THE INTIMACY OF READING

ralph stanley and the clinch mountain boys

oil on canvas by tj worthington

A facebook friend posted today his thoughts and experience on a lifetime of reading, looking at the books, in particular, that were important to him, that stay with him. Like I look at a bookshelf and my eye falls on One Man's Bible, by Gao Xingjian, a Chinese dissident living in Paris. I feel the same glow in my heart as when I gaze at the window and see a squirrel at the birdfeeder, tail curled behind its head, nibbling a seed. The spine of the book reminds me of the content, as powerful for me in the time of reading it as Henry Miller's Colossus of Marousi in the time of reading it. James Lord's biography of Italian/Swiss/French sculptor, Giacometti, was important, because I came to know him, admire his mind, his vision, how simply he lived. At the end, Giacometti died and was buried. I closed the book, sat in the chair and cried for half an hour. It was the same as hearing of the death of one of my closest friends. I see a piece by Giacometti today and feel his presence in it. The only tool he used was his pocket knife, which inspired use of minimal tools in my own art making. I use a drill, a saw, a brush, and a palette knife, wood glue. 

philippe petit

I see the title, Man On Wire, and remember Philippe Petit, who walked the wire between WTC towers. I have three newspaper articles I've kept because they said something powerful to me. One was an article from the Village Voice when Andy Warhol was shot. Another, Philippe Petit's amazing event walking the wire. The third, an article from a newspaper about Johnny Weissmuller, a famous Tarzan from the Fifties, kept alive a vegetable in an Acapulco condo on the beach, tubes and round the clock nurses. Couldn't talk from stroke after stroke after stroke, unable to die because heart was so healthy from a lifetime of rigorous exercise. All he could do was give out a Tarzan yell from time to time and run shivers through the whole condo. I think the Tarzan story told me exercise aint what it's cracked up to be. Why was Petit's event so meaningful for me? He walked a wire between two buildings that sway, up high in the wind above the city of canyons. I know that I could not even stand on the roof of a skyscraper, could not step out of the elevator or stair well door. I sure as hell could not stand at the edge and look down at the street two tenths of a mile below. I don't know all there is to know about self, not even close, but I do know that. Him crawling over the edge and just stepping onto the wire rates my total respect. I'd rather read about him than Henry Kissinger. 

johnny weissmuller

The Lance and the Shield, by Robert M Utley, a biography of Sitting Bull, hit me as deeply as the Giacometti biography. By the end, I knew Sitting Bull, the man himself, who he was. I felt something I had never before felt from a biography, that I knew this man, knew him well. His values were mine. He seemed as familiar as reading a memoir by someone I already knew well. Like Wendy Salinger's, Listen, a beautifully written memoir of living through sexual child abuse by daddy, illustrated for me why my friend Wendy was wired tight as a banjo string. Sitting Bull, I felt I knew as well as I knew Wendy. I spoke with a woman friend about it who was somewhat psychic. She told me to ask him. I said I don't know how. She said, Yes you do, just do it. Later, at home, I went into a kind of meditation, settled down, and appealed to Sitting Bull in spirit. He appeared. We were in his tipi, either side of a small fire in the center. We smoked the pipe. I was in awe, hesitant to speak. I was thinking this is about more than a silly question. Eventually, I asked him why he is so familiar to me, why I know him so well. He said, "I am your real father." We spoke a little bit more, though mostly sat in silence. I visited him a few more times, no more questions and answers, only silence. I painted a portrait of him that is on the wall maybe four feet from where I sit. My version looks more like Gregory Peck in brown face. 

The Lance and the Shield was reprinted years later with new title and some places rewritten, Sitting Bull. I read it. And found later, a book of stories from the life of Sitting Bull that were passed down through the family, by his great-grandson, Ernie LaPointe. They're among the book treasures in the house. Another treasure in the house is Ralph Stanley's memoir, Man Of Constant Sorrow, written for him by Eddie Dean, who wrote it in Stanley's own words, as if Stanley, himself, wrote it. I have to credit Dean, because it is so beautifully written. I carried the copy to a show at Fairview and asked Ralph to sign it. I couldn't speak. I knew if I spoke a word I'd break out in tears that wouldn't stop. I asked him to sign it by opening the book and putting it before him. He got it. He wrote his signature in it, and that was all I wanted. I'm not one to ask writers to sign books, but this was necessary. I painted a portrait of him and his band playing at Fairview Ruritan, drove it to Clintwood, Virginia, and gave it to the Ralph Stanley museum in appreciation for his music. Asked if I'd like to meet him, I declined. I said I'd turn to jello. They said, he's just a man. I said, I know. He's also Ralph Stanley. A biography of the Carter Family, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone, opened their music to me, one of the great gifts of my life. A few days ago I started Philip Glass's memoir, Words Without Music. I can see already it's going to be one of those books that is a treasure for how deeply it speaks to me. 

*

GROUNDED

jenny nibbles afternoon grain

                                       Now that my ladder's gone,
          I must lie down where all the ladders start
          in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. 

                                                            ~WB Yeats
                           from Circus Animals Desertion

Saw a news headline today, a flood in the capital of Georgia. I hadn't heard of a flood in Atlanta, then realized it was Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, the country between Russia to the north and Turkey to the south, the Black Sea to the west and Azerbaijan to the east. It is one of the poorest countries in the Western world, a consequence of its history and geography. The Tbilisi flood set loose the animals from the zoo, and they needed rounding up. How do you catch zoo animals in a flooded city? I saw a Georgian film last month, In Bloom, a beautifully made film, a peep-hole view into post-Soviet life, a picture of how a couple of families live their everyday lives, two teenage girls in school. It is my only experience of Georgia, other than seeing it on a map. Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, a city about forty miles by highway from Tbilisi. He gave Georgia a kind of status in Soviet times, though post-Soviet, he's not much of a tourist draw. 

jack nibbles afternoon grain

I read the brief article about the zoo animals in Tbilisi and WB Yeat's poem, Circus Animals Desertion, came to mind, one of my top favorite poems of all time, all places. I googled the title, found the poem and read it. Came to the end and there it was, a purpose in my destiny, the place I set to start my new life in the mountains, the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, my own interior stuff, the bottom of the ladder, on the ground. At the beginning of my new life, I worked a farm with 22 head of beef cows and one bull. Sent the calves to market every fall. Cleared some land with a bush axe of saplings and young trees grown up the first several weeks, working self into shape. Hard labor and solitude. Tom gave me the job to see if I could take it. If I couldn't do it, he'd be rid of me from the start and not have to fool with a simpleton on the farm. I took it for boot camp, focused working the body into shape. I wanted to come down out of mind, self-image, everything false about my motivations and wants. Hypothesized hard labor and standing on the ground the best place to start, living simply on the edge of the woods, farm on three sides, a gravel road and one neighbor on it. 

