"Written In Blood" edited by Wess Harris--Book Review

 

"Written In Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction" is edited by Wess Harris who is employed by Appalachian Community Services, Inc. located at 229 Birtice Road, Gay, West Virginia 25244, and the book can be ordered directly from Mr. Harris.  The book is listed at $19.95 plus shipping and is well worth the price if you have any interest in the Appalachian coal mining industry and the efforts of coal miners to achieve and maintain safety in their relationship with the generally absentee owners of mines in Central and Southern Appalachia.  This book was my first contact with what is known as Esau in the coal fields.  My earlier discussion of this practice has been read by hundreds, perhaps a few thousand readers on this blog.  The book is composed of about 20 generally short chapters written by several of the more important writers in the ongoing effort to accurately portray the history of the Appalachian coal fields.  Those authors and/or interviewees include Wess Harris himself; William C. "Bill" Blizzard who was a writer for the Charleston Gazette for many years before being fired for refusing to cross a pressmen's picket line during a labor strike, and who later worked as a professor of West Virginia History and Labor History at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia; Michael and Carrie Kline whose writing and oral history has been featured in many newspapers and magazines for the past several decades; UMWA official Cecil Roberts; former Mine Safety and Health Administration executive Jack Spadoro; and Joy and Chuck Lynn who previously owned the Whipple Company Store and first brought about awareness and documentation of the practice of Esau in the coal fields.   

The book provides an excellent timeline of labor efforts and operator resistance to those efforts primarily  in the West Virginia coal fields but also discusses the Adkins Coal Company explosion at Kite, Kentucky, in my native Knott County, along with a discussion of the Martin County Kentucky coal mine blowout of millions of gallons of black water and coal sludge into the Tug Fork River below Warfield, Kentucky.  Jack Spadaro's discussion of his inspections and reports at the Adkins facility at Kite, Kentucky, squarely places the blame for the deaths of several miners on the owner's refusal to pay a paltry price for clay "dummies" which were usually inserted into blasting holes behind explosive charges in order to prevent dangerous sparking into the mine's atmosphere during those explosions which could ignite suspended coal dust in the air and which Spadaro found to be the cause of the explosion and the fatalities.  Spadaro was also a major player in the research and regulation following both the Buffalo Creek Flood and the Martin County Kentucky mine blowout which caused the severe pollution of the Tug and Big Sandy Rivers and the need for municipalities to shut down 17 water intake facilities downstream from the blowout. It is generally not necessary to explain the Buffalo Creek Flood to most people in coal mining areas since it resulted in the deaths of more than 125 people. Spadaro, Blizzard, and Roberts are all historic figures in the history of the Appalachian coal fields.  It is my opinion that, in time, Joy and Chuck Lynn will also be viewed as historically important people in the effort to disseminate the truth about the persistent efforts by the coal industry to stymie organized labor, cover up non-compliance, and minimize the importance of the average worker in one of the most dangerous professions in America.

This book is not a clean, neat, saccharine sweet piece of reading.  It tells the cold, hard truth page after page and is not for the timid reader who might have previously been misled into believing the standard propaganda of the typical coal mine operators or acquiescent government officials who would allow anything short of cold blooded murder in order to hang onto a few jobs in the coal fields.  The book reports honestly and realistically on opposition to union organizing including the Battle of Blair Mountain in which Blizzard's father, William Blizzard, led UMWA miners in the effort to unionize the Logan and Mingo coal fields in southern West Virginia while facing machine gun fire from coal company hired gun thugs.  It also exposes the practice of Esau in the coal fields, particularly at the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County which I have discussed at length in the blog post linked at the beginning of this story.  That is a practice in which wives and daughters of miners who were temporarily unable to work were forced into sexual servitude in order to obtain food or other necessary commodities for their families.  That practice was first brought to light by Joy and Chuck Lynn when they were operating the Whipple Company Store as a privately owned museum. They documented numerous accounts of the practice of Esau which were related to them spontaneously by women who had either lived in the coal fields or descended from mothers whose husbands worked in the industry.  I spoke at length by telephone with Wess Harris earlier this week about the book and many other issues related to the coal industry in Appalachia.  I also made multiple attempts to speak with Joy Lynn this week about many aspects of the book including Esau in the coal fields but was never able to make contact with her other a short e-mail which said nothing.  I have also communicated via Facebook Messenger with the West Virginia singer and song writer Mary Hott who has written and recorded an entire CD of songs, "Devil In The Hills", about the practice of Esau and has created a private website at this link both to market her CD and to disseminate the truth about Esau.   Joy Lynn has produced two books about the entire experience of operating the Whipple Company Store Museum which can be ordered directly from her and her information can be accessed from Mary Hott's website above.  

