An installment in our Appalachian Foodways series The reunion had barely started before people began lifting casserole lids and peeking beneath sheets of aluminum foil. Children darted through rooms. Chairs scraped across the floor. Someone carried in a crockpot and set it on the counter. The meal was still an hour away, but the inventory had already…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The newspaper clipping is yellow with age. Beneath a photograph of a simple brick schoolhouse, a headline announces the end of an era: Last Two-Room School Goes, But Without Tears. The reporter described excited children looking forward to cafeteria lunches, waxed floors, and more space. Progress had arrived,…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. Something in the Woods The trail bends through second-growth timber. The ground shifts first. It turns uneven underfoot, as if something was built here and then let go. A low rise crosses the path, a line of stone that no longer holds its shape. A few steps farther,…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. At the Old Time Fiddle Competition at the Galax (VA) Old Fiddler’s Convention, the differences in Appalachian fiddle tunes show up quickly if you listen for them. The same tune comes across the stage more than once. It carries the same name and basic melody, but it never…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. Payday at the Window Payday in a coal camp didn’t look much like payday in town. Miners lined up outside a small office window near the tipple. Sometimes the pay envelope held paper notes printed by the company. Sometimes it held small metal tokens stamped with the mine’s name and a dollar…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The trees were cut weeks ago and left where they fell. Oak, poplar, chestnut. Thick trunks lying crosswise in a field that needs to be planted. One man can clear brush. He can trim branches and split smaller lengths for rails. He can’t move logs that size alone….
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. Imagine a winter morning in 1910. You step outside before dawn and pull the kitchen door shut behind you, listening for the latch to catch. The cold doesn’t creep in gradually. It smacks you in the face. Snow lies crusted across the yard, firm in some spots, hollow in others, and your boot finds yesterday’s path…
An installment in our Appalachian History & Culture series A weather report for Galax, VA, might call for scattered showers, but drive a few miles toward Pipers Gap or down into a Carroll County hollow and you’ll see how quickly that forecast unravels. One ridge catches the rain. The next stays dry. Along the Blue Ridge escarpment in Patrick County, a…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. The sheriff knew where the trouble was coming from before anyone notified him. Raised voices carried down a company road cut into the hillside. A family was loading what they could onto a wagon. A company foreman stood to the side, arms folded, eyeing them closely. Two armed…
An installment in our Appalachian History & Culture series The body lay in the front room, washed and laid out, the clock stopped. Folks came and went through the day and into the night, chairs pulled close to the walls to make space. Someone moved quietly between rooms with a tray of funeral biscuits, pressing…
An installment in our Appalachian History & Culture series If you grew up around Appalachian households, you probably learned early that belief didn’t need an audience. It didn’t announce itself or ask for an explanation. What we now call Appalachian faith and folk practice showed up in how the home was arranged, in what sat…
An installment in our Appalachian History and Culture series. You’re sitting at the table with a box of old photos. Some are loose. Some are stuck together. A few have curled at the corners. You recognize faces, but not always names. You know they’re family, but you can’t always say how. You turn one over,…