"Rosie Hicks and Her Recipe Book" by Donnie Henderson Shedlarz & Edited by Thomas Burton--Book Review

This is the official description of this book on the official website of the editor, Thomas Burton, who is the author or editor of roughly a half dozen other Appalachian books. 

"Rosie Hicks is the deceased widow of Ray Hicks, the internationally known traditional storyteller from North Carolina. She lived in the shadows of all the publications and publicity of Ray; nevertheless, she is an interesting person in her own right. Her life is an engaging story, both as an individual and as a representative of a culture that has for the most part passed away. And that story is told in this little book directly from a series of recorded interviews by Donnie Shedlarz. The book focuses on Rosie’s wonderful anecdotes of growing up in Beech Mountain, North Carolina, including her marriage to Ray; but it also includes the recipes that she kept in an old recipe book, as well as a number of family photographs."  Thomas Burton Website 

The person who conducted the oral history interviews on which this book is based was Donnie Henderson Shedlarz who died of some unnamed lung ailment and asked Thomas Burton, before her death, to finish the work on this little book.  Thomas Burton transcribed the interviews of Ms. Shedlarz and edited the book which was published by Landa Books in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  I am unable to locate an internet website for Landa Books and have to assume that it is no longer functioning or was a purely personal project of Thomas Burton or someone else associated with Ms. Shedlarz.  This book was produced in what must have been a self-publishing, or vanity press, effort and is quite difficult to locate.  I have previously read three others of Thomas Burton's books including one called "Beech Mountain Man" which is an oral history biography of Ronda Lee Hicks, a nephew of Ray and Rosie Hicks who was quite a reprobate in his own right.  Burton had a long standing friendship with several members of the Hicks family and it is not surprising that he would have volunteered to complete the work which Shedlarz, a mutual friend of Rosie Hicks and Burton, had begun.  Shedlarz and Rosie Hicks had become friends during contacts they initially made at story telling festivals around the country where both appeared at times along with Ray Hicks.  

This book is small, brief, and that is its greatest shortcoming.  Rosie Hicks was a fascinating Appalachian woman from a different era, having been born in 1931 in an isolated portion of Western North Carolina where she spent her entire life.  She was a teenager when she married her husband Ray Hicks, who eventually became the most famous Appalachian story teller.  Rosie eventually, because of traveling to story telling festivals with her husband, developed a minor reputation as a story teller also.  But this book does not focus on her story telling although it does contain two brief stories from her repertoire which I will discuss briefly below.  The book is purely an oral history memoir with a sizeable collection of Hicks family photographs and photos of the index card pages of Rosie's personal recipe book.  The text portion of the book is only about twenty-five pages and the entire book is only sixty-one pages.  But it is well worth reading if you can locate a copy.  Burton did a creditable job of sticking to her unique dialect in his transcriptions and the book can shed some light on a few aspects of Appalachian dialect in Western North Carolina.  

There are several old Appalachian folk sayings and riddles in the book along with two short Appalachian Folk Tales from Rosie Hicks' collection.  One is called "Gallymanders" and the other is called "Mule Eggs".  Both are variants of common themes among the folk tales of Appalachia.  I do not pretend to be an expert on Appalachian Folk Tales but I have read and written about one of Leonard Roberts' books of folk tales.  Roberts is considered the best known expert in that area although he has now been dead nearly forty years.  I have to admit that I should read and write further about this important aspect of Appalachian Culture.  For those of you who have had no experience with Appalachian Folk Tales, these two in Rosie's book are a good place to start.  The book also has a sizeable collection of traditional Appalachian riddles.  Although my wife and I have not tried any of Rosie's recipes yet, some of them are worth examining including her Black Magic Cake, Prune Sour Cream Coffee Cake, and Stack Cake.  If you can find a copy of this book, I think there are aspects of it all of you can enjoy.  

