PAT AND JOHN AND THE OLD-TIME FIDDLE

vincent van gogh

It's been a couple days of good vibrations all day long, good feeling, good vibes, good friends. This morning started with a phone call minutes after I woke up. From then on, seeing people of the first circle around my heart, friends of many years. Friend I wrote of yesterday, our forgiveness story, called wanting to know where he can find a banjo for his youngun, who wants to learn to make music. He has talked with the kid at length about school sports like football: kids come out of football with permanent physical problems, and when you're out of school, football is over. He told the kid if you want to learn something after school, learn to make music. You can play a banjo the rest of your life into old age. Why do something that comes to nothing when it will only bring you broken bones and concussions? I felt like it was sound counsel to be passing to a kid just starting out in his life. I feel like making music would be an immense help to the kid all the way through school and the rest of his life. If he takes to it, the great unknown. He talked at length. The donkeys heard my footsteps in the house and were braying for me to bring carrot and hay. Caterpillar wanted her catfood. She maoed repeatedly unto the pleading mao with the upturn at the end. All I could do was show her my open hand to mean, not now. She finally gave up in frustration, turned and went to the bedroom to her bed. He kept on talking, donkeys at the fence pleading to me with their eyes through the window. I went to the refrigerator, put three carrots in a pocket and went out the door with the phone. I didn't have to talk. I carried the wireless phone taking carrots to the donkeys, fed them carrot chunks with the phone in one hand. At the moment I thought he was done, he needed to tell me about a bar-B-Q place to take somebody I really want to impress. You can get out of there for less than ten dollars. He described every detail in the place, exactly how to get there. It seems like it could have been annoying, but it was not. This is one of the few people whose dark side I know as well as the light side. His dark side is definitely from hell, hell within, and his light side is a wonderful human being with a true heart. A mountain boy, who is who he is and no apologies. 

vincent van gogh

He talked the whole time I gave Jack and Jenny their morning carrots, and let me go when I was about ready to throw them hay, needing two hands. I was amused. He's funny when he gets going, tells good stories, explains endlessly and makes everything funny, except when he's talking about the twenty people that want to kill him, "and four of them mean it." Keeps him alert. I figure it keeps his heart pumping. It's his life he made for himself the way he wants it. It's his business, not mine, unless I happen to be around when the drive-by he's expecting with A-Ks occurs. He was funny to listen to, as always, like a stand-up comic with a telephone and an audience of one. Adjusting the blue tarp over the bales of hay, John and Pat's car came down the road and parked by the mailbox. I was still in the clothes I slept in--even slept in a sweater last night, it that kind of cold--with a jacket on to keep out the cold. They came inside and we talked awhile. I suggested I make some Ethiopian coffee and they wanted to go to town to eat, it being almost noon. I thought what the hell: I probably smell fairly rank in the clothes I wear at home. I've managed my wardrobe such that I sleep in the clothes I wear during the day at home. If I don't go to town for four days, I wear and sleep in the same clothes for four days. I think I'd slept two nights in what I wore today. I told myself that everywhere we go, I'll know people and they all know my scent anyway. If they didn't before, this their day. Therein lies the freedom that goes with white hair and a certain age. If I carried a cane, people would open doors for me. That sorry old man can't take care of hisself no more. It's with this license I put a hat on going out the door, no more concerns about my scent preceding me. Pat and John and I are close enough that we fart with no problem. We drove to town to the Tex-Mex restaurant, Mis Arados, had a good brunch and good conversation. They live near Hillsdale, NY, on the Massachusetts line. Pat said she can see Massachusetts from her kitchen window. I likened her to Sarah Palin, who makes us both bend over laughing and throwing up at the same time.  

