Rednecromancer

Quality vs. Quantity

The 32 Annual Appalachian Studies Conference is over and Shawnee State University has welcomed its students back from spring break. I stand corrected (sitting on my ass actually) that the ASA Conference was being held for the first time in Ohio. As one of my mentors, Professor Rodger Cunningham points out, the conference has been held in Dayton at Sinclair Community Collage. (Rodger also corrects my misconception that Akron was the capital of Eastern Kentucky. It must be a county seat of Eastern Kentucky at least. ) It was, I believe the first time the conference was held in an Appalachian Ohio County.

The conference seemed to have a moderate attendance. I see on the history section of the ASA site, that the conference in 1999 in Abington, VA hit the 700 person mark. My experience as an event planner tells me that this conference was around half of that number. More than once I heard comments about presenters and attendees who had planned on coming to the conference but who had been unable to because of budget constraints. This is no doubt due to our economic down turn. I think that those who did attend the event were pleased with the facility and enjoyed spending time in Scioto County. One complaint was the lack of coffee service. Being a caffeine addict, I was more sensitive to hearing this complaint than perhaps others.

Although the attendance may not have been at its peak these sessions did not seem to suffer for quality and if anything were a bit less woolly than they had been in the past. I sensed more of an advocacy and utilitarian nature to the sessions than I had in the past. This is not to say that there has not always been a great focus on advocacy with ASA and there are still papers and presentations that focus on the rarities in Appalachia but this year seemed to strike me with more of an “okay what do we do with what we know?” spirit.

Many of the sessions concentrated on building sustainable communities with industry and agriculture. The theme of the conference was connecting Appalachia to the world through the arts but in reality it would have been more accurate to have just labeled it: connecting Appalachian to the world, period. There were many fewer presentations like: “The Impact of Laplander Feminist Rhyming Schemes on the Bluegrass Music of Appalachian Utah.”. It seems like those who are still in the Appalachian Studies community are more interested in finding ways to benefit the people of the region and less in saying something provocative to get attention or just poking hillbillies with a stick and recording how they react.

I am a bit concerned that as the Appalachian Studies community moves from scholarship for scholarship's sake to a more activist role, that many of the nation's colleges and universities that have supported Appalachian centers and programs may start to withdraw that support. I would normally say good riddance if I thought that there was a substitute means of support but I really don't see how other public and private philanthropy will pick up the slack. One frightening example of this “pull back” is Radford University. I hear that Radford is in the process of dismantling its Appalachian Studies programs. What I find most disheartening about this possibility is that Radford has been one of the most useful programs when it comes to Appalachia.

Much of the work at Radford has been focused on improving the lives of Appalachians in Virginia and indeed within the region. This stands in stark contrast to the pointless scholarship that I rage against at other institutions. I fear that that this move by the Radford administration is due largely to ignorance and bigotry. The ignorance comes from the misguided notion that natives from Appalachian can choose not to be Appalachian. We can call ourselves Appalachians, Americans, Virginians, Ohioans or whatever but the outside world will always see us as hillbillies. The bigotry of course comes from the fact that the public at large thinks that there is something wrong with being a hillbilly. In my contact with the students and faculty of Radford's Appalachian programs in the last decade I have found that this group of people take the common sense approach of fixing the world's perception of what Appalachians or Hillbillies are about without making natives of the region feel as if they have to be anything other than themselves. Being a hillbilly is a good thing.

I was glad to spend a bit of time with folks who love the Appalachian people and who have worked tirelessly on their behalf. It really charges your batteries to see folks who you have known for almost 20 years still going and offers some bit of hope to meet new advocates. Next years ASA conference will be held at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, Georgia on March 19-21. So if you have the time and a couple hundred dollars please think about attending.

I am the only one who sees the irony?

CNN news story on camping

New York Times story on shantytowns

I was visiting my 90 year old granddad earlier this week and he made the observation that economic downturns are slower to impact the rural areas. I have heard other Appalachians make the statement that we know how to do “poor” better than most other regions since we have had so much more practice.