Favorite Stories From My Father, Ballard Hicks, 1887--1971

I tend to believe that I am a pretty good story teller and I know I came by it honestly.  My father, Ballard Hicks, was a wonderful story teller and could talk about any subject, any time, anywhere.  He had been born in the holler of Bruce at Mousie in Knott County Kentucky in 1887 and died in 1971 at the age of 84.  When he was born, Grover Cleveland was president and by the time he died the country was suffering through the Viet Nam War and the crimes of Richard Nixon.  When my father was born, Knott County Kentucky was a toddler of three years old.  Most of the prescription medicines we used even by the time I was born in 1951 were unknown in his time.  Anything as common as a broken bone or appendicitis could kill you.

Ballard Hicks, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

  My father helped hunt wild hogs for winter meat as a teenager with his father, Charlie Hicks, and his brothers, William, Isom, Fair, Elder, and Tim.  They kept mountain cur dogs which were trained to hunt any and all edible animals.  My grandfather kept more than fifty stands of bees most of his life and was said to talk about "his honey, his money, and his old woman".  I suspect he was a story teller too.  My father's family raised, made, hunted, fished, or bartered for 99% of everything they ate, wore, and used in daily life until well into their own adult lives.  Life in the late 19th century was not easy in Knott County Kentucky but I never heard my father or any of his siblings complain about how they grew up and I personally knew six of his nine siblings.  I sincerely wish that I had recorded every story I heard from them and many others I knew from their era instead of assuming I would remember those stories.  But I do remember many of my father's favorite stories and I heard most of them many times until his death when I was twenty.  

Sometime when I was about 8 or 9 years old, Daddy decided it was time for me to learn to swim and took me to Beaver Creek near our house to try to teach me even though he was past 70 at the time.  During this experience, he told me the story of how he learned to swim.  He said that his mother, Elizabeth "Betty" Carpenter Hicks, sent him somewhere on Ball Branch around Mousie where someone operated a grist mill to get a turn of corn ground into meal.  He said the miller had a few other turns of corn to grind before his and he went outside the mill to walk around the mill pond.  During this walk or play session, he said he fell off the mill dam into the pond which was well over his head and he could not swim.  He said he went under the first time and came to the surface without being able to swim.  He went down a second time and when he came up he still was not able to swim.  He said just as he was about to sink for the third time he managed to begin kicking and paddling in a successful manner and made it to the bank alive.  He always said that he could always swim after that incident. I am sure that near drowning incident played a role in his decision to teach me to swim. 

Charley and Betty Hicks and Their Children And Two Grandchildren, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

He also told a couple of other stories about his childhood including one about going fishing with one of his brothers, either Fair or Elder, and they weren't catching anything when the brother noticed some kind of unusual action coming from under the bank and said, "I think there's a big catfish or turtle under there." 

Ballard Hicks, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Daddy said the brother took off his clothes and dove into the water and a great thrashing and boiling ensued in the creek.  Eventually, his brother came up with his hand in the mouth of a large catfish which Daddy always described as having "made a dish pan full of meat".  He also always said that the catfish had "skunt up my brothers hand and arm way above his wrist". Another of his favorite stories was about a time his father took him and another of the brothers to Jackson with him which would have been a full day's trip through the woods from Bruce.  He said this brother was about 8 or 9 years old and had never been out of the Mousie area.  When they got to Jackson, it had a few blocks of concrete sidewalks and Daddy always said his brother walked along for a while looking at the sidewalks and finally said, "I sure wish I knowed where they got them big flat rocks.  Pa could use some of them to set his bee gums on."  Both my father and I always thought that was a hilarious story.

