Ruminations On 2014 In Appalachia And America

For a variety of reasons, I have not written anything of consequence in the last several months but I have maintained my usually close observation of a variety of issues both in Appalachia and America at large.  I have to admit that I was caught up in political observation for most of the past year or so and I have been generally disappointed by the results of the elections I have watched.  The Republican Party has managed to gain control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928 and we all know what the outcome of that was.  John Boehner has been re-elected as the Apeaker of the House and Mitch McConnell of KY has been elected Senate Majority Leader.  I had strongly supported the election of Alison Lundergan Grimes to the senate from KY and was sorely disappointed by her loss to McConnell.  The one bright side to that is that she has lost none of her appeal in KY and could still be senator or governor.  Along with the re-election of most of the Republicans in both houses of congress, they gained several seats in both houses and their new members in the lower body particularly are of a Right Wing Radical persuasion which is terrifying.  They have also appointed Rep. Scalise from Louisiana as the House Republican Whip despite clear evidence of his connections to several white supremacist organizations including one headed by former Grand Dragon of the KKK David Duke.  In response to some rather vociferous reactions to the appointment of Scalise, Duke has threatened to out every member of congress to whom he has connections and he claims to have many.  My personal response to that is to say "Let her rip, David!"  In the event that he did release a list of names, it would give liberal and middle of the road Americans a clear group of elected officials with whom to be displeased and to resist in future elections.  I doubt that he will release the list of names since he knows that could trigger more than one defeat in the future and weaken whatever connections he still has to Washington power.  

In my own KY, Senator Rand Paul is making more and more noise that he intends to run for President and is actually being perceived by a certain segment of the electorate as a legitimate candidate.  That assessment of the man could not be further from the truth.  He is a true Right Wing Radical Republican with ties to the Tea Party and generally does not represent the views of most of Kentuckians or Americans.  He also has more than one distasteful, illegal, immoral, or disqualifying incident or expressed belief in his past.  As an eye doctor in Western KY he has been sued for malpractice at least twice and created his own accreditation body when he was unable to qualify for accreditation.  There is also the prior allegation of his involvement in an alleged sexual assault while in college.  But the alleged victim in that incident suddenly dropped off the media radar after making serious allegations.  However, she never withdrew those allegations and that seems to raise two possibilities for her silence.  Either she was actually lying or she was either coerced or bribed to get her to shut up.  Senator Paul is also planning to try to run for both President and Senator in a violation of the KY constitution which blocks anyone from running for more than one public office at the same time.  Alison Lundergan Grimes, the KY Secretary of State, is responsible for overseeing the election process in the state and has said she will sue Paul in federal court if he attempts to register for both offices.  In the event that this issue does arise in the coming months, Secretary Grimes deserves the support of every rational voter in the state in her efforts to stop Senator Paul.  I hope to write further on the possibility of Rand Paul as a Presidential candidate in the future  but I need to do more research on one particular aspect of that idea, his close ideological resemblance to former Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, the godfather of the Anti-Communist crusades in the 1950s which literally destroyed the lives of thousands of good, decent Americans who were not remotely communists and done absolutely nothing wrong.  

And, in that vein, I have personally never been more fearful about the state of American Democracy than I am today.  Even in the 1960's & 1970's with Richard Nixon in power and great crimes being committed against personal liberties, I was not as fearful of potential outcomes as I am today after this most recent election.  In the Viet Nam Era, both houses of Congress were still occupied by a group of honest, decent, law abiding citizens of both political parties  such as Senator Sam Irvine, Senator Barry Goldwater, Senator Everett Dirkson and others who would not have joined an illegal conspiracy in order to gain their political ends.  Today, with the current congress, I cannot make that statement.  Senator Paul himself has been heard to say that he believes that lying is a legitimate means to gain political ends.  West Virginia has elected Senator Shirley Moore Capito whose father served prison time due to political corruption as Governor of West Virginia.  Whip Scalise has connections to the KKK.  And the list goes on.  

Additionally, the Citizens United decision from the U. S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a great deal of what happened in this most recent election.  The entire idea that a corporation can make unlimited contributions to political races and be viewed by the courts as a "person" is a giant step toward the destruction of the concept of "one citizen one vote".  This problem was further exacerbated by the fact that less than 40% of eligible voters actually went to the polls in 2014, I have recently begun to repeat a mantra whose source I have been unable to clearly identify that "bad politicians are elected by good people who don't vote".   Corporations and the super rich will always speak up and spend money to protect their vested interests.  Single anonymous citizens, especially if they are poor, will frequently if not generally, fail to speak up for their rights and needs due to the need to find daily subsistence.  Poverty makes us involuntarily prioritize our actions in ways that do not support our own best interests.  And many of the already stated goals of the Republican majorities in congress are geared to increase the ever expanding wealth gap among Americans by privatizing Social Security; destroying Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care; continuing high interest rates and instituting higher qualifications for student loans; continuing to refuse to tax corporations and the rich at rates equal to those imposed on the working class; decreasing VA loans and other VA benefits; eliminating funding for National Public Radio; and a thousand other unstated programs in government are in danger from this congress.  