No need for me to go into a familiar rant about how mobile homes aren't such a bad idea, I have done that. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it is easier to feed yourself from your own garden if you have a couple of acres to spare. The damn deer are a problem but that is nothing a shotgun and a few extra freezers can't take care of with the side benefit of more food for the table. ( I am not promoting poaching or out of season hunting, I'm must saying . . . )

I do believe that Americans will permanently change their behavior due to this recession/ depression but I don't think will be drastic as to give up the insanity of moving millions of people to areas of the country that get less than 10 inches of rain a year. On the bright side we probably won't see a Hooverville sprouting up outside of Sandy Hook, Kentucky. Yeah I know most hillbilly towns look like Hoovervilles to begin with.

As a teen I used to eat my breakfast sitting on the floor. My dad told me that he used to do the same thing. Our reasoning is that you can't fall off the floor when you are tired and half asleep. I figure that most of what hurts is the impact; lying there ain't so bad. Same with us hillbillies. We are already camping. We are already sittin' on the floor.

The Appalachian Studies Association Conference

Connecting Appalachia and the World Through Traditional and Contemporary Arts, Crafts, and Music

March 27-29

Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, Ohio

For the first time in its 32 year history the Appalachian Studies Association Conference will be held in Ohio. I am pleased in general that Appalachian Ohio is finally getting recognition and additionally excited that the conference will be held at Shawnee State University in my home county of Scioto. It is not particularly surprising that Shawnee State was chosen as it is probably more accessible than the larger and more prestigious Ohio University in Athens. As far as I know Shawnee State and Ohio University are the only large state schools in the heart of Appalachian Ohio and there are probably few non-educational facilities if any in the area that could accommodate the conference. Shawnee State is also the home of the Ohio Appalachian Center for Higher Education which endeavors to increase college attendance rates in Appalachian Ohio.

Even though Shawnee State is not my alma mater, I have a personal connection to the school. As a staffer for former Ohio House Speaker Vern Riffe, I was with the Speaker when his HB 739 was signed into law at Portsmouth on July 2, 1986 creating the university. I have had many family members since graduate from SSU including my dad. Of course my uncle Ted and aunt Frances have been faculty members of the institution. Shawnee State was also the back drop for my first in person view of President Obama on October 8, 2008. You will recall that this was the rally where Obama's now famous pie story was first told.

If you have a free weekend and $155 to spare you might want to head over to Portsmouth this weekend and attend a few sessions. Unfortunately this is past the registration date so the banquet and luncheons won't be open to anyone who is a late/ on-site attendee.

It is always good meet folks who are interested in Appalachian but I will warn you that much of what is offered at this ( or any ) conference is the type of garbage typical of modern academia. In an effort to come up with something fresh and new the “researcher” latches on to some obscure and atypical element found in Appalachia and magnifies it and “talks” it until it has the appearance of being bigger than it is. A paper is then written by cobbling together a bunch of fifty-cent words with a syntax so convoluted that even Jacques Derrida would want to slap the author. An equally stupid title complete with a superfluous colon is added to the mess and submitted to half a dozen symposiums in hope that one will accept it.

But I will leave it up to the individual to separate out the grain from the chaff.

Do you believe in the American Dream?

This past Thursday evening I got a chance to view Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie at the Wexner Center on the Ohio State campus. As I have mentioned in a prior post, my cousin ( first cousin once removed ) Shane Davis is the cinematographer. The two other principals are director, Jay Delaney and producer Jeff Montavon. All three of these men are from rural Scioto County, Ohio.

The film was exactly what I expected: a sympathetic portrait of the working-class poor who have been left behind when industry disappeared from one of the larger industrial towns in Appalachia. The film does not make any effort to edit away Dallas and Wayne's short-comings but unlike many more exploitive works it doesn't magnify those flaws. It does concentrate on elements that the subjects themselves would consider most important. This is in addition to Bigfoot of course.

Both men are married with children. Gilbert, whose wife appears on camera, has been married for over 20 years and has three children. I apologize for not taking notes so as best as I can remember Wayne has been married for nearly 20 years and has two children. In a rather sweet segment, Dallas' wife explains that he is her best friend. In the same segment she also breaks the news to Dallas that while his kids love him to death, they also think he is nuts.

Wayne works at the carwash next door to his house. Wayne is what most Americans would call working poor. Wayne would like to “get ahead” and he probably doesn't always make the best choices which has contributed to his difficult situation, but the fact is that Wayne works. Dallas is on disability due to emphysema. I don't know if Dallas' condition was brought on by smoking or by workplace hazards or both. But seeing as how many of the jobs in Scioto County were not lung friendly it is likely that Dallas' illness is partly occupational. I can remember the black soot that used to accumulate on the porches in Portsmouth and New Boston when the foundries and mills were still in operation so simply breathing could have contributed to Dallas' lung disease.

