Category: Appalachia

Posted in Appalachia

Stories of Appalachia: The Beauty Queen

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Country women are the hardest working women around. Particularly country women who live in Appalachia. All work hard at home. Home is often a farm, more so in the past than now. Many also have jobs outside the home, more now than in the past.

Sarah was a woman of the past, living her entire life in Appalachia. She was born in the 1930’s, so her life spanned the century mark in 2000. Most of her life was like women had lived in Appalachia in the past centuries, but parts of her life were very much in the present and future. She was most comfortable with the traditions of the past but valiantly tried to embrace the present and look toward the future.

She was the kindest, most caring person I’ve ever known. She met the love of her life, Randall, as a small child. They were playmates in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. Teenage sweethearts, they even went off to college together after they married. Randall became a teacher in the local school system. Sarah went to work for the county’s Board of Education.

They had a rich life, full of friends and family and a special daughter who came to them. After they cared for her, she spent many years caring for them. She’s still caring for Randall. Sarah considered her to be her own. Until the last twenty years, Sarah and Randall also cared for Sarah’s mother. Such is the way of the rather clannish people of Appalachia. Family still means something to them. They take care of their own.

Sarah and Randall lived in Sarah’s grandparents home place. It was most of the way up a “holler,” which is the Appalachian slang for a long, narrow valley between close mountains. Most of that holler was part of Sarah’s grandfather’s large farm until the grandparents passed away. Sarah’s mother retained land and the house. Sarah inherited it. They made their home there. It was a beautiful place.

Before the opioid epidemic that affected Eastern Kentucky among many other areas, the entire region was green and lush with farms here and there. Then, one of the area’s major industries, coal mining, began to die and the unemployment rate started to rise. Many left the area, but just as many did not. They didn’t want to leave their families. Drugs found a foothold due to joblessness and poverty. Suddenly, it wasn’t quite as beautiful as it had been in Sarah’s childhood, but she and Randall remained in the family home place after Sarah’s mother passed away.

Sarah’s grandfather and grandmother had a large family. There were many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Especially in the last years, Sarah graciously welcomed any family member who knocked on her door and planned family get-together’s and reunions. In the present day, the family is dwindling away until mostly cousins remain, but the cousins were always welcome.

Then, tragedy struck. Sarah was struck down by a heart attack probably caused by underlying health conditions. Other health issues cropped up and Sarah was transferred to the nearest city where her health issues could be addressed. Sarah was 84 and Randall was 88. Sarah survived for a number of days, but finally, the doctors could do nothing else and hospice was recommended. Sarah only briefly survived in hospice with her daughter and husband right beside her. Tragically, to Sarah’s family and friends, she passed away after a long life with her soulmate.

Sarah was a beauty queen. Beautiful inside and out, she positively affected everyone’s life that she touched. She will be so missed by her family and friends.

—————————-

Note: Why am I writing about Sarah? She was my beloved first cousin and we always stayed close. Without Sarah, I will be lonely for the rest of my life for her unique personality, the culture she represented, and my own family which is lost to me. She represented a dying culture that was beautiful to its core. People who cared about their family and friends and were willing to sacrifice to care for them. May she rest in peace.

Posted in Appalachia

Where is Appalachia?

Posted on by

C1101958-AD7B-4549-AF10-2B3C8E4BEC8A

I live on the fringes of Appalachia and my roots are deep in this region of the United States. I live in a university town in northeastern Kentucky. Appalachia has rough geographic boundaries, but it is largely a cultural region, as opposed to a geographic region, of the U.S. In many places, Appalachia is difficult to access because of geographic impediments. The region is located in the Appalachian Mountains. Roads are few and the roads that are there are curvy through the mountains. In some places, the roads are not well built and are prone to washouts and mudslides. The fact that they run through mountains doesn’t help.

If you look at the map above, you can see that the Appalachian region includes all of West Virginia, almost half of Kentucky and Tennessee, most of Pennsylvania, one-third of Ohio, and the southern slice of New York. In the south, it touches Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and includes portions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Appalachia stretches from New York to Mississippi and encompasses 206,000 square miles where roughly 26 million people live.

It is a large region of the United States and even though parts are sparsely populated, the whole has a sizable number of people residing there.

Posted in Appalachia

Appalachia: Appharvest Aims to be the Breadbasket of the U.S.

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

I live in the south-central portion of Appalachia, actually on the fringes of the region, in northeastern Kentucky. We are excited about the future here due to Appharvest making its home in the county in which I live.

Appharvest is a startup company that has opened the largest greenhouse in the U.S. in Rowan County, KY. The goal of the company is to produce the majority of tomatoes used in the U.S., taking that market share away from our traditional supplier of tomatoes, Mexico.

