Once in a while, I stumble into a book which is exactly what I am looking and hoping for at the time and this is one of them. It is even more interesting that I found this one and bought a copy at roughly the same time I located and bought two others which have been wonderful for both myself and many of the readers of this blog. The first such book was Cratis Williams' "Tales From Sacred Wind: Coming of Age In Appalachia" which I have written about extensively in this blog and which has been greatly appreciated by a multitude of my readers.
I have also bought, very lightly perused, but not fully read, a wonderful book called "Decoration Day In The Mountains: Traditions of Cemetery Decoration in the Southern Appalachians" by Alan Jabbour & Karen Singer Jabbour. I will complete reading that one before I write about it. But based on the reception for what I had to say about the Williams book, many of you will eagerly anticipate knowing more about the "Decoration Day..." book. But right now, let's talk about another of the wonderful Appalachian books by my friend Bill Best, "100 Years of Appalachian Visions...".
Bill Best edited, or compiled, this book more than twenty years ago and I had never heard of it until I strayed into it on a used book website and ordered it immediately. In a show of his genuine humility, Bill had never spoken to me about this book until I told him I had located a copy. I had earlier read and written about more than one of Bill's other books which I have enjoyed greatly. Bill is a friend of mine although we have not known each other very long at all and that is my loss. But even though we have not known each other at length, I am proud to say that I wrote the "Afterword" for Bill's next book which will be released in a very limited edition before the month is out. I will write about it also as soon as it is officially available for purchase. But, to repeat myself, let's talk about this book, "100 Years Of Appalachian Visions", which is a compilation of short, but wonderful essays by native Appalachians, both famous and relatively unknown, about growing up in Appalachia, primarily in the twentieth century. The book contains essays by numerous well known, even famous, Appalachian writers along side works by other individuals whose names were not known to me before I read the book. Among the better known authors in this book are my friends and mentors Don West and Loyal Jones whose works are also accompanied by contributions from other famous Appalachians such as former Georgia Governor Zell Miller, Gurney Norman, James Gifford, Jim Wayne Miller, George Ella Lyon, Sidney Saylor Farr, Ron Eller, Jesse Stuart, Chuck Yeager, and Wilma Dykeman. There are a total of more than 55 essays in the book and every one of them is well worth reading.
These essays are all personal epistles from a wide variety of native Appalachians from all around the region about the experience of growing up in Appalachia. They are sometimes funny, sometimes painful, and always educational and worthy of your time and effort to read them. They discuss the feelings many of us have felt when we traveled outside our homeland and found ourselves being "othered", made fun of, belittled, embarrassed, and mistreated because we spoke with that wonderful accent which is rooted in the British Isles of several centuries past or because we dressed a little quaintly, or because our apparent poverty was making an outsider uncomfortable. These essays are all written by Appalachians who sought education, self-improvement, and a better life and most of these authors realized along the way that it was more valuable to them to become proud Appalachians rather than to change to suit the tastes of those who belittled and shamed them. As I read this book, I was reminded of the occasion about 1969 when I was sent on a college exchange winter quarter to the campus of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. During my one month stay on the campus, a local student who lived in Cleveland invited me to come to his family home one weekend for dinner, which had always been supper to me. I will never forget being introduced to his parents who were apparently fairly well off and lived in a home which was considerably larger than nearly every home I had ever seen in Knott County Kentucky. We ate in a formal dining room and the parents probed me with dozens of questions just like those most of the authors in Bill's book and most of you native Appalachians have heard at some point in your lives somewhere in the north, northeast, southwest, or northwest when we left the region. But the part of the entire affair which left a lifelong impression on me was the numerous times the family members would ask me to repeat some common word I had used in the conversation. As I recall, there were a few occasions in which I was actually asked to spell what I had just said. It was if they thought I spoke a foreign language and I was humiliated. Somehow, I got through that meal and the remainder of the evening before I had to catch public transport back to the Oberlin campus which was the first time I was ever on public transport alone and was, of itself, another experience which I will always remember. I also saw and ate my first bagel on the Oberlin campus during that winter quarter. The cafeteria style student dining areas on the campus were a far cry from Hunger Din at Alice Lloyd College where all students were assigned to a particular table with a faculty member and several other students and served family style much as we would have eaten in our own homes.
But, just like most of the authors in Bill Best's wonderful collection, I got through the challenges of that trip to Oberlin, swore I would not change my accent, and also swore to learn how not to be embarrassed by being me, a native Appalachian who was seeking to gain education and self-improvement while maintaining an identity I knew was real, made me the person I was, and would carry me through all such challenges I ever met. I hope all of you read this book, learn from it as I did, and choose to be a proud Appalachian.
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