Two Separate, But Connected Visits To Two State Capitols, West Virginia And Alabama

On two separate, but politically interconnected visits to the capitols of West Virginia and Alabama, I saw two things, one in each capitol, which showed me a great deal about the thought processes and actions of the political leaders in both states. What I saw in each capitol was connected to the sight I saw in the other in a way which was very educational for me and should have been so for anyone else who saw what I saw. The headline in this story from the Los Angeles Times tells succinctly what had happened in West Virginia. Former three term governor Arch Moore had been found guilty and sentenced of mail fraud, extortion, obstruction of justice and filing false income taxes during his 1984 and 1988 campaigns and during his third term, from 1985-89. On July 11, 1990, he was sentenced to a term of five years and ten months in prison and fined $170,000. He was ordered to serve his time in the Federal Correctional Instution in Petersburg, Virginia. I don't remember the exact date on which I subsequently made a visit to Charleston, West Virginia, and visited the West Virginia Cultural Center near the Capitol building which I have done nearly ever time I take a trip to Charleston. But I believe that visit was probably sometime late in 1990 not long after his sentencing. Arch Moore was depicted for several years in alarger than life marble bust which had sat since its original installation in the mezzanine level of the grand entrance to the Cultural Center. The bust sat against the rear wall of the mezzanine until some time after this visit, and I had seen it many times on other visits to the Capitol. As I climbed the stairs to the mezzanine and turned the corner to face the site of the bust, I saw a three sided box made of sheets of white painted plywood surrounding the area at the center of the rear wall where the bust had always been displayed. I thought "well, they removed his bust..but what have they put in its place". I walked over to the plywood box and saw that a thin crack had been left where two sheets of the plywood joined. I put my face close to that crack, and lo and behold there in the space which the plywood box surrounded was the bust still on scene after his incarceration. I laughed and walked away to finish my tour of the facility. Some months later, I returned to the Cultural Center and found that the bust was no longer there and neither was the plywood box. I have alway assumed that considering the size and weight of the huge bust, the management of the Cultural Center must have had the bust hidden until they could acquire a fork lift to lower it to the ground level of the grand entrance. The entire rear wall of the mezzanine has been used as a small art gallery ever since the removal. Google AI claims that the bust is still in the Cultural Center but I know better. I have never seen it since that sight of it hidden behind the plywood box.

In the late summer or early fall of 1993, my wife and I took a vacation to Montgomery, Alabama, where we toured three major historic sites: the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama State Capitol, and the graves of Hank and Audrey Williams. Inside the Capitol, along a couple of walls was a portrait gallery of the governors of the state. This visit was shortly after former Governor Guy Hunt had been found guilty in April 1993 of misusing inaugural funds in a criminal case which bore some similarity to the Arch Moore case. Guy Hunt was sentenced by a Montgomery judge to five years of probation, 1,000 hours of community service, and ordered to pay a $211,000 fine. Naturally, he appealed his sentence. The eventual outcome of that appeals process will be discussed shortly. Hunt had been indicted on December 28, 1992, Hunt on 13 felony charges, and wound up having most of them eventually dropped. He was eventually convicted on one charge in which the prosecution claimed he had taken $200,000 out of his 1987 inaugural fund which all consisted of private or corporate political donations intended to be spent on the inaugural festivities. The charge claimed that he had stolen the money for his own personal use. When we visited the Capitol and walked along viewing the portraits of all the governors of Alabama, we came upon an empty spot on the wall between the portraits of his immediate predecessor and successor. The wall around this space was still visibly more stained by time than the rectangular area which had previously held Hunt's portrait. I have no idea where the portrait had been taken, and I have never been back in the Alabama Capitol since that single visit. The following section of Guy Hunt's biography on the internet based "Encyclopedia of Alabama" describes the ultimate actions which followed his initial conviction and sentencing:

In June 1997, Hunt won his first victory in the matter when the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles approved a pardon for him on grounds of innocence. For the pardon to be valid, however, it needed to be signed by a judge or district attorney, but no one willing could be found. Even the recently elected Republican attorney general, Bill Pryor, refused to sign the pardon, arguing that he did not believe his office held that right or power. Then in a stunning defeat, when Hunt requested that probation be terminated shortly before it was due to expire in 1998, circuit judge Sally Greenhaw extended it for five more years because Hunt had been able to pay only $4,200 of the fine and court costs assessed against him. On March 30, 1998, however, Hunt's probation was lifted when his attorney presented a check to the court for the entire balance. Sympathetic Alabamians, both Democrats and Republicans, had helped Hunt raise the needed funds. The next day, the Board of Pardons and Paroles again pardoned Hunt on grounds of innocence, and because probation had been terminated, no affirming signature was needed. The following day, Hunt qualified to run for the Republican nomination for governor.

