00:00:00 Speaker 1: M how many years you think you grew to back my time, I was big enough to work in a backer page and that was real little and two thousand and four, which the last year I grow to show, I probably was fifty years in the backerup field, you know. On this episode of the Bargaris podcast, I want to take you on a journey into the mountains of southern Appalachia. It will be my pleasure to introduce you to the Clarks, a family of farmers, musicians, and bear hunters who are relics of the region's culture. Dr Daniel Pierce is a professor and author and national authority on Appalachian culture who will give us a guided tour through its fascinating history. We'll listen to the life story of this family. Here's some bluegrass picking, and wade through the fact and fiction of the regions stereo types. We might even talk about Dolly Parton. The people that lived, they lived, like I said, with the earth. They had to make their living. That's why I'm saying, you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle. You cannot separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics from your music. It's a part of life. And that was what our music was in the mountains. It was a part of our life. My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the bear Grease Podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. This podcast, Fifty Years in the Backer Field, is part one of a two part series on Appalachian mountain culture. Check back for part two called Moonshine, Nascar and Bear Hunting. Also, I want to tell you again that we're going weekly with this podcast. Will continue to do our documentary style podcasts like this one every other week, but on the off weeks will release what we call the bear Grease Render, where we'll discuss, dissect and distill the documentary style episodes with a band of married guests. It's gonna be a guaranteed blast. It's like the Bear Grease Podcast unplugged. You're gonna love it. Initial little cabbage right here, you see that right there? Day But I want to say a cabbage head, Dan Slaw on each hedge wood when you cut them up, they make a rash walart. So I know I've had them for paper didn't eat all of them. Did you ever grow did you ever grow tobacco? Yeah? What? What? How did? What did you do with it? The backer I growed was burly and uh and I growed I growed it at only field and you grew up commercially. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've done a farming besides the magic ros Tobacca. That's the voice of Mr Roy Clark, not to be confused with the Roy Clark from the show He Hall. This Roy Clark lives in Cock County in eastern Tennessee, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, which is a range inside the Appalachian Range. East of his front porch you can see the high ridgeline border of North Carolina, and to the north you'll hear the intermittent sound and muffled barks of his hounds. I've never seen Mr Roy not wear overalls. It seems he hasn't. Every day pair and it's going out pair the latter. Looking sharp and new, Mr Roy looks like he could be from Ireland. In his younger years, his hair was red, but now it's a faded shade of gray and white. He's seventy two years old and he's a living relic of times past, and you have to take my word for this. He's a bear hunter amongst bear hunters. He's dedicated his life to raising, training, and hunting bear hounds. He has a rich history with the American plothound, a breed of big game dog endemic to the Appalachians. How many dogs have you got out here? Mr? Roy? Thirteen fifteen chevente to twenty three, twenty four, twenty four right here, and I've got something the barn and that's a bear dog pack, that's the three patch. Uh. But yeah, I know you, young dog, that you're doing pretty good? Did I finally a little bit? Yeah? Do you ever have a dog that didn't start out very good, that maybe it was slow to start, that ends up being a top pound I'll tell you something. Most of the time, to do naturals, just the one just by, just most time. Southern Appalachia is a storied region of the United States. It includes the entire state of West Virginia, the western side of Virginia, western North Carolina, northwestern South Carolina, eastern Kentucky, East Tennessee, northern Georgia, in northeast Alabama. Basically, the region is defined by mountains, and it's roughly the southern one third of the Appalachian Mountain Range, which runs from Newfoundland, Canada, all the way down to Alabama. This range includes at least thirty mountains higher than five thousand feet and the highest peak east of the Mississippi River mountain Mitchell in North Carolina, which is six thousand, six eighty four feet above sea level. The range is an alternating series of ridges running north and south, which acted as a natural barrier to the western expansion of the early colonies that would become the United States. This topographic layout is important because the culture, like everywhere else, has been shaped by the land from which it was hewn. In this case, the mountains proved to be both and eden, but also a custard land ridden with all varieties of scarcity. I began exploring the Appalachian regions some years ago in search of the region's legendary bear hunters and houndsmen of which there are many. But what I found was more robust. I found a cultural treasure rivaling any place I've ever visited. It's called Before we officially meet, Mr Roy, I want to be clear about something. Appalachia is a very diverse and modern region of the country. They have swinky coffee shops, distinguished universities, and target superstores. I've chosen to highlight rural Appalachia to get a glimpse into what it once was and the way that it still is to some and frankly, I'm fascinated with rural culture and have the highest respect for people like the Clark family. Meet Mr Roy, Mr Roy, what are your what are some of your earliest memories living back here in East Tennessee. I remember when I said, little I cann't even hold a play up players them bottoms, drip down them that the horses? Is that right now? What were you all planting by then? Corn and tobacco, corn in to backing, Uh yeah, and hit a rock and he didn't make blue places on his side and stuff because I had to walk up in that plow and he would eat you on the shade and felt like it broke agree over something. What year were you born? Nineteen forty eight, so your seventy three. I'll be shaventy three in November. So what did what did your family do back in We're in uh Cock County, Tennessee. Actually, Daddy drive us Scoob Bush when I was real little, and then well before that, he'd drove a log truck. When my