"Tales from Sacred Wind Coming of Age in Appalachia" by Cratis D. Williams--Book Review

Williams, Cratis D., and David Cratis Willams and Patricia D. Beaver, Editors. Tales From Sacred Wind Coming of Age in Appalachia (Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Co. 2003)

For my regular readers over the past month or so, it is no secret that I love this book.  Some of the most popular and easiest written blog posts I have ever done have been about particular segments of issues which Cratis D. Williams discusses in the book.  I have written about Death, Dying, and Burial Practices In Appalachia; Croton Oil And Cratis Williams; Traditional Appalachian Children's Games; and One More Short Lesson From Cratis Williams.  I had also written a much earlier post about some reading of his work which I had one under the title Responses To Some Reading Of Cratis Williams.  All of these posts were very easy to write and well received by my readers.  Cratis Williams was the Dean of the Appalachian State University Graduate School and taught there for several decades in addition to being one of the most influential scholars in all of the field of Appalachian Studies.  I have said repeatedly that I never met Dr. Williams and I regret that a great deal.  He was erudite, well read, incredibly funny, and one of the best experts on the culture of Appalachia, especially in the early twentieth century.  

This book was edited by his son, Dr. David Cratis Williams and Dr. Patricia D. Beaver who had been one of his professional colleagues at Appalachian State University.

Cratis D. Williams--Photo by the Williams Family

It was published eighteen years after his death.  It is basically a memoir of the first twenty or so years of his life.  It is assumed that he intended to complete a comprehensive memoir of his entire life and simply did not have the time during his academic career to complete and subsequently did not live long to complete the work after his retirement. That is a tragedy since this book is one of the finest books ever written about Appalachian Culture in the early twentieth century, especially the culture of the Big Sandy River Valley and Eastern Kentucky.  This book was published as the eighth produced in the Contributions To Southern Appalachian Studies Series from McFarland & Company in Jefferson, North Carolina.  The series is now comprised of roughly forty books and still being expanded regularly by the publisher.  They cover numerous areas of interest in the greater field of Appalachian Studies.  Although I have not read anywhere near the entire series, I am sure the majority of them are well worth reading.

Now, to get back to "Tales From Sacred Wind...", I am sure that most people tend to think that the name Sacred Wind for the post office in the community on Caines Creek in Lawrence County must have been rooted in religion.  According to Williams, it was not remotely rooted in religion.  He relates the story of how the first postmaster had been tasked with naming the post office and wanted to find a particularly meaningful name.  He had struggled with that effort and was sitting on his porch one day with a friend talking about the effort when the friend passed gas loudly and demonstratively and said, "Name it after that." which is exactly how the postmaster arrived at the name of Sacred Wind.  

The book covers numerous areas of Appalachian Culture including those I have written about and numerous others such as feuds, family strife up to and including patricide and pedicide, the United Baptist Church, one room schools, education in general, farming, child birth, midwifery, and many others.  The book is well written but, if there is one area in which to critique it, the quality of the writing is variable, at times well above average and, at other times, the quality drops a bit.  The book was apparently written over several years in small to medium segments or sections each on a particular topic.  After his death, Cratis Williams' son and Dr. Beavers edited the manuscript and McFarland published it.  I am sure that it does not have the same level of consistency and quality that it would have if Cratis Williams had lived to fully complete the work to cover his entire life.  But the work is well worth reading and I certain that many of my regular readers on this blog will attest to that fact also.  It is well worth the money, time, and effort to buy and read it.   

Croton Oil And Cratis Williams

Over the last month or so, I have written several posts based on my reading of the book "Tales From Sacred Wind Coming Of Age In Appalachia" by Cratis D. Williams.  I have loved the book, loved writing about it, and the posts have generated a great deal of interest from my readers.  I had thought that I would not write any more of these single subject posts about the book and what I learned from it but I just cannot resist writing one more.

