“They started a new deal program that would help everyone and improve everyone’s life. They formed a group called the Tennessee Valley Authority. These were the biggest idiots of all. They come strolling in here thinking they’re all good giving people cheap electric power, but they don’t think of the farmers.

“Where do you think they got their power from? They got it from the rivers. The rivers I used to irrigate my land with. But it was all gone then. They formed dams, and stopped up the water. My poor apples were gone then. My sisters still had their business, but they too were unhappy with what the TVA was doing to the farm that my father had started.

“That was it for me. I couldn’t produce any more apples with those darn TVA people doing what they wanted with the water. I was then forced to move into town to try to get a factory job. I took all the money that I had, and all my clothes, and I was off to see what this New deal was all about.

“Wendell Wilkie, president of the Commonwealth and Southern Company, led the fight against the TVA. He had many followers, but there were also men that disagreed with him and they liked the idea of having the Tennessee Valley Authority.”

Michael Smith
Orchardist
Interviewed November 11,1934
Raleigh, NC
Source: http://www.ncsu.edu/ligon/am/teddy/tva.htm

“There is just one phase of this program to which we object most seriously, and that is the Federal Government spending the taxpayers’ money for the erection of power plants which, as we feel, are not needed for the very simple reason that generally, throughout the country, there is an abundance of power capacity, and particularly in the Tennessee Valley region there is already an excess of capacity. We are at a loss to understand how the power generated at Government-built plants can be disposed of except to take the place of privately owned power plants now supplying that community.”

John D. Battle
Executive Secretary of the National Coal Association
Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs
House of Representatives (74th Cong., 1st Sess., 1935)
Source: http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/coal.htm

Representative Joe Martin of Massachusetts stated that the TVA was “patterned closely after one of the Soviet dreams.” As a subsidiary of the federal government, the TVA enjoyed numerous advantages that private power enterprises did not: from the onset it paid less than one fifth of the equivalent total Federal taxes paid by investor owned power companies. The authority did not pay any interest on funds appropriated to it from 1933 to 1959.

Not surprisingly, Wendell Wilkie’s Commonwealth and Southern, and various other power companies as well, filed a total of thirty four lawsuits against the TVA by 1937. Three of those challenged the very constitutionality of the act before the Supreme Court. The TVA remained intact throughout.

Between 1933 and the end of World War II, the TVA directors managed the biggest construction project on Earth, helping bring the people living in the region into the modern industrial and agricultural era. But not without a fight.

Sources: http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364proj/fall_97/swain/Controversies.htm

http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/tva17.htm

www.spiritus-temporis.com/tennessee-valley-authority/

http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=T072

http://cog.kent.edu/lib/OlsonFairExchangePaper.pdf

TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, Wendell Wilkie, appalachia, appalachian history, mountains

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1. Some of our adventures in the Tennessee Valley

Throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s she continued raising her 11 children and four of her grandchildren at the family farm in Gallia County, Ohio. With no means of transportation, Grandma Gatewood would simply walk two, three, four or five miles for her visits.

Then in 1955 at the age of 67, Grandma Gatewood made a journey that gained nationwide attention. Seeing a “National Geographic” article about the Appalachian Trail, and discovering that no woman had ever hiked its entire length, Grandma Gatewood decided to set out on an adventure. Amazingly, she made her arrangements and started in Maine on the hike without as much as a word to her family about her plans.

Unfortunately this first try ended abruptly when her glasses were accidentally broken, forcing her to return home. “I thought it would be a nice lark,” she said, adding “It wasn’t.”

But finally, in 1957, she successfully hiked the trail all the way from Maine to Georgia, and if that wasn’t enough she hiked it again in 1960, and then again at age 75 in 1963, making her the first person to hike the trail three times (though her final hike was completed in sections).

