Chapter 20

Rarely was the voice of the miner's wife raised in song as she plodded through her daily drudgery. Now and then the young folks could be heard singing--but not an ancient ballad. Rather it was a rakish song picked up from drummers coming through the mining camps who sold their inferior wares to the commissary manager.

There was a church propped up on the hillside. But meeting usually broke up with the arrest of some of the young fellows who didn't try hard enough to suppress a laugh when the camp harlot went to the mourner's bench, or when some old creature too deaf to hear a word the preacher said went hobbling toward the front. Sometimes an older miner, who for the sheer joy of expressing a long-pent-up feeling, shouted "Praise the Lord!", was dragged out by a deputy sheriff, along with the young bloods, on a charge of disturbing religious worship.

The limb of the law usually knew who had a few dollars left from the week's pay. The law knew too that a miner preferred to pay a fine rather than lie in jail and lose time on the job next day.

There was no pleasant diversion around the coal camp for womenfolk and children, no happy gatherings such as the play party, a quilting, an old-time square dance. In their drab surroundings, little wonder men and women grew old before their time.

That was yesterday. Today there are model mining towns throughout the coal fields. Holden in West Virginia even has swimming pools and modern cottages for its miners. A miner can work on the side too--it is not uncommon to see signs over his cottage or barn door reading, "Painting and Paper Hanging," "Decorating." There are thrifty vegetable gardens, and miners' wives vie with each other in the product of their flower gardens. Holden is sometimes called the Model Mining Town of America. It has welcomed visitors from all over the land.

In Harlan, Kentucky, once the center of many stormy battles between miners and operators, the county crowned a Coal Queen on August 23, 1941, commemorating the first shipment of coal thirty years previously. The queen, a pretty eighteen-year-old high school girl, won the title from six other contestants, enthroned on a replica of the railroad car which hauled out the county's first coal. As part of the celebration a $1500 public drinking fountain was dedicated and speakers hailed the economic progress of Harlan County since 1911. Each day 1200 railroad cars loaded with coal leave the county.

It was an all-day program being sponsored by the Harlan Mining Institute safety organization in co-operation with the County Coal Operators Association.

Not only were mining officials present from many points but politicians as well were present, including Mrs. Herbert C. Cawood, Republican nominee for sheriff, a sister of the crowned coal queen.

BACK TO THE FARM

For those who do not have a hankering for work in the foothills and industrial centers there is today a greater incentive to go back to the farm or to stay there than ever before in the history of our country. For the young mountaineer there is the Future Farmer Association which not only trains him in soil conservation, guides him in what is best for his type of farm, or what stock he can best produce, but also holds out the spur of reward. It is a fine plan for promoting friendly rivalry and spurs the future farmer to excel his young neighbor. Each fall there is a great state fair in a leading city of each of the Blue Ridge states, where the young future farmers of America gather with their exhibits in livestock, poultry, exhibits of their own crops. There is even a revival of the prettiest baby contest so familiar to the old county fair of the long ago. However today the contest has expanded beyond mere beauty; there is a health baby contest. The grand champion rural child is given an award with much pomp, and to complete the spirit of friendly rivalry and to bring about better understanding and fellowship between country and town there is also a contest for the champion rural and city baby.

The mountain boy, because he is no longer isolated by rugged roads, meets his city cousin on common ground.

The scene has changed along the once rugged creek-bed road. In place of the saddle hung on a wall peg on the front stoop for passersby to view and perhaps envy, a new saddle once the joy and pride of the mountain lad, today there is a spare tire and there is an auto in the foreyard or in the garage, a garage which is often bigger than the little cabin itself.

The mountain farmer is being taught by skilled leaders to help himself.