I repeat that this book is not for the timid or doubtful reader. It will cause you to feel anger, disgust, and a desire to help make the world a better place and that is a good thing.  In many circumstances, it is necessary to feel all those emotions in order for wrongs to be righted, evil to be resisted, good to be sown, and for justice to be served.  And everyone who has been wronged deserves to have justice even if they never lived to see it while alive in the world.  This truly is a story "Written In Blood".   

Esau In The Coal Mines Of Appalachia

 

This post and the practice of Esau in the coal mines is rooted in the story of Esau and Jacob from the King James Version of the Bible.  The Biblical story also has serious implications in the coal fields of Appalachia as reported by several independent scholars and writers and has been corroborated numerous times both by individuals of advanced age who lived and worked in the coal mines of Appalachia and by their offspring, especially the daughters of these coal miners and their wives.  First we will read a key portion of the Biblical story from Genesis 25: 21-34. Then we will discuss how it applies to the history of the Appalachian coal fields.

²¹ And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.  ²² And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the Lord. ²³ And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.  ²⁴ And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.  ²⁵ And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.  ²⁶ And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.  ²⁷ And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.  ²⁸ And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.  ²⁹ And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:  ³⁰ And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. ³¹ And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.  ³² And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?  ³³ And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.  ³⁴ Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

 

 When we examine the story from the Bible, we see that Esau and Jacob were intended to become leaders of two different "nations" of people and that Esau was the first born which in Biblical times meant that he was intended to inherit the entire estate of his father Isaac.  But, as the Bible states in the story "the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger". This Biblical mandate that the elder should serve the younger is brought about because Jacob is a mighty hunter and Esau, the elder, is eventually forced to sell his birthright to his younger brother in order to keep from starving.  A question which many people ask about this story is "what is pottage?".  Basically, pottage is either a soup or a stew and the "lentiles (sp)" from which it is made are a relative of beans which are not commonly eaten in America but are available and I actually sat at my kitchen table yesterday and "looked", to use an old Appalachian expression, some lentils for a pot of bean soup, or pottage, if I may say so.  So the upshot of the Biblical story is that Esau was forced to sell everything he stood to inherit in order to eat.  Now, let's move on to how this story came to be played out in Appalachian coal fields, coal camp towns, and coal company stores.  

During times of unemployment, strikes, or in events when miners were injured, sick, or otherwise unable to work, coal companies and the coal company stores would not allow the miners and their wives, who were usually the ones who did the shopping, to continue to receive merchandise or scrip from the company store unless the miner was owed money.  Therefore, no work, no money owed, no scrip, no food for the family.  The coal companies did not do any miner any favors and when the work stopped the pay and the food also stopped.  But a system developed in many, if not most, of the coal company stores which came to be known as Esau in which the wives or daughters of temporarily non-working miners could be issued some scrip or food based on the scrip system which was administered in most cases by coal company employees who were often actually contracted employees of one of the coal security companies such as Baldwin-Felts or Pinkerton.   For those of you who do not know about the scrip system, it was a system by which coal companies created their own form of money, scrip, with which they paid their employees and scrip was only good in the stores owned by the particular company which issued the scrip.  At times, it was possible for employees to sell scrip outside the company at vastly discounted rates much in the same way, in recent years, food stamp recipients have been able to sell food stamps.  