These men want to fix up their homes. Wayne needs a $1,500 repair on his waterline and Dallas says he needs a new roof, gutters and downspouts. Toward the end of the film Wayne worries that he may have a lien on his home. This all leads me to believe that Wayne and Dallas own and have owned their own homes for many years. This further demonstrates that these men have provided one of the basic necessities for their families, that of permanent shelter.

Wayne wants to prove to the world and to Scioto County that Bigfoot exists. It struck me as odd that Wayne felt the need to differentiate between the world and Scioto County but listening to the men lament the passing of Portsmouth, Ohio's heyday explains all. I think that Wayne and Dallas love their hometown and southern Ohio. It gives them a sense of place and adds to their identity. Even though these men live in town their hobby takes them to the beautiful forested hills surrounding Portsmouth. My guess would be that even if the rest of the world could not be convinced that Bigfoot exists, Wayne and Dallas would be satisfied if their hometown was convinced.

When an outside Bigfoot researcher encourages Wayne to fudge the date on a photograph while appearing on a radio program and is caught by the radio host, Wayne and Dallas' friendship is tested. Or at least Wayne fears that their friendship has been damaged. In a related segment Wayne feels left out when Dallas travels to Tennessee for a small Bigfoot convention and is recognized for his contribution to Bigfoot research. As a proud Appalachian I was buoyed by how Dallas' fellow Appalachian in Tennessee treat him with respect and kindness while the researcher from California strikes me as a bigger monster than the one they are hunting.

While we may feel pity for these men I think that we can see in them and admire the typical Appalachian values of family, persistence, home, community and friendship. I think that Delaney and crew did a masterful job of allowing these elements to be recorded without forcing them. It is easy to make fun of Dallas and Wayne at first. The American mainstream has been conditioned to poke fun at hilllbillies with such examples as SNL's “Appalachian Emergency Room.” But it is pretty damn hard to keep laughing at these two men without wading into the deep end of hypocracy or jettisoning ones humanity.

A Fatal Mistake

So.

You are working with Appalachian communities and their negativity is driving you crazy.  What did you expect?  Did you believe that your sunny disposition and can-do attitude was going to change 800 years of socialization?  Or did you actually think that the famed Appalachian fatalism was some myth like hillbilly inbreeding and violence?  The inbreeding and violence are indeed filthy lies but the fatalism is one of the defining features of the Appalachian psychology.  But it isn't as bad as all that.

You must first realize that you cannot change these people and you have to find a way to work within their culture.  I also want you to understand that not only is it impossible to change the individual mind sets of these good people, this fatalism is probably a justified and healthy response to centuries of strife that they have had little power to avoid.

It is commonly believed by Appalachian scholars that around 70% of the originals settlers to the area were Scotch-Irish.  The label isn't exactly accurate as this number includes many groups from around the Irish Sea who were neither Scots nor Irish but northwestern English and Welsh.  Some quarter of a million people immigrated to the American backcountry between 1717 and the Revolutionary War.  There are a number of cases of whole villages moving to the new world.

This becomes important for us when we examine the experience of these peoples starting in the 13^th Century.  Life in Europe and the world was brutal at this time. Childbirth dropped the life expectancy of women to 25 years of age and many if not a majority of children never reached adulthood.  But existence along the Scottish borders had the additional horror of cross border warfare with England and  almost constant raiding between lairds and by the Gaelic highlanders.  Why would anyone use mortar to build the walls of their home when the raiders will just pull them down?   We begin to see why these people may have developed a fatalistic world view.

It would seem that some of these farmers in southwest Scotland caught a break when James VI of Scotland became James I of England.  James thought it a good idea to send farmer from the southwest of Scotland to northern Ireland (Ulster) to farm the lands that had been seized from unruly Catholic nobles.  The Scottish farmers were good Protestants and in need of better farmland since they had been plowing rocks.  Unfortunately the displaced Catholics were not pleased with this new plantation. The violent results continue to this day in Northern Ireland.