Even if the mountaineer's farm is on a forty-five-degree slope there is hope for him today, thanks to the Farm Security Administration. A workable plan for soil rebuilding was the first step. To reclaim wet land the mountain man digs drainage ditches. Stone, heretofore hidden in the mountain side and unused, is now utilized for building barns and houses. On fourteen acres a man and his family, including a couple of grown sons and their families, can today raise a living and be comfortable. With a loan of $440 from the Farm Security Administration a once unproductive miserable farm can be made liveable and productive.

The farmer of the hill country is being trained to put to use the things at hand.

Second-growth timber is coming on and is conserving the productive qualities of the hillside soil which was drained away by ruthless cutting of timber a quarter century ago. Today the farmer is taught to treat his farm and pasture land with lime and phosphate, a thing unheard of in the early days. And the greatest of all his blessings today, the mountain farmer will tell you, is the good road.

Why then should he want to leave the mountains he knows and loves so well?

It was tried by the young folks, but finding themselves ill fitted for work at coal camps or steel and iron mills or factories or industrial centers, they returned eagerly to the hills, at least during the first five years of the thirties.

To this day, though some have remained in the mill towns, it is not uncommon to hear the womenfolk--whose men have provided them with modern conveniences, a frigidaire, a gas range, an electric washer and iron, a spigot of running water--say, "Wisht I had back my cellar house, my cedar churn, the battling block to make clean our garments. All these here fixy contrapshuns make slaves of my menfolks at public works to earn enough cash money to pay for them." And again, "I'm a-feared of that 'mobile. I'd druther ride behint old Nell in the jolt wagon."

Recently a Harvard sociologist, Dr. C. C. Zimmerman, has suggested that, because the Appalachian and Ozark farmers are producing children in excess of the number "required to maintain a population status quo," they pull up stakes and settle in "declining rural New England."

However, those in a position to know, through long years of close contact with the southern mountaineer and his needs, point out that no resettlement or colonizing plan can be worked out until a better program of regional analysis is first accomplished. They point out that many a mountain farmer would not earn in a whole lifetime of toil enough money to make a down payment on "even a rundown New England farm."

Besides there is still in the makeup of the mountaineer that spirit of independence. He does not want to rent. He wants to own outright, even if his property is no more than a house seat. There are few sharecroppers in the southern highlands. A mountaineer would rather suffer starvation than be subservient. Though he may be illiterate he still remembers, because the story has been handed on by word-of-mouth, the suffering and mistreatment of his forbears across the sea.

To add to his security today there is the Tenant Purchase program for rehabilitation through the United States Department of Agriculture, and mountain men themselves are selected as members of the committee. It is a part of the FSA. The _Big Sandy News_, July 25, 1941, carries this story to the mountaineer: "The Tenant Purchase program provides for the purchase of family type farms by qualified tenants under the Bankhead-Jones Tenant Purchase Act. Farm Security Administration rehabilitator loans are available to low income farm families, ineligible for credit elsewhere, for the purchase of livestock, workstock, seed, fertilizer and equipment, in accordance with carefully planned operation of the farm and home. About 150 farm families in Lawrence county have already been helped by this program.

"The services of debt adjustment committeemen are available to all farmers, as well as to FSA borrowers. The committeemen will assist creditors and farm debtors to reach an amicable adjustment of debts based on the ability to pay."

In this particular section of the Blue Ridge, while some are looking to the soil, others have an eye on the waters above the earth. There is being revived the plan of twenty years ago for the canalization of one of the best-known and most important rivers of the Blue Ridge Country--the Big Sandy. As a means to that end there is an organization called the Big Sandy Improvement Association and, with a mountain man, Congressman A. J. May, to espouse its cause, things look promising for the project.

The mountain men and their city co-workers get together and speak their minds and exchange views at dinner meetings down in the Big Sandy Valley. A survey is being conducted to show to what extent a navigable river would aid industry, especially the coal business. Mountain men are joining their practical knowledge with the scientific knowledge of men of the level land who are putting the plan of canalization of the Big Sandy River before Uncle Sam for consideration and backing.