The system which developed in these coal companies and their stores which came to be known as Esau was used at times when miners were either killed, injured, striking, or otherwise unemployed and had no money or scrip with which to feed their families.  Since coal miners usually worked long hours six, or even seven, days a week, their wives or  teenage daughters were usually the people who went to the company stores to buy groceries for the family.  Under ordinary circumstances, the woman wishing to make a purchase would go to the pay window and ask for some amount of scrip for groceries, select her items, and pay for them at the counter with the scrip.  Another slightly different system might have the purchaser simply sign a ticket for the amount of her purchases and the tickets would be recorded in the paymaster's book against the employment record of the minor.  In either case, it was not uncommon for a miner to work weeks, or even months, without ever actually receiving any form of payment in his pay envelope on payday.  It was more common for miners to receive a statement in the pay envelope which showed hours worked or tons of coal loaded, amount of pay earned, amount of scrip issued or purchases made subtracted from the amount earned, and a running total of the amount the miner owed the company hence the line in the famous song "I owe my soul to the company store".  

The Esau system worked in a very different manner and supplies or scrip were only issued to female members of the miner's family and records were kept in a different book, the Esau book.  When the wife or teenage daughter of an unemployed miner needed food or other important purchases, she would go to the company store, ask an employee for what she needed be told there was no scrip available in her husband or father's name, and then be told by the employee who was always male and usually a contract employee of one of the hired "security" companies that there was a way she could get what she needed.  She would then be taken to some isolated section of the company store, forced to have sex with the male employee, and the amount she owed the company would be recorded in the Esau book.  This system has been documented by several coal mine writers and historians over the years including West Virginia Public Broadcasting's Catherine Moore and Michael and Carrie Kine who produced stories of the Esau system as it operated in the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County, West Virginia.  Catherine Moore documented this story about the Esau system as told to her by Joy Lynn, the owner and tour guide at the Whipple Company Store in the days when it was being operated as a museum: 

"We’ve had multitudes of women and tell us as little girls they remember their mothers coming to the company store and one of the things that a lot of more the lovely ladies had to do was come upstairs.  Some of the young girls had the stories shared by their mothers stating that they would be escorted in the shoe room. There would be a selected guard that would be waiting for them and they would receive a brand new pair of shoes with no accountability other than to perform whatever the service the guard wished to have in lieu of pay.  We had one woman in particular share with us that her mother was a young girl about 25 years old and bought her first pair of shoes here and the women’s entire life those shoes remained in the shoe box on her closet shelf never to be worn and she refused to wear another pair of shoes her entire life.  She made her shoes out of cardboard, newspapers and twine.”  (WV Public Broadcasting, Catherine Moore, October 23, 2013)

Catherine Moore's telling of the story is corroborated in Michael and Carrie Kline's "Esau in the Coalfields: Owing Our Soul to the Company Store" in the book "Written In Blood", edited by Wess Harris.   In that article, the aforementioned Joy Lynne relates the following story: 

"Just off the ballroom on the third floor of the store is a smaller room toward the back of the building.  In early photographs it's the only curtained room.  It served as a fitting room, so it has been frequently told, where women were accompanied by one of the guards from the first floor to try on shoes they had seen displayed in the shoe department.  A woman, of course, seldom had money of her own and barely enough scrip or credit at the company storeto cover the week's groceries and rent.  So when she got up to the shoe room she found it furnished with a cot upon which the guard encouraged her to sit while trying on the shoes.  When the door shut behind her, she found herself alone with the guard...Over the past several years we've had eight or ten women refer to this as the 'rape room'.  After they got their lovely shoes they would have to pay for them in this room."  ("Written In Blood", edited by Wess Harris, pp. 19-20).