Croton Plant Potted As An Ornamental--Photo by Shutterstock

I do still owe the regular readers who have enjoyed these posts one more book review type post to discuss the book in general and I will do that.  But I just have to write about Cratis D. Williams and croton oil.  When we were both boys, forty years and fifty miles apart in the drainage of the Big Sandy River in Eastern Kentucky, both of us knew about croton oil although I never had a personal encounter with the stuff.  But Cratis Williams did, or thought he did, and wrote about it in the book.  Croton oil was a strong laxative which was extracted from plants of the croton family.  Croton plants are described as a tree native to India and the Malay Peninsula.  Based on photos I have been able to find, I believe we still see members of that family being sold as either potted plants or for transplantation as ornamentals in yards and gardens. I suspect that many of my readers will recognize the plant also.  If any of you have these plants in your homes or flower gardens, I would love to see what you know about it posted as a comment on this post.

As my parents, maternal grandparents, and other friends and relatives described it, croton oil was one of the most powerful laxatives you could use and was sold in most country stores in the late 19th and early 20th centuries all over Appalachia. Cratis Williams wrote the best description of a bout of diarrhea I have ever read in this book, which he and several others believed was due to croton oil, and I will get to it in a minute but I need to prepare the readers to fully understand how effective, or overly effective, croton oil could be.   In the stories I heard, most people who had ever used croton oil hated the experience and it was generally used only in times of desperate constipation.  It apparently caused a lot of pain; rapid, excessive, fire hose like evacuation; and nobody who ever used it desired to do so again. I have been lucky enough to locate one photo of a vintage bottle of croton oil on E-bay and post it here also.

Vintage Bottle of Croton Oil--Photo by E-bay

Based on what Cratis Williams said in the book about what he and several others believed was their group experience of it, he agreed with the people I knew about the overpowering effects of the concoction.  Croton oil also had other negative qualities and I found a report that the US Navy actually used it to prevent sailors from drinking alcohol which was known as "torpedo juice" because the croton oil was added in small amounts to the neutral grain spirits which propelled torpedoes in an attempt by the navy to stop sailors from drinking the torpedo fuel. The oil was intended to prevent sailors from drinking the alcohol based fuel. Sailors with experience in drinking and making alcohol would build crude stills on their ships to separate the alcohol from the croton oil since alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than croton oil. I would not be surprised to someday learn that the first sailor to do that was from Appalachia and came from a family with experience in moonshining.  Members of the Norwegian resistance who had been ordered by the Nazi sympathizing Quisling government to turn over a boat load of freshly caught sardines to the Nazis whom Quisling had allowed to occupy Norway doctored the seized sardines with croton oil as they were about to be shipped to  a German U-boat base.  The Norwegian Resistance fighters had found a way to cooperate with British forces who supported the Norwegian Resistance to obtain a large shipment of croton oil to poison the entire boat load of sardines, whose fishy taste was expected to conceal the tampering.  I have actually read a lot about Eastern European Resistance efforts in World War II but had never run into that story before. I have added titles of a few books about the history of the European Resistance to the list on the front page of this blog which is labeled  "Books I Have Read Lately".  Based on what Cratis Williams wrote about it, and on the stories I heard from my family and friends, I would love to read a first person account from a Nazi soldier who served at that U-boat base about eating those sardines. Croton oil also has a long history of having been used in cosmetic skin peels due to its abrasive qualities which must have added to the pain of using it as a laxative. When applied externally, croton oil can cause irritation and swelling. Croton oil has been used widely in Phenol-croton oil chemical peels due to its caustic exfoliating effects.  Used in conjunction with phenol solutions, it results in an intense reaction which leads to initial skin sloughing.  I can only imagine what a person's digestive tract would have felt like after a large dose of the oil as a laxative. Since croton oil is very irritating and painful, it is used in laboratory animals to study how pain works  and I am certain that members of PETA probably hate it also.  But, I know I need to get to Cratis Williams' account about croton oil before I lose all my readers.