Gatewood never carried more than 20 lbs of gear and food during her hikes. She simply did not believe in expensive state of the art paraphernalia. “Most people today are pantywaist,” she observed. Grandma G. traveled light, toting simply a blanket, plastic sheet, cup, first aid kit, raincoat, and one change of clothes. Her footgear was also plain, just an old pair of tennis shoes: “Head is more important than heel.” And there were no freeze dried hiker meals for her. Her hiking diet consisted mainly of dried beef, cheese and nuts, supplemented by wild food she would find along the way.

On the design of the Appalachian Trail: “For some fool reason, they always lead you right up over the biggest rock to the top of the biggest mountain they can find.”

sources:
www.answers.com/topic/grandma-gatewood
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Gatewood

http://www.hockinghills.com/i_grandm.htm

Grandma+Gatewood Appalachian+Trail Appalachian+History Appalachian+Culture History+of+Appalachia

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1. Benton MacKaye proposes the Appalachian Trail

Martin, a member of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild, was the son of a regionally renowned fiddler, Marcus Lafayette Martin, and was part of a family of noted artists from Swannanoa, NC. His woodcarvings are representative of both the southern handicrafts revival and the arts & crafts revival that swept the southern highlands in the late 19th to mid 20th century.

Example of an arts and craft revival style Appalachian mountain banjo made by Edsel Martin in 1970; black walnut.

Ed Dupuy interviewed Martin on Jan 22, 1965 at his home in Swannanoa. Dupuy’s 1967 book “Artisans of the Appalachians” contains an essay on Martin that is based on this interview:

Dupuy- Edsel, how did you get started at this sort of work?

Martin- My father did this work, and I think his father did, too. But I think it just sort of growed on us boys. This grew up with us.

d-Your father made violins and dulcimers; what else did he make?

m- I’ve seen him do some pretty good carving. Not figure carving, just stars, and arrowheads, and all sorts of things. Odds and ends, something different.

d-No doubt you got your start from him. It rubbed off on all you boys.

m- We were all brought up by ourselves. My mother and father separated; all of us four stayed and lived together. This was all we had to do, you know, to occupy ourselves. And this is what we come up with.

d-As far as you can remember, how long have you been at this sort of thing?

m-Wall, I’ve done a little of this as far back as I can remember. It was actually about 1946, maybe a few years earlier than that, when I began to put these on the market. Earlier, we just didn’t think of making any money at it, we did it just for pleasure.

d-Are you the youngest of the brothers?

m-I’m the youngest; the others are Wade, Fred, Pepper and Wayne. Wayne carves at Gatlinburg.

D-You have just lived and grown up here all your life?

m-I was born in Gastonia. I’ve lived here just about all my life. My dad was from out in Cherokee County.

d-What were some of the first things you began to make with your hands?

m-I carved some Indian door stops and stuff of that type. Door stops; and I modeled some out of clay.

d-Have you any idea how many dulcimers you have made?

m-Oh, I guess probably 175. We sold about thirty alone last year.

d-I notice one of these is made out of walnut and one is made out of cherry. Does one wood make a better dulcimer than another?

m-Well, I don’t know, Ed. You can make two just alike, and they won’t sound alike, even out of the same wood, you’d get a different tone.

d-This is patterned after the old ones, isn’t it?

m-Yes.

d-This will have four strings?

m-Yes.

d-Haven’t I seen some with just three strings?

m-Yes, they make them with three strings.

d-In beginning a dulcimer from scratch, what do you begin with?

Handcarved washerwoman sculpture of white pine, about 9” tall, made 1968.

m-You get a pattern for the back and the front, and the tail piece, get it straightened out and line up and glue that one first. Then you set your sides and wait for them to dry. Then you set your top and the other two pieces to make the finger board.

d-This scroll on the neck, that is entirely hand carved? That’s very much like a fiddle scroll.

m-Yes. I like to put something in them so they don’t look like any old thing. I’ve seen some violins that had some lions heads on them.

d-Even these pegs are hand carved; what would they be made of?

m-They’re made of maple; hard maple. I cut ‘em with the grain.

d-Does the thickness of the wood have much to do with the tone?