Appharvest is a greenhouse that covers 60 acres and employs almost 300 people. Jonathan Webb is the founder of the company. He is a Kentucky resident and a graduate of the University of Kentucky. Appharvest is within a day’s drive of 70% of American consumers. It is a facility, patterned after greenhouses in The Netherlands, that uses sustainable crop production techniques. It uses recycled rainwater for irrigation and a combination of solar energy and LED lighting in order to grow the tomatoes. At a later time, Appharvest will expand beyond tomatoes.

Immediately upon the opening of the Rowan County, Kentucky facility, ground was broken for a second Appharvest greenhouse in Madison County, Kentucky. Appharvest is set to be a great asset to this region of Appalachia, providing jobs and national exposure.

Posted in Appalachia

Appalachian Recipe: Fall Apple Cake

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Hi everyone! This is a very old Appalachian recipe, handed down from my great-grandmother to my grandmother and finally to my precious Aunt Red, the lady I wrote about in the blog post,  The Most Elegant Lady. It is so old that the writing is extremely faded on the paper I have. I have to get it typed up before it completely fades away! Since it is fall apple season, I thought it was time to share this with all of you!

Fall Apple Cake

*This cake was originally supposed to be made with Winesap apples. Winesap apples are very hard to find now. Granny Smith apples are the best substitute.

2 cups sugar

2 cups vegetable oil – Wesson oil or other oil

Mix sugar into vegetable oil

3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsps cloves

1/2 tsps cinnamon

1 tsps salt

1 tsps baking soda

3 cups finely chopped apples (Winesap or Granny Smith)

Optional: 1 cup finely chopped nuts or 1 cup raisins

Mix everything together

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour

Let cool on a baking rack before cutting it

ENJOY!!

Posted in Appalachia

Appalachia: John Morgan Salyer, Father of Bluegrass Music and Kentucky fiddle music

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Kentucky fiddle music, the precursor to Bluegrass music, began to be common in households across the eastern Kentucky area of Appalachia in the late 19th century. It developed in more or less complete isolation in the rural, geographically isolated parts of Appalachia and eastern Kentucky. John Morgan Salyer, this writer’s great uncle, is remembered as the last great fiddle (violin) player. He was instrumental in the development of Kentucky Fiddle music.

John did not like playing publicly, although he did from time to time. We have an extraordinary collection of John’s music only because his sons, Grover and Glenn Salyer, recorded them on a home disc machine during the 1940s. John’s music is housed at Berea College in Berea, KY.

John Morgan Salyer, a pioneer of Kentucky fiddle music and the beginnings of Bluegrass music, was my great-uncle. In the picture below, my grandmother, Mollie Evelyn Salyer, is on the right of John Salyer, and her sister, Julia Salyer, is on the left. John Salyer was the son of Morgan Salyer and Katherine Patrick. He was my grandmother’s half brother. Morgan Salyer married my great-grandmother after his marriage to Katherine Patrick ended.

John Salyer was born in 1882. He was raised in a log cabin on Birch Branch, off Burning Fork Road, in Magoffin County, KY. He lived in that specific area of Appalachia all of his life. He began playing the violin, called the fiddle in that part of the world, when he was a boy. When John was 8 years old, he broke his leg. His father, my great-grandfather, Morgan Mason Salyer bought him a violin. He began to realize his musical talent. John subsequently spent 3 years in the Phillipines during the early part of the 1900’s. When he returned home to Magoffin County, KY, he married and had nine children, two of whom died at birth.

John’s branch of the Salyer family and my grandmother’s branch of the family were tied together by a common father, Morgan Mason Salyer. The family was musical and they frequently got together and played music. John played the fiddle. My grandmother played the banjo. John’s musical influences were local musicians including Willie Fletcher and Jeff Gipson.

Back in those days, from the late 1800s to the 1950s, few people received any formal musical training. They learned from older generations. There was very little travel to other parts of the country. Automobiles did not come to Magoffin County, Kentucky until the 1920s. The families would get together in the evenings and play. Kentucky fiddle music developed through largely informal groups of people getting together to play on someone’s porch or in their living room in John’s case. There are stories in the family of evenings spent playing and practicing with John Morgan Salyer. 

John did not ever sign a recording contract. Instead, he played at square dances and hoedowns in his local area of Magoffin County. Once, he and other musicians went on a rail trip to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The musicians went from car to car playing their music all the way from Kentucky to Chicago. When they arrived in Chicago, they were invited to play at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago, a famous venue.

John Morgan Salyer was a farmer by trade. He passed away in November, 1952 from complications of diabetes.