To repeat myself, I have never felt that American Democracy was more endangered than it is today. 

THE MUSIC OF THE GREAT MIGRATION

LORD, I'm 500 miles away from home!

Following the end of World War II hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, and military support people returned home with no clear plan of employment and not a lot of jobs available.  This was especially true in the Appalachian South.  This precipitated one of the largest human migrations in the history of the United States.  Thousands upon thousands of native Appalachians left Central and Southern Appalachia to go to the industrial Midwest and north.  Many of them, along with their descendants,  still remain there today.  In many ways, both subtle and obvious, they changed the history, culture, and sociology of the regions to which they moved.  I have mentioned in other posts that they brought their churches, foods, habits, music, and arts with them and transplanted those elements along with themselves into the sometimes resistant soil of their new homeland.  I have also written one post about Dead Baby Music, A Subgenre Of Bluegrass and, in part, that music is also the music of a displaced people.  I also wrote a post about visiting my own relatives in Kendallville, IN, a town which was forever changed by this migration.  That post can be found at  Visiting The Urban Appalachians . 

In the area of their music, they made an impression not just on the area in which they were living but on the entire country.  This was especially true of country music, bluegrass, and to a a lesser degree, jazz and blues.  Just as the book "The Dollmaker" became a part of American literature, the music of these transplanted Southern Appalachians became an integral part of American music.  Songs such as "Detroit City", "South of Cincinnati", "Times Is Gettin' Harder", and even Johnny Cash's "One Piece At A Time" were the music of a displaced people working in America's factories to make the products of a country.  

Just as "The Dollmaker" was the story of a people living a life they disliked in a place they had no desire to come to love, songs like these were the musical tears of a people who had come to a cold, distant, and different land in order to make their way.  And in spite of how much they may have disliked the lives they were leading, they came to many forms of success just as Joseph did in Egypt.  The musical structure of these works held diligently to the music of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and the rest of the Appalachian Mountains.  Their lyrics were the wails of displaced people who longed to see the hills of home.  And, without belaboring this aspect of it, this music was a manifestation of the Appalachian Value Love of Place about which I have written so much.  

These songs told stories about the lives of displaced people in very many ways.  The absolute classic among them is Bobby Bare's "500 Miles Away From Home"  part of the lyrics of which state: "well I didn't have to pack.  I had it all right on my back.  Well, I'm 500 miles away from home."  That is a typical story of thousands of native Appalachians who mustered out of the military or simply graduated from high school and immediately left for what my high school sociology teacher Wallace Niece used to call "Dayton, Detroit, Middletown, and all points north."  They found a town with jobs, sometimes with the assistance of a relative who had gone on ahead and already had work.  They took what little money they had and began walking from door to door, factory to factory seeking work until some hiring agent who knew the traits of this group of people hired them.  Then they went to work and soon bought a car, a house, and sometimes became trapped by their possessions and related debts.  But life didn't always go well and sometimes they found themselves doing without, drawing unemployment, and unable to return home if they wanted to.  The Bobby Bare lyrics go on to say: "I know this is the same road I took the day I left home.  But it sure looks different now.  And I guess  I look different too cause time changes everything.  I wonder what they'll say when they see their boy looking this bad."  And in situations like that, many of them never even made the attempt to go back home.  

My bluegrass song writing friend Clarence Kelly told this part of the story in a way that is rarely equaled in country or bluegrass  with his classic song "South of Cincinnati".  It is a love story gone wrong but that love story involves both a couple and the love of the mountains.  The song is about a man who left Harlan County Kentucky to go to Chicago to work after telling the woman he loves he will be back someday.  But he never comes back and eventually dies in a "cheap cow city motel" and the last stanza finds "a slow train headed south through Cincinnati" carrying him back to the hills of Harlan.  

And, of course, not everything went well for these people just as it did not go well for Gertie Nevels in "The Dollmaker".  She lost a child.  These displaced Appalachians lost children, divorced, became unemployed, drank too much whiskey, and lost their way at times.  And to the good fortune of the rest of us, they often put those losses into lyrics and music.  One of the most poignant and powerful of these songs is "The Rolling Mills Of Middletown" by Tom T. Hall, perhaps the greatest of the Appalachian lyricists.  In this story, his protagonist marries the wrong woman, moves to Middletown Ohio and goes to work in a steel mill where the "rolling mills of Middletown roll on, roll on, roll on".  As the story progresses, the man is sent home from work early one night but decides to stop for "a good cold beer at a little bar.  His woman and some day turn guy were dancing closely there."  And the man simply turns and walks away to end the story in a bone chilling manner which is Tom T. Hall at his best.  

