Category: Appalachia

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

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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.

Posted in #100WW, Appalachia, Flash Fiction

Appalachia: Pearl Harbor – #100WW

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The news ran up and down Burning Fork and Birch Branch roads in Magoffin County, Kentucky faster than the water in the creeks. The family ran into the house to turn on the radio, their only means of communication with the outside world. The address by the President of the United States was playing. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and the U.S. had entered World War II.

The young man from Michigan enlisted in the Navy. He was to be sent to Kentucky where his fate would intertwine with that Appalachian family because of this Great War.

100 words

Picture credit to @Bikurgurl

Posted in Appalachia, Non-fiction

#SoCS – 5/19/18 – Stories of #Appalachia – The Postman and the Dog

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Up until I was in my 20s, my uncle lived deep into the Birch Branch hollow  (pronounced “holler” in the eastern Kentucky dialect). He lived in a cabin and with him lived his female Doberman Pinscher, Gertrude. For awhile, he also had a male Doberman Pinscher named Sue, after Roger Miller’s song, “A Boy Named Sue.”

But this story is about Gertrude. My uncle was a postal service worker in Magoffin County, Kentucky. He delivered mail and Gertrude accompanied him. Mail carriers in rural areas tend to drive slowly between stops and my uncle certainly did. One reason he drove slowly is because of where Gertrude rode in/on the station wagon that he drove. She rode on top of it. My uncle and Gertrude were something of a legend in Magoffin County because this was quite a sight to passers-by.

My uncle passed away in 1974 and left poor Gertrude behind. She was old then and very bonded to him. She lived the last years of her life on my cousin’s porch, in a cushy dog house, undoubtedly grieving for my uncle. She was bonded and there was little to do for her although my cousin certainly tried.

A man and his dog.

Posted in Appalachia, Non-fiction

Stories of #Appalachia – Birch Branch Today

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My grandfather’s farm, in Magoffin County, KY, USA, located in the heart of Appalachia, is no more now in 2018. It was located at the intersection of the small dirt road, Birch Branch, and a county road that was only a little more well-traveled, Burning Fork. My grandparents have been gone now for many years and the farm sold off. I only have one reason now to go back to Birch Branch and that is a much-loved cousin who still lives in the area. I guess a second reason is to gaze longingly at what used to be the farm and wish for things that used to be. I feel less and less able to do that and more likely just to remember it in my heart and mind.

Today, unless you can remember Birch Branch and my grandfather’s farm in what used to be lovely eastern Kentucky, you wouldn’t recognize it. The road is the same, dirt and some gravel. But where my grandfather’s and great uncle’s farms were beside it, now there is a trailer park. Not a well-maintained trailer park, but trailers with neglected little children running around in dirt yards and dogs tied out in the heat on chains. Usually, there are men sitting on the steps of the trailers, during the day when they should be working. There are no jobs. The unemployment rate in the county is upwards of 33 percent. They either don’t think of it or don’t have the means to travel to find a job like generations before them did.

You’ve heard of the opioid problem in the U.S.? You’re looking at it when you view what is now where my grandfather’s farm used to be. Instead of working, these men are taking pain pills. OxyContin, Percocet, Hydrocodone, any of the codeine or morphine=based drugs they can get. Most of them aren’t just temporarily high because of some sort of problem. They are the long-term addicted. If they ever had job skills, they lost them long ago. Generations of men just like them lost them long ago. It is the cycle of poverty and drug abuse.

Such things had never been heard of when my grandfather farmed this land. If you couldn’t find a job around home, you joined the military or you left home and worked away. You didn’t give up and sit on the steps of a trailer stoned out of your mind day after day after day. I find these people and this lifestyle disgusting.

The creek is still there, filled with trash. I can still envision the part of the land that was my great-uncle’s. He had a beautiful collie dog named Lassie who I played with as a child in the green pasture land. The horrible drug trailers populate that land now.

Some of you may think that the loss of coal mining is responsible for this problem. Not so. Magoffin County is not a coal mining county. The loss of self-respect and the availability of drugs is responsible for the problem. When I visit, I want to scream at these people to get in their cars and find a job. It wouldn’t help.

Politicians can discuss the opioid problem, but until they can find jobs for these people, the opioid problem will remain. It may, right now, be too late. I hate to sound cynical about an area that I loved so much, but I don’t expect this social and cultural problem to be solved in my lifetime. Magoffin County, KY is certainly not the only county in an area as big as Appalachia to have exactly the same problem.