On the website Appalachian History.net, Dave Tabler recorded this story from Wes Harris, the editor of the the book mentioned above, "Written In Blood": 

 “Esau was issued only to women, and it was a form of scrip that would enable a women to purchase food for her children during the time that her husband couldn’t work. But it was only good for 30 days, and if her husband went back to work within those 30 days, then the company in their kindness would forgive the debt. And if he did not go back to work at the end of 30 days, then the scrip became a loan that was due and payable in full on day 30. And of the course the women didn’t have jobs or scrip or money, and so they had to pay it back—and it was a collateralized loan—and the women themselves were the collateral. Their physical selves would be used to pay the debt.” (Dave Tabler, "Esau Scrip and The Shoe Room, AppalachianHistory.net November 6, 2013)

The West Virginia singer and songwriter Mary Hott related this story about forced sexual servitude in the coal fields to the website MorganCountyUSA.org about her understanding of Esau and how it caused her to study the system and record an album containing several songs about the practice: 

 

Singer and songwriter Mary Hott of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia was listening to the report. “I heard the radio report on the Whipple Company Store,” Hott told This Week in Morgan County. “People were telling stories – rape, torture by mine guards, to keep control, to keep the miners and their families under control, to keep out unions.” (Mary Hott on The Devil In The Hills of West Virginia" on MorganCountyUSA.org February 28, 2020)

Although some academics have publicly questioned these reports, most of which were originated in the works of Joy Lynn and her husband at the Whipple Company Store during the days in which they operated it as a museum,  the concept of Esau has been corroborated by other legitimate writers and historians including Janet W. Green in an article on the website West Virginia History entitled "Strategies for Survival: Women's Work in the Southern West Virginia Coal Camps"

In interviews with coal miners' wives who lived in housing owned by coal companies during those years, women reported that wages were not stable in the mining life. To meet the challenges of uncertain wages and work shut-downs, women raised gardens on available land, preserved food, and, if necessary, sewed underwear for their children out of flour sacks. Women earned cash by taking in boarders and laundry, selling butter and eggs, and serving as bootleggers and prostitutes.  (Janet W. Green, "Strategies for Survival: Women's Work in he Southern West Virginia Coal Camps" West Virginia History, Volume 49, 1990)

 On her official website, Mary Hott, the singer mentioned above, gives this explanation of her motivation to record her album and makes an attempt to confront historians and writers who doubt the stories arising from Joy Lynn, Michael and Carrie Kline, and Wess Harris. She also provides links to the three academic articles written by Catherine Moore. 

"The idea for this music project was sparked in October 2014 after I heard a rebroadcast of a Halloween week special on WV Public Radio on haunted buildings in the state. The featured haunt that morning was the Whipple Company Store in Fayette County.  The broadcast also introduced the discovery of “Esau Scrip” which was publicly unknown at that point in time. The series of three radio stories by Catherine Moore initiated the ongoing controversy among some historians over the very existence and purpose of Esau scrip and piqued my curiosity." (Mary Hott, "Devil In The Hills: Coal Country Reckoning")

 While it is easy to understand why some historians and writers might question these stories without further empirical evidence to support them, it is also common knowledge that victims of sexual oppression, sexual abuse, and assault are generally very reticent to discuss their victimization and most of the victims are either already dead or elderly.  I have also learned from Wess Harris himself that the Whipple Company store is no longer being operated as a museum, has fallen into decrepitude, and is now owned by an individual who is connected to the West Virginia coal industry and might well have personal reasons for suppressing such stories about the Esau system in the coal fields.  I grew up within three miles of a large coal camp town in Eastern Kentucky and spend several years working in the coal fields of West Virginia and I had never heard of the Esau system until I read "Written In Blood" which is a major source of these stories.  Without a doubt, oral historians in the coal fields of Appalachia should make a concerted effort to learn the whole story of Esau in the coal fields.  How accurate are the extant stories about it?  Was it widespread in the coal fields beyond the Whipple Company Store?  Do the living wives and daughters of Appalachian miners corroborate the stories being told by the aforementioned sources. 

Do Deaths Come In Threes? Appalachian Folkways?