vincent van gogh

Pat and I go back to 1975 in Charleston. In the next year, I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains and she moved to NYC. She and John met in the City and have been together ever since. They reproduced twice, two intelligent, beautiful grown girls, who have a personal friend relationship with their mother and will all their lives. She is who she is and she has allowed her girls who they are. All their lives they've had a free-thinking character for a mother. John is the same kind of dad for them. He has watched Wizard of Oz at least a hundred times with one of his babies sitting on one leg, the other on the other leg, watching it with them every time they wanted to see it. The girls grew up feeling safe that John was their papa. Both Pat and John stood up for them, caught them, encouraged them along. They're both fabulous women now. I mean by fabulous, my own estimation of them as what I call true human beings, women who, like their mother, are who they are, no apologies. They are people I'm humbled by the opportunity to know. I saw them grow up and was awed by them through childhood and on up. I feel blessed that these are my dear friends. That they are my friends is certainly a blessed experience. John was looking for a hand-made fiddle. I called a musician friend in SW Virginia and asked for some tips on who is making fiddles and has them for sale. He gave me the name of one in Boone, then added he had one for sale, one he's owned for several years and played a lot; in fact, played it that morning. I told him we'd be by there in a few hours, will have lunch and hit the road. John has a friend who plays fiddle and offered to teach him to play for no charge. John wants to learn something challenging to exercise brain in a time of life when you use-it-or-lose-it. He assessed the fiddle a considerable challenge. Friend told him to start with a good fiddle. Since he's going to the Blue Ridge, he'll have a good chance to find one hand-made. 

vincent van gogh

The fiddle is made by Robert Glier, of Cincinnati,1855-1924. He evidently was known for a lot of fiddle for the bucks. It has a rich, full sound. It has tiger striped wood on the back and the neck. The man made violins all his working life. He left Germany age 30. I'd say he learned his craft in Germany, more than likely an apprentice, trained in the old world way of fiddle making, sound its purpose. I'd reckon these mountains have a number of his fiddles, especially up around Kentucky, West Virginia, eastern Ohio, Virginia. A lot of traditional music has been played on Glier's fiddles. That my friend who sold it, Scott, owned it is a testament to its sound. He's been buying his instruments from friends in the region who make fiddles. I suspect he needed to get rid of the one that was not made locally to help pay for a new one by someone he knows. John was happy with his find. The price was right, the source was right, the time was right, the fiddle was right. He's looking forward to showing future fiddle teacher his find. We fell into a good flow the whole time they were here. None of us had an agenda, none of us was in a hurry, we relaxed and went with the flow. On the way back I suggested we stop by and see my friend Carole, who I wanted to meet them and them to meet her. I called her on John's cell phone. She was receptive to a drop-in. Carole fell into our flow, like stepping into the boat with us, and we had an open, free-flowing conversation in a circle in her sitting area, which just happened that way. Good vibes. They were as if they'd known each other twenty or more years. Before Carole's, we ran into a friend of Carole's and mine, Beth, when Pat was shopping for a wire for her i-pad to facilitate something I don't understand, which could be anything, how to turn it on.            

vincent van gogh by himself

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CHRIS COX AND OTHER HILLBILLY FRIENDS

 

I've been reading in a collection of my friend Chris Cox's columns he writes for the Asheville paper. Chris is from Alleghany County and many of the people he writes about are people here. Some of them I have known. I'm enjoying reading his accounts of people I know and know of. His first collection of his columns he published in a book, WAKING UP IN A CORNFIELD. Amazon has it with 5 stars from customer reviews. I don't see a consensus of five stars on amazon reviews very often. Chris's writing is clear, concise and poetic in the best sense of the adjective, not floral but insightful. His columns are lovingly conceived, coming from somebody whose mind is in touch with his heart. He may not think of it in these terms; it's so much a part of his character he wouldn't notice. In a sense, he is what I mean when I call somebody "real." It's what I call the mountain people, real. When somebody is bad, they're real about it. When somebody is good, they're real about it. By real I mean true, true to self, true to others, honest, straight-forward, says what he means with no compulsion to say what he doesn't mean. And by honesty I mean something more expansive than true and false. I don't mean always telling the truth or even seldom telling the truth. Not that Chris makes things up, he doesn't need to. I'm defining my use of the word, not Chris in particular. Chris is mountain people; it comes naturally to him to connect with the humanity of individuals he writes about. One in particular sticks with me, a friend of his dad's, Leo, who played poker seriously, a great guy, who, the first thing you need to know about Leo is never trust him. Know that and you never have a problem with him.