m-That one is a quarter inch, but I’m going to hollow it out. Pull in from the inside and roll it from the outside. The thickness of the wood does make a difference. You get it too thick and it won’t ring right.

d-This finger board, these are metal frets that are set in here?

m-Yes.

d-What were the old original strings made off? Were they steel or were they all gut?

m-I’ve read literature, Ed, where they were hammered out some way.

d-They were drawn through a die, I expect. Have you any idea how long people have been making dulcimers?

m-As far as I can trace it back, was the third chapter of Daniel in the Bible; I believe it was King Nebuchadnezzar. That’s as far back as I want to take it. It pleases me that it goes back that far. And carving goes back as far as Joseph, where in his carpenter shop he told Jesus how to carve wood with the grain.

d-Can you play a dulcimer?

m-Yes, I play a dulcimer pretty good.

Source: Hunter Library Digital Collection/Western Carolina University: http://wcudigitalcollection.cdmhost.com/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/p4008coll2&CISOPTR=2955&REC=1

Edsel+Martin Swannanoa+NC instrument+makers woodcarving Appalachia appalachian+history

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1. The Family Bible

OLD MAN WRIGHT RIDES INTO EXILE
So as to Git Away From Trouble, This Settler of the Hills–Fighter and Killer–Sits Astride His Mare and Goes Slowly Down to the Valleys.
By HARRY R. BURKE
Of the Post-Dispatch Staff

Pikeville, KY—Old Man Lige Wright packed his traps in the saddlebags and gingerly pulled himself across the back of his good bay mare. He rode out then through Osborn Gap and into Virginia slowly. For Old Man Lige Wright was doing the hardest thing he had ever done. He was running away from trouble.

Back of him was a lifetime of warfare. And ELIJAH WRIGHT was essentially a man of peace. He feared no one. He told no lies. And he paid his debts. There were notches on his gun–speaking figuratively–but that was Lige Wright’s misfortune. The luckiest unlucky man that ever lived! Twice he had been condemned to spend his life in the penitentiary.

Once he had been sentenced to hang by the neck until he was dead. And in Virginia–whither now he was going–Elijah Wright had served to the full a life sentence for murder. For in the Commonwealth of Virginia, eighteen years in prison is, constructively, a life term. His debt to the Commonwealth had been paid in full.

Four years ago at the door of the penitentiary, the Commonwealth of Virginia had given Elijah Wright a suit of clothes and a bill and sent him out to face life’s battle. And he had gone back to his native Kentucky hills to begin once again. There trouble had come upon him–trouble that was not of his own seeking, though the moon¬shine liquor that brought it on had been.

And now he was going into voluntary exile. It was not that he was afraid. In the old man’s face you could read the fearlessness of an eagle. There was no man lived who could say that Old Man Lige Wright was afraid. He had leaped too often to meet death face to face.

His right hand, which gingerly held the reins as the bay mare ambled through the gap, was still stiff from a deep cut between forefinger and the stub of what at one time had been his thumb. This cut was a mark left by the butcher knife when he seized it as his enemy lunged that night last March.

And as he rode into exile Old Man Lige Wright thanked God that those enemies from behind had knocked him senseless with his own gun–taken while he wasn’t look¬ing from his saddlebags, wounding him so sorely that he rode even now in a dizzy haze and sometimes saw double as images danced before his eyes. He thanked God that the blow had prevented him from seizing that murderous knife and turning it against the wielder.

