted'that in West Virginia, to:work with John Sayler. World War I was sent to West.Virginia to fly a they wanted it in Kentucky, they wanted It in bombing mission against.the miners. That Pennsylvania and,Coldrado. They wanted all '.MM:Ware yOu'liiie of UMWA histbry makes you realize how high rip in the ranks of the advantages. And if somebody hadn't made 0141d* mat.ewan? the government was the resistance to the a stand, they could have had slave labor. In a- JONES:Al a kid-in:Mississippi, John L miners' cause. Very simple way the film tells that story'.

I 0 Now and Then/7 Say les... The Tug Valley. the scene of Sat early strife in the coal mines. was also the scene of There were the hardshell and the a bitter 14-month strike softshell'Baptists. So in the hardshell against tA.T. Massey church, which was more an Old - Company in the 1980s. Some of the same tactics Testament kind of church, the usek,s , in the 1920s were preacher, who I played, is a company employed to break this strike by 1,100 miners that man who says that we can't do began after Massey refused anything for ourselves here on earth to sign the national contract but accept our fate. He was saying, that the United Mine Workers of America had you were meant to serve the coal negotiated with the companies and that's that. But Danny, members of the Bituminous a softshell Baptist, has a more New Coal Operators Association (BCOA). Massey wanted the Testament interpretation. I-1c believes union to negotiate contracts Jesus meant for us to help each other with each of its subsidiaries. but miners argued that this by joining the United. Mine Workers of would jeopardise their America. health. safety and retirement benefits. Here. security guards hired by Massey and equipped with MartMoore has been writing for the riot gear patrol the entrance UMWA Journal inWashington, fi of a Massey mine, the D.C., for four years. She was a coal Sidney Coal Company In Pike County,Ky.. February. miner in Mingo County, W. Va., and is 1985. This is what picketing a native of Johnson City. union miners encountered every day as strikebreakers Matewannever made it to theaters in --Tossed the picket lines. A most of the region. However, it should guard shack is under construction In the rear. The be available now on videocassette. New York Times reported that "The strike was marred For a review of John Sayles' book, by repeated violence Thinking in Pictures: The in :g both sides." Making of the Movie Matewan, see page 28.

This °dick appeared in a chfferent form in UMWA Journal. Used by permission.

41,

Ii

I. Strikers tried a new tactic civil disobedience in the strike against A.T. Massey in 1985. These miners and their wives held a sitdown protest near Lubata. W.Va., to block the rail shipment of nonunion coal. They stopped the train. but they were arrested for their troubles. The New York Times reported. "The union finally called off the strike December. 1985. when Massey settled charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board. In the settlement, Massey acknowledged that its subsidiaries were a single company." But. the favorable ruling did not help the miners in other areas. The miners had to go back to work without a contract and the company fired 100 strike activists. 8/Now and Then Denise Giardina

talks about Miners and their families were thrown out of company houses and forced to five in Storming Heaven "tent colonies" like thi one at Lick Creek, Mingo County, W.Va., cira}1920. Tim Boudreau As a child Giardina said she had 'before outside owners took conk )1 of "never heard of the battle," even the land and reduced a society of Thousands lined the ridge of though she grew up in Black Wolf in independertfakiners and miners to Blair Mountain.Sheriffs McDowell county, less than 100 miles little more than serfs. deptties, coal company from the site. Giardina's interest in writing about mercenaries, American Legion "I became interested in Appalachian the coalfields developed gradually. history after college," she said in a After graduating from West Virginia members and college students recent' interview. "When I found out on summer vacation waited, Wesleyan University in 1973, she did about the strikewith people living in graduate work at Marshall University in armed with pistols, some with tentsoniners trying to overthrow the Huntington, W. Va. She earned' machine guns and howitzers. governmentI was shocked. I;thought master's degree from the Episcopal Company planes, loaded with it would be a great story. I couldn't Seminary in Alexandria, Va., in 1979. crude bombs, circled overhead. believe someone hadn't written about itIn 1980, she chose writing over U.S. Army troops stood ready. before." ordination as an Episcopal priest. In the valley,. some 10,000 Months of researchsifting through "It bothered me that I wasn't4rriting, armed union miners prepared to newspaper clippings, reading so I decided to give it a try...I never storm Blair Mountain.to try to transcripts from Senate hearings on dreamed I could make a living off of free their neighbors and co- the battle, and interviewing miners it," she said. "The only writing I had workers held captive by familiar with the Battle of Blair done before war for the church Mountaincame together in Storming newsletter." company guards who had Heaven, a look at the conditions that overrun their coal camps. incited the uprising. Giardina completed her first book, Years of exploitation in the Though her book is fiction it is Good King Harry, which she describes Appalathian coalfields boiled based on fact. Some of the places and as an antiwar novel based in medieval over at the Battle of Blair events in her book are composites, butEngland, in 1984. The reviews were she said she can point to at least one favorable, but sales were discouraging. Mountain, W. Va., during the Between her first work and Storming last two weeks of August, 1921. source for each incident. "I didn't make anything up, I didn't want to be Heaven, she wrote several 'guest Dozens of miners died; many columns for-the Charleston Gazette. more were injured; others lost accused of exaggerating. I even left out some atrocities because I was afraid Payment was a set of coasters. Writing arms and legs in their futile readers wouldn't believe them." occasional articles for the Washington fight. The battle crippled the Plenty of atrocities were left for the Post wa lucrative, but she had fledgling-union movement in the book. She tells of company guards to supplement her income with work Appalachian coalfields and throwing a black man into a furnace as a secretary for various West tightened the economic and and of others attacking a pregnant Virginia Democratic politicians political stranglehold of outside woman, repeatedly kicking her in the "Secretarial work gives me more landowners and coal operators stomach. Ar.ather incident, the murderpsychic energy to work on writing," she on the coal towns. of two union organizers on the steps said. "I can't take a job where they But decades later, one of the of a county courthouse, became the want me to be there five to 10 years, basis for John Sayles' movie Matewan. or where they want you to take it bloodiest fights in American home with you. And besides, I can labor history was largely The Battle of Blair Mountain was only the culmination of the miners' type fast, and that's about my only forgotten, even in West Virginia. struggle, Giardina found in her marketable skill" Novelist Denise Giardina research. Storming Heaven details the She admits that it's tough to survive thought the story should be daily abuses, the years of humiliations economically as a writer in the region. told, which she did in her and the grinding poverty suffered by "The traditional way is to teach at a second book published in 1987, the Appalachian miners and their college, but I wouldn't want to do {Storming Heaven. families. It also looks at the times that." Now and Then/9 Fighting Back... Appalachian experience is universal. Appalachia to aspire to. I'd hate to see The issues that people deal with Appalachia become a Yuppie haven. With the sale of movie rights for herelove, death, life, familyare the But we can't stick our heads in the Storming Heaven to Columbia same as elsewhere. And the themes of sand and pretend there are no Pictures, Giardina could indulge a bit. exploitation that are seen in problems," she added. "To say that the But she lives simply. Eight miles off Appalachia are also universal." coal industry has done a lot of the main highway on a road that winds Giardina sees similarities to the negative things in West Virginia is not into David, Ky., her neat, single-story Third World in that exploitation. saying anything negative about West bungalow is one in a row of homes "We have the same kind of Virginia. It's simply standing up and that hugs the mountainside. A thin economic situation here as in the Thirdsaying they shouldn't be allowed to do strip of grass separates her house from World," she said. "We have an this anymore." her neighbors and from a road that abundance of minerals. They are taken Giardina knows firsthand the carries frequent coal truck traffic from out by multinational corporations. We precariousness of life in a town a nearby mine. Inside, an oak table, an don't receive much in economic dependent on coal. She grew up in the Apple computer and a sagging green benefits, and we're left with the tiny coal camp of Black Wolf, where couch left by the last tenant stand out problems. her father kept books for Page Coal among the simple furnishings. "There is an American ideal of and Coke. Her grandfather, an Italian Giardina's neighbors know little of freedom, justice and revolution that immigrant, had worked underground, her work. She says she is likely better has become mainlyiip service. It's in as had her uncles. known for helping care for a neighbor's Page sold out to a larger firm, which injured dog than for her writings. And closed the mine in 1964. When she for a writer whose latest book has won was 13, her family moved to wide acclaim and was selected as an Charleston, W. Va., to find work. altemate in two national book clubs,,a Black Wolf was abandoned. "There recent evening at her home was was a traumatic loss of community," decidedly quiet, interrupted only once she said. by a nephew calling to sell popcorn for In Storming Heaven, Black Wolf his school's fundraiser. became the inspiration for the town of Giardina is comfortable in David. "I Winco. liked the idea of living in a coal camp. .1 see coal as a curse....lf they had It appealed to me because I grew up in never found a piece of coal in the a town like this." mountains we'd be better off," she It also keeps her close to the people said. "Without it, we would be like she writes for. New Hampshire or Vermont or North "Growing up (in Appalachia) is what Carolina. We would be clean and made me a wrifir. Staying here is what prosperous. "But that's wishful thinking because keeps me the kind of writer I want to rs3 we do have people here whose be. I write for people around here, not4 . for academics. Author Denise Giardina livelihoods depend on it." "There is a value system in She urges community control of Appalachia that I try to keep in my places like Appalachia where those outside coal interests and calls for writing: a sense of humility, a lack of values have the best chance of "strictly, strictly, strictly regulating (the pretension, a sense of egalitarian surviving, because the conflict is so industry) because it's incredibly values. Also, the culture has a clear here," she said. destructive." theological base, and I've picked that "The difference between freedom Giardina draws lessons from the up." ..^.d being exploited is very clear 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain and Still, she wants her writing to appeal hereand it's very clear where that applies them to contemporary .beyond Appalachia. While her next exploitation is coming from." Appalachia. book will be based in Appalachia, she Giardina sees a certain irony in the "There's not much knowledge of our is also planning a work about Nazi charge that her work portrays Appalachian heritage," she said. "It's Germany. AppalachiansWest Virginians in important to know that people fought "I'd like to show that Appalachian particularunfavorably. back. When I found out that people writers can write about other things "It's not true," she responded. "I've fought back, I thought maybe I should besines Appalachia. That's important. written about our pride and how too." 0 0 0 People tend to stereotype Appalachia outsiders have put us down....The and categorize Appalachian writers, people in the novel are strong, Tim Boudreau has worked for the and that's a form of,a putdown...I independent, good, interesting people. Martin Countian in Inez, Ky., and wouldn't mind being pigeonholed as an "Some criticism comes from people the Bristol Herald-Courier in Appalachian writer if I thought people trying to distance themselves from Bristol, Va. 'He is now a reporter for respected it. People think, 'Oh, that's being Appalachians. The prejudice the Chillicothe Gazette in Ohio. good, but it's just a subcategory of against Appalachians has made some -----=-- writing.' people ashamed of their heritage. Most "Sometimes we have to write about of American culture is sort of plastic, For a review of Storming Heaven other places to show that the fakenot something I want see page 29. 10 /Now and Then 3 coal dust. His hearing faded out tons) of coal, they'd give you a dollar James Thompson several years ago. None of this bothersfor it," he recalls. "If there'd be a rock Thompson as much as the fact that in it, slate, they'd give you a quarter or his injuries forced him off the job. He 50 cents." The buckle on his belt says "WE still pays dues to United Mine Workers "I tell you, all my jobs in the coal DIG COAL," and 82yearold James of America. And when someone in mineI liked all of 'em," he says. "But Graham Thompson means that with Local 7604 dies, he contributes to the my favorite job, the hardest in the coal all his heart. miners' burial fund. mine, was loading coal by hand. That The son of a fanner from Finney, "My first job as a coal miner was was hard, hard labor." Va., he has worked as a butcher, a loading coal by hand in 19 and 23," he Thompson recalls the clandestine builder, a cabinetmaker and a miner. It says. "Harmon Coal Company. You gatherings of miners who were intent was coal mining he loved best. Three had to buy your own tools, bLiy your on unionizingand equally intent on weeks before he was eligible to retire, own powder to shoot coal withbuy evading the dreaded Baldwin-Felts in 1967, Thompson's glove got caught, everything. You'd work three days, 12 Detective Agency guards hired by coal and he was yanked into a coal hours a day. Then you'd work two companies to stamp out union activity. conveyor. The accident ended his 44 days, eight hours a day. Then on Talking about the union was a firing years in the mines. "He come within a payday, the boss would look at how offense, Thompson recalls. "Back fraction of being killed," recalls his much coal you loaded and you'd when I first started they had Baldwin- wife, Lottie. probably draw 10 dollars." Felts detectives all over the coal fields, His arm has been pieced together Thompson says that $10 for two shooting men who'd joined the union." and his broken ribs have healed, but weeks' work bought more in the 1920s Thompson was left with aches and than several hundred dollars buy pains as well as scars. His breath is today. But a miner's earnings then sapped by black lung, the miner's were anything but regular. respiratory disease caused by inhaling "Sometimes you'd load a car (five

