Christmas In Appalachia

With Christmas coming up soon, I am reminded of many things which took place at Christmas when I was growing up in Knott County Kentucky in the 1950's and 1960's.  While I grew up with more than most people in the neighborhood, my parents were a long way from rich and did not spend frivolously for anything.  But Christmas was a special time and we had good food, family, visits from relatives and friends, and a few well selected gifts. 



 Salisbury Elementary, where I attended school, had a Christmas party with two one act plays, poems, and songs. A Christmas tree would be found and chopped down a few days before Christmas by the older boys.  It would be hauled into the building and decorated with hand me down ornaments from the teachers and a few parents.  There would be a few lights, tinsel, and other seasonal decorations.  But, to us, it looked like a first class job.  Usually, a few parents, family, and friends of students would come to the show.  It is difficult at best to turn a two room school into a theater and we did not really try.  Students would practice briefly each day after Thanksgiving to prepare for the show.  The one act plays would usually have only 4 or 5 parts and older students along with those with the best memories would usually be selected for the plays.  Older students would recite longer poems since they were harder to remember.  The school would be minimally decorated by the teachers.  On the day of the show, the last day of school before Christmas break, the front room, which housed the first through fourth grades, would be rearranged with a clothesline strung across the room a few feet from the dividing wall.  Sheets would be donated by mothers temporarily and they became the curtains.  Two of the oldest and tallest boys would be selected to draw the curtains.  As many chairs as necessary would be jammed into the remaining space with a respectful clearing left for the pot bellied stove and water bucket. 



A few classic Christmas songs would be sung in faltering but lusty voices.  Children would recite several poems and "Twas The Night Before Christmas" was always a big hit.  Then the plays would be produced with the typical poor quality amateur acting, few if any costumes, and universal approval no matter how bad the overall production might be.  When the plays were over, gifts would be passed out.  We would have drawn names for gifts a week or two before the date.  There would always be a few children whose parents were too poor to allow their children to draw names.  A few others would allow their children to draw names but the gift would be a box of chocolate covered cherries which could be bought for less than fifty cents in those days.  Nearly every child hoped that their name was not drawn by a giver of chocolate covered cherries.  There were also always small gifts for every child from the Caney Creek Community Center at Pippa Passes, KY.  The Community Center was a non-profit organization which had been founded by Alice Lloyd of the college of the the same name.  These gifts would generally be age and gender appropriate but minimal and had been donated by people hundreds of miles away.  Then the Christmas vacation would begin. 

Chocolate Covered Cherries

At home, we would generally have a large Christmas feast which would be very similar to the Thanksgiving dinner I have written about in an earlier posting.  Since my parents owned a small grocery store, we usually had more than our neighbors. But most of our food was still home grown.  Just before Christmas, my parents would bring several items into the store which they did not sell the rest of the year.  There would be a small collection of fresh fruit such as apples, oranges, tangerines, and bananas.  There would also be bagged nuts including mixed nuts, English Walnuts, and Brazil nuts which were more commonly referred to by a racist name based on their physical attributes.  We usually also had local black walnuts, hickory nuts, and hazel nuts gathered from trees on our property. We also often had chestnuts which might have been gathered in the woods or bought from a wholesaler.  Chestnuts would be either boiled or placed on the front of a gas space heater with a slit in one side to prevent explosions.  Other people with wood or coal heat either baked their chestnuts on top of a pot bellied stove or in the front of the hearth. I still love the taste and smell of a roasted chestnut.  My grandparents also had one of the few pecan trees in Eastern Kentucky on their property and, in most years, we had a few pecans as well.  There would also be large wholesale size boxes of a few loose candies which my parents sold by the pound.  These would be chocolate drops, usually referred to by the same racist name as Brazil nuts: "Grocery Mix", a type of mixed vari-colored candies of nearly pure sugar; horehound candy; and stick candies. And of course, there would be a few boxes of chocolate covered cherries. Even though we did not like them at the time, today I often buy the single wrapped chocolate covered cherries at the impulse racks of convenience stores.  I can eat one now and it brings back dozens of memories tied to the holidays when I was a child.   These seasonal treats might be the only thing a few parents would be able to afford for their children.  

Bagged Mixed Nuts



Even if we had not been able to kill a hog at Thanksgiving, we usually had weather cold enough by Christmas and fresh pork was usually a staple at Christmas dinner.  Turkeys might or might not be served and were usually commercial products if they were.  Very few people in my area grew their own turkeys.  Much of the Christmas dinner might be home grown and local recipes prevailed. 