To add to the frustration of these Scotch-Irish their linen trade began to flourish until the Woolens Act of 1699 and a six year drought brought the happy days to an abrupt end.  The Test Act of 1704 had made it illegal for Presbyterians to hold public office and even called into question the legitimacy of their marriages.  Once again these people were on the move with an invitation from the Penns.  James Logan the acting governor of Pennsylvania actively recruited these Irish Protestants to settle in the western reaches of the colony.  As he told the Penn family, he hoped that these rugged Scots who had been so effective against the wild Irish in Ulster could be a human frontier between the savages and the civilized east.   

These people were probably more in control of their destinies than at anytime in their history but the treaties the east made with the native populations and the raids by enemies both native American and European must have struck the Scotch-Irish and their Rhineland German neighbors as capricious. 

Eventually the wars with the native peoples calmed down ( we killed them all off with war and disease ) and a difficult but sustainable life opened up for these new Americans.  The people of the hills had little in common with the people in the flatlands.  This was especially true in the slave states.  The Appalachian counties were denied equal representation and suffered neglect but for the most part they had their freedom.

The Civil War thrust the Appalachians between two feuding factions once again.  West Virginia stayed with the Union as did Kentucky.  The fighting in the hills was personal and brutal.  And when it was over West Virginia has the unique insult of having to pay reparations to Virginia.  The famed feuds which became a common Appalachian stereotype had more to do with unresolved conflict as a result of the Civil War fueled by a changing economic environment that some innate propensity toward violence.  Indeed Appalachian counties are among the least violent in the nation and West Virginia is one of the few states without a death penalty.

Appalachians have since been gunned down by company thugs and their own military not to mention being swept away in flash floods caused by irresponsible mining practices. I will remind our readers that the Buffalo Creek Disaster took place in 1972.

So Appalachians are a bit negative. Can anyone blame them? 

The reality is that this fatalism is no more than “knocking on wood”.  “If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise,” is a common American saying that captures the attitude of most Appalachians.  All they are saying is that given their experience they aren't going to get their hopes up.  It doesn't mean that they are not going to make the effort it is just that they are going to temper their hope just in case.  It is my firm belief that this caution keeps the average Appalachian from slipping into despair. Once they see this trait for what it is, the mature organizer will be able to accept this negativity as a benign element of the Appalachian culture or at its best a valuable self defense mechanism.

Bigfoot Hills of Appalachian Ohio

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie provides a look at the trials and triumphs of life in the Appalachian foot hills.  Through the experience of Dallas and Wayne, two amateur Bigfoot researchers in southern Ohio, we see how the power of a dream can bring two men together in friendship and provide hope and meaning that transcend the harsh realities in a dying steel town. -- from the official website

 

I got an email from my cousin Shane yesterday with a link to his new movie.  Shane (who is my first cousin once removed or commonly referred to as a second cousin) is a tortured artist and cinematographer.  We usually spend at least a few minutes chatting about our similar interests at most every family gathering.    So this past Strickland family reunion at the governor's residence he told me that his film had been accepted to the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin.  I don't think the news was common knowledge so I kept it under my hat until I got this email.  To give you an idea of the stature of SXSW, the new Harold and Kumar movie will premiere at the festival.

 

On the surface the film is a documentary about two Bigfoot researchers, Dallas and Wayne, and their struggles to get their material reviewed.  In reality the film is about the indestructible Appalachian spirit.  It also looks to be a cry for assistance on behalf of our beloved Scioto County.

Anyone familiar with the Jesco White documentaries may be a bit concerned that this is just another exploitation doc but I am certain that this is not the case.  Shane and his friends have worked with a number of non-profit organizations in our region. Habitat for Humanity is among the better known.  The crew is from the Lucasville-Otway areas of Scioto County which gives them extreme hillbilly credibility.  There may be areas of Appalachian Ohio that are closer to the center of the region but there can be no areas that are closer in spirit.

 

The ethics of this type of documentary also depends not just on how the subjects are depicted in the film but how they are treated afterwards.  The fact that a bunch of folks had to have a fund raiser to buy cord wood for Jesse White while his documentaries were being sold by a commercial distributor is proof in my mind that ethics were breeched.   

 

 

This documentary offers Dallas and Wayne a chance to reach their primary goal of having the mainstream media pay attention to their “research” which is more than I think this pair of buddies had ever hoped for. Knowing Shane as I do and my conversations with Jay cause me to believe that this film is more similar to Country Boy in its treatment of its subjects.  I have witnessed the better angels of our nature with David Sutherland's Country Boys and the power of these small films to draw attention to the real Appalachia.   