so little I wasn't going to leave her with Lottie Thompson anyone. And Daddy kept the boys, Tommy and Billy." Her next job was in a boarding Lottie Whittaker.Christian house for miners at Coalwood, a Thompson has spent much of her life mining community in McDowell as a miner's wife, living in and around County. "I'd get up in the moming the coal camps of southem West about 5:00 o'clock, and I'd get a dollar Virginia. At 76 she still puts up canned a day there, too. I'd cook and wash goods and bakes some of the best rollsdishes and pack lunches for the James and Lottie at their home in and biscuits around. miners. They'd have a day shift and Pearisburg. Virginia. She honed those baking skills in the night shift, so you had to know what coalfields, after her first marriage to put in a man's bucket." run by her sister-in-law. ended and she had three children to By then she had struck a deal with It was at Coalwood that she met support. In the 1930s a woman in the her brother, who also had young James Thompson, who was working coalfields had few choices if she children: he kept her two boys and fed as a butcher at that time. After they needed a job. She had even fewer them; she would buy his children married in 1943 she quit work to stay choices if she had children. clothes and books. home with her family. "Whatever come along, that's what "It worked out real good," she Life as a coal miner's wife meant I'd do," she says, cheerfully. Mrs. recalls. "That way I could visit them "you just washed, ironed and cleaned Thompson got her first break at a every week ...I even went to the house," Mrs. Thompson says. In her lumber camp in Brown's Creek in PTA meetings." first marriage, to a coal miner she McDowell County, near her hometown Another jobthis one easier and describes as "real hot-tempered" and of Welch. better-payingcame through the prone to changing jobs often, the "I helped 'em cook and I made a recommendation of a-coal company family moved 50 times in six years. dollar a day. Big money! This woman nurse. Mrs. Thompson would stay with "We always lived in coal camps. If was the boss, s:Ie fed the lumber men. women after the birth of their babies, you quit working for that company, I helped her cook and wash dishes and doing housework and cooking "so the you moved out of their house. And do all that. She let me keep Evelyn husband could work." She eamed $10 you bought your furniture from the (Lottie's 18montold daughter) with or $12 for two weeks' work. Later she coal company, bought your clothes me. I made that deal, because she was worked in a Coalwood boarding house from the coal company, anything and 14 Now and Then/11 James was young. Back when I started, you earned about $10 for two weeks' The Strikers_ work. And now the lowest wages paid to coal miners$85 a day. Would you arisen fray ihe smoke. "The mines where I worked, they think a long time if someone offered and' anitiety:::. brought the union in over a year before you a job at $85 a day, would you !SftheirOsid* anybody else ever knowed it. We'd slip think a long time before you turned it and around, having union meetings back in down? I would. Eighty-five dollars is a they`brifiatheir_Ohildran- the woods. Way back in a deep holler. whole lot of money." WithiearitiSind'candy. And then, after we got everybody in "H2 used to go out every morning WI** that wanted to go, we finally got and stand on the sidewalk and watch raiid leaningagairathe bar enough men to form a local union." those men go to work at 5:30 in the theifstare into Wild-spac Thompson worked in three mines in morning," Mrs. Thompson recalls. nodding Southwest Virginia from 1923 until "He'd wave to all his buddies going to 1948. Then in 1948, he took a job work.was so sad." and lkniiint men: with Eastern Gas and Fuel Co. at It also saddens Thompson that most circle 1he,10316 Kopperston, W.Va. of his first crewmates at Kopperston ilmlY.4600th Ig nine-bag Koppers Coal Co. had built the 100 are gone. "As the miner would say, with no.lictiede*an, homes in Kopperston as its model coal they have all kicked the bucket," camp in 1938. Mrs. Thompson recalls observes Mrs. Thompson. the sUorm blowi:open its amenities: "They built pretty houses "Miners are real close to one the double doors; and had bathrcoms and everything in another," she says. "They are just a -ciciar0.1%.44' them. And spaced 'em real pretty." different breed of people from town burningin-sawdust; After years spent in older mines that people or other workers. I guess and outside dir:hdrissb.are were nearly "worked out," Kopperston'sbecause they work in the mines, and and:men'Shout that.ifs ti.ie;- coal seams offered Thompson hope never know if they're going to come b:inds-akhats for long-term employment. out or not ...face those explosions 'they-walk -into rain At Kopperston he loaded coal, set and everything. They know it's timbers to support the mine roof, hung dangerous for all of them. It's just kind ---7-Joseph Barlett sheets of canvas to keep the coal dust of like they're all kin people. They're all down and worked on the conveyor belt brothers." the, ctristver- is -blowin' that hauled coal out of the mine. It nearly broke his heart to quit =I =I =I in theluind work. "I did want to go back. I'd go Beatty flied Skidmore back in a minute, if I was able. Yes. I far tooting the -log Bain whistle would," he says. "I'd go back today if I ayery time he got stewed. back then. They always stayed cleaned Well one day:itcomes-up Lottie up. They always kept the house clean. Beatty'i been fired And those that had men on the night and Skidinore, when he gets wind, shift always cleaned their living room moseys up with_a bigshit-eatin' grin everything. And if you didn't have your up of a night, and made sure it was and asks, furniture paid for, they'd just come and straight, and all the dishes was "Wal, Beatty, you dirty Iow haul it back. They wouldn't let you washed. Because they said, You don't doWn payment work for another coal company and know what's going to happen. And he whose whistle you been keep their furniture! They liked you to might get killed tonight, or crippled, tootin?r pay it off, you know. And who, back and neighbors might be coming in.' " then, during the Hoover Panic, ever "Back then, they didn't have all Bob Henry Baber had any money to pay off anything?" those safety rules. You just kind of After she married Thompson she lived wondering if they'd come back lived oily briefly in the coal camps. again. And if you saw an ambulance, Joseph-barrett's work hasappeared The family moved to Oceana, in or a bunch of cars close to the mine, in-Senithern Humanities Wyoming County, when Thompson you figured somebody got killed or Rev,i0v,:roeiK004)ri and- took a job at the Kopperston mine. crippled. And you usually was righ:. It ROIHno, Stone., He.is,a native West For Mrs. Thompson life as a miner's was just real bad back then. Well, it VitinianWhlives:in-Lexington, Ky. wife meant always being ready to face still is." Bob ilemyBaber is' working on a the worst. She faced it several times: number ofwntirig-projeCts including twice when Thompson was hurt in the =I -new children's. books, a collection of mines and more recently when a his kiriakichiari poetry and a book mining accident left her son Torn On lowku;WhICA-he says Is "your permanently disabled. cidwn home haiku." Health works at "It's one of the most dangerous jobs Mary Alice Bascom lives near Johnson Appalshap in-Whitesburg, Ky. I know of," she says. City, Tenn.. and writes for newspapers "I'll tell you what the women did and mugaiines. 12/Now and Then 15 Working Mother In the circling days

I catch a-Ilimpse

of doubt from my daughter a question mark

spelled out in Cheerios on the table

Flow will we survive? Rita Quillen

Summer of 19

Three sisters with faults no bigger than being born in a mountain shadow,

hung around all summer like coats on a hall tree,

waiting for a man who'd wear them out with work and childbirth. Glenn McKee

Fixing Supper I am at five p.m, a heathen, Lord, raging at stations of the house profane: the frantic stove of spills and chiding pots, the sink confused and dishes paralyzed, with children underfoot, the whole house loud and haywire. No faith here. No charity. Until this: a pause, a grasp of grace to serve the chastened fish and gentle rice. Suzanne Clark

Rita Quillen teaches at Tri-Cities State Technical Institute at Blountville, Tenn. Her study of Ap;Jachian poetry, Looking for Native Ground is forthcoming from Appalachian Consortium Press. Glenn McKee grew up in Southeast Ohio and lives in Maine. Suzanne Clark homeschools two of her three children. She also writes poetry and is putting the finishing touches on her non-fiction book, Blackboard Blackmail, to be published by Footstool Publishers this year. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Wellspring, and other literary magazines, and she fr is part of a local poetry group. Carletta Sims is a photo major at ETSU. 3 16 Now and Then/13 fa, ANOTHER SIDE of Appalachia Southwest Virginia, 1988 Photos by Kenneth Murray conceived and coordinated by Carol Moore and Jenay Tate Rockett

Melissa Ann Palmer's School of Dance, Coebuin, Virginia.