 

 

Leo was a really good acoustic guitar picker who could not play with a band for being unable to get along with anybody long enough to finish rehearsing their first gig. Understanding where Leo came from helps one to see Leo in an empathetic light; his dad was in prison through most of his childhood for killing a cousin over a still they were working together, whose last words were, Y'kilt me. When I say rough people, I don't mean sandpaper rough, but sawmill rough. Leo was one of the very first people I met here, maybe the second, after his uncle Tom. I was inside my house, which was completely empty, making bookshelves for a wall. It was Christmas day, 1976. I'm not a Christmas celebrant, so I spent the day preparing the house to start bringing my items in. It started snowing. I was driving a 4 wheel drive Jeep pickup with good tires and let it snow. The snow was up to four inches and I was shutting down to go back to the house I was staying in waiting for this house to be emptied by the previous owner. I saw a 61 Ford go up the road. I thought, You won't get far, and went out the door thinking it a good thing to have tracks in the road to drive on. On the road I saw parallel tracks that looked like two huge snakes went up the road side by side. I knew for sure he was not going far. A short ways after the road starts uphill I saw him, driver's side tires in the ditch, back wheel spinning. It was a gravel road then. I stopped, went to his passenger side door with window open and saw him face-down on the steering wheel, passed out drunk, foot on the gas pedal holding the motor wide open. I spoke to him, he jerked upright and I asked if he needed help. Duh. He told me to push it back onto the road. I went back to the left rear fender and pushed the car sideways while he spun the tire. Easily pushed it out of the ditch, hardly any effort on ice, and he was gone, snaking up the road out of sight. He turned left where I turned right. All I know of what happened next was he and the car survived the drive to wherever they went.

 

 

I saw his car go up and down the road several times during my first months. His uncle Tom had told me he was living up the road with his girlfriend. In the spring I was working with Leo's cousin, Bill, clearing a meadow that had grown up in saplings with bush-axe and chainsaw. We saw Leo's car go up the road and Bill said, There goes the most worthless man in Alleghany County. I had to double-take on Bill saying that of somebody. Bill, himself, was a contender for the title. It made what he said all the funnier. Bill said it to mean that guy is even more worthless than himself. Bill had his issues, too. His daddy died of a heart attack driving a tractor when Bill was 12. He and his half dozen brothers and sisters came up in the worst kind of Appalachian poverty, a house you'd call a shack, looked down on by everybody and called 'inbred" because mama and daddy were cousins. He and his brothers became a small gang. They were not aggressive tough guys, but you take one on, you've got them all to deal with. They stuck together to hold their ground. I learned quite a lot about Leo from Bill and Tom. He was a living character for me by the time I met him. And he'd heard about me from his cousins. I don't know how they characterized me, though it would been something like a college-boy that don't know nothin, though he can drink himself stupid and likes to ride around in the car with them on weekends drinking beer and laughing, is respectful and doesn't look down on them. It was easy to be respectful, I was half afraid of them until I found they were my bodyguards when they took me to places I'd never dare go alone. Looking back, I could have easily gone alone with no problem, but then I was looking at the unknown with fear. The pool room on a Saturday night late when everybody was red-faced and red-eyed is something I could never have experienced without my bodyguards. They knew everybody. Everybody already knew I was the new college-boy that worked with them, and were no more interested in me than if I were a bottle cap in the parking lot. I liked it like that. I didn't want their attention. I'd never been in such proximity with so many really rough looking guys. I felt like Pee Wee Herman in the biker bar. And that is not an exaggeration.