Christmas was also a time when many of the relatives who had migrated to the industrial north would come home for visits.  But the numbers at Christmas were usually lower than at Thanksgiving due to weather concerns.  Also, many of them who had children of their own preferred to stay in their own homes for Christmas.   Gifts were always opened in our house on Christmas morning.  A few people opened theirs on Christmas Eve.  But I was generally told that waiting till  Christmas morning was better since it taught some impulse control and also allowed time for Santa Claus to come.  We usually left out some milk and cake or cookies for Santa until I was old enough to know that he was a fictional character.  In the store, there would always be new Coca Cola Santa advertising each year.  It would usually contain at least one stand up cardboard Santa.  I often wonder how much antique value we burned in the garbage each year by destroying the Coca Cola Santas at the end of the holidays.  

Coca Cola Santa Claus

Christmas in Appalachia was never much like it was depicted by the Waltons.  There were some similarities.  But Christmas at my house on Beaver Creek was unique, fun, rewarding, and a definite family affair.  I wish I could go back to at least one mountain Christmas like they were in the 1950's.  "Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night."

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UPDATE: September 25, 2019

The Jesse Stuart Foundation has just released a new book called "True Christmas Stories From The Heart Of Appalachia" and it includes my story, "Christmas On Beaver Creek", along with stories by Jesse Stuart, Cratis Williams, Bill Best, and my two good friends Edwina Pendarvis and Emily Steiner. It has 43 stories from 39 different authors. I have a few copies with my autograph and a personal inscription for whomever you choose which are available at the same price the publisher charges for unautographed copies.  They are $25.00 each plus $3.00 shipping which is what the publisher has set as the price.  You can contact me at Roger D. Hicks, 65, Highway 1081, West Liberty, KY 41472,606-743-2087, or e-mail at rchicks@mrtc.com  Merry Christmas!

 

International Page Views???????

I have noticed over recent weeks and months that numerous page views of this blog have come from foreign countries, especially in Eastern Europe.  I appreciate it anytime anybody reads this information since a major objective of writing it is to keep Appalachian Culture alive.  I have thought at times that most of the foreign page views must be coming from Appalachian military personnel in foreign placements. But I doubt that all of them do.  I would love to see comments from my foreign readers about why they read this blog and what they think of it.  If you are a foreign reader, please send me a short comment on the comments page or an e-mail at hicksroger_@hotmail.com 
I would love to hear you comments.

Thanksgiving In Appalachia

I think back to the Thanksgivings I spent at home with my parents and other members of our extended family and numerous positive memories come back.  I grew up next door to my maternal grandparents, Woots and Susie Hicks.  Just down the road, within sight, was the home of my Aunt and Uncle Mabry and Hazel Hicks with their five children.  On down Beaver Creek about five miles in Floyd County was the home of my Aunt and Uncle Corbett and Ellen Terry and their five children.  About three or four miles up Beaver Creek in Knott County was the home of my Aunt and Uncle Edgar and Doris Hall and their two children.  Including myself and my sister, within five miles of my grandparents house, fourteen first  cousins lived.  This meant that many holidays and a lot of other ordinary days were spent with large numbers of the extended family around the tables at my grandparents house.  There were usually two tables: a "Big Table" for the adults and a "Little Table" for the children.  On most occasions, we ate in shifts with the adult males eating first and the women and children eating second. 

While we did not eat a lot of fancy food, we were never hungry and variety was always present.  There was always meat of some kind; and, on a special occasion such as Thanksgiving, there might be two or three kinds of meat.  Chicken and dumplings were generally present at a big family dinner with big, fluffy dumplings which would melt in your mouth.  The best chicken and dumplings always came about when a good laying hen was killed and her uterus, or "egg bag", was emptied in the cooking dumplings to give them that rich golden color which only happens when partially formed eggs and egg yolks are in the broth.  For those who have never eaten chicken and dumplings made this way, you cannot imagine just how much better they are than ordinary dumplings.