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Acolyte Ethan Moore at All- Saints Episcopal Church on Virginia Avenue in Norton, Virginia. 18 Now and Then/15 Another Side...

sA,

Il

Miami Elisabeth Store!! Alb at her lair office in Norton, Virghda.,A native of Norton, she graduated from J.L Burton High School. Her father, Joe Siliddy, is ,chancellor emeritus of Clinch Valley College.

Nightlife at the Holiday' Inn's Shaft Lounge in Norton.

Sarah Dotson at Four Seasons, her high-fashion, high- quality, commensurately-priced store in Wise County Plaza'. Her store was one the Biot ti not the firstwomen's clothing stores to market. trendy, progressive clothes and accessories for the woman of means. She has a tremendous following, and her mark can be seen on many women around t Nortonmany of whom used to shop out of town for the kind of clothes they waned.

Carol Moore directs a sex equity program at the Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, Va. Kenneth Murray's latest book Highland Trails is published by the Upper East Tenn. Tounsm Council. His two books of photos, Down to Earth and Portrait of Appalachia were published by Appalachian Consortium Press. He has also had pictures in Time, Newsweek and New York, Times. Jenay Tate Rockett is the editor of the Coalfield Progress in Norton. Va. 16/Now and Then Is Closedeyes as the instant overwhelms Dr. .ErnifisStilt Here Outside ,Voting, Idiosyncracy barren trees rattle dry leaves rustle 4lieCelifittIOCat:butirieisinar. for covering browning grass as the passage of fall 1949;47 folklote; ages the mountains When**. When spring arrives first ea*bUt. t!:ere will be fewer trees more concrete asphalt and red lights and cops !t never stops

At least Faust sold his soul we're giving ours away day by flatland tourist day. Ron Johnson

Retirement Living is infecundous 40844;dias7 monochromatic days Vgxliet1 spent in the Sonoran Desert kthe-ApOala_Chiakarea'hi7 the late,'?1,106:011si inside Tucson Estates Senior's Park 40!,-undOtibtecgy;the'S'ObtOf,r.whiChInite*C". was marketed asca tonic,flielped, 'But we recognize u your 14' x 52' mobile home many local peopleWith-Vitainin Perfqct iiii§401,4,COiribiriatioil of squeezed onto an infinitesimal lot deficiencies. Tri-Cities_BeVerage, has. appropriatellie-bio-iregional received thousands ofletters over thesustainable,OCOnoiny;-loeal as you follow Fifi years claiming everything from cured incie0endence and culture at its best. around your fenced-in plot hangnails to improved sex lives. E.,7.rlyLees hope pr. B.never gets big promotions for the chink claimed that"ene to hire Michael Jackson--but collecting hot poodle turds Enuf could "cure a ner:aus run maybe Barney Fife-or Otis would be with a long down conditiona feeling of getting OK. handled older." Dr. Enuf can no longer be sold Dr. Enuf is a tonic to our local as a medicinal tonic, but certainly spirit. It's like an anchor thrown back scoop people still buy it as such. And, even in time. The good doctor is a friendly today the bottle claims: "Dr. Enuf=is face in a dark slidetop cooler. An old Sheryl L. Nelms Enough" and "Ask your Doctor aboutman sitting in front of the little Dr. Enuf." country store sipping the Doctor's As locally made soft drinks have elixir is a scene which could only be Ron Johnson of Spruce Pine, N. C,is vanished from the American scene, found in Upper East Tennessee, a an amateur juggler and professional sales of the legendary Dr. Enuf have familiar And comforting sight. bartender (which he calls the perfect steadily increased over.the last five We wish the good doctor continued job for a poet). His work has appeared years. TriCities Beverage, the success in his practice. inDark Starr, The Creative Johnson City company that makes Urge, Possum Holler, Tarotand the drink, today boasts of 14 =3 co 1==1 Bad Haircut Quarterly. employees and seven trucks that distribute the drink exclusively in John Hart, a bird watcher and Sheryl Nelms. a widely published poet, Upper East Tennessee. librarian in Johnson City.haslong lives in Tucson. Ariz., where she says Charles Gordon, owner and been interested in exploring the link she is "a photographer, a weaver, a developer of Dr. Enuf, has been a between folk andpopculture. painter and an old dirt biker Now and Then/17 "77.` -77.7

t i -- 11

,,,, 'y c3-i" 1 1 AVi.1::, - , 7j4t le rzi i 82 ii.,%00.... 0.4c .' olger Family harviting potatoes, Western North Carolina, , ( 1940s. ;...7,.,. 4e ...... " ...3raserm+4. .1.4-....-.'

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Spinner at Pickett Yarn Mill, High Point, N.C. Photographed for the ,National Research Project, record of the Works Man cutting boy's hair, Western North Carolina, Progress Administration,1936-37byLewis Hine. 1940s.

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The first bookmobiles Working for the Works Progress Administration, Pack Horse Librarians delivered library books to remote sections by horse and mule. The librarians met once a week at their library to replenish their saddle- bags with books. This photo was made January 11, 1938, on Mill Creek, Knott County, Ky. 18/Now and Then 21 1107;",

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Ethel Cable worked in the twisting, department of Leon- Ferenbach of Johnson City, Tenn., for 31 years. She r `ired in 1973, saying, "I'll sure miss Leon-Ferenbach."

Mary Ruth Livingston of Johnson City pulls out tobacco plants.

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.e. At the Star Barber Shop on State Street in Bristol, Gene Boyd 4iirtelz...... :4,1I cuts hairwhilemusicians hold an impromptu get together in /11%itg,tt,.._, the back of the store. The barber says, "Every now and then I think about all the musicians -I grew up with and played with Jasper Cothran, who learned to read at age 49 through a over the years ... they all went on to fame and fortune, and I literacy program, checks out a book at his local library in stayed right here cutting hair." Spartanburg, S.C. "I Never Did Change Things Here" Jane Harris Woodside

Ivan White believes in workru, from his youth was supportive. If have since vanished from the valley. physical labor, day in and day out. neighbors who weresharecropping The self-sufficient communities of What the Tennessee farmer does not didn't raise their own wheat for flour White's youth began to change around believe in is change. On a fine early and were temporarily unable to pay for World War II. "Do you remember the spring day, a visitor is likely to find a "poke" at the country store, the Roosevelt, the President, he throwed 77-yearold White, having easily Whites shared from their supply. In us into war?" asks White, obviously climbed the steep slope of the return, the Whites were free to call on not one of Franklin Roosevelt's biggest 2,000foot mountain behind his home, neighbors when they needed help. fans. readying horse and plow for planting Community members rarely gathered During the war, Appalachian one of his hayfields. White lives much to socialize unless they had some task residents left the mountains in large the same selfreliant life as'his at handapple peeling or corn numbers to work in wartime industries. ancestors did, farming 80 mountainous shucking, quilting or bean shelling. For the first time they became involved acres without the aid of any "When I growed up, people was good in a cash economy and got a taste of mechanized implements. to one another. They liked one the outside world. The introduction of White was the third of seven another. And somebody was sick or electricity, along with improved children born to a farming couple. somebody got in a tough spotthey transportation and communication, After completing the fourth grade at a could get help. further broke down the isolation of one-room school, he went to work full "We didn't live out of store like mountain communities. Farm time on the family farm. "I guess I people do now. So we made what we machinery became available. The started following the horse when I was eat," White maintains. The family e.ending oil industry provided the fuel about 10 years old," White recollects. raised potatoes, beans, cabbage and to run them. Pesticides and herbicides He talks about the long and strenuous wheat. They kept hogs, cows and replaced the old-style organic farming days of his childhood philosophically. horses and made molasses. What they methods. With the encouragement of "That's the way we got it, so. Hard couldn't produce themselvessugar, agricultural extension agents, farmers work and plenty to eat and hard work. coffee, baking soda and saltIthey modernized and mechanized, trading in And being tough enough to stand it." purchased at the country stores which The community White remembers Au.derlakikab..- -12It

23 "I Never Did Change like to work this stock. I mean I train not only scarce, but even worse, are Things..." them, and they know what I say. And now considered antiques and sell at they mind just like a kid would mind exorbitant prices. It is not uncommon you. And I keep stock that's got for White on his rides into town to sense." pass by the plow points that are the horse for the tractor. Old-time The farmer has resented the essential to his livelihood painted and farmers had increasing difficulty finding increasing intrusion of the government placed as ornaments by the side of hired hands to helix during harvest. into agricultural matters, especially "Setmailboxes. White cones by making Starting with Franklin Roosevelt, Aside" programs designed to increase what repairs he can, tracking down old says White, "things began to change. farm prices by letting fields lay fallow, implements thelnechanized farmers And time speeded up, and it changed thereby decreasing supply. He has have piled in outbuildings or the time, and it changed, and it refused to participate in such occasionally fining parts in a nearby changed everything, you see," he programs. "I just didn't like the idea of hardware store. states, using repetition for emphasis. somebody telling me what to do with Although White has done hi3 best to "And back to that time to worse and something that I owned. And if I maintain his traditional culture, the worse and worse on up 'til now. And wanted to let it lay out, it,t,rst laid out. rural community that supported that so, times speeded up faster and faster. So I didn't draw no cher' it or way of life has crumbled. The old "Every president changed. Things gotanything. And if I had the notion to families have scattered. Although some different, more different, more farm it, why all right." farming continues in the valley, most different. Things that you didn't In 1951, White married. 1-1t., and his people travel to nearby cities and understand, and programs come up wife, Bertha, live in the grey-shingled towns to work. Some retirees have that you didn't, you know, hear tell of house that his father built. The Whites moved into the valley. Younger people or didn't know anything about. And-so are connected to the outside world by move in, then move back out after a you didn't know the meaning of it, and their telephone and radio. With brief stay. a :fellow like me was out, you see, on marriage came more responsibility than The breakup of the old community the outside of it. Have to get he'd "ever had before or ever thought with its cooperative ethos has forced somebody else that understood it or about." White to be even more self-reliant than had the education to explain these Other than his marriage, however, his father "You don't go too far in words to you that I wouldn't know." White's life follows much-the same farming any more. Just what you can In the midst of all this social, rhythms as those of his childhood. do yourself," he says. "Somebody economic and cultural change, White During the growing season, he plows, that's farming like you, well, they busy has done his best to stand fast. "I sows and reaps with his horse-drawn when you busy, you see? And them never did change things here," he machinery. He is also proficient at that ain't busy, you better off without asserts. He did not purchase farm various craftsblack smithing, them because they ain't no count when machinery because "hillside farming veterinary medicine, and broom you get them. They're going to stand and all didn't suit a tractor. But you making. White has increased his around and count the hours and count .could take a pair of mules or a pair of dependency on stores over the years, their money." horses and go up on these hillsides." and he and his wife hire a neighbor's White feels alone in more profound White also has some less pragmatic car once a month and get staples such ways. In contrast to the old days, reasons for sticking to the old ways. "I as cornmeal and flour at a local people now "want nothing to do with do it 'cause I was raised that way, and supermarket. you. Me and mine and the hell with I liked it, and I never did care too Working the farm the old way you. That's the way they live around much about a tractor." What he does presents some challenges White's here. You feel like if something care about are horses. "Good horses. ancestors didn't have to face. Farmers happened, you got no friends around. And good mules. I like that better than who specialized in some particular Kind of cold, yeah." anything that I have to work with on craft and provided their neighbors with White plans to continue rising early, the farm, I guess that's the reason why implements are gone. Many of the working long days in the field, tending I like farming as well as I do. 'Cause I parts White requires to do his work areto his animais, and practicing his crafts maim as long as he is able. For Ivan White, life and hard work are inextricably linked. =1 0 0

Juan White is a pseudonym designed to protect the farmer's privacy so that visitors interested in old-time farming methods don't prevent him from plowing his fields and raising his crops.