All my life in Appalachia, I have heard people, especially older people discuss the folk belief or old wive's tale that deaths always come in threes.  This past week or so I have had some reason to wonder about it again.  My wife, who spent the first 23 years or her life in East Central Wisconsin about half way between Milwaukee and Green Bay but has lived for the last 28 years in Appalachia, also recently brought it up to me because we had both been thinking about it in relation to the recent deaths of three people to whom we had some minor connections.  But none of these people knew each other so far as we know although it is possible they could have.  The first of these deaths was the death in Wayland, Kentucky, of the 38 year old son of a female friend of mine whom I have known since about 1968. He died on March 9, 2021, which was coincidentally the 51st anniversary of the death of my own mother.  I admit that I have never met her son because she and I fell out of touch many years ago and just reunited on Facebook a year or two ago.  The second death was the death of a 57 year old woman in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, who is the sister-in-law of a female cousin of mine with whom I grew up and with whom I am still close. She died on March 8, 2021, one day before the son of my long time friend.  This woman was married to the younger brother of my cousin's husband and although I had never met her and her husband, we regularly travel to our cousin's house which is literally on the old property of the parents of my cousin's husband's extended family and three of those siblings have built homes there.  I have heard her name many times along with her husband's but I repeat I did not know her.  The third death was much closer to us since it was the death, at age 68, two days ago of one of the two sisters from whom we bought our house and we have known her 28 years or so since early December of 1992. She died on March 11, 2021, within four days of the first death and three days of the second in this group of three. She and I had spoken on the telephone for about fifteen minutes about two months ago when her husband had been hospitalized for a major heart attack.  She and her sister, along with their husbands, have been our closest neighbors since December of 1992.  But over the last few years, out face to face contacts have decreased somewhat and we generally interact now more often at times of crisis, in either major or minor ways, such as this event.

 

Although I cannot say I really knew two of these people, I know their families quite well and communicated with all of them in response to the deaths of their loved ones.  My long time friend in Wayland and I communicate regularly on Facebook and share a large list of common friends, some of whom I advised of the death of her son.  She and I communicated by message within hours of his death.  I did not attend the son's visitation or funeral because of Covid 19 dangers.  When the sister-in-law of my cousin died and I learned of it because of searching online obituaries for the obituary of my friend's son, I called my female cousin's brother, to whom I am closer, and asked him if it was true that his sister's sister-in-law had died.  He immediately called other family members, verified the story, and called me back.  When I learned of my neighbor's death through another elderly neighbor on whose property she will be buried beside members of both their families, I called her sister and son and offered my condolences and discussed plans for the funeral.  I will not attend that visitation or funeral either but will probably time it so I can be present, a mile from my house, for the graveside service, once gain due to Covid 19 concerns.  

 

Admittedly, this is not three of my closest friends or family members, but my wife and I have some connection to all three deaths.  So,  the question naturally arose in our minds, "do deaths come in threes" as the common folk belief in Appalachia suggests.  This blog post suggests that deaths in threes is simply due to the fact that celebrities often seem to die in groups and the author apparently had never heard the idea in a manner which indicated that it is and has nearly always been expressed in folk beliefs in many areas of the world.  This second internet post suggests that For most people it is because they have heard the superstition, or been taught it. Much like any superstition, they get handed down generation upon generation with little or no thought.  This second internet post comes closer to the likely truth by referring to the idea of deaths coming in threes as being "a superstition" but does not make the connection to folk ways, folk beliefs, or old wive's tales.  This next link comes a bit closer to what I believe to be the truth when it says This is a cultural question rather than a historical one...In essence your question is related to a widespread European belief that all sorts of things happen in threes - which does not apply when dealing with cultures that see things that happen in fours or with other possibilities. But this writer has raised the possibility that other cultures believe that things might happen in fours.  For me, it seems more likely that some other cultures, far from Appalachia, might believe that deaths, or other bad circumstances, happen in fives which happens to be the number of fingers on a hand or toes on a foot. Folk ways and folk beliefs are often tied to some natural occurrence such at that.  But, no matter the number a culture believes, it is my opinion that the belief is culturally based and rooted in cultural history not celebrity status as my first quoted blog post would suggest.  I suspect that writer was simply not well educated about any culture and more focused on mass media as their personal influence source.  When we do an internet search using the phrase "Appalachian belief deaths come in threes" we find this more accurate link from Dave Tabler, a more credible source, at least in Appalachia, who simply states Death comes in threes in a congregation.  From a purely Appalachian point of view, I would say this is the most accurate discussion of the belief about deaths coming in threes at the blog "Blind Pig And The Acorn".  Death comes in 3s (This one is still alive and well in southern Appalachia and I believe it myself.)  Personally, I am not as certain about it as the author of the Blind Pig And The Acorn blog, but I do not firmly rule out that possibility.  I will examine the burials in three cemeteries on Find A Grave in the next few days for evidence of this belief and pass on what I learn as an addendum to this blog post.  But my whole point in writing this blog post was to ask you, my readers, what do you believe about deaths coming in threes?  

