"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.

"Hillbilly" Is A Cultural And Ethnic Epithet

 I suppose that with a title like the one above the first thing I should do is give you a definition for the word "epithet".  The website dictionary.com gives this definition of "epithet" which I believe is the most appropriate for our purposes here: "a word, phrase, or expression used invectively as a term of abuse or contempt, to express hostility, etc." And, as bad as I hate to have to, I suspect I should also give a definition for the word "invective".  The website dictionary.com gives this definition of "invective": vehement or violent denunciation, censure, or reproach;  a railing accusation; vituperation; an insulting or abusive word or expression."  While it might still be fairly common for natives of Central and Southern Appalachia as well as the Ozark Region to sometimes use the term "hillbilly" about themselves, it is also generally understood that the use of the word of the word to refer to such residents will usually result in its being interpreted as being insulting, abusive, a reproach, a censure, or an accusation. Other cultural, ethnic, or racial epithets are also sometimes used by members of the groups they denigrate and defame but, just like "hillbilly", those words are rarely accepted by members of those groups when use by outsiders and they should never be accepted or even used by members of those groups.  In my mind, the word "hillbilly" is no different from, just as defamatory, and just as damaging as any of those other words: the "k" word, the "q" word, the "n"word, the "f" word, or the "c" word.  These words all fall within a class of language which should never be used any more than the more common, but less defamatory, curse words should be used.  Being a member of the particular group in question does not make it any more acceptable for you to use those words than it does for a stranger.  

I have recently located a nineteen year old doctoral dissertation from Lousiana State University by Dr. Laura Grace Patillo entitled Appalachia on Stage: the *Southern Mountaineer in American Drama which due to its length (379 pages) I have not completed.  But the dissertation is intriguing for its content and intention to address the "scripting of America's hillbilly other" as well as for its dedication to "a strong Appalachian woman of faith, patience, and wisdom".  I firmly believe that if more native Appalachians such as Dr. Patillo, myself, and the mentors who taught us to seek positive self image instead of accepting cultural epithets and assumptions about us all natives of Central and Southern Appalachia would have benefited both directly and indirectly.  Without having ever known Dr. Patillo or her work, it is obvious to me that she was raised and mentored by the kind of Appalachian people who sought to emulate our strong, ambitious, and self-sufficient forbears and to pass those qualities on to every person they met in some direct or indirect fashion.  

I have also been able to locate a second refreshingly positively entitled doctoral dissertation by Dr. Casey R. White at South Dakota State University which states its intentions in the title:  "REDNECKS AND HILLBILLIES: A THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF PRIDE AND HIGH SELF-ESTEEM EXHIBITED BY SOUTHERN CHARACTERS".   Its stated intent to examine the "construction of pride and self-esteem exhibited by southern characters" is exactly what I hoped to engender with this blog post.  I hope to be able to read both these dissertations fully and to report on them succinctly in later blog posts.  

I have also frequently directed others interested in the public image of native Appalachians to watch the AppalShop movie "Strangers And Kin: A History Of The Hillbilly Image".  It is an excellent and timeless examination of the creation and proliferation of the negative image of Appalachian people as "hillbillies".  In a sidelight to this discussion, I am also reminded of a former supervisor I worked under as a mental health therapist in a juvenile treatment facility.  This person was a native of Mount Sterling, Kentucky, and I will never forget the conversation in which he informed that he did not believe that there was such a thing as an Appalachian Culture.  When we consider the Appalachian Culture in the light of the commonly recognized elements of culture, it is strikingly clear that few cultures anywhere more clearly meet those elements.  Religion, Art, Politics, Language, Economy, Customs, Society, and Geography are listed among those key factors in culture on the website Quizlet.  As we examine each of those listed elements we learn that religion in Appalachia is strikingly unique with Old Regular Baptists, Freewill Baptists, Holiness, Primitive Baptists, and Serpent Handlers all being key segments of religion in Appalachia.  Appalachia is also the home of a truly unique group of folk artists including Edgar and Donny Tolson, Minnie Adkins, and Tim Lewis.  The language of Appalachia is also incredibly unique and traces its roots directly to the British Isles of the 15th and 16th centuries.  

If you are a native Appalachian, be proud of your heritage.  Do not allow anyone to denigrate, defame, or demoralize you because you are Appalachian.  Speak out both verbally and in writing in defense of the Appalachian Culture and history.  

 

Appalachian Heritage

As I said in the introduction to the previous article about Blaise Pascal, I recently dug up a box of old floppy discs and used a USB floppy drive to read them and save what I thought was worth saving for my own personal reasons or to pass some of it on either here in this blog or as ideas for writing to be published in more traditional formats.  Below, I have inserted a brief, less than 400 words, article I wrote many years ago about my thoughts of the importance of having native Appalachians acknowledge and believe in their heritage as Appalachians.  It is instructive to me both from the point of view of looking back on how my opinions and ideas have developed over time and from the point of view that it still ties in strongly with much of the other work on this blog about Appalachia and Appalachian Studies.  Here it is!  