Posted in Appalachia, Non-fiction, Uncategorized

Stories of Appalachia: Birch Branch

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There is a little creek that runs up a hollow (pronounced “holler” in eastern Kentucky) called Birch Branch. Now in case you don’t know what a holler is, I’ll tell you. It is the very narrow valley between two mountains. I’m not sure if that term is specific to Appalachia, but that’s the only place I’ve ever heard it used. Birch Branch is the creek that was beside the farms and houses where my family, for many generations back, lived and thrived. The name came from the Native Americans. I assume it was named because of the slight river birch trees that grow by the creek.

I didn’t live there. I grew up in northeastern Kentucky which is still Appalachia, but it isn’t the heart of the region. Birch Branch and the area around it, which is in Magoffin County, Kentucky, is in the heart of Appalachia.

When I was growing up, we used to visit my grandparents and other relatives in and around Birch Branch very frequently. That area was originally where my maternal grandmother’s people lived and, when I was a girl, most of them still lived there. My mother, dad, and I were often there every weekend. I developed an understanding of Appalachia and its people because I am one of its people. My mother grew up there. I have deep Appalachian roots through her that extend back to the Revolutionary War.

Back to Birch Branch. It was a beautiful place back in those days. Heavily wooded. Mountainous. A few homes miles apart. The road was dirt and gravel. My grandfather and grandmother married and bought a house on that road in 1901 along with a beautiful farm. They raised eight children in that farmhouse, including my mother.

By the time I came along, they had moved to another farm house on what they called the main road, an intersecting road with Birch Branch. All of my childhood, my cousins and I would play up and down the Birch Branch road and in that creek. We heard stories of what had happened there in the past. One story was that one of my great-grandfather’s wives had gotten angry with him and thrown herself into the creek. I’ll have to tell you that it would be very hard to drown yourself in that creek since the water level is usually low. That story is part of the family legend.

One particularly poignant memory for me is a trip I took up Birch Branch with my grandfather in his cart pulled by his mules. We went to his family’s homeplace, which was farther on from Birch Branch. I remember that, even as a child, the beauty of that place struck me. Green, lush, pure, clean. Not like it is today. The remains of the log cabin in which my grandfather had grown up were in the wonderous meadow to which he took me. I’ll never forget that special day. Circa 1960s.

Birch Branch is part of my heritage. Stay tuned for Part 2. Birch Branch today.

Posted in Appalachia, Eastern Kentucky

Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

I posted this book review some time ago, when the book was newly published, and before many of you had read it. Now, just about everyone who is very interested in the subject has read it. We know that Ron Howard is going to turn it into a movie.  Here is the review again:

Update: This book is going to be made into a movie, directed by Ron Howard.

Before I start this book review, I feel the need to print a bit of a disclaimer. This book is about the area of the country in which I grew up. I grew up on the fringes of Appalachia, but I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who lived in Magoffin Country, KY, just two counties over from Jackson, KY, where the author spent at least part of his childhood. I don’t think I’m biased as I’ve spent most of my life in other places than Appalachia. But, I understand the culture and I am brutally honest about the culture. I have delayed writing this book review because the subject matter of the novel is so close to my heart as I’m sure it is close to the heart of J.D. Vance. With that said, here goes…..

https://rosemarycarlson.com/2017/01/02/book-review-hillbilly-elegy/

Posted in Appalachia

Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Update: This book has been made into a movie, directed by Ron Howard.

Before I start this book review, I feel the need to print a bit of a disclaimer. This book is about the area of the country in which I grew up. I grew up on the fringes of Appalachia, but I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who lived in Magoffin Country, KY, just two counties over from Jackson, KY, where the author spent at least part of his childhood. I don’t think I’m biased as I’ve spent most of my life in places other than Appalachia. But, I understand the culture and I am brutally honest about the culture. I have delayed writing this book review because the subject matter of the novel is so close to my heart as I’m sure it is close to the heart of J.D. Vance. With that said, here goes…..

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance is about a family who originated in Breathitt County, KY, squarely in the middle of the Appalachian portion of Kentucky (southeastern Kentucky). Breathitt County is poor, even desperately poor, white, and most of the people are, in their way, both hopeless and proud. This book is Mr. Vance’s memoir. However, J.D. Vance did up in Appalachia. He did not grow up in Breathitt County, KY. His family moved to Middletown, Ohio and that’s where Mr. Vance grew up. He was in Kentucky on occasion to visit relatives.