This film is all the more poignant for me as this is about my Appalachia.

edited 2-22-08 7:10PM

 

Time to change the Neighbors?

Heading south on SR23 for a visited at mom and dad's the other day, I noticed a billboard that read:

“Time to change the Neighbors”

It was an advertisement for a national residential builder and developer.  As a matter of fact when we were hunting for our last house in Virginia, I looked at one of their “developments.”  It was basically the same type of development that we were moving from only it was located in a rural area with larger lots.  It was still the same kind of neighborhood where everyone is from someplace else and nobody stayed for more than four years.  This is one of the three or four simple reasons that America is such a Charlie Foxtrot.

Rednecromancer is a website dedicated to Appalachians both at home and abroad, (any place that ain't Appalachia) but it is also a site dedicated to global hillbilly world domination and the hillbilly way of life.  You can find hillbilly traits among non-hillbillies and in areas outside of Appalachia.  Not surprisingly these areas often have high concentrations of hilljacks. My current neighborhood is a good example.

I have neighbors on either side.  Both are hilljacks.  Bob is from the Stubenville area.  He is an accountant, Viet Nam vet, widower, newly-wed and Freemason.  Lynn on the other side is only the second owner of a nearly 90 year old home and native of West Virginia.  Lynn is likewise a widow but newly engaged.  Kathryn, Lynn's daughter was among the various kids who came out to see my band and the other bands some 15 years ago.  One of  Lynn's son's did some student teaching at my old high school when he was a student at Marshall University.   Bob and his new wife Suzanne and Lynn had a party for the purpose of introducing us to the neighborhood.  It was kind of like a belling.

Most of the other parents I meet in the school yard are from this community and a good many of them went to this very same school.  We often find that we have friends in common and I didn't even grow up in this community.

Staying in one place is good.  I know that there is a wanderlust streak in many hillbillies but I think the vast majority like to sink their roots deep down and around the rocky hillsides.  But it isn't just hillbillies who find comfort in familiar surroundings and continuity.  Most human being do.  Problem is that modern-popular culture and television has worked to make a good many people think that they need more than they have and that moving in order to take a job to make more money is a good idea. 

It ain't.

Don't misunderstand me.  Appalachia is having a difficult time providing a living for native hillbillies. This is saying something seeing as most hillbillies need much less in the way of material objects to be happy.  So one cannot blame the folks who move from the hills so they can provide the basics for their families.  This is probably why hill folks get so homesick. They are actually happy living in the hills among their own folk. Most people are.

It flies in the face of being politically correct and multi-cultural but research on “happiness” is demonstrating that living in a homogeneous community is one of the greatest factors when it comes to being happy.  To be honest I think I lot of this “happiness” crap is just that and only goofy American academics would think that it would be possible to quantify happiness but this is the results of the findings.  Oh they want to say that Iceland and Denmark are happy because they are socialist, and they may be but they are also happy because they are about as homogeneous as you can get.  I am sure however that some dolt will quote some exceptions that will do nothing more than prove the rule.

Typical xenophobic hillbilly?  Not at all.  I neither fear nor hate the other.  I do understand how being with folks who see the world the same way you do can be less stressful.  I also think that America is large enough to handle a patchwork of communities without cramming diversity down each others throats.

Another bit of research some years ago by a Finnish group found that grandmothers were critical to the health and development of children.  This explains why women live on after  they can no longer have children of their own while men remain fertile but live on borrowed time after 70.  It is pretty hard to be a good grandmother living in Tampa while your grandkids are living in St. Paul.  So we have a double whammy here.  Folks who move their children away from their parents for work and folks who abandoned their grandchildren for Miami and Scottsdale. 

Some sledtrack then gets the great idea of bringing school kids in after school to retirement centers so that the children have a place to go after they get off school and before their dual income parent get off work and the old folks have something to distract them from the fact that they are about to die, probably alone.  And I am sure that there is probably more than a few government grants to “facilitate” such encounters. 

I got an idea.  Let's stop moving about the country and destroying our nurturing communities!  Tell the big money Delberts to move the jobs to where people already live and preferably to a place that has water.  If your old and cold put a kid on your lap instead of moving 1,000 miles away where you expect the federal government to rebuild your home after every hurricane.

Our neighbors are fine.  It's our minds that need changing.

Were you born in a barn?

