Real and Unreal

I just came across this headline and photo on CNN's feature page:

LIFE IN APPALACHIA TODAY

I have two reactions, one socio-political and the other, personal memoir.

First, social commentary:  C'mon, really? Life in Appalachia Today? More Like Wild Sh-t You Can Still Find in America Today. There are an estimated 3000–5000 Klan members throughout the US as of 2012. How many of these events could they possibly get together in a year?

I'm not saying the Klan is not a threat to society, or that this is not outrageous regardless of how few occur. But this is not Life in Appalachia Today. (Another photo CNN showed was of a snake-handler. I'm here to tell you that that's not too common either.)

How about we have a few pictures of more common aspects of Life in Appalachia, if that's what you say you're going to show? You could get some provocative shots of a church BINGO game. And if you're still craving that negative spin, focus on the obesity rate: You will see men and women at BINGO using two, even three, folding chairs together to sit comfortably. Now that, though negative, at least shows something relevant about Life in Appalachia Today.


Second, personal memoir:  Sure, Klan events happen still; there are scattered occurrences all over. I'm not sure how often it happens today in Upper Appalachia, where I'm from. What I do know, empirically, is that it used to happen. I had a brush with it when I was five or six years old.

A loving,  patient, soft and huggable woman in town had become my "Nana" by the time I was a few months old. She cared for me like a grandmother for the first decade of my life. 

Nana Perkin's husband, Ernie Perkins, was driving us in his truck when we saw the remains of a burnt field right off 209, the main route to town. I don't remember a cross, but there was a large area of blackened ground with bleachers set up around it.

Ernie teased us, "You'ins want we head over to the Ku Klux Klan for a cross burnin'? Haw! You kin tell your daddy we joined up with the Klan!"

I didn't know what he was talking about but apparently Nana did. She told him to "shush in front of her" (me). Nana was always telling him that. Ernie was a good man—tender with me—but he was typical for a man of that time and that place, a hillbilly, plain and rough.

They didn't go into it further. I felt something sinister connected to that burnt ground and empty bleachers. What got burnt? Who burnt it? Who sat in the bleachers and watched? People I knew? I remember I shivered. I thought it maybe had to do with witches.

Overheard During My Childhood

"Practically nobody can hold their moonshine."

It was most likely at Granpa Jones' place where I heard that. He wasn't none of us' granpa, but we all used to pile in the car and drive out a dirt path through the trees, to where he lived way back in his own private holler. I'd think he had to have a still; I know he always had moonshine.

This is what a "still" usually looked like
 back then. Now there's lots of plastic.
That's a picnic cooler used below.

Unlike how it's shown in movies and TV, moonshine is
not always clear. The jars  above hold Lemonade and
Apple Pie moonshine—"Gourmet Hooch," you might say.

 

Sure as sh-t, the hooch goes in
Mason Jars—that's not just in
the movies and on TV.

Granpa Jones' house (more a cabin) had a great big porch we all set on at night. This was back when there was lightning bugs. Big clouds of them. While the grown-ups drank and smoked and hollered and fought, us kids would catch the bugs in jars and peel the bellies off and stick the glowing blobs on our ring fingers. Then we'd pretend to get married. . . .

 

On any night, riding out to Granpa's in the car, we'd have my parents and me, some of my cousins, another set of parents, and their four kids. By the end of the night, all the grown-ups were stinking drunk, some were even sick, and one of us kids would have to drive the car back home. We could hardly see over the wheel.

Rogovin, Appalachia 1969, detail

I remember one of the boys having to drive and he was absolutely terrified. He was afraid the grown-ups would yell if they knew he was scared. But they weren't much concentrating on us. They were still all hollering and coughing. Someone threw up.

Appalachia again. Please bear with me.

  mountain dialect

 kick = "die"
That musta been back when Aunt Hattie kicked.
NOTE: This is not considered disrespectful in the dialect. 
 

 I don't know why I've felt compelled to think about and write about my childhood in Appalachia. It may have something to do with my mother dying earlier this year. Come to think of it, she must have kicked right around the time I started this blog. Yes, I think I've hit upon the origins of my current preoccupation.