Hillbilly Elegy is a graphic portrayal of life in Appalachia, or perhaps I should say Eastern Kentucky, during the time Vance grew up. I’m speaking as one who was there at the same time as well as before and since. I know that the way Mr. Vance portrayed Eastern Kentucky is based on his truth and what he may have observed when visiting, but it is sensationalized and Hillbilly Elegy gives its readers a warped perspective of the area.

The people of Appalachia are good people. They are proud and they would be hard-working, if there were anywhere to work. Once the occupation of coal mining started to decline, unemployment skyrocketed. Industries simply seldom move into this part of Appalachia due to its relative geographic isolation, the lack of good roads, and a low educational level of the people.

Since work is so scarce, there have been periods of movement out of the area, and Mr. Vance’s family moved during one of those periods. The typical places to move have been to Ohio and Michigan. Mr. Vance’s family moved to Middletown, Ohio seeking a better life and work. Ultimately, they were seeking upward mobility. A generation or two before the period in which Hillbilly Elegy is set, upward mobility existed in Eastern Kentucky. That was during my grandparent’s time. During Mr. Vance’s time, upward mobility was difficult to obtain but certainly not impossible.

One fault I have regarding Vance’s book is that he gave no historical perspective on the Appalachian region. The Appalachia that I knew was not the Appalachia that Vance seemed to know. Those who experienced Appalachia before Vance knew a beautiful, peaceful place with people who immigrated mostly from Scotland, Ireland and England. The people were fiercely independent and self-sufficient because they had to be. They were farmers and, yes, coal miners, among other occupations. They were clannish and family-oriented.

Another problem with Mr. Vance’s book is that he depicted the people as either ignorant, drug addicts, alcoholics, lazy or some combination of all of these characteristics.
Vance couldn’t be more wrong. Even though many are uneducated, uneducated does not always mean ignorant. They are independent and self-sufficient and many were self-educated and went into the trades such as construction, plumbing, electricity, auto mechanics and more. Clearly, alcoholism and drug addiction were not part of their lives. A generation or two before Vance’s time in Appalachia, many were farmers, often tobacco farmers. Some of that ended when the price supports for tobacco were removed by the federal government. However, they farmed other crops. Corn, wheat, soybeans were some and they raised sheep and cattle. Unfortunately, Vance’s family must not have taken these paths.

Vance basically trashed the Appalachian area and the culture of the Appalachian people with little explanation or historical perspective. Hillbilly Elegy is a book based on one Appalachian family, not the entire area. Vance sensationalized those things he had been exposed to, but didn’t do his research on why things were as they were.

Yes, Mr. Vance’s family carried their culture with them when they moved to Ohio. What else were they to do? They knew nothing else. They were hot-tempered and quick to take offense. Perhaps that was because the culture in Eastern Kentucky developed in geographic isolation from the rest of the world. The family had addiction problems. When people can’t find work, that tends to happen. Those things went with them to Ohio as they are not solvable over night. They were “different” than their neighbors in Ohio. Of course they were. They came from a different place with different social norms and different values. It was hard to fit in, especially with people who called you a “hillbilly” and made fun of your accent. Vance’s family all struggled with their middle-class life in Ohio. They struggled to escape the demons of their pasts. They never did and my guess is neither did J.D. Vance. Hillbilly Elegy was the written testament to the chip Vance carries on his shoulders.

Vance’s family life seems chaotic to people who have never lived in the culture of Appalachia but not so chaotic to those of us who have. He did have the stabilizing influence of his grandparents on his mother’s side and that, perhaps, saved him. He went on to become a first-generation college student, a Marine, and he graduated from the Yale Law school. He is not the only young person to have escaped a disadvantaged background. He clearly had determination and intelligence as is evidenced in Hillbilly Elegy.

Vance, however, did not make it clear that the culture described in this book is not limited to Appalachia. Any poor, white, disadvantaged culture can fall prey to the cultural problems that Vance’s family experienced.

Hillbilly Elegy is a bestseller. My feeling is that it was written to be a bestseller by sensationalizing the bad and ignoring the good that exists in Appalachia. It is a social psychology look at a culture in crisis. If you want to read just one perspective on Appalachia, then read this book. Keep in mind that it depicts only the perspective of J.D. Vance. There are other books on Appalachia, the people and the culture that are much more well-rounded. Vance’s book is simply the story of one family.

#amwriting #amblogging #writing #HillbillyElegy #Appalachia