Read the full story here

Old+Man+Lige+Wright Pikeville+KY Dickinson+County+VA appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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We open today’s show with the story of how colonial Virginia governor Lord Dunmore decided to settle the western boundary line dispute with Pennsylvania by forcibly taking possession of Pittsburg, or Fort Pitt, and attaching it to the colony of Virginia. When challenged by Pennsylvania, Dunmore admitted that the land had indeed once belonged to Pennsylvania, but asserted it was lost to that colony because she allowed the French to take possession of it, and that when Great Britain recaptured it, in the French and Indian War, the title was vested in the crown, and that, as Virginia was a Crown Colony, the title passed to that colony rather than to Pennsylvania, which was a proprietary government.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

“I was 10 years old when the First World War stopped,” says Guysville, OH native Emma Barnhill in her oral history conducted with the Countdown to Millenium Oral History Project. “I had an uncle over there in the war. It was rough, they was in those trenches y’know, and things. My mother made taffy and sent it to her brother for Christmas, and he got it, he said and then he sent me a piece to read in church and I knew two verses. ‘In Flanders field the poppies rose,’ and something about crosses rows on rows, but I remember that.”

Benton MacKaye was the first person to propose the idea of an Appalachian Trail, which he did in October of 1921. He grew up in Shirley Center, Massachusetts, reading the work of American naturalists and poets and taking long walks in the mountains of Massachusetts and Vermont. MacKaye sometimes claimed that the idea for the trail was born one day when he was sitting in a tree atop Stratton Mountain in Vermont.

“Did you ever wonder why you came home from the carnival empty handed?” asks writer Sam Brown in this June 1930 article from Modern Mechanix. “Remember how you tried to ring the bell by hammering the catapult or how you tossed ring after ring trying to win a cane? Swindled? Well, maybe! Listen how the operators gimmick their games so that you can’t win. It may save you money or help you win.”

We’ll wrap things up with the story of how the post office came to Pine Mountain, KY. The great difficulty in attracting one was that most of the locals could neither read nor write; mail is after all a form of written communication. One man, William Creech (1845-1918), took it upon himself to tackle the issue. He made a first attack on the problem by urging each of his neighbors to send off to both of the leading mail-order houses for their catalogues. If the son-in-law of the family had a different name, Creech asked the farmer to send it off twice. Whenever the necessity arose, which was often, he wrote the cards of request himself.

And, thanks to the good folks at Juneberry78s.com, we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Uncle Jimmie Thompson in a 1926 recording of Lynchburg.

So, call your old Plott hound up on the porch, fire up your corn-cob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

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The Garrett County native did not begin painting until later in life. Once she did start making pictures, she often drew from her memories of her hometown, primarily a Scottish mining community, during her turn of the century childhood.

In A Wee Bit O’Scotland: Growing Up in Lonaconing, Maryland, Levy depicted kids playing ball and jumping rope, her father’s general store, interiors, people working, coal cars and scenic views of the Western Maryland countryside.

Ruth Bear Levy grew up playing ball with Hall of Fame baseball player Lefty Grove. They were childhood friends in Lonaconing. She always loved baseball and did a series of baseball paintings — many inspired by Lefty.

Mine Mouths Open On The Hillsides, by Ruth Bear Levy, n.d. Oil Painting. 30 X 40 in. Reproduced in “A Wee Bit of Scotland: Growing up in Lonaconing, Maryland.”

Her family was musical: her mother played the piano and Ruth played the mandolin. Her father’s store was called “M. Bear’s Daylight Clothing Store”; he served on the Lonaconing city council. Levy’s paternal grandfather emigrated from Bavaria and settled in Frostburg. Ruth’s father moved eight miles to Lonaconing where he opened his store and got married. Her maternal grandfather Eisenberg emigrated from Austria-Hungary and settled in Cleveland, OH and then in Cumberland, MD. He opened a store there with his three sons and became a founder of the Reform Jewish Temple.

Levy traveled throughout childhood to visit her three uncles in Baltimore and to tour Washington, DC, Pittsburgh and Cleveland with her family. Ruth Bear Levy eventually left Lonaconing for Baltimore in pursuit of a degree in English at Goucher College. In Baltimore, she met her husband, urologist Dr. Charles Levy, a Johns Hopkins graduate.

Levy wrote that it was not until after she was married for 21 years or more and her son returned from service in the Navy during World War II that she had met painter Herman Maril, whose work along with that of other important Maryland artists of the period is characterized in part by the use of pastel tones. She studied with Maril as a private student beginning in about 1954.

