June 30, 2021 • 64 mins
On this podcast, we’ll explore southern Appalachian culture through the life of a family of farmers, musicians, and bear hunters. The Clark family in East Tennessee are relics of the region’s past. Clay also interviews national expert, Dr. Daniel Pierce of the University of North Carolina Asheville, who will take us a on a guided tour of the regions storied past, helping us understand both fact and fiction. You’ll hear some bluegrass music, and we’ll even talk about Dolly Parton. This is part one of a two part series on Appalachian Mountain culture. You’re going to enjoy meeting the Clarks!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M how many years you think you grew to back
my time, I was big enough to work in a
backer page and that was real little and two thousand
and four, which the last year I grow to show,
I probably was fifty years in the backerup field, you know.
(00:21):
On this episode of the Bargaris podcast, I want to
take you on a journey into the mountains of southern Appalachia.
It will be my pleasure to introduce you to the Clarks,
a family of farmers, musicians, and bear hunters who are
relics of the region's culture. Dr Daniel Pierce is a
professor and author and national authority on Appalachian culture who
(00:46):
will give us a guided tour through its fascinating history.
We'll listen to the life story of this family. Here's
some bluegrass picking, and wade through the fact and fiction
of the regions stereo types. We might even talk about
Dolly Parton. The people that lived, they lived, like I said,
with the earth. They had to make their living. That's
(01:08):
why I'm saying, you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle.
You cannot separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics from
your music. It's a part of life. And that was
what our music was in the mountains. It was a
part of our life. My name is Clay Nukelem and
(01:36):
this is the bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things
forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and
where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their
lives close to the land. This podcast, Fifty Years in
(02:01):
the Backer Field, is part one of a two part
series on Appalachian mountain culture. Check back for part two
called Moonshine, Nascar and Bear Hunting. Also, I want to
tell you again that we're going weekly with this podcast.
Will continue to do our documentary style podcasts like this
one every other week, but on the off weeks will
(02:23):
release what we call the bear Grease Render, where we'll discuss,
dissect and distill the documentary style episodes with a band
of married guests. It's gonna be a guaranteed blast. It's
like the Bear Grease Podcast unplugged. You're gonna love it.
(02:47):
Initial little cabbage right here, you see that right there?
Day But I want to say a cabbage head, Dan
Slaw on each hedge wood when you cut them up,
they make a rash walart. So I know I've had
them for paper didn't eat all of them. Did you
ever grow did you ever grow tobacco? Yeah? What? What?
(03:09):
How did? What did you do with it? The backer
I growed was burly and uh and I growed I
growed it at only field and you grew up commercially. Yeah. Yeah,
that's what I've done a farming besides the magic ros Tobacca.
(03:31):
That's the voice of Mr Roy Clark, not to be
confused with the Roy Clark from the show He Hall.
This Roy Clark lives in Cock County in eastern Tennessee,
in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, which is a
range inside the Appalachian Range. East of his front porch
you can see the high ridgeline border of North Carolina,
(03:53):
and to the north you'll hear the intermittent sound and
muffled barks of his hounds. I've never seen Mr Roy
not wear overalls. It seems he hasn't. Every day pair
and it's going out pair the latter. Looking sharp and new,
Mr Roy looks like he could be from Ireland. In
his younger years, his hair was red, but now it's
(04:16):
a faded shade of gray and white. He's seventy two
years old and he's a living relic of times past,
and you have to take my word for this. He's
a bear hunter amongst bear hunters. He's dedicated his life
to raising, training, and hunting bear hounds. He has a
rich history with the American plothound, a breed of big
(04:40):
game dog endemic to the Appalachians. How many dogs have
you got out here? Mr? Roy? Thirteen fifteen chevente to
twenty three, twenty four, twenty four right here, and I've
(05:03):
got something the barn and that's a bear dog pack,
that's the three patch. Uh. But yeah, I know you,
young dog, that you're doing pretty good? Did I finally
a little bit? Yeah? Do you ever have a dog
(05:26):
that didn't start out very good, that maybe it was
slow to start, that ends up being a top pound
I'll tell you something. Most of the time, to do naturals,
just the one just by, just most time. Southern Appalachia
(05:47):
is a storied region of the United States. It includes
the entire state of West Virginia, the western side of Virginia,
western North Carolina, northwestern South Carolina, eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee,
northern Georgia, in northeast Alabama. Basically, the region is defined
(06:09):
by mountains, and it's roughly the southern one third of
the Appalachian Mountain Range, which runs from Newfoundland, Canada, all
the way down to Alabama. This range includes at least
thirty mountains higher than five thousand feet and the highest
peak east of the Mississippi River mountain Mitchell in North Carolina,
(06:31):
which is six thousand, six eighty four feet above sea level.
The range is an alternating series of ridges running north
and south, which acted as a natural barrier to the
western expansion of the early colonies that would become the
United States. This topographic layout is important because the culture,
(06:52):
like everywhere else, has been shaped by the land from
which it was hewn. In this case, the mountains proved
to be both and eden, but also a custard land
ridden with all varieties of scarcity. I began exploring the
Appalachian regions some years ago in search of the region's
(07:14):
legendary bear hunters and houndsmen of which there are many.
But what I found was more robust. I found a
cultural treasure rivaling any place I've ever visited. It's called
(08:00):
Before we officially meet, Mr Roy, I want to be
clear about something. Appalachia is a very diverse and modern
region of the country. They have swinky coffee shops, distinguished universities,
and target superstores. I've chosen to highlight rural Appalachia to
get a glimpse into what it once was and the
(08:22):
way that it still is to some and frankly, I'm
fascinated with rural culture and have the highest respect for
people like the Clark family. Meet Mr Roy, Mr Roy,
what are your what are some of your earliest memories
(08:46):
living back here in East Tennessee. I remember when I said,
little I cann't even hold a play up players them bottoms,
drip down them that the horses? Is that right now?
What were you all planting by then? Corn and tobacco,
corn in to backing, Uh yeah, and hit a rock
(09:06):
and he didn't make blue places on his side and
stuff because I had to walk up in that plow
and he would eat you on the shade and felt
like it broke agree over something. What year were you born?
Nineteen forty eight, so your seventy three. I'll be shaventy
three in November. So what did what did your family
do back in We're in uh Cock County, Tennessee. Actually,
(09:30):
Daddy drive us Scoob Bush when I was real little,
and then well before that, he'd drove a log truck.
When my grandpa broke his leg twice. I believe he'd
drove a log trip from ten year old up tilly.
So your grandfather was a logger. Yeah, they logged up
the good and they had holem will be under the
dereo put him off over there, and then a little
(09:54):
of one a box car next to railroad trade or
did roll them off, and then they had a little
him on that railroad corn hollow out of here. And
then he drove a school bus and while I was
in school, and then I guess before I was out
of school, he went to work for the county driving
a bulldog instead. There wasn't a lot of money to
(10:15):
be made in this country a long time ago. Yeah, okay,
what what were some of the first things that you
did to make money y'all? Were y'all were going to
getting coal out of Kentucky. We did my grandpa, that's
that track. Like fifteen year old, I'd driving to Kentucky
and we had houling Colen stuff out of Kentucky and
(10:35):
go around and peddle it around. And then we'd Uh.
In the summertime we'd go to we'd go to Henderson
Bill to to his daughters and had peach or church
and apple old church and growed water melon and candle hope.
And we'd take that log truck and haulam in here,
and how peaches and pedal ama out, and how watermelons
(10:56):
and cantle hopes and pedal am. So what do you
what did you do for a living? What kind of
work have you done? When I got out of high school,
I worked a little bit his emotion helper building some
buildings John the Stoke Livan camp down there, and then
I went to Merkan Inca which was a fabric place, Okay,
(11:17):
in a factory. Yeah. And then I went in service
for two years. And then after I got out of service,
I come back to Anca and then come up. I
run Percisions court clerk and got elected for head. And
I farmed all the time that I worked. It ain't
I farmed? And then tell me about your farming. Well,
(11:39):
it was hard work and not much money. It's mostly
what it was. I growed the back and I growed tomatus,
and me and my brother in law and the whole
family has worked into the magus, when we grow a
couple of acres of tom where were you selling the tomatoes?
We've taken them to the packing house in North Carolina.
Oh really, we actually saw some in ten to see too,
(12:00):
but most of the North Carolina where we took him
to the sale. And we've done decent with that for
a while. And thematis got so they figured out I
wanted to drop a price, and you're not make nothing
out of them. And we grow damn per I don't know,
ten or fifteen years, I guess. And and then one
year he come up at uh that we took a
(12:21):
little up bier and uh. And when it comes down
to get the check, we didn't get no money. We
got a bill. We owed them pifty cents a box
or packing so, uh, we are you being serious? I'm
dead serious you, I said, they went in a hole
on him. I said, well, damn, we never paid it.
So I went to I went to Atlanta, Georgia, down
(12:43):
the farmer's market down there, and we was going in
the hole. We weren't even gonna come out that year.
And my brother and I, which is Edward, and my
wife Brendan, and the young ands and and my sister
Diane and her young and they picked the amatis. Edward
would truck them to me down there, and I stayed
three weeks down there on the farmers market and didn't
(13:05):
even come home. And we come out making some money
off of the hold. What we quit raising them today?
Now you but you still raised thems today though I
still raised them to eat. And I raised some lake
crops of tomatus here after day. And I ain't talking
about a big amount. I'm talking about that field right
down our three or four tens, three or four ten
(13:28):
tents of an acre, tents of an acre. And I
actually made more money and her peddling them to these
restaurants and stuff and taking them and selling them. I
made more money off of down Like if I had
fifteen hundred plants out and I could make four dollars
a plant that was like caute, forty five hundred dollars,
that's some money. And the debates, but the middleman got
(13:50):
in the middle of it, took all the money away
from him. And then the back of which you made
a little bit on here, but it wasn't know. So
you grew, you grew backer, you grew tobacco for how
many years, you think you grew tobacco. Actually my time,
I speak enough to work in a backer patch and
that was real little until h two thousand and four
(14:14):
was the last year I grow toch So I probably
was fifty years in the backup field, really growing about
twenty acres or so not to start with it. Yeah,
but on the lift I might have head close to that.
But now we just mostly growed what we had. Fun
eyes are growing at. What he means when he says
(14:37):
that he grew someone else's tobacco is that he's referring
to a government tobacco allotment, meaning a person with the
allotment is able to sell a certain amount of tobacco.
The person can also lease out their allotment to another
farmer to grow as like Daddy's in pappage. In my
(15:01):
grandpa up here, I growed his from time I was
in high school with grandpa's year and uh, he had
about a hype acre about what he had. Tell me,
how how does your bear hunting fit in with your
with your work? I mean, like it's clear that you
have dedicated a big part of your life to bear
(15:23):
hunting with hounds. I had to work back or off
in the followed the year, and some of them would
be a hunting, and I just keep the radio on
and listening and couldn't work back or for listening to
him and stuff for gradnit off and and they'd get
one of going, and I've left the backer born and
laded me up. Check your right doves and hit the
(15:46):
mountain up Janner. I remember one time its running one
and I went up burned packing and they're still on
the other side of the mountain. And I packed the
byron and treat it and killed the byron, had it killed.
When they got to me, I thought that you were
working to baccup a couple of things. When he said
(16:07):
he packed a bear, what he meant is that the
other guy's dogs were chasing the bear. Mr Roy heard
their dogs running the bear, and he sent his dogs
in his reinforcement. He packed them. Secondly, we just grazed
the surface of Mr Roy's bear hunting in this section.