 

Left: Julia Salyer, half-sister to John Morgan Salyer; Middle: John Morgan Salyer; Right: Mollie Evelyn Salyer, half-sister to John Morgan Salyer

 

 

Posted in Appalachia, Creative Nonfiction Essays, Eastern Kentucky

Appalachia: Hillbilly and Redneck

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

When we hear the term “hillbilly” or “redneck,” we automatically have a negative connotation associated with them. To those who aren’t familiar with Southern Appalachia, we think of the TV show, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” or the movie, “Deliverance,” and the associated depiction of the two terms. Those images are only caricatures dreamed up by show business.

The term “hillbilly” is an old term that simply refers to people who live in the mountains, in rather remote areas, and live their own way. It doesn’t mean they don’t wear shoes or that they’re ignorant, but we tend to use the term as a slur to refer to people we consider hillbillies. Hillbilly seems to have somehow gotten tied up in a social class definition. That couldn’t be further from the truth. My grandfather, who was born deep in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, was certainly a hillbilly, but he and his family were of at least the high middle socio-economic class regarding income, social standing, and education.

The word “hillbilly” originally referred to a type of music played and developed in the mountains. Hillbilly music was the original bluegrass music. Pure, original Bluegrass music originated in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in isolated pockets in the mountains, usually through the music of family groups or bands. Somehow, the word shifted from the music of the people to the people themselves. Most mountain people don’t mind being called hillbillies. When it is used as a slur based on an imagined stereotype, that shows the ignorance of the user and not the hillbilly.

The word “redneck” is thrown around today as a slang word referring to people with, usually, a particular way of life and political persuasion. We think of rednecks and we immediately see the Confederate flag, conservative leanings, and guns. Perhaps that is the modern definition of “redneck, but it is not what the word originally referred to.

The word “redneck” originally came from Scotland and referred to those who worked outdoors and had a sunburned neck as a result. It also referred to peaceful protestors against mining officials because the protestors tied a red bandana around their necks.

The word “redneck” is not a word tied to the mountains or to any geographic region. You can be from the middle of the largest cities. If your beliefs are based on the Second Amendment, you fly the Confederate flag in the back of your pickup truck, and you believe in far right-wing politics, you are the modern definition of a redneck.

When I was growing up, I never saw a Confederate flag at my grandfather’s house in Eastern Kentucky. The only guns I saw were a couple of hunting rifles used to deer hunt for food. My grandfather was a centrist in his politics but leaned left. The modern definitions of “hillbilly” and “redneck” would not fit him even though he was one of the originals.

Copyright Rosemary Carlson @2020

Posted in Appalachia

Appalachian Dialect: Comments on its history

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

The way that people talk in the Appalachian region of America, particularly the Southern Appalachian region, is a subject that has always fascinated people from other regions. Southern Appalachia runs from southeastern Pennsylvania to Alabama. The dialect has often had fun poked at it because it sounds different than English spoken in other areas of the U.S. It isn’t as simple as just the fact that the Appalachian people have a particular accent. Their actual speech patterns may differ from traditional English.

One of the myths about the Appalachian dialect is that it dates back to Shakespearean English. Not true. It probably goes even further back to the days of Chaucer. The dialect has survived, for one reason, because of the geographic isolation of the area. Appalachia is mountainous with hills not as high and new as the Rocky Mountains in the west, but high hills nonetheless. They are more rounded and green. The Appalachian Mountains have been here longer and have sheltered the people from many outside influences. Roads into the area have been difficult to build and expensive. There still aren’t many of them.

The fact is that the Appalachian dialect is close to that of the first settlers to America. Chances are, the English spoken among the first colonial settlers sounded a lot like the Appalachian English of today. It is the English of the Scots-Irish immigrants who first settled in Appalachia. Other cultures are also represented in the Appalachian dialect. The area had 10% African-Americans around 1860. German immigrants also populated the area.

Not only does the English spoken in Appalachia sound different due to the way words are pronounced, the grammatical structure of sentences is actually different. One difference is the agreement between the subject and verb in a sentence. An example would be, “Horses is large animals,” and “We went to find the dogs, which was over the hill.” This pattern of speech was found in the Scottish lowlands as well as colonial America due to the Scots immigration to the area.

Maybe the vocabulary of Appalachian speech is most fascinating. Words like “poke” refer to a sack. “Pone” refers to bread made in a skillet, usually cornbread. A well-known word is “holler” which refers to the valley or hollow between two mountains. “Sallet” refers to salad. The Appalachians put the letter “a” before verbs like “I’ll be a-going to the store right now.” Unusual contractions are used like “They done gone to town.”