Versions of this idiomatic phrase asking someone to “shut the door” are universal.  The Russian version is “were you born in an elevator.”  This site from the UK gives a fairly likely origin of the phrase in English.  It also removes some of the irony of a Christian using the phrase in a derisive fashion.  Christ was after all born in a barn.  Most of us Americans (the unlucky and the Appalachians) are today born in hospitals unless our parents were hippies.  Even the current fad of converting barns into houses shouldn't add to the barn born population.  Although hippies are some of the most keen for the barn to house craze.

There was a time in the western world when people and livestock occupied the same living space.  I reckon it was for heat and security.  There have been recent studies that suggest that children raised in close proximity to livestock have a much lesser incidence of allergies.  Of course there is that whole bird flu thing.

I don't know anyone in my family who was born in a barn.  I was born in Mercy Hospital in Portsmouth, Ohio.  It had a hexagonal chapel with stained glass windows that dominated the front of the building so it was almost like being born in a church.  My dad had to demolish it a few years ago when he was the engineer for the local group of hospitals.  The old hospital with its asbestos and such could not be made safe for the patients so it was a difficult but rational decision.  I think dad was able to save the glass.

Although the living generations of my family have been born in hospitals or at home, some of us have lived in barns.  Some have lived more than once in a barn and some have died in them. 

My grandma died in a barn. 

To be honest it was an addition to the barn that was built when my uncle Ted moved back from Kentucky.  The barn had been converted into a home by my grandpa and older uncles when my grandparents' third home was destroyed by fire.  They lived in the chicken shack while the barn was undergoing its transformation.  Living in a barn may protect you from allergies but I reckon it provides you with no special defense against Polio.  My mom contracted Polio when she was a little girl of two years or so. With luck and the Shriners she was left only with a crippled foot and a slight limp.  She suffers the effects of post-Polio syndrome now but it beats the hell out of a short life in an iron lung.

You would hardly know that the old farm house was once a barn, it has white with its deep green trim and tin roof. It is cliché to talk about sleeping under a tin roof in a steady rain but there is a reason for that.  What I wouldn't give to fall asleep while my grandma rubbed my creek wadding tired back, under the portrait of Jesus while listening to the steady drumming of the Appalachian rain. 

The house is still there and my cousin Anita and her husband Mark have raised their family there.  Anita spent her last few years of high school in the barn before she went off to be a soldier.  Her childhood home burned and my grandpa sold the old home place to uncle Harry, Anita's dad.  Grandpa was ready for a smaller place closer to his favorite coffee shop where he would hold court with young men (newly retired 65+ crowd) and talk politics.

My uncle Harry died in the barn some years after grandma.  He was sitting at the kitchen table when grandma came back to get him.  I am glad he was there.  I am sure that made grandma's trip back to get him that much easier.  He recognized her immediately.

My grandpa died in the hospital at 92. I reckon that was 12 years ago.  My dad would stop in to check on him as dad made his rounds about the hospital.  The last thing grandpa said to my dad was, “Don't work too hard, Mike.”  Grandpa never thought anyone could work hard enough so that was quite a compliment to his son-in-law.

Grandpa had worked hard all his life and he could be cruel at times.  He was not cold but like many adults who are denied a childhood he could be a bit mean.  I have heard stories of grandpa living in a barn as a child after his father died. He was forced to work to help provide for the family and would often scour the railroad tracks for coal that had fallen from the coal cars.  And no this was NOT during the Great Depression; it was prior to WWI.  My great-grandmother (whom I obviously never met) was reported to have thought that Christmas trees were pagan and would not allow one in the home.  I am not sure what they would have decorated the tree with in the first place but getting a tree would have been easy and free.  When my grandma was older and tired and threatened that she was not going to bother putting up a Christmas tree since all the children had trees in their own homes, grandpa would always go up on the hill and bring down some little Charlie Brown tree. 

Grandpa loved toys.  The boys would often get him those naughty items like the guy-in-the-outhouse-who-pees-on-you if you open the door or somesuch item that used to be found in the cheesy tourist places back in the 1960s.  He had a mechanical chimp that screeched and played the cymbals that he just loved.  You pushed a button on its head and it would make this awful racket.  Grandpa would grin and flash his gold tooth.  At 90 he was still that poor little boy. 