In episode two, We're gonna dive much deeper. I was
(16:34):
born into byar hunting. My grandpa bar Hunt and my
daddy bear hunty. My other grandpa here bar hunting a
little bit it. My great uncle Barhuney it's been some
bar hunting here. I think I was with Pappy and
I was three year old and we was on the
log truck and the gift to first bar Daddy ever killed,
(16:55):
because I remember I remember shutting on top of it
on that log trick. If it's something else, I probably
wouldn't remember. What are your first memories of bear hunting
back in there with your dad and Grandpa? Well, I
remember when I was a six year old, if I
could wake up of them morning when they get, they
wouldn't get. He wouldn't give me up. But if I
(17:16):
could wake up a lot of times she'd let me go,
you know, miss schoo and go. But then we would
go by our hunting and uh, and we would have
to lead dogs to the woods. It got sold that
I'd had to lead the trail. Dog got in front
of the other dogs. I wouldn't big enough to hold you. Well,
when I'd go with Daddy out in the woods and
(17:37):
he would be a hunting a track and if you
put rounder time up around a tree, and then he
didn't make me stay with him, and then he'd be
trying to see which voice are going, and then he
hid a holler for me to bring that dog. Well,
I know when I tied that dog, he was gonna
drag me down. So I know if I turned him blue,
so I'd be in trouble too. So I've just taken
(17:59):
get two hand hold on that leads drop and here
we'd go when I fall down, and Daddy'd catch me
when I got to him. And I know one time
Daddy said, you're gonna have to lead the ramler. We
ain't got enough to lead the dolls. And I told Pappy,
I said, my Grandpa, I said, I ain't wanted to
lead no dollar. He said you had to go with
him soon. And I said, well, I'll tell you one thing.
(18:21):
I might go this time, but the next time I
go by our hunting, I'll be big enough telling so
I ain't leading your dollars. Because son, he'd hearing me
to death. They had to get that down. And they
had this biral here that they had boughten uncle burned
about it in Florida, I guess. And they brought you
back here and they had he had a wild I was,
I don't know about three year old men through four.
(18:42):
And they had food with that byron, food with it
with dogs and stuff. Why I wasn't afraid of it.
Might didn't want to hear it. And Daddy'd get me
and checked me up up on the top of it.
And you talked about wanting office something they had they
had a bear, they had live and uh, I wanted
to offense everybody I didn't about like Grandpa was. He'd
treat him in the barn as an old barn down here.
(19:05):
Every time you get loose, she's bet him up in
a tear poach down. How colin was it for bear
hunters back then to have a live bear? Well, I
never did hear of another bar, except at I got
a corner with Hart dealing him up yanner and and
and and he said that that his daddy had wanted
to store a bar. And that was you know years
(19:26):
or coto. What what about camping and hunting back in
the Gulf with with them, with your dad and grandpa. Yeah,
we'd actually, uh, we'd actually load everything we had on
a on a log truck and you put you dolls
and your food and tarpolian and and everything. I only
can go to the good. And then we'd sleep in
(19:47):
the back of that truck and put some hay down
and step to sleep home and take a tarpolian and
covered over the back of eating, let it come over
the side and cook beside eating and like it. And
when we had the em old jeeves and we'd hunt
that lamb cheeps instead. Roy, how would you describe Appalachian
(20:08):
Mountain culture? I describe it in a way that there's
no better way to grow up, or have you young
and you your grand young inster to grow up in
Appalachian culture than I believe that's the best they are now.
Making money that ain't the best they are, but having
your family and being close to your family and having
(20:29):
good values to come to them. I think it's you
can't beaty. And actually the disastrous stuff like tornadoes and
we'll even flooding and stuff like as and the tornadoes
and stuff. I've never seen one here in mild why.
And I just think that's good cause down to Gwner
in some that flat country they had to worry about
(20:51):
it every time it comes strong. Yeah, I wouldn't like
to live like a Like I said, if you want
to make money, you better go somewhere else. Besides you're
I don't think it u it making money. And if
you can make it is only our to life. I
want to step back a generation and introduce you to
(21:13):
Mr Britt Davis, who is Mr Roy's father in law.
It was a great pleasure to briefly speak with him.
I was taken aback by his story, but mainly how
it seemed to him to be so common. Mr Britt,
How old are you? If I lived on the second
(21:34):
day of June, I'll be nanny ninety. What year were
you born? Thirty one? N one? So you grew up?
You were? Were you born in this hollow? Yeah? Right,
a little dar about And what kind of work did
you do your whole life? Yeah? I farm some, I
log some, and I worked about a year on this
(21:57):
interstate down here, and then went to work for the
County Road Department and stayed there retard. Have you ever
have you traveled much out of Appalachia? No, you've stayed
right here. I went to text this one time whenever
Roy was an army out there, and that's the only
trip I ever made. Really. I lived on up in
(22:20):
the Gulf up Third Well. I'd say we's up there
about full or five years because my daddy got killed
up there, and I enjoyed that up bur lot. How
did your how did your father get killed with a
low log rold over? Really? How old were you? I
was about to have your old Wow? How did that
(22:41):
impact your life? Well? You made it rough on me
for a while. Yeah, yeah, he's up there whenever the
about the time it started, but he got kill when
(23:03):
we lived that a long time for the got So
did you have to kind of were you the oldest son,
so you kind of had to take care of your family? Yeah?
Really so was that a lot of responsibility for you then? Yeah?
We moved back home here up here. Yeah, my grandparents
(23:24):
hit me with it, and I raised a croppoter back
and bought the place where I leave. Mm hmm. How
old were you? I'd say I was about thirteen? Really,
So you you raised a crop of tobacco when you
were thirteen and bought a piece of property. Wow. And
(23:44):
that's the property that we went to earlier today up
at the head of this holler. Yeah. Yeah, so you
bought that place when you were thirteen, I'll be daring.
And so you've lived you've lived there your whole life? Then,
whole life? What what are your earliest memories? Mr Brett,
(24:05):
oh Law, I can I can remember playings back then
better than again now. Really, I can remember my carrying
me and us to stopping and talking to her neighbors.
That was before we moved to the Gold So that
was in the nineteen thirties. Did your family have a car,
(24:26):
had automobile? No? No? What? How did you get around? Walked? Walked?
You didn't Everything you needed you could walk to get. Yeah,
this little stores all around here, three or four well,
I'd say it was in the late thirties or the
early fourties. Before that, there is there were a car
(24:49):
in this country, is that right? Doctor lived right up
Pearl there. He had the first tell me about how
the the doctor were worked in this community. He go
around in the and he's with his horse, and people
wanted to be doctored. They'd tyrant or a wife fig
(25:11):
on the mailbox and hea, he'd ride his horse up
to your house and knock on the door and say
what's wrong? And you finally got the car and they
do the same thing. Do you ever remember being sick
and him having to come to your house, the doctor
on you? Really? What what would you have been sick from?
(25:31):
Maybe the strip th old or or something, and he'd
come give you some penicillin maybe or something. That's what
you doctored with penicillin. Wow. When did electricity come back
in here? I'd say it was about fifty two or
fifty three for what I got it. So you were
in your twenties before you had electricity. Yeah, do you
(25:53):
remember those days? Oh? Yeah? What would what would you do?
Once it got dark? Would you light the house with
that open? Had l lamp? What kind of lamp? Was
the coal burning? And you would what would you do?
You would sit around with the family and just sit
around and go to bed. I guess that's they finally
got a ridio, Mr Brett. Do you remember when John F.
(26:16):
Kennedy died president? Do you remember where you were? Was
that a significant rejective? Where I was where we has
a unter. I was running the road world Tom's Creek,
and I just partly got a paste old man's house
and he come out and run up the road behind
(26:37):
me in holiday and me and and told me about m hmm.
Do you hear what they're saying, Mr Brett? They're saying,
because you uh, because you were the only child, you've
been spoiled your whole life. Do you agree with that?
I wouldn't hardly say that. Wow, what a story. Back
(27:04):
to Mr Roy, I asked Mr Roy what he thought
about moonshine in the mountains. This is what he said.
And remember in part two, we're going to explore this
much more. My daddy and grandpa, an uncle and some
of their close friends and stuff probably turned me against
(27:27):
the drinking and stuff because they stayed drunk all the time.
So you don't drink. No, I ain't never drunk. I know.
We'd go get down peaches and we went and got
a load one time, and the peaches was overwrapped and
they was too shyp We couldn't didn't get to sell
me any but we had probably a hundred thirty bush
(27:51):
along the drug. So they made us hepsied peaches and
they put them in barrels and they made liquor out
of them peaches. And I don't know how many years
they drunk on it. But I don't take the shoulder
any And I always thought to myself, I ain't gonna
never drink because I put up with it my whole
life and I ain't gonna be like it for somebody
(28:13):
had to put up with me like it. Yeah, talk
to me about music in your family? What? What does
how have y'all? Well, y'all play easy. It's been in
my family. It goes way back. My grandmother was a
was a picker, and my daddy was a piker and
a singer and stuff and and I guess it's just
(28:36):
come right on day until So what kind of what
kind of music did they play? Mostly blue grass and
mostly ballot and stuff like that. They've shung And how
you sing? You sing and dance a little bit a
little bit? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe if we can
get them my whole line up here after a while,
we'll we'll draw the sute of this hill a little bit.
Sounds good to me. While visiting the Clarks, I wasn't
(29:02):
shy about asking them if they'd play some music for me.
They obliged. I hope you'll join me in recognizing the
uniqueness of a legendary bear hunter, Mr Roy singing a
song about bear hunting. This is old slew foot. What's
(29:24):
what Songroy? What's what's this song about? It's a battle bar?
And and may I okay? And hi on a mountain
bunch tell me what she fardreck bird looking back at me?
(29:51):
He better eat you ra a boy for its dutlate.
The bar's got a little pie towards the games. Oh
eat figure around the middle, and he frout across the room,
running ninety miles and night, taking thirty feet at you.
(30:13):
Ain't never been cawdy, ain't never feed tree. Some folks
saved lord like me. I saved up my money and
I boughty some bees. They started making honeyway being the
(30:33):
tree cut down. The tree of my honey's all gone.
Oh slu footst made hisself at home. Oh eat figure
around the middle, and he frout across the room, running
ninety miles and night, taking thirty feet at you. Ain't
(30:57):
never been cawdy. Ain't ever been dry. Some folks says
a lot like me. Well, winners coming on, and it's
when he be low the river throws over. So where
can he go? We chase him up the galage and
(31:22):
me run him in the well. We shoot him in
the bottom to listen to him yell, Oh, he's big
around the middle, and he frought across the run, running
ninety miles and nur taking thirty feet Ain't never been cowdy,
(31:43):
ain't never been dry. Ain never had nobody after him
like me. That's good. While we're talking about music, I
(32:06):
want you to give ear to Oh Label Read. She
was born in nineteen sixteen and passed away in two
thousand two. She's Appalachian to the core, a folk singer,
a songwriter, a banjo player, and a philosopher. If you
listen to her talk and sing, you'll get a window
(32:26):
into Appalachia that cannot be replicated. In twenty nineteen, the
Library of Congress inducted her nineteen seventy three album titled
Oh Label Read, into the National Recording Registry. This is
a clip of that recording. Meet olabel Read one in
(32:49):
the mapping Prove the Hills and ballads through the red snow,
seen the lightning bleshing I've heard, but the roll I
haven't known how long. I've been asked many times to
(33:18):
describe my life in the mountains, and there's one point
that I specifically like to make and want to make,
is that I don't believe there would be anyway in
the world that you could possibly describe it. There could
be no fun made of it, because it was a
life with the earth, your elements, as the old people
(33:45):
called it, the birds, the animals, the bees, you knew
every you knew every season. You could tell. You were
raised to kind of tell when a storm was gonna come.
