Don Pedi

Don Pedi, Renowned Old Time Mountain Dulcimer Player; Born in Boston, rambled around until he found his home in the mountains; Marshall, North Carolina:

“I got interested in traditional music through the folk revival in the sixties, Bob Dylan and all that stuff. There was a big festival in Newport, Rhode Island. I went to see Bob Dylan and all these kind of folks and ended up seeing these tradition musicians from out of the mountains. (After that) I just rambled around for a while. Met some fellows in Colorado and moved back to Asheville (NC) with them to play. 

I’ve lived most of my life in Appalachia. When we came in to North Carolina from Tennessee, across them mountains my whole energy shifted, like something settled in my soul. I felt like I was home for the first time in my life. That was 1973.

Learning to play the mountain dulcimer, I saw somebody do it, Richard Farina and his wife Mimi Farina, Joan Baez’s sister. They told me about Jean Ritchie. He had gotten his dulcimer from her. I went down to that Newport festival and saw her (Jean Ritchie) and these other traditional players and got real interested in that kind of music. 

When I moved back into the mountains, I moved back in with people who had lived there for generations. My neighbors to this day still plow with mules and horses. 

I just play the dulcimer. I don’t read a lick of music. I just play the dulcimer.

(Music in the mountains) is a source of pride, a source of self-betterment. It’s a history. These old songs talk of actual events. These songs are about real events that took place. That’s how they documented and kept the stories alive. A lot of the older music that came over from the British Isles, they kept that going and then it changed and developed into our music. (Mountain Folk) kinda shed the ornaments of that music and added the rhythms of African American music and Native American music. That’s how we got our version. 

The importance of it is and the differences of it, after World War II is when I see that it really changed. I realize the Bristol Sessions were 1927 but people were still playing pretty much traditional stuff. Some of the old time traditional musicians are still around but most of them are dying off now. There are pockets of people preserving the music the way they learned it from earlier generations. By this time, once bluegrass started, after World War II and the beginning of the folk revival it began to change. Musicians started to get themselves out of the way of the piece. My innovation is that I play them on the dulcimer, these fiddle tunes and such, but I’m not changing the tunes. Jean Ritchie for example, her innovation was to play counter melody to her voice because that just suited her. 

For the most part, the ballads and the old fiddle tunes people played them like they had learned from previous generations, often times family members. What changed with the folks revival and with bluegrass is that it now became ‘my performance of this piece, what can I do to change this and make it different?’. To me, the older way is what I cherish and preserve. 

I’ve carpentered, cooked, whatever it took to support my art habits. I do visual art and things but music is pretty much my livelihood. 

I think culture has to do a lot with your positioning, like class. I came up kinda poor, working people and when I moved down here I moved in with people who worked the land and got by. A lot of my neighbors were tenant farmers when they were younger. I have nothing against having money. I wouldn’t mind having more but it becomes a different way of looking at the world. 

The word hillbilly? It depends on how you take it, how it’s presented. I'm proud that somebody calls me a hillbilly. It’s a lifestyle that I embrace.”

Jennie Sams

Jennie Sams, Age 8, Harlan, Kentucky and Manchester, Kentucky:

“I live in two towns because my mom and dad have split custody of me. I kinda prefer Clay County because that’s where I grew up. 

I like living in the mountains because you get to hunt. (I’ve hunted) deer, squirrels, rabbits. 

My brother, he don’t live with us. My dad has a girlfriend and my mom; she just works. 

Sometimes I have sleepovers. One of the fun things I like to do is go to the waterpark. I think it is in Pineville or Barbourville. Barbourville is where it is at. I don’t know how this happened but I went down the blue slide and I came off my inner tube. It got stuck. I got it unstuck and got back on it and then it came out from under me again. At the end I went head first into the water, back flipped and then went into the splits. I landed back up on my feet. I don’t know how that happened. 

Once I got bitten by a dog. It was thanksgiving. We had ate and it was the next day. Me and my sister and my cousin went outside. We were sitting on the swing and my sister was gone and my cousin was gone for 5 seconds and I went to pet the dog and it bit my face. I had to go to the emergency room. First, we got t-boned by a truck on the way to the emergency room. My uncle was behind us so me and my mom, my dad and my brother and me got in the car with my uncle. So as soon as they started trying to put stitches in my face I started screaming. They had to give me medicine to knock me out. Then when I woke up they were still doing it and I threw another fit. I think I was four or five. 

My mom’s dad worked in the coal mines. In the coal mines you have to dig the coal and put it in carts and push the carts and then put it on coal trucks. The coal trucks take it to where it has to go. They use it for electric. 