“I had never been interested in painting before,” Levy wrote. “But now a childhood urge returned to express my most innermost feelings, to be productive, to record, and I began putting my thoughts on canvas under Herman’s sensitive, skillful tutelage. Later I worked under Walter Bohanan’s guidance. The pictures in this book are among the results.”

sources: www.marylandartsource.org/artists/detail_000000106.html
http://whilbr.com/itemdetail.aspx?idEntry=2719

Garrett+County+MD
Ruth+Bear+Levy appalachia Saltville+VA appalachian+history

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Its future as a resort destination began to emerge when John B. Glenn purchased the 500 acres on which the spring was situated for $800 in 1825, and constructed an inn for guests to come and enjoy the water. The popularity of his guesthouse was so high with lowcountry residents looking to escape the coastal heat that in 1835 fifteen investors, headed by a Dr. Maurice Moore, formed a stock company to buy Glenn’s property and build a large summer resort hotel on the site.

In 1877, Dr. John Wister Simpson of Laurens County, who like Dr. Moore had served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, bought the springs property from the stock company and relocated his family to it. His brother was then-Governor and later Chief Justice William Dunlap Simpson; small wonder that the site became the Governor’s summer headquarters.

Simpson willed his interest to sons Harvey, Paul, Casper, and Arthur, who during their tenure saw the resort become the state’s most popular. The resort passed into the hands of their children, and became the Glenn’s Spring Company, later called simply Glenn Springs.

By 1894, the hotel was once again deemed too small to accommodate demand. Paul Simpson of Simpson & Simpson expanded the property to over 58,000 square feet, able to serve 500 guests. “The Hotel is fitted with Water Works, Sanitary Arrangements, baths on first and second floors and Electric
 Bells,” crowed an 1897 ad in the Spartanburg Journal. The signature feature of the hotel was the more than 580 linear feet of piazzas.

Part of the 1894 expansion involved the creation of The Glenn Springs Railroad to make hotel access easier. The two-car train ran from Becca Station (now Roebuck) via the Charleston & Western Carolina line from Augusta to Spartanburg (now CSX), to Glenn Springs.

The nine mile trip from Roebuck to Glenn Springs cost 75 cents for adults and 35 cents for children. Riders boarded a train in Spartanburg, took it to Roebuck, then boarded the train going to the springs. Finally hotel livery wagons delivered guests and their summer-long baggage to the hotel.

Glenn Springs water was not only enjoyed locally, but was bottled and shipped throughout the United States and parts of Europe. Beginning in 1931 Glenn Springs was the official water of the United States Senate. The resort had transformed from being the center of social activity for the upstate to attracting visitors from near and far. The original beautiful wooden building burned in 1941, but was never rebuilt. The hotel’s chapel, built in 1908, still remains on the site.

The Glenn Springs Historic District, including the hotel site, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 4, 1982.

sources: Seeing Spartanburg: A History in Images, by Philip N. Racine, Hub City Writers Project, 1999
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/spartanburg/S10817742033/index.htm
http://www.spartanburgboyshome.org/
History of Spartanburg County, South Carolina, by John Belton O’Neall Landrum, Genealogical Publishing, 1997

John+Wister+Simpson John+B.+Glenn Dr.+Maurice+Moore Glenn+Springs+Hotel Spartanburg+SC appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

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1. The New Deal — social elixir or socialist plot?

The money raised by selling the heal-all ointment actually went to the adult who recruited the children. The children, meantime, received points which could be spent on prizes. And oh, were the pictures of those wonderful prizes eye-catching! One could win yo-yos, dolls, baseball gloves, bats and balls. The more you sold the bigger and better the prize; “Daisy” air rifles, “Radio Flyer” wagons and even bicycles could be won. Through the eyes of that era’s children, this was a great opportunity to get toys they otherwise could not have.