I always tell us because you could see the leaves
turning in the summertime. Particularly in the winter, you could
tell if it was going to snow because of the
(34:06):
base of the color of the base of the trees.
So many things you just grew up with that you
get away from as you go through life if you're
not careful. Now I'm not saying that you go strictly
back to the past, but I'm saying there's no way
in the where all that anybody could ever make fun
our poke fun at the way people were raised in
(34:27):
the mountains, because as far as the music is concerned,
we did gospel, we did blues, we did everything. I
did not play what you would call I guess professionally,
I don't know. The word never just quite suited me.
But anyway, there had to be every nationality in the
mountains at one time for them to know each other's
(34:48):
ways of life. There was communication because I think people
needed one another and they realized, if you see, they
realized it's so much. And I believe one of the
reasons was as they were so close, really and truly,
because we were so close to the earth and the
elements into God's creation. I think that's the one thing
made him know. I think that all and your music
(35:11):
and everything comes through communication with people. And the people
that lived, they lived, like I said, with the earth.
They had to make their living. That's why I'm saying,
you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle. You cannot
separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics from your music.
(35:34):
It's a part of life. And that was what our
music was in the mountains. It was a part of
our life. Our man, Dr Dan Pierce of the University
(35:58):
of North Carolina asked, full is my new friend. He's
a national expert on the Appalachian region, and his love
of mountain culture has fueled his writing. He's the author
of numerous books that helped interpret the region's story in
a significant way. He's also known as u n c
Ashville's professional hillbilly. Meet Dr Dan Pierce. Well, I can't
(36:24):
introduce him without leaving a trail of fodder to part
two of this podcast. Here are a few of the
titles of his books, Tar Hill, Lightning, Corn from a Jar,
and Real NASCAR, but we'll get to all that later. So,
Dr Pierce, all the regions of America have been influenced
(36:46):
by immigration for the most part. Where did the people
from the southern Appalachians come from? Well, there there are
a lot of streams of immigration that come into the region,
and so you know, there is a there. There is
kind of a stereotype that the Appalachians are the Scots
(37:07):
Irish culture plopped down and being unchanged for hundreds of years.
The Scot's Irish were for sure in terms of the
dominant ethnic group that came to this region, but there
are lots of other groups. Are Germans, their English. Daniel
Boone was an English Quaker. You know. You can't think
of a board Appalachian person than Daniel Boone, you know,
(37:31):
and so you know that was not unusual, and so
and other you know, Moravians, and of course, uh this
is something that in recent years that scholars have looked
at a lot. More is that even though you can
go to lots of parts of Appalachia today, you can
go to joining counties here and you'll find only a
handful of African Americans, but there were significant numbers of
(37:51):
African Americans in every county and Appalachian. So that's a
part of that that stream as well. But again the
dominant group where the Scots Irish. And now would we
be in the Southern Appalachians here in North Carolina. Yeah,
that's the way you would in western North Yeah, from
really you know, northeast Alabama, North Georgia through East Tennessee,
Western North Carolina, western tip of Virginia, West Virginia and
(38:14):
eastern Kentucky the southern app that's the Southern Appalachians. So
the the Scots Irish people would they would be a
dominant feature of this region or at one time would
have been. Was this the only place they came or
were there other parts of Can you look at the
whole um what people refer to as the uplands south?
You know, this is like the non cotton belt, the
(38:36):
North Georgia, North Alabama, North Mississippi, much of Tennessee, you know,
western North Carolina all the way through to Texas, Arkansas.
The Scots one, people kind of look at this as
a you know, how can you be Scots and Irish?
And when you know what happens is in the Elizabethan
period the late fifteen hundreds the English conquered much of
(38:59):
our and during that period, and so Elizabeth and then
her successors gave what they called plantations or big tracts
of land to people who would help, you know, nobility,
you who had helped them out. And they didn't trust
the Irish. They were Catholic. They saw him as barbarians
and savages. A lot of the same imagery you're gonna
see when English people come to America and characterized Native
(39:21):
Americans in the same way. It's it's really kind of
kind of very interesting to look at. So to work
their plantations, they imported people across the Irish c from
the lowlands of Scotland. So these are not there's a
lot of misconception in parts of the southern Appalachian region
that they think of there, you know, the bagpipes and
the plaids, and so these were not those Scots. Those
(39:43):
are Highlanders and these are lowland Scots. And so they
come over to northern Ireland and they and they worked
these plantations and they're pretty successful. They're raising sheep, they're
raising linen. They're there for you know, a hundred years
or a little more. But then I think the enemy changes.
Things get pretty bad for you know, rents go up dramatically,
(40:05):
wool market declines, and America is opening up at that point,
and so you see it really hundreds of thousands of
people in Ulster, Northern Ireland, Protestants for the most part,
the Scots Irish begin to make the trip across the
Atlantic Ocean and they come in through Philadelphia. Then they
start moving into western Pennsylvania. Atlants taken up by Germans
(40:28):
and others who have been there before, the Germans and
the English. And so then they head down what's called
the Great Wagon Road, which is now eight one down
through the Shenandoah Valley Road. Yeah and so yeah, and
so they head down through the Shenandoah Valley and then
they end up in western Virginia and North Carolina, and
(40:49):
then as the Cherokee or driven out of the region
in the late seventeen hundreds, they move into the and
my ken lived in uh It was part to North
Carolina then, but it became Tennessee, the the northeastern part
of Tennessee, and then moved down the Holston and Tennessee
River valleys, and my folks settled in just south of
(41:12):
Knoxville between Knoxville and Chattanooga and then moved west from
there into West Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, and so that
whole area really probably the dominant group and nominate ethnic group,
you know, probably you know, half or so or close
to it. Okay, that's a good that's a I was
gonna ask you that, like, how so if it wasn't
all Scots Irish, how much of it was so maybe, yeah,
(41:37):
but they had a you know, a huge cultural impact,
and they brought a lot of things with them. Can
you describe kind of the dominant features of the Scots
Irish and what they did bring over here? And also
my my end question. I don't want to stack them
too deep here, but it's you know, where do we
see that culture still displayed today? You know, and a
lot of things. Again, you can get a little carried
(41:58):
away and stereotype these things. For one, You've got to
understand the way culture works is that it's it's not
and and and later on, particularly the early twentieth century,
people from the outside who come to the region want
to characterize this region is being like preserved in amber
or something. You know, it looks like they're they is
locked in the past. You know, which is not at
all true because culture is always evolving. And when they
(42:22):
come here, of course they don't survive in this area
unless they learn from the Cherokee, because you you know again, okay,
you know, for one thing, these are not hunting people
when they come I mean everything in the British house,
you know, the only people that are hunting are people
in the noble well unless you're a poacher. Yeah, you're
(42:44):
not hunting over there. So when they come here, of
course that's gonna be part of their subsistence. Okay, who
teaches them to hunt? You know, Daniel Boone doesn't come
at this as a he has to learn who's he
learned from. He learned from the from the from the Cherokee,
from the Native of Erkins. In this area, there's a
lot there would have been some positive, friendly relationship between
(43:07):
some of these people and some of the Native Americans. Yeah,
I mean you actually see early on with people like Boone,
there's a period in Boone's life where, you know, and
there were a lot of concerns in communities and with
people about people going native, you know, because there were
things that were very appealing and there were some questions.
Boone was actually captured by the Shawnee and taken into
(43:29):
what's now Oho. There are some questions about did he
have a Shawnee wife, did he have a Shawnee family?
Was Boon tempted to stay with the Shawnee. But but
these people bring a lot of things with them and
the things that they brought. One of course, of the
biggest things that they bring in the music. And so,
you know, a lot of the music that we think
about is Appalachian as traditional and stuff like that is
(43:53):
music that has made the trip across the ocean. The
old ballads and the fiddle tunes and things like that.
You can trace a lot of the music that's even
you know, some of it's you know, a lot of
it's still being performed today. There may be in a
very very American take on it. It may be a
ballad about the about Tom Tom Dooley, you know, who
(44:15):
who conspires with one of his lovers to kill another lover.
You know, that becomes a popular song very later on,
Or about Frankie Silvery's who's a woman who kills ruds
when he gets gets executed. You know. Yeah, well, you
know the ballads we're a big part of that and
those are always tragic, you know, there's there's always that
(44:36):
theme in these things. But that of course, you know,
those things get combined with other influences. For instance, like
we think in the banjo as being characteristically Appalachian, but
it's an African instrument, you know, so that's where that
comes from. So again it gets combined with their their
culture of music, just families that played music in the
(44:56):
social aspects of gathering everybody up, playing music that's legit.
I mean, that is a real part of Advocacian culture. Yeah,
you get these influences that are coming over and then
and again you throw other influences in, but it really,
you know, is shaped by in the eighteen hundreds in
particular about what I call front porch culture, and so
(45:16):
you get, you know, you get music that's suitable for
a front porch or or folk tales or dancing, that
type of thing, you know, is largely influenced by what
the Scots Irish bring and and this is reinforced by
the area. But but you know they're bringing with him.
And again you can get real carried away with stereotypes.
(45:37):
Jim Webb, who was a senator, from what I think Virginia.
You know, you wrote a book on Scottsire is called
born Fighting, you know, and so you can get carried away,
but there is that independent streak of you're not going
to tell me what to do, and that's really reinforced
because people are living, you know, the way that they
the region is settled is very different from than say
(45:58):
like eastern Pennsylvania, where people tend to live in communities,
you know, but people are living in kind of scattered
I mean part and it's partly geography. You know, that
people are living in scattered so there's not a lot
of bottom land. So that what I'm hearing you say
is the geographic features of like we're in some pretty
rough country here, a lot of a lot of topography,
a lot of elevation change and just steep mountains and stuff.
(46:20):
So there there just wasn't a big flat spot for
a big city to be have. It was like some
some family was down in this hollow and another family
was over here, and I mean you had communities, but
that that reinforced kind of isolation independence. Yeah, it works together.
The culture they're bringing with them with the topography really
kind of does reinforce that that sense of rugged or
(46:43):
some people would call it cussod independence that uh, you know,
I think it's still much um there, and I think
again it's a kind of combination of culture and geography.
And another thing that you know is very much part
of that is making lick liquor. There we've said it.
(47:07):
To understand the impacts in the real story of how
Moonshine has attached itself to this region, you'll have to
listen to part two of this series. We're saving it.