The people of the Blue Ridge mountains are learning slowly and surely to mingle and to work with others. That again is due to good roads.

Once there was the simple manner of making sorghum, whereby the mountain man paid for the use of the mill in cash or cane; today there is the Sorghum Association which helps the mountaineer market his product. There is even a Blackberry Association whose trucks drive to the very door and load up every gallon a family can pick.

Conservation is evident on every side and mountain people are realizing the benefits in dollars.

Where once timbering was carried on in an appallingly wasteful manner, reforestation under the guidance of trained leaders is under way. Camps of the CCC dot the whole southern mountain region and fruits of their efforts can be seen in the growing forests on many a mountain side. In Mammoth Cave National Park alone 2,900,000 seedlings were planted to stay gulley erosion in an area of 3,000,000 square yards.

Mountain boys who have entered CCC camps are rated high in obedience, deportment, and adaptability to surroundings. Some of them have never been away from home before. Many have been no farther than the nearest county seat.

Frequently the mother back home can neither read nor write but she shows with pride a letter from her son. "My boy's in the Three C's. He's writ me this letter. Read with your own eyes." You see her glow with genuine pride of possession as you read aloud--perhaps the hundredth time she has heard it--the boy's letter. The mother shows it to everyone who crosses her threshold there in the Dug Down Mountains of Georgia. There is another letter too. "Johnny's captain writ this one." She knows them apart even though she does not know A from B. "Johnny's captain has writ moughty pretty about our boy." So well does the old mother know the content of the letters she is ready to prompt if the visitor omits so much as a single word in the reading. And when Johnny came home, after his first months of service were ended, he was hailed as a conquering hero by family and neighbors alike. The mother was proudest of all. "Look at this-here contrapshun." From the well-ordered case in the boy's trunk she brought out a toothbrush. "He's larnt to scrub his teeth with this-here bresh and"--she added with unconcealed satisfaction--"he don't dip no more. 'Pon my honor he's about wheedled me into the notion of givin' up snuff. But when a body's old and drinlin' like I'm getting to be dipping is a powerful comforting pastime."

The mountain boy's older brothers and father too have come to understand co-operation. They can work with others. They know the meaning of WPA folklore. When the boss calls out jovially, "Come and grab it, boys!" they, who have never heretofore worked by the clock, know dinner time is up and they must start back to work. When the head of the work crew calls out "Hold! Hold! Hold!" they know a fuse of dynamite is about to be lighted to blast the rock from the mountain side and they hurry to safety. "Dynamite is powerful destructuous!" one tells the other, and they remain at safe distance until again the boss of the crew calls out "All right!" and they are back with pick and shovel.

The mountaineer has become a good steel worker, a dairyman in the foothills, a good mill hand.

The old folk, however, still cling to the old order of things. Once there was an old schoolmaster in the southern mountains who refused to give up teaching from the McGuffey Readers despite the fact that legislation had ruled out the old familiar classics. So persistent was he in his decision it eventually brought on a heart attack which caused his death.

Men of the hills have been quite baffled by CIO and other union cards. Young men first joining the CIO were heard to boast, "We can have anything we want. The CIO is going to buy me and my woman and the kids a nice, fine, pretty home. Pay all our bills if we get sick."

Only a few short years ago in a coal camp in West Virginia a mountain man, who was then working at public works for the first time, found himself haled into court at the county seat on some misdemeanor charge. When asked "Who is the President of the United States?" he unhesitatingly gave the name of the sheriff who had arrested him. So long had his family lived apart that he knew nothing of the workings of his own government and nothing about the various offices, high and low. Yet in the family burying ground of that mountain man inscriptions on the tombstones of his ancestors show that three of them served with distinction in the War of the Revolution.

Lest the coming generation forget the ways of their forbears and the America for which men struggled and died--the America of yesterday--the scene is being faithfully reconstructed in various ways in national parks. The boys of the CCC camps are having a very important hand in reconstruction and conservation.