grandpa broke his leg twice. I believe he'd drove a log trip from ten year old up tilly. So your grandfather was a logger. Yeah, they logged up the good and they had holem will be under the dereo put him off over there, and then a little of one a box car next to railroad trade or did roll them off, and then they had a little him on that railroad corn hollow out of here. And then he drove a school bus and while I was in school, and then I guess before I was out of school, he went to work for the county driving a bulldog instead. There wasn't a lot of money to be made in this country a long time ago. Yeah, okay, what what were some of the first things that you did to make money y'all? Were y'all were going to getting coal out of Kentucky. We did my grandpa, that's that track. Like fifteen year old, I'd driving to Kentucky and we had houling Colen stuff out of Kentucky and go around and peddle it around. And then we'd Uh. In the summertime we'd go to we'd go to Henderson Bill to to his daughters and had peach or church and apple old church and growed water melon and candle hope. And we'd take that log truck and haulam in here, and how peaches and pedal ama out, and how watermelons and cantle hopes and pedal am. So what do you what did you do for a living? What kind of work have you done? When I got out of high school, I worked a little bit his emotion helper building some buildings John the Stoke Livan camp down there, and then I went to Merkan Inca which was a fabric place, Okay, in a factory. Yeah. And then I went in service for two years. And then after I got out of service, I come back to Anca and then come up. I run Percisions court clerk and got elected for head. And I farmed all the time that I worked. It ain't I farmed? And then tell me about your farming. Well, it was hard work and not much money. It's mostly what it was. I growed the back and I growed tomatus, and me and my brother in law and the whole family has worked into the magus, when we grow a couple of acres of tom where were you selling the tomatoes? We've taken them to the packing house in North Carolina. Oh really, we actually saw some in ten to see too, but most of the North Carolina where we took him to the sale. And we've done decent with that for a while. And thematis got so they figured out I wanted to drop a price, and you're not make nothing out of them. And we grow damn per I don't know, ten or fifteen years, I guess. And and then one year he come up at uh that we took a little up bier and uh. And when it comes down to get the check, we didn't get no money. We got a bill. We owed them pifty cents a box or packing so, uh, we are you being serious? I'm dead serious you, I said, they went in a hole on him. I said, well, damn, we never paid it. So I went to I went to Atlanta, Georgia, down the farmer's market down there, and we was going in the hole. We weren't even gonna come out that year. And my brother and I, which is Edward, and my wife Brendan, and the young ands and and my sister Diane and her young and they picked the amatis. Edward would truck them to me down there, and I stayed three weeks down there on the farmers market and didn't even come home. And we come out making some money off of the hold. What we quit raising them today? Now you but you still raised thems today though I still raised them to eat. And I raised some lake crops of tomatus here after day. And I ain't talking about a big amount. I'm talking about that field right down our three or four tens, three or four ten tents of an acre, tents of an acre. And I actually made more money and her peddling them to these restaurants and stuff and taking them and selling them. I made more money off of down Like if I had fifteen hundred plants out and I could make four dollars a plant that was like caute, forty five hundred dollars, that's some money. And the debates, but the middleman got in the middle of it, took all the money away from him. And then the back of which you made a little bit on here, but it wasn't know. So you grew, you grew backer, you grew tobacco for how many years, you think you grew tobacco. Actually my time, I speak enough to work in a backer patch and that was real little until h two thousand and four was the last year I grow toch So I probably was fifty years in the backup field, really growing about twenty acres or so not to start with it. Yeah, but on the lift I might have head close to that. But now we just mostly growed what we had. Fun eyes are growing at. What he means when he says that he grew someone else's tobacco is that he's referring to a government tobacco allotment, meaning a person with the allotment is able to sell a certain amount of tobacco. The person can also lease out their allotment to another farmer to grow as like Daddy's in pappage. In my grandpa up here, I growed his from time I was in high school with grandpa's year and uh, he had about a hype acre about what he had. Tell me, how how does your bear hunting fit in with your with your work? I mean, like it's clear that you have dedicated a big part of your life to bear hunting with hounds. I had to work back or off in the followed the year, and some of them would be a hunting, and I just keep the radio on and listening and couldn't work back or for listening to him and stuff for gradnit off and and they'd get one of going, and I've left the backer born and laded me up. Check your right doves and hit the mountain up Janner. I remember one time its running one and I went up burned packing and they're still on the other side of the mountain. And I packed the byron and treat it and killed the byron, had it killed. When they got to me, I thought that you were working to baccup a couple of things. When he said he packed a bear, what he meant is that the other guy's dogs were chasing the bear. Mr Roy heard their dogs running the bear, and he sent his dogs in his reinforcement. He packed them. Secondly, we just grazed the surface of Mr Roy's bear hunting in this section. In episode two, We're gonna dive much deeper. I was born into byar hunting. My grandpa bar Hunt and my daddy bear hunty. My other grandpa here bar hunting a little bit it. My great uncle Barhuney it's been some bar hunting here. I think I was with Pappy and I was three year old and we was on the log truck and the gift to first bar Daddy ever killed, because I remember I remember shutting on top of it on that log trick. If it's something else, I probably wouldn't remember. What are your first memories of bear hunting back in there with your dad and Grandpa? Well, I remember when I was a six year old, if I could wake up of them morning when they get, they wouldn't