Tia Thomas

Tia Thomas, Photographer; Mountain City, Tennessee:

“My husband and I had a restaurant for a couple of years, and I homeschool my kids. After we got out of the restaurant business I was at the place where either I was going to have to go back to a 9 to 5 job, I was going to have to quit homeschooling them or [I would] have to do something from home.

I got this idea that I was going to start making some bows and tutus and little things for the girls and I was going to sell those out of my house and make a living like that. When I made some, I decided to take the girls out and take some really cute pictures of them to sell the hair bow. I posted them on Facebook thinking I would sell all these hair bows, and all the sudden, people started asking me about having pictures made. And I was like, hmmm, well that’s an idea! And so, long story short, I guess that’s kinda of how I ended up in it [photography]. I won my first camera (Via a photo contest), and never looked back from there.

I do portrait photography, landscape photography [and] of course I do a lot of weddings, senior pictures, family pictures. I love to shoot landscape stuff around here, but people pay the bills better than landscape does.

I was born in Ohio. My paternal grandparents were from Mountain City [Tennessee] and at some point, they moved to Bristol. My Dad was born in Bristol. My maternal grandparents were from Pikeville, Pike County, Kentucky.

In the late 50’s I guess it was, maybe early 60’s, both sets of grandparents moved to Ohio to find work. Along therein somewhere after that, that’s when my parents met, so I was born in Ohio, but my grandparents eventually wanted to move back. My Mom and Dad wanted to move back here, so we moved back to Tennessee when I was seven. I have been here ever since.

My maternal grandpa worked several different factories. He had originally gone up to Chicago for a little while, he had gone a couple of different places, I think lived in Columbus for a while, but he ended up in a machining factory. They made fabricating machine parts and things like that in Orville. 

I consider myself to have been raised here. I don’t have a lot of memories of Ohio. I have little bits and pieces of that time, but the majority of my childhood that I remember has been from here.

I love the people here. I think that you just don’t find what we have here in so many places in the United States. I am not scared of people here. I feel like I can walk up to anybody and talk to them, and I am ok with that. Some situations in a lot of other places people are like, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t approach that situation, you shouldn’t approach that person.’ But that’s not something that I ever feel here. 

People care about each other differently here. I can’t tell you how many times I have stopped along the side of the road to take pictures, and I’ve had 15 people stop and ask me if I was ok or if I needed help. The next car will come along, do you need help, are you ok, do, you need me to do anything for ya? You just don’t see that. I have broken down in cities before and had hundreds of cars pass by and not one person stop. 

Appalachians are extremely proud, and not in a bad, false way. Appalachian people are very proud in their culture, their heritage, their past. A lot of that was stripped somewhere along the way though. If you look back in history, a lot of people in the Appalachian area were poor, but they didn’t know they were poor, until somebody came in and told them they were poor and said, “Hey, you should have more stuff. You should have more shoes, you should have more clothes, you should have better cars.” When people started telling them that they didn’t have all this stuff, I think people started wondering, started to think, “Oh, well maybe they are right, maybe I should have more stuff.” I think that has had a negative impact on the culture around here.

I don’t mind if somebody from around here says I’m a hillbilly or calls me a hillbilly, but I don’t think I would like it if I were somewhere else and somebody called me a hillbilly. Most places, it seems, really see it as a negative connotation. 

Maybe it all started with the Beverly Hillbillies, I don’t know, that may have had something to do with it. When there was a big influx of people from the Appalachian region going north to find work, and the time that my grandparents went up there, I always called it the great southern migration. I don’t know what it was really called. But I think that a lot of them were not welcomed at all in a lot of places. People saw them very differently. People saw them as poor, uneducated.

The saddest times for me, were actually stories of hearing my family talk about some of the ways they were treated when they were other places away from here. 

I remember hearing stories about families who had brought a pig to Chicago. They didn’t know what to do with their pig, but they knew they needed their pig to feed their family, so they took it into their apartment and slaughtered the pig in the bathtub, and hung it up in the bathtub. That kind of thing happened a lot from the way that I have always heard the stories passed down. People would see that, and because they didn’t understand it, they would immediately make a lot of rash judgments. 