The X-mas lights and Satan Claus are everywhere this Christmas and it is enough to shove even the most light hearted and tolerant Christian over in the dour, killjoy camp with my great-grandmother and John Knox.  I also risk excommunication when I proclaim that Christmas owns Easter.  Christmas should remind us of what great potential each child holds and how special the joy and wonder of childhood is and how it never leaves us no matter what we suffer.  In this spirit and on the more noble side of the excess of Christmas are the toy drives for the disadvantaged children.  As an example my friend Dan and some members of his woodworkers club build hundreds of beautiful wooden toys every  year.

Of course there are the unreformed Scrooges who are critical of these toy drives and argue that they just reinforce the behavior that leads to poverty.  I have news for you Skippy, the poor you will always have.  Ignoring poverty will not cause it to go away or cause people to be more responsible.  But those who believe that poverty can be cured are missing the point just as well.  I thank God for this broken world where I can prove and improve my soul by doing what is right.  It is like sniffing the mimeograph sheet of the quiz that you know you have most of the answers to.

Giving a gift to a child at Christmas is the right thing to do.  I doubt my grandpa would have been any less of a hard worker had he enjoyed a Christmas tree or a toy but he may have been a bit less harsh as an adult.  Childhood is good for children and it is up to us to insure that every child gets as much childhood as possible.  It is no easy task as  there are so many things that can intrude on it.  Obviously poverty, but there is the loss of a home perhaps by fire or flood.  Serious childhood illness robs many children of carefree play.  The death of a parent or custodian is nothing a young child should have to endure. A child doesn't have to have been born or live in a barn to deserve a gift at Christmas.  All children are to be pitied since eventually time and experience will take their childhood from them.

Were you born in a barn?  Shut the door!  But please keep your heart wide open.

Been Gone

Hey all you good hillfolk.

I have been unable to post for the past few weeks as we have been in the middle of moving.  Yes, I am back in Ohio and I beg my close friends to forgive me for keeping this all secret.  There were multiple reasons for not mentioning the move on the site but I have to admit that much of it on my part was a fear that I would jinx it like last time.  Us Appalachians are a superstitious bunch.

Needless to say the PO Box in Virginia will be useless as soon as the forwarding order runs out.  I reckon I will get a new one here in central Ohio.  All other contact info is the same but if you have sent an email you may want to resend as I just downloaded a thousand or so emails and I am sure my server dropped a few.

So I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving and I hope to be posting regular as soon as I can get Larry the Cable Guy to hook up my broadband.

Hillbilly Super Hero

You know how us hillbillies like to traded for stuff.  I just traded one of our readers, Michael Craine, some stickers for a sketch of Rednecromancer's icon.  Actually I would have sent Mike the stickers regardless so his hard work on this bit of artwork was just out of the goodness of his heart.

I have thought about the idea of a hillbilly super hero for years.  Actually some of us regulars at the Empty Glass in Charleston, WV would often brainstorm the notion after a few beers.  Sometimes we would get crazy and dream about Tim Truman heading up the project.  Tim who is a famous comic book artist is also a native of Gully Bridge, WV.

 

I could see this character as a revenant who embodies the Appalachian spirit.   A revenant is usually the spirit or reanimated corpse of a victim of a crime or injustice who returns to seek revenge.  This is an interesting but not so common literary feature.  The average hillbilly would be most familiar with Clint Eastwood's characters in Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter.   Appalachian horror writer, Scott Nicholson uses this device in his recent novel, The Farm.  All the same revenge, while understandable, is not a positive motive for any action from any hillbilly in any form living or dead so I would be uncomfortable with the traditional idea of a revenant.  “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.”  My preference would be our hero aids and protects a community of hillbillies as opposed to avenging a wrong. Hey, you can still open up a can of Whoopass while protecting folks.

 

So why don't some of you folks who like to write fictions try your hand at spinning yarns about our hero? The only thing that needs to be a constant is that he (or she) is a mysterious hillbilly who helps other hillbillies in need and then slips away.  In my head he is not exactly an Uncle Sam  or John Bull (spirit of the British People) but similar.  He would appear differently to any community that needs his assistance.  Indeed he my not be a he at all.  Hints of his background would enhance the mystery but it would be breaking the rules to tell the reader exactly where the “stranger” was from or who he actually was.  Pretty open ended guidelines other than that.

Come on give it a try.

Comic and literary heroes

GrimJack

Solomon Kane

Eternal Champion