get. He wouldn't give me up. But if I could wake up a lot of times she'd let me go, you know, miss schoo and go. But then we would go by our hunting and uh, and we would have to lead dogs to the woods. It got sold that I'd had to lead the trail. Dog got in front of the other dogs. I wouldn't big enough to hold you. Well, when I'd go with Daddy out in the woods and he would be a hunting a track and if you put rounder time up around a tree, and then he didn't make me stay with him, and then he'd be trying to see which voice are going, and then he hid a holler for me to bring that dog. Well, I know when I tied that dog, he was gonna drag me down. So I know if I turned him blue, so I'd be in trouble too. So I've just taken get two hand hold on that leads drop and here we'd go when I fall down, and Daddy'd catch me when I got to him. And I know one time Daddy said, you're gonna have to lead the ramler. We ain't got enough to lead the dolls. And I told Pappy, I said, my Grandpa, I said, I ain't wanted to lead no dollar. He said you had to go with him soon. And I said, well, I'll tell you one thing. I might go this time, but the next time I go by our hunting, I'll be big enough telling so I ain't leading your dollars. Because son, he'd hearing me to death. They had to get that down. And they had this biral here that they had boughten uncle burned about it in Florida, I guess. And they brought you back here and they had he had a wild I was, I don't know about three year old men through four. And they had food with that byron, food with it with dogs and stuff. Why I wasn't afraid of it. Might didn't want to hear it. And Daddy'd get me and checked me up up on the top of it. And you talked about wanting office something they had they had a bear, they had live and uh, I wanted to offense everybody I didn't about like Grandpa was. He'd treat him in the barn as an old barn down here. Every time you get loose, she's bet him up in a tear poach down. How colin was it for bear hunters back then to have a live bear? Well, I never did hear of another bar, except at I got a corner with Hart dealing him up yanner and and and and he said that that his daddy had wanted to store a bar. And that was you know years or coto. What what about camping and hunting back in the Gulf with with them, with your dad and grandpa. Yeah, we'd actually, uh, we'd actually load everything we had on a on a log truck and you put you dolls and your food and tarpolian and and everything. I only can go to the good. And then we'd sleep in the back of that truck and put some hay down and step to sleep home and take a tarpolian and covered over the back of eating, let it come over the side and cook beside eating and like it. And when we had the em old jeeves and we'd hunt that lamb cheeps instead. Roy, how would you describe Appalachian Mountain culture? I describe it in a way that there's no better way to grow up, or have you young and you your grand young inster to grow up in Appalachian culture than I believe that's the best they are now. Making money that ain't the best they are, but having your family and being close to your family and having good values to come to them. I think it's you can't beaty. And actually the disastrous stuff like tornadoes and we'll even flooding and stuff like as and the tornadoes and stuff. I've never seen one here in mild why. And I just think that's good cause down to Gwner in some that flat country they had to worry about it every time it comes strong. Yeah, I wouldn't like to live like a Like I said, if you want to make money, you better go somewhere else. Besides you're I don't think it u it making money. And if you can make it is only our to life. I want to step back a generation and introduce you to Mr Britt Davis, who is Mr Roy's father in law. It was a great pleasure to briefly speak with him. I was taken aback by his story, but mainly how it seemed to him to be so common. Mr Britt, How old are you? If I lived on the second day of June, I'll be nanny ninety. What year were you born? Thirty one? N one? So you grew up? You were? Were you born in this hollow? Yeah? Right, a little dar about And what kind of work did you do your whole life? Yeah? I farm some, I log some, and I worked about a year on this interstate down here, and then went to work for the County Road Department and stayed there retard. Have you ever have you traveled much out of Appalachia? No, you've stayed right here. I went to text this one time whenever Roy was an army out there, and that's the only trip I ever made. Really. I lived on up in the Gulf up Third Well. I'd say we's up there about full or five years because my daddy got killed up there, and I enjoyed that up bur lot. How did your how did your father get killed with a low log rold over? Really? How old were you? I was about to have your old Wow? How did that impact your life? Well? You made it rough on me for a while. Yeah, yeah, he's up there whenever the about the time it started, but he got kill when we lived that a long time for the got So did you have to kind of were you the oldest son, so you kind of had to take care of your family? Yeah? Really so was that a lot of responsibility for you then? Yeah? We moved back home here up here. Yeah, my grandparents hit me with it, and I raised a croppoter back and bought the place where I leave. Mm hmm. How old were you? I'd say I was about thirteen? Really, So you you raised a crop of tobacco when you were thirteen and bought a piece of property. Wow. And that's the property that we went to earlier today up at the head of this holler. Yeah. Yeah, so you bought that place when you were thirteen, I'll be daring. And so you've lived you've lived there your whole life? Then, whole life? What what are your earliest memories? Mr Brett, oh Law, I can I can remember playings back then better than again now. Really, I can remember my carrying me and us to stopping and talking to her neighbors. That was before we moved to the Gold So that was in the nineteen thirties. Did your family have a car, had automobile? No? No? What? How did you get around? Walked? Walked? You didn't Everything you needed you could walk to get. Yeah, this little stores all around here, three or four well, I'd say it was in the late thirties or the early fourties. Before that, there is there were a car in this country, is that right? Doctor lived right up Pearl there. He had the first tell me about how the the doctor were worked in this community. He go around in the and he's with his horse, and people wanted to be doctored. They'd tyrant or a wife fig on the mailbox and hea, he'd ride his horse up to your house and knock on