jack and butterfly

I'd separated self from a host of habit patterns like on a chopping block. It was an extreme move. I knew, making the decision, there would be no turning back. This is it. Figure it out. My prayer had been that I would like to go someplace with a living culture where English is spoken. Appalachian culture came up with an opening. I thought, if this isn't answer to prayer, it's awfully coincidental. It was difficult in the early years, coming from an absence of culture, initially, then a decade in Southern culture, enough to see it going away, being swallowed by the anti-culture, anti-community wave sweeping the land with set determination. Mountain culture continued. It would last at least long enough to provide a taste of a way of life, albeit one on its way out. I have not totally adopted mountain culture for my own, because then I'd be conforming to codes not my own. I came here to find my own codes. I have adopted many of the mountain codes for my own for their practical application to everyday life, like Confucianisms. I never play education one-upmanship with any of the hillbilly people I know. And they know it. It's part of my name. Also, I don't make apologies for my education. I did it because I wanted it for my own self, for my own development. You're not apologizing for quitting after the seventh grade and I'm not apologizing for sticking with it. I had to prove to the people around me I was not looking down on them by not looking down on them. It was easy. I never looked down on any of them from the beginning. 

jenny

I can't talk down to anybody. One of the first things I learned in my first year is I aint got nothin on no hillbilly in the entire Appalachian chain. I found them such intelligent people they humbled me. First maxim I gave self was never attempt to fool anybody of these mountains for any reason. It will not work. It may for a minute or two, but when it stops working, you'll never see a sign of it. They just pay less attention to what you say. Ralph Stanley, speaking of the mountains was also speaking of mountain culture when he said, "They keep you humble, they put you in your place." I had found my place among a people I respected. I learned respect from hillbillies. I asked my friend Jr Maxwell when he was into his late seventies, who he had looked up to along the way. He said he looked up to everybody. It was all he said. It needed no amending. At the moment, I took it for somewhat self-serving, but learned as years went by it was a concise statement of fact. I understood why so many people looked up to Jr. He looked up to them first. He was decidedly the most humble man I'd ever known. He was so deeply humble within himself that he never needed to show it the way people do pretending. It was simply who he was. I threw my ladder away when I left the world of commerce. I have preferred to remain on the ground throughout my stay. I like what Joseph Campbell said about ladders. We spend our lives climbing a ladder and when we reach the top, alas, it was the wrong ladder. I'll stay on the ground, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, and not concern myself with ladders. Ladders deceive. I could not have donkeys on a ladder. 

jack

*

HILLBILLY DJ

the carter family

From social moments I've engaged in over the last weeks I'm seeing I don't know how to talk to anybody anymore. Never did, really. Consciously worked at learning to be witty and entertaining, but it never took. Something like taking a chemistry class when I never wanted to know anything about chemistry. I couldn't learn those letters with the lines between them. It was opaque as trying to learn to read music. It never took. I understand what people who cannot read see when they look at a page of words, same thing I see in a sheet of music. At piano concerts I've been to, Peter Serkin, Artur Rubinstein, some others with familiar names and some without, I see people reading music and playing really fast, I'm in awe, even knowing they've practiced it ten thousand hours and don't need the written music but for emergency moments, like somebody coughs and distracts the musician for a tenth of a second. I'm in awe of anybody who can read music and play at the same time, even make music of it. A musician is someone who likes to play the same thing over and over working on nuances, smoothing the finger work, learning the tune so well it's automatic. Playing old-time mountain music of no written notes and no written words, passed from musician to musician, is a matter of subtle musicianship as subtle as more "serious," school educated music that is indeed more advanced for having been written over hundreds of years, studied and played by serious musicians. Years and hours of mastery of an instrument matures with age in hillbilly music as in classical. Jascha Heifetz's violin is the only classical violin that has made tears run down my face like hillbilly fiddling does when it's by Tommy Jarrell or Fred Cockerham or Howard Joines sawing the strings.

the carter family

First time I heard Heifetz play Scottish Fantasy, by Max Bruch, I'd been in the hills a few years, had a few LPs of hillbilly fiddling I didn't listen to much, but liked. I was in the house with a classical station on the radio. Scottish Fantasy came on and the fiddle went straight to my heart like a bolt of joy lightning. I flopped down in a chair and wept throughout the song. It's the same thing that happens to me at a Ralph Stanley concert. The music is so beautiful my heart overflows with joy and tears run down my face. The name Ralph Stanley comes to mind and my eyes dampen. The names of the Carter Family, Sara, AP and Maybelle, dampen my eyes. Can't leave out Carter Stanley who can make you feel a song, like Sara Carter, with a plain voice telling the story, like few other singers do for me. I think I have everything the Stanley Brothers recorded, the Carter Family too, also Uncle Dave Macon, another of the great ones. In the time I had the music store of mountain music, I had speakers outside that played onto Main St, hillbilly music all day long. One day a car parked in front, a middle-aged woman driving. She left the car to pay a bill or something, leaving an old man, evidently her dad of 90+. I noticed the bill of his ball cap bobbing up and down and his fingers tapping rhythm on the armrest of the open window, Dave Macon clucking his banjo. The old boy too feeble to drive could still be moved by good music. Dave Macon used to play in the very building when he came to Sparta to play at the Spartan theater, now the Jubilee, in the 1940s. The building in that time was DC Bledsoe's Ford dealership. Local musicians jammed in the showroom with Uncle Dave and his musicians the afternoon before the show. A fruit jar went  the rounds and everybody got right for the concert. 

