A newspaper correspondent, writing to his paper from the mountain region
of Eastern Tennessee about twenty-five years ago, had the following to
say:
"These mountain people have some occasional times of recreation. I was
at one recently. A few days ago I received an invitation to 'a Kickin'.'
In this neighborhood every well-regulated family has a clumsy,
old-fashioned loom to weave the wool of the mountain sheep into fabrics
for home consumption. Some of this material requires to be fulled, and
to do this 'a Kickin'' is instituted, and it was to one of these
gatherings that your correspondent was invited. It was held at one of
the houses, common in this section, with a big fireplace and no windows,
located on the banks of the Spillcorn Branch. The envoy with the
invitation was diplomatic. 'Hev ye ever bin to a Kickin' afore?' queried
he. I told him I had, and I had, too, in Pennsylvania at that, and the
only one I ever saw before. 'Would ye like to go to one of our Kickin's
down yere?' I responded that it would certainly afford me great
pleasure. 'Then,' said the mountaineer, 'they're a-goin' to hev a
Kickin' over in Spillcorn to-night, an' you kin come over.'
"Not wanting to miss the overture, I went early. The house was unusually
large and had one room, with a bed in each corner. Quite a number of
strapping boys and girls had collected, and everything bore the aspect
of a funeral. The Kickers were ranged around on chairs with that owlish
silence that goes with awkwardness and having nothing to say. Presently
one of the girls whispered something to another girl near by her, and
they slipped out by the back door, and then every girl in the house
broke for the door like a lot of sheep going through a gap in the fence.
Then the masculine tongue broke loose and Babel reigned, until a few
minutes later, when the girls came in, and the funeral was resumed. I
sat in one corner with my chair tilted back, taking observations, when
not engaged in fighting off a human gad-fly who was pestering me with
questions of national politics.
"Presently the old woman said they might as well begin. If there was
silence before, pandemonium broke loose now, and everybody was
electrified. The old man went out on the porch and rolled in a web of
coarse woolen fabric, containing a hundred yards or more, and unrolled
it in a loose pile on the floor. Then the boys and girls took off their
shoes and stockings. The boys rolled up their pantaloons as far as they
could get them, while they arranged fourteen chairs in a circle in the
middle of the floor, with the pile of goods in the center. The old
woman, who looked for all the world like one of the witches in Macbeth,
poured gourdfull after gourdfull of hot water on the material, until it
was soaking wet, and then daubed soft soap with a liberal hand over the
whole.
"Then the Kickers sat down, boys and girls alternating. The girls
gathered up their skirts and sat down on them. They had a bed-cord, with
the ends tied so that when the Kickers were seated they could grasp this
rope, which was passed around from hand to hand, and hold on while they
kicked.
"Everybody now was talking at once, and the confusion was that of a
madhouse. The gad-fly yelled at me that if 'Pennsylvany went Dimmycratic
it was all gone to the dogs'--and the kicking began.
"It will be seen that it required constant and vigorous attention to
business, pounding that sloppy mass of woolen with bare feet, until
everything rattled, to keep it from being kicked over on those who were
disposed to be slow. Twenty-eight naked feet would be kicking into the
pile with all the rapidity and strength their owners possessed, while
the soapsuds flew up to the rafters.
"Everybody laughed, and yelled, and screamed, and kicked till their
faces grew red and their eyes fairly stood out in their heads. The floor
grew as slippery as soap and water could make it, and every now and
then some chair would slip and its occupant sit down suddenly on the
floor, and, holding on to the rope, would pull the whole crowd over in a
floundering, laughing, yelling pile.
"Then everybody would pant and take a rest and sit down again. The girls
would hitch up their impedimenta to a safer distance, and the
performance would begin all over again, and thus with relays for two
hours. Only one accident occurred. There was one big fat girl they
called Loweezy, who looked like a human featherbed with a string tied
around it. Louisa was doing her level best to kick the pile over on her
opposite, and had gathered both feet and let fly like a pile-driver, and
was about to repeat the operation, when, at the critical moment, her
chair shot out backward and Louisa sat down in a puddle of soapsuds,
with what Augusta Evans in one of her novels calls a sound like the
wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. What little breath was in her
was knocked out, and it was unknown for a brief space whether it would
ever get back. But she got up, and was duly escorted by her female
companions to the back porch for needed repairs. The old man threw a few
more pine-knots on the fire, and Louisa returned and spread herself
before the cheerful blaze in a manner calculated to do the most good.
Then when everybody was tired out the work was pronounced completed, the
wreck was cleaned off the floor, and supper prepared."