The people have southern Appalachia have been laughed at and discriminated against because of their different dialect. They have been called “rednecks” and “hillbillies” in a derogatory way. During the great migration of Appalachian people, between the 1940s and 1960s, to northern climates in the U.S. to find work, the city of Cincinnati, Ohio actually made it against the law to discriminate against them.

There are many legends and myths associated with Southern Appalachia and those surrounding the language and dialect of the Appalachian people are just some of them.

Posted in Appalachia, Non-fiction

Appalachia and Comfort Food: Tonic for the Soul

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

I guess, when life gets too much for us, we go back to our roots. My roots lie in two very diverse places, but one of my feet stands in the Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky. I think that the cooking, when I was growing up, was perhaps the best in the world! Even now, when I’m way past all grown up, I want to eat what my mother cooked, and what her mother cooked. My comfort food comes straight from Appalachia with only a few exceptions.

I still seek out roadside vegetable markets that crop up in the summer all around where I live. I now live on the fringes on Appalachia and, just about every week in the summer, I’ll take a drive 50 miles south in search of homegrown vegetables. I did that on Saturday and have a refrigerator stocked full of wonderful vegetables grown in the region.

Today was a very stressful day for both my husband and myself. About mid-afternoon, all I could think about was cooking some of those vegetables the old-fashioned, Appalachian way. I knew that eating what I grew up on would be a tonic for my soul. During this pandemic and the uproar in our country, I think we’re all looking for a little tonic.

I started to cook dinner and grabbed the green beans. I wanted green beans and cornbread. I’ve already given you my recipes in another blog post, so I’ll skip that. I put the green beans on to cook after spending two hours stringing them. I made the cornbread, with buttermilk, and put it in the oven. While the cornbread baked, I sliced fresh tomatoes, small cucumbers, and a cantaloupe for dessert. I took the cornbread out to cool and waited on the green beans. I don’t cook my beans with meat anymore, my one nod to health. I slice up a sweet onion and season them with onion, salt, and pepper. Delicious!

Dinner was wonderful and I was much calmer and less anxious after eating my comfort food. What’s your comfort food? Try it during the pandemic. Maybe it will be tonic for your soul too.

Posted in Appalachia, Challenges, Flash Fiction

#SoCS – Ground

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Linda’s Stream of Consciousness prompt this week is the word “ground.” As that word crossed my mind, it was easy to find something to write about. Going to “ground” to me is just about the same as “going to the well.” It means that, for me, it’s time to center myself, steady myself, and stand firmly on the ground in order to decide where life is going to take me next. I’m rather at a crossroads in my life with regard to this second career that I have carved out. I have to decide which direction I want to go.

The Universe is giving me, or maybe forcing me, to take some time to make my decisions. My husband and I are going to take a big trip very soon. We live in the U.S. and we’re going to Europe; specifically, the Mediterranean. I have been all over northern and Central Europe, but never to Southern Europe. We’re taking a wonderful cruise around Italy, France, and Spain and some of the islands in the sea. We’ll, of course, be on the ground in Europe some as we stop at ports of call. I can’t really make any decisions about my career or start anything new until we return. It will give me some time to do some thinking. This will be valuable, I think. I’ll take pictures and share them with al of you when we return.

Posted in Appalachia, Non-fiction

#SoCS – 5/26/18 – Appalachia: Memorial Day

Posted on by

59818522-96A3-4277-BCF8-C388BD8101E8

It’s Memorial Day weekend and that’s an important holiday in Appalachia. It’s a holiday that honors lost loved ones, whether they were lost in war or died of natural causes, in this region of the U.S. In Appalachia, it’s a weekend where families reunite, have large meals together, and decorate the graves of their deceased relatives with flowers. Across Appalachia, Memorial Day is most often called Decoration Day.

When I was growing up, and even now, the family would congregate where most of the relatives were buried. In my case, that was at my grandparent’s home in Magoffin County, Kentucky. Every nuclear family within the extended family would bring beautiful flowers to decorate each grave. Often, that would involve going to three or four cemeteries.

Memorial Day at the cemetery was also a social occasion. Families who seldom saw each other would have a chance to talk and catch up while decorating the graves.

After decorating the graves, everyone would go to my grandmother’s house for a large meal and a visit with each other afterward. It was one of the most important family holidays of the year.

We still honor our lost loved ones in Appalachia in much the same way. Families are smaller. There are fewer large family meals. Instead of meals in grandma’s kitchen, they are often prepared on the grill. You will still find people hunting flowers a few days before the Memorial Day weekend to decorate gravesites. They will still enjoy visiting with family and friends in the cemeteries. It’s getting more difficult to find children who know what “Decoration Day” really means and who it honors.