the carter family

Had a radio show on Saturday mornings of regional mountain music on the local AM station, until it was sold to a preacher who shut it down and left it. It was a bitter shame for Sparta to lose its station. Every Saturday morning I went to the station from ten to eleven and played mountain music from here in this county, surrounding counties and the Central Blue Ridge. Never had to play the same thing twice, but by choice. I searched for everything I could find from here by local musicians, tapes they made practicing, recordings. Local fiddler, Art Wooten, recorded 9 songs with Bill Monroe, played the first bluegrass song to be played on Grand Ole Opry, Mule Skinner Blues, in January, 1939, with Bill Monroe's band. He forever has the title, The First Bluegrass Fiddler. I often referred to the show as music from home. Art recorded, I think, eight songs with the Stanley Brothers and four with Flatt & Scruggs. Often I'd devote an hour to a given band or artist, an hour of Whitetop Mountain Band, an hour of Alternate Roots, an hour of Big Country Bluegrass. My purpose was to give the people of the county who love their own music a chance to hear it. The radio show was one of my many art forms. It was a creative expression as dj, making an hour of good mountain music to fill the listener's ears with joy. I had no idea how many people listened, who, or anything. I talked to a black microphone. It was my listener. It took a little time to learn how to talk to a black tennis ball as though it were conscious, like Hamlet talking to a skull. I went to Dudley Carpenter at first to teach me how to dj. He was a good teacher. He taught me how to do it right. I didn't want to do it right, but wanted to know how. I wanted to talk no more than to tell who made the music and song titles. Occasionally, I'd tell a little something, but my attention was on playing the music. 

the carter family

It was my favorite hour of the week. Eventually, I got the feel for people hearing it at home, driving, living their lives. I loved the Carter Family so much and knew my listeners loved them even more than I did, people of the same culture as the Carter Family, I could not talk during a Carter Family show. Everybody knew the titles, I didn't need to introduce any song. I sat with tears flowing down my face for an hour loving the music and happy my listeners were loving it too. My style as a dj was more NPR than commercial. I talked reasonably. Mountain people don't like to hear a lot of talk. They want to hear music. I played music. When it was the Stanley Brothers, tears ran down my face the whole hour. They are so of these mountains. The Carter Family, The Stanley Brothers, Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson are the voices the soul of the Southern Appalachians chose to sing through. These musicians, in my heart's way of hearing them, are of these mountains to the place they are these mountains. The only Christmas song I never tire of hearing is Ralph Stanley's Beautiful Star of Bethlehem. It tears me up every time I hear it. He can make you feel a gospel song in the heart. I had a good time sharing the beautiful music of these hills with the people whose music it was. I never imagined in earlier life I might one day be a dj playing mountain music on a local AM station in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Backwoods Beat Music Hour. I loved my listeners, even though I did not know who they were. Occasionally, in the grocery store or post office I'd fall into conversation with someone who told me they listen. I've met some wonderful people like that. The radio show was an expression of my love for the people of the county, a thank you for allowing me to live here in peace.        

*

DONKEY JACK'S BIG ADVENTURE

jenny and jack

 

This morning I woke with the old-time song playing in my head, Rabbit In a Log, Arnold Spangler singing it with the Laurel Fork Travelers. There's a rabbit in a log and I aint got my dog. How will I get him, I know. I'll get me a briar and twist it in his hair. That's how I'll get him, I know. The song has been in my head all morning. I love it when a good song gets in my head and sticks around. Ralph Stanley and Jimmy Martin recorded together Rabbit In a Log in the late 1960s, Ralph's second album after Carter died. But Arnold Spangler owns the song. He does it the old hillbilly way playing his squawking fiddle and Melvin Felts clucking his banjo. Makes me wet-eyed just to remember them. Lord have mercy, how I love old-time hillbilly music. It's the only music I've heard in my life that makes me cry for the beauty in it. I wept all the way through a Ralph Stanley concert, start to finish, for the beauty in the music. I can't play Stanley Brothers or Ralph Stanley much, their singing is so in line with my vibration, or something, that I weep. Carter Family too. When I'd play Carter Family on the radio show, I couldn't talk between songs for weeping and choking up at the mention of the name of any one of the three. My eyes are damp now just thinking about them. I didn't need to say anything about the Carter Family to any of my listeners. All loved the Carter Family, knew a great many of their songs. Never had to introduce anything. Just let it play, the more songs the merrier. And I sat in the chair and wept. It was the same when I played the Stanley Brothers or Ralph. Baptist hymnals have a considerable number of songs attributed to AP Carter. AP was a severely nerdy mountain boy in the time before WW1, who never got into fights, didn't run with the boys, but took all day long walks along the railroad track singing. He had a tremor in his voice the other kids made fun of and he quit school to get away from them. It's the tremor in his voice that makes his vocals AP Carter's alone.  

 

 

jack

 

Their story is told in a wonderful biography of the Carter Family, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?, told in such a way that when it's over you feel like these are people you have known. Somehow, it brings them to life. And a wonderful autobiography by Ralph Stanley, Man of Constant Sorrow. He took that old, old forgotten song, recorded it and it, too, was forgotten. Then that silly movie about hillbillies, O Brother, and Dan Tyminski's version of Man of Constant Sorrow made the song immensely popular. Then it was discovered that Ralph Stanley has been singing it all along. Ralph Stanley, in his old age, began to get attention and big royalties since the movie made his song so popular. A rock version of the song has been made by the Charm City Devils. They have a great hard-metal version of it on utube that makes me want to see them in concert so bad I may find a way to drive to Johnson City, Tennessee, Aug 26, to see them the closest they'll come to here. I'm ready for another concert. I need a good rock concert every now and again. Looks like a two to two and a half hour drive, same as to Charlotte, Roanoke or Greensboro, the places I have to go to for a concert anyway. But it is so great to drive less than twenty miles to see Ralph Stanley in a place where only hillbillies go, the people who love him in their hearts, and bring out the people homebound in wheelchairs, the people whose bodies are out of control twisted up in knots, strapped into a wheelchair, faces glowing with joy. And the people around them regard them the same as if they're ok. His voice is the voice of the soul of these mountains. He sings in the old Primitive Baptist style like Aretha Franklin sings in black gospel style. I'm not an autograph seeker, don't care about them, but I carried my copy of his book to a concert and asked him to sign it. Only his name. It is one of my book treasures that will not leave this house as long as I'm living. Loaned books never come back. I love that book from my soul. Books are too easy to find on amazon for me to be a lending library. Most recent one I loaned had with it the stipulation I really do want it back. I'll never see it again. It's gone forever. Nobody knows what happened to it. It just went poof, vanished into infinite space. I've found a used copy on amazon to replace it, but would prefer my own copy. The book, itself, doesn't matter as much as the trust that was broken. Trust has a way of not coming back when it's broken, like fine china. Glue doesn't fix it.