"Some say they saw him near the tracks at furnace number one with heat so hot the hubs of hell would seem just barely warm.  Well they never saw my friend again. Did he do something wrong?  The rolling mills of Middletown roll on, roll on, roll on."

Not all of these stories of displacement and relocation ended in such a strongly negative manner.  Many thousands of these people succeeded admirably and went on to wealth and fame.  And the combination of success and failures; births and deaths; marriages, divorces, and wedded bliss led to the creation of some of the best music in American country, bluegrass, jazz, and blues.  The people of Appalachia who had gone north to attempt to make their individual marks on the towns they found collectively left a far greater mark on the music of the common people of the entire country. 

Reflections On The Death Of Pete Seeger

If I Had A Hammer, I'd Hammer In The Morning

 

 

Pete Seeger, a genuine America hero, is dead.  I never knew Pete Seeger but we had one friend in common, the Appalachian poet and social activist Don West.  Pete Seeger and Don West had a great deal in common.  Both were hauled in front of the Senate Un-American Activities Committee which was chaired by Wisconsin's right wing radical Senator Joseph McCarthy.  Both Pete Seeger and Don West stood up to Senator McCarthy and his right wing minions with unflinching persistence and refused to be cowed by a classic example of a small minded, black hearted, egocentric man who had managed to accumulate far more power than he was capable of handling in a responsible manner.   Both Pete Seeger and Don West walked out of the McCarthy Hearings with new, ironclad determination to exercise their right to free speech and to dedicate their lives anew to the causes of the poor, minorities, elderly, infirm, and the working class.  Both men faced persistent problems throughout the rest of their lives due to this work for good, right, just causes.  They were frequently defamed, belittled, and pilloried by the forces in America which have always fought to prevent just causes from being successful.  But neither of them ever gave up on the fight and went to their graves after speaking about injustices as long as it was physically possible for them to do so. 

Pete Seeger was a shining example of a public figure who knew how to use his fame to help others.  He spoke out in songs, speeches, and written prose on nearly a daily basis for more than seventy years.  Since his death, I have read quotes from him as recently as 2011 in which he was still seeking to right wrongs, repair injustices, and change the world for the better.  Don West did the same until his death at age 86 in 1992. I was also lucky enough to meet two others who were interrogated and  pilloried by the McCarthy Committee, Florence and Sam Reese, and to spend one day in their company in November 1974 at a workshop at the Highlander Center in New Market, TN, which was co-founded by Don West.  Sam Reese was a union member and organizer during the UMWA strikes in Harlan County Kentucky during the 1920's and his wife Florence was a songwriter and singer who wrote the classic union song, "Which Side Are You On", during those union efforts.  Just like Pete Seeger and Don West, Florence and Sam Reese never stopped speaking out against injustice and working to right wrongs and improve living conditions for the working class, the poor, minorities, ill, and elderly.  They also travelled the country as long as it was physically possible for them to do so and Sam  Reese was actually in poor health when I met the Reese's but he was still working and speaking out to the best of his ability to do so. 

I have learned a great deal from knowing Don West, knowing the work of Pete Seeger, and learning for one day at the feet of Florence and Sam Reese.  The most important thing I learned from them all was that freedom of speech is a sacred right given to us by the founding fathers and should never be abridged or endangered and should also be exercised at every opportunity especially in the presence of those like Senator Joseph McCarthy who would seek to impair, endanger, or infringe upon it.  I learned that there will always be people like Joseph McCarthy who are willing to ignore and even run roughshod over the constitution in order to promote their own interests and opinions.  I also learned that speaking out in support of the best interests of the poor, minorities, elderly, infirm, and working class can be an expensive and painful habit.  But I also learned that there must be those of us who are persistently and unceasingly willing to speak out and to suffer whatever consequences might occur in order to promote the truth, to fight injustices, and to seek to make the world a better place for all who live in it no matter how vocal, venomous, or virulent the opposition may become. 

It is particularly interesting that Pete Seeger died in these current times when a particularly vocal, venomous, and virulent group of people have risen to some serious levels of power in this country and are totally devoted to destroying the rights and lives of those less fortunate than themselves.  A Right Wing Radical Fringe of the Republican Party is once again holding sway with millions of attentive listeners and they are working to impair voting rights; destroy trade unionism;  reverse important gains such as minimum wage, overtime pay, health care reform, gay marriage, and women's rights.   This group is led by several members of congress including, but not limited to, Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, Representative Paul Ryan, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, and a handful of other slightly less vocal and virulent public figures.  These are particularly dangerous people and these are the most dangerous times for human rights and free speech in America since the McCarthy Era.  This group of public figures have managed to gain the support of several hundred thousand to a few million Americans and to promote a number of various assaults on voting rights, free speech, universal religious freedom, health care accessibility, and a plethora of lesser social contracts which have been forged by voters and workers over the last 50 to 100 years. 