 It was also common to have squirrels and gravy in the fall.  There is no better food than squirrel cooked in a pressure cooker with white cream gravy.  My idea of dessert when squirrels are present has always been a squirrel's head.  We always cooked them with the eyes, ears, and nose tip removed. You can eat them intact, but I have never been a fan of that style.  In eating squirrel heads,  you take the head in your fingers and hold it on the plate while you eat the facial muscles.  Then you remove the lower jaw and eat the tongue.  But the piece de resistance is the brain which is removed by cracking the top of the skull with the handle of a butter knife.  Then you pick the bone fragments off and literally suck the brain out.  It is rich, sweet, buttery tasting, and cannot be equaled by most other foods.  Squirrel brain has only one drawback.  It is too small.  Brains from nearly any edible animal are wonderfully tasty food.  Whether it is squirrel, cow, or hog, the brain is one of the best tasting portions. 

Squirrel for Supper

If the weather was cold enough, it was also common to kill a hog during Thanksgiving week.  Fresh pork, especially organ meats, is stupendous at a holiday dinner.  We often sent the heart, lungs or "lights", liver, kidneys, spleen or "melt" to the house as soon as the hog was gutted and that would be our supper after the hog was processed.  We never ate chitterlings and threw them out.  I often wonder what we missed.  There might be a large pot of fresh pork and potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner. We also frequently flavored vegetables with small amounts of pork.  The favorite for this use was smoked jowl.  But salt pork was also often used.  In the days when refrigeration was not always available or electricity was unpredictable, salting was often the most effective way to preserve home killed meats.  Hog killing deserves an entire post and, at some time in the future, I hope to get one done.

Hog Killing Time In Appalachia

We also had numerous pots of various homegrown vegetables and my personal favorite was shucked beans.  For the uninitiated, shucked beans are made by sun drying white half runners.  They may be strung and placed on strings with a needle and thread or strung and broken and dried on a sheet either on the roof or the ground.  The sun drying process imparts a flavor to beans that cannot be equaled by any other bean.  It is also interesting that a food dehydrator cannot produce the same flavor.  We often also had homegrown sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes, squash, beets, turnips, carrots, and a variety of greens such as kale, collards, mustard, and turnip greens. Although beet greens are also edible, I do not remember ever eating them at home.  And, if the weather in fall had been fair, we might have some late sweet corn. 

There was  always corn bread, biscuits, and, in later years, commercially produced rolls.  The biscuits were large, fluffy  cathead biscuits about the size of your fist.  The best online recipe for cathead biscuits is found at this URL: http://www.deltablues.net/biscuit.html 

The variety of food available at a family Thanksgiving dinner was incredible but it always seemed to be eaten.  Desserts were also prolific.  There would be cakes, pies, jello, and salads galore. Pies would generally be covered in homemade meringue made from fresh egg whites and browned to perfection under the broiler in a gas oven. We generally had fresh whole milk and home churned butter.  Today, I still fondly remember churning and after the butter was removed from the churn dipping a coffee cup in for a cup of warm, fresh butter milk.  It is an awesome drink.  Just thinking about a traditional Thanksgiving in Appalachia makes my mouth water. 

Thanksgiving Turkey

It is interesting that I have written this much about Thanksgiving dinner and never mentioned the turkey.  We usually had a turkey baked with sage dressing and a large pan of extra dressing on the side.  I still do not care for dressing without sage in it.  That rich, spicy smell always takes me back home to Beaver Creek no matter where I am when I smell it.  The same holds true for sausage.  We generally made homemade sausage with a strong dash of sage.  Commercial sage sausage does not come close to home made since none of the companies make it strong enough to remind me of home. 

Happy Thanksgiving and Bon Appetit!!!

Billy Robinson Personal Property Dispersal Auction

Billy Robinson Personal Property Dispersal Auction

130 Broadway Street

Austin, Indiana

Roger D. Hicks, Auctioneer

IN Lic: #11000120

We have been contracted to sell at auction, on Saturday, September 10, 2011, a large consigment of personal property belonging to Billy Robinson of Austin, Indiana.  Mr. Robinson operated an appliance reparir shop in this location and has used the building for storage for several years.  The site is only 30 minutes from Louisville and Evansville and only 3 minutes off I-65.  We look forward to seeing you at the sale. 