They talked different, they dressed different, they didn’t have a formal education maybe.

My dad was probably around middle school age, and you know that’s a tough age anyway. He was in Ohio, after his family had moved up from Bristol. One of his teachers would bring him to the front of the class, and tell him to pronounce certain words that we would say differently. 

The teacher would say, ‘say boil’, and he would say ‘boyl’, and ‘say oil’ and he would say ‘oyl’ and then everyone could laugh at this hillbilly that they had brought into their school system. I think that really kind of stuck with him his whole life. He would not do public speaking at all. If there is any type of situation where he was gonna have to get in front of people, my dad would never get in front of people and speak after that. I don’t think that he would have wanted to go on to college or do anything like that because {of} the humiliation that somebody would do that to somebody else and that humiliation was going to carry over, [and] make you feel like you’re an uneducated person. What would make you think that you could go on and get an education or do something when people are seeing you as their entertainment monkey or something?

Talking about Appalachian pride, and our accents and stuff, that is something I’ve tried really hard to instill with my own children. Not judging people based on the way that they talk, for starters. They really have no concept of judging people based on their looks, it just not something that’s ever occurred to them, but also not judging people on the way they talk. 

My son [is] going to be a movie director. He never says he ‘wants’ to be a movie director, he says he is ‘going to be a movie director’ when he grows up. He is pretty critical when he watches movies, and one of his biggest pet peeves is the Hollywood southern accent. 

Every movie he watches he’s like, ‘they just can’t get it right! Why can they not talk like us? Do they really think that is how we sound, because we don’t.’ He hates that, and he hates hearing someone saying App-a-lay-shian. Anytime he hears it, he is twelve, and oh, that eats at him. That is his two biggest pet peeves, a fake Hollywood southern accent and App-a-lay-shian. 

I am team Appal-at-cha all the way. I just don’t know why people feel the need to go on the pronunciation of the word from people that don’t live here, or have never lived here. ‘Oh, but I had App-a-lay-shian studies when I was in college at UC Berkeley.’ And so you learned all about us when you were at Berkeley? A three-hour credit class that you only showed up for half the time?

I feel like I had a really good childhood here. That is something that makes me kind of sad now, is that even in our area things have changed so much that my kids will never have the same childhood that I had. 

I have been really happy that my husband and I have been able to raise our family here. It’s not an easy place for a young family to make it, because we just don’t have the jobs and the work and things that a lot of larger places would have. But we have always found a way to make it, and to be able to do what we can do. I have been very happy that I’ve been able to start my own business. I have been able to work from home and homeschool my own kids.

I’ve been able to do some traveling and see different places. I love to travel. I love to see other places but I always want to come back home when I am done. I’m always glad to see the mountains. As soon as I can see the mountains, then I know I am home.“

Doug Naselroad

Doug Naselroad, Master luthier, Appalachian Artisan Center in Knott County. Hindman, Kentucky:

“Naselroad, that's an old German name; it’s probably a corruption of it. I have a dual citizenship. I live in Hindman, right here where we sit on Main Street, and I also have a little farm up in Clark County where I go back to on the weekends. 

I was born in Mount Sterling. I moved back and forth a whole lot, looking for opportunity; Dayton, Detroit, Philadelphia, Frenchburg, Ashland, Oregon; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; lived several years in the hill country of Texas, and Branson, Missouri. 

I love Kentucky. It’s home and it’s hard to get on with folks some places. I wouldn’t single out any place in particular, but there’s a little voice in the back of your head when you're off some place like South Texas, it’s [saying] this ain’t home. People [in Appalachia] are easy to understand, people are easy to relate to, they feel a lot like family when you’re dealing with them. Honestly, Hindman in particular is a great town, they treat you like family here, some of them are. 

In Ashland, I worked as a commercial artist. I had a gig playing music on the weekends. I did odd jobs to save up to buy a car. We published a cartoon book, I did two comic books, I’ve worked as a wine steward; I’ve worked in the saw mill; I’ve sold used cars; I’ve tended bar; I’ve been a computer tech; and I’ve actually been a luthier with Collings Guitars in Austin, Texas, and I’ve worked for a bunch of music stores. 