Some years ago a nephew of Fiddling Bob Taylor of Tennessee met with several friends on hallowed ground in that State, not for a patriotic celebration but merely for the joy of roaming in the great out-of-doors. The ex-governor's kinsman, like his forbears, had been born on the site where in 1772 the first step was made in American independence by the Watauga Association. This autumn day these sons of those early patriots fell to talking of the country, its scenic beauty, its resources--particularly in the mountain region. "Fitting shrines set in the beauty of the great out-of-doors are the finest monuments to our patriots, it seems to me," said one. Another said, "The world's history shows that from the time of creation the successful men were those who really loved the out-of-doors. Abraham was a nomad whose home was wherever he pitched his tent. Moses sought the silence and solitude of Midian before God could speak to him. David was a shepherd boy on the Judean hills. Elijah dwelt in a cave. In the New World we see Washington, the surveyor, a lover of the out-of-doors; Thomas Jefferson, finding happiness and contentment in roaming the hills of Virginia; the immortal Lincoln, coming from the backwoods of humble parents; Theodore Roosevelt, cowboy on the plains of our western country."

With a smile Fiddling Bob's nephew turned to his friends. "Fellows, I'll wager there's not one among them from Abraham down to Teddy but would enjoy a canter over a good highway to take a look at the Blue Ridge Country. The most beautiful forests and parks in the world. Ought to link 'em up with a highway."

"Not a bad idea," chorused the friends, and they took another round of mint juleps to celebrate the birth of a thought.

"Ideas grow and thoughts travel fast," Fiddling Bob's nephew remarked some years later when setting out on a cross-country journey. "The Park-to-Park Highway grows annually and this Skyline Drive, which is a part of the plan, is one of the most alluring of all modern roads." Starting at Front Royal, the northern entrance to the Shenandoah Valley Park, it continues to Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro on the south, a distance of 107 miles. It is a broad mountain highway following the crest of the Blue Ridge, invading a world that was remote and known only to mountain folk. Today over its smooth, paved surface cars climb quickly to airy heights from which may be viewed innumerable vistas of the Piedmont plateau and the Shenandoah Valley. At strategic points parking overlooks have been constructed, from which are seen tumbling waterfalls, deep and narrow canyons, cool shady forests, open meadows, and wild flowers of every shade and hue throughout the summer. Autumn presents a boundless riot of color and winter a snowy, sparkling blanket pierced by tall green pines.

The Skyline Drive links with the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rockfish Gap which will at last connect the Shenandoah National Park with the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee.

"In case you don't know," Fiddling Bob's nephew likes to remind a stranger, "Shenandoah Valley Park was presented by Virginians to the nation in 1935 and more than three million dollars have been spent on the Skyline Drive alone--a drive that hasn't a parallel in America. Through this wilderness the Father of his Country once trudged on foot as a surveyor and looked down upon the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley from the lofty peaks of the Blue Ridge. His was the task to survey lands for the oncoming settlers. He had no moment to explore under the earth. That was the task of later men. Today for good measure, after you have beheld the breathtaking beauty from the heights, just travel seven eighths of a mile from Front Royal to the Skyline Caverns where you'll see the most unusual cave flowers that man has ever looked upon. Why"--Fiddling Bob's nephew puffs vehemently on his corn-cob pipe--"do you know that Dr. Holden, he's professor of Geology at VPI, says these Hellicitites, that's what he calls 'em, 'these weird, fantastic, and pallid forms' warp scientific judgment. And, friends, it's nature's work, these inconceivable structures hidden from the world for millions of years down under the ground."