Maytag wringer washer, collectible bells, collectible angel figurines, cookie jar, blue/green blown glass pitcher, antique iron bed frame, antique steel revolving multi-tiered hardware rack, tall 4 door metal parts cabinet, lots of appliance repair parts, assorted hardware, antique/collectible toys, antique/collectible Christmas ornaments, chairs, tables, shelving, a sizable amunt of scrap metal.  Bric a Brac, knick knacks, odds & ends. More information and items will be added as we inventory the consignment.
Food and restrooms on the grounds.  Lots of easy parking. 
Cash or approved check only with a valid state ID. Registration begins at 9am.  Bidder responsible for property at the fall of the hammer. 
Roger D. Hicks, Auctioneer; James Caudill, Auctioneer; Candice M. Hicks, Cashier



Love of Place, An Appalachian Value

The Old Home Place

There are several old jokes about displaced Appalachians always trying to return home.  Probably, the best of these goes like this.  A man dies and Saint Peter is giving him a grand tour of Heaven.  They go through room after room of happy people who are enjoying all the pleasures which can be imagined in Heaven.  Then they come to a room full of people who are also enjoying good food, fellowship, and fun.  But all of them are chained to the floor with large chains and locks.  The new man asks Saint Peter, "If this is Heaven, why are all  these people chained to the floor." Saint Peter replies, "They are all from Appalachia.  They want to go home every weekend."  In "Appalachian Values", Loyal Jones tells of northern industrial supervisors who struggle to keep Appalachians on the job site who want to return to Appalachia for funerals of distant relatives.  References are also commonly made to the "Three R's of Appalachia": reading, writing, and Route 23.  

Country and bluegrass music are loaded with songs about displaced Appalachians either longing for home or giving up to go back from whence they came.  "Detroit City" is a classic of the genre and about a city which has been full of displaced Appalachians for decades.  The song is more southern than Appalachian but it is played on juke boxes every night in bars that cater to Appalachians all over the industrial north.  The final stanza and chorus say:

" I rode a freight train north to Detroit city,

After all these years I've been wasting my time,

I'll take my foolish pride,

on a southbound freight and ride,

Go on back to the ones,

I've left waitin' so far behind,

I want to go home, I want to go home,

Oh Lord, I want to go home." Detroit City by Bobby Bare.

That chorus has been spoken by thousands of displaced Appalachians who may not have even heard the song.  It captures the essence of pain in people who are forced to work in a place and a job they dislike or even hate in a locale not nearly as likable as that from which they came.  My personal favorite of the songs by and about displaced Appalachians was written and recorded by my friend Clarence Kelly, who is a displaced Appalachian himself.  The song is about a man who leaves Harlan County Kentucky for Chicago leaving a lover behind.  It is a tear jerker in the classic sense and has been recorded by numerous country and bluegrass performers.  The ballad is about a man who remains in Chicago for years always writing to the old lover "I'd like to come back home, if I ever get south of Cincinnati". He is eventually found dead in a cheap hotel room and the last stanza says "there's a slow train headed south through Cincinnati" carrying the coffin of the man who never made it home but wanted to be buried in Harlan County.  Clarence Kelly has told me he wrote that song sitting at a picnic table in his backyard in Dayton, Ohio.  How much more real can it get?

That desire to be buried in the old family graveyard is one of the key elements in Appalachian love of place. Quite often elderly displaced Appalachians will leave explicit instructions for the return of their body to the old family graveyard on property on which no member of the family may have lived for many years. I have written at length about burial customs and family graveyards in an earlier blog posting.

 Two or three other elements comprise the key pillars of this deep seated love of place.  The old home place where the displaced Appalachian was born and/or grew up is also a key element.  Old farms and rundown houses all over Appalachia are often owned jointly by dozens of individuals and two or even three generations of the descendants of the original owners.  No one may be using the property.  But someone continues to pay the taxes and no one is willing to sell the property.  These properties are held for decades in the understanding that "one of us might want to come back home sometime".  I know of several such properties within a short driving distance of my home which have not been inhabited for more than twenty years.  Yet none of them has ever been sold despite numerous inquiries by potential buyers.

Another key element of the love of place is the school to which the displaced person went as a child.  High school reunions all over Appalachia draw large percentages of the classes involved.  They may also be attended by several people who never actually graduated with their class or graduated in a different year from the same school.  Schools which have been demolished such as Knott County High School in Pippa Passes, Kentucky, which I attended, also generate nostalgia about the elements of the past which have been lost.  I recently returned to Pippa Passes, Kentucky, with two Appalachian Folk Artists whom I represent.  I actually spent time walking to and remembering the old school site which is now a parking lot, the old lunch room which is now also nonexistent, and two long gone restaurants where high school students spent time playing hooky.  Old schools are often turned into businesses and sometimes draw visitors who might otherwise never enter the particular business they became.  One former school at Sassafras in Knott County is now the home of The Indian Bottom Association of Old Regular Baptist Churches.