Some of the photos below were taken in the 70s when I was growing up there. Some are more current. All of them are gathered from the internet. I have several photos taken by me and my family that I wish I could use instead. I inherited albums and boxes of these photos, but I haven't had the heart yet to look through them.

 mountain dialect

 let on = "to pretend"

He let on 'e was gone to meetin' but 'e wasn't, he was gone fishin'.

This is also used as in Standard English: "to reveal." 

He never did let on 'e was from the county office.

Strangely, the two meanings are opposed.

 

The photo above shows what the residential areas of Byesville looked like when I was a child. Come to think of it, it shows what Byesville looks like nowadays, too. 

I lived in town until we moved to a more rural area "out in the township." There, you might not have a neighbor closer than a couple of miles down the road. 

Above right is downtown Byesville. It's been boarded up since probably the mid-80s. There on the left, with the green front, was my father's grocery store. On the right is the Dan-Dee Bar that has this sign—I swear to god—handwritten on the side of it:

No Lofeing

Police Pattroled

They let on like Byesville actually has police, but I don't think there have been any since the 70s–80s. There was only ever one policeman anyway. You just called him at home. All the time I can remember, it was Johnny Reid, 685–6620. (Not so impressive that I remember it—you only have to know the last four digits.) Officer Reid was a real nice man. He was at the school crossing for us twice a day and he sure was nice to us kids. He told us jokes and showed us tricks with his gun and stuff.

 mountain dialect
 to give someone the what-for = "to tell someone off"; "to chastise"
I'm aimin' to give that boy the what-for if 'e don't git himse'f in here!

This might as well be me and my family when all us cousins were little. Though I was an only child, my parents had 19 siblings between them and almost all had five or six kids. We once counted that I had 57 first cousins. And I don't think all my aunts and uncles were done procreating.

This photo at left could have been taken in the 70s or now. This is a typical Appalachian home. Drive around the old roads and you'll see scores of families living like this. I knew a family that lived in an old abandoned post office out on County Road 13.

The boy in the foreground here I could swear was Butch Rudd, one of our neighbors. (Given name: Clayton.) That'd be a sister or cousin on the threshold.

When Clayton Rudd was 16, he kissed me, way up on a mountain behind my house where we went at his insistence. I must have been... oh, 11 or 12. I felt sick. Afterwards, I just kept spitting on the ground, over and over. As soon as I come down off that mountain, I ran and told my mother about it and you can bet she gave ol' Clayton the what-for!

********* 

mountain dialect

 a-prefixing
We knew they was a-comin', 'fore they did.

 Mary Belle Littleton Long

I took this picture of my mother just a few

years ago. She's in her early 70s here. 

She was still giving me the what-for.
The last thing she said to me, as she 
lay in the hospital, was:

Don't you come back in here 

a-visitin' tonight.  I gotta get some rest!

In the morning she was already gone when I got there.

A Passel of Passels

My dad had a passel of aunts and uncles on his mother's side, the Nobles.

Back Row:  Hattie, Nettie (my Grandma), Raymond, Ollee (/OH-lee/, I think her real name was Olea),
Freeman, Emmy (Aunt Emmy was always a hell-raiser. Note dress.)
Front Row:  Ernest, Andy, their father (my Great-Grandpa), their mother (my Great-Grandma), William, Arthur

This post is about my Aunt Hattie, far left in the back row. Next in line is my Grandma Nettie... which I guess means... Aunt Hattie is my Great-Aunt Hattie, officially.

Typical of Appalachians, I have so many relatives of all generations and connections, that we have to wear name tags at our family reunion. Even then, you can't put it all on a name tag: Daughter Hattie, Sister Hattie, Aunt Hattie, Great-Aunt Hattie, et al. We effectively get it wrong because we call a person by whatever our parents' generation calls them. We don't go, Huh, Dad calls her Aunt Hattie so I guess me and my first cousins should say Great-Aunt Hattie. Despite how it may sound right now, we usually don't think about it this much.

Beefsteak when I'm hungry

Whiskey when I'm dry

Comp'ny when I'm all alone

And heaven when I die!

When I was little, Aunt Hattie would often come to our house for a spell.  She was a fun-lovin', whiskey-drinkin', story-tellin' ole' broad. She was so funny, with her off-color remarks and her raspy voice, that she'd have us kids giggling when we didn't even know what she meant.

