"Down Through The Years" by Jean Shepard, On Reading Her Autobiography

My wife Candice and I just completed reading this 2014 autobiography of Jean Shepard who was one of the first major female stars in country music, and also the first female star to have a #1 Hit on the charts which was actually her first released single, "Dear John", which was a duet piece of sorts with Ferlin Husky. Husky didn't actually sing on the song but narrated a soliloqy by a male figure in the song who is abandoned by the female protagonist who marries his brother while he is in a war zone in the military. The book is well worth reading despite several weaknesses. The text was recorded by Jean Shepard on cassete tapes and transcribed by a secretary. The transcription is literal, without any editing, and often has clearly recognizable errors in grammar and syntax which are assume are due to the secretary's faithful verbatim rendering of Jean Shepard's dialect which was rooted in her native Oklahoma. The book is composed of a Foreword, twelve numbered and titled chapters, and three other sections which are labled as "Endnote From Jean", "Special People", and "Acknowledgements". The book has no clearly identified publisher other than the author, but it does have an ISBN Number. It is somewhat oddly produced and took me some time to locate a copy on the internet. The book is filled with page after page of anecdotesa about Shepard's life, her rapid rise to stardom, the fifty plus year career she had, and the many friends both famous and unknown which she developed during her lifetime. There is sizeable discussion of her brief marriage to Hawkshaw Hawkins before his death in the same plane crash which killed Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas. She also delivers what appears to be honest discussion of her other three marriages which are comprised of one before her fame which was annulled due to domestic violence, another brief marriage to a Nashville detective after Hawkins' death, and her marriage of nearly forty years until her death to Benny Birchfield who was a man of many talents: guitarist, bus driver, mechanic, and devoted family man who raised his own son with Shephard and her two previous sons by Hawkins. It is an easy read in short sections within the chapters. It is also well worth reading if you like country music, especially classic country music. You could have difficulty, as I did, in finding a copy on the typical used book websites due to the unexplained publication route the book took. But when you find it, you will enjoy it!

Random Ramblings On Blog Readership

After years of writing this blog and seeing it slowly begin to become reasonably popular among blog readers, I am suddenly seeing it rise above 50,000 and even 60,000 page views a month. To be honest, I have no idea why this has happened. I suspect it might have finally been posted somewhere by somebody with much larger readership which is causing the increase in page views from the sometimes 20,000 page views it had received in the past, or the lesser numbers which were universal in the first 5 to 10 years of the blog. But now, for two months in a row, it has exceeded 60,000 page views after having been regularly graced by less than 20,000. Follower numbers have slowly risen to more than 200 but that took years. I have regularly posted blog posts on several Appalachian oriented sites but it took about 15 years for the blog to see this sudden increase. If you have any ideas about why please post them in the comments section on this blog post.

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.

"A Picture From Life's Other Side: Appalachian Poems" by Bob Henry Baber

At times when I am in a book buying mood, I will often stray into other books I had not set out to search for and buy one or two I had not foreseen. Although, I had not planned to buy this book, I had been aware of its existence virtually since the day it was published. I was recently searching for a book or two which had roots in the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, especially one or two which had been published by individuals such as Gail Amburgey, Pauletta Hansel, P. J. Laska, and Robert "Bob" Snyder. I found a copy of this book by Bob Henry Baber who had also been a student at the Southern Appalachian Circuit and decided to buy it. It has been relatively rare to find it on the typical used book websites such as Abe Books and Alibris from which I have bought hundreds of books over the years. Amazingly the copy I found was also in near perfect condition and signed with a generic signature. Bob Henry Baber self published this book in 1994. The title is taken from the music of Hank Williams and his song by the same name. Several of the poems had been previously published in small journals around the country including "Appalachian Heritage", "Appalachian Journal", and "Cold Mountain Review". Many of the poems are rooted in the coal mining industry as is a great deal of Appalachian writing. Some such as "Let Me Hide Myself In Thee" are comments on or reflections of the sometimes fundamentalist religion of much of Central and Southern Appalachia, Others of the poems such as "Taking Title" are strong examples of the Appalachian Value which Loyal Jones called Love of Place. Bob Henry Baber's life, as I have known him, has always been deeply rooted in his historical family farm near Richwood, West Virginia, which Bob has always referred to as "Baber Mountain". For several years, he held a summer get together there which was attended by both members of his family and his friends in the world of Appalachian Literature. Like many other, if not most, native Appalachians Bob Henry Baber has also penned his own paean to the Appalachian family cemetery in the poem "Severed Threads". The lines: "Who will bury our spirits beneath hearthstones to protect them from frigid air? Who will stir our memories and throw kindling on our ancient dreams? Who will cut the cemetery grass that will so shortly be given over to woods?" are another feelingly rendered manifestation of the deep rooted Appalachian people to the many cherished but overgrown mountain cemeteries on long lost family farms which had been scratched out of the resistant mountains of West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Western Virginia, and North Carolina. He chose to end the book with that poem and it was a fitting tribute to the ties which have always bound him to those mountain acres near Richwood where his ancestors made love to the land with gooseneck hoes, double bit axes, and hillside turning plows, and carried their hard earned raisings from the field to the root cellar in order to weather one more winter on the place which had woven its way into their hearts.