There were plenty of adults who were quite willing to take advantage of that fact, and the children were ripe for the taking. By the mid-1930s 300,000 young salesmen had signed on, endeavoring to sell the salve to anyone with a door on which to knock. To aid sales the company provided its sales force a beautiful 8”x10” religious print to give away with each 25-cent can. In order to handle the large volume of requests for Cloverline, the Wilson plant soon had to open it’s own postal substation at Cloverline Terrace, near its Tyrone, PA headquarters.

The lid of Cloverline Salve’s tin container had an art nouveau design motif around the edge with a green four-leaf clover in the center. “Apply freely, and repeat as often as needed for temporary relief of the minor irritations of the skin mentioned below.” The petroleum-gel product promised to remove wrinkles, heal cuts and burns and give your skin a glowing complexion. If you got chapped skin, you rubbed it in, and if you had a cold, you rubbed it on your chest or your nose, and you rubbed it on any sores you had.

In 1967 the Wilson Chemical Company was dealt a crushing blow by the Federal Trade Commission, which decided that the Company’s advertising method of luring young salesmen had to stop.

sources: www.tyronehistory.org/faq_WCCo.html
http://irvsukelele.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-child-labor-laws.html
http://mywilson.homestead.com/old_jules.html

Cloverline+Salve Wilson+Chemical+Company appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+culture history+of+appalachia,

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Dotson-Lewis was born in the coalfields of southwest Virginia in Buchanan County where her family had deep roots in the coal and timber industries. Her dad moved his big family to a forty-two-acre farm high in the remote hills of Nicholas County, West Virginia when she was still a young girl. He was in pursuit of bigger game to hunt and bigger timber to cut. There in the mountains, Betty was raised surrounded by coal miners, coon hunters, and storytellers.

Slusher is the eldest daughter of a World War II veteran and his Hawaiian-born Japanese bride. Upon her father’s retirement from a career in the Marine Corps, the family of seven resettled in his hometown of Haysi, located in the Appalachian foothills of southwest Virginia. Blending her mother’s cherished stories of growing up in Hawaii with her stories of the mountain culture that her father so loved, Kathleen began writing about her rich and diverse heritage when attending Berea College.

Chapter Two
The Tillman May Dream
[Gracie]

I was five years old, walking with my mother across the back porch towards the kitchen door of Verdie and Tillman May’s weatherboard house. An apple tree close to the steps held an empty tire swing. I tried to control my trembling hands and wobbling knees. I pressed against my mother’s thigh, wanting to crawl back into the womb for protection from this stranger, Death, I knew nothing about, who’d made an unexpected and unwanted call in our coal mining holler.

My mother didn’t notice me clutching her dress. She was sobbing into a white, wrinkled handkerchief wadded up in her hand. She and I (her scared little girl) walked as one the length of the back porch, turning our bodies sideways to gain entrance into the small kitchen. Yellow flowered wallpaper covered the walls opposite the tall kitchen cabinets filled with Blue Willow dishes.

Women from Verdie and Tillman’s Pentecostal Holy Roller church crouched together in a circle, crying and praying aloud in the center of the room. The kitchen table had been moved to one side. They opened their entwined arms and made a path for me and my mother to pass through into the dimly lit dining room.

The brown metal coffin stood backed up against the wall away from the long knotty-pine eating table. I kept my head downturned and lifted only my eyes toward the coffin. Fancy, puffy white satin fabric filled the inside lid. An embroidered United Mine Workers of America emblem was sewn to the top edge. Big white buttons held the satin in place.

The coffin lining looked like the bodice of the beautiful wedding dress with pleats, tucks, and big buttons I’d picked out in the spring and summer Sears & Roebuck catalog.

Quickly, I lowered my eyes and pushed my chin further down on my chest, pressing against my collarbone till it hurt, so I couldn’t see Tillman. I did see Nellie, Tillman’s eight-year-old beagle hound, his most trusted and loyal companion with the exception of his wife, Verdie. Nellie’s long, tan head lay underneath the coffin directly below her master’s head. Her slanted brown eyes were filled with liquid. Several of the drops spilled over and settled in the white patch underneath each eye.