- Jane Woodside is not a pseudonym. She is a folklorist and Research Associate at the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services. Now and Then/21 '-'- -.4- '-. ;- '-" - -'4- '4 Z44 ''- '-4' -:---

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, The Shine Man

I wrote this song about a friend of mine, Lee Allen. He was the shine man at the Majestic Barber ;Mop, in downtown Johnson City, Tenn. In writing this music section for Now and Then,I thought it would be interesting to talk with Lee Allento give more insight on him and the place where this song comes from. I found Lee more than happy to talk about his life,and the art of shining shoes. Lee Allen shined shoes at the Majestic for 15 year;. Before that, Lee worked various other jobs: bottle man, janitor, cafe cook, dishwasher, preacher, cafe manager, and a trucker Lee Alien by the Majestic Barber Shop. Johnson City. Tenn. for the Clinchfield railroad. His first job was shining shoes at the age of 15 in 1925. boys. I was on this endthese Ed: .Lee, what's a spit shine? Ed: How did you learn to shine other boys, they were more Lee: Well, a spit shine isyou wash shoes? experienced than 1 wassee I just the shoes off, wash them off good Lee: I learned watching other boys watch them and learn how. But and put about three coatsrub shine. boys, it was a busy place, it was them three times and every time Ed: What did a shine cost then? busy all the time. Back in the 30s you rub them put extra polish on Lee: Well, down there then, in the shine business was extra- them. Then you put a little water Greenville, South Carolina, a good. and shine real hardand that shinewas 10 cents. I worked for Ed: All kinds of customers. leather w;11 begin to shine. Then a Mr. Auston. He was running the Lee: Oh yeah, yeahoh yeah, this was you dablittle more polish a.id barber shop and he took me in. on Main Street in Greenville, rub them again, back through the Ed: When you were 15? South Carolina. back, and you will get a shine Lee: When I was 15uhhmn. Ed: Do you miss it? that will stick, I mean it will stick Ed: When did you start shining at the Lee: I just miss doing some work. I'd a long time. Majestic? be satisfied doing anything if I Lee: Let's seeI retired in '67 from the was able to. railroad. I started right after that. Ed: Could you make pretty good Ed Snodderly is a musician, songwriter and one of the proprietors of Johnson money then? City's renowned five music club, The Down Horne. Lee: I made a right smart, when I first startedone day down there, I made $44.75in one day. Our Minister's Other Heaven Ed: How many shoes was that? At times he abandoned Lee: Oh, boy, and I was so tired that regimented gliyries and flew daywhen I got honie it didn't with us to other. planets take much for me to go to sleep. tended by angels in space hOmets. That was Christmas time - -the Our guilty pews softened and souls rest of the time I did real zood, lon;:.iardened to threats of eternal fire but it started slacking off, slacking reconsidered a heaven offered off 'til it got down to where I'd as interplanetary adventure, an everlasting makeI'd stay the2a long time Disneyland without the lines. and just make two or three shines We stayed late, the organ a day. blasting like,a rocket ship Law, law I've shined shoes. through the su'ilunaty mill town, Where I was shiningwhere I first gray and silent as a barren planet. started shining shoes, there was a shine stand as long as that couch Randy W. Oakes or longer. There was five of us Now and Then/23 the main topic is what it should is fifty to a hundred revisionsand Review bewriting. that's after it's well along." Harriette Amow would probably not Harriette Arnow echoes the Harriette Simpson Arnow, object if we said that the topic was sentiments of the rewriters. Seen 1908-1986 rewriting since this is what she stresses writing in one of her notebooks and heavily in her remarks on her craft. later at the mechanical typewriter, a film by Herb E. Smith These will be sweet words to English which she much preferred over her 16mm. or videocassette, teachers and they should be regarded husband's electric with its irritating 36 minutes, 1988 as wise words for aspiring young hum, she speaks not about completion Appalshop Films writersand older ones too. John of works but always of "beginnings." O'Hara said that he wrote at a single From the embryonic notebooks which Robert J. Higgs sitting at the typewriter, stories which she stored in a chickenhouse, and were ready to be sent to his editor. which were apparently bank accounts Much of the fiction of Appalachia This was not E e way of Harriette of ideas, as Hawthorne regarded his, deals with the coming and going of Arnow. She was more like Donald she went on to a worksheet, another individuals and families into and out of Davidson who said that there is no beginning, and then on to the first the region. The Great Meadow by such thing as good writing, only good draft, still another beginning. Always Elizabeth Madox Roberts may be rewriting, or Dylan Thomas who she was reshaping and polishing. As regarded as the representative novel of acknowledged that he worked "not by she describes the process, her gravelly settlement of the Kentucky country. It writing but rewriting. Almost any poemvoice slow, deliberate and full of is a masterpiece, and so is Harriette Simpson Amow's The Dollmaker, the definitive novel of the great exodus from Appalachia to the northern cities prior to and during World. War II. If --tr:=.-Z-Z" she wrote nothing else, Arnow would still be a significant American writer. Hence, anything she has to say about fiction is worthy of attention, end in the Appalshop film, Harriette Simpson Amow, 1908-1986, she has plenty to say. Directed by Herb E. Smith, the film, like the person it honors, is unaffected, straightforward and honest. it.k6; Amow herself does most of the Harriette and Harold Arnow take a break from ripping out the front porch of their talking, which is as it should be, and farmhouse in Keno, Kentucky, 1941.

come-forward to say, 'I saw a Gertie.' Still, she is real to me, more so I am certain, than many people I have met: Hence, "I cannotsay of her any more Shortly after publication of for a while last year, but didn't get to than I'can Say of actual people, or Harriette Amow's Dollmaker in see any one except the local even of myself, why she did this or 1954, she wrote this letter to a doctorTom got sick, and we were that. Do we really know? Why did I woman from her hometown of out at Mama's. write about her in the first place; I Bumside, Ky. In it she, ruminates on Nice to know.you have knon never thought she Would bring either On often-discussed point in her reading The Dollmaker, and'it is no fame or money, and neither did much bookthe meaning of the ending. surprise to hear of two people who of anybody else, save a handful of disagree on why Gertie split her blockpeople at Macmillan and my husband Dear Vivian, of wood. Critics and those who wrote who liked her though he didn't think How times does fly. It seems such showed a marked division; the anybody else would. a little while since you were a little bgmbolists as a rule saw Gertie as a I know the behavioral sciences and girlyou used, I think, to roll the failure, giving up the only fine thing child psychology put much stress on baby buggy back during the war remaining to her in order to live, or in motivation, but these sciences are when I lived in Burnside for a little other words complete adjustment to only in their infancy and constantly -while, and you lived'on the street. the alley life that on the surface changing; thepsychology I studied at across from the Christian Church, seemed all shoddy ugliness. The the University of, Louisville is now and it doesn't seem so awfully long humanistsministers, teachers, socialpretty well outdated, for as we learn ago that I knew your aunts at worker's and such quite often saw her more of human kind we learn mostly schoolall I believe older than your as a successa woman come of age what a marvelously complex thing is father. We all used to jump rope a lot and with strength enough to face the any member of the human race, even at noon, and they could jump me world without a symbol. It is true thata simple woman such as Gertie. Two down, though ,I believe they were Gertie is a fictional character, so children can be born into the same younger than I. We were in Burnside completely fictional that no one has family, have to all outward