"Rosie Hicks and Her Recipe Book" by Donnie Henderson Shedlarz & Edited by Thomas Burton--Book Review

This is the official description of this book on the official website of the editor, Thomas Burton, who is the author or editor of roughly a half dozen other Appalachian books. 

"Rosie Hicks is the deceased widow of Ray Hicks, the internationally known traditional storyteller from North Carolina. She lived in the shadows of all the publications and publicity of Ray; nevertheless, she is an interesting person in her own right. Her life is an engaging story, both as an individual and as a representative of a culture that has for the most part passed away. And that story is told in this little book directly from a series of recorded interviews by Donnie Shedlarz. The book focuses on Rosie’s wonderful anecdotes of growing up in Beech Mountain, North Carolina, including her marriage to Ray; but it also includes the recipes that she kept in an old recipe book, as well as a number of family photographs."  Thomas Burton Website 

The person who conducted the oral history interviews on which this book is based was Donnie Henderson Shedlarz who died of some unnamed lung ailment and asked Thomas Burton, before her death, to finish the work on this little book.  Thomas Burton transcribed the interviews of Ms. Shedlarz and edited the book which was published by Landa Books in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  I am unable to locate an internet website for Landa Books and have to assume that it is no longer functioning or was a purely personal project of Thomas Burton or someone else associated with Ms. Shedlarz.  This book was produced in what must have been a self-publishing, or vanity press, effort and is quite difficult to locate.  I have previously read three others of Thomas Burton's books including one called "Beech Mountain Man" which is an oral history biography of Ronda Lee Hicks, a nephew of Ray and Rosie Hicks who was quite a reprobate in his own right.  Burton had a long standing friendship with several members of the Hicks family and it is not surprising that he would have volunteered to complete the work which Shedlarz, a mutual friend of Rosie Hicks and Burton, had begun.  Shedlarz and Rosie Hicks had become friends during contacts they initially made at story telling festivals around the country where both appeared at times along with Ray Hicks.  

This book is small, brief, and that is its greatest shortcoming.  Rosie Hicks was a fascinating Appalachian woman from a different era, having been born in 1931 in an isolated portion of Western North Carolina where she spent her entire life.  She was a teenager when she married her husband Ray Hicks, who eventually became the most famous Appalachian story teller.  Rosie eventually, because of traveling to story telling festivals with her husband, developed a minor reputation as a story teller also.  But this book does not focus on her story telling although it does contain two brief stories from her repertoire which I will discuss briefly below.  The book is purely an oral history memoir with a sizeable collection of Hicks family photographs and photos of the index card pages of Rosie's personal recipe book.  The text portion of the book is only about twenty-five pages and the entire book is only sixty-one pages.  But it is well worth reading if you can locate a copy.  Burton did a creditable job of sticking to her unique dialect in his transcriptions and the book can shed some light on a few aspects of Appalachian dialect in Western North Carolina.  