When Williams was living in a boarding house in Lousia in order to attend high school twenty-five miles from his home on Craines Creek, the residents of his boarding house and several other homes on that street all got their water from one well in a yard nearby.  Since this was the middle to late 1920's, the well was no doubt a hand dug well and the boarding house had an outdoor toilet in the back yard as I suspect most of the other houses did also.  Williams also related earlier in the book that the city water supply for Louisa at that time was stored on a hillside above the town inside a remodeled Civil War stone fort which also probably put everyone who drank that water at risk.  But here is Williams' account of the croton oil incident, or what he and several others believed was a croton oil incident. They thought that a local prankster had poured a large amount of croton oil into the shared well. Whether it was caused by croton oil or by contaminated water, which is what I suspect, it is the best description I have ever read of diarrhea.

"One night I became dimly aware of much activity elsewhere in the house as abdominal pains woke me up.  The pains, passing like waves, mounted in intensity, and, before I was fully prepared to admit that a trip out back through the darkness was a necessity, I found that unless I hurried I might not be able to make it to the privy in time to head off an accident.  Pulling on my pants and slipping my feet into my shoes without taking precious time to tie the laces, I rushed headlong down the stairs and in a half bent posture on toward the back door, half embarrassed to see all the members of the household up and scattered along the way through the dining room, kitchen, and laundry room, all with the gas lamps on, highlighting my hegira through the ranks of smiling, but nonetheless puzzled faces.  As I fumbled hurriedly with the lock on the back door, Ernest called out that it was a good thing for me that I had appeared.  Perplexed by the remark but without time or inclination to determine its significance, I dashed toward the privy, my shoe laces whipping at my legs and my shoes playing loosely on my feet.  Halfway there I flung one of my shoes, which I decided not to bother to find just at that time.  The rowling pain was so severe  and the need for relief so intense that I thought I had waited perhaps two seconds too long as I released my pants and thumped myself down on the bench.  An explosion was followed by a mad rush outward of everything in me, like the crashing of wild waters down a valley after a dam has been dynamited.  But the relief did not meet my Gulliver-like need for satisfaction. The pain continued.  Other floods, driven by the growling anger of my bowels, followed in rapid succession.  After what seemed eight or ten minutes, I realized that even though the pain continued, I was thoroughly, completely, and absolutely purged but that had my tonsils given away my entire intestinal tract would have turned itself inside out and fluttered behind me in comfort on the night breeze like the tail of a comet."  (Cratis D. Williams, "Tales From Sacred Wind Coming Of Age In Appalachia, pp. 394-395)

 I repeat that section from the book above is absolutely the best description of diarrhea I have ever read, anywhere, any time, from anybody and, in spite of those of you who might be mildly offended, I just had to pass it on for the reading pleasure of those of you who have had similar experiences but lacked the words to describe it.  That description lives up to every story I ever heard told by those I knew who had also experienced croton oil as a laxative.  I can assure you that I am very grateful that croton oil had stopped being marketed in country stores in Appalachia by the time I was a boy. Cratis Williams, the other residents of his boarding house, and several people in neighboring houses who all drank water from the same dug well believed that some prankster had poured croton oil in the well as I stated above.  But the houses in that part of Louisa were fairly close to the Big Sandy River and most of them had outdoor toilets and dug wells. In a typical small town lot, those wells and toilets were probably not often as much as one hundred feet apart which is well within a range capable of causing ground water contamination of the wells from the toilets.  I suspect it is much more likely that the well was contaminated from either a high water table from the river or one of the outdoor toilets.  It is also probable that the combination of river, high water table, and outdoor toilets combined accounted for the contamination of the common well and the widespread bout of diarrhea that night.  

Here are links to several other posts I have written on the blog about Cratis Williams, his life, work, and the book.  Death, Dying, and Funeral Practices In Appalachia;  Traditional Appalachian Children's Games such as Fox and Geese; Responses To Some Reading Of Cratis Williams;  A Short Lesson From Cratis Williams And "Sacred Wind...".  I hope some of you at least enjoy them all. 

One More Short Lesson From Cratis Williams and "Sacred Wind..."