I mean, a lot of these people when they came,
I mean one, they brought in their head the knowledge
of how to make whiskey. And in many cases they
you know, they brought us still with them, and so
(47:29):
this is an important part. You know, you look at
how people lived in this region for a long time,
and there's still a few you know, it's primarily subsistence,
you know there and again you know, you you you
throw in other influence because they're not bringing their culture
and plopping it down. But you know, for instance, you know,
the grain that they're going to grow is not barley
(47:52):
or wheat, or it's gonna be corn, you know, which
is not which they learned when they got here. You
know from the Native Americans and so but they you know,
they're raising most of their food, and then they're also
one of the things they bring with them, although there
are a number of them already here that the Spanish
brother are hogs, and hogs are incredibly important and it's
(48:14):
a some people refer to this as a as a
hog and hominy economy because it's corn. You know, the
staples are corn and pork. Dr Pierce, How has this
culture been stigmatized in the negative way nationally? That's my
number one question. Number two question is how have we
glorified it in maybe ways that it didn't deserve. Yeah,
(48:37):
and actually that's those stereotypes cut both ways. It's it's
really interesting. But you see in the late eight one,
Appalachia enters a period prior to the Civil War, the
sudden Appalachian reading with a pretty good poor man's country.
I mean, you could could subsist pretty well. But in
the aftermath of war, a lot of things change. I mean,
one of the devastational war itself, and people don't think
(48:59):
about Appalachian the war, but there was really an internal
war going on here and then you know so much,
you know, so many men were lost because so many
men were either volunteered or were conscripted into both armies.
You know, there are significant numbers of people in the
Southern Appalachian reason they're fighting for the Union. And there's
community warfare you know between you know, kind of armed
(49:20):
malicious uh during this time. And so there's that that was,
and then what they called um impressment, where the particularly
Confederate army come in and say, okay, I need I
need your hawks, you know, and they would write you
out a receipt and say okay, go to the county
seat and you can get compensated in Confederate money, you
know for this. You know, you can't replace your hogs
(49:41):
or your horses or your mule or anything like that
that they're taking in that So the war itself, but
then after the war you get a number of things
that happened. One is that population grows and you know
so many and people had you know, pretty sizeable hundred
fifty to underd acre far before the war. You know,
they have families of like and kids or more, and
so when you die, you divide that up. It doesn't
(50:04):
take many generations to where you've got a farm that's
really not able to support a family and so and
and what do you do well? In increasing there's a
lot of land around here. There's not a whole lot
of good flat riverine farm land, you know, so you
start farming on land you shouldn't farm. And of course
it's just it. It exhausts very quickly, it eroads, it's
(50:27):
you know, and so it's just increasingly hard. And then
other things. You get the changing of the fence laws
for a variety of reasons, where now you have to
keep your animals pinned up. You can't free range anymore,
and so that really cuts into the whole livestock thing.
And and it becomes cheaper because of the railroads to
bring pork in from Cincinnati or somewhere like then, and
then the producer yourself, and so your market's gone, you know.
(50:50):
For another cash crop, you get the excise tax on liquor,
you know, and so all these ways, it's it's just
kind of a huge it's almost a conspiracy. You know.
You look at it and say, you know, everything bad
that could happen could happen, and so it's harder and
hard to make a living on the farm, you know.
And so you know, poverty, and of course education becomes
(51:11):
less of a priority in an environment like that. And
and this is a time when you get people coming
into the region and quote discovering Appalachia and kind of
defining Appalachia is this kind of different, unique kind of place.
And so you get a lot of these what are
called local color writers who come in and they write
these stories, you know, and a lot of the stereotypes. Well,
(51:33):
and at the same time you're also having a in
the eighteen seventies eighteen eighties, you have what's called the
Moonshine Wars in the region where the federal government really
starts cracking down, and so the national press comes in
and they're covering and sensationalizing it and then characterizing these
people as these brutish, ignorant, you know type people. And
(51:55):
so you're getting these images nationally, you know, and everything.
You know, again, it is po already, it's ignorance, it's
and the media back then was probably much like it
is today. They're trying to sensationalize anything they can, probably right,
and so they love these stories of these shootouts between
revenue A that's he, that's right, and and the hat
(52:19):
fields and with coys, you know, and feuge and they
love huge, you know, and so it just all plays
into this image well you know, and that and that
image is perpetuated over the years in just incredible way,
you know, because then you know, so you get books,
you get the uh, the media you get, and then
you get movies. You know, a lot of the early
silent movies worthise, you know what what one historian called
(52:42):
the moonshine and feud movies, you know, and then you
get into music and and uh, those stereotypes in many ways,
and they're just perpetuated about the region. You know. You
see the the bumper stickers around here that people think
are funny, you know, it's you know, it's just paddle faster,
I hear band and chokes. So you know, you get
(53:03):
that kind of thing. This still, I mean, it's amazing
cause we have so many people coming to this part
of western North Carolina from Florida, from New York or
New Jersey or something, and they come here, and it's amazing.
These could be highly educated people, but they you know,
they're fearful, you know, of going outside the Asheville city
(53:24):
limits because of you know those people, you know, and
they really really do fear them, you know, and so
but again it's just magnified and it seems like, you know,
in an era where you know, people are very uh like, well,
you don't stereotype people, you know, we don't do that,
you know, and we look at people's individuals. But the
(53:45):
one group that seems to be fair game. I mean,
all you have to do is turn on the cable TV.
You know, it seems like it's it's it's people, well,
people from Arkansas and people people from the Ozar, people
from the southern Appalachian region. So that's that's fair games. Still,
and so again you get into all these these bizarre
(54:05):
stereotype you know, it seems like what I'm hearing you
say is that poverty was the driver for most of this. Yeah, yeah,
that's interesting. Yeah, and of capturing the region at a
certain moment, you know, when they were in abject poverty,
you know, and then and then extending that, you know,
for time immemorial. You know, if we're talking about poverty,
(54:27):
if you if you think about like kind of the
legs were taken out economically of this group of people,
and if they had been in a place that had
massive river systems for transport, or had incredible crop land,
or had some incredible natural resource that could have stimulated
the their economy. They the whole culture would have been different.
(54:47):
But like, these mountains are so rough and rugged and
hard to live in that when the way they originally
started living was taken out, poverty came in. Like again,
I'm just thinking about how the natural landscape affects different places.
Because if this had been a port, you know, if
there had been an ocean here, like they would have
(55:08):
you know, but this is inland. This is a kind
of isolated again, thinking about how the landscape affects these cultures.
But well it does, and and you can get carried
away on on exaggerating isolation, you know, because there were
a lot there were most people, i mean, particularly by
the late nineteenth century, people are generally not too far
from a railhead, you know, and and they're you know,
(55:30):
the thing that amazes people is that people because you
look at it now and you see all these forests
and everything. But again, i mean, this whole region was
clear cut, right, So this wasn't and there were railroads
up into every covid holler in the region here, uh,
and then but then a lot of it, you know,
the federal government came in, the Forest Service brought it up,
and then you've got national parks and stuff like that,
(55:52):
and so you know a lot of it's now reforested
different as well. So but you know, isolation is is there,
and it limits your opportunity. So again you you face that,
you know, how do I live? You know, and so
you're you're either pretty crafty or you you live at
a very level or you leave. I'll tell you what
(56:13):
Dolly Parton is like fascinating to me. I mean, we
we grew up, you know, listening to some of her stuff, like,
but when you come here in the Appalachia, especially pretty
close to pigeon forage and severe able, there's just something
that the world just loves about this lady that was
really a true Appalachian at a very maybe common Appalachian upbringing,
(56:37):
just you know, one room, log cabin pour and coming
out of that. Her influence in this region is notable.
What I mean by Dolly's influence is notable is the
sheer number of billboards and images of Dolly that you
see here. Much of it is fueled by the Dolly
(56:57):
Parton theme park called Dollywood. I wish they would sponsor
this podcast Saw the Meteator, folks could get tickets. I
digress and I think, I mean, Dolly's obviously exceptional, but
I think she illustrates a lot of things that are
important to the region. One, I think, you know, because
(57:19):
of that whole stereotype about ignorant hillbillies that I think
Dolly illustrates there, you know, and the and in the
deeper you look, you see, I mean, you know, poverty
has a huge impact on this but you have so
many people who have come out of this this region
who are you know, just incredibly creative intelligences, entrepreneurs, I mean,
(57:42):
just creators, you know, and uh, you know there are
shaped by their experience in this region, you know. And
Dolly is obviously you know, to um you underestimate uh
Dolly Parton at your peril. But at the same time,
Dolly has very effectively done something that a lot of
(58:04):
Appalachian people have done. And so stereotypes can be damaging,
but in some ways they can be beneficial. And if
you're smart and you know how to use it, you
make a lot of money off the Appalachian stereotypes. And
Dolly has made a lot of She plays the innocent hillbilly,
(58:26):
nave country girl card. But yeah, you don't have to
look very deep to see that she is a genius
in a lot of Wells. There's a friend of mine
named Wayne Colwell's novelist, and he wrote a book called
Requing by Fire, which is about a community and the
Smoky's when they create the National Park, you know, they
remove people, and these people go to a neighboring community
(58:49):
and they got a bunch of stuff from their barn,
and so they buy an all gas station, you know,
and they kind of put the stuff out, you know,
and make some souvenirs and stuff like that for the tourists.
And so, you know, one day they're sitting in their store.
They you know, the business hasn't been too good since
they first started out, you know, when somebody comes in
and one of the women's kind of playing around. She
she finds an old body, you know, which was her
(59:10):
grandmother's and she puts that on, you know, and then
somebody comes in the store and it's like, oh man,
these are real you know hill billies or whatever, you know,
And then the guys start, well, we're gonna play into
that so they start wearing overalls, you know, and carving
you know, little geehawl womy diddles or whatever, you know,
that kind of playing in the stairs. And so, you know,
it's basically the idea that, Okay, you're gonna have the
(59:32):
stereotype of me, and so I'm gonna play into that
stereotype and sell it back to you. And so that's
what Dolly is doing in any way. She's selling that stereotype, uh,
in many ways, and it's very effective. And I have
to admit that I you know, um, you know, being
in academia, you know, and I kind of played to
the stereotype sometimes. I think, you know, I'll never forget
(59:53):
the look on a on a on the face of
a chancellor and and most of the administrators when I
was on this committ and and uh, we were talking
about something. I don't remember what it was, but you know,
the very serious kind of thing. And so I go,
I kind of had a different view than they did,
and I said, well, let me throw this gunk into
the middle of the table. And they kind of looked
at me like, who are you. Well, they got their attention.
(01:00:17):
You know, I don't really know what to say to
conclude in a statement stating what I've learned. I think
I can trace my deep respect for rural people back
to my dad. He was a banker in a rural
town in the mountains, and when he came home from
(01:00:38):
his white collar job, he didn't tell me about the
people that lived within the boundaries of the city. He
told me stories about the loggers, the moss gatherers, the
cattle farmers, and the hunters, because the people that mainstream
society didn't celebrate. It taught me not to take society's
word for who has value you and who doesn't. I
(01:01:02):
don't know if he did that on purpose, but he
marketed these people to me as if they were legends.
People like James Lawrence by Province and who you've met today,
Roy Clark, Mr Britt Davison our hero type figures to me.
None of these men ever asked for attention. I'm certain
(01:01:24):
many of you can identify people like this in your life.
Aside from being notable woodsmen, their trend is consistent. They
proved a high level of character through the use of
negative things in their life to build something positive. They
didn't let scarcity difficulty. They're hard times defined their life,
(01:01:45):
and they're all humble. None of these men are perfect,
but they have a unique brand of character. I believe
their stories are worthy to be told. There are no
answers in life foul by moving backwards, and I hope
the frequency of these stories doesn't cast too much of
(01:02:05):
a lustful eye on the past. But my hope is
that by looking back will become appropriately relevant for a
successful future. I'm glad to be alive. We were put
here for such a time as This Appalachian Mountain culture
is fascinating, and I continue to stand on the idea
(01:02:28):
that a person who can appreciate their own culture is
more apt to appreciate the culture of another. It's cold,
(01:03:03):
feels spring and favor love, springing way and the red
(01:03:25):
light all I say, You're faint. A many from my tea,
(01:04:01):
only them be Incess
M how many years you think you grew to back
my time, I was big enough to work in a
backer page and that was real little and two thousand
and four, which the last year I grow to show,
I probably was fifty years in the backerup field, you know.