Aunt Hattie had a daughter named Joanne who was my first cousin once-removed. Me and my first and second cousins just called her Cousin Joanne, or sometimes Aunt Joanne. (You take my point about this naming thing? Google "double cousins" if you want more.)

Aunt Hattie'd play the piano and really belt out all the ole' mountain songs. You never hear those songs anymore....

Practically every night, the grown-ups would get to dancin' and drinkin' and smokin'. Us kids'd all be dancin' too. Some of us drinkin'. It was a righteous good time. Seemed like the whole Noble family was big on dancin'. We was a passel of dancers, you might say.

****************

In the late 1970s, Aunt Hattie was living in Florida with Daughter Joanne. For a few years, they weren't able to make it to the Noble Family Reunion, held each year at—get this—the Noble County Fairgrounds. One of those years, at the reunion, some somber but necessary decisions were made during the "business meeting" about arrangements for when Hattie died.

The next year, Joanne got herself and Hattie up to Noble County for the reunion. Aunt Hattie was failing but hung on for the trip. The business meeting started with the reading of the minutes from the year before:

It was decided that when Aunt Hattie dies, her body will be shipped from Florida to the Noble County Funeral Home and be shown there. As Joanne and Hattie are destitute, the body will be interred in a pine coffin....

The secretary's voice sputtered out. Aunt Hattie could be heard crying. Joanne was weeping and walked away from the tent. Oh, yeah. This happened. Awkward family moment. Deftly, the secretary picked up the next item of business and the meeting progressed.

****************

Pretty darn lucky though that we'd gone over the arrangements—sure enough Aunt Hattie died and we had to ship her before the next summer. I wish I could remember if I went to the funeral. The Nobles have a passel of 'em every year.

Early Lessons, #2

Mrs. Sharpe's house was like this.

My 5th grade teacher at Byesville Elementary was Mrs. Winnie Mae Sharpe. She was the wife of the mayor, O.J. Sharpe. They lived in the biggest house in town, a large (palatial to us) colonial with green grass in the yard and a garage that was used for putting cars into. This was different from other houses in Byesville.

Whereas our houses were more or less like this.

Mrs. Sharpe was formidable for reasons beyond those trappings, though. She was considered the meanest teacher you could have at Byesville Elementary. (Personally, I favored my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Thorla, in that spot and not just because of the name--Thorla vs. Sharp would be a hard one to call. No, I was going on first-hand evidence from when Mrs. Thorla shut my hand in the classroom door, on purpose.)

Mrs. Sharpe traditionally assigned seats at the beginning of the school year. You were to sit in one of five rows, lettered A, B, C, D, and . . . F. Hm. Mrs. Sharpe explained that the very best pupils in the class would be in the front seat of each row. If you were at the front of A row, then you helped all the A students who sat behind you. And so on. Down to F row. Being in 5th grade already, we caught on almost immediately. Mrs. Sharpe was very careful to explain that the "front-row person" (that was the official title, we were soon to gather) of the F row deserved our respect because it was very hard to help all the F students.

At this point you probably think I am making this up. I am not. This was 5th grade in Byesville, Ohio, in the 1970s. And it's not like these kids weren't already carrying around emotional and intellectual baggage. On top of the fact that they probably didn't have enough to eat. Or warm enough clothes. Or eyeglasses if they needed them.

To the point where American education had progressed in Appalachia by then, no one questioned the schools about anything. Teachers were the only college-educated members of our community. Usually they were clueless first-year teachers who beat it out of there after a year's experience. But there were also a few lifers like Mrs. Sharpe, who became "pillars of the community." What with being all that and the mayor's wife, Mrs. Sharpe could have eaten a kid for breakfast and no one would say 'Boo.'

Dunce by Shadowland-Dreamer

So no one did say, 'Boo.' This was the classroom arrangement for our whole 5th-grade year, and for years before and after. As a front-row person myself, I was delighted and proud and queasy and ashamed. Christ, I was only in 5th grade. If I can't forget that experience, I wonder how many of Mrs. Sharpe's students can't forget their own version of it. The only thing an adult perspective has added to my understanding is that I don't think Mrs. Sharpe was an evil person. I don't think she wanted to hurt kids, really. At least not as badly as she did. But that kind of thinking doesn't mitigate; it just complicates. There's really nothing redeeming to say about it. It's just a melancholy story from the past, in Appalachia.