Reading "Tales From Sacred Wind Coming Of Age in Appalachia" by Cratis D. Williams has been a real pleasure for me and, based on page views of the other blog posts I have written about it, many of my readers on this blog agree with me.  My posts about "Traditional Appalachian Children's Games" and "Death, Dying, and Funeral Rites In Appalachia" have been some of the most well received posts I have ever written on this blog.  I appreciate the interest in both my writing about his work and about the work of Cratis D. Williams. 

Cratis D. Williams--Photo by the Williams Family

He was one of the early founding fathers of the entire Appalachian Studies movement and he deserves that respect.  I am nearly through the book and will write a longer, more traditional book review of the book in a few days when I finish it.  But I just came across another story of a completely different nature in the book which I want to discuss at length here because it reflects on an important cultural and moral value among Appalachian people which I believe has vanished to a great degree in much of the region.  

In the section to which I am referring, Cratis went to the home of some school friends during a school year break when he going to high school in Louia and living in the home of some relatives because his home on Craines Creek was twenty-five miles away, too far in the 1920's to live at home and go to school. At the time, it was a full day's ride on mule back or in a wagon. As he relates the story, during his time in the home of these friends, he could hear sounds coming from somewhere in the house and could not account for the person making the sounds since everyone he had met was in sight of him at the time.  As Williams begins the story: "I kept hearing hearing a moan and chatter followed by high pitched laughter coming from somewhere in the house.  Nobody said anything about it and the Boggses talked on as if they heard nothing."  For nearly anyone, such an occurrence would cause a lot of thoughts, possibly some worry and fear.  But, as it turned out, there was no cause for any concern, worry, fear, or other negative emotions.  But Williams goes on with the story: "During the first night I was there, I could hear that curious moaning and high pitched laughter from time to time all through the night.  But, the next morning, Cratis Williams got his answers about the moaning and laughter when the mother of the family asked one of his friends "...to bring Hettie to warm and to be fed by the fire.  Two of the boys disappeared.  In a few minutes, they returned carrying a high chair in which was strapped a badly deformed little girl with a misshapen face."  As Cratis Williams relates the story, he was then told that the father of the family had been out and about in the community one day when he had heard noises coming from what appeared to be an abandoned house.  He went to the house, looked in the curtainless window and saw two small children in the empty house, one dead, and the other, Hettie, still alive but very weak crawling in the floor. The man then went to the closest neighbor for help and they entered the house, rescued the living child, and reported the events to the authorities in Louisa.  As it turned out, the two severely disabled children were orphans whose parents had been first cousins and that consanguinity resulted in their severe handicaps.  The parents had died and left the children to another sibling and her husband who were not handicapped.  But these caretakers had abandoned the two children and "...left the country.  No one knew where they had gone."  The community had buried the dead child and the county had allowed this family to take care of the severely handicapped little girl, a job which they had accepted freely at a time when there was no such things as welfare, kinship care, child support, foster care, or food stamps.  This family had seen a human being in need, unable to care for even her most basic needs, and had taken on the responsibility of caring for her for the rest of her life, no matter how long that might be.  Williams does not relate that the authorities were ever able to locate the two adults who abandoned the children.  But, in light of the limited ability of police agencies in that time to locate fugitives, it is unlikely that anyone ever heard from them again.  

This story, while not absolutely common in Appalachia, does point out a tendency among native Appalachian people in the early twentieth century to see a need and step up to address it in whatever way seemed best at the time.  We are people of compassion, honesty, honor, and willingness to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.  I have written in several places on this blog about the "Appalachian Values" of Loyal Jones, another of the early fathers of the Appalachian Studies movement and someone I have known.   I have never known of a story exactly like this one in my life in Appalachia.  But I have seen a few occasions when an elderly person without close relatives has been accepted into an unrelated home to be cared for until death. Some Mennonite friends of mine cared for an older woman until her death and are now caring for an elderly man about the same age.  I have known several instances of families having disabled members, both children and adults, who have been cared for and protected admirably by their family.  In my own family in another state, a niece and her husband have a severely handicapped daughter whom they care for with love, respect, and compassion that is admirable anywhere.  It is sad that such a story could have been true in Eastern Kentucky in the 1920's but such stories are not completely unheard of anywhere.  What is to be learned from this story is that in Appalachia, people usually have tried to do the right thing in nearly all circumstances and still do today.   This is one of the most moving stories in the Williams book and it is well worth reading. 