the door and say what's wrong? And you finally got the car and they do the same thing. Do you ever remember being sick and him having to come to your house, the doctor on you? Really? What what would you have been sick from? Maybe the strip th old or or something, and he'd come give you some penicillin maybe or something. That's what you doctored with penicillin. Wow. When did electricity come back in here? I'd say it was about fifty two or fifty three for what I got it. So you were in your twenties before you had electricity. Yeah, do you remember those days? Oh? Yeah? What would what would you do? Once it got dark? Would you light the house with that open? Had l lamp? What kind of lamp? Was the coal burning? And you would what would you do? You would sit around with the family and just sit around and go to bed. I guess that's they finally got a ridio, Mr Brett. Do you remember when John F. Kennedy died president? Do you remember where you were? Was that a significant rejective? Where I was where we has a unter. I was running the road world Tom's Creek, and I just partly got a paste old man's house and he come out and run up the road behind me in holiday and me and and told me about m hmm. Do you hear what they're saying, Mr Brett? They're saying, because you uh, because you were the only child, you've been spoiled your whole life. Do you agree with that? I wouldn't hardly say that. Wow, what a story. Back to Mr Roy, I asked Mr Roy what he thought about moonshine in the mountains. This is what he said. And remember in part two, we're going to explore this much more. My daddy and grandpa, an uncle and some of their close friends and stuff probably turned me against the drinking and stuff because they stayed drunk all the time. So you don't drink. No, I ain't never drunk. I know. We'd go get down peaches and we went and got a load one time, and the peaches was overwrapped and they was too shyp We couldn't didn't get to sell me any but we had probably a hundred thirty bush along the drug. So they made us hepsied peaches and they put them in barrels and they made liquor out of them peaches. And I don't know how many years they drunk on it. But I don't take the shoulder any And I always thought to myself, I ain't gonna never drink because I put up with it my whole life and I ain't gonna be like it for somebody had to put up with me like it. Yeah, talk to me about music in your family? What? What does how have y'all? Well, y'all play easy. It's been in my family. It goes way back. My grandmother was a was a picker, and my daddy was a piker and a singer and stuff and and I guess it's just come right on day until So what kind of what kind of music did they play? Mostly blue grass and mostly ballot and stuff like that. They've shung And how you sing? You sing and dance a little bit a little bit? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe if we can get them my whole line up here after a while, we'll we'll draw the sute of this hill a little bit. Sounds good to me. While visiting the Clarks, I wasn't shy about asking them if they'd play some music for me. They obliged. I hope you'll join me in recognizing the uniqueness of a legendary bear hunter, Mr Roy singing a song about bear hunting. This is old slew foot. What's what Songroy? What's what's this song about? It's a battle bar? And and may I okay? And hi on a mountain bunch tell me what she fardreck bird looking back at me? He better eat you ra a boy for its dutlate. The bar's got a little pie towards the games. Oh eat figure around the middle, and he frout across the room, running ninety miles and night, taking thirty feet at you. Ain't never been cawdy, ain't never feed tree. Some folks saved lord like me. I saved up my money and I boughty some bees. They started making honeyway being the tree cut down. The tree of my honey's all gone. Oh slu footst made hisself at home. Oh eat figure around the middle, and he frout across the room, running ninety miles and night, taking thirty feet at you. Ain't never been cawdy. Ain't ever been dry. Some folks says a lot like me. Well, winners coming on, and it's when he be low the river throws over. So where can he go? We chase him up the galage and me run him in the well. We shoot him in the bottom to listen to him yell, Oh, he's big around the middle, and he frought across the run, running ninety miles and nur taking thirty feet Ain't never been cowdy, ain't never been dry. Ain never had nobody after him like me. That's good. While we're talking about music, I want you to give ear to Oh Label Read. She was born in nineteen sixteen and passed away in two thousand two. She's Appalachian to the core, a folk singer, a songwriter, a banjo player, and a philosopher. If you listen to her talk and sing, you'll get a window into Appalachia that cannot be replicated. In twenty nineteen, the Library of Congress inducted her nineteen seventy three album titled Oh Label Read, into the National Recording Registry. This is a clip of that recording. Meet olabel Read one in the mapping Prove the Hills and ballads through the red snow, seen the lightning bleshing I've heard, but the roll I haven't known how long. I've been asked many times to describe my life in the mountains, and there's one point that I specifically like to make and want to make, is that I don't believe there would be anyway in the world that you could possibly describe it. There could be no fun made of it, because it was a life with the earth, your elements, as the old people called it, the birds, the animals, the bees, you knew every you knew every season. You could tell. You were raised to kind of tell when a storm was gonna come. I always tell us because you could see the leaves turning in the summertime. Particularly in the winter, you could tell if it was going to snow because of the base of the color of the base of the trees. So many things you just grew up with that you get away from as you go through life if you're not careful. Now I'm not saying that you go strictly back to the past, but I'm saying there's no way in the where all that anybody could ever make fun our poke fun at the way people were raised in the mountains, because as far as the music is concerned, we did gospel, we did blues, we did everything. I did not play what you would call I guess professionally, I don't know. The word never just quite suited me. But anyway, there had to be every nationality in the mountains at one time for them to know each other's ways of life. There was communication because I think people needed one another and they realized, if you see, they realized it's so much. And I believe one of the reasons was as