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.