 

jenny and jack

 

Talking on the phone this morning with Carole, I saw Jack walk by the windows exploring my territory. I jumped off the phone in a hurry, picked up 4 carrots from refrigerator, went out the door calling to Jack. I did not know what to do. I thought carrot might be an attraction for him. Not. He was on an adventure. I followed him talking to him like I do, called him by name, keeping him knowing I'm behind him and aware of him. He was walking along my rock walkway to the parking lot for one, sniffing every rock. I let him take his time, have his adventure, hoping a car would not drive by and scare him. He was smelling my footprints, Caterpillar's and the possums that walk around here at night picking up bird feeder leavings. He was exploring my meadow he sees across the fence, knows it's the meadow I live in like I see the meadow he lives in. I walk into his meadow. Why not Jack walk into my meadow? I was a bit anxious, because a car always goes by when you don't want it to, even if only three cars go up the road in a day. I didn't want Jack to feel my anxiety. I wanted him to feel that I was walking with him, having a stroll. He sniffed his way along, pulled up some jewelweed and snacked on it, tried some grass, pulled up some plantain, chewed it some and spit it out. He was in a place he'd only seen from the fence. He was up close to the car he sees me ride by in. I honk at them when I drive by the meadow and holler out an open window, Donkey. Today was Jack's first experience with the car up close, to walk by it, smell it, smell the ground around it. He put a front hoof on the pavement and I thought, Oh no, let's not go walking on the road. The new surface, asphalt, his first time feeling it, he pulled his hoof back and would not step on it again.

 

jack

 

Jack made a turn toward the grass in the tracks that lead to the gate to the other meadow. I thought maybe he was heading that way. No. He turned around and walked back to the stone walkway with intent, walked past me holding a carrot, taking no interest. He walked back to the gate like he was in a hurry. He walked to the gate and it didn't move as easily as the other way. It spooked him. He walked a ways to the left and grazed in a jewelweed patch. I gave Jenny some carrot. I went through the gate, left it open and walked out into the meadow along their trail with Jenny following. Jack watched us go away into the distance. He stepped through the gate and came running, ran by us with a big smile on his face like he was having a great time. I gave carrots to Jenny, Jack came around for a carrot. Jack got too close, Jenny swung her ass end around on me, quick as a cat, and I hollered, Jen! She calmed down, I stepped out of her range and said, I'm going to my barn. They went at each other, slinging their heads around each other's necks, donkey martial arts sparring. They even raised their front legs high off the ground, standing on their back legs like pictures of rearing horses. It was beautiful. Their teeth were bared, they came down and Jack went into domination mode. Jenny ran, Jack behind her with his chin on her rump, her kicking him in the chest and neck, running. She came to a flat place by the creek and he ran up, took hold of the back of her neck and walked her where he wanted her to go. She broke free and he took hold of her again, took the fire right out of her. He let her go, they pretend tussled a short bit and both went to grazing. I replaced the baling twine I use to hold the gate closed. It was from last winter and is getting rotten, breaks easy. No problem. Easily replaced. I love the ratty old gate too much to put up another one. The wooden frame is all rotted, none of it would hold a nail, but the wire mesh holds it all together. It looks like it would fall apart from just touching it. I like about it that it's a soft gate, a gentle gate. It was old when I was new.  

 

jenny scratching on the gate

 

 

*

 

 

HILLBILLY HEAVEN

 

caterpillar lioness

 

I want to sit back with a movie and Caterpillar on my lap, but I want to do this more. Been waiting all day to be here. Didn't get to write yesterday from weariness after being up all night writing about the Wild Goose experience, which I felt was valuable, not just for the spiritual fellowship of the meeting, but the entire experience with Debi, who is valuable to my heart. She's a catbird in kitten britches. True as true is and she don't back down from nothin. A few years ago she was driving in Sparta, just left the traffic light in front of the courthouse. A man was walking across the street in front of her and he turned and made some smart remark to her about not slowing down soon enough. She laid a revolver on her arm resting on the open window and asked him to repeat what he said. He ran. Her life has been a struggle, the cause of the struggle being the men in her life. She's been into everything that could be got into, multiple times. Her heart embraces all the world around her. Such a big heart she doesn't know how to handle it, it gets trampled and beat down. She has something of a contentious personality, too, which is simply mountain. It gets her in trouble sometimes. She doesn't care. She'd say, I am who I am and I aint bein nothin else for nobody. You hear a lot of triple negatives in the mountains. I love it every time I hear one. Once I heard a quadruple negative. It's still in my head, heard it between 25 and 30 years ago. It was so beautiful I memorized it, can't find it right now, but it will rise to the surface in a day or two. The woman who said it was Eura Lee Phipps, wife of John Lee Phipps. Some people called them the Lees. Eura Lee sang in the Regular Baptist church, so fine a hillbilly voice it brings tears to remember it. One of the men would lead, most often Millard, the preacher, Debi's great uncle, who sang with the soul of Ralph Stanley. When he sang a gospel song, you felt its meaning. He and Eura Lee would lead the songs. He'd sing a line and she'd repeat it in her high hillbilly voice, all the way through. She'd sing a phrase after a phrase, sometimes a word after a word. Fourteen years I listened to Eura Lee's beautiful singing that was totally unselfconscious. She just sang the songs the way she sang them since she was little.
 

air bellows outdoor art museum

 

This is getting close to my heart right about now. People from the past I have loved in community and individually, the people of my heart. So many of them dead now. The very last of the old-time mountain people are dead. May be a few left in the nursing homes. A few are in their nineties, but their minds are largely gone. I had the great good fortune to know some of the most wonderful people of my life in these mountains. In my Charleston years I knew a lot of good people, but here in these mountains is where I found the home of my soul. Today at the doctor's office talking with the nurse taking blood pressure, whose husband is a bluegrass musician, and she's from Fries (pron: freeze), Virginia, we were talking about what fun it would be to go to sleep one night and wake up in Gloryland. I asked if she knew the Ralph Stanley song, Gloryland, knowing she did, and she did. We both had a moment of inner swoon hearing Ralph Stanley. Another version of Gloryland, by the Marshall Family. They own that song. It is totally theirs. I'm going to check YouTube, I already know it's there. It's in a cd in another room, but I don't want to go look for it. Found it on YouTube and now the whole front of my face is wet all the way down the chin. Just now wiped a tear off my chin. Wow. If you want to hear what I mean by hillbilly singing, the Marshall Family do it. They're from the mountains of central Pennsylvania and they do mountan singing right. That song tears me up. The visual with it was big clouds in natural cloud motion. My eyes were closed all the way through and tears of joy running. Hadn't heard that song in some years. There'll be no tears in Gloryland, the moon and sun won't shine, for Christ himself is light up there. There'll be no graves on that bright shore. It's of the Baptist tradition in the spirit of a church hymn. I think it was originally a black gospel song. It has that kind of soul. Ralph Stanley sang it too, and it don't get no better'n Ralph Stanley singin a gospel song.

