Appalachia is a region that extends from southern Maine to northern Georgia.
Thirteen states and some 406 counties are encompassed in this region. West Virginia is the only state that lies completely within the Appalachian region.
Approximately 22 million people live in Appalachia. This region is 42 percent rural. Many negative stereotypes about Appalachia and its inhabitants are depicted in the media.
Risk factors for Appalachians include heart disease, stroke, accidental injury, respiratory illness, and cancer. Common Appalachian values: Loyalty to family; Independence; Self-reliance; Modesty; Pride; Love of the home land, and Religion—all are part and parcel of these inherited values.
In four books on Appalachian culture that I gathered and compiled after spending more than three decades traversing the seemingly secret hills and hollows of so-called mountaineers, the backwoods and backwater wilds throughout Southern West Virginia, I teamed up with my former student and colleague Vincent Sweeny, to produce a trilogy titled Songs of the Whippoorwill: an Appalachian Odyssey, and another volume, Appalachian Chronicles, all of which are available at Tamarack in Beckley, as well as from various online bookstores.
My books are also designed to be read by my former students for free online if you have the Kindle technology. The books range in price from about $10 retail to about $25, depending on one’s source of purchase.
Scores of Appalachians proved worthy subjects for my prose. They included not only the heart of the deeply forested hills but also the soul of Appalachian culture throughout the region. They represent the strongest refuge of the old lifeways of kinship networks and multiple skills of self-sufficiency.
In the Appalachian countryside, there’s no telling or predicting what you might see on any given day: old log cabins, plywood shacks, trailers, petite brick abodes, big white farmhouses, cinder block remains of early gas stations, and abandoned arched structures of mysterious purpose.
Most dwellings have satellite dishes and flower and vegetable gardens. And everywhere there are footbridges, across numberless streams.
For me, it evokes that entwining of romance and tragedy that seems the essence of Appalachia herself.
In Volume I of the Whippoorwill trilogy, you will find in the prologue: “They are the original hillbillies. They live alongside the hills, in hollow after hollow. They are the Appalachian people, the hill people.
“And yet, their folk and families are found deeper and deeper in remote hollows, driven almost to extinction by the region’s poverty and by a society that has little use for their ancestral skills and abilities.
“The confusion about the much-publicized region of Appalachia—often citing Southern West Virginia as its heart and soul—stems no doubt, from the stereotypes surrounding it. When most people, especially outsiders, think of Appalachia, they commonly think of poverty, because that’s what they have seen portrayed in magazines and on TV.”
On page 21 of volume I, there is a story about a sure-shot granny that sends buckshot at dark-plumed gobblers; followed by stories about moonshiners, coon hunters, herbal gardeners, wild mushrooms, hunting with mules, snake hunters, Old Time Religion, an old fiddler remaining rich in memories, Appalachian clogging, a whistling preacher who reproduces bird and animal sounds of all kinds, and a two-fisted minister who wages war in the pulpit.
There’s a farrier who puts his heart into shoeing horses, a catalog of old folk remedies, a little red schoolhouse story, and different speech patterns of the hills.
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In Volume II of the Whippoorwill trilogy, there are stories about a one-hundred-year-old shoeshine man, a one-hundred-year-old Beckley midwife who delivered some 1,000 babies in Raleigh County, charging only $5 per patient, and staying with each mother and child for a week to make sure all went well; a Clay county man who dressed up in loin cloth like Tarzan and posed for pictures during the Great Depression for 25 cents a shot; a Rhode Island rooster in Monroe County that sang along with the National Anthem; a two-fisted lawman who became the Buford Pusser of Bradshaw; a Welch man who kept landmark station open for 60 years; a Mercer farmer who planted crops according to the Zodiac and raised bumper crops; a bull-riding sheep dog that hitched rides in from the pasture; a grandfather who packed his oxygen tank on a 4-wheeler and hunted gobblers; a possum that makes its home in a kitchen cabinet of Hinton woman; and eggs that say, “take me, don’t take me” on a hillside chicken farm.
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In Volume III of Songs of the Whippoorwill, stories abound on topics such as ‘Fox hounds pummel the moonlight trail,’ community given ‘Odd’ name by accident, veteran vacuum cleaner man knocked on doors for decades, Sophia farmer rides herd and runs her ranch alone, power of faith—’give me that old-time religion,’ a Raleigh man who raised fierce fowl for cock-fights across the country, outhouse advice: ‘don’t fall through the hole,’ old coal camp sites that offer a chance to reminisce, returning pilgrims say it’s good to be home, and doctor writes disabled veteran a prescription for ‘fishing.’
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My stand-alone fourth book, Appalachian Chronicles, includes many folk who belong to a vanishing culture—they are hillbillies. It offers a moving, intimate look at the mountain people of Southern West Virginia, considered by many as the epicenter of the Appalachian expanse, all the way from Maine to Georgia, following a ridge line that extends for more than 1,000 miles.
Appalachian Chronicles does not profess to be a sociological study full of facts and figures. Rather, it offers a look into the soul of a small, almost totally cut off world. Some folks are sustained by their religious beliefs; some are supported by welfare; some are disconsolate about their future—but all are survivors of a culture that no longer has much use for the proud pioneer spirit of their forefathers.
The work offers a tough and yet touching tribute to them all. It brings a quietly fading region and its people to life through their talk, their attitudes, and their behaviors. And it is refreshingly devoid of both condescension and pity. On the contrary, the tome presents a dramatic and remarkable addition to the faint and feeble literature that exists regarding the mountain inhabitants of our amazing, historic province.
The sly country wit and wisdom contained in this volume is reminiscent of folklore and myth brought to the region by settlers in the early 18th century, those seeking religious freedom and sovereignty over their own lives.
By establishing residence in the greater Appalachian wilderness, away from the so-called civilized mechanisms of government, the independent-minded immigrants could operate their whiskey-making stills with impunity—in other words, without fear of official reprisals or taxation.
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Top o’ the morning!