Nellie was Tillman’s favorite rabbit hound and the only hound allowed in the house. Nellie and Tillman meshed the moment they met. Both enjoyed the early morning rabbit chase and both showed signs of good breeding: happy, good-natured, and playful. An untouched biscuit from the kitchen table lay near Nellie’s front paw. She too was in mourning.

Tillman whittled me a wooden soldier doll for Christmas. My mother hadn’t told me why Tillman died or where he would go when he left the dimly lit dining room. My stomach turned over at the strong stench of funeral carnations, baby’s breath, honey-baked hams, and embalming formaldehyde.

Opposite Tillman’s dead body, a row of men lined the wall. Familiar faces to me. They drew slow drags on their Camel cigarettes. With mouths rounded into large Os, the men tilted their heads back, letting rings of smoke drift out of their mouths and noses and filter up towards the pink-flowered, papered ceiling. Some smoke rings drifted and hovered over Tillman’s head in the casket. The men spoke in low voices as they sipped cups of strong black coffee in preparation for the night’s watch with Brother Death.

One man’s breath reeked of whiskey when he opened his mouth to speak to my pretty mother. He attempted to give her a hug, but she pulled away. He was a regular visitor to our house, because he was one of Dad’s hunting buddies. The Dingess Family Gospel Quartet harmonized on the chorus of When the Roll is Called Up Yonder in the adjoining living room. Lillie Dingess sat in a chair to ease some of the weight of the guitar off her humped shoulder.

Verdie May, Tillman’s widow, sat in a rocker in the middle of the living room. A prayer shawl covered the upper half of her short, stout body. Her gray hair, pulled back in a bun, had fallen free from hairpins with the convulsing of her head in shock and grief. The unruly hair fell on her shoulders in the same young woman’s style I had seen in Verdie’s wedding picture on the bedroom dresser. The new widow’s deep mourning sounds could be heard throughout the house. Two of her daughters-in-law took turns dabbing tears from her swollen eyes and holding smelling salts under her nose.

I didn’t want to look in the box and see Tillman dead, but my mother took a firm grip on my hand, lifting me on my tiptoes even though I resisted. I squeezed my eyes shut tight. Fear washed over me as I bent toward the coffin. Slowly I opened my eyes. There lay Tillman May—hair slicked back and blackened with shoe polish, pale skin yellowed from too much formaldehyde, rugged hands with traces of coal dust around his fingernails, clutching the Bible he always carried. I had never seen a dead person before.

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Captain John R. Pitts of the 4th Ohio Cavalry Association presented the flag to Mrs. Charles G. Brown of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The following individuals are pictured: Mayor T. W. Smith of Huntsville; James Quinton (4th Ohio); Mrs. Virginia Clay-Clopton (UDC); Mrs. Helen Plaine (UDC); Joseph H. Goddard (4th Ohio); L. C. Bramkamp (4th Ohio); T. C. Lindsey (4th Ohio); W. W. Shoemaker (4th Ohio); William H. Henry (4th Ohio); Mrs. A. W. Newsom (UDC); Mrs. Charles G. Brown (UDC); Mrs. Cornelia Branch Stone (UDC); Mrs. Andrew J. Dowdell (UDC); Captain John R. Pitts (4th Ohio); Mrs. Thomas W. Palmer (UDC); Mrs. Bennett B. Ross (UDC); Mrs. Leopold Bashinski (UDC); Mrs. Tallulah B. Bankhead (UDC); Mrs. Clarence M. Tardy (UDC); Thomas Osborn (4th Ohio); M. H. Richardson (4th Ohio); C. N. Vaught (UCV); James R. Johnson; Mrs. Ellen P. Bryce (UDC); Mrs. Asa S. Rountree (UDC); Mrs. L. T. Pride (UDC).