A great deal of emphasis is also placed on the particular county or creek where the displaced person grew up.  I have heard children and grandchildren of displaced Appalachians speak of "going home for the weekend" to the homeland of their parents and grandparents when they had actually been born and lived their entire lives in the industrial north.  The love of place gets passed down from generation to generation.  It is not uncommon for displaced Appalachians who have been gone for decades to retire and buy a small home in Appalachia to return to for the rest of their lives. 

Church also plays a large role in the love of place.  Even though most truly Appalachian denominations have spread to the industrial north with the Great Migration, this love of the church of their youth will cause Appalachians to travel home to be baptized, to actually join  a congregation, and to be buried. Old Regular Baptists from several Appalachian Associations eventually formed the Northern New Salem Association of Regular Baptist Churches which exists primarily in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. The Little Flossie Church in this association is named for one of my half sisters, Flossie Wicker Hicks, who moved to Kendallville, Indiana, in the 1940's. 

Love of place among native Appalachians has remained strong for decades and will continue to do so.  In many ways, it is similar to the strong desire to return home which was exhibited by the Cherokee who were moved to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee did not see themselves as Appalachians and Appalachia was not a commonly spoken of concept at the time of the Trail of Tears.  But the Cherokee were returning to Appalachia and they were the original Appalachians.

Appalachia--What's In A Name

Appalachia, More Than Just A Word

The general rule of thumb in pronouncing proper names is that the owner of the name sets the rule.  In the case of place names, the rule is to pronounce the place name as the majority of residents of a place pronounce it.  We Appalachians generally pronounce the word Ap Uh Latch Uh.  Appalachian writer and song writer Billy Ed Wheeler said that his mother always said, "Billy, if you don't quit, I'm going to throw this Apple AT Cha."  Those two ways are correct.  All The Others are Wrong.  Several non-Appalachian place names provide illustrations of names which are pronounced somewhat differently than they are spelled and would include Mackinac, Michigan, which is pronounced Mack-uh-naw, and Poughkeepsie, NY, which is pronounced Puh-kip-see. The area of New York state which includes Poughkeepsie has several local place names which are Native American in origin and not pronounced anywhere near how they appear based on spelling.  There is also Apalachicola, Florida, which is pronounced Ap Uh Latch Uh Co Luh which is an amazing coincidence. Or is it? It is also interesting that the very same people who mispronounce Appalachia generally do not mispronounce Apalachicola.

Map of the Allegheny and Cumberland Plateau--Central Appalachia

Living my life in Appalachia, I have seen hundreds of outsiders, including my own Wisconsin born wife, come to the region with the best of intentions.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions. But, let me state for the record that my wife has adapted well to the area and learned a great deal culturally.  She has, to a degree, been assimilated into the Appalachian culture. In my post on visiting the urban Appalachians, I also quoted from an obituary by an unknown author writing in the Minutes of The Northern New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptists who had assimilated into the Appalachian culture in a very similar way.  However, this type of adaptation is rare.  Many, if not most, non-Appalachians make an ill founded attempt to change us. 

Appalachian Mountain Cabin

But back to the name Appalachia,  most times native Appalachians may not directly or immediately correct the mispronunciation of visitors or missionaries other than by pronouncing it correctly every time in the person's presence.  But they will place some degree of negative importance on a mispronunciation.  The point is that if the visitor or missionary does not care enough to learn how to pronounce the name of the region where we live correctly they generally do not care enough to matter much to us.  Visitors and missionaries will almost always put the Ap ah lay cha pronunciation on the word with a few adding an extra syllable to make it Ap ah lay che ah.  Both pronunciations are wrong, have always been wrong, and always will be wrong. The reasoning which goes into their persistent mispronunciation is identical to that espoused by the Europeans who settled America and believed they had a divine right to take the land which had been owned and occupied for thousands of years by Native Americans.  This concept is known as "manifest destiny" and is defined as:

"Manifest Destiny was a phrase which invoked the idea of divine sanction for the territorial expansion of the United States. It first appeared in print in 1845, in the July-August issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. The anonymous author, thought to be its editor John L. O'Sullivan, proclaimed "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our multiplying millions."  http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h337.html