I cannot fully decide just how similar and how different these two cases and their ultimate handling by the powers that be in West Virginia and Alabma are, but both have been forever imprinted in my memory, and both are forever connected in my mind. Two state governors from two politically (now) similar states were charged and convicted of political corruption in their states during their terms of office. The outcomes were somewhat different despite the convictions. You can make up your own minds whether either or both of these cases was/were handled appropriately. If there are political lessons to be learned from these two men and their criminal convictions, I sincerely hope all of us can figure out what those lessons are.

A Call For Gun Control In Appalachia In 1941

The attached news story below was taken from the Floyd County Times of April 10, 1941, just a little over 78 years ago.  I was quite pleased to find it in a county newspaper anywhere in Appalachia but even more pleased to find it in the primary local newspaper I read as a boy in Floyd County Kentucky, the county in which I spent the first 6 years of life and one which has played a significant role in the lives of myself and my entire extended family since the day my third great-grandfather Aulse Hicks immigrated to the area from Western Virginia sometime between 1790 and 1810.

Floyd County Times, January 2, 1941

In his charge to the Floyd Circuit Court grand jury a few days before the story made the paper, Floyd Circuit Judge Henry Stephens, Jr. stated "Reduce the carrying of pistols, and you reduce murder. I desire that the grand jury investigate all  classes and kinds of crime and especially the carrying of concealed deadly weapons.  Thousands of dollars could be saved in Kentucky through the circuit courts, if the law was such that the first offense of carrying a concealed deadly weapon was punishable by from one to five years in the state reformatory."  Judge Stephens was correct in this statement in 1941 and he is still correct today more than 78 years after he said these words in his charge to the grand jury.

Five of the twenty worst states in America, based on their per capita gun deaths by 100,000 citizens, are wholly or partially in Central and Southern Appalachia.   Alabama, whose Northeastern region in the area of Sand Mountain, is the fourth worst state in the union for gun deaths with 17.6 gun deaths annually per 100,000 citizens.  Tennessee, where nearly the entire eastern half of the state is Appalachian, is 10th worst with 16.4 gun deaths yearly per 100,000 residents.  West Virginia, which is wholly in Central and Southern Appalachia, is 13th worst with 14.3 gun deaths per 100,000 citizens.  Kentucky, which has nearly all the eastern half of the state in Central and Southern Appalachia, is 17th worst in the nation with 13.7 deaths for each 100,000 potential living victims in the commonwealth.  Georgia, whose northeastern counties are in Central and Southern Appalachia, has 12.6 gun deaths per 100,000 residents and is the 19th worst state in the nation for gun deaths.  These are deplorable and indefensible statistics if we are honest about the issue of the horrible need for comprehensive federal gun control legislation.  The number of lives which could be saved all across the nation, not just in Appalachia, with such legislation would be worth far more than enough in human life, legal costs, and total lives saved to more than justify the uproar which such rational and well justified humane legislation would engender.  The 2nd Amendment does not guarantee the right to unrestricted ownership of weapons as groups such as the NRA would have you believe.  It guarantees the right to "well regulated" ownership of guns and, if we are honest, we know that guns have never been well regulated in America.  It is long past time for us to work to make Judge Stephens' dream come true.   

Easter Trees In Appalachia

With this being Holy Week and tomorrow, Friday, April 19, 2019, being Good Friday, I have finally decided to write about a topic which pops into my head every year about this time and has for at least the last twenty years.  That topic is the fairly recent practice all over Appalachia of people creating Easter trees in their yards and houses.  They have been more common in Europe for about forty or fifty years.  One famous Easter tree is known as the Saalfelder Ostereierbaum, an apple tree in the garden of Volker Kraft in Saalfeld, Suringia.  Mister Kraft and his family have been decorating the tree since the early 1960's, starting with about a dozen and a half plastic eggs tied to the branches of the tree. Mister Kraft has stated in interviews that he had wanted to have an Easter Tree ever since he saw his first one near his home in 1945.  