When I started forty-six years ago, there was no such thing as luthier training, or at least no place I knew of. I was mentored under people like Homer Ledford and ‘course I learned a lot from Collings when I was out there. I love the creative dynamic of it. 

You start with a chunk of wood, and you end up with a song. I mean that’s magic, it really is! Every kind of instrument you make, it’s different, but when the music starts coming out of it, you feel a kind of a joy that a lot of occupations don’t really give you. We like to put on a radio show once a month. I have some friends down here, we’re songwriters, we all get together, you know, throw music back and forth. Most of it, the only people it gets played for is each other, or our radio audience if they can listen in to WMMT. 

(Learned to play) from a girl, started me off with some chords, learning how to play old folk music and country music when I was fifteen. She was so purty and nice I thought I’d make her a guitar. So I kind of started both about the same time. I don’t know what ever happened to her, I don’t know what happened to the guitar. First one I made. 

Thanks to the interest of my apprentices, I’ve got a wide variety of stuff that we’re making. I’ve got guitars, mandolins, banjos, canjos, dulcimers, ukuleles and the Hindman dulcimer. ‘Course I’ve always made guitars all along. So right now, I’m working on a ukulele for the Chairman of the NEA. I’m building a couple of mandolins and a big flat top bluegrass guitar. I just finished a ukulele last week for John Trustee. Little bit of everything. 

(I like playing) the guitar, because when I get a steel string guitar finished I can ring it out a little bit. I’m getting a little bit better playing the ukulele and I really, really am fond of the dulcimers. I don’t really consider myself to be a player on much of anything but the guitar. And I’m not very good at the guitar, but it’ll do. 

Chet Atkins always tells this story about hearing this feller, when he’s going up in an elevator and he hears this music in the elevator, and he’s listening to this feller and this feller is all over the guitar; and he’s thinking “Man, I’ve got some competition now, this guy is good.” As he gets higher and higher up he’s ready to step off the elevator; just as he does he realizes that it’s an old recording of him. He said, “Then it sounded terrible again.” The psychology of that whole idea is such a truthful thing. I don’t mind playing for people, I have a lot of fun, it feels good when I’m doing it, but Lord spare me from having to listen to myself. Played back I don’t ever feel like I did it right. 

Music and Appalachian culture go back, they’re inseparable. I think it’s because of the culture evolving in such a solitary, kind of a quiet place. Appalachia is a place where you want to make contact with people, and you want to stay close with your friends. Socially, music used to be really, really important. People used it as a reason to come over to one another’s houses, for a frolic, that kind of thing. I know it goes many generations back in my family here. In fact, I’ll tell you how far music goes. Back in our immediate genealogy, we found out when we first started doing research, that one of the first people to ever bring a dulcimer, the first record of a dulcimer ever coming into this state was through the Cumberland Gap, by a fella named Eli Boggs. 

It comes from middle European instruments, like the scheitholt. The scheitholt is a German instrument that in old German translates into something like stick of firewood or stick of wood. It’s just a straight little thing, we had one of them out there a while ago. We believe it was carried into the mountains by Moravian circuit preachers. You know the Brethren, people that rode from mountain community to mountain community; maybe had a church service every couple of months. 

In teaching the hymns, they would need some sort of little rudimentary musical instrument that they could take with them. We think that’s probably the genesis of that style of instrument and then of course, good ole’ Appalachian creativity nurtured it into the instrument we know today. We know there’s a simple version of the dulcimer that comes up out of Virginia. Again, we’re going back to our family history there. In 1871, right here in Big Doubles, out toward the Letcher-Knott County line, I think it used to be all Letcher County, a man named James Edward Thomas created a very specific style of dulcimer that is still reflected in most of the dulcimers made today. There’s a little debate as to where the origin of the hourglass shaped dulcimer was; but Uncle Ed certainly was in a class by itself back in 1871. Of course, people like Jean Ritchie popularized it to the outside world. 

