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Video revives memories of lost voices
County residents who missed the documentary Mountain Talk when UNC-TV broadcast it this past February might want to tune in Friday, April 16, for a 10 p.m. repeat showing.
Narrated by Sylva storyteller Gary Carden and with a score made up mostly of tunes picked by Henry Queen of Johns Creek, who is joined by his mother, 90-year-old Mary Jane Queen on a couple of numbers, the video showcases the language of the hills and hollows of Western North Carolina.
Produced by Neal Hutcheson, Mountain Talk, subtitled Language and Life in Southern Appalachia, is part of the North Carolina Language and Life Project, an undertaking of the linguistics department at N.C. State University.
It was enjoyable to see familiar faces and hear scholarly explanations of the Elizabethan phrasing and works that persisted for more than a century in isolated mountain communities. Also, the video triggered memories of the mountain voices that introduced the city girl I once was to the high-country culture.
I came to Jackson County from Atlanta to attend college at Western Carolina University, and I never left. The mountains had taken hold and living among their splendor more than made up for the fact that jobs were scarcer than hen's teeth.
When I hired on at Tommy Beutell's Christmas tree farm, my Appalachian education began. The first few days I was totally lost, linguistically speaking. My co-workers were mostly from Canada community and their mountain talk was undiluted. Gradually I began to catch on and make friends. Before too long, I moved my two cats and me to an old house so far out in Canada that it was almost to the Transylvania County line.
Once I lived in the community, I took up the main social activity of my neighbors: I hung out at Phillips Grocery, long gone now, but located at that time on then-unpaved N.C. 281, roughly halfway between Tuckasegee and Toxaway. It was the only place to buy necessities, such as gas, flour, cornmeal, pinto beans and kerosene for the lamps (in 1974, there were still homes without electricity) and treats - a candy bar or an ice-cold dope.
Up until then I'd always heard "soft drink" or "soda pop," but at Phillips' store, it was a dope. Anything you bought was carried home in a "poke" but not until you'd sat and visited "a spell."
Proprietor Jim Phillips (probably in his 60s then, he died about 18 years ago) was a good storyteller. Only thing was he started in the middle most of the time, as if he were picking up a conversation from the day, or maybe the year, before. It was disconcerting at first, but after I got the hang of it, I really learned a lot - like the fact that hippies wore patches on their blue jeans as a way of recognizing each other.
Another interesting tidbit I picked up was that our astronauts didn't really walk on the moon. It was all a hoax, Jim said.
"They made those pictures out in the desert, out west somewhere," he said. "If you look right sharp you can see the shadows of the telephone poles."
I found out that some chickens lay green and blue eggs (Jim raised them and would sell the eggs in his store when he had enough), and that Ford transmissions don't have to work like the factory installs them. Jim once asked me to drive his old pickup back to the store while he walked down the ridge and looked for a missing cow. Before he got out, he said, "You know where reverse is in those other 'uns? Well, first is there."
Someone had replaced his transmission - backwards - but Jim never complained. He just dealt with it.
Jim's descriptions of those around him were usually on the mark. My friend Dona, for example, whose memory isn't the sharpest, "wakes up in a new world every morning," according to Jim. "Once she sleeps, that's it."
And I can't forget Gordon Owens, one of Canada's premier storytellers, who died in December 2000. Phillips' store was a lively place when Gordon happened along. No matter which direction a conversation was headed, one of Gordon's stories was usually its final destination.
While on the subject of gardening, Gordon would tell us he "never could" understand why folks plant their "taters" around the side of a hill.
"Why then they have to dig 'em," he said. "I always plant mine in rows up and down the hill. Then all I have to do is open up the end of a row and hold a sack there to catch 'em as they roll out."
I don't know what size fish Gordon actually ever caught, but he sure could tell some whoppers.
"I was driving across the Tanasee Creek Lake one sunny winter day when I saw something shiny in the water. I got out to look 'cause I was worried someone might have driven off into the lake. I saw an old car hulk I'd never noticed before. Swimming around inside it was an 18-inch brown trout. I carried my fishing pole all the time in those days, and I went back to the car to get it. Do you know that fish saw me coming and rolled the windows up! I had to go back to the house hungry that day," Gordon said.
He could even top himself when it came to fish stories.
"One Sunday evening I had a pint of moonshine. I didn't really have any place to go, but I got my brother-in-law's fishing pole, stuck that liquor in my pocket and went down to the head of the lake on some old logging roads. Well, I never thought to bring any bait, so I got to looking around a big chestnut stump for a cricket or something.
"When I looked inside that stump there was a big rattler all coiled up - and next to that snake there was a little toad frog. I got to thinking that I'd really like to have that toad for bait. So I got out that liquor and poured a drop or two on that rattlesnake's head. He leaned back and opened his mouth, so I poured some down his throat. That snake started looking milky-eyed and in just a minute he laid his head over against the side of the stump. I eased my hand down in there and got the toad and went on down to the lake.
"In a little while I caught a nice brown trout. I was puttin' it on a string when something flipped me on the britches leg. I looked down and there was that old rattler with two more toad frogs."
It was those stories and the time I spent listening and learning that I remembered while watching Mountain Talk. Featured in the movie is WCU English professor Karl Nicholas, who mentions "you'uns come go with us," as an example of mountain speech.
In the video, Karl leaves out the phrase that usually follows that one, but driving past Jim's old place the other day, I could almost hear Jim's voice: "You'uns stay with us."
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