they were so close, really and truly, because we were so close to the earth and the elements into God's creation. I think that's the one thing made him know. I think that all and your music and everything comes through communication with people. And the people that lived, they lived, like I said, with the earth. They had to make their living. That's why I'm saying, you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle. You cannot separate your lifestyle, your religion, your politics from your music. It's a part of life. And that was what our music was in the mountains. It was a part of our life. Our man, Dr Dan Pierce of the University of North Carolina asked, full is my new friend. He's a national expert on the Appalachian region, and his love of mountain culture has fueled his writing. He's the author of numerous books that helped interpret the region's story in a significant way. He's also known as u n c Ashville's professional hillbilly. Meet Dr Dan Pierce. Well, I can't introduce him without leaving a trail of fodder to part two of this podcast. Here are a few of the titles of his books, Tar Hill, Lightning, Corn from a Jar, and Real NASCAR, but we'll get to all that later. So, Dr Pierce, all the regions of America have been influenced by immigration for the most part. Where did the people from the southern Appalachians come from? Well, there there are a lot of streams of immigration that come into the region, and so you know, there is a there. There is kind of a stereotype that the Appalachians are the Scots Irish culture plopped down and being unchanged for hundreds of years. The Scot's Irish were for sure in terms of the dominant ethnic group that came to this region, but there are lots of other groups. Are Germans, their English. Daniel Boone was an English Quaker. You know. You can't think of a board Appalachian person than Daniel Boone, you know, and so you know that was not unusual, and so and other you know, Moravians, and of course, uh this is something that in recent years that scholars have looked at a lot. More is that even though you can go to lots of parts of Appalachia today, you can go to joining counties here and you'll find only a handful of African Americans, but there were significant numbers of African Americans in every county and Appalachian. So that's a part of that that stream as well. But again the dominant group where the Scots Irish. And now would we be in the Southern Appalachians here in North Carolina. Yeah, that's the way you would in western North Yeah, from really you know, northeast Alabama, North Georgia through East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, western tip of Virginia, West Virginia and eastern Kentucky the southern app that's the Southern Appalachians. So the the Scots Irish people would they would be a dominant feature of this region or at one time would have been. Was this the only place they came or were there other parts of Can you look at the whole um what people refer to as the uplands south? You know, this is like the non cotton belt, the North Georgia, North Alabama, North Mississippi, much of Tennessee, you know, western North Carolina all the way through to Texas, Arkansas. The Scots one, people kind of look at this as a you know, how can you be Scots and Irish? And when you know what happens is in the Elizabethan period the late fifteen hundreds the English conquered much of our and during that period, and so Elizabeth and then her successors gave what they called plantations or big tracts of land to people who would help, you know, nobility, you who had helped them out. And they didn't trust the Irish. They were Catholic. They saw him as barbarians and savages. A lot of the same imagery you're gonna see when English people come to America and characterized Native Americans in the same way. It's it's really kind of kind of very interesting to look at. So to work their plantations, they imported people across the Irish c from the lowlands of Scotland. So these are not there's a lot of misconception in parts of the southern Appalachian region that they think of there, you know, the bagpipes and the plaids, and so these were not those Scots. Those are Highlanders and these are lowland Scots. And so they come over to northern Ireland and they and they worked these plantations and they're pretty successful. They're raising sheep, they're raising linen. They're there for you know, a hundred years or a little more. But then I think the enemy changes. Things get pretty bad for you know, rents go up dramatically, wool market declines, and America is opening up at that point, and so you see it really hundreds of thousands of people in Ulster, Northern Ireland, Protestants for the most part, the Scots Irish begin to make the trip across the Atlantic Ocean and they come in through Philadelphia. Then they start moving into western Pennsylvania. Atlants taken up by Germans and others who have been there before, the Germans and the English. And so then they head down what's called the Great Wagon Road, which is now eight one down through the Shenandoah Valley Road. Yeah and so yeah, and so they head down through the Shenandoah Valley and then they end up in western Virginia and North Carolina, and then as the Cherokee or driven out of the region in the late seventeen hundreds, they move into the and my ken lived in uh It was part to North Carolina then, but it became Tennessee, the the northeastern part of Tennessee, and then moved down the Holston and Tennessee River valleys, and my folks settled in just south of Knoxville between Knoxville and Chattanooga and then moved west from there into West Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, and so that whole area really probably the dominant group and nominate ethnic group, you know, probably you know, half or so or close to it. Okay, that's a good that's a I was gonna ask you that, like, how so if it wasn't all Scots Irish, how much of it was so maybe, yeah, but they had a you know, a huge cultural impact, and they brought a lot of things with them. Can you describe kind of the dominant features of the Scots Irish and what they did bring over here? And also my my end question. I don't want to stack them too deep here, but it's you know, where do we see that culture still displayed today? You know, and a lot of things. Again, you can get a little carried away and stereotype these things. For one, You've got to understand the way culture works is that it's it's not and and and later on, particularly the early twentieth century, people from the outside who come to the region want to characterize this region is being like preserved