Manifest destiny has also been practiced in Appalachia by groups as diverse as the VISTA Program, church groups from the northeast and midwest, and outside land owners and/or mineral holding companies.  This total disregard for the free will of citizens is rarely seen elsewhere in the USA.  But it is common in Appalachia for a group of outsiders to show up driving either a U-Haul full of second hand clothes or piece of equipment for mineral extraction and to tell the locals that their actions are in our best interests.  They come mispronouncing the name of our homeland, misunderstanding or denying the authenticity of our culture, and simultaneously expecting us to believe every word they say and adapt our ways and beliefs to their expectations.  Is it any wonder that we take offense at strip mining, clear cut logging, and the way they mispronounce the name of our homeland?  Manifest destiny is also a topic I will approach in a complete blog posting at some time in the future. It has contributed greatly to the overall general negative attitude toward Appalachians and the justified anger of Appalachians toward strip mining, mineral extraction in general, clear cut logging, VISTA, and most other missionarys and missionary organizations.

It is interesting to note that when Alice Geddes Lloyd came to Knott County Kentucky shortly after the turn of the 20th century she made a  public commitment to never meddle in three issues: religion, politics, and moonshining.  Oh, how much better off Appalachia would be if all the others who followed Ms. Lloyd to the mountains had taken similar positions..

The name Appalachia is an old Native American word and has been pronounced in the region for hundreds of years in the way it was originally pronounced when the first Europeans stepped off the boat in the tidewater region.  It comes from the name of the Apalachicola tribe and actually has been translated to mean "the land of the ruling people."  My, how that interpretation has been changed over the history of Appalachia.  The mispronunciation began about the time the first missionary came to Appalachia to save us from ourselves.  It has persisted since that time.  Native Appalachians have tried to educate these people about their mistake for hundreds of years.  But it is nearly impossible to educate and correct anyone when they live under the mistaken belief that they are superior and are working to alter your life in a way to make it meet their expectations of normal.  This is what forced cultural assimilation is all about. I will, in the future, write at least one complete blog posting on the subject of cultural assimilation and ways to resist it.

Having grown up in Knott County, Kentucky, I honestly do not remember the first time I realized I was an Appalachian.  I do not recall having heard about it from my grade school teachers and I am doubtful if any of my high school teachers mentioned it either.  But I was in the first group of Upward Bound students during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.  I also clearly remember the famous visit by LBJ to Martin County Kentucky to kick off the War On Poverty.  But when I entered the Upward Bound Program, I was exposed to several people who made lasting impressions on me and who had varying degrees of knowledge about and commitment to Appalachia.  I met Albert Stewart who founded "Appalachian Heritage" magazine and was one of the greatest poets the region has ever produced.  He was arguably one of the best writers of the modified sonnet in this country.  He also made a lasting positive impression on hundreds of native Appalachians and students of Appalachian Literature.  His commitment to Appalachia was total and lifelong. I was lucky enough to know Al and stay in touch with him until his death.  Watch for a complete posting about Albert Stewart in the Appalachian Heroes section of this blog. 

Photo of Albert Stewart, Appalachian Hero

I also met William Howard Cohen who was not Appalachian but spent much of his life in Appalachia teaching and writing at Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes in Knott County.  Bill Cohen was, to say the least, unique.  He was totally committed to abolishing strip mining in America and literally put his life, his job, and his reputation on the line dozens of times by opposing strip mining.  He was devoted to Appalachia and its preservation.  He was also generally misunderstood at best and not at all understood at worst.  He was brilliant, eccentric, and one of the finest humans I have ever known.  Watch for a complete posting about William Howard Cohen in the future.  Since he was not Appalachian, it will not be in the Appalachian Heroes section.  Bill Cohen was a non-native hero who lived and worked in Appalachia.  At this point, let me state for the record that spending some significant number of years in Appalachia does not make a non-Appalachian an Appalachian any more than my spending an equal number of years in Harlem or Los Angeles would make me African American or Hispanic.  Bill Cohen was many things.  But most of all, he knew he was not Appalachian and never tried to be.  Thereby, he avoided the most classic and egregious mistake made by the missionaries who still keep flooding our borders. Bill Cohen used that key piece of self awareness as the foundation of a long career working in Appalachia and actually being a positive influence while he was here.