There are several old Appalachian folk sayings and riddles in the book along with two short Appalachian Folk Tales from Rosie Hicks' collection.  One is called "Gallymanders" and the other is called "Mule Eggs".  Both are variants of common themes among the folk tales of Appalachia.  I do not pretend to be an expert on Appalachian Folk Tales but I have read and written about one of Leonard Roberts' books of folk tales.  Roberts is considered the best known expert in that area although he has now been dead nearly forty years.  I have to admit that I should read and write further about this important aspect of Appalachian Culture.  For those of you who have had no experience with Appalachian Folk Tales, these two in Rosie's book are a good place to start.  The book also has a sizeable collection of traditional Appalachian riddles.  Although my wife and I have not tried any of Rosie's recipes yet, some of them are worth examining including her Black Magic Cake, Prune Sour Cream Coffee Cake, and Stack Cake.  If you can find a copy of this book, I think there are aspects of it all of you can enjoy.  

University Of Kentucky Men's Basketball And The Pitfalls Of Running An NBA Training Camp

 

As we approach the end of the 2020-2021 regular college basketball season, the University of Kentucky has a record of 8-14 which is the worst record at the university for something approaching a hundred years.  Not even two former famous alcoholic coaches have done this bad at UK.  UK has only one hope of being invited to the NCAA Tournament this year and that is to win the South Eastern Conference Tournament which will require them to win three games in a row when they have only been able to do that twice this season despite once again having a team built around several of the top basketball recruits from the previous year's high school graduates.  It ain't happening!  UK will be invited to the National Invitational Tournament, also known as the Tournament Of The Also Rans.   It has been interesting this year, as the wheels fell off the wagon, and stayed off, to hear the multitude of lame excuses being made for the disaster by the fan base.  What is not interesting is to watch the program continue to fail due to the model being used to run the program.  

 

 As of today, March 1, 2021, since John Calipari came to Kentucky in 2009, his record is 338-91 for a winning percentage of .788 and he has won one national championship and been inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. Simply in terms of winning percentage, that is an admirable record. But that one NCAA championship came in 2012. That was nine years ago.  Joe Hall won his single NCAA Championship in 1978 and only 7 year later, at the end of the 1984-1985 season, he resigned and retired.  Whether he simply got tired of the incessant pressure to win another championship or was forced to resign has never been public knowledge.  But, in either case, after only 7 years of not winning the second championship Joe Hall was relegated to the status of a revered elder statesman in Lexington which his record of 297-100, for a winning percentage of .748 and nearly as good as John Calipari's, deserved. Joe Hall did his .748 the hard way with primarily four year players who had some degree of loyalty to the program. Orlando "Tubby" Smith had a record of .760 at Kentucky and won one national championship the hard way with primarily four year players who had some degree of loyalty to the program. Nine years later, Tubby had not won a second championship and he too was gone. 

 

In early April of 2012, all the fans of the university were elated, literally jumping up and down, firmly convinced that in only a few years the University of Kentucky would win  enough NCAA Championships to finally equal and pass UCLA under John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches who ever lived.  When I think about this absolute hero worship of John Calipari and the system he has instilled into University of Kentucky basketball, I am reminded of the words of Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon: 

 

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming

Before I go on, let me say clearly that I am a fan of John Calipari and his ability to coach basketball.  I am not a fan of his system which is simply to run an NBA training camp, to recruit as many players as possible who are cinches for the NBA, put as many of those players as possible into the NBA, tout that form of success as being success for the program, and to ignore the fact that the university with the most wins in NCAA basketball history is not the team with the most championships and will not be playing for one this year.  As soon as John Calipari got to the University of Kentucky, he instituted a plan based on one and done players who were locks for the NBA and ignored, for the most part, a long standing tradition at Kentucky of recruiting in state players, four year players, and players with ties to the state and the university.  That is to say he stopped recruiting players with loyalty to the program.  We often see figures about how much money the NBA has paid and is paying to those former one and done University of Kentucky basketball players.  But have you ever seen an article in the media about how even one of those players ever made a sizeable donation to the university which gave them an opportunity to play one year, ignore tradition, and move on to the NBA and the bank, actually numerous banks?  According to this article by sportswriter Dennis Varney from December 21, 2020, there are more than thirty former University of Kentucky players in the NBA.  One day later, December 22, 2020, Duke University had what was an Atlantic Coast Conference record 26 players in the NBA and has actually won two NCAA championships since John Calipari has been at Kentucky.  Villanova, which has won two championships since Calipari has been at Kentucky, had only 8 players in the NBA at the start of the 2020 season.  The bottom line of that is that NCAA national championships are not won by teams of one and done freshmen.  They are won by teams of committed, loyal players who intend to stay four years, develop skills, accept coaching, and play as a team.  