There has never been a more important time for socially responsible individuals to stand up, speak out, and work to promote the best interests of all Americans.  I ask each of you who reads this piece to spend some time in reading, study, and observation in order to prepare yourselves to support the common good just as Thomas Paine and the founding fathers did.  Work to develop the unceasing and unflinching fearlessness Pete Seeger and the others I have mentioned developed in the face of Joseph McCarthy.  Stand up, speak out, and never cease to do so until the day they bury you just as Pete Seeger, Don West, Florence Reese, and Sam Reese did.  

101.1FM, WSGS Radio, My Favorite Places In Appalachia

THE BEST RADIO STATION IN APPALACHIA

 

 

I have mentioned in other posts once or twice the fact that I grew up listening to radio on a couple of stations in Eastern Kentucky.  But the station I have mentioned most frequently and the one I consider to be the best radio station in Appalachia is WSGS FM 101.1 in Hazard, KY.  Their excellent website can be found at WSGS Radio . The station was one of the first to be licensed in Eastern Kentucky and one of the first 100,000 watt stations in the area also.  At the time, Hazard was a small town and waiting for the coal boom which made it famous.  Earnest Sparkman, a native of Knott County and a former University of Kentucky basketball player, along with a couple of partners obtained a license and opened the station.  Over the course of time, Earnest Sparkman managed to buy out all his partners and his descendants still operate the station today.  They play an eclectic mix of country, bluegrass, mountain music, and a bit of other genres sometimes accidentally and sometime on purpose.  They are available over the Internet and have a loyal following of former Eastern Kentucky people all over the world.  Their website is also very well managed and takes a strong interest in history, both their own and that of the local area. 

 

WSGS is exactly what a small town radio station should be and yet, with 100,000 watts of power and a broadcast tower located on one of the highest mountains in Kentucky, they boom their signal out over portions of five or more states.  You can listen to them all the way from Southern West Virginia to Western Kentucky and from Southern Ohio to Western North Carolina and a large chunk of East Tennessee.  They still run a local advertising base with most advertisers being businesses located in Perry County and the surrounding counties.  They run one of the best bluegrass and classic country formats in the entire southeast and regularly play songs from the early days of radio.  They also have recently resurrected their swap shop show which had been off the air for several years.  They broadcast University of Kentucky men's basketball and a plethora of local and regional high school games.  They are also one of the longest running broadcasters of the Kentucky Sweet Sixteen Boy's Basketball Tournament in the entire state. 

 

But the best, most unique, and most entertaining part of their regular broadcast schedule is known as The Faron And Scott Show, a wide ranging, free wheeling half hour of conversation, country music, telephone requests and bizarre slices of life which comes on each weekday morning at 9:35am.  The show is run by the station manager, Faron Sparkman, and a regular member of the broadcast crew, Scott Napier.  It is the continuation of what began as The Faron And Bob Show or The Excellent Adventure.  The show was renamed after the death of long time station engineer, Bob Hale, who passed away in his early 60's on the 60th anniversary of the station after having been the man who held equipment together and cohosting the show for many years.  The Faron And Scott Show is very difficult to describe but it is a throwback to all the little radio stations in the southeastern United States when new station owners and broadcasters were first trying to find out exactly what that new fangled thing radio was all about.  They allow call-ins and have a regular cast of callers from around the area who might call to talk about anything from the death of Ray Price to the ongoing effort to catch an irritating rooster running loose in the city limits of Hazard. One of the best aspects of those call-ins over the last several years has been regular calls from Colonel Hugh X. Lewis, born as Hubert Bradley Lewis in Yeadis, Kentucky, who rose to stardom in the world of country music and died in on December 29, 2020, only four days after his 90th birthday.  Hugh X. Lewis was just one of the more than 400,000 innocent victims of the Covid 19 Pandemic which did not have to happen if the White House had done anything about it after having been told the pandemic was coming in January 2020.  One of the more hilarious recent call in requests was for the country classic song "Make The World Go Away" by Eddy Arnold for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in light of his recent political fiasco with the lane closure on the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey.  The show begins with a minute or so blend of short sound clips gleaned from radio, television, old commercials, and news shows that will initially make no sense whatsoever to the new listener.  I am certain that nearly every weekday at least one or two people driving through the area hear the beginning of the show and believe they have wandered into the Twilight Zone and rapidly choose to miss out on one of the most unique and interesting radio shows in America today.  But for the thousands of regular listeners and hundreds of regular callers, the show is a mandatory part of daily life in Appalachia.  The show might feature an interview with a new performer or band who are on the road promoting a new release or  a tribute to some radio legend who has passed away recently.  The unlimited surprises of life on the radio are what make the show well worth your time. 