home sweet home

Went to YouTube again and found Judy Marshall singing I Just Want To Thank You Lord, another Marshall Family song that tears me up. Simple song, soulful. When I was so down and out, you came along and made me want to shout. I just want to thank you, Lord, for always being there. Wow. I'm in the spirit. Eyes are running. Those are the two songs by the Marshall Family that I love with my whole heart, just like I love Caterpillar. It's taking me back to my Saturday morning radio show on local AM station WCOK. Seven years of playing music of the Central Blue Ridge an hour every Saturday. It was my favorite hour of the week, because I was playing what I called Music From Home, emphasis on musicians of this and surrounding counties, to the people of my county. It included gospel. Mountain people love their gospel music. And it's something to love. Emphasis was the Central Blue Ridge, and it included down into Georgia mountains with the Skillet Lickers, the Smokies and up into West Virginia and East Kentucky and  East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, Northwest NC. All hillbilly music. I gave my listeners some good jams. When I played the Carter Family, I couldn't talk for choking up. Just the mention of one of their names, all I had to do was say, "Sara," or "AP," or "Maybelle," and I'd choke up unable to talk. Long silences, not good on the air. None of their songs needed introduction or anything said. When I played an hour of Carter Family there was no talk, because I couldn't talk. I wept through the whole show from knowing how much my listeners were loving the music. The people of these hills LOVE the Carter Family. Playing the Stanley Brothers, I couldn't talk, and often playing Ralph Stanley. These were musicians I loved so much and knew all my listeners loved them even more than I did. I was saying to my listeners what I say to the mountain people in all my art forms: Your culture is valid and good. You are valid and good. When I write articles for the old-time music magazine, I am doing the same thing: your music is valid and good, you are valid and good. For five years I wrote a column in the local weekly paper. I wrote to the mountain people I live among and appreciate as much as I'm able to appreciate anything. My attitude was that I was writing specifically to the mountain people of this county. All others had permission to read if they wanted to.

stay away from important people

 

Writing that column was tremendous fun. When I wrote about somebody, it was always country people like I like being among, never any of the "important" people. My attitude was they get enough press. They don't need my attention too. Anyway, they're sure as hell not going to get it. I had the attitude before Jr Maxwell gave me the maxim, Stay away from important people. One night an elderly woman who believed herself Sparta Society, which I took for an oxymoron, she called me at home to tell me I needed to write more about the important people and less about these people who are nobodies. The next piece I wrote celebrated the janitor at the courthouse, told about his life, introduced him to the community, told about who he was, a friend of mine, humble old hillbilly, told the work he does. I concluded that the courthouse is the most important building in the county and Roy maintains that building, making him one of the more important men in the county. Roy couldn't read. One of the women in the Clerk of Court office read it to him with all of them standing around listening. Judges were talking to him after reading it and the lawyers spoke to him as if he were a man. The people around him celebrated him. Every day for a month afterward somebody would mention to him having seen it. It brought him a month of very positive attention and even gratitude for all that was taken for granted. The coffee pots in the break room always had fresh coffee in them. When they were low, suddenly they were full again. A few years later he didn't show up for work one morning. A deputy went to the house and found him in the bed, gone to Gloryland. The county had a plaque made in his memory for his service that hangs on the wall in the courthouse hallway. Somebody so unappreciated he was invisible. My work kept me in the courthouse every day for six years. I came to know Roy pretty well. The day any graffiti appeared on the men's or the women's rooms walls, it was gone same day. He kept the walls painted white, so all he had to do was go over it one time with the brush. Roy was a good man. I was grateful to that old woman for inspiring me to look for the most humble individual I knew. These, for me, are the people worthy of attention.

water in a white bucket

At the doctor's office I talked some with another nurse I know there, Julie, who was telling me about where she lives, just down the road and in sight of the little church I went to that is now closed and locked up, dust on the benches. They called them benches, not pews. Pews wouldn't sound right to the hillbilly ear. Sounds like you're trying to be up there with the big shots that talk perfect English. Any sign of uppity behavior was, and is, dealt with immediately by anybody nearby. Parents, friends, relatives, anybody you know or don't know. It's the culture. You don't act like you think you're somethin special. Sure as you do, you'll be shown right away you are not, whatever method it takes. Very strict code. My city background and college education are something of a wall between me and the working mountain people. It's a low wall now, easy to step over, no higher than a curb. To them, that puts me in the class of the people they work for. And teachers. First thing I have to do when I meet someone new of these hills is just show them by my behavior, the attention I pay to them when they talk, and laugh when they say something funny, kind of like in a secret society without saying it let them know I don't feel I'm better than anybody around me. I look up to them. I appreciate them. I am one of them, naturalized and in the heart. They learn I live by their code, appreciate them, love them, by asking around, You know this feller? What have you heard about him? What kind of a feller is he? Soon they'll find somebody who knows me and get the country equivalent of, he's cool, or, he's an arrogant piece of shit, or whatever suits the individual speaking. I've earned the trust of some hard core people, which I value as much as a medal of honor to wear around my neck. When I can earn the trust of people who don't give trust without years of experience (hillbillies), I feel like I have accomplished something important in the experience of being human. I've become that way about trust, too, and like it. It serves. Everyone I know has learned I don't talk about them behind their backs and don't tell their business. Took the car to my mechanic today. He went for a drive with it to get the feel of what I'd described to him. He keeps the radio on WPAQ in Mt Airy. They played an outa sight old-time fiddle tune, a great hillbilly fiddle tearing it up with banjo a-cluckin so good it made me listen close. It set me to flatfootin on the cement floor in the garage with nobody a-lookin.    

