In Defense Of Appalachian Culture or Conversation With An Idiot!

Abut 25 years ago, I was working as a mental health therapist in a facility for juvenile males in one of the most classically Appalachian counties in Kentucky. That facility at the time had an idiot as its executive director. I had not been employed there very long, we didn't know a great deal about each other, and became involved in a lengthy conversation. The talk wound round and round as such conversations often do, and the fellow asked me something or other about the kinds of things I was interested in or in which I was involved. I said that I was very much involved in Appalachian Culture, Appalachian History, and Appalachian Literature. To my utter amazement, the man who had been raised in a Kentucky county which sits of the edge of Appalachia said "there is no such thing as Appalachian Culture". I was momentarily thunderstruck but managed to regain my mental equilibrium in time to make an honest attempt to inform him of the error of his ways. To this day, I still don't know if he was actually that stupid, and he was definitely stupid, or just attempting to antagonize me. He had been career Army which, I am certain, had not improved his intellectual capacities and skills. i began with a very brief history of Cenral and Southern Appalachia which is the area which constitutes what I refer to as Cultural Appalachia. That area of the entirety of West Virginia and parts of Eastern Kentucky, Western Virginia, East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, North Georgia, and much smaller portions of Western South Carolina and Northeastern Alabama are the area of the Appalachian Mountain Range which comprise the entirety of Cultural Appalachia. The vast majority of the area of the Appalachian Mountain Range is not remotely a part of Cultural Appalachia. Yes, there are areas outside that area which have been deeply affected by the large numbers of Appalachian people who have migrated into them, especially in the Midwest. But having been affected by a non-native culture does not make an area a part of the migrant culture. In the reverse of that premise, let's imagine that I, a Caucasian Appalachian male traveled to Watts in Los Angeles or Harlem in New York City. No one in their right mind would say that I had suddenly become African American or Hispanic. Even if I became a multitudinous polygamist with more than two dozen wives and a hundred children who were all raised in social isolation and steeped in my native culture, no one would say that I had managed to make Harlem or Watts into a part of Appalachia. Cultural Appropriation is not that pervasive. But let's move on to the rest of my discussion with the previous idiot in mind. In a momentary aside in addition to discussing a list of the various elements of Appalachian Culture, I also intend to intersperse throughout this blog post some photographs of some manifestations of that Appalachian Culture. The first of these elments to be so pictured below will be Food which is clearly recognized as a primary element in every clearly acknowledged culture. The photograph below is of a meal I cooked in my home a few months ago of guinea and some side dishes.

I'm certain that most of my readers will say something like "most native Appalachians do not eat guineas" which is true. But most native Appalachians, especially rural Appalachians do eat numerous game animals and some species of non-traditional farm animals which most other cultures in America do not eat such as squirrels, rabbits, grouse, doves, deer, elk, raccoons, ground hogs, etc. The side dishes I had with that guinea were hominay cassesrole and baked sweet potato. Almost nobody in "modern America" eats hominy in any form. But I once took a double batch of that same hominy casserole to a pot luck at a local yak farm and, so help me God, the casserole dish appeared to have been licked clean when I picked it up to leave after the event at which most of us at least sampled yak chili and yak meat loaf. Eating a wide variety of both plants and animals is a key part of Appalachian Culture.

Religion is one of the most commonly discussed elements of all cultures and a key element of Appalachian Culture. I took the photograph above of a little Holiness Church in Blaine, Lawrence County, Kentucky, a few years ago. The building is still standing, but I believe the little church is now defunct. But Appalachian Culture is replete with a widely divergent group of both denominations and non-denominational churches including the Old Regular Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Freewill Baptists, United Baptist, Southern Baptist, Holiness, Pentecostal, Serpent Handling both Jesus Only and Trinitarian, all of which are traditional churches in the region of Central and Southern Appalachia. And several of those including the Old Regular Baptist, Serpent Handling, and Primitive Baptist have been founded in the region by fairly recent emigres from England and the Anglican Church. Several of those denominations have been transported into the Midwest by Appalachian migrants aloong with their food ways and other cultural elements. Near Kendallville, Indiana, there is a church in the Northern New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptists which is named for my half sister, Flossie Hicks Wicker. It is called the Little Flossie Church of The Old Regular Baptists. Just 28 or so miles south of that church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, there have been at times at least three serpent handling churches which were also brought to Northern Indiana by Appalachian migrants. That is the obvious migration of a culture. I also have three or four generations of nieces and nephews who practice the self-sufficient ways of hunting, fishing, and foraging which their grandparents and great-grandparents took to the Northern Indiana area when they left Eastern Kentucky in the heart of Appalachia. I don't intend to discuss every commonly discussed and recognized element of most cultures in this blog post. That would be much more a design for a book. It is actually a book which deserves to be written. But I am not certain that I have the time to write that book. Maybe one of my readers who is a native of Central and Southern Appalachia can do that book in the near future. And, as I have implied in that previous sentence, I do not believe that it is possible for a non-native of any culture to appropriately address any culture of which they are not a native in a rational and fully accurate manner.