The Kraft Easter Tree with about 10,000 Easter eggs.  Photo by Wikipedia.

But the general practises I have seen in Southern and Central Appalachia is to use much smaller trees than the Kraft apple tree and to use far fewer plastic Easter eggs.  I have seen them in nearly every state in Central and Southern Appalachia in yards of homes ranging from old mobile homes and sharecropper's shacks to mansions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to perhaps even a few million.  Often these trees will be comprised of only a few spindly branches with about a dozen or so plastic eggs.  But they may also hold a variety of other objects ranging from crosses to crowns of thorns to toy ducks and toy rabbits. They are also often created in flower pots and other containers both inside and outside the home.  Below is a photo of an Easter tree in a flower pot inside a home.  

Small Easter Tree In A Flower Pot Indoors--Photo by www.picturesso.com

The amount of variety in Easter trees is nearly as great as we see in Christmas trees and many of the people who create one also create the other.  They often claim that the Easter tree is a manifestation of their Christian faith.  I have no idea how they come to that kind of conclusion but I realize it can be a convenient excuse for someone who just loves gaudy objects in, around, or near their home.  I tend to think of these people as being somehow related to crows or lyre birds which gather glittering objects and carry them home to their nests.  Below is a particularly pitiful attempt at an Easter tree.  

A Pitiful Easter Tree--Photo by HubPages

This particular Easter tree leaves a great deal to be desired in my mind before it should ever be considered either an expression of religiosity or an objet d'art.  And that brings me to my own opinion of Easter trees.  I consider them to be one of the silliest and least justifiable wastes of time and resources I have ever seen.  You will never see one in my home or yard.  You will never hear me praise one no matter how gloriously its creator has endowed it with their wasted resources.  I do not consider them to be an expression of any form of religiosity worth supporting with one's belief.  In some ways, I am appalled at myself for even wasting fifteen minutes to write about them and search for photos of them to post along with this blog post.  I do not consider them to be anymore justifiable than I do those equally silly, but well meant, memorial stickers posted for the dead in the windows of a car which the owner is not likely to drive more than a year or two before trading it.  Saints, preserve me from Easter trees! 

"The Hills Remember The Complete Short Stories Of James Still" Book Review

Still, James and Ted Olson (Editor) 2012  The Hills Remember The Complete Short Stories Of James Still (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press) 

Growing up in Knott County Kentucky where James Still lived for most of his 94 years, I knew about James Still at about the same time I became aware of Appalachia and Appalachian Studies sometime in the late 1960's. I honestly do not recall the first time I met James Still.  I cannot say that James Still and I were friends but we were acquaintances and I was flattered to be able to refer to him as Jim to his face.  I was also able to introduce Jim Still and my long time friend and mentor, National Book Award Finalist P. J. Laska at a James Still reading at Black Swan Books in Lexington, KY, sometime in the early 1990's.  As I recall, it was some time shortly after the release of the "Wolf Pen Notebooks". That was a highly interesting evening for several reasons.  Lexington socialite Anita Madden was at the reading wearing a pair of skin tight bright blue pants and she and Jim flirted for most of the evening.  If you have never seen an 85 year old man flirt with a 60 year old woman and find that flirtation reciprocated, I highly recommend it as entertainment especially if the man and woman are of the caliber of Madden and Still.  After the reading, Laska, Still, and I went to eat at a Shoney's Restaurant on North Broadway near the Springs Motel where he usually stayed when he was in Lexington.  We stayed in the restaurant until about 1am talking about Appalachia, literature, Appalachian Literature, Still's travels around the world, the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College writers group of which Laska and I were both members, and the triumvirate of Appalachian writers of which Still was a member, the 1929 class from Lincoln Memorial University which included Still, Jesse Stuart, and my friend and mentor as well as Laska's professional colleague, Don West.  That evening deserves to be addressed in a completely separate blog or essay and will be some day.  