The banjo existed concurrently, very early on. It has African origins. George Gibson has a lot of theories about how it evolved from an African instrument. Very early in the history of America the banjo was mentioned. Thomas Jefferson talked about the banjo. The dulcimer and the banjo have some common traits in the context of Appalachia. They both can be made for little or no money. I think that common denominator is why we see so many early examples of homemade dulcimers and banjos. 

There’s really not much store bought that’s in them. Even the banjos would have a groundhog skin or cat skin; they would have gut strings. We have some dulcimers here that actually have gut string remnants on them. It’s very possible that these instruments were made without one store bought item. People very often didn't have money; I wouldn’t say never but; had lots of wood, ‘cause it’s nothing but woods down here, but not much money. And inventive; the example of the dulcimer that we replicate and present to the outside world is a beautiful example of early intervention and artistry. The banjo makers were a little more crude and maybe a little less successful. 

(A dulcimer) It’s got to have a good scale, the notes have to fret out in the right places. It needs to be rather delicately made in order to be loud. It can’t be made out of real thick pieces of thick wood ‘cause if it is there won’t be any sound come out of it. So it needs to be very delicate; it needs to be minimal; you don't add a lot of junk onto it that you don't need. 

Then it’s just craftsmanship. You have to put it together in a way that it will be durable and it will stay in tune and have a voice. I have no idea how the things work, and I made a whole bunch of them. It’s kind of a mysterious process, you know the sound goes around and around in them and comes out. 

Seems like every time you try to manipulate the sound of a dulcimer, it fools you. That being said we’ve gotten some really sweet, angelic tones out of those Uncle Ed style dulcimers. One lady insists one of the dulcimers Mike (Slone) made was anointed. So we try for that. It’s positive, whatever that means. Sometimes they’ll turn out a certain way and we reference back to that one that Mike made several times. We’ve got theories as to why it had the character it had and yeah, we work toward that. Sometimes they turn out pretty good. 

Lutherie is such an involved discipline that the marketplace is pretty far down the road. I got one guy that’s been here almost three years; he’s made more than thirty instruments and he’s just now getting to where he wants to market them in a consistent way. So in that way, we’ve served the purpose of business incubator with him. Some of our apprentices who come in here they just want to make a collection of instruments; sometimes just one instrument to give as a gift or to have an heirloom to hand down to grandchildren. Everyone’s got different goals in this. 

The common goal is we all want to make something that’s excellent. They’re always thrilled when they get that sound out of those instruments. Brett Ratliff has been over here making a dulcimer. I’ve got about fifteen people that have been through here. We’ve got a new guy, Brack Hayes, and he’s playing in public a lot. I think he’s making an instrument to play. More often than not, I think people are just making them to challenge themselves personally; to see if they can be a maker. It’s not easy, but my guys have really risen to the challenge. 

It dispels a lot myths about Appalachian work ethics and integrity. These guys can do anything that they want. They surprise me sometimes how intense and detailed they are when it comes down to it. I’ve got one boy that just obsesses with these instruments when he’s making them. They are meticulous and perfect and the first time he offered a ukulele to someone for sale, it was gone. He sold it so fast he scared himself. He said, “I ain’t got no ukulele now. I can’t believe I sold it.” I said, “Give him his check back, Chris.” He said, “Well, no, I got to go pay insurance.” I said, “Well keep it then.” He said, “But I ain’t got no ukulele.” But my point is that his work was basically flawless. It was the first instrument that he made. 

I really like helping people succeed; I like it when people who I’ve apprenticed into a skill find success. Mike’s got a career now, and honestly that’s why I come down here. I could stay at home, I’ve got a little shop up there, I could stay at home and throw things together; but to pass it on to others I’ve got to come out here and meet up with them every time they’re ready to work. I’ve really been blessed by the results there. It’s a little broken up sometimes; some of these guys they’ll work for a month or two, lay out for a month or two, come back ready to finish up. The pace of it is kind of unpredictable. The results are pretty uniformly gratifying.”