my blue ridge mountain home

 

 

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HAVANA CAFE WITH CYNTHIA

cynthia and double selfie as retired cop

A couple weeks ago Cynthia and I spoke of making a run to West Jefferson to have lunch at the Havana Café and see Selma again. Selma had the coffee shop in Sparta before Becca. Selma's spirit fills the air of this small restaurant of extra good Cuban food the same as her spirit filled the air at the coffee shop in Sparta. The aroma in the air is so Cuban you can almost see it, floating vapors in the air of scent from a Cuban kitchen, it surrounds you before the door closes behind you. We wanted to go last Friday but the weather was too intensely cold. The oppressive cold would take some of the fun out of it. We were looking for a fun time, not survival. The weather looked good for this Friday, so away we went. It was an excellent sun shining day over familiar highway I'd not been on in several years, highway I drove once a week for about five years. The drive was a good review of the landscapes and houses all along the winding mountain road, Hwy 18 from Sparta to Laurel Springs, Hwy 88 to Jefferson, then to West Jefferson. Cynthia goes another way from the way I drive to West Jefferson. When we passed my turn off point I was lost from there on. Everything had changed along there so much since I last drove the highway I did not recognize anything but the McDonald's M. It was my only landmark telling me where we were. She was going in from that end. The drive from there to the part of town we were headed to was unrecognizable from the McDonald's onward. It has been more than twenty years since I've been on that road. It's been a lot of years since I've been to West Jefferson. It was like I had never seen any of it before. I recognized a few spots, just enough to mark location. It is a pretty town now. The Havana Café is on the back street that faces the old railroad track, the road to the library.

 

selma and cynthia

 

As soon as we stepped inside I heard an explosion of "MAMI!" Cynthia and Selma fell into each other's arms for a big nurturing hug. It was joyous for both of us to see Selma again. And to see Ralph, her husband, the chef. He is aware of the subtle flavors in Cuban cooking. I can tell because his cooking makes me aware of subtle flavors. Selma's decorating is a simple suggestion of Latin ambiance in a place with a familiar American feel, nothing pointing its finger at the Cuban but the aroma in the air and Selma's Latin style. Though nothing on the walls is "Cuban," the interior of the small restaurant  is packed full of tables and there is no feeling of being crowded anywhere in the place. Chairs of a beautiful contemporary design, black seat and back, chrome structure; light weight, easy to handle, sturdy and firm on the floor while moving easily. They give the place a feeling of style. It is Selma's decorator's eye. The chrome chair legs enhance the floor with a pattern of faux tile. It's the floor that gives the place a Latin ambiance to accompany aromas in the air. With the kitchen beside the area with the tables, it makes the place feel alive. The atmosphere in the place is lively talkative people feeling comfortable liking their context. I was feeling good being with Cynthia. Her light-hearted spirit balances my deadbeat spirit. Like I interpret myself having crow energy, I feel Cynthia is wren energy. You might see a wren through the window land on the deck railing. It will look this way and that, turning every which way looking around, looking deeply, not just glancing, attention shifting in a mind that goes too fast almost to live with. Cynthia's mind is instantaneous, so she's very quickly bored.

 

on the left the kitchen, on the right the dining area

 

Cynthia's world and my world intersect just a little bit, such that we see each other every once in awhile by apparent chance. I'd not seen Cynthia in so long and hadn't had a quality visit with her in so much longer that we spontaneously decided to make the run to the Havana Café to see Selma and have some good Cuban cooking. I may have bored Cynthia out of her mind, but I felt comfortable with Cynthia the whole time. She once apologized for her driving, but I told her I'd not had an anxious moment yet. She was keeping it in the road to my satisfaction. She felt to me like a driver with good experience who knew the roads, never went into a curve faster than it allowed, nor too slow. She's a good driver. The whole round trip I never felt anxious the first time. I enjoy conversation with Cynthia. I've missed Cynthia and today didn't seem like quite enough. We talked about driving to West Jefferson again before too long. Cynthia is petite and vulnerable like a wren, too. I feel protective with her, like Steven Seagal said to a woman he was with in a gunfight, "If you want to get out of this place alive, stay with me." So heroic a thing to say. The same quotation came to my mind the day I sprung Jr Maxwell from the Sparta nursing home. Cynthia is from Asheville, has traveled all over the country, worked here and there. She came to Sparta to be the director at the Teapot Museum that was in its time of quick wane when it became apparent no money was coming from anywhere. Mr Vanity from LA who had a fortune in the teapots wanted the working class citizens of the county to fundraise fourteen million dollars to build his museum for his teapots in a time of rural Depression in America.. Mountain people didn't drink tea anyway, except for iced tea Southern style with plenty of sugar, and not from no tea pot. It didn't work out.

  

selma

 

Since the time I said no to the world of the false, I've turned my focus inward onto my world, the people in my world. Cynthia is someone in my world I don't see enough of. My new awareness makes me want to give more attention to the people of my world I want to be around rather than the frauds in the media. Cynthia is a refreshing spirit for me. Makes me wonder about past life connection. I feel like we know each other better than we do. I've known Cynthia from the time we first met. She's in her world and I'm in mine. We went to see Ralph Stanley not too many years ago. It was a good show. She was teaching a course in the community college on Southern culture. Made me glad she could have a Ralph Stanley experience with her appreciation of the culture. Again, as I remind myself every day, I want to focus my attention on appreciation of the world immediately around me, the scenes along the highway, the restaurant, the car, Cynthia, Selma, I was feeling full appreciation. It was appreciation day for me, like yesterday was and the day before. I have tremendous more fun when I'm appreciating the people I'm among. I wanted to be with Cynthia today because she's someone I appreciate, respect, like an awful lot and feel comfortable in her presence. We're like inter-racial. Her world is not my world and my world is not hers. The coffee shop is about the only place our worlds intersect. That's ok. She's a huffin-puffin go-getter who gets things done, good organizer. I'm a donkey laying under a shade tree wearing a sombrero with holes in it for my ears to stick out, listening to reggae, Burning Spear, waiting for Babylon to fall. On the drive over we discovered we both like rum. It was a good day, my celebration of having Cynthia in my world day.