James Still Photo by University Of KY

Over the years I had read large chunks of Still's writing but had never had the pleasure of reading his complete short stories.  I recently bought the book "The Hills Remember..." and plowed through it in something less than record time.  It contains 53 stories of which a couple are published in the book in two versions, usually one as it was published in a magazine and another as it was included later as a chapter of a novel or part of a major short story collection. Still  had a practice of often publishing short stories in magazines and later using them as book chapters both as originally published and sometimes with significant edits.  "The Hills Remember..." is believed to contain every extant story written by Still.  Ted Olson, the editor, did an excellent job of locating, editing and collating the works.  Olson had worked with Still prior to his death, was aware of his idiosyncrasies, and was an excellent choice as the editor.  The stories are arranged in somewhat chronological order as they were originally written or published and contain all the stories which were included in "River Of Earth", "The Run For The Elbertas", "Pattern Of A Man", and "On Troublesome Creek".  The book is an excellent way for the economically minded reader to achieve as broad as possible a sampling of Still's short fiction.  But I would not recommend that the person seeking to fully understand his prose output read the book and assume they are done.  The stories which were included in "River Of Earth" are not always exactly as they were published in the novel. There may also be slight differences in these versions of the stories included in "The Run For The Elbertas" and the other two aforementioned collections.  The stories which are included as chapters in the novel "River Of Earth" are also not necessarily published in this collection along the timeline of the novel.  If you are a real aficionado of Appalachian Literature or James Still, you will want to read his entire body of work.  Still was a widely known short story author in America as evidenced by the body of stories which were previously published in national magazines such as "Atlantic", "Yale Review", and "Virginia Quarterly Review".  This book attempts, in part, to reassert Still as a major American short fiction author in addition to his prior recognition as a novelist and poet.

The book contained several stories I had not read and several of those are well above average.  The first and best surprise I received from the book was a story called "Sweet Asylum" which is set in James Still's native Alabama.  This story is about an Alabama cotton plantation owner who is deep in debt, widowed, and seeking a way to resolve his debts and save his family plantation.  It is a masterpiece which instantly reminded me of the work of Kate Chopin.  In terms of technique, it is highly reminiscent of her classic "The Story Of An Hour".  It is not quite as masterful a work but uses the same type of double twist ending to slam doors in the faces of both the protagonist and the reader. It may well be the best short story James Still ever wrote.  James Still has so thoroughly been identified as a master author of Southern Appalachia that many of his readers either forgot or never knew that he was born and grew up in Chambers County Alabama, an area that is very different culturally and physically from Knott County Kentucky and Central Appalachia. I should state for the record that I have traveled extensively in Alabama in general and Chambers County in particular and know that area quite well.  James Still did, however, spend the great majority of his life in Knott County and Appalachia and will forever be seen as an Appalachian author.  He went to Lincoln Memorial University in 1925 and graduated there in 1929 as a member of that incredible threesome of Appalachian writers: Still, Don West, and Jesse Stuart. LMU is located in Harrogate, TN, in Claiborne County, which is just as much the heart of Appalachia as Knott County. Hindman, KY, and Harrogate, TN, are only 100 miles apart.  During his time at LMU and later throughout his life, Still was a classmate and friend of both Jesse Stuart and Don West. During that time frame, John Crowe Ransom and the Agrarians and Fugitives were key components of the literary world at LMU. Collectively, Still, West, and Stuart of the LMU Class of 1929 are arguably the best single graduating class of regional writers to ever graduate from any university in the same academic year. That is a particular feather in the hat of LMU since it is a decidedly small university with only 1,675 undergraduate students as of this writing. Still then completed a Master of Arts Degree in English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  After completing his work at Vanderbilt he was employed by the Hindman Settlement School and remained in Knott County for the rest of his life.

The second observation I made as I read "The Hills Remember..." was that in many of Still's short stories there is a level of violence which could almost be called gratuitous.  Several of his stories, including one which I consider among his best, culminate in or originate from murder.  The second story in the book and the title piece "The Hills Remember" is a fine piece of work but also inordinately violent.  The main character, Old Aus Hanley "...had a graveyard all his own across Stormspur filled with men he had killed."  As the story begins, Aus Hanley is lying in a pool of his own blood after being ambushed by a drunk man, shot in the back by someone whom no one in the area  would have believed capable of murder and especially not capable of the murder of Aus Hanley.  A crowd gathers to watch Aus Hanley die.  The sheriff arrests the drunken perpetrator and stands near the victim also waiting to see him die.  The crowd all believe that one of Aus Hanley's family members who are too far away to attend the death will eventually seek revenge against the shooter.  But Aus Hanley calls the sheriff from his death throes to bring the shooter to him so he can learn who killed him.  The story concludes with Hanley pulling his murderer close to him and "...his right arm lunged in a single driving stroke toward Luke's breast...The handle of a Barlow knife protruded from his breast."  With his final dying act, the murdered man has also murdered his killer.  It is a wonderful story but the level of violence portrayed is well beyond that found in most short American fiction.