Over the 65 years that WSGS has been in operation, they have survived floods, a major fire, and the onslaught of canned radio on satellite.  Their listeners are loyal and never desert the station.  The management also has managed to preserve thousands of hours of priceless tape including founder Earnest Sparkman broadcasting from the scene of the Floyd County School Bus Wreck; live music performances by The Singing Miner, a pro-union disc jockey and former coal miner; sports broadcasts by famed basketball announcer Cawood Ledford; and hours and hours of Earnest Sparkan playing Santa Claus and a character known as Greasy Creek Bill who still delivers taped one liners on the station long after the death of his creator.

WSGS is a throwback to radio as it used to be and a harbinger of what radio could be if station owners had more in mind than just selling advertisements and pleasing whatever statistical slice of the community which spends the most money.  It is a place where a poor, isolated, Appalachian of little or no means can feel comfortable calling in to share human contact with a disc jockey who will provide that contact with respect, humor, and appreciation.  WSGS is well worth spending some of your time either driving in your car, or listening on the internet in order to enjoy a slice of life in the Appalachia of both today and yesterday.  It is one of my favorite places in Appalachia.      



THE GOLDEN DELICIOUS APPLE, WEST VIRGINIA'S GIFT TO THE WORLD

The Golden Delicious Apple, A West Virginia Success Story

 

Ever since my childhood, I have loved good, fresh apples and my favorite apple has always been the Golden Delicious.  I love the sweet, fresh, crisp, but somewhat mealy texture of the Golden Delicious.  I firmly believe it is exactly what an eating apple should be.  It is also a great apple for fried apples which I love at breakfast.  I suspect I must have been an adult before I realized that the Golden Delicious is a product of Appalachia, specifically West Virginia.  This apple is well known to nearly everyone who loves apples and is grown, sold, and eaten all over the world.  There could not have been a finer contribution to the world than this sweet treat.  The apple related website Orange Pippin  lists the Golden Delicious as the parent, grandparent, or possible ancestor of more than 40 other apple varieties.  There is probably no more popular apple for orchardists to grow, sell, and use as breeding stock when attempting to produce new and useful apples. 

 

The Golden Delicious was a chance seedling discovered on the farm of L. L. Mullins about 1891 in Clay County West Virginia and the original tree and the earth surrounding it were sold to Stark Brothers Nursery which first marketed it about 1914.  The rest, as we say, is history.  The Golden Delicious moved on to take over the apple world.  The story of how the apple tree was found and saved in the middle of a field being mowed is a wonderful little vignette in the history of West Virginia, food culture, and the world when we consider how much this particular little tree changed life and food culture and might just as easily have never grown to maturity.  I do not currently own a good history of apples or fruit trees and am forced to rely on Internet stories in order to compile a story of how the tree was found, saved, sold, propagated, and disseminated worldwide.  The West Virginia Archives and History site run by the West Virginia Culture Center has published a story by Adrian Gwinn of the Daily Mail from 1962 which contains a first person interview about the apple's history.  That story can be found at Daily Mail Story About The Golden Delicious .  J. M. Mullins at age 87 gave the mail this account of how the tree was found and saved by him on the farm of his father.

 

I was born in 1876 on the farm where that apple tree later became famous. My dad was L. L. Mullins, who owned the farm. "Now one day, when I was about 15 years old, that would have been about 1891, dad sent me out with a big old mowin' scythe to mow the pasture field. "I was swingin' away with the scythe when I came across a little apple tree that had grown about 20 inches tall. It was just a new little apple tree that had volunteered there. There wasn't another apple tree right close by anywhere..."I thought to myself, 'Now young feller, I'll just leave you there,' and that's what I did. I mowed around it and on other occasions I mowed around it again and again, and it grew into a nice lookin' little apple tree and eventually it was a big tree and bore apples." Charleston Daily Mail 1962.

Stories like this about any kind of wonderful, world changing discovery are few and far between.  They deserve to be told repeatedly and, in this case, West Virginia deserved perpetual credit for the discovery and propagation of the Golden Delicious.  The official website of the Stark Brothers Nursery gives only this brief account of the tree: " In 1914, Paul Stark Sr. discovered an apple with an outstanding flavor that was sweet and juicy with a hint of zest."  The Stark Brothers' side of the story can be seen at this address: The Stark Brothers' Story .  The official story of the Golden Delicious Apple can be found on the website of the Clay County Golden Delicious Apple Festival .  I am sure that somewhere in all the differing versions of the story that the real story lies waiting to be written firmly in stone.  But the one thing on which the world seems to agree is that the Golden Delicious Apple was a product of Clay County West Virginia and is one of the greatest products Appalachia has ever produced.  It is a story of which every Appalachian should be proud.