My mamma likes to do flowers. She’s usually cleaning, sweeping, mopping. She does the work and my aunt and cousin live with her. My cousin wants everything. All she eats is sweets and stays in the house. She never goes outside. I have to drag her to get here to come down. When I get her to the stairs she says ‘OK, OK I’ll go’. I have to drag her to the first stair, then she’ll go. Then I kinda have to drag her out the door on her feet. She don’t want to do anything. I have to make her do it.

My aunt’s car’s quit working.

I’m a hillbilly. Hillbillies usually don’t dress up.”

Earl Moore

Earl Moore, Working on Masters in Computer Security Administration, Age 39; Hindman, Kentucky (Frog Town):

(Today is Earl’s Birthday. Happy Birthday Earl!!!)

“I was born in Pikeville, Kentucky at the Pikeville Hospital. My parents had the local CPA firm (Hindman). They always did books and all that for all the coal companies so I got to know all about the coal mines and stuff without going into the coal mines which was a good thing to me. They were on top of the old Ben Franklin Store originally, which is where the Artisan Center is now in downtown Hindman. That used to be the Ben Franklin Dime Store, general store. I loved it because I could just run down the steps and get me a candy bar or whatever. After that they moved behind the new courthouse. 

I experimented with drug use. It’s prevalent in the area. It touches everyone in the area. I fell into that circle. In this area you feel like there is nothing to do and that gave me something to do. That was a very dark time in my life, a low point. I saw the error of my ways though. Luckily I now see things from the other side of drug addiction. I just hope that kids can understand that there is really nothing good that comes out of drug addiction. You are just wasting your life away. When I look back I wonder why I thought it was fun. There is nothing fun about it. It encompasses your whole life. That was a very, very bad part of my life.

Never wanted to work in the coal mines. I’ve got family that has worked in the coal mines. I just saw what it was doing to people’s lives. They would be under there and their backs would get so bad and their lungs, just all the health risks that came with it. It’s one of those risk/ reward things. I just didn’t see the reward being worth the risk of being under there you know. The coal crashing on your head or knowing you are coming out of there with black lung or a hurt back. That’s guaranteed if you go underground. That’s basically what you see around here now. Underground is what is meant for you after you are dead, not for while you are living.

I’m presently working on my Masters in Computer Security Administration. What I love is building guitars, artsy stuff. I hang out down at the Hindman Artisan Center’s luthier shop building guitars. Doug Naselroad (Artisan Center Resident Luthier) showed me kind of the ropes, got me started, got me on my feet. I’m in the process of building my own shop here in Frog Town. 

I bought a house in Frog Town, just down from my mother, of course, because my whole family was born and raised there. My great grandmother lived there. The old barn is still standing where she had her cattle and horses and so forth. We are talking about back in the early nineteen hundreds. 

I loved growing up here because it was a nice family atmosphere, especially in Frog Town. Frog Town is where the community kind of gathered. That’s where all the kids got together and played. We had whiffle ball games, we road our four-wheelers, we could hit the mountains, go hiking, just beat down a briar patch with a stick. All that kind of stuff is what we ended up doing. I feel like I’m the last generation that was raised doing the mountain stuff. I was lucky because I grew up with the (older) group there in Frog Town that knew the mountain stuff and passed it down to us. I’m sure I don’t know as much as my grandfather did; but I did learn a lot of the old traditions and stuff.

I just hate that the old traditions are being neglected by young folks because of video games, MySpace, Facebook social networking and all of that. I was talking to a kid the other day who was heading to Natural Bridge State park to go hiking. I ask him why he didn’t just go hiking here. He said he would get lost here. I ask if didn’t know how to count hollers and creeks and ridges as you go by to know how far away from home you are. He said, ‘what are you talking about? Ridges?’ I said really? I told him, ‘me and you need to go in the mountains sometime so you know the way to get around this area’.

I do have so many great memories of growing up here. I remember the Christmases growing up, Christmas and the holidays because the families get together, spending time together. At Christmas we would meet at my granny’s house. We would all get there about six because we would all do our other Christmases first. That would be Christmas Eve actually. Christmas Eve was the presents and all that. That was when the kids would have all the fun. That’s the part I remember and enjoyed the most because we were all together. We would have 25 to 30 people together at my grandmother’s house. Here we all are sitting in the living room with everybody opening their presents individually. We would go around in a circle. You got to see everybody’s present, the enjoyment and togetherness you get from that. 

Times like that, staying up in my granny’s attic, me and my four cousins, sleeping up there, messing around and having a good time playing poker, the family poker game, nickels and dimes. It wasn’t like we were making fortunes. At the end of the night if I made 20 dollars I did good, I had a great night.

Now it’s not the same. I have uncles; grandparents that have all passed away and I miss that part of the family although I know they are off in a better place. I’m here without them so I’m selfish in that respect. 