"The Narcotic Farm" by Nancy D. Campbell, JP Olsen, and Luke Walden

The University Press of Kentucky web site describes this book in the following manner:

"The United States Narcotic Farm opened in 1935 in the rolling hills of Kentucky horse country. Portrayed in the press as everything from a "New Deal for the drug addict" to a "million-dollar flophouse for junkies," the sprawling art deco facility was equal parts federal prison, treatment center, working farm, and research laboratory. Its mission was to rehabilitate addicts, who were increasingly criminalized and incarcerated as a result of strict new drug laws, and to discover a cure for opiate addiction. This richly illustrated book offers an important history of this progressive yet ultimately doomed experiment. "Narco," as the locals called it, pioneered new treatments such as prescribing methadone to manage heroin withdrawal and developed drugs that blocked the action of opiates. The coed institution admitted federal prisoners as well as volunteers who checked themselves in for treatment, and through the years it hosted several legendary jazz musicians, including Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins, as well as actor Peter Lorre and writer William S. Burroughs. The facility ultimately closed in 1975 under a cloud as Congress learned that Narco researchers had recruited patients as test subjects for CIA-funded LSD experiments from 1953 to 1962, part of the notorious project MK-Ultra."

In the early 1970's, as a part of my intial involvement in the world of substance abuse treatment, I was an occasional visitor to The Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, as it is described in the quotation above. I always went there as part of a group of people, both professionials and patients, who were visiting the facility as an aspect of our involvement either as staff, patients,or volunteers in the field. I was never an employee or a patient/inmate at the facility. By that time, the name of the facility had been changed to the Federal Medical Center Lexington. I often attended group actitivities there and met numerous members of both their professional and patient/inmate populations. It was a fascinating place to visit since it was both a segment of the federal prison system and a treatment and research facility funded by the federal government as a part of the federal response to alcoholism and drug addiction. This book is a fine piece of work, especially in the area of the massive amount of research it required by the three co-authors. They must have spent mulitple years seeking, locating, and compiling the vast amounts of records, photographs, books, media articles, documentaries, and other records, both first hand and secondary, which comprise the book and its supporting documentation. It is somewhat easy for the casual reader to misinterpret this book as a "picture book". While that term can be accurate as a partial descriptor of the book, it is nowhere near a fully accurate assessment of the book. Yes, the book is documented with several hundred excellent and powerful photographs from a wide variety of sources, but is also comprised of thousands of words of written material which is divided between a fine written assessment of the work involved in the institution's work in the twelve areas which comprise the individual chapters, and dozens of lengthy descriptions of the multitudinous photographs which are primarily classic black and white highly professional documentation of the facility and its work with a smattering of more recent color photographs of generally equally professional work.

This book is a fine historical document of a facility which has lasted more than 90 years as both a prison and a treatment and research institution for what were often considered the most severely addicted persons in the nation. In the early days of the facility, its patient population was composed of both convicted felons and patients from the general American public who were allowed to voluntarily admit themselves to the facility as patients seeking treatment for their addictions. My impressions of this book are naturally dual in that I am writing about it as a general reader and also as a reflection of my own personal knowledge which was derived from actual time spent there as a visitor with experience in the field of substance abuse treatment. I strayed into my copy of this book at a local Goodwill Store as I often do with used books in a variety of fields, and my investment of $1.59 was repayed by my initial inspection of the photographs, Contents page, and the Index and Credits. Instantly, I was reminded of the two most interesting men I met during my visits to the facility. One was a somewhat aged but physically and mentally active man in his late fifties who was both a chronic alcoholic and sometime drug abuser who was also an inveterate con artist. He was able to achieve long term periods of abstinence especially at those itmes when he was in a controlled environment. But at those times such as his incarceration and treatment at the Narco Farm, he would invariably be ruminating about his impending release and perpetration of the "perfect con game". He also told a personal narrative of his first incarceration in a state prison in the northeastern United States shortly after he attained adult legal status. He claimed to have been the person who picked up a package containing some firearms which an outside source threw over the prison wall to be carried to the inmate who led one of the worst prison riots in American history. He claimed to have never been an active participant in the actual riot and related attacks on prison staff, and claimed to have never been prosecuted for his part in the riot planning. He always said he had simply been assigned to pick up and transport the package of firearms as the were thrown over the downtown prison's wall and transporting them to the key figure in the riot. During the time I knew this man, he was released from the federal prison system and instantly attained a job as a chef in a large hotel in Lexington. As the book discusses, it was not uncommon for inmates at the facility to be released and remain in Lexington. Almost immediately after his release, this man began the perpetration of his "perfect con game" and was subsequently reincarcerated because of it while claiming to have remained stone cold sober the entire time.