 

PATENT MEDICINES AND OTHER THINGS WE SOLD IN COUNTRY STORES

MORE MEMORIES FROM A COUNTRY STORE

 

 

A recent encounter in which I came in contact with a fairly good collection of vintage to antique patent medicines brought back a lot of memories of the items we regularly sold in country stores.  I came to be in possession of a fairly sizable collection of these patent medicines recently and sold them to a neighbor and friend who still runs a fairly authentic country store and antique shop.  But as I went through the collection, I was reminded of dozens of similar items my parents and other country store operators used to sell which I never see anymore.  I have discussed some of these items in one of my earlier posts, The Country Store And Travelling Salesmen.  While I had these recently found items in my hands, I took photos of most of them and will just post the photos and write a few of my own personal reminiscences of them. I apologize for the quality of some of the shots.  Many of the items are small and I cropped the photos a bit too small since I use a fairly cheap digital camera. 

 

Phillips Milk Of Magnesia Tablets Store Display (Roger D. Hicks)






One of the nicest items in this group I found was a vintage Phillip's Milk of Magnesia Tablets store display box of about 12 boxes of tablets.  These and several other types of "stomach medicines" were sold regularly in country stores in my childhood.  It was fairly common for country people to avoid going to doctors both because of poverty and distrust of medicine in general which translated into  faith in both folk medicines and readily available patent medicines which could be bought from  the country store operator who was a neighbor and friend who was generally better known and more trusted than the doctor at the county seat.  But I do not want to leave a blanket negative impression of the country doctors of my childhood.  Two in particular, Dr. Mark Dempsey and Dr. Melvin Wicker from Floyd County both deserve posts on this blog at some time in the future. I recently did complete my post about Dr. Mark Dempsey and was able to learn a great deal about him and his political beliefs while researching it which pleased me greatly.  I deeply regret that I did not know him much better when I was young and he was still alive.  I hope my readers also enjoy that post about him. 

 

 

Tube Rose Scotch Snuff (Roger D. Hicks)

 

 

 

Another item which I found in this same collection was an unopened can of Tube Rose Scotch Snuff, which may well have been a contributing factor for some of the usage of "Stomach Medicines" by people all over Appalachia and the south.  I do not recall that my parents ever sold snuff or that there were ever many people who asked for it in Knott County during my childhood.  Most of our neighbors, my father, and even myself, for a short while, were chewers of tobacco.  This tobacco usage was split between pouch, plug, and twist with Red Horse, Red Man, Beech Nut, Kentucky Twist, Brown's Mule and a few other brands carrying most of  the business.  Since tobacco was not commonly grown in Knott County, there were very few chewers of homegrown.  But I have known of a few people who got a few seeds and raised a small patch or often just a row or two for private use.  But getting back to this can of Tube Rose Snuff, it was a fine example of a vintage country store piece and was unopened with the Internal Revenue Stamp still attached and unbroken.  It was manufactured in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and also carried a union labor stamp which is rarely seen on any item today.  That regrettable loss of union shops began about 1981 with the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan and a strong anti-union element in  American politics.  Today's fight by fast food workers for an increase in the minimum wage is directly rooted in the changes of attitudes which were promoted by the Reagan Administration beginning with the firing of the air traffic controllers shortly after he became President. 

 

 

Ramon's Pink Pills (Roger D. Hicks)

 

 

Another of the items in this collection which brought back instant memories of itself and a dozen other patent medicines was Ramon's Pink Pills, "an adult laxative for sluggish bowels due to temporary constipation".  This is a classic example of "stomach medicine" and Ramon's Pink Pills were sold by the millions across Appalachia and the rural south along with Carter's Little Liver Pills, Fletcher's Castoria, Geritol,  Black Draught, SSS Tonic, Lightning Hot Drops, and a wide variety of purgatives, antacids, and putative cure all's.  My parents must have sold thousands of boxes, bottles, and cans of these medicines.  And I have to say that finding the Ramon's Pink Pills and the Milk of Magnesia in the collection were a lot like meeting old friends after too long a time apart. 

 

 

 

 

Old Hickory Throat Troches (Roger D. Hicks)

 

 

 

 

Another item in this collection which I found fascinating but did not recognize from my childhood was a tube of Old Hickory Throat Troches which were made by the Old Hickory Medicine Company in Andalusia, Alabama.  I even tried calling a number I located on the Internet to learn more about them and found it disconnected.  I have to assume that the company, like most of the patent medicines, is no longer in existence.  I believe these were sold as a treatment for minor sore throats and must have been similar to cough drops.  If any of you remember them, please send me a personal E-Mail or comment on this post.  I would love to know exactly what they are.  I am sorry to say that I have never been to Andalusia even though I have travelled extensively in Alabama. And I also recently sold a vintage 1953 Hank Williams Song Book to someone in Andalusia.   

 

 

Colgate Tooth Powder (Roger D. Hicks)

 

 

 

Another item I found and did not remember ever seeing in our store was a small metal can of Colgate Tooth Powder which I assume was a precursor of tube toothpaste.  And to be honest, I do not recall that we sold a great deal of tooth paste in our store.  As I think about it, I believe this might have been due to one or more of several reasons: 1) due to poverty, many people might have been using other methods such as baking soda; 2) a lot of our neighbors never seemed to brush their teeth regularly which is also often connected to poverty; 3) folkways of cleaning teeth such as brushing with fragrant twigs might have also been practiced.  Whatever, the reasons, Colgate Tooth Powder or any other brand was not common in our store in my childhood. 