(00:21):
On this episode of the Bargaris podcast, I want to
take you on a journey into the mountains of southern Appalachia.
It will be my pleasure to introduce you to the Clarks,
a family of farmers, musicians, and bear hunters who are
relics of the region's culture. Dr Daniel Pierce is a
professor and author and national authority on Appalachian culture who
(00:46):
will give us a guided tour through its fascinating history.
We'll listen to the life story of this family. Here's
some bluegrass picking, and wade through the fact and fiction
of the regions stereo types. We might even talk about
Dolly Parton. The people that lived, they lived, like I said,
with the earth. They had to make their living. That's
(01:08):
why I'm saying, you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle.
You cannot separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics from
your music. It's a part of life. And that was
what our music was in the mountains. It was a
part of our life. My name is Clay Nukelem and
(01:36):
this is the bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things
forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and
where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their
lives close to the land. This podcast, Fifty Years in
(02:01):
the Backer Field, is part one of a two part
series on Appalachian mountain culture. Check back for part two
called Moonshine, Nascar and Bear Hunting. Also, I want to
tell you again that we're going weekly with this podcast.
Will continue to do our documentary style podcasts like this
one every other week, but on the off weeks will
(02:23):
release what we call the bear Grease Render, where we'll discuss,
dissect and distill the documentary style episodes with a band
of married guests. It's gonna be a guaranteed blast. It's
like the Bear Grease Podcast unplugged. You're gonna love it.
(02:47):
Initial little cabbage right here, you see that right there?
Day But I want to say a cabbage head, Dan
Slaw on each hedge wood when you cut them up,
they make a rash walart. So I know I've had
them for paper didn't eat all of them. Did you
ever grow did you ever grow tobacco? Yeah? What? What?
(03:09):
How did? What did you do with it? The backer
I growed was burly and uh and I growed I
growed it at only field and you grew up commercially. Yeah. Yeah,
that's what I've done a farming besides the magic ros Tobacca.
(03:31):
That's the voice of Mr Roy Clark, not to be
confused with the Roy Clark from the show He Hall.
This Roy Clark lives in Cock County in eastern Tennessee,
in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, which is a
range inside the Appalachian Range. East of his front porch
you can see the high ridgeline border of North Carolina,
(03:53):
and to the north you'll hear the intermittent sound and
muffled barks of his hounds. I've never seen Mr Roy
not wear overalls. It seems he hasn't. Every day pair
and it's going out pair the latter. Looking sharp and new,
Mr Roy looks like he could be from Ireland. In
his younger years, his hair was red, but now it's
(04:16):
a faded shade of gray and white. He's seventy two
years old and he's a living relic of times past,
and you have to take my word for this. He's
a bear hunter amongst bear hunters. He's dedicated his life
to raising, training, and hunting bear hounds. He has a
rich history with the American plothound, a breed of big
(04:40):
game dog endemic to the Appalachians. How many dogs have
you got out here? Mr? Roy? Thirteen fifteen chevente to
twenty three, twenty four, twenty four right here, and I've
(05:03):
got something the barn and that's a bear dog pack,
that's the three patch. Uh. But yeah, I know you,
young dog, that you're doing pretty good? Did I finally
a little bit? Yeah? Do you ever have a dog
(05:26):
that didn't start out very good, that maybe it was
slow to start, that ends up being a top pound
I'll tell you something. Most of the time, to do naturals,
just the one just by, just most time. Southern Appalachia
(05:47):
is a storied region of the United States. It includes
the entire state of West Virginia, the western side of Virginia,
western North Carolina, northwestern South Carolina, eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee,
northern Georgia, in northeast Alabama. Basically, the region is defined
(06:09):
by mountains, and it's roughly the southern one third of
the Appalachian Mountain Range, which runs from Newfoundland, Canada, all
the way down to Alabama. This range includes at least
thirty mountains higher than five thousand feet and the highest
peak east of the Mississippi River mountain Mitchell in North Carolina,
(06:31):
which is six thousand, six eighty four feet above sea level.
The range is an alternating series of ridges running north
and south, which acted as a natural barrier to the
western expansion of the early colonies that would become the
United States. This topographic layout is important because the culture,
(06:52):
like everywhere else, has been shaped by the land from
which it was hewn. In this case, the mountains proved
to be both and eden, but also a custard land
ridden with all varieties of scarcity. I began exploring the
Appalachian regions some years ago in search of the region's
(07:14):
legendary bear hunters and houndsmen of which there are many.
But what I found was more robust. I found a
cultural treasure rivaling any place I've ever visited. It's called
(08:00):
Before we officially meet, Mr Roy, I want to be
clear about something. Appalachia is a very diverse and modern
region of the country. They have swinky coffee shops, distinguished universities,
and target superstores. I've chosen to highlight rural Appalachia to
get a glimpse into what it once was and the
(08:22):
way that it still is to some and frankly, I'm
fascinated with rural culture and have the highest respect for
people like the Clark family. Meet Mr Roy, Mr Roy,
what are your what are some of your earliest memories
(08:46):
living back here in East Tennessee. I remember when I said,
little I cann't even hold a play up players them bottoms,
drip down them that the horses? Is that right now?
What were you all planting by then? Corn and tobacco,
corn in to backing, Uh yeah, and hit a rock
(09:06):
and he didn't make blue places on his side and
stuff because I had to walk up in that plow
and he would eat you on the shade and felt
like it broke agree over something. What year were you born?
Nineteen forty eight, so your seventy three. I'll be shaventy
three in November. So what did what did your family
do back in We're in uh Cock County, Tennessee. Actually,
(09:30):
Daddy drive us Scoob Bush when I was real little,
and then well before that, he'd drove a log truck.
When my grandpa broke his leg twice. I believe he'd
drove a log trip from ten year old up tilly.
So your grandfather was a logger. Yeah, they logged up
the good and they had holem will be under the
dereo put him off over there, and then a little
(09:54):
of one a box car next to railroad trade or
did roll them off, and then they had a little
him on that railroad corn hollow out of here. And
then he drove a school bus and while I was
in school, and then I guess before I was out
of school, he went to work for the county driving
a bulldog instead. There wasn't a lot of money to
(10:15):
be made in this country a long time ago. Yeah, okay,
what what were some of the first things that you
did to make money y'all? Were y'all were going to
getting coal out of Kentucky. We did my grandpa, that's
that track. Like fifteen year old, I'd driving to Kentucky
and we had houling Colen stuff out of Kentucky and
(10:35):
go around and peddle it around. And then we'd Uh.
In the summertime we'd go to we'd go to Henderson
Bill to to his daughters and had peach or church
and apple old church and growed water melon and candle hope.
And we'd take that log truck and haulam in here,
and how peaches and pedal ama out, and how watermelons
(10:56):
and cantle hopes and pedal am. So what do you
what did you do for a living? What kind of
work have you done? When I got out of high school,
I worked a little bit his emotion helper building some
buildings John the Stoke Livan camp down there, and then
I went to Merkan Inca which was a fabric place, Okay,
(11:17):
in a factory. Yeah. And then I went in service
for two years. And then after I got out of service,
I come back to Anca and then come up. I
run Percisions court clerk and got elected for head. And
I farmed all the time that I worked. It ain't
I farmed? And then tell me about your farming. Well,
(11:39):
it was hard work and not much money. It's mostly
what it was. I growed the back and I growed tomatus,
and me and my brother in law and the whole
family has worked into the magus, when we grow a
couple of acres of tom where were you selling the tomatoes?
We've taken them to the packing house in North Carolina.
Oh really, we actually saw some in ten to see too,
(12:00):
but most of the North Carolina where we took him
to the sale. And we've done decent with that for
a while. And thematis got so they figured out I
wanted to drop a price, and you're not make nothing
out of them. And we grow damn per I don't know,
ten or fifteen years, I guess. And and then one
year he come up at uh that we took a
(12:21):
little up bier and uh. And when it comes down
to get the check, we didn't get no money. We
got a bill. We owed them pifty cents a box
or packing so, uh, we are you being serious? I'm
dead serious you, I said, they went in a hole
on him. I said, well, damn, we never paid it.
So I went to I went to Atlanta, Georgia, down
(12:43):
the farmer's market down there, and we was going in
the hole. We weren't even gonna come out that year.
And my brother and I, which is Edward, and my
wife Brendan, and the young ands and and my sister
Diane and her young and they picked the amatis. Edward
would truck them to me down there, and I stayed
three weeks down there on the farmers market and didn't
(13:05):
even come home. And we come out making some money
off of the hold. What we quit raising them today?
Now you but you still raised thems today though I
still raised them to eat. And I raised some lake
crops of tomatus here after day. And I ain't talking
about a big amount. I'm talking about that field right
down our three or four tens, three or four ten
(13:28):
tents of an acre, tents of an acre. And I
actually made more money and her peddling them to these
restaurants and stuff and taking them and selling them. I
made more money off of down Like if I had
fifteen hundred plants out and I could make four dollars
a plant that was like caute, forty five hundred dollars,
that's some money. And the debates, but the middleman got
(13:50):
in the middle of it, took all the money away
from him. And then the back of which you made
a little bit on here, but it wasn't know. So
you grew, you grew backer, you grew tobacco for how
many years, you think you grew tobacco. Actually my time,
I speak enough to work in a backer patch and
that was real little until h two thousand and four
(14:14):
was the last year I grow toch So I probably
was fifty years in the backup field, really growing about
twenty acres or so not to start with it. Yeah,
but on the lift I might have head close to that.
But now we just mostly growed what we had. Fun
eyes are growing at. What he means when he says
(14:37):
that he grew someone else's tobacco is that he's referring
to a government tobacco allotment, meaning a person with the
allotment is able to sell a certain amount of tobacco.
The person can also lease out their allotment to another
farmer to grow as like Daddy's in pappage. In my
(15:01):
grandpa up here, I growed his from time I was
in high school with grandpa's year and uh, he had
about a hype acre about what he had. Tell me,
how how does your bear hunting fit in with your
with your work? I mean, like it's clear that you
have dedicated a big part of your life to bear
(15:23):
hunting with hounds. I had to work back or off
in the followed the year, and some of them would
be a hunting, and I just keep the radio on
and listening and couldn't work back or for listening to
him and stuff for gradnit off and and they'd get
one of going, and I've left the backer born and
laded me up. Check your right doves and hit the
(15:46):
mountain up Janner. I remember one time its running one
and I went up burned packing and they're still on
the other side of the mountain. And I packed the
byron and treat it and killed the byron, had it killed.
When they got to me, I thought that you were
working to baccup a couple of things. When he said
(16:07):
he packed a bear, what he meant is that the
other guy's dogs were chasing the bear. Mr Roy heard
their dogs running the bear, and he sent his dogs
in his reinforcement. He packed them. Secondly, we just grazed
the surface of Mr Roy's bear hunting in this section.