Speaking as a native of Knott County which is generally assumed to be the setting of most of Still's work, I must say that it is not a level of violence I found common in the time I was growing up there. I was born in Knott County roughly 20 years after James Still moved to the county.  I grew up in a country store in the Beaver Creek area of the county. My father was born in 1887 on Bruce at Mousie and lived most of his early life in Mousie, not far from Hindman where Still lived.  My mother had been born and reared on Rock Fork Creek in still another area of the county.  I was exposed to people from all over Knott County and the surrounding area.  Although I knew several people during my childhood who either had already or later committed murder, the area was never as violent as Still portrayed it in many of his stories.  A second story which is incredibly violent is called "The Scrape".  In that story, two men induce the protagonist to tie their arms together with a wire, take charge of their guns, and observe as they fight with knives to a mutual death.  "Jiddy produced a wire...He ordered me to tie an end around his left wrist, and the other about Cletis's.  A thing they had agreed on.  I did what I was bid do..."  The story ends with both men dead in the dirt road and the narrator heading off toward his original destination with the comment "I thought about Posey Houndshell.  Nobody stood between me and her." 

I must admit that I have not read the two books which might help me to further understand the violence in Still's fiction.  They are: "James Still In Interviews, Oral Histories, and Memoirs" by James Still and the aforementioned Ted Olson; and, "James Still: Critical Essays On The Dean Of Appalachian Literature" edited by Ted Olson and Kathy H. Olson.  What I would really love to see is a book length work solely addressing that issue of violence in Still's work. 

Still is also frequently referred to as one of the better, if not the best, writers in Appalachian dialect.  I do not dispute that he is a fine writer in Appalachian dialect.  But I will always believe that Mildred Haun is a far superior writer of Appalachian dialect.  Her classic work "The Hawk's Done Gone" is far and away the best dialect writing ever done in Appalachian Literature.  As I said earlier, I spent the first twenty years of my life in Knott County Kentucky, was educated there through high school and began my college education at Alice Lloyd College.  I was also reared by my parents, maternal grandparents, and an extended family of aunts and uncles who all grew up in Knott County early in, and in some cases before the turn of the twentieth century.  I know Knott County Appalachian dialect as well as any human on earth and I must insist that there are times when I see that  James Still wrote linguistic expressions which I never heard from my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, farmers at the livestock sales or jockey grounds, or the elderly customers at my parents' country store.  The one word which he used frequently, especially in "River Of Earth" and his short stories and which I never once heard in Knott County is "chaps" in reference to small children.  In my childhood, small children were "young'uns", "chillun", "yard apes", "curtain climbers", and several more conventional, less colloquial terms.  But they were never "chaps".  I suspect that is an expression from Still's youth in Alabama.  Getting back to the comparison between Still and Haun, I will defend Still to the degree that the two of them were writing dialect based on two different subregions of Central Appalachia.  I have also traveled extensively in the Cocke County, TN, area where Haun spent her life and did extensive research among Appalachian serpent handlers there.  The two subdialects have significant differences.  But Haun's consistency and accuracy in writing dialect is superior to James Still's.  It is also worth noting that it is only 63 miles from Harrogate, TN, where Still attended college to Newport, TN, where Haun lived her life.  I do not know that Still ever spent time in Newport but since he and Haun both attended Vanderbilt University it is possible that he did know her and might have even visited the area which would have also exposed him to the dialect which she wrote so admirably.  It is also possible that Still's travels from Chambers County Alabama to Claiborne County Tennessee to Davidson County Tennessee to Knott County Kentucky could have provided a plethora to opportunity for Still to blend the dialects of the four to a degree that not even he recognized. 

Do not allow anything I have said in this post to leave you with the impression that I do not respect and value the writing of James Still in all genres in which he wrote.  He is definitely at the vanguard of writers about Appalachia.  His short fiction can stand up well in comparison to nearly any other writer in American Literature.  The book "The Hills Remember..." is a compulsory read if you intend to believe or say that you understand the literature of Appalachia.  Buy a copy and read it sometime soon.  You will enjoy it greatly.