24/Now and Then 2 7 Arnow. Path in 1936, an effort with her new burden on the truly dedicated writer husband, newspaperman Harold with a family. The old cliche, "A man knowing, and her face radiating Amow, to live off a 150-acre farm on wcrks from sun to sun/but a woman's sincerity and weathered living, she the South Fork of the Cumberland work is never done," held true for her suggests something more than writer, Rivera "terrible disease" she calls the as a woman and a writer. It was something like the vates, the writer- experiment in characteristic low-keyed essential not to cook and write at prophet. We can, rm sure, read about humor, the subsequent move to once, she said in typical folksy fashion, her ideas of writing somewhere, but Detroit, writing The Dollmaker, and for if you do, you ruin both the hearing them from her personally in raising a family. cooking and the writing. How so much h-"orking milieu is something Her views on the setting of her energy emanated from so small a special. Like Henry David Thoreau, novels and her ideas about living in frame was amazing. Simple whom I know she admired, she town and ccuntry are engaging and organization of time tums out to be appears fussy on occasion, even revealing. She was strangely attach2d part of the secret. She wrote in the cranky, always a little out of tune with to both and seemed to altemate quiet hours of the early morning, after the world around her, but always between them throughout her life. She feeding her baby around 3:30 a.m. and observant, always cultivating the dearly loved nature and its manifold before Harold arose around 6:00 or singular voice and vsion as the serious beauty, which she could describe in 7:00 a.m. artist must. crystal prose, but also the The devotion of Harriette Amow to Appropriately, Smith catches the conveniences of the city. In Detroit, her craft as pictured is inspirational. subject at turning points in her life, she says, "it was so much better to get "I've given about everything to writing," "beginnings," Amow might say. Her water by turning a faucet than by she told me after one of her lectures first job as a teacher in a one-room going down to that spring and here. That is not quite true as the film school in Pulaski County was a wonclaring if you would encounter shows. She gave much to her family beginning. The daughter of two another snake." Obviously, this is not and was always willing to share her teachers, she tried teaching in the voice of Gertie Nevels, the hardy insight with those wanting to grow and Louisville, which didn't work out since heroine of Dollmaker. What is thus learn. In Harriette Simpson Arnow, the principal "spied on" her and the underscored in the contrast is the 1908-1986, she is still sharing her children knew "mean tricks." From creative imagination of.the artist which remarkable beginnings. Louisville she went to Cincinnati where in her life was not sufficiently she worked as a waitress and devoted recognized, too many people assuming ==I ==I ==I herself to writing, publishing her first that Dollmaker was largely story with Southern Review, a autobiographical. Robert J. Higgs co-edited (with beginning that took her on a One of the biggest problems for Ambrose Manning) Voices From distinguished career in her true calling. Harriette Amow was finding the time the Hills, an anthology of There were other beginnings, the to think and to write and rewrite. WhatAppalachian literature. He teaches publication of her f:rst novel, Mountain comes through powerfully is the English at ETSU. he realized his paintings were not andbitterly she had realized that some at had never-been much good.) I don't school would have understood think Gertie had-any illusions about Reuben, and taken Cassie as Cassie her artistic ability;-after all shehad was without trying to change her; she appearances the same environment displayed something more than talent had learned cc rather felt enough of and become people who differ in in carving the outlines of the figure human compassion and -most aspects of their lives. and the hands. True, she-needed the understanding after reaching the city, Thus; to give any black and white wood for dolls, but the family was that she could split the block of answer as -to exactly why Gertie tplit not starving, not_yet; she might have wood, knowing the things she had her wood a_ n untruthful- thing got more laundry wodc or have tried wanted in the face were about her in to do;-boolcsanci their Characters for heavy cleaning, but instead in the world. However, if you don't exist onIV to.their readers, and the order to give-the family a bit more agree with all this, don't feel badly; reader. has -the right,to interpret any .security,:,she chose,.after deliberation, many saw matters in an entirely tale at:hi:sees fit.. Howe_ I-always, to sacrifice the figure. It hurt, and it 'different light. 'felt that eertie split her wood was a sacrifice in a sense made for because,..-;tie really didn't need it any all the things she hated such as the- Sincerely, mores4:was not an act of despair. Icy Heart: You-can stop there;nd- (my husband many years ago in, bewail her fate as,many have done, ChicagOluievian.artistwho could and hate modem civilization, and 2tipthy2:747 "4101/ nottelthit itaintings-andin a-fit of think of Gertie as its victim, losing atijeritieked :them -in -a- pile- and -home in the countrychildren, and buined them all;:niy feelings on her last.thing, the block of wood, all ==I hearittg*theStOty,was the-man to the monster. I prefer, however, to turned his paintings, not because he go a step-further; her life in the Avis dtiring,the depression, country under her mother had never given:tithe:and-money. for materials been too happy; she had leamed that © Estate of Harriette Simpson thafyieldei-hir nothing, but because the alley was indeed a big place; Amow 1988

Now and Then/25 Review

Black Coal Miners in America

by Ronald L. Lewis The University Press of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky 1985 $25.55 (hardcover)

G.E. Neasman and Larry Mayes 4-.74k732' - "