   

winter foliage

 

 

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JACK STABLE RAMBLE

Much of the day I was making steps toward emptying a shed I'd built in 1977 out of boards from an old shed that had been torn down. Initially, it kept chickens for ten years. They nested in there and slept in the trees. One night when they slept in the shed a coon got in and killed a couple of them and they never slept in there again. They slept on a white pine branch close enough to the ground they could easily fly to it, but out of reach of night predators. Eventually, so many dogs came into the area that I couldn't keep chickens anymore. I liked to let them run free. I threw grain to them in the mornings and they pecked in the meadow for grasshoppers and every kind of bug they eat. I've kept scrap wood in the shed since the chickens. I'm a natural born junkyard man. I can't throw anything away unless there is nothing left that can be done with it. Over the years I've cut things out of plywood with a jigsaw, like a life-sized fiddler, a seven foot long guitar, things like that. I've kept the scraps. I have ten foot long one by ones, two twelve foot long dowels, a wooden barrel missing top and bottom. Posts of various sizes, blocks of wood. Two plywood circles 4 foot diameter and neighbor Tom Pruitt's mailbox with post. A few years after Tom died the road was paved. The bulldozer pushed the box and post out of the ground and treated it like trash. I brought it home. It's rusted really bad, has remains of paint in places and two bullet entry holes on one side and exit holes on the other side. I've aimed for years to plant it in the ground somewhere around the house for old-time memory. The post is old dry wood roughly nailed together. I call it found art.

 

 

Making the chicken house into a stable. Cutting out the wall that faces the meadow, making half of it an open doorway and the other half a wall about half way up, leaving the upper half open. It's a good size for two donkeys and a foal. I already know when Jack gets his Jeanette and they have a little donkey, I will be inseparable from the little one. It will be my pet from the start. It will be born in the same place my cats were born. It feels a little bit funny that in this time when I'm wrapping up this lifetime to suddenly have something I've wanted all my life, a donkey. It just came to me. Wanting a donkey was something it never occurred to me to tell anybody, because I believed it a hopeless urge like wanting a car I can't afford. And when I needed my old man car, the Toyota pickup burned up and died. I had the use of this 93 Buick that is an excellent car and two weeks later it became mine. Insurance money from the truck gave me the money to bring the Buick back to its potential after years of desperately needing a tuneup and taillights and a new headlight, new brakes, new tires. It took quite a bit to bring it back. Ever since that visit with the mechanic, it has run to my total satisfaction. It's 20 years old and doesn't use oil. It's a v-6 and evidently as classic a motor as the Chevy Nova slant six. Those Nova motors continue after the car has rusted away. They end up in Third World countries running pumps.

Much of the time driving I'll not listen to music because I like listening to the motor. It's running as close to perfectly as it can in the hands of a non-mechanic. My mechanic is like the guys on the NPR show Car Talk where people call in, tell their car's symptom and these master mechanics with advanced degrees from MIT answer to what the problem is, what it will take to fix it and a ballpark figure of what it will cost. Done in spontaneous Marx Brothers comedy. A few times when I've had something just a little off in the car, I could tell my mechanic (I say my because he is the only one I'll go to) what the car is doing and he goes straight to the problem. He doesn't half fix the car, either. When I drive out of his garage I feel the difference immediately. Chuck Billings is his name. He's in Glade Valley on Osborne Call Road. He's like a dentist, takes care of one appointment after another. I admire his knowledge in a big way. He's the kind of man you can trust as a true human being, too. He plays acoustic guitar with a hillbilly gospel band, Covered By The Blood. I love their name. It could also be a hard-core punk band or gangsta rappers. Musically, Chuck and I are in tune that the Stanley Brothers are the best there ever was, no two ways about it. Oh, I just felt this overwhelming longing to hear Carter Stanley sing. It brings tears just to think about him. Such a superb singer. Ralph Stanley tears up every audience at his shows when he recites The Hills of Home, his memory of Carter, growing up together, making music together. It's one of the wonderful hillbilly tear-jerkin talk songs. It leaves few dry eyes in the audience. To sit in a Ralph Stanley audience is to be among people who live by their hearts having a heart fest.

I'd put on some Stanley Brothers, but then I'd have to stop writing, sit back and listen. The music will do that to me. I can't do anything else and listen to the Stanley Brothers or Ralph Stanley. Even if I wanted to, I'd have a hard time turning off Thomas Mapfumo, whose band is playing now. He's from Zimbabwe. His band is the Blacks Unlimited. Dance club music. He sings in his home language. It's a flow like palm wine music and a lilting reggae, understated vocal, talk-singing. You can hear him on youtube if you're curious. I can listen to it because I can't understand the words. The vocals are the same as an instrument. This is dance music from Harare. It's a sinuous flow with interestingly complex rhythms. I sometimes wonder about how Mapfumo gets along these days. He was the rebel singer in Rhodesia when the blacks ran the white farmers out of the country and took over the farms. Robert Mugabe. The voice of the revolution, it's going to be a better world. Not. Mugabe has bled the country the same way the Banks are bleeding the American people, taking all to self. Mugabe loses every election and won't leave office. Zimbabwe is so incredibly depressed I can't help but wonder how much Mugabe hates the Zimbabwean people. He has 9 PhDs. Of course he deserves keeping the people in the worst kind of poverty. It's his privilege. He's smart. I wonder how Thomas Mapfumo comes to terms with himself for his part in the revolution. I can only imagine him disappointed. But his music hasn't suffered any. His music satisfies my ear like maybe Dvorjak quartets, like recent Bob Dylan projects. Very different music, but similar satisfaction in my ear. Music with a flow that obviously affects my thinking. It's been playing the whole time. I've tried to not get lost in the music, but it happened.

 

 

MOONSHINER'S CODE

Today has been an all day review of where I came from inside myself to where I am now inside myself. Sandy, son of the farm I used to caretake, was here for the first time since he became the owner of the mountain house. I had not seen Sandy since before he started Law School, and he's been lawyering for 35+ years, as long as I have lived in the mountains. We used to be from the same culture, urban. He still is. In the time he's been practicing law, I've been a minimum wage laborer in a remote region of the Blue Ridge, living in mountain culture long enough that I have over time faded into the culture to the point it is now my own. I love the culture and the people I know so much I get choked up and teary-eyed talking about them. A few times talking with Sandy sitting on the deck I choked up telling him a little bit about this world. It is a different world from the world he knows. He asked about finding some white liquor. I said, You have to know somebody. I told him as a lawyer he surely knows somebody who can find him some at home. Right away, he knew who it would be. Moonshine is the only thing people from outside the mountains think they know about the mountains. First thing they say is where can they get some. I don't know. You have to know somebody. I've learned the moonshiner's code and value it as a worthy code. I've taught myself to live by the code, even though I don't know how to make liquor.