 

 

On the sixteenth of April my friend Pat was visiting from the city for the weekend. It was her birthday. She was at a wok in the kitchen when Leo's car stopped out front and we heard a knock on the door. I opened the door. It was a woman in jeans and jacket wearing an old-timey bonnet, blond with blue eyes and black teeth. She put out her right hand and said, Hi, I'm Margie. By this time I'd heard so much about Margie she was a legend already, from Bill and his brothers. I about fell over backwards. This was the first time I'd seen her. They didn't say she had black teeth, but I heard about all the rest of her. She said Leo was waiting in the car. They had some vodka and some chaser and beer. Did we want to party? I said, Yeah. Margie went back to the car and they both returned toting the condiments, a guitar case and a banjo case. Pat turned off the stove and joined the party. We started off with some drinks, getting acquainted, where you from?, talked, laughed, Leo took out his guitar and started picking. Margie took out her banjo and sang, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. She had a harmonica, called here a harp. It was the only song she knew. She sang it over and over as the night went on and we got more shit-faced. It was her song. She loved it so much she didn't need any other songs. The song was her life. I never tired of hearing her sing it. I put a cassette on to record her singing it and let the tape go as she and Leo made music and we laughed and partied. Bill stopped by, seeing Leo's car, and went to town for more liquor. Pat was loving this spontaneous moment at least as much as I was. We were both in awe of what was happening before our eyes. It could not have happened if either she or I looked down on these people. Margie told us she'd learned to play the banjo in prison, harp too. Leo was an impressive guitar picker. I thought Margie's banjo pickin was beautiful. I loved her singing, the first my ears had beheld of hillbilly singing. She sang it from her soul. It was right. It was right like Big Mama Thornton singing Summertime and Nina Simone singing Porgy. I gave the hour and a half tape to Pat for her birthday present. She still has it.  

 

caterpillar

all photos by tj worthington

 

GRUMPY OLD BASTARD ROAD RUNNER

 

jack's nose

Calm, quiet day after a night of big thunder and rain. I went out with a couple of five gallon buckets to shovel up some donkey droppings to spread under the rhododendron around the house. They are huge, ready for some nourishment. I don't know how well it works, but I spread it on the ground out around the outside edge of the branches where the root tips crawl through the ground. I've been told donkey is high potency manure that burns the plants. I'm assuming leaving it on top of the ground and letting the nutrients soak in a little at a time during rains will be more gentle. I'm not tilling it into the ground. The pink rhododendron that get full sun are blooming now while the ones in the shade are just now popping the buds. In my early years in the mountains the pink rhododendron, the ones the people in the old way called purple, bloomed in late June every year. The  blooming has crept forward in time until they're blooming mid May now. I've watched their blooming season advance closer to the end of winter. These rhododendron have almost rounded tips on their leaves. They love sunlight. The other rhododendron has pointed leaves and white flowers the old people called pink. They also called rhododendron laurel and called mountain laurel ivy. It was a language overlap in changing times the old folks couldn't adjust to. Laurel was laurel and ivy was ivy. Somebody comes along saying that's not laurel and that's not ivy, the old folks would let it go by, somebody else trying to make something common into something high sounding. One of the many insights picked up in these mountains was seeing that the people of the old way before electricity and oil were not less intelligent than us because they didn't finish high school and their grammar was different. We from outside the mountains tend to look at the old hillbillies as none to brite, people who were poor because they were uneducated. I see it so the other way around now, I have to watch judging people who take mountain culture for a lesser version of their own, because I did it for too long a time to admit without embarrassment.

 

jack's topknot

 

When it comes to intelligence, they had it all over us. Their educational system taught them how to figure things out. Ours has us memorizing details. Ever tried to read a high school history text book? Detail after detail to be memorized. So boring you never want to read another book the rest of your life. Bring back the Bible, just because it's good reading. I'm not going to say anything about the twitter generation, because I know nothing at all about them. I see a few in the coffee shop and they act like they're not even there. That's the extent of my experience. Recalling a time recently I went into a local restaurant with friend Bill Nixon from Atlanta. I came face to face with the guy who was to seat us, looked to be about 18. I drew a blank. I don't know how to talk to an eighteen year old. So many generation gaps have gone between us I lost track of the young long ago. I'm looking at the guy and he's looking at me and I don't know what to say. Every experience I've had in recent years speaking to somebody that age, they say, What? I didn't want to go through any of it. I put two fingers up. Bill stepped up. He and the guy talked like peers. The kid talked to him like Bill could hear, and Bill was older than me. Bill has taught art in university much of his life. His students are people of that age and he knows how to talk to them. Knows so well, the guy lit up talking with Bill. The difference, Bill saw him person to person, I saw him the other side of a communication barrier. It was all in my attitude. Bill looks like old Walt Whitman and I look like a retired cop. Now, when I have occasion to address the young, I tell myself to receive them for who they are, like everybody else, and talk like the other can hear. In many ways, it's like being in a foreign country among the young in this time of the life. The ones I know, I connect with them easily. It's the ones I don't know that put me in a state of bewilderment. Perhaps I put too much emphasis on not understanding their culture. I admired that moment in Bill. A bit of urban sophistication was in the mix too, none of which I have.