in amber or something. You know, it looks like they're they is locked in the past. You know, which is not at all true because culture is always evolving. And when they come here, of course they don't survive in this area unless they learn from the Cherokee, because you you know again, okay, you know, for one thing, these are not hunting people when they come I mean everything in the British house, you know, the only people that are hunting are people in the noble well unless you're a poacher. Yeah, you're not hunting over there. So when they come here, of course that's gonna be part of their subsistence. Okay, who teaches them to hunt? You know, Daniel Boone doesn't come at this as a he has to learn who's he learned from. He learned from the from the from the Cherokee, from the Native of Erkins. In this area, there's a lot there would have been some positive, friendly relationship between some of these people and some of the Native Americans. Yeah, I mean you actually see early on with people like Boone, there's a period in Boone's life where, you know, and there were a lot of concerns in communities and with people about people going native, you know, because there were things that were very appealing and there were some questions. Boone was actually captured by the Shawnee and taken into what's now Oho. There are some questions about did he have a Shawnee wife, did he have a Shawnee family? Was Boon tempted to stay with the Shawnee. But but these people bring a lot of things with them and the things that they brought. One of course, of the biggest things that they bring in the music. And so, you know, a lot of the music that we think about is Appalachian as traditional and stuff like that is music that has made the trip across the ocean. The old ballads and the fiddle tunes and things like that. You can trace a lot of the music that's even you know, some of it's you know, a lot of it's still being performed today. There may be in a very very American take on it. It may be a ballad about the about Tom Tom Dooley, you know, who who conspires with one of his lovers to kill another lover. You know, that becomes a popular song very later on, Or about Frankie Silvery's who's a woman who kills ruds when he gets gets executed. You know. Yeah, well, you know the ballads we're a big part of that and those are always tragic, you know, there's there's always that theme in these things. But that of course, you know, those things get combined with other influences. For instance, like we think in the banjo as being characteristically Appalachian, but it's an African instrument, you know, so that's where that comes from. So again it gets combined with their their culture of music, just families that played music in the social aspects of gathering everybody up, playing music that's legit. I mean, that is a real part of Advocacian culture. Yeah, you get these influences that are coming over and then and again you throw other influences in, but it really, you know, is shaped by in the eighteen hundreds in particular about what I call front porch culture, and so you get, you know, you get music that's suitable for a front porch or or folk tales or dancing, that type of thing, you know, is largely influenced by what the Scots Irish bring and and this is reinforced by the area. But but you know they're bringing with him. And again you can get real carried away with stereotypes. Jim Webb, who was a senator, from what I think Virginia. You know, you wrote a book on Scottsire is called born Fighting, you know, and so you can get carried away, but there is that independent streak of you're not going to tell me what to do, and that's really reinforced because people are living, you know, the way that they the region is settled is very different from than say like eastern Pennsylvania, where people tend to live in communities, you know, but people are living in kind of scattered I mean part and it's partly geography. You know, that people are living in scattered so there's not a lot of bottom land. So that what I'm hearing you say is the geographic features of like we're in some pretty rough country here, a lot of a lot of topography, a lot of elevation change and just steep mountains and stuff. So there there just wasn't a big flat spot for a big city to be have. It was like some some family was down in this hollow and another family was over here, and I mean you had communities, but that that reinforced kind of isolation independence. Yeah, it works together. The culture they're bringing with them with the topography really kind of does reinforce that that sense of rugged or some people would call it cussod independence that uh, you know, I think it's still much um there, and I think again it's a kind of combination of culture and geography. And another thing that you know is very much part of that is making lick liquor. There we've said it. To understand the impacts in the real story of how Moonshine has attached itself to this region, you'll have to listen to part two of this series. We're saving it. I mean, a lot of these people when they came, I mean one, they brought in their head the knowledge of how to make whiskey. And in many cases they you know, they brought us still with them, and so this is an important part. You know, you look at how people lived in this region for a long time, and there's still a few you know, it's primarily subsistence, you know there and again you know, you you you throw in other influence because they're not bringing their culture and plopping it down. But you know, for instance, you know, the grain that they're going to grow is not barley or wheat, or it's gonna be corn, you know, which is not which they learned when they got here. You know from the Native Americans and so but they you know, they're raising most of their food, and then they're also one of the things they bring with them, although there are a number of them already here that the Spanish brother are hogs, and hogs are incredibly important and it's a some people refer to this as a as a hog and hominy economy because it's corn. You know, the staples are corn and pork. Dr Pierce, How has this culture been stigmatized in the negative way nationally? That's my number one question. Number two question is how have we glorified it in maybe ways that it didn't deserve. Yeah, and actually that's those stereotypes cut both ways. It's it's really interesting. But you see in the late eight one, Appalachia enters a period prior to the Civil War, the sudden Appalachian reading with a pretty good poor man's country. I mean, you could could subsist pretty well. But in the aftermath of war, a