Cratis D. Williams and I On Death, Dying, and Funeral Rituals In Appalachia

I am currently reading "Tales From Sacred Wind: Coming of Age in Appalachia" by Cratis D. Williams and I will write about it more fully in a more formal kind of book review when I finish it.  But I have just read some important sections of the book about the deaths of various people in the Sacred Wind community of Lawrence County Kentucky in the book and they prompted some memories of my own which led me to write about that aspect of Williams's observations and to insert some of my own.  I also wrote another post about "Tales From Sacred Wind..." since I posted this one which has also become quite popular with lovers of Appalachia and Appalachian History and folkways. It is about both our experiences as children in traditional Appalachian children's games.  At the time I wrote these two most recent posts about Cratis Williams, I neglected to mention in either of them that I had written a much earlier post called "Responses To Some Reading Of Cratis Williams" which might also be interesting to some of you.  It is a response to a small pamphlet he wrote about his most important early teacher, William H. Vaughan, who was a primary influence in leading Williams to pursue a career in academia which was not common at the time in Eastern Kentucky. 

Cratis D. Williams--Photo by The Williams Family

I have written previously on this blog about these topics but the practices in Appalachia have been ever changing in both my lifetime and that of Cratis Williams who was born about forty years before me and has now been dead for thirty-five years.  Cratis Williams was one of the premier scholars in the field of Appalachian Studies and served in various capacities at Appalachian State University.  The best, and perhaps only book, devoted solely to death, dying, and burial practices in Appalachia is "Death and Dying In Central Appalachia" by James K. Crissman.  But it was published in 1994 and is becoming a bit dated twenty-six years later.  "Tales From Sacred Wind..." was published in 2003 based on manuscripts which Cratis Williams had left unpublished at his death in 1985 and is also a bit dated.  There is a genuine need for a more recent scholarly look at death and dying in the region.  Crissman's book is excellent, well researched, professionally documented, and wide ranging in its coverage and I have cited, quoted, and recommended it for many years.  But the work of Williams in "Tales From Sacred Wind.." provides a brief but needed addition to the work of Crissman.  I hope my own observations from a long life in Appalachia also contribute to the field.  

My primary impetus to write about Williams's observations came about quite serendipitously shortly after I read his section on death practices through an e-mail exchange with a new acquaintance about a cemetery in our native Knott County which both of us have known all our lives.  I grew up near that cemetery and my acquaintance has several relatives buried on it.  In his book, Cratis Williams tells a story about one of his elderly female ancestors who planted two cedar trees beside some graves on a cemetery at Sacred Wind.  The old woman would not allow anyone else to assist her in planting the trees and expressed an old folk belief that the person who plants a cedar tree will die before the tree is fully grown.  As my e-mail exchange progressed with my acquaintance about the Knott County cemetery, he said this: "My grandfather died in (a) mining accident in 1948, and my grandmother later moved to Michigan. Her last visit to this cemetery was in 1974. During that visit, she planted some cedar trees near the grave of my grandfather. She told me  there was an old saying, that if you planted a cedar tree, you would be dead by time the tree was large enough to shade a grave.  My grandmother died five years later, in 1979. The cedar trees are still standing, and are posing problems to headstones due to their roots."  It is always fascinating to me to read, and especially to hear first hand, about any Appalachian folkway or folk tale.

Another friend of mine, both on Facebook and in real life, John D. Shelton, responded to this post after I had posted it on Facebook with this story about planting cedar trees which concurs almost exactly with Cratis Williams's story and the one above from my other acquaintance.  "As a teen, I was going to plant a Cedar Tree my Uncle scolded me saying never plant Cedars, because you will die when they are big enuff to shade your Grave."  Obviously, the folkway or folktale about planting cedars and impending death of the planter has spread across a wide area.  