The other man I met at the Narcotic Farm was an early perpetrator of an airliner hijacking. He had been a traveling salesman based in a fairly large southeastern city. He said that he had gotten on a commercial airliner in his home city while in an alcoholic blackout during an extended drunk. Shortly after the plane reached cruising altitude, he said he had told a stewardess "This is a hijacking and I want to go to Cuba." The pilots and other personnnel had pacified him to the best of their ability while communicating with federal law enforcement the entire time. They told him that the plane did not have enough fuel for the long trip to Cuba and they would need to stop somewhere to refuel. Being a somewhat sociable alcoholic, he agreed, and the plane landed at a major airport in another city. When they landed, the crew advised him that none of the other passengers wanted to go to Cuba that day. Once again being a really nice alcoholic, he agreed and allowed the passengers and most of the support staff to leave the plane. The entire story had, of course, been a ruse and as the other passengers completed their deboarding an FBI team boarded the plane and arrested him. This man always swore that he had been in an alcoholic blackout the entire time and remembered nothing of the incident until he regained consciousness in a federal prison holding cell in that second city. He said when he regained consciousness he knew he was in a jail which was unlike any he had ever been in before. He said he could see a television on the wall near the end of the cellblock in which he was being held. He said that the first thing he could remember seeing was himself on the evening local news being led off the plane by two FBI agents. He was convicted of the hijacking but was able with the help of a fine attorney and a good psychiatrist who examined and hypnotized him to convince the necessary authorities that he truly had been in a total blackout due to his alcoholism and had no organic memory of the event. He received a sentence which was shorter than most hijackers at the time and was eventually admitted to the Lexington facility for treatment. I have no idea what happened to this man upon his eventual release from prison.

The Narcotic Farm was often the temporary home and treatment facility for a variety of high profile inmates. It came to be known as a hotbed for jazz music due to the heavy involvement of narcotics in the jazz music scene. The book records that at times aspiring jazz musicians would actually volunteer to become patients at the facility in order to get to play with the actual stars who were incarcerated there at any given time. The book records that:

Chet Baker, Elvin Jones, Stan Levey, Jackie McLean, Red Rodney, Sonny Rollins, Howard McGee, Benny Green, and Tad Dameron.."

were at various time incarcerate there. The Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, Sr. who wrote the classic book "Junkie" did time there as did his son the writer William Lee Burroughs. In addition to "Junkie" by the elder Burroughs, several other well known books were written, at least in part, about time spent at the facility by their authors. Those books include "Kentucky Ham" by William Lee Burroughs, "The Fantastic Lodge: The Autobiography of a Girl Addict" edited by Helen MacGill Hughes, and "The Farm" by Clarence L. Cooper, Jr. Recently, the facility received the latest of its celebrity inmates when Joseph “Joe Exotic” Maldonado, the star of the Netflix documentary series “Tiger King,” was tranferred there. The facility in Lexington is and always was a unique location in the federal prison system. This book is equally unique and well worth reading by a variety of readers including musicians, clean and sober alcoholics and addicts, workers in the addictions and correctinos fields, writers both aspiring and famous, photographers who still love to see exceptional work by others in their chosen profession, and general readers in search of a change of pace in their reading matter.