During my Upward Bound days, in my first year on the Stuart Robinson Campus at Blackey, Kentucky, in Letcher County, I had the educational experience of meeting Harry M. Caudill.  I do not use the term educational in the same sense that many others refer to Harry M. Caudill.  He spoke to the Upward Bound group that summer and his best seller "Night Comes To The Cumberlands" had just come out not long before.  Each student in the program had been provided a copy of the book and it was the basic text in our summer history course that year.  Many of the students in that group, who were among the brightest in the area, showed up for Caudill's speech carrying their book and many well grounded criticisms of his low regard for his fellow Appalachians.  While he was a pretty good historian and writer, Harry M. Caudill did more to help perpetuate negative stereotypes of Appalachians than nearly any other native of the region.  His interpretation of historical and sociological data, when it referred to Appalachia and Appalachians, was nearly always wrong.  His conclusions were derogatory, defamatory, and debilitating. He was guilty of believing, expressing, and spreading most of the prejudices which continue to damage Appalachian people to this very day.   "Night Comes To The Cumberlands" is the last book anyone should ever read about Appalachia.  It should only be read after the student of Appalachia and Appalachian culture has read and learned enough to be able to see through the cultural fallacies in Caudill's work. 

Another work which is often well spoken of but has served as a millstone around the necks of Appalachians is "Deliverance" by James Dickey.  Far more people have seen the movie than have read the book.  Based on reviews by my friends in the Appalachian movement at the time, I have chosen to never bother to read the novel.  I have seen key scenes from the movie and based on their devastating portrayals of mountain people have chosen to never watch the entire film.  I am considering reversing myself and reading the book in the near future in order to write a blog posting about the damage Dickey did to the Appalachian image. 

But, to return to the stated subject of this posting, the name Appalachia is pronounced "Ap uh latch uh".  Any other pronounciation is a dead give away to natives that the speaker knows little or nothing about the  region and its people.  It is also a pretty good indicator they probably care less. If you are among the thousands of people who mispronounce the name, learn the difference and change.  Whether you are a native Appalachian or a non-native, show enough respect for the land, culture, and people of the region to learn about it, help educate others about it, and protect and defend the land, its culture, and its people.

Patriotism, An Appalachian Value

Appalachia And American Democracy

Patriotism is one of the ten basic cultural values identified by Loyal Jones in his landmark book, "Appalachian Values".  Jones says of Appalachians that:

"Appalachians have a special feeling about the flag of the United States.  This is the land that gave them freedom to be themselves, and when that freedom was threatened, they led in seeking independence." Loyal Jones, "Appalachian Values", p. 107

Jones goes on to cite several examples of how Appalachian have led the country in efforts to seek freedom from Great Britain prior to the American Revolution, how the mountains were settled by Revolutionary War veterans who were given land for their war efforts, how Union recruitment was high during the Civil War, how East Tennessee was an area of strong Union sympathy,  how both Georgia and Alabama had Union counties during the Civil War,  and how Winston County Alabama seceded from Alabama during the Civil War. 

The most awarded soldier in World War I was Sgt. Alvin C. York of Fentress County Tennessee.  He captured two German machine gun nests and marched back into camp behind 132 German prisoners in the Argonne Forest on October 8, 1918.  John Alexander Williams gives a compelling description of York in "Appalachia, A History". 

"York was never simply an American hero", Henry Shapiro has commented. "He was first and last a mountaineer because his virtues were the virtues of the native American folk.  Tall and lanky, stolid, loyal, simple, choosing duty over his Christian convictions and his pacifism, his sinewy muscles developed by splitting logs on the hillside farm, his marksman's eye trained in squirrel hunting, Alvin York was the mythic mountaineer come to life."  By practicing his mountaineer virtues as readily in France as in Tennessee, York validated the notion that these virtues derived from a culture, not just an environment.  His legend reinforced the widespread belief in Appalachian exceptionalism while at the same time confirming the essential Americanism that was at the core of the mountaineer image."  John Alexander Williams, "Appalachia, A History"; page 223.

Photo of Sgt. Alvin York

While it is inspiring to read this description of the quintessential Appalachian war hero, it is even more inspiring to visit Fentress County Tennessee, as I did in 1990.  I was, at that time, the Advance Scout for the Vision Quest Wagon Trains, a private for profit juvenile delinquency company which travels across the southeast with juveniles, horses, mules, and wagons.  I was able to secure a campsite on the old York family farm near both the grave of Sgt. York and the Sgt. Alvin C. York Historic Park on US 127 in Pall Mall, Tennessee.  During the night we camped on the farm, which is privately owned, we also screened the Hollywood film about York which starred Gary Cooper.  I was also able to meet and talk with a few members of the York extended family as we were passing through the area. 