 

 

Zenith Brand Tibet Almond Stick (Roger D. Hicks)

 

 

 

Another unknown, at least to me, item which showed up in the collection was a metal can containing a Zenith Brand Tibet Almond Stick which was used to either repair or disguise scratches in furniture.  I do not recall any similar items to this being common in the area when I was growing up.  Many of our neighbors had either homemade furniture or cheap store bought furniture and never seemed to pay a whole lot of attention to minor dings.  It probably had nothing to do with a particular disregard for caring for property but was rather more about a different set of priorities which did not place scratches on furniture at the top of a to do list for the average parent with a garden, a house, livestock, and several children to care for. 

 

 

Windsor Rubbed Sage (Roger D. Hicks)

 

 

Another old friend which showed up in the collection, much like a long awaited letter from home, was a can of vintage Windsor Rubbed Sage.  I have written in this blog before about my love for sage as a spice in both sausage and turkey dressing. In the post Thanksgiving In Appalachia, I disclosed my love of sage. And in the recent post Hog Killing Time In Appalachia, a reader and I engaged in an interesting exchange in the comments section which discussed the love of sage.  I always associate the smell of sage dressing and, to a lesser degree, sage sausage with the wonderful memory of coming in out of the Thanksgiving or Christmas cold to the smell of hot sage dressing, steamy windows, and a plethora of other traditional Appalachian seasonal dishes on the table.  Many people in the area during my childhood grew their own spices including sage.  My own family only grew our own hot peppers, dill, and one or two others.  When my wife and I moved into our current home 21 years ago, we found that the deceased owner had kept a greenhouse for years and also had planted garlic, dill, mints, and numerous other spices around the property.  Sadly, I have not kept them all alive and now I have to buy them all.  I do not specifically remember Windsor Rubbed Sage from my childhood.  The brands of spices we were most likely to sell were McCormick's and Sauer's which were then and still are high quality spices.  But still, seeing this box of sage brought home a hundred wonderful food and country store based memories. 



 

 

Dr. LeGear's Flatulent Colic Medicine (Roger D. Hicks)

 

Another of the non-food items from this collection was Dr. LeGear's Flatulent Colic Medicine, a patent medicine for use in horses, mules, and cattle.  I spent a childhood in a country store, worked about 15 years in the Central Kentucky Thoroughbred business, and spent more than 3 years working on the Vision Quest Wagon Trains and I had never seen this medicine before.  But veterinary medicine in Appalachia during my childhood was nearly non-existent and many counties at that time did not have a single veterinarian.  Just as they did with their children, most Appalachians until the late 1960's treated health problems in their livestock themselves with remedies based primarily in folkways. 

 

This was a wonderful walk down Memory Lane for me as I found, inspected, remembered, and wrote about these items from my childhood.  I hope it is a source of warm Appalachian memories for my readers as well.  I will expand this post a couple of times in the near future.  But, for now, I want everyone of my readers to enjoy it as much as have I.  Therefore, I am posting it while it is still in progress.  

 

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Update February 25, 2022

 

This item is not a patent medicine but when I found this photograph of one of  favorite childhood memories both from my time at Salisbury Elementary School and simply from growing up in a country store.  This is a Blue Horse Writing Tablet which I used every day in both grade school and high school and which we also sold regularly in our store both to my fellow students and to their parents who used these Blue Horse Writing Tablets for everything from writing letters to distant relatives to saving recipes to keeping important addresses and records to sending business letters to Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Wards to writing obituaries for our newly dead relatives.  Nearly everyone I knew in my childhood used these tablets for something on a regular basis.  

 

 

 























Christmas Hospitality In Appalachia

An Interesting Evening In Menifee County Kentucky

This past Saturday, December 7, 2013, my wife Candice and I took  a trip from our home in White Oak, Morgan County Kentucky down US460 into Frenchburg, KY, the county seat of Menifee County to post some handbills for an upcoming auction.  Along the way, we stopped at nearly every kind of business one can find in a small county in Kentucky or in Appalachia in general for that matter.  Altogether, the trip was probably about 80 miles since it is roughly 35 miles from our home to Frenchburg and we took a bit of a side trip to Cannel City on our way home.  We spent the biggest part of the afternoon on this trip, had a ball, and experienced one heartwarming dose of Appalachian hospitality like I had not seen in a while.  We put out a few handbills along the way and came to the Oldfield Farm Store and Mize, KY, post office where we once again saw a US Post Office being run inside a privately owned business which does not happen much anymore.  Mize is one of the small post offices which came up for possible closing last year as the post office management tried to complete a plan by which it can become profitable again.  But, like many other small post offices across the country, Mize escaped the budget axe at least for the present. 