My Grandparents, Elizabeth "Betty" Carpenter Hicks and Charley Hicks, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

But my personal favorite of all his stories from his childhood was connected to his decision to quit school and go to work as a brakeman on a log wagon when he was only ten years old.  The drivers on log wagons had to give full attention to their team of horses or mules and employers often hired young boys to operate the wagon brake on downhills and to hook and unhook the teams from the wagons and other assorted chores.  His employer in this logging job also owned a country store and all his employees were required to take their pay in "a store order" which required them to accept merchandise instead of money and operated much the same as scrip in coal mining jobs.  When my father got his first "store order", he said he took it home and gave it to his mother to spend on the household.  To his surprise, Grandma Betty took the store order and bought one of his brothers a new mackinaw coat.  Daddy said he made up his mind that "if I'm old enough to work, I'm old enough to spend my own store order".  When he got the "store order" the next week, he took it on Saturday to the store and bought himself a brand new blue serge suit, the first store bought clothes of his life.  Then he went to a local square dance, barn dance, corn shucking or some such event.  As he told the story, he "set on a nail keg all night with a little girl on my lap".   On his way home after the event ended, he realized that he had caught crabs from the little girl.  He said he knew better than to carry crabs into his mother's house and stopped in the yard to holler when he got home, "Hey Ma!  Hey Ma!"  Grandma Betty stepped out on the porch to ask him what he wanted and he said he told her, "Ma, I've caught the body lice."  She told him to fill her wash kettle with water, build a fire under it, and call her again when it was boiling and to stay out of the house.  When the water boiled, Grandma Betty told him to go in the wash house or cellar, take all his clothes off, and throw them out the door to her.  She threw the new blue serge suit in the boiling water and boiled it about an hour to kill the crabs.  Daddy said when the suit got dry it had changed drastically and one leg was about a foot longer than the other and both arms of the suit coat were shrunk horribly.  He would tell that story and laugh and say, "I worked two weeks to wear a blue serge suit one night."  Both of us loved that story and so have most others who have heard it.

My Aunt & Uncle, Ida and Tim Hicks, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

As I said earlier in this post, Daddy and his father and brothers always killed hogs for winter meat at a time when there were no livestock laws and most people's hogs ran wild in the woods.  They would wait for good hog killing weather after a hard freeze came and the crops were in and take two or three of those mountain cur dogs and a rifle and hunt until they had killed enough meat to last through the winter.  He always talked about one of those dogs in particular which he said was the best dog they ever had.  During one of these hog hunts, the dogs cornered a large boar under a rock cliff before they got within shooting range of it.  Before they could kill the hog, it had managed to get a tusk into that good dog whose name I do not remember.  The dog was not killed instantly but was severely wounded in the abdomen.  Daddy said they killed the hog and carried the dog home where my grandmother, who worked as a midwife in the area, attempted to sew up the dog's belly.  But the dog died and was always remembered fondly by my father.

Daddy always said that during his childhood, his father owned a wonderful muzzle loading rifle which could not be beaten for accuracy.  At that time in the mountains, it was common on weekends to hold shooting matches and someone would put out word that there was a match at their farm and men from all over the area would walk in with their guns and compete.  Usually, there was a small entry fee, since money was scarce, and the person in charge would put up a hog, sheep, or cow, as prizes.  The animal would be parceled out over five matches in four quarters plus the hide and tallow.  If more than one person won a quarter, the animal had to be slaughtered on the spot and divided between the winning parties. Sometimes, one of the winners might be able to buy the lesser portions from the others and manage to just lead or drive the animal home. Daddy said he and his brothers could almost always win most matches with the muzzle loader and at one particular match several miles from their home they won all four quarters of a large beef animal but lost the match for the hide and tallow.  He said they tried to buy that portion from the winner who was angry at having lost the majority of the matches and refused to sell his portion.  According to Daddy, they had to slaughter the animal on the spot, give the man the hide and tallow and take turns carrying the four quarters of a large beef home for several miles.

Curtis Hicks, Ballard Hicks, & Hewie Hicks, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Eventually, he said other men in the area would not shoot against the muzzle loader and it was banned from some matches. So the brothers altered the rifle by sawing part of the stock off and even painting the stock and forearm blue for awhile.  He never said what eventually happened with that muzzle loader; but if I could find it I would give anything to own it.