The full story of the Black peoples' gifts to America is yet to be told. ManyMiner and his family at subsidiary company store in McDowell County, West distinguished Black writers, including Virginia, August, 1946. P to by Russell Lee the scholarly and gifted W.E.B. DuBois, wrote extensively during the form of convict leasing. The coal combined to reduce the mine labor first half of the century about the role operators exploited the Black miners in force. As the demand for labor began of Blacks in developing America; order to guarantee their profits. to decline, discrimination against however, Black achievements were The pattern of race relations in the Blacks resulted in their being often excluded from history books Northern coalfields was different from disproportionately affected by the written largOly by white historians. No those in the South. Wages were higher attempt to modernize the mine doubt most people in America today, in the North because of the strength of industry. As operators replaced miners white as well as Black, have little the miners' labor union, which was with machines, Blacks were nearly knowledge of the significant role traditionally white. The Black miners eliminated from the mine labor force. Blacks played in building this country. were utilized to a large extent as scabs Ronald L Lewis' Black Coal Miners Dr. Ronald L Lewis has helped correctduring labor conflicts. The established in America is a welcome addition to this problem by providing an account white miners used all means at their the sparse literature that documents of a slice of Black history. disposal in order to protect their jobs the tole of Blacks in fashioning the Dr. Lewis provides an insightful and to prevent Blacks from entering face of American industry. His analysis of the role of the Black labor their communities: chronicle of Black miners adds another force in the American coal industry. According to the author, Central chapter to the history of Black The author examines the distinctive Appalachia attracted more Blacks than Americans. To those who want to pattems of race relations that prevailedany region in the nation because know more about Black contributions in the mines from 1780 to 1980. In Blacks found equal pay for equal work to America, this book offers a glimpse the process, Lewis weaves a detailed throughout the area coalfields. Here through the chronicle of one thread of historical account of the importance of operators maintained control over their Black experience. The book is Black labor in development of workers through a policy of "judicious informative and good reading. America's coal industry. mixture," enabling the operators to The history of Black miners in conquer labor by offering equal = = 1 = 1 America reaches back to slavery and opportunity to all miners while, exist,...i in both South and North. As concomitantly, instituting repression the coal industry expanded in the against all those, regardless of race, G.E. Neasman is Director of Human South during the antebellum period, who did not accept complete Resources at East Tennessee State slaves were deploy .d in the mines as subservience to management. University. A native of Florida, he has in other Southem industries. Although Lewis concludes his analysis of the worked in Mississippi state slavery was abolished with the Black coal miners' experience with an government. Emancipation Proclamation, vestiges ofoutline of the forces which nearly forced Black labor continued in the eradicated Blacks from the coal Larry Mayes is a planner/evaluator coal industry. The system utilized tens industry. The author posits that with the Office of Human Resources at of thousands of Black convicts in the market and technological forces ETSU. 26/Now and Then codes to meet contract obligations for dramatic Banner Mine explosion raised Review the supply of a reliable and cheap anew questions in the press and source of labor? All of these questions, legislative halls about the convict lease Ward and Rogers make clear, could system. Much of Ward ani Rogers' most often have been answered with a thoroughly researched monograph Convicts, Coal, and the strong affirmative. deals with mining company attempts Banner Mine Tragedy If two conditions had been met, an to allay fears on the issue of safety in by Robert David Ward and affirmative response to the first of the mines, on mining inspections and William Warren Rogers these questions would not, in itself, cover-ups, on parliamentary The University of Alabama Press, indicate a morally reprehensible policy. maneuvering and lobbying preparatory Tuscaloosa and London, 1987 These conditions would have been, of to new mining regulations and course, a reasonable and just penal commissions and various positions on Jim Odom code, fairly applied, and work places mine safety taken by area newspapers. which were not life-threatening or Since the convict labor system itself Because of its subject matter, damaging to the convicts' health. was still linked to matters of social Convicts, Coal, and the Banner Mine Despite periodic scandals and calls control of Blacks, the political Tragedyis a troubling work. It for changes in a system that subjected establishment in 1911 was not concerns a mining disaster in 1911 hapless Blacks to direct exploitation in prepared to react to the disaster at the near Birmingham, Ala., which killed work places that contemporary medicalBanner Mine by destroying or even 129' workers, most of whom were reports indicated to be "the vilest significantly modifying the convict unskilled Black convicts. scenes of filth, disease and cruelty," labor system; the legislature did, Since the creation of its prison the system endured because it was however, adopt a new mine safety systcrn in the early 1840s, Alabama profitable and because it continued to code. had attempted to run its penal function as a means of social control The passage of the new code in institution for profit; by the late 1840s, in a racist society. 1911 did not mean, of course, that the state had hit upon the expedient of The large number of deaths in the working in coal mines thereafter was leasing the operation of the prison to reasonably safe. Infrequent mining the highest bidder who then worked inspections, the deliberate overlooking Jim Odom admits to having strong. the convicts at the state's facility in of infractions, the outright venality on feelings. about Alabama coal mines various enterprises, sometimes the part of safety inspectors, and the for personatreasons: agriculture, sometimes manufacturing. disinclination of owners to spend Ward and Rogers indicate4hat coal money on safety were some of the After the Civil War, various state miners routinely clammed that the governments, including Alabama's, reasons the legislation was more minesin the-WarriorFieldwere very symbolic than effective. modified their penal codes with what gaseous;_from family experience I the authors describe as "those know that-the mines in the kirge coal One of the disappointments of the provisions of social restraint and field northwest of Birmingham Were Ward and Rogers book is that very economic discipline remembered as the not only unusually gaseous but also little information is given about the Black Codes." To the degree that they that the miningrlegislapori of -1911 victims of the disaster. These generally regulated Black economic and social proved woefully inadequate to the careful historians indicate by way of activity in a manner satisfactory to task of insuring safety for the miners., disclaimer in the introduction that their whites who resented bitterly the My own grandfather, as work isnotintended to be a history of abolition of slavery, the Black Codes superintendent for a mine in this the convict leasing system. They appeared to many people outside the same area, led a party into the specifically state that "the book is South as a not-so-well-concealed effort Sayreton #2 Mine in 4943 to rescue about the men who worked to reinstitute slavery in all but name. miners after an explosion; a second involuntarily in the Banner Coal Mine." To be blunt, the book is In the post-Reconstruction period, exploSion killed him and -other notabout Bourbon Democratic governors not members of the rescue party. The these men, except incidentally. Rather, it is primarily about the pathetic only leased the use of convicts to bring mine owners (Republic Steel) claimed revenue to the state but generally in 1943 what the Pratt Company did_ political maneuverings following a leased the convicts for work outside in the Banner Mine accident in 1911, mining accident that claimed the lives the penitentiary, particularly in mining, that a miner's carelessness 1;4, of these involuntary miners. No doubt timber or textile industries. caused that accident. Whether' that these scholars are correct in their Several questions naturally arise was the case in 1943 or in 1911-is assessment that "the full story of the concerning the reasons local and state open -to question; shortly before the convicts cannot be told because governments used the convict leasing explosion that -cost him his life, my biographical information on them is almost nonexistent." Since that is system. Did govemments at various grandfather hadi,britten- to his son in levels use this system primarily to save ,military_service in Iceland that he was apparently the case, one wonders why money that they would otherwise very concerned about safety in the they promised what they could not spend managing felons and mines because of gas;- he told other deliver. misdemeanants? Did they use their members of the family at the same This valuable piece of research penal codes to insure a source of timethat his requests for an would have been strengthened had revenue in order to keep other taxes improved ventilation system were Ward and Rogers achieved throughout low? Did they collude with industrial or ignored by the owners. the work the very clear, direct and mining interests to apply the penal eloquent prose style with which they 30 Now and Then/27 dilemma. Its chief protagonists are a Review pacifist ex-Wobbly labor organizer, seemingly an amalgamation of Tom concluded their study. Calling the Joad's friend Preacher Casey, Harry system of convict leasing "the Black Sims, Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill, Code of the New South" which "servedwho dies in an idealistic attempt to government and industry to the great unite the miners of Matewan without reward of both," they conclude that the resorting to violence, and Danny, a system, "in the name of dealing with young miner and budding preacher criminals, created and fostered the use who somehow survives the massacre of forced labor," and that "it functionedand goes on to devote himself to fully as muchand sometimes making the union a reality.Matewan is moreto supply the requisite cheap not just history. It is also an attempt to labor to favored interests as it did to personalize ideology and philosophy: handle criminals." If all the movie is about is who got shot and who didn't, the history ends thereit o 11 doesn't inform anything we do today. But Jim Odoni, a natiue of Birmingham, people still go underground to mine coal, Ala., teaches history at ETSU. people with power still pit races and ethnic groups against each other to keep = CI them from taking control of their own lives, religion is still used for oppression as often as liberation. The last shot in the Thinking In Pictures: movie is not the dead Baldwins on the street but Danny walking back into the The Making of the mine, his voice as an old man telling us Film Matewan how he went on to work for the things J o e Kenehan stood for . . . we have seen '1- by John Say les only a piece of an ongoing battle. Houghton Mifflin, Thefilm Matewanoperates on many Boston, Massachusetts 1987 levels. ReadingThinking In Pictures $9.95 (paperback) makes one realize how much we take and still coming up with results that for granted when viewing a film, how are artistically, technically and Richard Blaustein easy it is to pick up on flaws and financially rewarding. imperfections in the work of others By modem standards,Matewan is Thinking In Pictures isan instructive and how hard it actually is to bring considered a low-budget film. Sayles analysis by a creative artist of the together all of the elements which had seven weeks and just under four process of conceptualizing and draw us into a work of narrative art. million dollars to realize a project realizing a major film project. A novelist tumed filmmaker, Sayles which had taken years of arduous Matewan, which opened in 1987 is acutely aware of the possibilities and effort by his producers to finance. and received enthusiastic reviews, is a limitations of various narrative media: Crewing and sustaining positive romantic yet emotionally authentic Fiction relies more on the imagination of emotional investment in a collective interpretation of an actual Appalachian the reader, while movies often seem to be project is the basis of Sayles' coalfield gun battle that occurred in imagination made solid. We do some of philosophy of leadership. Like Eliot 1920. Inspired by the vivid our understanding straight from the gut, Wigginton, he recognizes that and if we can be made to feel the damp recollections of elderl.y West Virginia and cold of the mine shaft, feel the alienation is the true enemy of miners, writer/director John Say les weight of the pick, breathe the dust-thick excellence and that involvement in used the oral history of the Matewan air, were going to have more of a handle meaningful work can be one of life's Massacre as his point of departure in on a coal miner and his feelings than we greatest pleasures: could get just from reading and thinking. You work that hard for that long with exploring broader themes of tension Thinking in pictures is a way to inhabit people and the production isn't just what and conflict in American society: the bodies of characters as well as their you do for a living, it become your life, All the elements and principles involved minds. Trying to bring those pictures, the people working with you become your seemed basic to the idea of what those feelings to other people. is a lot of community. The strangest and nicest America has become and what it should what movie-making is all cuyout. thing during shooting was that even be. Individualism versus collectivism, the There are obvious reasons why though all of us were neck-deep in the personal and political legacy of racism, technical demands of making the movie, the immigrant dream and the reality Thinkingln Picturesshould be of of creating the illusions that would which greeted it, monopoly capitalism at interest to Appalachianists, eventually tell the story, the story would its most extreme versus American filmmakers, folklorists and other populism at its most violent, plus a sometimes pull us out of all that and students of the narrative arts. It also make us pay attention and make us think lawman with two guns strapped on walking to the center of town to face a concerns the role of the creative leader about what had brought us all together. bunch of armed enforcerswhat more in any complex collective enterprise. A Thoughtful, lucid and unpretentious, could you ask for in a story? director, particularly an independent Thinking In Pictures is not justabout Strongly evocative of Steinbeck's director like John Sayles, is concerned making a movie; it's really about Grapesof Wrath,the script of with resolving the real and the ideal: working, thinking and growing. Matewan, which is printed in the book, makinc effective use of limited Worthwhile reading. encapsulates what Sayles perceives as resources, knowing how to make the essence of the ongoing American practical plans, adapting to changes 28/NOw and Then 3.1. dangerous hours in the mine and the life, Storming Heaven examines some Review salary that left most miners unable to of the difficult decisions that the provide for their families' needs, coming of the coal industry forced the Rondal becomes convinced that the people of Appalachia to make. For only hope of improving the miners' lot Miles Bishop, who hates farming, the Storming Heaven is the union. Even after he witnesses choice is easy: he is delighted to ally by Denise Giardina the murder of a union organizer himself with the Boston mine owners W.W. Norton & Company thrown alive into a blazing fumace as who recruit him to manage their mines. New York, 1987 a lesson to all who would support the But increasingly Miles realizes that $16.95 (hardcover) union, Rondal remains committed to allegiance to the owners involves him the establishment of that union. inevitably in the crimes of exploitation Laurie Lindberg Another of the book's narrators, and violence that his employers Carrie Bishop, has her own mission: tocommit against the people. For Albion High on the list of hazardous relieve suffering and preserve life. Half Freeman, a minister, the choice is occupations is that of the coal miner. convinced that her scomful father was never easy; he believes in charity and Anyone who has worked in a mine canright when he predicted that she was a non-violence, but his commitment to give numerous chilling examples of the girl too ugly and stubborn and freedom and justice for the workers dangers faced every day. Ironically, independent ever to marry, Carrie leads him into situations where those who have dared to claim the grows into a delightfully violence seems the only recourse. Even right to safer working conditions and unconventional woman who makes Carrie Bishop, whose vocation is benefits appropriate to the risks good use of her intelligence, common healing, finds herself wielding a inherent in the job have found sense and compassion through her machine gun in a desperate effort to themselves facing yet another deadly chosen profession of nursing. Although save the striking miners from slaughter hazardthe hostility of mine owners other mountain folk migrate thankfully at the hands of the mine owners' hired and operators. to the cities, Carrie says, "I have gunhands. In her novel Storming Heaven, travelled outside the mountains, but Storming Heaven is a book about Denise Giardina illuminates a little- never lived apart from them. ...Therethe politics of land ownership, about known chapter in history, the conflict is enough to study in these hills to last the conflict between rich and poor, between miners and mine owners that a lifetime." No sooner does Carrie about the human longing for love and culminated in the Battle of Blair recognize the justice of the miners' justice and freedom. It's a war story Mountain in 1921. Although reared cause than she makes that cause her and a love story. It's a compelling look and educated in West Virginia, own. at memorable characters caught up in Giardina had never heard of that Possibly because she herself lived as a life-and-death struggle, the results of battle, which she discovered had a child in a West Virginia coal camp, which can be seen today. "Progress," involved 10,000 miners pitted against Giardina is particularly sensitive to the claims Rondal Lloyd, "is always at not only the mine owners and their unusual challenges faced by the somebody's expense." Denise mercenaries, but also against the inhabitants of the camps. She tells us Giardina's novel shows quite clearly at federal government itself, which of Vemie Lloyd, who cultivated flower whose expense the "progress" brought provided bombs, guns and poison gas boxes filled with red and white about by the coming of coal to to subdue the strikers. Giardina's petunias, and every day "splashed the Appalachia was achieved, and it raises research for the book was careful and petals with water and gently wiped poignant questions about the ulitmate extensive, and the major events of the them clean with a dry cloth"; of the value of such progress. novel are based firmly on documented typhoid which spread rapidly among C=I C:1 0 evidence. the residents of the camp; and of a Despite its basis in fact, the book diet consisting mainly of beans, gravy Laurie Lindberg is a professor of doesn't read like a history, nor even and combread. English and teacher of Appalachian like most historical novels, because its Besides vividly depicting a way of literature at Pikeville College, Ky. author wisely chose to narrate the story in the voices of her major Diamond Jenny #5 Mistress Mine chr.racters. Reading Storming Heaven is like listening to four people one He spends his day-nights Tucked away, deep inside. might have known, people talking not Moving within her darkness. Her hold on our lives to an audience, or even to each other, She, rounded and beautiful, Is complete. but 'n themselves. The voices of these Older than memory, My days and nights are filled charat. lrs are unselfconscious, natural, Larger than our lives, With waiting, authentit. And Giardina has done a Dangerously moist And the fear wonderful ju --nturing the dialect And deep, She may someday choose of Appalachia. Like all women keeps her Not to return him At the heart of the novel is Clabe secrets, To me. Lloyd's boy Rondal, who learns early Her treasure about the mining life when he must Jane I-licks leave school at age 10 to work alongside his daddy in the mines. Jane Hicks writes poetry and teaches at Dobyns-Behnett High School in Experiencing firsthand the long, Kingsport, Tenn. 32 Now and Then/29. and women in the South. Mill owners' attempts to ftilfill the Review Part 1 covers the period from tenets of scientific management led 18804920 and centers or: the them to cut wages and demand development of the cotton mill world. increased productivity ("stretchout") Part 2 focuses on the period from from the mill hands. Such tactics, or Like A Family. The 1920-35, a time when the textile "hard rules" as the authors refer to Making of a Southern industry underwent many changes, them, led to a wave of strikes in 1929. especially those involving the shift to Defeat in the strikes and the ensuing Cotton Mill World "scientific management" inspired by theDepression led to further wage cuts by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Jameswork of Frederick Taylor and and "stretching out the stretchout." De loudis, Robert Korstad, Mary stimulated by the post-World War I When it became apparent that the Murphy, Lu Ann Jones and textile recession. The book ends with National Recovery Administration and Christopher B. Daly. the General Textile Strike of 1934 its textile code were not going to University of North Carolina Press,which signalled the disintegration of prevent wage cuts and stretch out Chapel Hill, 1987 the mill village world. from "code-chiseling" owners, workers $34.95 (cloth) $12.95 (paper) The family metaphor is central to theorganized into unions and struck again book. Workers used the metaphor to in the 1934 General Textile Strike. But Marie Tedesco describe village life and the the strike ended in defeat and in relationships of workers to one disillusionment with both unions and The cotton mill people was about the another. Within this familial world the govemment. lowest class of people there. They called roles of women and children were In the wake of further New Deal them linthead. ... Well, cotton mill particularly important, even though legislation which diminished the people didn't worry about it, they were these roles followed a sexual division South's competitive (low-wage) the best people in the world. ... They love to do things for people. And they of labor based on hierarchies of sex advantage, the company mill town lost don't take nothing off of people. People and age common on the farm and in its advantage. Such companies as come and want to give them a dirty der!, mills established elsewhere. Women Burlington Mills began selling their they don't take it. They just fight for were weavers and spinners who were villages. As the authors emphasize, theirself. many workers had ambivalent feelings George Shea, former mill worker expected to be patient and carefulas Charlotte, North Carolina they were in the domestic sphere. about the dismantling of the company Children were at the bottom of the towns. One retired worker, for Cotton mill workers saw themselves hierarchy and performed the most example, lamented that "People misses as a group apart.Like a Familydetails menial tasks. Men, supposedly strong a lot by not having community ... and analyzes mill and community life and authoritative, performed jobs that now you're scattered. You work maybe in the Piedmont region of the South. were "heavy" or involved supervision. one place, then work way out yonder, Relying extensively on interviews of The familial world of the mill was a and you don't get close to nobody." workers conducted by members of the white world which reflected the In the end the familial world of the Southern Oral History Program at the segregation of Southem society. Blacksmill and village was broken apart by University of North Carolina at Chapel were excluded from production jobs, economic forces, the Southem mill Hill, the book tells the workers' story even though in the antebellum South owner's desire for continued high from their own perspective. In many slaves had worked in the spinning and profits being foremost among these respects, as the authors explain in the weaving rooms. Black males performedforces. Retired workers looked back at preface, this work represents a only the heaviest and dirtiest work. their lives in the mills with mixed conscious effort to extend the 1940s They moved bales of cotton or worked feelings. They had many memories work of such regional sociologists as in the picker room. Black females, that were good ones. But many Harriet L. Herring, Jennings J. Rhyne, however, were almost entirely excluded millhands perhaps agreed with George Liston Pope and John Kenneth from the mill. Occasionally they might Dyer, who in summarizing his life in Moreland. be found cleaning bathrooms and the mills of Charlotte had this to say: The book also re-examines the mopping floors. The corporations take advantage of people. They can do it because they can. disparaging portrait of the mill worker Family relations dominated village That's the reason they do it, they can drawn by Wilbur Cash in his influential life. Families recruited kin to work in and they get away with it. It say "Justice 1941 work,The Mind of the South. the mill. Sharing and mutual aid for All," and it ain't justice for all. It's Cash saw the mill worker as a "pitiableamong families characterized life. justice for some. .. The man's got money, he can get what he wants, the social type, stunted by poverty and But all was not rosy. Frequently man ain't got it can't do nothing. The isolation."Like a Familymakes it clear men, used to being their own bosses, man's got money, got power. That's that millhands were not pathetic, resented subjecting themselves to the abourall I have to say. passive creatures, but rather were authonty of foremen and mill owners. resilient, proud people who actively Chafing at being dominated, men in sought to improve their lives. tum tried to dominate their wives and oco Like a Family isat once both children. Women, for their part, took analytical and compassionate. The on the double burden of mill work and book cuts across traditional domestic work. It's no surprise, then, Marie Tedesco is public service disciplinary lines and can be read with that many mill womenlike their rural archivist at ETSC"s Archivesof profit and enjoyment by those ancestorslooked with ambivalence to Appalachiaand has writtenaboutthe interested in the working class, textiles marriage and family. rayon plants in Elizabethton, Te 7. 30/Now and Then 3 3 Frontier Nursing Review Service Headwaters television is Appalshop's broadcast television directed by Anne Johnson division, producing seven half-hour programs each year on the culture and social concerns of Appalachia and rural America. Jo Ann Crawford Programs have been shown on public TV in the region andare available on various video formats. They are all in color,run This show offers a delightful portrait 28:30 minutes and cost $150 each. Two of the 13 shows in the of Mary Breckinridge's Frontier Nursing series are reviewed here. Service as it was in its infancy. The Mud Creek Clinic Appalachians, especially Elinor video affords, a look into the history of Graham, M.D., were the actualizing the health care agency and, equally directed by Anne Johnson force of the clinic; without them it interesting, a pictorial history of the would have remained a dream of the people and culture of rural Eastem Mary Swaykus impoverished local people. Kentucky during the early 20th Graham had been a VISTA worker century. Mud Creek Clinic tells the story of in the area in the 1960s. She was so Included are excerpts from the the Mud Creek Health Project, as it impressed by the health needs that sheoriginal documentary, "The Forgotten was originally known, a health care entered medical school. Then, with herFrontier" filmed in 1929 by Mary -facility which has existed since 1972 husband James Squire, M.D., she Breckinridge's cousin, Marvin to serve the people living in the retumed to organize and begin the Breckinridge. Ms. Breckinridge narrates southern end of Floyd County, Ky. clinic. When I came in 1975, the Drs. these portions, describing the The film is cast in a retrospective Graham-Squire were being paid difficulties encountered during the year mode, opening at the groundbreaking $10,000 each to provide health care atspent making the documentary: of the clinic facility in 1983, then the clinic, run a pediatric clinic part- crossing flood-swollen rivers, climbing looking back to trace the projecfg time, and take care of those patients treacherous mountain terrain on history. who needed admission to the hospital. horseback and filming actual childbirth The filmmakers interview people From the clinic's inception until at leastscenes in the cabins of mountain who live on the creek, especially the 1980, all the professional health care people. old pioneers who organized to fight for staff were nonAppalachians. It was In all instances, the film portrays the available, affordable health care. Their only because of their presence and people of this rural community as they anecdotes and the, narration give a sacrifice that Mud Creek Clinic becamewent about life, and the role of history of the effect a determined few and remained more than a wish. They Frontier Nursing Service as it had when they applied union kept it operating and growing despite supported that life. Though some organizing techniques, including the infighting and power struggles portions of the film are reenactments, picketing, to pressure self-serving local which marked the local the people of the community served as and state officials into equitable political/community board structure. "actors" for the original documentary. distribution of federal funds. The The idea of presenting this television Included is an interview with one of result, as one narrator put it, series about the region is laudableit the original nurses of the Frontier "demonstrated what health care as a provides both perspective on what Nursing Service who also "starred" in right would look like." battles have been waged and how Marvin Breckinridge's film. She reflects Featured in the film is Eula Hall, a much more needs to be done. The on her experiences with the people in hillbilly woman who grew up in hard series would be stronger if an honest r,ZIA times and who was determined to have story were told. better for her neighbors and her family. Eula, as the film relates, did not live on =:=3 I=1 the creek all her life but traveled up North and saw that people lived differently and had rights. Although Mary Swaykus, M.D., is an Assistant she rejected the different way of life Professor of Family Medicine at the and returned to her mountains, she Kingsport Family Practice Center. She retumed with a growing conviction of was a physician at the Mud Creek her and her neighbors' rights to self Health Project from 1975-1977. determination, their right to receive the social benefits due them, and their right to health care. Her determination, hard work and dedication is portrayed as the moving force behind many of the social advancements in the area, specifically the existence of the Mud Creek Clinic. Notably absent from the film is any t,e.ltft. mention of the -work, dedication and Mary Breckinridge, founder of the II. sacrifices made by "outsiders." Non- Frontier Nursing Service. 34 Now and Then/31 Review 111, 'Sow ,9111. the community and with Mary Breckinridge. The videotape does not include demographic data, founding date or stated goals of the Frontier Nursing Service. However, the reality of the goals was made alive and obvious by the very nature of the film. The absence of the demographic data was more than offset as I observed the Kingsport, Tennessee: The Great Depression and World Frontier Nurses in action and War II brought the same hardships interaction with the community they A Planned American Americans of all kinds suffered, but served. City the city itself came out of the war As I viewed this filmed history, I stronger than ever. It was in the late thought of other health care programs by Margaret Ripley Wolfe 1940s and 1950s that the city reached in rural Eastern Kentucky. As a University of Kentucky Press, its peak. Business boomed, the nursing student at Berea College, I Lexington, Kentucky 1987 population grew rapidly, development participated in a similar program and $24.00 (hardcover) raced ahead, and Kingsporters gained insight into the reasons for confidently considered themselves the success or failure of such programs. Edward L. Ayers leaders of the TriCity area. But it was Often, the basic goals were the same also then that the seeds of Kingsport's or similar to those of Mary If they recognize the name at all, decline were sown. City leaders, like Breckinridge: to improve health outsiders recognize Kingsport only as their counterparts all over America, ,awareness and health care practices. one of the TriCities tucked into the allowed virtually unrestricted growth Obviously, Mary Breckinridge was northeastern comer of Tennessee. But along Kingsport's Golden Mile. East successful. The Frontier Nursing for decades Kingsport seemed set Stone Drive, the focus of much of this Service exists today with offices in apart, the beneficiary of a special development, is no longer a mile, nor Hyden, Ky., and clinics in surrounding destiny. The small city had been is it golden; rather it is a driver's counties. Statistics I have gathered planned frorn the ground up near the nightmare and a magnet pulling indicate that health care there has tum of the century by a small band of business away from the original been improved. For example, the Northern and Southem' businessmen. downtown area. That downtown, as matemal and infant mortality rates Those men had attempted to build late as the 1960s a thriving, attractive have been significantly reduced in the what residents used to call "the model and distinct reminder of the best of the population served by the Frontier city," a mixture of balanced industry, city's heritage, is now given over Nursing Service. enlightened business, good housing, largely to fumiture stores and parking The original and continued success organized recreation and city planning. spaces. The mall has become the of FNS is due to respect for the They hoped to offer the residents of place in town where one is most likely culture and its peopleas opposed to the Holston Valley and the surroundingto meet friends and neighbors. In all of programs entering the rural community hillsides the opportunity for good this, of course, Kingsport is not alone. to teach "those" people or to alter theirwages and to offer factory owners an The difference was that Kingsport had culture. Mutual learning was "Anglo-Saxon" work force not likely to a chance to be something better and encouraged and anticipated. The strike or cause trouble. Both got what gave it away. nurses on the videotape spoke as oftenthey wantedat least for a while. Margaret Ripley Wolfe, a native and of what they had gained as what they The 1910s and 1920s saw the town resident of the Kingsport area as well had given. grow rapidly into a small city, an eager as a professional historian, tells this This videotape will be of special participant in all the changes of those story well. While the first part of the interest to nursing students or nurses, heady years. The founding fathers book is a relatively straightforward especially those with an interest in fleshed out their plan, and hospitals, account of the city's origins, the latter public health or midwifery. Persons department- stores and movie houses parts are fired with passion and interested in establishing health care attracted more and more people to controlled indignation. The hope that programs in various cultural settings Kingsport. A key event in the town's Kingsport can regain its special and might also gain insight. To those of us history occurred in the early twenties, unique destiny seems to smolder who hold a special pride in our when Kingsport managed to attract beneath the surface, and that is a hope heritage, this film offers pictures from Eastman Kodak to its ranks of that anyone who cares about the the past. industries. The city then possessed model city cannot help but share. factories to produce not only chemicals, but also cement, paper and 1==I 1==I ==I Jo AnnCrawford isa'nurse at the books. Wealthier residents began to Veterans Administration Medical adopt the trappings of affluent Edward L. Ayers is associate professor Center at Mountain Home, Tenn. She America, and elite subdivisions and ofhistory atthe University of Virginia, has had work published in nursing golf courses grew in the mountainous where he teaches Southern history. He education journals. setting. grew up in Kingsport. 32/Now and Then 3 5 Hooking Past To Futurewith Rugs Pauline B. Cheek