Rick Crawford

Rick Crawford, Retired Welder, Currently A Civil War Reenactor; Middlesboro, Kentucky, Born and Bred:

“I couldn’t imagine growing up anywhere else. I’m definitely not a city person. [There’s] nowhere I like as good as the mountains. 
I am retired, and I do blacksmithing for the regimental, for the 37th Virginia, 63rd Tennessee, 23rd Tennessee, 19th South Carolina. We do re-enactments of the Civil War. This is my first year as a regimental blacksmith, and I’ve been assistant regimental blacksmith for seven years. I am a certified welder, and welding ain’t nothing but modern day blacksmithing. When you can take a small piece of metal and make anything you want to out of it, that’s what I like about it. 

My grandfather was a retired coal miner. He was crushed in 1936 in Appalachia, Virginia. He about died from it, and [he suffered] the rest of his life. One of the roof bolts gave away and it tumbled down on top of him. I’ve been in the mine. I went almost a hundred foot inside the mine with one of my cousins on one of the carts one day. I said, “Nah, God didn’t make me a gopher. Take me back.” 

My mom is from a place called Appalachia, Virginia. [In] The movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” the house that Loretta Lynn grew up in was the house that my Mom was raised in. [In] the movie when Doolittle Lynn is driving the Jeep up the coal slate [that] was in Appalachia right there, right in front of my aunt’s front door. 

Appalachian people [are] just a different breed. Even if we don’t know each other, we’re friends. Even if we don’t know each other, then somewhere down the line we’re probably kinfolk. And it’s just a different atmosphere than what it is up north. And it’s always been that way. We’re just so much more laid back. Sociable. Easy going. More than what northerners are.

And I say northerners not wanting to say what I’d normally say. No, I’m going to go ahead and say it. I tell my wife, who was born in Sidney, Ohio, there’s two types of Yankees. There’s a Yankee, and there’s a damn Yankee. A Yankee is one that comes around, and looks around and goes back. A damn Yankee is one that comes down here and stays. Now, she was born in Sidney, Ohio so that classifies her as a Yankee. And since she’s still here, I guess that classifies her as a damn Yankee. 

I was working at a nursing home as a CNA, and one of her friend’s husbands worked with me and I think they just tried to pawn her off on me. They kept telling me about her and telling me about her. And then one day, I’m mowing grass and they pull up about 500 foot away. She gets out, and they leave. And I said well let’s go out and eat. About six months later, we were getting married. We’re working on our 25th year. 

There’s been times it’s hard when you have to pay your bills and every thing, money gets kind of sparse and it’s hard to live and eat. But the good thing is, we live in the Appalachian Mountains. A 12-gauge shotgun [and] you’ve got supper on the table whether you got money or not. I love hunting. I cannot remember not going hunting and I got a 24-year-old son and he couldn’t hit a side of a red barn painted blue. 

I used to walk out of the house with a 410 or a 12-gauge across my shoulder as a little punk and hit the woods. If they seen a kid walk out of the house now with a shotgun you got to believe there’s going to be a cop behind him. But you know, 40 years ago people didn’t think about that.

[A few years ago, a tornado touched down in Middlesboro, Kentucky] When it came through, I was sitting in the field hugging a goat. I couldn’t get all my goats in the barn in time, and I was actually in the field hugging a goat when it came down. It picked up a car in front of my mom and dad’s house, spinned it around in a circle, and put it nose first in a ditch. The church we got married in was rebuilt because the tornado demolished it. It hurt town down a bit because it destroyed a lot of businesses, but it didn’t take long to bounce back. 

When it [the tornado] got inside Middlesboro, it just bounced around and then found the gap and went across the gap. Honestly, I had heard in movies and stuff about how it sounded, and let me tell you, a tornado actually sounds like a locomotive coming through the woods. It was just like something big coming through knocking trees down, breaking them and stuff and it scared me. Didn’t hurt me a bit. It killed one woman, and permanently injured her son. 
I just sat there and held the goat. I wasn’t smart enough to get under the bridge, I guess. Close enough I could see it, but not close enough. It came down within 15 feet of my mom and dad’s house and never touched it. It was just like God took his hand and guided it where he wanted it to go. And that’s exactly how it done.