He always told one story about hunting in the Mousie area with an unnamed friend as an illustration of how tough times were during his younger years.  He said he went rabbit hunting once when he was a young adult with some friend whom he knew had little on which to live.  He said it was a snowy morning and as they were cresting a small rise a red fox trotted over the rise into sight and his friend shot it.  The man immediately turned to my father and said, "Build us a fire, Ballard, while I skin this fox."  Daddy said he thought his friend just wanted to warm up while they were waiting to retrieve the fox hide which he could sell.  But after the man started skinning the fox, he cut out the hind quarters and asked, "Do you want to eat these front quarters, Ballard?  I'm going to brile these hind quarters."  Daddy said he declined to eat any of the fox and waited while his friend broiled and ate the majority of the animal.  He also always told one other story about people in poverty eating unusual animals.  He said he knew a woman in the area who had three or four children and no husband at home.  He said he went to visit there once and the woman had a large kettle of something boiling merrily on the stove.  Daddy asked, "What are you cooking?" and the woman just replied somewhat evasively, "I'm just cooking supper for me and the young'uns."  Eventually, he said he was able to get her to admit what she was cooking.  She had gotten out in the area around her house and caught and cleaned three or four terrapins or box turtles  and was cooking them to eat.  He never ate any of those either.

Another of his favorite stories was about two couples he claimed to have known in his childhood who lived on small, hillside farms not far apart.  Apparently, neither of these couples could get along.  So the story went, the two men eventually agreed to trade wives, farms, and families.  He always swore that the two men simply packed up their personal belongings and walked from house to house on the same day, probably passing in the road, and seemed to live quite amicably for the rest of their lives with the other woman and each other.  I realize that this story is somewhat unsavory in today's world and tends to seriously devalue both women and children.  But my father swore it was true although he never named the people involved if it was true.

My other absolute favorite story from my father was about an incident shortly after he bought a country store near Wayland, Kentucky, quit the coal mines, and became a storekeeper due to the failing health of his first wife, Ora Wicker Hicks,

Ora Wicker Hicks, Ballard Hicks, Earl Wicker, Pearl Wicker, & Orville James Hicks--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

who had been diagnosed with an untreatable neurological condition which her obituary described as "paralysis". Some time shortly after he bought the store and during the time before World War II rationing ended, he bought a truck load of black market lard from a fly by night person who had the fifty pound cans of lard hidden under a covering of square baled hay.  He said the lard sold like wildfire because nobody had ration stamps and the price was reasonable.  But about a week after the lard started selling, Daddy had to pay the devil his due.  When the local cooks got about three or four inches down in each bucket of lard, it turned out that the majority was only beef tallow covered up with nice, creamy pork lard.  He always said that load of lard nearly broke him in the store business but he could still laugh about it.  

My Parents, Ballard and Mellie Hicks, Photo by Roger D. Hicks 

New Book, "True Christmas Stories From The Heart Of Appalachia", From The Jesse Stuart Foundation

The Jesse Stuart Foundation has just released a new book entitled "True Christmas Stories From the Heart of Appalachia".  The book has 43 Christmas stories from 39 authors. It has stories from my friends, Edwina Pendarvis and Emily Steiner, as well as the well known authors Jesse Stuart, Thomas D. Clark, Cratis Williams, Bill Best, and Billy C. Clark. Including my story, "Christmas On Beaver Creek", there are three stories which are set in Knott County.  Two of those stories are set at Pippa Passes and the Caney Creek Community Center. This book is a wonderful addition to your collections of Christmas books or Appalachian books. It is also a wonderful Christmas gift for those who love to remember and work to preserve the Appalachia of their childhood.  It is well worth reading and will take nearly every reader back to some wonderful memory from your growing up years. I have a limited number of copies available with my autograph at the price of $25.00 plus $3.00 shipping (28.00 total) which is the price set by the publisher. The book will cost you the same amount of money without any autographs from the Jesse Stuart Foundation.   I will accept PayPal at rchicks@mrtc.com. I will also accept orders with a check or US Postal Money Order at:

Roger D. Hicks

65 Highway 1081

West Liberty, KY 41472

Send me an e-mail there with your name, address, and the name of the person to which you want each copy dedicated.