In the 1920s Belvia Ramsey of The income from Madison county, N.C., acquired a rug- rug making allowed hooking machines Cutting up long an improved standard johns, the young bride made rugs that of living. Rug hooker she bartered for baby clothes in nearbyJakie Robinson Bailey Asheville. Ten years later, Ramsey wasexplains, "Now, this working full-time as an independent house didn't have no rug broker, supplying craftspeople in bathroom or the mountains with materials and electricity. We'd hauling finished rugs to Asheville borrow money from branches of New York-based rug the FHA when we got wholesalers. "I handled a payroll that water and other averaged from $80,000 to $100,000 a improvements, and year," remembered Mrs. Ramsey. "Thatwe'd pay it back $100 was big business for Madison County." a yearall with rug Hooking rugs has been a way of money." recycling worn-out clothing since Locally-owned colonial days. Narrow cloth strips or factories sprang up heavy yarn were worked through a and coexisted with burlap backing with a metal hook. the cottage industry. Later a hinged wooden tool made the The Madison Rug work easier. Shop employed 100 Chi ren cutting sock tops for hooked rug., Mars Hill, In the 1920s, hand-hooked rugs people and helped to North Carolina. Photo by Doris Ullmann in the 1930s. enjoyed a renaissance as part of an make Mars Hill, N.C., Appalachian folk crafts revival. "Law, the center of the hand-hooked rug than 200 people who had been a part they were making little cotton rugs industry in the 1930s. As many as of the rug industry. This project has back up every holler," remembered one 10,000 finished rugs a week were resulted in a permanent exhibit at Mars of my informants. Enterprising shipped out by truck and train to Hill College's Rural Life Museum and a craftswomen recruited girls from the department stores and wholesalers. booklet entitledHooking Past to communityand their own During the Depression rug money Future by Hand.My oral history childrento cut off sock tops, dye came to mean survival. Pansy Edwards project also helped to reawaken yarn and hook. Husbands constructed Arrowood, a former employee of the interest and scores of area people have rug frames and trucked rugs to Madison Rug Shop, said, "If it hadn't taken up the craft again. distributors or to roadside stands. been for that Rug shop, I don't know Distribution and marketing, however, A three by five foot rug would bring what we'd a-done. There was no place are problems. As veteran rug hooker about 50 cents. By putting in eight to else around here to work." Mrs. Noble Brackens observes, "If we 10 hour days, families could earn as By the 1940s business was so brisk just had a market, we could supply much as $100 a week. that New York firms opened their own thousands (of rugs) to big department ' factories in Asheville, a development stores. It would be the best thing that that contributed to the demise of the could happen for this county." -,14e Madison Rug Shop in 1942. Soon, .4.9Zr.,-.),:f; osr/, however, the larger concerns were f= ;.* having difficulties because of changes in wage/hour and child labor laws. Long time Mars Hill, N.C., resident Manufacturers turned to the less Pauline Cheek is currently enrolled in restrictive environment of Puerto Rico. the Peace and Justice Program at the The rug hooking industry all but Earlham School of Religion in disappeared in Western North Richmond, Ind. Carolina. co1:=:=1 But like any endeavor which fi becomes a warp-thread in the life of a Alice Anthony (photo page 19) community, rug hooking did not recently graduated with an M.F.A. ' ll Sisters Noble Brackens and Bettydisappear from the memories of those from ETSU. She is a part time Shelton hook a rug on their front porch, who had been involved with it. In the instructor and is building her color 1987. past 10 wears I have talked to more portfolio. 36 Now, and Then/33 The Genie Newels Appalachian Workout