Sgt. Willie Sandlin was an Eastern Kentucky soldier in World War I also and managed to wipe out three German machine gun nests and receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts.  In addition to these two outstanding examples, hundreds and thousands of native Appalachian soldiers, both male and female, have served honorably for hundreds of years in all branches of the US military. 

Photo of Sgt. Willie Sandlin

Pvt. Jessica Lynch, a female soldier from West Virginia, was captured by Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm and for quite some time was the public relations face of that conflict.  She eventually left the Army and returned to a somewhat difficult civilian life in West Virginia. Her biography, "I Am A Soldier Too", by Rick Bragg is well worth reading.

Photo of Pvt. Jessica Lynch

In many ways, Pvt. Jessica Lynch represented a kind of Appalachian military volunteer upon which the media and military have fed for many years. Poor Appalachians with little formal education and poor job prospects have often joined the military as  a means of becoming self sufficient and obtaining education.  While they have fought admirably and often won distinction, they have also been used as cannon fodder, advance scouts in the jungles of Viet Nam, bomb disposal technicians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and public relations tools when they succeed. Pvt. Jessica Lynch's time as a prisoner of war and the treatment she received after leaving the military led cartoonist Mike Keefe of the Denver Post to draw the following strongly worded cartoon in 2003:



Human interest stories such as those told above are telling and generate justified pride in Appalachians.  However, researchers tend to love statistics.  The numbers of Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to Appalachians tell just as compelling a story.  John Alexander Williams, in his classic work, "Appalachia, A History" presents in graph form, on pages 384 & 385, the distribution of Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from Appalachia in contrast to the entire rest of the country and also shows figures of the representation of the total male population in Appalachia.  In World War II, 58 of 440 Congressional Medals of Honor went to Appalachians for a total of 13.2% while Appalachian males over the age of 14 represented only 12.4% of the US male population.  During the Korean War, Appalachians were awarded 26 of 131 Medals of Honor which totaled 19.8% of medals while male Appalachians over the age of 14 represented only 11.4% of the US male population.  During the Viet Nam War, Appalachians were awarded 32 of 239 Medals of Honor which amounted to 13.4% of the medals.  At that time, Appalachian males over the age of 14 only represented 8.7% of the US male population.  As of the 2002 publication of Williams' work, Appalachians had been awarded 116 of 810 Congressional Medals of Honor for a percentage of 14.3%.  The numbers of awards for valor in all categories in the US military have always been disproportionately received by Appalachian males. 

Another story of Appalachian valor in war time which is rarely if ever told involves the participation and deaths of a large contingent of Appalachian volunteers at the Alamo.  Texans hold the Alamo dear to their hearts and their history.  But to my knowledge, almost no one is ever told that Davy Crockett was not the only Appalachian who volunteered to fight and die resisting Santa Anna.  There were at least 16 of Davy Crockett's "Tennessee Boys" who also died at the Alamo. William Travis himself was from South Carolina.  But today, almost no one knows that he was not a native Texan.  Nearly a third of  the men at the Alamo have been proven to have come from the states in the Appalachian Region to join the fight for Texas independence simply because they felt it was the right thing to do and an effort worth dying for.

Photo of Davy Crockett

General Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager was a native of Myra on Mud River in Lincoln County West Virginia and entered the military as a buck private in the US Army Air Forces.  He became the first man to break the sound barrier after qualifying for flight training and receiving an officer's commission.  He developed a reputation as one of the best test pilots in the entire US military.  He retired as a brigadier general and was later promoted to major general in retirement due to the successes he achieved as a pilot.  He also commanded fighter squadrons during the Viet Nam War.  He was a combat ace with 11.5 official kills. He actually became an "ace in a day" with 5 kills in one day.  He was also one of the handful of pilots chosen to fly and learn about the first MIG-15 which US forces obtained via a defection.   While his individual accomplishments outstrip those of nearly all other Appalachians in the military, they are not totally atypical.  He was one of many Appalachian men and women who made the military a career and earned their way to positions of authority based purely on their individual skills. 

Photo of Major General Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager

Appalachians have fought and died in nearly ever major conflict in which this country has been involved.  In nearly every one of those conflicts, the statistical involvement of native Appalachians was highly disproportionate to their statistical representation in the population at large.  Their representation in the military continues today at levels just as high as it has ever been.  Appalachians continue to be placed in positions of greatest risk by their commanders and they nearly always justify the trust in their abilities which causes the placement.