He turned with a beaming countenance when we had emerged from the cavern of matchless wonders. "Young Americans don't have to study geography books these days. All they have to do is get a second-hand car, fill it up, and strike out on the Park-to-Park Highway. They'll get an eyeful and an earful too from native sons, and learn more about America than they can dig out of the dry pages of a book in a year. Why, right down there at Charlottesville there's Ash Lawn where James Monroe lived and meditated. His friend, Thomas Jefferson, set about building the place in 1798 while Monroe was in France looking after Uncle Sam's business. Even great and busy men in those days were neighborly. Thomas Jefferson did a good part by his neighbor James Monroe when he built that house, and the ambassador thanked him generously when he came back to occupy the place. The two used to roam the grounds together and spent many happy hours there. They visited to and fro; you see Monroe lived across yonder within sight of his friend's home. The great of the past take on reality when you actually set foot upon the ground they have trod. Places come to life when we see them with our own eyes. That's the purpose of these great highways, the Park-to-Park highways that connect the scenes of American history."

As the terrain changes there is a great variety in the scenes along Skyline Drive. Sometimes the road leaves the crest to tunnel through a rocky flank of mountain and you come unexpectedly upon sparkling streams tumbling down the mountain side to the valley below. The eye follows the cascade to the very edge of the drive. It disappears beneath the wide surface and reappears beyond a rocky wall, cascading down and down to fertile valleys below.

Virginians, and people of the Blue Ridge generally, count one of their greatest prides the restoration of the capital at Williamsburg through the generosity of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Old and young who pass through the graceful wrought-iron gates to the Governor's Palace thrill at the sight of the restored colonial capital named for King William III, a scene which all in all reflects old England in miniature, "as the state of mind of its citizens reflected the grandeur that was to be America." Here are the stocks in which offenders were locked while they suffered jibes from passing tormentors. Elegant coach-and-four remind the visitor of days of grandeur of Old Virginia when the FFV's were entertained at the royal palace. Across the way is the wigmaker's shop, and the craft house, displaying the Wolcott Collection of ancient tools and instruments. Here too is seen the Wren building, oldest academic structure in English America, "first modeled by Sir Christopher Wren."

Even a youngster of the Blue Ridge knows about Yorktown where Lord Cornwallis surrendered in 1781. "Here's where we fit and plum whopped the life outten the redcoats," we overheard a mountain boy from a mission school boasting to his companions.

Within a few short hours I had left behind Old Virginia and its reminders of colonial days and crossed into the Mountain State.

"There's plenty of beauty and culture in Old Virginia, I'm not denying that--" Bruce Crawford looked over his spectacles at his inquisitive visitor--"but there's just as much on this side of the Blue Ridge. We've got as many wonders under the earth as above it. And"--he turned now in his swivel chair in his quarters in the Capital to look far up the Kanawha River--among the many duties of this Fayette County man is that of letting the world know about his state--"I'm not forgetting Boone roved these parts. Trapped and hunted right here on the Kanawha. But what I started to talk about was not the hills, the rivers, and the caves, but the people." He spoke slowly, deliberately, this sturdy, well-groomed hillsman. Like Sergeant York of the Tennessee Mountains Bruce Crawford can, if need be, drop easily back into the dialect of his people. And he is an accomplished writer. "I don't care enough about it to follow the profession of writing," he said, and fire glowed in his gray eyes. "But as old Uncle Dyke Garrett used to say, 'I takened all I could a while back from furriners' so I cut loose and wrote my notions about it and it was published in the _West Virginia Review_. Take it along with you on your travels through the Mountain State and see if I've come near hitting center."

It seems to me he came mighty near hitting center and with Bruce Crawford's permission, here are his sentiments:

"In recent weeks two ignorant jibes were flung at the State of West Virginia, one by a Southern editor and the other by a Northern cartoonist.

"The editor, a Virginian, moaned that rude mountaineers had routed Democrats of the 'old Southern type' from the Capital on the Kanawha and that the Lost Cause was lost all over again. He was still sad because Senator Matthew M. Neely had been elected Governor on a platform to restore democracy to the Democratic Party, and government to the governed, in West Virginia.