In episode two, We're gonna dive much deeper. I was
(16:34):
born into byar hunting. My grandpa bar Hunt and my
daddy bear hunty. My other grandpa here bar hunting a
little bit it. My great uncle Barhuney it's been some
bar hunting here. I think I was with Pappy and
I was three year old and we was on the
log truck and the gift to first bar Daddy ever killed,
(16:55):
because I remember I remember shutting on top of it
on that log trick. If it's something else, I probably
wouldn't remember. What are your first memories of bear hunting
back in there with your dad and Grandpa? Well, I
remember when I was a six year old, if I
could wake up of them morning when they get, they
wouldn't get. He wouldn't give me up. But if I
(17:16):
could wake up a lot of times she'd let me go,
you know, miss schoo and go. But then we would
go by our hunting and uh, and we would have
to lead dogs to the woods. It got sold that
I'd had to lead the trail. Dog got in front
of the other dogs. I wouldn't big enough to hold you. Well,
when I'd go with Daddy out in the woods and
(17:37):
he would be a hunting a track and if you
put rounder time up around a tree, and then he
didn't make me stay with him, and then he'd be
trying to see which voice are going, and then he
hid a holler for me to bring that dog. Well,
I know when I tied that dog, he was gonna
drag me down. So I know if I turned him blue,
so I'd be in trouble too. So I've just taken
(17:59):
get two hand hold on that leads drop and here
we'd go when I fall down, and Daddy'd catch me
when I got to him. And I know one time
Daddy said, you're gonna have to lead the ramler. We
ain't got enough to lead the dolls. And I told Pappy,
I said, my Grandpa, I said, I ain't wanted to
lead no dollar. He said you had to go with
him soon. And I said, well, I'll tell you one thing.
(18:21):
I might go this time, but the next time I
go by our hunting, I'll be big enough telling so
I ain't leading your dollars. Because son, he'd hearing me
to death. They had to get that down. And they
had this biral here that they had boughten uncle burned
about it in Florida, I guess. And they brought you
back here and they had he had a wild I was,
I don't know about three year old men through four.
(18:42):
And they had food with that byron, food with it
with dogs and stuff. Why I wasn't afraid of it.
Might didn't want to hear it. And Daddy'd get me
and checked me up up on the top of it.
And you talked about wanting office something they had they
had a bear, they had live and uh, I wanted
to offense everybody I didn't about like Grandpa was. He'd
treat him in the barn as an old barn down here.
(19:05):
Every time you get loose, she's bet him up in
a tear poach down. How colin was it for bear
hunters back then to have a live bear? Well, I
never did hear of another bar, except at I got
a corner with Hart dealing him up yanner and and
and and he said that that his daddy had wanted
to store a bar. And that was you know years
(19:26):
or coto. What what about camping and hunting back in
the Gulf with with them, with your dad and grandpa. Yeah,
we'd actually, uh, we'd actually load everything we had on
a on a log truck and you put you dolls
and your food and tarpolian and and everything. I only
can go to the good. And then we'd sleep in
(19:47):
the back of that truck and put some hay down
and step to sleep home and take a tarpolian and
covered over the back of eating, let it come over
the side and cook beside eating and like it. And
when we had the em old jeeves and we'd hunt
that lamb cheeps instead. Roy, how would you describe Appalachian
(20:08):
Mountain culture? I describe it in a way that there's
no better way to grow up, or have you young
and you your grand young inster to grow up in
Appalachian culture than I believe that's the best they are now.
Making money that ain't the best they are, but having
your family and being close to your family and having
(20:29):
good values to come to them. I think it's you
can't beaty. And actually the disastrous stuff like tornadoes and
we'll even flooding and stuff like as and the tornadoes
and stuff. I've never seen one here in mild why.
And I just think that's good cause down to Gwner
in some that flat country they had to worry about
(20:51):
it every time it comes strong. Yeah, I wouldn't like
to live like a Like I said, if you want
to make money, you better go somewhere else. Besides you're
I don't think it u it making money. And if
you can make it is only our to life. I
want to step back a generation and introduce you to
(21:13):
Mr Britt Davis, who is Mr Roy's father in law.
It was a great pleasure to briefly speak with him.
I was taken aback by his story, but mainly how
it seemed to him to be so common. Mr Britt,
How old are you? If I lived on the second
(21:34):
day of June, I'll be nanny ninety. What year were
you born? Thirty one? N one? So you grew up?
You were? Were you born in this hollow? Yeah? Right,
a little dar about And what kind of work did
you do your whole life? Yeah? I farm some, I
log some, and I worked about a year on this
(21:57):
interstate down here, and then went to work for the
County Road Department and stayed there retard. Have you ever
have you traveled much out of Appalachia? No, you've stayed
right here. I went to text this one time whenever
Roy was an army out there, and that's the only
trip I ever made. Really. I lived on up in
(22:20):
the Gulf up Third Well. I'd say we's up there
about full or five years because my daddy got killed
up there, and I enjoyed that up bur lot. How
did your how did your father get killed with a
low log rold over? Really? How old were you? I
was about to have your old Wow? How did that
(22:41):
impact your life? Well? You made it rough on me
for a while. Yeah, yeah, he's up there whenever the
about the time it started, but he got kill when
(23:03):
we lived that a long time for the got So
did you have to kind of were you the oldest son,
so you kind of had to take care of your family? Yeah?
Really so was that a lot of responsibility for you then? Yeah?
We moved back home here up here. Yeah, my grandparents
(23:24):
hit me with it, and I raised a croppoter back
and bought the place where I leave. Mm hmm. How
old were you? I'd say I was about thirteen? Really,
So you you raised a crop of tobacco when you
were thirteen and bought a piece of property. Wow. And
(23:44):
that's the property that we went to earlier today up
at the head of this holler. Yeah. Yeah, so you
bought that place when you were thirteen, I'll be daring.
And so you've lived you've lived there your whole life? Then,
whole life? What what are your earliest memories? Mr Brett,
(24:05):
oh Law, I can I can remember playings back then
better than again now. Really, I can remember my carrying
me and us to stopping and talking to her neighbors.
That was before we moved to the Gold So that
was in the nineteen thirties. Did your family have a car,
(24:26):
had automobile? No? No? What? How did you get around? Walked? Walked?
You didn't Everything you needed you could walk to get. Yeah,
this little stores all around here, three or four well,
I'd say it was in the late thirties or the
early fourties. Before that, there is there were a car
(24:49):
in this country, is that right? Doctor lived right up
Pearl there. He had the first tell me about how
the the doctor were worked in this community. He go
around in the and he's with his horse, and people
wanted to be doctored. They'd tyrant or a wife fig
(25:11):
on the mailbox and hea, he'd ride his horse up
to your house and knock on the door and say
what's wrong? And you finally got the car and they
do the same thing. Do you ever remember being sick
and him having to come to your house, the doctor
on you? Really? What what would you have been sick from?
(25:31):
Maybe the strip th old or or something, and he'd
come give you some penicillin maybe or something. That's what
you doctored with penicillin. Wow. When did electricity come back
in here? I'd say it was about fifty two or
fifty three for what I got it. So you were
in your twenties before you had electricity. Yeah, do you
(25:53):
remember those days? Oh? Yeah? What would what would you do?
Once it got dark? Would you light the house with
that open? Had l lamp? What kind of lamp? Was
the coal burning? And you would what would you do?
You would sit around with the family and just sit
around and go to bed. I guess that's they finally
got a ridio, Mr Brett. Do you remember when John F.
(26:16):
Kennedy died president? Do you remember where you were? Was
that a significant rejective? Where I was where we has
a unter. I was running the road world Tom's Creek,
and I just partly got a paste old man's house
and he come out and run up the road behind
(26:37):
me in holiday and me and and told me about m hmm.
Do you hear what they're saying, Mr Brett? They're saying,
because you uh, because you were the only child, you've
been spoiled your whole life. Do you agree with that?
I wouldn't hardly say that. Wow, what a story. Back
(27:04):
to Mr Roy, I asked Mr Roy what he thought
about moonshine in the mountains. This is what he said.
And remember in part two, we're going to explore this
much more. My daddy and grandpa, an uncle and some
of their close friends and stuff probably turned me against
(27:27):
the drinking and stuff because they stayed drunk all the time.
So you don't drink. No, I ain't never drunk. I know.
We'd go get down peaches and we went and got
a load one time, and the peaches was overwrapped and
they was too shyp We couldn't didn't get to sell
me any but we had probably a hundred thirty bush
(27:51):
along the drug. So they made us hepsied peaches and
they put them in barrels and they made liquor out
of them peaches. And I don't know how many years
they drunk on it. But I don't take the shoulder
any And I always thought to myself, I ain't gonna
never drink because I put up with it my whole
life and I ain't gonna be like it for somebody
(28:13):
had to put up with me like it. Yeah, talk
to me about music in your family? What? What does
how have y'all? Well, y'all play easy. It's been in
my family. It goes way back. My grandmother was a
was a picker, and my daddy was a piker and
a singer and stuff and and I guess it's just
(28:36):
come right on day until So what kind of what
kind of music did they play? Mostly blue grass and
mostly ballot and stuff like that. They've shung And how
you sing? You sing and dance a little bit a
little bit? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe if we can
get them my whole line up here after a while,
we'll we'll draw the sute of this hill a little bit.
Sounds good to me. While visiting the Clarks, I wasn't
(29:02):
shy about asking them if they'd play some music for me.
They obliged. I hope you'll join me in recognizing the
uniqueness of a legendary bear hunter, Mr Roy singing a
song about bear hunting. This is old slew foot. What's
(29:24):
what Songroy? What's what's this song about? It's a battle bar?
And and may I okay? And hi on a mountain
bunch tell me what she fardreck bird looking back at me?
(29:51):
He better eat you ra a boy for its dutlate.
The bar's got a little pie towards the games. Oh
eat figure around the middle, and he frout across the room,
running ninety miles and night, taking thirty feet at you.
(30:13):
Ain't never been cawdy, ain't never feed tree. Some folks
saved lord like me. I saved up my money and
I boughty some bees. They started making honeyway being the
(30:33):
tree cut down. The tree of my honey's all gone.
Oh slu footst made hisself at home. Oh eat figure
around the middle, and he frout across the room, running
ninety miles and night, taking thirty feet at you. Ain't
(30:57):
never been cawdy. Ain't ever been dry. Some folks says
a lot like me. Well, winners coming on, and it's
when he be low the river throws over. So where
can he go? We chase him up the galage and
(31:22):
me run him in the well. We shoot him in
the bottom to listen to him yell, Oh, he's big
around the middle, and he frought across the run, running
ninety miles and nur taking thirty feet Ain't never been cowdy,
(31:43):
ain't never been dry. Ain never had nobody after him
like me. That's good. While we're talking about music, I
(32:06):
want you to give ear to Oh Label Read. She
was born in nineteen sixteen and passed away in two
thousand two. She's Appalachian to the core, a folk singer,
a songwriter, a banjo player, and a philosopher. If you
listen to her talk and sing, you'll get a window
(32:26):
into Appalachia that cannot be replicated. In twenty nineteen, the
Library of Congress inducted her nineteen seventy three album titled
Oh Label Read, into the National Recording Registry. This is
a clip of that recording. Meet olabel Read one in
(32:49):
the mapping Prove the Hills and ballads through the red snow,
seen the lightning bleshing I've heard, but the roll I
haven't known how long. I've been asked many times to
(33:18):
describe my life in the mountains, and there's one point
that I specifically like to make and want to make,
is that I don't believe there would be anyway in
the world that you could possibly describe it. There could
be no fun made of it, because it was a
life with the earth, your elements, as the old people
(33:45):
called it, the birds, the animals, the bees, you knew
every you knew every season. You could tell. You were
raised to kind of tell when a storm was gonna come.