I learned the code best from Jr Maxwell, and Tom Pruitt before him. Jr lived by the code because his life from birth was this world. Everybody in the mountains lived by the code until the drug business came along. Old-time liquor makers don't like and certainly don't trust any drug people. They rat before they're charged. The moonshiner's code is the mountain code. Don't rat, ever, for any reason. Keep everything you know about certain things to yourself. In the old days, the code was created by the threat of revenuers where somebody who ratted might end up dead or their house burned down. It was a serious time. Everybody stood behind their own people in the face of outsiders. The movie LAWLESS, starring Guy Pearce, is a good story of liquor makers in the 1930s. Pearce's character comes to the region from Chicago, an arrogant slick dick. The film was true to the mountain people, even respectful of them. Mountain people were used extensively in the film as extras. It's a true story told originally in book form by the son of the man whose life the story tells. Seven years I listened to Jr Maxwell tell me his life, the people he knew, experiences in his bluegrass band, how he drank while he played. He said drinking while making music, in his case banjo, you play better and better to the point where it starts going bad. He would drink to the point of his freest picking and hold it there. One of his fiddlers, his favorite through all the years, would drink all the way to oblivion before he stopped drinking. Jr understood his liquor very well. He used it for medicine. He drank a little every day. He told me, "I like to work like hell all week and get drunk on weekends." That was the rhythm of his life. I've been slightly drunk with Jr a few times. He is a fun drunk and I am too, so we didn't get in a fight. We laughed til our ribs were sore.

Visiting with Sandy and Eric today I was all over the place in my mind. Seeing Sandy took me back to Charleston years and the College. I saw him after all the years and it was like it had been a week. I was flashing on changes in my attitude toward life in my time in the mountains. Today I found the mountains, mountain culture, the people I know and have known, the very best influence I could live with regarding my spiritual path. The mountain people are God loving people to such a degree I feel like I am living in a place I could easily call holy in that so many lovers of God live in these mountains. Of course, there are the society church goers where they look down on the country churches. It's in the country churches that the spirit is alive and well. It's in the music too. It is tradition in the mountains that a bluegrass band play gospel songs in their song list. Bluegrass albums until recently have had gospel songs sprinkled among the others. When Ralph Stanley sings a gospel song, his fans love it in a big way. He can make you feel a gospel song. That's what is outstanding about Ralph Stanley, he makes you feel the song he's singing, whatever it is. For one thing, I have found Ralph Stanley's music one of the most enriching aspects of my life. And mountain music all the more. My mountain friends add a richness in my life, too, that I could not find living in a city. Eric tells me I have to see Portland. I'll love it. I have to see Oakland. I'll love it. I told him I don't go into airports anymore, because I refuse to submit to police state. Then I can drive. Cities have no appeal for me. These are different. He said, Tell me one thing you know about Portland. I said, It was once a redwood forest.

I was looking today at the people I've known over the years, the older ones all dead. Now I am one of the older ones. Now, I'm telling stories from the past, filling in younger people on how their ancestors lived and the kinds of people they were. While I was taking care of Jr, Lisa Tucker from Social Services came by a few times before we got involved with hospice. I knew her great grandparents. I asked her if she ever knew them. They died before she was born. Nobody had told her anything about them. I told her they were some of the best people anybody could know. The old man's name was John.  This is from over 30 years ago. They were very well respected people. I told her, "You come from good people." When she told me she was a Laurel Springs Tucker, I felt like I already knew her. This is another aspect of rural life I like a lot, knowing people by their extended families. It sometimes makes me long to have had the experience of a loving family. I tell myself what I had was right for me. And it was. The farther I get away from it in time, the more I'm able to see I needed grounding at the start. It set me into an adult life of re-parenting myself, teaching myself, learning as much as I can take in, driven in reaction to the force against knowledge I grew up in. I was not allowed to read in the house, so I learned to isolate myself to read. Reading became a passion because it was forbidden. Not forbidden like told not to. But, if you have time to read a book, you have time to mow the grass, wash the car, whatever came to mind. That was my message to stop it. My adult life has been spent reading as much as I could, and now in the later years I want to go back and read certain ones again. I'd like to read War and Peace again, but oh it is so long. It is also so beautiful a story told so well that when I finished reading it the first time, I couldn't read anything for several weeks, because no writing could satisfy the taste for beautiful writing Tolstoy spoiled me with.

Especially today I was looking at Justin, Crystal and Vada. I've known Justin all his life and Vada all her life. These are people I love as though they were my own. A year or so ago a man I know started running down Justin to where it was about to warm me up. I said, "Before you go too far, I have to tell you Justin is the same as my own." I felt satisfaction saying it. I knew it would be spread all over Whitehead by end of next day. That was ok. I wanted Whitehead to know it. In my heart, Justin, Crystal and Vada are same as my blood. Sandy assessed today that my love for the mountain people is a love of drama. I affirmed it, without really meaning it, though could see a case can be made for it. It's really not the drama. The drama makes good stories to tell, but the stories one tells are not necessarily the ones close to the heart. It's the character of the mountain people I love. I know people in these mountains, Whitehead in particular, I can trust totally, and they can trust me the same. Jr Maxwell, one of the first people I met here in 1976, withheld his trust until he saw in his last year that he could trust me when he couldn't trust anybody else. A month, thereabouts, before his spirit left the body, just before his mind went away, he said to me, "We're closer than friends. We're more like brothers." It was one of the great honors of my life. At about the same time within a week or two, he said, "I wish I could pay you for what you've done for me." I said, "You paid in advance. I'm paying you back. Five years of sharing with me the best liquor made on this earth is worth something to me." Another was the day Jr's spirit left the body. Two men at different times in the day said to me, "You get into any kind of trouble, all of Whitehead will back you up." A woman who had grown up with Jr, same grade in school, a neighbor all their lives, said, "Now Whitehead knows who you are." It may not sound like much to somebody else, but to me those are among the most valuable moments of my life. Earning the trust of mountain people is no small thing. I feel more affirmed by the trust of mountain people than anything else in my life. I value their trust absolutely.

all photos by tj worthington

 

 

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