lot of things change. I mean, one of the devastational war itself, and people don't think about Appalachian the war, but there was really an internal war going on here and then you know so much, you know, so many men were lost because so many men were either volunteered or were conscripted into both armies. You know, there are significant numbers of people in the Southern Appalachian reason they're fighting for the Union. And there's community warfare you know between you know, kind of armed malicious uh during this time. And so there's that that was, and then what they called um impressment, where the particularly Confederate army come in and say, okay, I need I need your hawks, you know, and they would write you out a receipt and say okay, go to the county seat and you can get compensated in Confederate money, you know for this. You know, you can't replace your hogs or your horses or your mule or anything like that that they're taking in that So the war itself, but then after the war you get a number of things that happened. One is that population grows and you know so many and people had you know, pretty sizeable hundred fifty to underd acre far before the war. You know, they have families of like and kids or more, and so when you die, you divide that up. It doesn't take many generations to where you've got a farm that's really not able to support a family and so and and what do you do well? In increasing there's a lot of land around here. There's not a whole lot of good flat riverine farm land, you know, so you start farming on land you shouldn't farm. And of course it's just it. It exhausts very quickly, it eroads, it's you know, and so it's just increasingly hard. And then other things. You get the changing of the fence laws for a variety of reasons, where now you have to keep your animals pinned up. You can't free range anymore, and so that really cuts into the whole livestock thing. And and it becomes cheaper because of the railroads to bring pork in from Cincinnati or somewhere like then, and then the producer yourself, and so your market's gone, you know. For another cash crop, you get the excise tax on liquor, you know, and so all these ways, it's it's just kind of a huge it's almost a conspiracy. You know. You look at it and say, you know, everything bad that could happen could happen, and so it's harder and hard to make a living on the farm, you know. And so you know, poverty, and of course education becomes less of a priority in an environment like that. And and this is a time when you get people coming into the region and quote discovering Appalachia and kind of defining Appalachia is this kind of different, unique kind of place. And so you get a lot of these what are called local color writers who come in and they write these stories, you know, and a lot of the stereotypes. Well, and at the same time you're also having a in the eighteen seventies eighteen eighties, you have what's called the Moonshine Wars in the region where the federal government really starts cracking down, and so the national press comes in and they're covering and sensationalizing it and then characterizing these people as these brutish, ignorant, you know type people. And so you're getting these images nationally, you know, and everything. You know, again, it is po already, it's ignorance, it's and the media back then was probably much like it is today. They're trying to sensationalize anything they can, probably right, and so they love these stories of these shootouts between revenue A that's he, that's right, and and the hat fields and with coys, you know, and feuge and they love huge, you know, and so it just all plays into this image well you know, and that and that image is perpetuated over the years in just incredible way, you know, because then you know, so you get books, you get the uh, the media you get, and then you get movies. You know, a lot of the early silent movies worthise, you know what what one historian called the moonshine and feud movies, you know, and then you get into music and and uh, those stereotypes in many ways, and they're just perpetuated about the region. You know. You see the the bumper stickers around here that people think are funny, you know, it's you know, it's just paddle faster, I hear band and chokes. So you know, you get that kind of thing. This still, I mean, it's amazing cause we have so many people coming to this part of western North Carolina from Florida, from New York or New Jersey or something, and they come here, and it's amazing. These could be highly educated people, but they you know, they're fearful, you know, of going outside the Asheville city limits because of you know those people, you know, and they really really do fear them, you know, and so but again it's just magnified and it seems like, you know, in an era where you know, people are very uh like, well, you don't stereotype people, you know, we don't do that, you know, and we look at people's individuals. But the one group that seems to be fair game. I mean, all you have to do is turn on the cable TV. You know, it seems like it's it's it's people, well, people from Arkansas and people people from the Ozar, people from the southern Appalachian region. So that's that's fair games. Still, and so again you get into all these these bizarre stereotype you know, it seems like what I'm hearing you say is that poverty was the driver for most of this. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, and of capturing the region at a certain moment, you know, when they were in abject poverty, you know, and then and then extending that, you know, for time immemorial. You know, if we're talking about poverty, if you if you think about like kind of the legs were taken out economically of this group of people, and if they had been in a place that had massive river systems for transport, or had incredible crop land, or had some incredible natural resource that could have stimulated the their economy. They the whole culture would have been different. But like, these mountains are so rough and rugged and hard to live in that when the way they originally started living was taken out, poverty came in. Like again, I'm just thinking about how the natural landscape affects different places. Because if this had been a port, you know, if there had been an ocean here, like they would have you know, but this is inland. This is a kind of isolated again, thinking about how the landscape affects these cultures. But well it does, and and you can get carried away on on exaggerating isolation, you know, because there were a lot there were most people, i mean, particularly by the late