I always tell us because you could see the leaves
turning in the summertime. Particularly in the winter, you could
tell if it was going to snow because of the
(34:06):
base of the color of the base of the trees.
So many things you just grew up with that you
get away from as you go through life if you're
not careful. Now I'm not saying that you go strictly
back to the past, but I'm saying there's no way
in the where all that anybody could ever make fun
our poke fun at the way people were raised in
(34:27):
the mountains, because as far as the music is concerned,
we did gospel, we did blues, we did everything. I
did not play what you would call I guess professionally,
I don't know. The word never just quite suited me.
But anyway, there had to be every nationality in the
mountains at one time for them to know each other's
(34:48):
ways of life. There was communication because I think people
needed one another and they realized, if you see, they
realized it's so much. And I believe one of the
reasons was as they were so close, really and truly,
because we were so close to the earth and the
elements into God's creation. I think that's the one thing
made him know. I think that all and your music
(35:11):
and everything comes through communication with people. And the people
that lived, they lived, like I said, with the earth.
They had to make their living. That's why I'm saying,
you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle. You cannot
separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics from your music.
(35:34):
It's a part of life. And that was what our
music was in the mountains. It was a part of
our life. Our man, Dr Dan Pierce of the University
(35:58):
of North Carolina asked, full is my new friend. He's
a national expert on the Appalachian region, and his love
of mountain culture has fueled his writing. He's the author
of numerous books that helped interpret the region's story in
a significant way. He's also known as u n c
Ashville's professional hillbilly. Meet Dr Dan Pierce. Well, I can't
(36:24):
introduce him without leaving a trail of fodder to part
two of this podcast. Here are a few of the
titles of his books, Tar Hill, Lightning, Corn from a Jar,
and Real NASCAR, but we'll get to all that later. So,
Dr Pierce, all the regions of America have been influenced
(36:46):
by immigration for the most part. Where did the people
from the southern Appalachians come from? Well, there there are
a lot of streams of immigration that come into the region,
and so you know, there is a there. There is
kind of a stereotype that the Appalachians are the Scots
(37:07):
Irish culture plopped down and being unchanged for hundreds of years.
The Scot's Irish were for sure in terms of the
dominant ethnic group that came to this region, but there
are lots of other groups. Are Germans, their English. Daniel
Boone was an English Quaker. You know. You can't think
of a board Appalachian person than Daniel Boone, you know,
(37:31):
and so you know that was not unusual, and so
and other you know, Moravians, and of course, uh this
is something that in recent years that scholars have looked
at a lot. More is that even though you can
go to lots of parts of Appalachia today, you can
go to joining counties here and you'll find only a
handful of African Americans, but there were significant numbers of
(37:51):
African Americans in every county and Appalachian. So that's a
part of that that stream as well. But again the
dominant group where the Scots Irish. And now would we
be in the Southern Appalachians here in North Carolina. Yeah,
that's the way you would in western North Yeah, from
really you know, northeast Alabama, North Georgia through East Tennessee,
Western North Carolina, western tip of Virginia, West Virginia and
(38:14):
eastern Kentucky the southern app that's the Southern Appalachians. So
the the Scots Irish people would they would be a
dominant feature of this region or at one time would
have been. Was this the only place they came or
were there other parts of Can you look at the
whole um what people refer to as the uplands south?
You know, this is like the non cotton belt, the
(38:36):
North Georgia, North Alabama, North Mississippi, much of Tennessee, you know,
western North Carolina all the way through to Texas, Arkansas.
The Scots one, people kind of look at this as
a you know, how can you be Scots and Irish?
And when you know what happens is in the Elizabethan
period the late fifteen hundreds the English conquered much of
(38:59):
our and during that period, and so Elizabeth and then
her successors gave what they called plantations or big tracts
of land to people who would help, you know, nobility,
you who had helped them out. And they didn't trust
the Irish. They were Catholic. They saw him as barbarians
and savages. A lot of the same imagery you're gonna
see when English people come to America and characterized Native
(39:21):
Americans in the same way. It's it's really kind of
kind of very interesting to look at. So to work
their plantations, they imported people across the Irish c from
the lowlands of Scotland. So these are not there's a
lot of misconception in parts of the southern Appalachian region
that they think of there, you know, the bagpipes and
the plaids, and so these were not those Scots. Those
(39:43):
are Highlanders and these are lowland Scots. And so they
come over to northern Ireland and they and they worked
these plantations and they're pretty successful. They're raising sheep, they're
raising linen. They're there for you know, a hundred years
or a little more. But then I think the enemy changes.
Things get pretty bad for you know, rents go up dramatically,
(40:05):
wool market declines, and America is opening up at that point,
and so you see it really hundreds of thousands of
people in Ulster, Northern Ireland, Protestants for the most part,
the Scots Irish begin to make the trip across the
Atlantic Ocean and they come in through Philadelphia. Then they
start moving into western Pennsylvania. Atlants taken up by Germans
(40:28):
and others who have been there before, the Germans and
the English. And so then they head down what's called
the Great Wagon Road, which is now eight one down
through the Shenandoah Valley Road. Yeah and so yeah, and
so they head down through the Shenandoah Valley and then
they end up in western Virginia and North Carolina, and
(40:49):
then as the Cherokee or driven out of the region
in the late seventeen hundreds, they move into the and
my ken lived in uh It was part to North
Carolina then, but it became Tennessee, the the northeastern part
of Tennessee, and then moved down the Holston and Tennessee
River valleys, and my folks settled in just south of
(41:12):
Knoxville between Knoxville and Chattanooga and then moved west from
there into West Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, and so that
whole area really probably the dominant group and nominate ethnic group,
you know, probably you know, half or so or close
to it. Okay, that's a good that's a I was
gonna ask you that, like, how so if it wasn't
all Scots Irish, how much of it was so maybe, yeah,
(41:37):
but they had a you know, a huge cultural impact,
and they brought a lot of things with them. Can
you describe kind of the dominant features of the Scots
Irish and what they did bring over here? And also
my my end question. I don't want to stack them
too deep here, but it's you know, where do we
see that culture still displayed today? You know, and a
lot of things. Again, you can get a little carried
(41:58):
away and stereotype these things. For one, You've got to
understand the way culture works is that it's it's not
and and and later on, particularly the early twentieth century,
people from the outside who come to the region want
to characterize this region is being like preserved in amber
or something. You know, it looks like they're they is
locked in the past. You know, which is not at
all true because culture is always evolving. And when they
(42:22):
come here, of course they don't survive in this area
unless they learn from the Cherokee, because you you know again, okay,
you know, for one thing, these are not hunting people
when they come I mean everything in the British house,
you know, the only people that are hunting are people
in the noble well unless you're a poacher. Yeah, you're
(42:44):
not hunting over there. So when they come here, of
course that's gonna be part of their subsistence. Okay, who
teaches them to hunt? You know, Daniel Boone doesn't come
at this as a he has to learn who's he
learned from. He learned from the from the from the Cherokee,
from the Native of Erkins. In this area, there's a
lot there would have been some positive, friendly relationship between
(43:07):
some of these people and some of the Native Americans. Yeah,
I mean you actually see early on with people like Boone,
there's a period in Boone's life where, you know, and
there were a lot of concerns in communities and with
people about people going native, you know, because there were
things that were very appealing and there were some questions.
Boone was actually captured by the Shawnee and taken into
(43:29):
what's now Oho. There are some questions about did he
have a Shawnee wife, did he have a Shawnee family?
Was Boon tempted to stay with the Shawnee. But but
these people bring a lot of things with them and
the things that they brought. One of course, of the
biggest things that they bring in the music. And so,
you know, a lot of the music that we think
about is Appalachian as traditional and stuff like that is
(43:53):
music that has made the trip across the ocean. The
old ballads and the fiddle tunes and things like that.
You can trace a lot of the music that's even
you know, some of it's you know, a lot of
it's still being performed today. There may be in a
very very American take on it. It may be a
ballad about the about Tom Tom Dooley, you know, who
(44:15):
who conspires with one of his lovers to kill another lover.
You know, that becomes a popular song very later on,
Or about Frankie Silvery's who's a woman who kills ruds
when he gets gets executed. You know. Yeah, well, you
know the ballads we're a big part of that and
those are always tragic, you know, there's there's always that
(44:36):
theme in these things. But that of course, you know,
those things get combined with other influences. For instance, like
we think in the banjo as being characteristically Appalachian, but
it's an African instrument, you know, so that's where that
comes from. So again it gets combined with their their
culture of music, just families that played music in the
(44:56):
social aspects of gathering everybody up, playing music that's legit.
I mean, that is a real part of Advocacian culture. Yeah,
you get these influences that are coming over and then
and again you throw other influences in, but it really,
you know, is shaped by in the eighteen hundreds in
particular about what I call front porch culture, and so
(45:16):
you get, you know, you get music that's suitable for
a front porch or or folk tales or dancing, that
type of thing, you know, is largely influenced by what
the Scots Irish bring and and this is reinforced by
the area. But but you know they're bringing with him.
And again you can get real carried away with stereotypes.
(45:37):
Jim Webb, who was a senator, from what I think Virginia.
You know, you wrote a book on Scottsire is called
born Fighting, you know, and so you can get carried away,
but there is that independent streak of you're not going
to tell me what to do, and that's really reinforced
because people are living, you know, the way that they
the region is settled is very different from than say
(45:58):
like eastern Pennsylvania, where people tend to live in communities,
you know, but people are living in kind of scattered
I mean part and it's partly geography. You know, that
people are living in scattered so there's not a lot
of bottom land. So that what I'm hearing you say
is the geographic features of like we're in some pretty
rough country here, a lot of a lot of topography,
a lot of elevation change and just steep mountains and stuff.
(46:20):
So there there just wasn't a big flat spot for
a big city to be have. It was like some
some family was down in this hollow and another family
was over here, and I mean you had communities, but
that that reinforced kind of isolation independence. Yeah, it works together.
The culture they're bringing with them with the topography really
kind of does reinforce that that sense of rugged or
(46:43):
some people would call it cussod independence that uh, you know,
I think it's still much um there, and I think
again it's a kind of combination of culture and geography.
And another thing that you know is very much part
of that is making lick liquor. There we've said it.
(47:07):
To understand the impacts in the real story of how
Moonshine has attached itself to this region, you'll have to
listen to part two of this series. We're saving it.
I mean, a lot of these people when they came,
I mean one, they brought in their head the knowledge
of how to make whiskey. And in many cases they
you know, they brought us still with them, and so
(47:29):
this is an important part. You know, you look at
how people lived in this region for a long time,
and there's still a few you know, it's primarily subsistence,
you know there and again you know, you you you
throw in other influence because they're not bringing their culture
and plopping it down. But you know, for instance, you know,
the grain that they're going to grow is not barley
(47:52):
or wheat, or it's gonna be corn, you know, which
is not which they learned when they got here. You
know from the Native Americans and so but they you know,
they're raising most of their food, and then they're also
one of the things they bring with them, although there
are a number of them already here that the Spanish
brother are hogs, and hogs are incredibly important and it's
(48:14):
a some people refer to this as a as a
hog and hominy economy because it's corn. You know, the
staples are corn and pork. Dr Pierce, How has this
culture been stigmatized in the negative way nationally? That's my
number one question. Number two question is how have we
glorified it in maybe ways that it didn't deserve. Yeah,
(48:37):
and actually that's those stereotypes cut both ways. It's it's
really interesting. But you see in the late eight one,
Appalachia enters a period prior to the Civil War, the
sudden Appalachian reading with a pretty good poor man's country.