After a brief stop at Mize, we travelled on west into Menifee County.  Along the way, I reminded Candice of a place just across the county line which we had visited several years ago known as the Swamp Valley Museum.  It had been run for about 50 years by a man named Clayton Wells who also had several old log buildings full of assorted antiques along with his country store.  Clayton Wells is now dead and I told Candice the store was probably closed.  But as we rounded the curve, I saw wood smoke coming from the store chimney and surmised that maybe Clayton's children were continuing to run the store.  We pulled in and I walked inside just as I would have in the past only to find that the store was actually closed and now being used by his children, widow, and other younger descendants as a family gathering place.  But I was invited inside the store anyway by Clayton's son, Gary Wells, a former deputy coroner of Menifee County and current member of the volunteer fire department.  There was a large number of the family in the old building which has been kept just as it was when Clayton was alive.  There was a large cast iron Dutch oven full of homemade beef soup steaming on the wood stove and Gary Wells, the cook, quickly invited us to have a bowl.  I told him I would have to check with Candice, who is in a wheelchair, to see if she was interested. Candice usually stays in the van when I am making short stops rather than make the effort to get in and out of buildings which are not handicapped accessible.  It turns out she was interested in going inside and eating with the Wells Family and Gary and one of his brothers helped me get her up the single step & through the door into the store.  The family made room for us, passed out paper bowls & plastic spoons for the soup, and gave us both a cold Ale 8 One, the national soft drink of Eastern Kentucky.  Ale 8 One is a mild ginger ale made exclusively in Winchester, KY, not far from Frenchburg & is drunk daily by thousands of Appalachian Kentuckians.  It probably deserves a separate post at some time in the future since it  is a Kentucky institution.  The store, although it is just as it was the last time I was there in about 2001, is no longer operating.  This was a family gathering in a place that is near and dear to their hearts and which had become a shrine dedicated to family memories.  But they still invited two strangers in, fed us, talked for about an hour about country stores, antiques, local politics, family life in Appalachia, and a dozen other topics just like we were all old friends.  They even allowed us to bring our 13 year old Dachshund, Giggles, into the store too.  She walked around in the floor along with a small great grandchild of Clayton Wells and was ignored just as if she was also a member of the family.  The soup was great.  The hospitality was a wonderful reminder of how people all across Appalachia used to treat strangers.  It reminded me of many visits I made as a traveling salesman or simply a traveler to many stores and homes across Appalachia in the last 60 years. It also reminded me of how many times I had seen my parents doing the same thing in our country store in the 1950's & 1960's.   The experience was a bright spot near Christmas which showed us the Christmas spirit as it had been long ago and may well never be very often again.  We enjoyed it greatly and I will post some photos in the near future of the Swamp Valley Museum and Store since I did not have my camera with me.  Perhaps in the spring I will go back on a Saturday when I can find the family in and take photographs for a while. 

For now I will let a description suffice.  The store is a small wood frame structure with a low porch in front.  Nearly every square inch of the building is covered with vintage to antique advertising and political signs.  The parking lot is slightly graveled and gets muddy in wet weather.  There is an old wire corn crib right beside the store and a fine old log house full of antiques  which used to serve as the Swamp Valley Museum about 75 feet downstream on the side of the parking lot.  It is fine place to visit although it is no longer being operated commercially and I would not expect the Wells Family to always be this hospitable to the random stranger.   But it is a fitting reminder of life in general stores in Appalachia when I was a child. 

When we started back home, we took a side trip to Cannel City, KY, to stop in at the Caney Valley Grocery which I have mentioned in this blog in the past.  It is an old wood frame two story store, still being operated by Roger Finch and family and also filled with antiques.  I was pleased to see a small display case full of vintage to antique patent medicines on the top shelf in the store to protect it from too many hands.  I had sold Roger Finch most of the patent medicines a few weeks ago and he was so enamored with them he brought the antique display case down from the upstairs antique shop to display them.  They include Dr. Drake's Glesco, Old Settler water treatment, Cloverine Salve, and several other items no longer on sale anywhere.  Altogether, it was a fine day on the road in Appalachia and I cannot wait to do it again.  I highly recommend a day long drive along US460 in Eastern Kentucky anytime one can find the time.  The remaining two lane sections of the highway contain some very interesting places to stop, visit, take a few photographs, talk a while, and occasionally see a bit of the Appalachia I remember from my childhood. US460 runs all across Kentucky from the Virginia border in Pike County to the intersection with US60 in Frankfort.  It is well worth spending a day or three driving all the remaining two lane sections in a leisurely trip to see a few reminders of life as it used to be.   At some point in the future, I will try to write a longer post about US460 in the My Favorite Places In Appalachia collection.  But for now I just hope it is also one of your favorite places. 


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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.  I will accept payment through PayPal at rchicks@mrtc.com   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!