nineteenth century, people are generally not too far from a railhead, you know, and and they're you know, the thing that amazes people is that people because you look at it now and you see all these forests and everything. But again, i mean, this whole region was clear cut, right, So this wasn't and there were railroads up into every covid holler in the region here, uh, and then but then a lot of it, you know, the federal government came in, the Forest Service brought it up, and then you've got national parks and stuff like that, and so you know a lot of it's now reforested different as well. So but you know, isolation is is there, and it limits your opportunity. So again you you face that, you know, how do I live? You know, and so you're you're either pretty crafty or you you live at a very level or you leave. I'll tell you what Dolly Parton is like fascinating to me. I mean, we we grew up, you know, listening to some of her stuff, like, but when you come here in the Appalachia, especially pretty close to pigeon forage and severe able, there's just something that the world just loves about this lady that was really a true Appalachian at a very maybe common Appalachian upbringing, just you know, one room, log cabin pour and coming out of that. Her influence in this region is notable. What I mean by Dolly's influence is notable is the sheer number of billboards and images of Dolly that you see here. Much of it is fueled by the Dolly Parton theme park called Dollywood. I wish they would sponsor this podcast Saw the Meteator, folks could get tickets. I digress and I think, I mean, Dolly's obviously exceptional, but I think she illustrates a lot of things that are important to the region. One, I think, you know, because of that whole stereotype about ignorant hillbillies that I think Dolly illustrates there, you know, and the and in the deeper you look, you see, I mean, you know, poverty has a huge impact on this but you have so many people who have come out of this this region who are you know, just incredibly creative intelligences, entrepreneurs, I mean, just creators, you know, and uh, you know there are shaped by their experience in this region, you know. And Dolly is obviously you know, to um you underestimate uh Dolly Parton at your peril. But at the same time, Dolly has very effectively done something that a lot of Appalachian people have done. And so stereotypes can be damaging, but in some ways they can be beneficial. And if you're smart and you know how to use it, you make a lot of money off the Appalachian stereotypes. And Dolly has made a lot of She plays the innocent hillbilly, nave country girl card. But yeah, you don't have to look very deep to see that she is a genius in a lot of Wells. There's a friend of mine named Wayne Colwell's novelist, and he wrote a book called Requing by Fire, which is about a community and the Smoky's when they create the National Park, you know, they remove people, and these people go to a neighboring community and they got a bunch of stuff from their barn, and so they buy an all gas station, you know, and they kind of put the stuff out, you know, and make some souvenirs and stuff like that for the tourists. And so, you know, one day they're sitting in their store. They you know, the business hasn't been too good since they first started out, you know, when somebody comes in and one of the women's kind of playing around. She she finds an old body, you know, which was her grandmother's and she puts that on, you know, and then somebody comes in the store and it's like, oh man, these are real you know hill billies or whatever, you know, And then the guys start, well, we're gonna play into that so they start wearing overalls, you know, and carving you know, little geehawl womy diddles or whatever, you know, that kind of playing in the stairs. And so, you know, it's basically the idea that, Okay, you're gonna have the stereotype of me, and so I'm gonna play into that stereotype and sell it back to you. And so that's what Dolly is doing in any way. She's selling that stereotype, uh, in many ways, and it's very effective. And I have to admit that I you know, um, you know, being in academia, you know, and I kind of played to the stereotype sometimes. I think, you know, I'll never forget the look on a on a on the face of a chancellor and and most of the administrators when I was on this committ and and uh, we were talking about something. I don't remember what it was, but you know, the very serious kind of thing. And so I go, I kind of had a different view than they did, and I said, well, let me throw this gunk into the middle of the table. And they kind of looked at me like, who are you. Well, they got their attention. You know, I don't really know what to say to conclude in a statement stating what I've learned. I think I can trace my deep respect for rural people back to my dad. He was a banker in a rural town in the mountains, and when he came home from his white collar job, he didn't tell me about the people that lived within the boundaries of the city. He told me stories about the loggers, the moss gatherers, the cattle farmers, and the hunters, because the people that mainstream society didn't celebrate. It taught me not to take society's word for who has value you and who doesn't. I don't know if he did that on purpose, but he marketed these people to me as if they were legends. People like James Lawrence by Province and who you've met today, Roy Clark, Mr Britt Davison our hero type figures to me. None of these men ever asked for attention. I'm certain many of you can identify people like this in your life. Aside from being notable woodsmen, their trend is consistent. They proved a high level of character through the use of negative things in their life to build something positive. They didn't let scarcity difficulty. They're hard times defined their life, and they're all humble. None of these men are perfect, but they have a unique brand of character. I believe their stories are worthy to be told. There are no answers in life foul by moving backwards, and I hope the frequency of these stories doesn't cast too much of a lustful eye on the past. But my hope is that by looking back will become appropriately relevant for a successful future. I'm glad to be alive. We were put here for such a time as This Appalachian Mountain culture is fascinating, and I continue to stand on the idea that a person who can appreciate their own culture is more apt to appreciate the culture of another. It's cold, feels spring and favor love, springing way and the red light all I say, You're faint. A many from my tea, only them be Incess