Williams also discussed several funerals he had attended both as a child and as an adult in Lawrence County including the deaths of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.  He even discusses one funeral which his entire one room school attended for the father of a classmate who had died from "lockjaw", tetanus, after having stepped on a nail while tearing down a house.  He discusses the man having been buried in a shroud or winding cloth only one of which such funerals I have ever known about in my life.  A man who owned property adjoining ours in my childhood home and, in fact, adjoining the cemetery which my acquaintance and I have been discussing was the only person I ever knew who was buried in a shroud or winding cloth and I did not attend that funeral which I regret.  For those of you who have not encountered either term, a shroud or winding cloth is a plain flat, usually white, garment or sheet in which a dead body is wrapped in the casket.  As I understand it, a full sized or larger sheet was used in most cases and the body was placed with the feet a foot or two above a corner with the head a foot or two below the diagonally opposite corner in order to increase the length and folding options of the shroud or winding cloth.  The washed and prepared body was then wrapped in the cloth usually beginning with a fold of the lower corner over the feet up to about the knees.  Then one side was folded over and possibly under the body and the other side was folded in the opposite direction in the same manner.  Usually after a viewing, visitation, or funeral, the top corner was then folded down to cover the face of the deceased.  It is my understanding that in some other countries, especially in the Middle East, this is still the dominant method in use.  In Appalachia, America, and several other countries, the use of white cloth is, of course, a symbol of purity.

Cratis Williams also discussed having known people who had their coffins made while they were alive and storing them in attics, barns, or spare rooms.  In an earlier post on this blog, I wrote about Clabe Mosley, an Old Regular Baptist preacher, whose coffin hung in the attic of my maternal grandparents' house for several years before he actually died.  Williams, in this book, also concurs with my writing that these people who had coffins built while living would sometimes actually get in and test the coffin as I reported that Clabe Mosley had done.  John D. Shelton also relayed this story about a person who had their coffin made well before they died and allowed the coffin to deteriorate in a fence row before his death.  But others, after the death, repaired the coffin and used it to bury the original buyer.  "I had another relative who was poor, so he built his own Casket and painted it, tried it for size, placed it in the Grave Yard fence row, it sat there many years covered in grass and weeds, no one moved it, he died and a Cousin and Preacher dug it out the weeds and cleaned it and made repairs, and a woman from Church made a cloth lining, and he was buried in it. This happened a few years back."

Cratis Williams also discussed grave houses in "Tales From Sacred Wind..." as I did in my post about burial practices in Appalachia in which I also included a few photos none of which are originally shot by me.  One of the funnier stories in the book is about a distant relative of Williams who, after getting drunk at a square dance, decided to crawl in the grave house of an ancestor to avoid walking home in the rain.  The man was awakened and terrified by an old sow and her pigs when the sow decided to use the grave house to scratch an itch.  Williams's relative thought he was experiencing a "hain't" and left the cemetery in terror until he realized it was only a sow.  I know of a couple of grave houses on a small cemetery near the Johnson/Lawrence county line on US 23 which are clearly visible from the divided highway.  I also know a few in Lawrence and Elliott counties in an are near where Williams grew up.

Williams also discussed, and his posthumous editors provided several photos of his grandfather David O. Williams who had a large stone, homemade mausoleum, or grave house built to hold the bodies of himself and his wife.  I know of one hand cut stone grave house of a similar nature at a small cemetery between Mousie and Lackey in Knott County Kentucky which is unmarked and said to contain the body of one of the first white settlers to that area.  That stone grave house has several cracks and openings where the stones have settled over the years and I have to admit that I have been tempted to return with a flashlight to see what is visible through the cracks.  I also know of a similarly constructed grave house in a small cemetery near Morgan County High School in West Liberty, Kentucky which also shows signs of settling and age. John D. Shelton, whom I mentioned above, also reported this anecdote about a grave house he had seen: "There is one Grave Yard in Clinton County (Kentucky) which has a little House on one Grave about four feet tall that has Windows in it, I guess they wanted the Loved one to get Sun and be able to see out."