I don’t know where Appa-Lay-Sha is; Appalachia is where I’m at. Honestly, growing up I thought the word hillbilly was kind of a bad thing but now I love it. As I have grown older and come to know what a true hillbilly is, I’m proud to be one. I listen to a lot of the band Goose Creek Symphony, Charlie Gearheart. I started listening to them when I was 12 years old. I went over to a bar in Floyd County when I was 14 to hear them play. Folks slipped me in to watch the Goose Creek concert, which is amazing to me. It one of those lasting memories because I got to hear Charlie Gearheart do his 'Hillbilly Nation’ poem. It’s something I feel, It’s something I’m proud of now.

You look around here now; you think it might have been hard living here, growing up here, especially our ancestors, to get through those hard times and those struggles. It’s like my grandfather said, when the depression hit they didn’t really notice because they were already in a depression. It wasn’t that big of a change of life for them because they were already having to struggle to survive. Wall Street didn’t mean a whole lot to Eastern Kentucky because Eastern Kentucky has always kind of been cut off. I still consider us 10 years behind the rest if the world. I appreciate that. I like being 10 years behind. That always gives us 10 years to prepare. That’s how I feel.

But people are happy here. Even if families just have a dirt floor, they are still the happiest families I have ever seen. People around here have the warmest hearts and the greatest courage I have ever seen.”

Barbara Church

Barbara Church, Entrepreneur and Artist, Eolia, Kentucky:

“I started my business about 25 years ago (Ovenfork Mercantile). Started out in this one room right here. That was all that was here and just started building on rooms. I tried to preserve the history as I built the business. I started out selling on consignment, arts and crafts, mostly things people made. I had about 30 crafters starting off. It started successful but when people sold their stuff they didn’t want to make more. If their stuff didn’t sell they didn’t want to pick it up. Then I kinda ventured off into antiques and art. About 7 years ago I started selling food, hot dogs, barbeque, snacks, homemade candy, peanut butter roll. I make six kinds of candy. It’s also a bed and breakfast. 

My business goes up and down with however the coal industry is doing. A lot of my customers are coal miners, contractors, truck drivers. Everybody around here says tourism (is the answer). But you’ve gotta do more than just hold meetings and talk about it. That always goes on. We need action not words.

Outsiders portray us as hillbillies. They portray as uneducated, living in poverty, in shacks, children running barefoot without any clothes on. We are just like anybody else. We just live here in the mountains. This is where we like to live. What’s special about this place is the culture, the people, the mountains themselves. It’s like you are traveling, just say to Lexington; when you come back this way and you see the mountains you get this good feeling.

I grew up here. I grew up at Eolia. Been here since I was 10 years old. Before that my father wondered back and forth between Kentucky and Virginia. He couldn’t decide where he wanted to live. He was killed in a logging accident when I was 10 so my mother moved us to Eolia where both sets of grandparents lived. 

It was a good place to grow up. We rode our bicycles up and down the main road. We could go visit both sets of grandparents without having to get in a car to do it. The school was just a few miles down the road. When you were growing up you didn’t really think about it but when you are grown you think about things you’d have paid more attention to like sitting on the porch of your grandparents house and them talking or playing music. You think back on it and that was a good time. 

Music is important to the culture. My father was a banjo picker. I think it is a creative outlet for a lot of people. Music just makes you happy.

I think the culture here, it’s changed but back then like in the community of Eolia, everybody knew everybody and neighbors helped each other out. You don’t even know your neighbors now. I think the values I grew up with haven’t been instilled in the younger people. 

I started doing art about 15 years ago. I just decided I wanted to paint. I had never painted before. I had these images in my head that wouldn’t go away so I went back to school to study art and just started painting. It gives my soul rest. When I finally get these images out of my head I can finally rest. 

I’ve had some sad times here. Of course it was sad when my dad passed away from the logging accident. It was time he shoulda been home but instead it was someone knocking on the door telling my mom that he wasn’t coming home. Two years after that his brother was killed in a little truck mine accident right up there at Eolia where I live. 

I lived here when the Scotia mine accidents happened. It was a very sad time. It’s like one of those incidents where you know where you were when you heard President Kennedy had been shot. Everybody around here can tell you where they were at when they heard about the Scotia explosion. First you wanted to make sure that the family that you had that were working at the mines were ok then you tried to find out who wasn’t ok. It brought about a lot of memories for me because I lost my first husband in a coal mining accident. It was the same as my dad. He hadn't been gone long then I heard a knock on the door. We lived in an apartment in downtown Harlan at that time. Our son was two weeks old. I was 17 at the time.

Four years ago I lost my son in a motorcycle wreck on top of Pine Mountain. That was kinda like losing his father again because he was the only connection I still yet had with my husband who died in the coalmines. I lost my son and my mother that same year. That was in 2011.

You just accept it and go on. 

Watching my mother has given me my strength. When dad died she was left with three children to raise on her own. She didn’t have a car, a driver’s license or nothing but she made it.”