Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Faculty/Staff Personal Papers WKU Archives Records 1966 UA37/44 Tidbits of Kentucky Folklore Gordon Wilson Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/fac_staff_papers Part of the Folklore Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, Linguistic Anthropology Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty/Staff Personal Papers by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ORIGINALS TIDBITS OF KENTUCKY FOLKLORE by Gordon Wilson Vol. XII Nos. 1601 - 1697 Missing #1603, 1616 1601 15ECOMING COJ\1SCIOUS OF WHO WE ARR If I were asked wh8t phase of our cultural life h8s changed mos.t in my long life, I suspect th8t fuld place first oi;ir. ccmsciousness of who we are. This applies not merely to the historians, sociologists,, . an- tiqu8rians, and such learned people, but also t9 plain Tom, Dick:, and Harry. We passed from log houses to better' types so fast, in many areas, th11t the younger generations felt 8 sort of shame for the older condi­ tions. Poli tic ians may hc1ve capitalized on log-c11bl.n c11nd ida te s, but mo'§f of the voters who followed such a local §or national hero made no great effort to go back to log houses or othi'r primitive conditions. As fast as money c1ccumulated, newer 11nd more modern houses appeared; c1nd think how m,my former dwellings spent their 111st years--often many of them--as storehouses for farm !lk<ichinery 11nc1 hay. Not too many years ago I could drive on country ro11ds within ten miles of Bowling Green and pass several such log houses of other days. When I left Fidel- i ty, in 1906, there were ~ many log houses s tl.11 used for family living. Among dozens of others/ my two brothers who lived in that section occupiea their log houses until some years later. So far as I know, only a very few such houses now remain, and they are so covered over with weatherboaraing that only old-timers know that they are log houses. Furniture had to change to keep up with the newer kinds of houses. Only an occasional person thought enough of the old stuff to store it in some relatively dry and safe place. Some of the families 11ctually cut up almost priceless furniture (as of now) and used it for kindling wood. A good mErny people felt that the old stuff was too much like the old log cabin 11nd were glc1d to get rid of it in any way. It was a r11re person who saved a representative number of 01a dishes or pieces of glc1ssware or outclc1ted clothing, no mc1tter how valuable they all might have been. Not yet h11d there grown up any widespread appreciation for antiques, as we cdll them now. I have Vi.Sited in some homes where the furniture, now worth a fortune, had been kept for sentimental reasons; but I was often embarrassed by the apologies ~ ,./' gi.ven for the tacky old stuff. Successive coats of paint or varnish had usually covered up the wood; years later, with plenty of paint-re­ mover and patience, some of these ashamed-of antiques became the most prized objects of these same homes, A sense of history was a long time developing. Only one person in a dozen, say, had anyf1ear idea of where his people had come from and when. Any time farther away th.cin Gnmdp.cip's boyhood seemed very long ago .cind got bcidly scr.~mbled with events re.ciching back into the earli'est several coloni.cil times. This seems strange to me now, for I knew t'if't~i,¢1 people who had seen c1nd talked to Revolution.ciry War soldiers. One of these oldsters lived so far down into my own lifetime that I was big enough to write a brl.ef account of his long and interesting life for our county newspaper. Fortunately, i.n every neighborhood a few people were "well-read," as it was then called, so that it was possible to get, if any one wanted to put himself to that trouble, a fc1irly clear-cut view of history. I am afraid that many of the Fidelity citizens never knew enough history to have passed the most elemental courses offered in the country schools, and this knowledge would include all the traditional knowledge as well as what was to be found in books. Side by side existed ,'1 very exaggerc1ted idea of the importance of one 1 s family history and an utter ignorance of actua1 times and dates. Be it said frankly, most of the people I knew were just a litllle ashamed of themselves, whether they dared admit it, and did not care too much about digging into history. 160Jt INT'l?RSTi\TTi HIGHWAYS One of the most marked differences between now and yesterday is the i.nterstcitf highway and sirni1,1r modern roads. As an old-timer who has watched a longfiprocession of events in many spheres, I cannot help cprnparing the stretches of interstate highways in Kentucl,y that are now finished 8nd open to travel and the roads that I knew as a child and for long af te rw8rd s. My mother's father and mother came as small children all the way from central North Carolina to what is now Calloway County. Traveling in ox wagons, a whole group of relatives and neighbors, they spent six long weeks on the way. Though not especially a very religious group, the refused to travel on Sunday, They arose early Monday morning, did necessary washing of clothes1 and tried to get i.n a short trip that afternoo: noon, My grandmother-to-be rode a horse :Qsne the entire journey and lived to a very ripe old age in spite of the handicaps of pioneer life. The one thing I recall most vividly about Mother •s retelling the story as she had heard it was about how the emigrants managed to get over the mount8ins: on particularly steep roads they cut dovm a tree and hitched it, limbs and all, to the back of the wagon, to act as a brake, When I first drove over the Great Smo\des, on a modern highway, I could not help recalling thijprimitive journey made so long ago, as I heard it as a child. There were h,o seasons for roads, so-called rosds, around Fidelity: mud and d'liist, Somehow I do not recall any intermediate seasons. One of my earli('St memories is of observing the dust that had settled on the eyebrows of my sister as I went with her in the tlld family buggy to the funeral of our great uncle one dusty late-sprill!Jfay (He had died the preceding fall, but the custom still prevailed of having a funeral long after the burial). The dusty season covered some of the very late spring, all the summer, and a slice of fall; the rest was mud. Travel lived up to the old meaning of the word-- 11 Suffering.n Murrc1y, the county seat of my home county, was-a b,1re eleven miJ.es away, but we got up early-, like the wowin in the Pr@verbs, and set out, often before the sun was up, on OUI' way to towm,,. By rather diligent keeping the horses going along, we usually arrlilved at the railroad three hours after we had ]eft home. The horses still had a lot of energy left, in spite of' the long journey, and they prc1nce d c1nd snorted when a trc1in cc1me by. With some three hours to attend to "trading," we started back over what used to ~ a tUur piece II about the middle of the afternoon and were pretty badly worn out by the time we came in sight of the lights in our house. Rather strangely, long after 1[ have been an old man, I have walked as fc1r as this round trip and felt equal to a full day's work the next day; I sometimes think it took more energy to ride in the lurching buggy or wagon the1n to hoof it along the road. Going to Brownsville, at the edge of the Mammoth Cave ]l],9ttonal Park, only some twenty-two miles from my front door, used to tc1ke some ingentous pl,mning, before the days of cars. I would go by train to Rocky Hill, hire someone to take me out in a buggy or wagon, and have to spend the night in the town because no trains were available to get me back that night. And it took some endurance for years after cars came in, too, for that stretch of rosd, from the train to the county seat, had some of the stickiest mud I have ever known; an extra boy often went along with us to help us out of the mud holes; a heavy pair of gum boots nearly always rode with us. For some years now it has baen a smooth ride to Brownsville and many another rlc1ce where I have gone. In a half hour, c1nd I am no speed fiend, I cover the distance it used to take several hours to mc1ke. And now a very modern highway, ri part of Interstate 65, is finished within a f'ew miles of my front door, and it is easy to go over the hi.11:s and fc1r away Rt what used to seem the speed of iight.