I am thoroughly enjoying reading this book and regret that I was never able to meet Cratis Williams in the flesh.  He is funny, informative, at times risque, and well worth reading.  "Tales From Sacred Wind..." is a book which ever student of Appalachian Studies should place on their "Must Read List". 


 

Responses To Some Reading Of Cratis Williams

Having just completed "William H. Vaughan A Better Man Than I Ever Wanted To Be A Memoir" by Cratis Williams, I want to set down some responses it generated as quickly as possible.  The book, or more accurately pamphlet (only 72 pages), is a biographical memoir about Dr. Vaughan the most important mentor in the life of Williams who is one of the most important figures in the history of Appalachian Studies.  The two met when Williams, a freshman in high school, moved from remote Crain's Creek in Lawrence County Kentucky to the county seat of Louisa so he could board in a home and attend high school which no member of his family had ever done. Vaughan was a teacher at the school and eventually became its principal.  He would later complete a doctorate and become president of Morehead State Teachers College (University).

The two maintained a mentor and protege relationship for more than 40 years until Vaughan died in Nashville where he lived and taught after being fired at Morehead following a political turnover in Frankfort.  Vaughan was a Democrat.  The new Kentucky governor was a Republican.  The firing cost the college its accreditation for one year.  But wherever the two moved in their separate careers, they stayed in touch and supported each other throughout their professional lives.  Williams was the only Lawrence County native who attended the funeral of Vaughan in Nashville in 1972. Their relationship was a model for what all mentor/protege relationships should be.  It was close, honest, cooperative, and life long. 

But the most striking thing  I noticed in reading the book was a quote by Williams in a biographical statement at the end of the book.  In that brief segment, Williams discusses his earliest exposures to the negative stereotyping of Appalachian people and how he dealt with that stereotyping throughout his life.  It should be a model for every Appalachian native today when the need arises to confront and educate the people who disseminate the stereotypes. The quote says:

"In college I picked up from  professors and students from outside the Appalachian region the negative attitudes toward us Appalachians that fictional stereotypes had created.  It was a shame to  be Appalachian.  An Appalachian persons first obligation to himself was to identify and correct or reject everything about himself that betrayed his identity.  As I considered and tried alternates, I found many of them superficial, unreal, often pretentious, and sometimes hypocritical.  I had to pretend, for example, that young middle class women were innocent little girls who played at life as if they were still in doll houses.  I had to substitute shallow euphemisms for the colorful and vigorous language in my dialect.  People played religion in middle class churches and few seemed to take it very seriously...My acceptance of people as they themselves saw themselves stood me in good stead.  My ability to listen, consider, ask questions without condemning or rejecting appealed to those who fate it was to work with me.  It has seemed to me that such success as I have enjoyed as a 'public person' is owing largely to my having accepted myself with confidence, and without significant loss of self-esteem, as an Appalachian.  I never feel the need to apologize for who I am or try to obscure my identity.  I find it enormously comfortable to be myself."  Williams, Cratis D.; "William H. Vaughan A Better Man Than I Ever Wanted To Be A Memoir"; p. 72.

The truths contained in that brief quote cannot be accurately enumerated or adequately explained by a person who has never been subjected to the negative stereotypes which Williams is discussing.  But he was able to progress from the point at which he first encountered the stereotypes to become a proud spokesman for the Appalachian people.  He created a career and a body of writing which is rarely equalled in any field.  Only one or two other native Appalachians have succeeded to the degree that Cratis Williams did.  Every Appalachian person who benefits from his work owes him a debt of gratitude. 

And every native Appalachian should try to confront the stereotypes and the people who perpetuate them.  We are the last minority group in America which it is still socially acceptable to denigrate, defame, and belittle.  So long as we stay silent and accept the stereotypes they will live on.  We need to take the same postion toward them that Williams took.  We must defend our heritage and our culture.

Cratis D. Williams, Ph. D.