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Appalachian Heritage

            For this little writing exercise, I will examine an issue that has been important to me for many years, Appalachia and Appalachian Heritage issues.  Many, if not most, of the students in Eastern Kentucky today are natives of Appalachia.  Yet the issues involved in living in the region and being of Appalachian Heritage mean little to most of these people.  They are not unique.  Most of the natives of Appalachia spend far more time forgetting than remembering their heritage.  Appalachians are a genuine American minority.  We have a unique culture, history, sociology, and lifestyle.  Yet we are ignored by mainstream society at best and ridiculed at worst.  The literature of the region is unique, as are the music, customs, art, and history.  Appalachian natives should seek to learn about, preserve, and promulgate our heritage.  There are several good museums, colleges, and community cultural centers in the area.  The Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee, founded by Don West and Miles Horton is such a place.  The Appalachian Studies Program at Appalachian State University is another.  The graduate school there is named for Cratis D. Williams, a native of Louisa, Kentucky, and graduate of Morehead State University who has written several important Appalachian books and served as an educator and administrator at one of the best small universities in the region.  The Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, a second institution founded by Don West, is another fine center dedicated to the preservation of Appalachian culture.  All these institutions and several dozen more work on a daily basis to further the Appalachian way of life.  Writers such as Don West, James Still, Albert Stewart, Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, Edwina Pendarvis, and Gurney Norman have all spent years writing about the Appalachian way of life.  I have studied and learned about Appalachia since I was in my early teens.  I work constantly to learn more and to pass that information on to other natives of the region.  Like any cultural minority, Appalachians must strive to avoid being assimilated out of existence.  We have many things to be proud of and we should show off that pride constantly.

Practicing The Appalachian Value Of Neighborliness And Hospitality

Over the last several days I have practiced and seen others of my neighbors practicing the core Appalachian Value of Neighborliness and Hospitality.  I have written about this key Appalachian Value on more than one occasion.  Just two days ago, I wrote a blog post about an eighty year old neighbor of mine whom I had never met until very recently who manifests this value on a daily basis and did so with my wife and I although we were not much more than strangers.  A little more than five years ago, I wrote about another occasion when relative strangers in an adjoining county had invited my wife and I into a family gathering and fed us a hot meal cooked on a wood stove in a former country store. I have had the pleasure of being invited into a relatively poor and shabby four room mountain home near Big Creek, West Virginia, where I was fed a fine meal of fried chicken, biscuits, and potatoes by people who were obviously at least as poor as I.  In a coal camp in Boone County West Virginia in the 1980's,  I was invited in, as a total stranger, to a family party being held for the final birthday of an eighty year old man who had been sent home from the hospital to spend his last days with family. I have spent several nights in the homes of practitioners of minority religion in Tennessee and North Carolina when I was researching that subject.

Roger D. Hicks and Loyal Jones Photo by Candice Hicks

I also wrote about Neighborliness and Hospitality in a response to a Loyal Jones manuscript in which he discussed that particular Appalachian Value by saying that "...we have become less trustful of strangers...our manners and customs have changed, so that we may only invite friends and neighbors we already know to meet for a meal."  He also mentions the increase of crime across the region as a factor in these changes.  Loyal Jones is absolutely correct in these statements.  The widespread drug epidemic and related crime wave across Appalachia has made us all afraid, to one degree or another, of anyone we don't know or who might appear to possibly be under the influence of any drug or alcohol.  Home invasions, robberies, burglaries, kidnappings, child murders, and all categories of violent crime are more common in the rural areas of Appalachia today than they were when "Appalachian Values" was first published forty years ago.  It is far worse than it was even 25 years ago when I was working as a door to door salesman in Southern West Virginia and South Eastern Kentucky. In the late 1980's when I was a salesman, I was regularly invited to eat meals in the homes of total strangers in the region. Two of my most precious memories involve such meals as I have cited above. I cannot imagine what it would be like to spend a day knocking on doors in those regions today, meeting total strangers in their homes, and attempting to gain entrance to those homes to conduct a sales presentation.  That would be a tough proposition today even if one was working on what are known as qualified leads, calls to people who want to see your product and know you are coming or to whom you have been referred by family or friends.

But I must take umbrage with at least part of that paragraph immediately above.  While the statements it contains are true, there are still daily practitioners of Neighborliness and Hospitality living all across Central and Southern Appalachia.  We may be harder to find sometimes.  We may be practicing those values with a more skeptical eye on the recipients of our largess but we are still providing food and rides to strangers at times.  We are still coming to the assistance of neighbors in need.  We are still donating to important charitable causes.  We are still practicing our kindnesses as our ancestors did even though we might not be quite so open about it in these broadly troubling times.

My own practice of these values came about in the last few days because I have some neighbors who are quite elderly and one of them is suffering from dementia while being cared for by a spouse who is 88 years old.  Another just lost their spouse at 90 after having cared for them for more than five years at an age when most people are either dead or in a nursing home.  The neighbor with dementia frequently falls and the spouse calls me to come and pick them up which I have done numerous times over the last year or so.  I also regularly check on the widowed neighbor because they have no children, still live alone, and seem to suffer from lack of social involvement other than a regular Sunday drive to church.  This person is remarkable in that they are living alone without any real concerns other than advanced age.  Their mental functioning is probably as good or better than mine with a 23 year age difference.  In fact they took a trip with a nephew more than thirty miles to another town to buy a new car just a few days ago.  I would also insist that there is nothing exceptional, unusual, or particularly exemplary in what I do for these neighbors.  It is the Appalachian way.  It is a core Appalachian Value.  It was totally commonplace in all of Central and Southern Appalachia just a couple of decades ago.  I sincerely hope that it becomes commonplace again.  Sadly, whether or not that happens may well depend on how we deal with the ongoing opioid epidemic.  I would say, in conclusion to all my readers, that we must work individually and collectively to reinforce, maintain, and preserve all these core values.  But most especially, we must work to be hospitable, neighborly, helpful, and caring about the people and the greater community around us.  It may well be what saves us all from a steady, inexorable deterioration in a community which is peopled by strangers who don't know each other, don't exhibit love for our country, and don't work to make the world a better place as our ancestors always did.