4th+Ohio+Cavalry+Association United+Daughters+of+the+Confederacy Huntsville+AL civil+war+veteran

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We open today’s show with a 1962 interview with Sanders Russell, harness race champion. Just prior to this interview, at age 62 and recovering from a broken leg, the North Alabama native won the famed Hambletonian. “Bi Shively won the Hambletonian when he was 73, you know. I quite frankly am looking forward to next season and a string of them after that.” Sanders Russell lived to be 82 years old.

We’ll pause in between things to catch up on a Calendar of Events in the region this week, with special attention paid to events that emphasize heritage and local color.

In the fall of 1941 on the eve of the United States’ entry into WWII, the Auburn High School freshman class of 1941-42 undertook an extraordinary community project. Under the guidance of their homeroom teacher, Harry W. McCann, Jr., who taught math, social studies, and English, the students decided that a place for social gathering and recreation was an important need for the people of Riner, VA.

“In your grandfather’s time the blacksmith shod horses, made plough points, built wagons and carriages, and made all kinds of tools and implements,” says Thomas Hidden in his 1944 book The Sons Of Vulcan. “He could turn his hand to making guns or clocks or locks and keys. Here is the kind of shop he worked in and here are some of the things he made.”

Next, we present a selection from Kentuckian Sarah Ann Jackson’s ‘My Journal for 1835.’ The diary was found between the walls of an old house in Laurel County, KY, but there is nothing that tells us if it was written in that place or how it came to be there. It was the only item found there. Jan Philpot, of the Laurel County Kentucky GenWeb site, transcribed the diary in 2001.

We’ll wrap things up with Viola Brown Black’s poem Home, written about her childhood home. The house still stands on Bell St. in Hiawassee, GA. It was built by her father, Lona Cicero Brown, in 1909.

And, thanks to the good folks at the Digital Archive we’ll be able to enjoy some authentic Appalachian music by Jimmie Rodgers in a 1928 recording of Untold Treasures.

So, call your old Plott hound up on the porch, fire up your corn-cob pipe, and settle in for a dose of Appalachian History.

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Finally First Woman became so angry she said she was leaving and never coming back. At that moment First Man really didn’t care. First Woman started walking westward down the path through the forest. She never looked back.

As the day grew later, First Man began to worry. At last he started down the same path in search of his wife. The Sun looked down on First Man and took pity on him. The Sun asked First Man if he was still angry with First Woman. First Man said he was not angry any more. The Sun asked if he would like to have First Woman back. First Man readily agreed he did.

The Sun found First Woman still walking down the path toward the West. So to entice her to stop, the Sun caused to grow beneath her feet lovely blueberries. The blueberries were large and ripe. First Woman paid no attention but kept walking down the path toward the West.

Further down the path the Sun caused to grow some luscious blackberries. The berries were very black and plump. First Woman looked neither left nor right but kept walking down the path toward the West.

At last the Sun caused to grow a plant that had never grown on the earth before. The plant covered the ground in front of First Woman. Suddenly she became aware of a fragrance she had never known.

Stopping she looked down at her feet. Growing in the path was a plant with shiny green leaves, lovely white flowers with the largest most luscious red berries she had ever seen. First Woman stopped to pick one. Hmmm…she had never tasted anything quite like it! It was so sweet.

As First Woman ate the berry, the anger she felt began to fade away. She thought again of her husband and how they had parted in anger. She missed him and wanted to return home.

First Woman began to gather some of the berries. When she had all she could carry, she turned toward the East and started back down the path. Soon she met First Man. Together they shared the berries, and then hand in hand, they walked back to their lodge.

The Cherokee word for strawberry is ani. The rich bottomlands of the old Cherokee country were noted for their abundance of strawberries and other wild fruits. Even today, strawberries are often kept in Cherokee homes. They remind us not to argue and are a symbol of good luck.

source: ‘The First Strawberries,’ retold by Barbara Shining Woman Warren
http://www.powersource.com/cocinc/articles/strwbry.htm

Cherokee+myths strawberries +appalachia +appalachian+history history+of+appalachia

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