COAL LUMP People aren't supposed to be lying around on the floor anyway. AND GRIND Builds intercostals, obliques, groin

PULLING and do WEEDS it again MUSIC: Stretches Tennessee Erni^ Ford spine, Sixteen Tons builds biceps and eliminates dandelions MUSIC: Roll Me Over in the Clover

FETCH AND CARRY Walk fast and balance BUTTER BURN your bucket with a dumbbell. Builds We build biceps the cardiovascular system, old fashioned way-- works out all major we churn it! muscle groups MUSIC: Buck Owens MUSIC: Elvis Presley I've Got a Tiger by the Tail Milkcow Blues Boogie Wear a fancy leotard for inspiration

Tiger 'tard by K-Mart 3 34/Now and Then r YOU CAN WORK OUT EVERY DAY,NO MATTER WHAT

WATER 'ROBIC Builds heart at id soul WAIST TWISTS MUSIC: Shall We Gather at the River? Builds deltoids, triceps, solidarity MUSIC: Florence ReeceWhich Side Are You On? if HEAD ROLLS As youtalke your cough medicine Cool down exercise, for loosening up MUSIC: Merle HaggardThe Bottle Let Me Down

seeds SHOULDER -TWISTS , 0 SeO.,,°o THE Builds deltoids, ,(out \(eeR PLOUGH N° triceps, conditions Stretches soil vertebrae and hamstrings

MUSIC: MUSIC: Carol .1: King Young ! Feel the Rascals Earth Move Groovin'

Art by Tony Feathers with copy assistance from Jo Carson andPat Arnow Tony Feather teaches art in Greene County, Tenn.

C Now and Then/35 The Runner

On the cellar steps Now I'm the runner. I was telephone listener My grandmother intthe cellar watching rainbows roll into cold water. magic fingers slip steaming clothes White Suds turned gray and vanished. through-the wringer. Clean wash roiled into a bushel. I carry the ready busheLto my mother, pass pins race the emptj-..fo the basement Then - clothes sorter for the next load cotton mounds covered the floor, crawling through the wringers slit mouth whites colors, railroad steel mill. just in time. I carried them to grandmother in the right time and order. Soon I will guide dean clothes-to the-bushel be the clothes-shaker sock hanger In the morning sun - pin holder maybe one day pole heaver clotheion her shoulders,-my mother chief hanger wringer operator held a shirt six pins two in her lips, moving up the line wooden cigars with no smoke. in the'businets of Monday wash. We sidestepped across thctridcs. I held two more for the switch in my fist. Georgeann Eskievich Rettberg

Onions

I cry all day long I walked to the altar when I was twelve cutting onions in the restaurant like some kind of nitwit fourteen pounds julienned and sauteed bawling for six gallons of soup. and praising God so he wouldn't send me to Hell for hitting my cousin I am a woman with a brick. who knows onions. I wanted to be a preacher and talk about Jesus, I know every laye make people be good, from the brown reptilian skin and my mom quit sending me to my room to the glimmering interior, but Brother Johnson said, "You're too little, holy of holies, and a girl." white..Buddha. I'd rather cut onions, now I am a weeper in a stainles steel kitchen, Like Mary. Mary cries a river for minimum wage John can dunk me in, to slice and dice wash away the stains the pungent Buddha, of sin, white Christ of sex, who loves crying women, of jaywalking. snivelling women, women with mascara running down their faces One pound in dark chopped lines. for-spaghetti sauce. I am a woman who knows Tears onions. fall from my face like white scales. Kelly Cogswell

Kelly Cogswell ,is a student at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky. .1 36/Now and Then 3 5 LIVES IN WAS Judy Cobb- Coal Miner Mary Alice Basconi

The distance from Cleveland, Ohio to Lynco, W. Va., can be measured not only in miles but in way of life. When Judy Cobb and her family made that move 12 years ago, she vowed to return to the city as soon as she graduated high school. Instead, the became a coal miner. Family ties kept Cobb from leaving. Wyoming County and its rugged Nis. It is here she plans to build her house near the family homeplace at the foot of Huff Mountain. At 27, Cobb is a slim blond with high cheekbones and capablelooking hands. She has worked as a fastfood chef and as a construction worker in Georgiabut mostly she's worked in the mines. She's been laid off three times in the last two years. Mine accidents have smashed her foot, 6 4,14,14# broken her nose, and cost five of her teeth. She doesn't mind the danger, Judy Cobb (aecOnd from right) and her mining criiw, Wyoming County, W.Va., 1983. although she says she's no longer the first.to volunteer to work in the mine's face. where coal is severed from the Whatever they tell me to do. I won't plant around here, I'd almost think seam. Here, a complex piece of have any choice unless they post jobs about getting out from underground, if equipment called a longwall miner and I can sign and get une. the money was right. I think that's shears coal from a severalhundred The mines aren't bad. I l'ke itthe what life's all about anymore, is foot face. dirt and stuff, it don't bother me. Soap money. It's shameful to say, but I "I'm classified as General Labor but I and water takes that off." guess that's what makes the world go do a little bit of anything, everything. There are unpleasant aspects of the 'round," she adds with a laugh. There's not much in the mines that I job for the only woman among about "If I had to go out and find a job haven't learned how to run. And if they 200 men; she objects to vulgar talk doing something else, somewhere else, know you can run it, they'll put you on from male coworkers. And there are I wouldn't know where to start. I look it," she says. certain miners who "still believe women at myself. I'm not getting any younger, Cobb works second shift at should be at home, raising kids, and the coal mines is what I've done." Peabocly.Eastem's Lightfoot No. 2 keeping house," she says. mine. After a fivemonth layoff last Yet she says her bosses have always year, she and 21 other laidoff miners given her a chance to prove herself. "I were called back. Her main job now is don't want special treatment," she cleaning up spillage from an says. "I haven't done anything to ask ==1 =I underground conveyor belt that brings for special treatment." coal to the surface. It is not a job that Does she see herself as a lifelong requires much training, but Cobb is miner? Cobb is uncertain. A miner's Geneve ofwa glad to have work. income is hard to give up. When featured in'our NasiiiiiekUuiti the "I don't mind, and it's all what you -Vestals-Ad* intos there's work, a miner can earn about Angas:otrribragii.C1 make out of it, really. It seems like if I $30,000 a year or more, she says. the eel etWeibt titfr a acalai.al keep myself busy the time goes by "I really don't want to make the coal SeuhaCotinlyilatiriwieiarainlba* Misr an the PhWhasiFaineraWthiiarysweihr tam ftr I'd prefer to be doing something mines my life, but I might have to. shall ha- else, but I'm just glad to be back to There migh. not be nothing better for manorial' :thffinat ielth Jail _Woodside for work. I would do, probably, anything. me to do. If they built that nuclear Nowdied gip wIN riot be