Here is an excerpt from my story: "Late in the evenings when the fire was warm and business slow, the older men would stop by the store to tell stories about old Christmas with the cattle kneeling in the fields...and how some old preacher talked about three men who rode on camels across a big desert following a star to take some fancy presents to a baby who was just like us, too poor to be born in a hospital." 

"Beech Mountain Man" by Thomas Burton---Book Review

Burton, Thomas: Beech Mountain Man (Knoxville, Tennessee, University Of Tennessee Press, 2009)

Thomas G. Burton is a professor emeritus of English at East Tennessee State University and an acknowledged expert in the field of Appalachian Studies and, particularly, in the area of Appalachian Serpent Handling.  His books on that subject are two of the best, most accurate, and most respected by the serpent handlers themselves.  But this book we are discussing today is not one of those books.  While it is subtitled "...The Memoirs Of Ronda Lee Hicks", it is not truly memoir.  In my opinion, it is much more accurate to describe it as oral history.  The format of the book is primarily direct, dialect transcriptions of audio tapes which Dr. Burton recorded with the subject, Ronda Lee Hicks, in the home of Rosa Hicks, the widow of the great Appalachian story teller Ray Hicks who was also a cousin to Ronda Lee Hicks.  The book is transcribed into relatively short sections on particular subjects which Hicks discussed during the taping.  Those sections are then combined in several chapters also on common subjects such as work, the military, and drinking.  There are short, generally single paragraph introductions written by Thomas Burton at the beginning of each section and chapter.  The tapes were transcribed with a solid attempt to be precise and ethical in rendering the unique sub-regional dialect of Appalachian English which Ronda Hicks spoke.  However, it is not my impression that the transcription was conducted according to strict linguist rules from any professional association of linguists.  

The foreword is written by John Shelton Reed, Professor Emeritus from the University Of North Carolina, and sheds some light on the possible intentions of the author.  In his foreword, Reed makes this important statement: "...Hicks is a classic example of a well-known type, the Bad Man.  The Bad Man may not be bad in all ways...but this is definitely someone you don't want to cross, or even seriously annoy, because he may respond with abrupt, brutal, and overwhelming violence."   It is my belief that Thomas Burton intended to produce a book which would, by first person anecdotes, deliver a studious rendition of the life of one such Bad Man. The Bad Man is just as much an iconic figure in America as the Folk Hero exemplified by Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, and Johnny Appleseed.  Real, living Bad Men have included the recently murdered James "Whitey" Bulger, Clyde Barrow, and Billy The Kid.  In my work in the human services professions, I knew numerous men, and a few women, who would have fitted into the rubric of The Bad Man.  My favorite client of all time was a man who walked into my office one day, introduced himself, and went on to say "You've probably heard of me.  I killed my brother down the road in front of ten witnesses, shot him six times."  Then he went on to tell the full story of the murder, why he committed it, and of his time in prison. We went on to have a mutually productive professional relationship for several years. In many ways, he was a great deal like Ronda Lee Hicks.   

Ronda Lee Hicks also exhibited, in his recorded stories, many key symptoms of at least two genuine mental health or substance use disorders according to the DSM-V, the book which psychiatric practitioners use to formulate appropriate, empirically rendered diagnoses of those with mental health problems.  Ronda Hicks drank heavily most of his adult life and freely admitted and discussed it with Thomas Burton.  He also committed numerous acts of violence which were minimally sufficient to require his arrest.  He served time in prison on two separate occasions.  Yet, he was also a man who could show a capacity to help others, to be considerate, loyal, and giving under certain circumstances.  To put it lightly, he was an enigma.  

The book is well worth reading for the student of Appalachian Studies, linguists, corrections or mental health professionals, and quite simply those who enjoy knowing about Bad Men.  It is not the best of the works I have read by Thomas Burton and, perhaps some day, I will reread his better books and write about those on this blog.