"A Song To Kill For" by Billy Edd Wheeler

"A Song To Kill For" is Billy Edd Wheeler's only novel. Wheeler is best known as a songwriter and playwright in addition to also having done some performing in the field of country music, having been a popular after dinner speaker for many years. This novel was self-published under the label Infinity Publishing which is virtually non-existent on the internet. They have been defunct since October 2023. I purchased this copy from Amazon and it was publication on demand. I'm not certain if Infinity which had been primarily a children's book publisher was an imprint of Amazon, or if it might have been owned by Wheeler and later sold to Amazon. While this is a self-published novel,Wheeler has a lenghty history as a playwright having written at least nine plays, several of which were produced for quite a few years as outdoor dramas around the southeastern US and Midwest. Wheeler also wrote several songs which were major hits as performed by others. Those songs include "Jackson" which was a signature duet for Johnny Cash and June Carter; "The Reverend Mister Black" which was a hit for the Kingston Trio;"Coward Of The County" which was a massive hit for Kenny Rogers; and, "Coal Tattoo" which has been recoreded by numerous artists with history in the Appalachian Coalfields including Kathy Mattea, The Kingston Trio, and Jim Croce. His well received plays include ""Hatfields and McCoys", "Young Abe Lincoln", and "Johnny Appleseed". It shouldn't surprise anyone to know that his greatest impact as a writer came in the area of playwriting since he held a masters degree in playwriting from Yale University in addition to his bachelors degree from Berea COllege. This book is worth reading even though it is not a great novel. It is funny, fairly well plotted, and has some well developed characters including the protagonist Gabriel Leatherwood who seems to, at least in part, to have been an alter ego of Wheeler himself. Leatherwood is a native West Virginian who is a musician and songwriter who traveld to Nashville only to have several of his early songs stolen by the lead villian who is the owner of music publishing company. Leatherwood decides to take on the company and its owner along with a sizeable cast of lesser villians who assist in his crimes including murder. Along the way, Leatherwood is lucky enough to fall in love with a beautiful female attorney, get invited to the White House to perform, and survive a rather graphic attempted murder by one of those villians. In the end, he marries the heroine, saves his songs, becomes rather wealthy, and chooses to return to Appalachian West Virginia with the woman of his dreams. I repeat, the book is worth reading especially if you are a musician of the country persuasion, an Appalachian, a writer,or if you enjoy crime stories and mysteries. It is not a great novel or a perfect novel. But it is worthy attempt at a first novel by a gifted writer in other areas of the arts.

My Thirty Minute Phone Call From Mitch McConnell!

Last night, just as I was falling off to sleep, my telephone rang and I answered. To my ecstatic surprise, it was Mitch McConnell in the flesh, so to speak, since so many million Americans have begun to doubt his existence. I spat, sputtered, regained control of my rapidly beating heart and finally responded, "Mr. Senator, thank you very much for calling me! I'm surprised you remember me since it has been so many years since we last spoke." Mitch rejoined, "Not remember you??? How could I not remember you? We ate pinto beans together at the old Rock House Restaurant at the mouth of Slone Fork between Hindman and Mousie in the summer of 1968 when we were both just young whipper snappers. You were sixteen years old and fresh out of high school at that wonderful old Knott County High School at Pippa Passes on Caney Creek, what an institution! I was a young, wet behind the ears attorney, just twenty-six years young, just graduated from law school the year before, working for Marlowe Cook in his run for the US Senate seat as his college coordinator with all the colleges in the state. We were desperate for every vote we could find so he sent me to see you in Knott County because you were enrolled in Alice Lloyd College after a wonderful academic summer or two in Upward Bound, that reprehensible program which had been such a waste of federal money by Democrats." I was thunderstruck to say the least but I tried to speak, to ask what he could possibly need from me now almost 60 years after that fortuitous bowl of pinto beans. I tried to speak, to question why it was his idea to call me now. "You and that bowl of pinto beans changed my life forever. You actually agreed to be the campus student chair for Marlowe Cook and Richard Nixon, God bless their sainted souls! You worked that job so hard, called me once a week at my office in Louisville and repeatedly told me the truth, that there were no Republican votes on Caney Creek. You taught me how to face the truth with that kind of honesty. You set me on the path to great power, motivated me to become a powerful United States Senator and Senate Majority Leader for a record stretch. I'll never forget you or that wonderful bowl of pinto beans." I said,"Sir, I'm afraid that you have more important calls to make than this one. I hope you don't intend to waste twenty minutes of your valuable time with me as you have with so many of your Republican colleagues! To my utter surprise, Mitch then said with a sly chuckle, "Waste twenty minutes? Oh no, this won't be a waste, and I'm going to give you a full half hour unlike the others. Just relax and listen as I tell you my plans." I agreed to sit quietly and listen as the half hour flew by, or actually just twenty-eight minutes of it. I can't divulge what plans Mitch told me about but they were fantastic, exhilirating, stupendous, supercalifragilisticexpealidoscious, but he swore me to secrecy. Then just as my bedside clock showed the call to have been going on for twenty-seven minutes, I heard a stentorian but heavenly voice in the background of Mitch's call. "Mitch, it's time. Let's go, please!" I heard Mitch respond, "Peter? Saint Peter, NO, it can't be. I have so much to do. I was just telling Roger Hicks how much I have planned from now until the end of my term...". Then,to my utter consternation, the line went dead...and, I suspect, the line did not go dead alone.