The Family Cemetery In Appalachia

The family cemetery in Appalachia has played an important role in social life, local history, and culture since Daniel Boone led the earliest settlers through the Cumberland Gap. The early settlers were coming into a country in which there were no roads, no white or European presence, and no prior history by their own kind of people. It was a rugged and dangerous environment. In a very short time, accidents, child birth, Indian warfare, and disease began to take their toll. Customs and sanitary norms of the time required that the dead be buried immediately. A certain percentage of those deaths took place even before the settlers were near an area where they intended to stay long term. In those cases, the dead were simply buried in the next available bit of ground where it was soft enough to dig. Many of those trail side graves have been lost for centuries. At times of Indian warfare, it was also not unknown for the settlers to make attempts to conceal the graves of their dead. They generally would have done this for two reasons: 1) to conceal losses of able bodied fighters from the enemy; and, 2) due to generally unfounded fears of desecration of the graves. But after settlers had found the piece of land they intended to call home, they buried their dead on their own land. A small piece of land would be chosen at the time the need first arose. The first grave would be dug and that spot would be designated the family cemetery for the Browns, or White's, or Hicks'. These first and most eventual graveyards in Appalachia were usually located on a piece of high ground, often with a good view of the surrounding area. It was often a favorite spot of the head of the household. There was also a common belief that on resurrection morning the dead in Christ would arise with the first rays of the morning sun. The higher elevations usually got morning sunshine earlier than low lying ground. It was also common for graves to be placed with the face of the dead toward the sunrise.

"The Play Pretty Book" by the Kentucky Youth Research Center & Illustrated by Tom Whitaker

 

The title of this book uses an old Appalachian expression for children's toys, Play Pretty, and was produced by the Kentucky Youth Research Center and illustrated by the renowned Kentucky artist Tom Whitaker of Magoffin County who also taught art at what is now known as the Big Sandy Community and Technical College for many years.  It is subtitled, and further described on the flyleaf as "An Appalachian Curriculum Handbook for Teachers of Preschool Children".  It is an interesting piece of work and in some ways difficult to describe in a few words. It was produced by a committee of at least 8 or 9 people from the counties of Breathitt, Clay, Elliott, Floyd, Jackson, Knott, Lee, Leslie, Letcher, Magoffin, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, and Wolfe.  The book was funded by a "special grant from the Kentucky Social Welfare Foundation."  I have extensive experience in nearly all of the 14 counties from which the committee was selected from professionals working with preschool children.  For the first 6 years of my life, I lived in Floyd County within a mile of one of the hundreds of Appalachian coal camp towns, Wayland, which is still today one of the most physically intact of such towns.  For the next 14 years of my life, I lived and was educated in Knott County but still only three miles from the Floyd County line and the town of Wayland where on August 31, 2024, I will be attending the Wayland Homecoming.  I was actually born just across the county line in Lackey, Kentucky, in Knott County; and, ever since at least 1790 my extended family and ancestors have lived in Knott and Floyd counties.  For the past 32 years, I have lived in Morgan County.  I have also worked as a social worker, mental health and substance abuse therapist in Magoffin, Breathitt, Jackson, and Wolfe counties.  I have worked as an auctioneer holding both estate and consignment auctions in Floyd, Letcher, Johnson, Magoffin, and Morgan counties. At the risk of appearing a bit overly impressed with my own resume, I believe I can state that I am an expert on Appalachian Culture.  I believe that I can state unequivocally that I am qualified to discuss the many aspects of culture, education, mental health, and most other aspects of life in any of these counties on that list of 14 since I have also spent large amounts of time in all the other counties on the list. I have also coauthored two articles about culturally appropriate human services and culturally apprroprate supervision of counselors in Appalachia which are on the permanent data base for counseling professionals of The American Counseling Association  Therefore, I am proud to say that this is a book which was and still is well suited to be used in early childhood education for the children of Appalachia.  Admittedly, the book is a bit aged, having been published in 1975, but it contains a small fortune of great cultural information which deserves to be preserved and passed on to the children whose predecessors have lived it.  

 

The book is described in the introduction in this manner:

"We sent a call out over the mountains and into the hollers.  "Tell us about your Play Pretties, the ones you make and do at home with your children and grandchildren, and those you make and do at the centers where you teach."  Mountain Folk took time to remember Play Pretties made for them when they were children, Play Pretties they make right now...It was our great, great grandparents who came to the mountains...They didn't have toy stores in those days to buy us toys so they made Play Pretties out of what was at hand, corn stalks, buttons saved from the store bought clothes, leaves, twigs, seeds, and nuts." 

The book is spiral bound, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, and 96 pages broken into six sections entitled, "Introduction, Play Pretties, Let's Go Play, Fixin' Vittles, Jist Lookin', and Frolickin'." It is illustrated throughout with black and white line drawings by Tom Whitaker who is best known for his many paintings and prints of life in Appalachia during both his own lifetime  from 1945 to 2020, and the Appalachia of his ancestors who lived in the region for several generations before he was born.  The various sections address numerous kinds of Appalachian Play Pretties, how they are made complete with instructions, how they are utilized, and also includes some recipes and songs from the region.  I had strayed into a few apparently unused copies of the book in a sizeable purchase of books from the estate of a former Morgan County principal and teacher.  If you teach young children in Appalachia or are simply committed to the preservation of Appalachian Culture and can find a copy of the book it is well worth buying and utilizing either in a preschool classroom or with your own young children and grandchildren.  It's a fun and truly unique little book.