 

jenny's whiskers

 

My friend Meredith I've known since she was a baby. Wasn't around her much, a time or two a year, but feel like I know her. First time I saw her after her PhD, I felt like she was closer and at once farther away. Farther away in that she has impressive knowledge in her head. A time I saw her when she was in high school, she had read on her own for fun, the Iliad and the Odyssey. She was then reading a two inch thick commentary on them. I daresay I was impressed. I might have wiggled my way through maybe one of them, but never the commentary at that age. She now has a baby as cute as she was. Her parents never hit her and she will never hit her baby. My friend Pat, who lives in NY state close to Massachusetts, raised two girls without hitting them. Oldest is now a surgeon. The other works with her in her landscaping business. They are brilliant, beautiful women, inside and out, contributions to the world around them. I'm comfortable in my age, comfortable in my culture, comfortable in my world of friends and neighbors. People come in from outside these parameters and I'm lost for what to say or do. I don't understand people outside my world anymore. I've given so much focus of energy to understanding the culture I live in, the people I know and the mountain of memories that go with advancing age, I don't pay attention to anything outside these fields, or meadows. Nobody tells me anymore I need to pay more attention to the world out there (television). Everyone in my world knows I never will. I've not paid attention to tv since 1961. Only have one now for watching films. Films are art forms. Tv is too, but about as much an art form as a child's coloring book. The art in television is mind manipulation. A century and a half of the study of psychology and what is the result? Mind control by way of television, addictive mind control that creates imaginary reality as directed by.... When you don't watch television and live in a world of people that do, just the frame of mind, ways of thinking make me an outsider. I hear Patti Smith again, Outside of society! That's where I wanna be! Followed by Lenny Kaye's guitar strings. Hail Yeah! Rebel yell.  

 

jack's nostril

 

Outside of society is where I'm comfortable. A thought of being comfortable in society gives me the shivers. There was a time in the life when I never imagined it possible to get out from under the constant assault of other people's expectations, like it would be impossible. The day I turned off caring, it became possible. I came to realize nobody has a right to expect of someone else. I quit allowing other people to expect of me. I quit caring before the move to the mountains. I'm in a place, have been here awhile, where I don't perform other people's expectations unless I agree to it or offer to. I found in these hills that the people outside society are the very most interesting people around. I'm remembering what friend Jr Maxwell told me his daddy, who was born months after the end of the War of Yankee Aggression, told him, Stay away from important people. I was inclined in that direction when he said it, but it was nice to have it so succinctly put. When somebody says, I didn't expect that of you, I think without saying it, that's your problem, not mine. I know I've pist an awful lot of people off with indifference to their expectations. It keeps them away. I don't want around me people who expect of others, especially the unspoken expectations, my favorite kind to trample. I have a maxim of my own on the subject, expect me to walk on your eggshells, they will be broken. It's been my attitude a very long time, so long I don't think about it anymore. It's become my nature. If I wanted to be a social butterfly, I would not choose here to do it. I came to Waterfall Road to perform that corny cliché, find myself. Oh, what a difference it made. A particular church here I liked, felt the spirit good there, went a few times, then the expectations start, "We expected to see you last week, brother." I'm gone. Once expectation raises its head and starts talking, I make tracks, high-speed tracks that barely touch the ground.

 

jenny's eye

 

 

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