I mean, you could could subsist pretty well. But in
the aftermath of war, a lot of things change. I mean,
one of the devastational war itself, and people don't think
(48:59):
about Appalachian the war, but there was really an internal
war going on here and then you know so much,
you know, so many men were lost because so many
men were either volunteered or were conscripted into both armies.
You know, there are significant numbers of people in the
Southern Appalachian reason they're fighting for the Union. And there's
community warfare you know between you know, kind of armed
(49:20):
malicious uh during this time. And so there's that that was,
and then what they called um impressment, where the particularly
Confederate army come in and say, okay, I need I
need your hawks, you know, and they would write you
out a receipt and say okay, go to the county
seat and you can get compensated in Confederate money, you
know for this. You know, you can't replace your hogs
(49:41):
or your horses or your mule or anything like that
that they're taking in that So the war itself, but
then after the war you get a number of things
that happened. One is that population grows and you know
so many and people had you know, pretty sizeable hundred
fifty to underd acre far before the war. You know,
they have families of like and kids or more, and
so when you die, you divide that up. It doesn't
(50:04):
take many generations to where you've got a farm that's
really not able to support a family and so and
and what do you do well? In increasing there's a
lot of land around here. There's not a whole lot
of good flat riverine farm land, you know, so you
start farming on land you shouldn't farm. And of course
it's just it. It exhausts very quickly, it eroads, it's
(50:27):
you know, and so it's just increasingly hard. And then
other things. You get the changing of the fence laws
for a variety of reasons, where now you have to
keep your animals pinned up. You can't free range anymore,
and so that really cuts into the whole livestock thing.
And and it becomes cheaper because of the railroads to
bring pork in from Cincinnati or somewhere like then, and
then the producer yourself, and so your market's gone, you know.
(50:50):
For another cash crop, you get the excise tax on liquor,
you know, and so all these ways, it's it's just
kind of a huge it's almost a conspiracy. You know.
You look at it and say, you know, everything bad
that could happen could happen, and so it's harder and
hard to make a living on the farm, you know.
And so you know, poverty, and of course education becomes
(51:11):
less of a priority in an environment like that. And
and this is a time when you get people coming
into the region and quote discovering Appalachia and kind of
defining Appalachia is this kind of different, unique kind of place.
And so you get a lot of these what are
called local color writers who come in and they write
these stories, you know, and a lot of the stereotypes. Well,
(51:33):
and at the same time you're also having a in
the eighteen seventies eighteen eighties, you have what's called the
Moonshine Wars in the region where the federal government really
starts cracking down, and so the national press comes in
and they're covering and sensationalizing it and then characterizing these
people as these brutish, ignorant, you know type people. And
(51:55):
so you're getting these images nationally, you know, and everything.
You know, again, it is po already, it's ignorance, it's
and the media back then was probably much like it
is today. They're trying to sensationalize anything they can, probably right,
and so they love these stories of these shootouts between
revenue A that's he, that's right, and and the hat
(52:19):
fields and with coys, you know, and feuge and they
love huge, you know, and so it just all plays
into this image well you know, and that and that
image is perpetuated over the years in just incredible way,
you know, because then you know, so you get books,
you get the uh, the media you get, and then
you get movies. You know, a lot of the early
silent movies worthise, you know what what one historian called
(52:42):
the moonshine and feud movies, you know, and then you
get into music and and uh, those stereotypes in many ways,
and they're just perpetuated about the region. You know. You
see the the bumper stickers around here that people think
are funny, you know, it's you know, it's just paddle faster,
I hear band and chokes. So you know, you get
(53:03):
that kind of thing. This still, I mean, it's amazing
cause we have so many people coming to this part
of western North Carolina from Florida, from New York or
New Jersey or something, and they come here, and it's amazing.
These could be highly educated people, but they you know,
they're fearful, you know, of going outside the Asheville city
(53:24):
limits because of you know those people, you know, and
they really really do fear them, you know, and so
but again it's just magnified and it seems like, you know,
in an era where you know, people are very uh like, well,
you don't stereotype people, you know, we don't do that,
you know, and we look at people's individuals. But the
(53:45):
one group that seems to be fair game. I mean,
all you have to do is turn on the cable TV.
You know, it seems like it's it's it's people, well,
people from Arkansas and people people from the Ozar, people
from the southern Appalachian region. So that's that's fair games. Still,
and so again you get into all these these bizarre
(54:05):
stereotype you know, it seems like what I'm hearing you
say is that poverty was the driver for most of this. Yeah, yeah,
that's interesting. Yeah, and of capturing the region at a
certain moment, you know, when they were in abject poverty,
you know, and then and then extending that, you know,
for time immemorial. You know, if we're talking about poverty,
(54:27):
if you if you think about like kind of the
legs were taken out economically of this group of people,
and if they had been in a place that had
massive river systems for transport, or had incredible crop land,
or had some incredible natural resource that could have stimulated
the their economy. They the whole culture would have been different.
(54:47):
But like, these mountains are so rough and rugged and
hard to live in that when the way they originally
started living was taken out, poverty came in. Like again,
I'm just thinking about how the natural landscape affects different places.
Because if this had been a port, you know, if
there had been an ocean here, like they would have
(55:08):
you know, but this is inland. This is a kind
of isolated again, thinking about how the landscape affects these cultures.
But well it does, and and you can get carried
away on on exaggerating isolation, you know, because there were
a lot there were most people, i mean, particularly by
the late nineteenth century, people are generally not too far
from a railhead, you know, and and they're you know,
(55:30):
the thing that amazes people is that people because you
look at it now and you see all these forests
and everything. But again, i mean, this whole region was
clear cut, right, So this wasn't and there were railroads
up into every covid holler in the region here, uh,
and then but then a lot of it, you know,
the federal government came in, the Forest Service brought it up,
and then you've got national parks and stuff like that,
(55:52):
and so you know a lot of it's now reforested
different as well. So but you know, isolation is is there,
and it limits your opportunity. So again you you face that,
you know, how do I live? You know, and so
you're you're either pretty crafty or you you live at
a very level or you leave. I'll tell you what
(56:13):
Dolly Parton is like fascinating to me. I mean, we
we grew up, you know, listening to some of her stuff, like,
but when you come here in the Appalachia, especially pretty
close to pigeon forage and severe able, there's just something
that the world just loves about this lady that was
really a true Appalachian at a very maybe common Appalachian upbringing,
(56:37):
just you know, one room, log cabin pour and coming
out of that. Her influence in this region is notable.
What I mean by Dolly's influence is notable is the
sheer number of billboards and images of Dolly that you
see here. Much of it is fueled by the Dolly
(56:57):
Parton theme park called Dollywood. I wish they would sponsor
this podcast Saw the Meteator, folks could get tickets. I
digress and I think, I mean, Dolly's obviously exceptional, but
I think she illustrates a lot of things that are
important to the region. One, I think, you know, because
(57:19):
of that whole stereotype about ignorant hillbillies that I think
Dolly illustrates there, you know, and the and in the
deeper you look, you see, I mean, you know, poverty
has a huge impact on this but you have so
many people who have come out of this this region
who are you know, just incredibly creative intelligences, entrepreneurs, I mean,
(57:42):
just creators, you know, and uh, you know there are
shaped by their experience in this region, you know. And
Dolly is obviously you know, to um you underestimate uh
Dolly Parton at your peril. But at the same time,
Dolly has very effectively done something that a lot of
(58:04):
Appalachian people have done. And so stereotypes can be damaging,
but in some ways they can be beneficial. And if
you're smart and you know how to use it, you
make a lot of money off the Appalachian stereotypes. And
Dolly has made a lot of She plays the innocent hillbilly,
(58:26):
nave country girl card. But yeah, you don't have to
look very deep to see that she is a genius
in a lot of Wells. There's a friend of mine
named Wayne Colwell's novelist, and he wrote a book called
Requing by Fire, which is about a community and the
Smoky's when they create the National Park, you know, they
remove people, and these people go to a neighboring community
(58:49):
and they got a bunch of stuff from their barn,
and so they buy an all gas station, you know,
and they kind of put the stuff out, you know,
and make some souvenirs and stuff like that for the tourists.
And so, you know, one day they're sitting in their store.
They you know, the business hasn't been too good since
they first started out, you know, when somebody comes in
and one of the women's kind of playing around. She
she finds an old body, you know, which was her
(59:10):
grandmother's and she puts that on, you know, and then
somebody comes in the store and it's like, oh man,
these are real you know hill billies or whatever, you know,
And then the guys start, well, we're gonna play into
that so they start wearing overalls, you know, and carving
you know, little geehawl womy diddles or whatever, you know,
that kind of playing in the stairs. And so, you know,
it's basically the idea that, Okay, you're gonna have the
(59:32):
stereotype of me, and so I'm gonna play into that
stereotype and sell it back to you. And so that's
what Dolly is doing in any way. She's selling that stereotype, uh,
in many ways, and it's very effective. And I have
to admit that I you know, um, you know, being
in academia, you know, and I kind of played to
the stereotype sometimes. I think, you know, I'll never forget
(59:53):
the look on a on a on the face of
a chancellor and and most of the administrators when I
was on this committ and and uh, we were talking
about something. I don't remember what it was, but you know,
the very serious kind of thing. And so I go,
I kind of had a different view than they did,
and I said, well, let me throw this gunk into
the middle of the table. And they kind of looked
at me like, who are you. Well, they got their attention.
(01:00:17):
You know, I don't really know what to say to
conclude in a statement stating what I've learned. I think
I can trace my deep respect for rural people back
to my dad. He was a banker in a rural
town in the mountains, and when he came home from
(01:00:38):
his white collar job, he didn't tell me about the
people that lived within the boundaries of the city. He
told me stories about the loggers, the moss gatherers, the
cattle farmers, and the hunters, because the people that mainstream
society didn't celebrate. It taught me not to take society's
word for who has value you and who doesn't. I
(01:01:02):
don't know if he did that on purpose, but he
marketed these people to me as if they were legends.
People like James Lawrence by Province and who you've met today,
Roy Clark, Mr Britt Davison our hero type figures to me.
None of these men ever asked for attention. I'm certain
(01:01:24):
many of you can identify people like this in your life.
Aside from being notable woodsmen, their trend is consistent. They
proved a high level of character through the use of
negative things in their life to build something positive. They
didn't let scarcity difficulty. They're hard times defined their life,
(01:01:45):
and they're all humble. None of these men are perfect,
but they have a unique brand of character. I believe
their stories are worthy to be told. There are no
answers in life foul by moving backwards, and I hope
the frequency of these stories doesn't cast too much of
(01:02:05):
a lustful eye on the past. But my hope is
that by looking back will become appropriately relevant for a
successful future. I'm glad to be alive. We were put
here for such a time as This Appalachian Mountain culture
is fascinating, and I continue to stand on the idea
(01:02:28):
that a person who can appreciate their own culture is
more apt to appreciate the culture of another. It's cold,
(01:03:03):
feels spring and favor love, springing way and the red
(01:03:25):
light all I say, You're faint. A many from my tea,
(01:04:01):
only them be Incess
Host
Clay Newcomb
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