[When asked about Middlesboro’s native son, actor Lee Majors] Actually my aunt dated him in high school. I’m not really a Lee Majors fan anyhow. I used to be when he was on “The Big Valley” but [the] “Six Million Dollar Man” just kind of killed me out on him. That was all I wanted of him right there. 
Hillbilly doesn’t insult me a bit. I’m proud to be a hillbilly. I’m proud to be a gully jumper. A bushwhacker or anything else you want to call me. Just don’t call me late for supper. There’s nothing any sweeter than a good jug of moonshine. I’m a hillbilly born and bred. So it doesn’t offend me a bit. 

My daughter goes to the hospital in St. Louis, Missouri and they call it Appal-ay-sha. And I’m like, I don’t know where you’re talking about, because I’m from Apple-at-cha. One day, they said, so you’re from Florida? And I said, no I’m from the mountains. But I don’t know what the meaning of that word [Appal-ay-sha] is. It’s just not right. 

To help the economy around here, we got to get some people in our cities and in our county government offices that actually want to do something. Because, until these mountain regions around here change, and they want to change, it ain’t going to change. We’ve depended on coal for so long and now that we can’t depend on it as much as we used to, we’ve got nothing to fall back on.

If you’re not from here, you’re not going to understand us. And if you understand us, you better stay here.”

Deborah Thompson

Deborah Thompson coordinates country dance programs at Berea College, where she combines her love of old-time music and dance with her desire to pass it on to others. Since 1976, she has performed both solo and with various groups. She currently performs with the old-time and Americana band, Skipjack.

Deborah Thompson, Professor, Berea College; Hisel, Kentucky:

“I’ve lived there (Hisel, Kentucky) since 2001. Before that I was in Barbourville, Kentucky for about 10 years. I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland area and moved a lot when I was a kid. Been in Kentucky since 1991. 
I was at Union College in Barbourville, teaching a program called the Appalachian Semester. We would get students from other colleges to come to our little college and kind of do a study abroad. We would travel around the region and use the community members as our teachers. The students would do internships and get sociology credit for that. I’m also a teacher at Berea College. 

I consider myself to be a resident, an ally, a student of Appalachia. I identify with being here, but I wouldn’t claim it as my own. I feel most comfortable here, but I grew up with parents who are from the Great Plains and I grew up all along the east coast. When I finally came to Appalachia as a college student myself, I felt most at home here than anywhere else I’d been. So, it’s complicated, but I hesitate to say I’m Appalachian because I didn’t grow up here, and I think that is an important thing. 

[Pronunciation of Appalachia] It is interesting how just that pronunciation can make a big difference. I lived in West Virginia for a while, and that’s definitely Appalachia. Except they say App-a-lay-sha. They have a little more northern culture, but still mountain. So, it’s what part of the region you’re from. I also realize that Appalachia is a huge area. Northern Appalachia, I’ve been in Pennsylvania and it looks just like Kentucky and the culture is very similar. And people there would say App-a-lay-sha. I’m trying not to be snobbish about that myself, but it is kind of an insider outsider kind of a marker.

Hillbilly is interesting. I think it’s something that people who live here can claim as a powerful symbol, a powerful identifier. A lot of people use it very sloppily, and it can be used very hurtfully. I try to avoid it unless I know who I’m talking to, and unless I make it clear what I’m meaning by it, or if I use air quotes. It’s a very loaded term that it’s not very comfortable for a lot of people, and so I try to be careful and not try to alienate people. Appalshop certainly talks about hillbilly nation, and in that context, it’s a very powerful term. I think it is something that people can use and I respect that, but I will be careful with it. 

My passion is the kinds of things we do here at the Hindman Family Folk Week, which is people participating in their own lives and building community through cooperative music and dance and participation. My passion is for people to not think they can’t do something because somebody told them. You know, somebody told them they can’t sing. Well I don’t believe that. So, helping people appreciate and learn about this kind of music and dance and feeling empowered to do that for themselves, that’s my passion really. 

