Some Thoughts On "Crossing The Bar" by Alfred Lord Tennyson

There was a clue on "Jeopardy" quite a while ago about the poem, "Crossing The Bar" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, which is one of the most well known poems about death other than possibly "Thanatopsis" by William Cullen Bryant. Because the language is a bit simpler and the poem much shorter than in "Thanatopsis", "Crossing The Bar" was for many years one of the most often printed pieces on the back of funeral memorial cards in Appalachia. I have a sizeable collection of such memorial cards and wrote about them in the blog post at the preceding link. I have probably seen it on the cards at a hundred or more funerals in my life. It is a great little poem and, in it's own way, a major part of Appalachian history and culture.

 

With the recent massive flooding in Eastern Kentucky and the still unfinished search for the likely dead, many more of those memorial cards in being printed in several of the most Appalachian counties in Kentucky.  One of those is my native Knott County and, luckily, so far I have not heard of anyone being among the dead from my relatives and acquaintances.  I also have deep ties to Floyd County which has had severe flooding especially in Wayland and Garrett on Right Beaver Creek and all up Left Beaver Creek, all of which lies in Floyd County.   I spent the first 6 years of my life on Steele's Creek in Floyd County just a mile from Wayland and still have many friends and relatives there.  The next 17 years of my life were spent on Right Beaver Creek at Dema in Knott County just about three miles from Wayland.  Most of my closest friends during my teenage years were from Wayland including my two cousins, more like brothers, Jack and Johnny Terry.  It is horrible to think of having anyone die in a flood and it is just as horrible to know that several thousand people in about 7 counties in Eastern Kentucky are now homeless because of this flood.  So, in memory of the dead from the Eastern Kentucky floods of July 29, 2022, here is the complete text of "Crossing The Bar".

 

Crossing the Bar

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

 

 

 

"Raft Tide and Railroad How We Lived and Died" by Edwina Pendarvis--Book Review

Pendarvis, Edwina. Raft Tide And Railroad How We Lived and Died. (Frankfort, KY, Blair Mountain Press 2008)

"Raft Tide and Railroad How We Lived and Died" by Edwina Pendarvis is labeled as memoir although I would tend to call it more of a historiomemoir if creating such a word does not bend the English language too far.  Eddie Pendarvis, as she prefers to be called, and I have been friends for a couple of years and the better I come to know her the better I like her and her work.  She is a retired professor emeritus of the Education Department of Marshall University, an Appalachian author and poet of some note, and the author of numerous books in several fields.  She grew up in several locations in Appalachia including the Left Beaver section of Floyd County Kentucky and Kopperston West Virginia. Several members of her extended family worked in company stores and the coal mines.  

This book covers the history of her family as it immigrated into Pike County Kentucky and then spread out over Appalachia, West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and Central Kentucky.  The first several chapters are highly fictionalized which, while it may have been necessary due to poor or no documentation two hundred and more years ago, is a quality I do not like.  There is also some fictionalization in a few of the later chapters but it is of a much more creative and deliberate nature and much more acceptable in the work.  Ms. Pendarvis does an excellent job of researching and documenting the available records, both verbal and written, about her ancestors.  The book will be especially popular with individuals who have spent at least part of their lives in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia.  It is filled with wonderful stories and vignettes about the family, its many unique members, and the complex lives they lived.  Ms. Pendarvis, as a babe in arms, was present at the murder of her maternal grandmother on the porch of the family home in Pike County.  As a result, her maternal uncle Donald Johnson spent most of his remaining youth in Ms. Pendarvis' home under the care of her mother who was his older, married sister.  He grew up to become rich in the Pike County coal industry and eventually made and lost two fortunes.  He was also the breeder and seller of a Thoroughbred colt who set a world record auction price of $10.2 million dollars at the Keeneland Summer Select Yearling Sale in July of 1983.  In a mildly strange coincidence, I was present in the arena at Keeneland the night that colt sold since I had spent nearly twenty years working in the Thoroughbred industry of Central Kentucky.  

This book is full of wonderful moments which remind the native Appalachian reader of home, the old home place, mother's chicken and dumplings, and of the winter evenings when there was enough fire wood but maybe not enough pinto beans.  It takes us back to our youthful aspirations and memories of little failures we thought we had forgotten.  It is well worth the price of admission.  If you are a native Appalachian, buy it, read it, use it to remember the good times, the bad times, and those hopeful times when you knew in your heart that there were better times a coming.