 

Most one and one players come to any university believing they are God's gift not just to basketball but to the world in general.  Most of them have been given miles and miles of leeway by high school and AAU coaches because they were stars.  Most of them believe that they, and only they, can lead a team to success.  They also tend to believe that the university which they have graced with their presence is lucky to have them, better let them have their way, and stay out of their way while they serve out a mandatory year before leaving.  Many of them view that year in much the same way they would view a jail sentence.  They do not play team ball.  They are not interested in winning unless they are the player of the game, the season, the decade, and all of history, as briefly as they view history.  They do not care about assists, blocks, or rebounds unless a person they believe is less talented than them is providing them the ball via those assists, blocks, and rebounds so they can score and look good in the press.  

University of Kentucky basketball is paying a horrible price for having an NBA training camp on campus instead of a team of loyal four year players who are committed to winning a national championship, achieving a degree, and then moving on the NBA if fate decides they should.  But, I am not saying Kentucky needs to fire John Calipari mainly for these reasons: 1) he can coach basketball as well as anyone Kentucky could likely replace him with; 2) he has an incredibly high buy out built into his contract; and, 3) just as the program can be fixed, so can Calipari and his thinking.  He is a person who has a great sense of self preservation in addition to his sense of self promotion.  What I am suggesting is that Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart have a thirty to sixty minute "Come To Jesus Meeting" with Calipari and inform him of the new, and old, focus of University of Kentucky basketball, winning national championship and that focus can be achieved by doing the following things: 1) the heart of the team every year must be five players who are committed to play four years and earn a degree; 2) those players must not be living under they idea they are one and done; 3) those players must be rated from about 25 to 100 in their high school graduating class; 4) the coaching staff may then have as many as five players each year on the team who are rated above 25 in their high school graduating class so long as they know that the experienced players will start and play most of the time especially early in the year and that playing time for anyone else will be on a strictly earned basis; 5) other slots on the team should be filled with other players with strong ties to the university and the state who are willing to do the dirty work of getting beat up in practice, fighting for playing time, and taking orders from the coaches; and, 6) every year the coaching staff must actively recruit whomever is selected as Mister Basketball in Kentucky.  

You are wondering why I brought up that last insistence about Mr. Basketball in Kentucky, I bet.  If you look at this year's roster for Western Kentucky University, they have five players on the roster who were either Mr. Basketball in Kentucky or a finalist for that award and John Calipari never recruited any of them.  At Western Kentucky this year, Taveion Hollingsworth, Dayvion McKnight, and Carson Williams were all previous Kentucky Mr. Basketball winners. Jackson Harlan was a finalist for Kentucky Mr. Basketball.  Isaiah Cozart was named Gatorade Kentucky Boys Basketball Player of the Year and a finalist for Kentucky Mr. Basketball.  All five of those players would have literally killed and died to play in Rupp Arena for four years for the University of Kentucky and were not offered that opportunity.  And this year, they defeated the University of Alabama on December 15, 2020, and probably all watched on television as the University of Kentucky lost to Alabama twice.  Right now, the most likely candidate to become Kentucky Mr. Basketball 2021 is Reed Shepherd, the son of former Kentucky player Jeff Shepherd, and there are persistent rumors in the media that Calipari has not actively recruited him.  It is long past time for Mitch Barnhart to have that "Come To Jesus Meeting" with John Calipari and put a stop the pitfalls of allowing Kentucky basketball to be nothing more or less than an NBA training camp.  

I do not fully know how seriously Kentucky basketball was damaged by losing assistant coach Kenny Payne but I firmly believe his move to the NBA was a part of the problem this year.  But that does not lessen the importance of stopping the NBA training camp focus of the program as it has been for the last decade.