[About Appalachian culture and traditions] I don’t think they would be kept alive if they didn’t have some meaning for people. When you talk about, “I’m going to do this to keep it alive,” it’s as if you’re resuscitating a corpse and what’s the point of that? It’s got to mean something for the people who do it, and just doing it for the sake of keeping it alive is not enough.
I think making it relevant, or for me those things are relevant and part of it maybe a little bit of paranoia on my part thinking this world could just disintegrate with all the crap that goes on and all the nuclear weapons and everything. And so what’s gonna happen if the grid goes out? It does periodically. I like to be as self-sufficient as I can be. Not to be apart from people, and to only do for myself, but I want to be able to keep myself. It’s making your own fun, and not having to rely on a television set or paying money for your entertainment. You can make your own entertainment and you forge relationships by doing that. The value of that is that someday we’re gonna have to do for ourselves again. I just can’t imagine that all of this digital technology is going to stay around forever. 

Place has a big part of who we are, it’s very important and you’re history affects who you are. People have specific histories, and so that’s why we need to know our own history. We can learn a lot from that. I don’t think we should blindly follow our traditions, but I think we should use them to build on, and acknowledge the value of the people who went before us who did all these things that a lot us can’t do now. There are power situations going on. It’s worth fighting for making sure that the people maybe who are less powerful still have their history told.

When I talk to people about it, I use a quilt analogy where you have a lot of the same pieces in a lot of different cultures. You have family, you might have education for children or work or gender roles, all these pieces and you might share some of the same pieces with another culture but it’s the way it’s put together that makes it unique. You might have a quilt that’s all made of triangles, but if you put it in a different way it looks different. It’s a particular combination of things. Around here, southerness but not too southern, mountain, rural, different ethnic groups that make this up. You have your Scotts-Irish, some German, African American and some places like coal camps you have some other ethnic groups like Hungarian or something. And then it’s influenced by the land that’s here. So, I guess it would be that particular history and that particular combination of things. 

I agree with some of what Loyal Jones says about personalism. It’s part of the southern thing; part of the rural thing. People really appreciate people as persons, and want to relate to them in that way. Religion is really important in Appalachia. Even if you are not part of an organized religious group, people have more of a knowledge about Christianity, Protestant Christianity, and maybe a little more autonomy with that. Language use and then some of the cultural things, the way people play music and the way they dance and the way they cook and the stories. Story telling is really important. That’s the way people tell their history and relate to each other. Like, who are your people? Oh, you’re part of those Thompsons? No, my Thompsons come from Canada. But still, I live at Hisel. I know these people and these are my neighbors. You find your place in the world. Place is super important here. 

A lot of the Appalachian people I know continue to have hurtful memories and stories about people talking about them being barefoot or you know, incest, or other kinds of really bad parts of the stereotype. I think that people will accept that or identify with that if they’ve been politicized maybe somehow. Here’s a story that maybe will help illustrate it. I was teaching a elder hostel, or Rhodes Scholar program in Berea. Somebody had gone to some local restaurant and they saw a t-shirt that said, “you know ten ways you can tell you’re from Kentucky,” and there was stuff about you brush your tooth and stuff like that. And the woman said what’s wrong with you people? Here you’re selling these t-shirts. No wonder people keep making fun of you. And I was saying, what’d you mean you? You know who are you talking about? Are you talking about the restaurant owners? Are you talking about me? Are you talking about the person that works in the gas station? 

You know there is no consensus about we are the Appalachian people and we’re going to stand together. That idea of having a solidified identity around some issue, or around skin color or around religion or whatever. People will come together when there is something really drastic like a sludge spill or something like that, but once that gets cleaned up, people go back to their life. They may not even realize it. But they’re comfortable. And so it’s uncomfortable to be always pushing back. 

One of the things that drew me to Appalachia actually in the 1970’s, ‘80’s, from outside was because I felt like the people who lived here were living their lives the way they felt like they should. And so, when strip mining protests were going on in the ‘70s and ‘80s that was the thing that really drew me here because I thought, you know they are standing up for what they believe in and not just caving in to middle class capitalist culture. 

And I still feel that way. That is one of the things that I like about living here is that people are more comfortable living the way that they think they ought to live, and speaking the way they want to; even if it’s not acceptable in middle class mainstream culture.“