The stag isn't slow in being on his way. He and his pals pile into their
car and head toward the next tavern.
The present generation of mountain youth may have lost their
superstition but they will take a long chance on beating the pinball
machine. They will play it for hours--until the last nickel is dropped
in the slot because, "Yes siree, just last night at the Blue Moon I saw
a fellow get the jackpot. Double handful of coin!"
A mountain girl once ashamed because her granny smoked her little clay
pipe puffs a cigarette nonchalantly held between highly manicured
fingertips. She will spend her last dollar for a permanent and lipstick.
She would not be interested in the simple fireside games, Clap In and
Clap Out, Post Office and Drop the Handkerchief. Such things are far too
slow for her highstrung nerves these days.
However, community centers are trying valiantly to bring back square
dancing and community singing. The effort is successful in some
localities, particularly through North and South Carolina. Old-time
singing school with the itinerant singing master has given place to
singing societies that meet sometimes in the summer months on the
courthouse square or indoors.
Religious customs, too, are becoming modernized. The foot-washing of the
Regular Primitive Baptists, while it is still carried on in some of the
mountain churches, lacks much of the solemnity and imposing dignity of
bygone days. The church house itself is changed, which may account for
much of the modification of customs. The log church is replaced with a
modern structure of native stone. The walls are painted. There is a gas
chandelier suspended from the ceiling. While there is still no
elaborate, elevated pulpit, the floor of the front portion of the church
where the faithful wash each other's feet is today covered with
linoleum. The long spotlessly white towel used for drying the feet of
the meek has given place to a brightly colored green and red striped
bath towel (basement special, or such as are found on the counters of
the five and ten). The singing, instead of being the solemn chant of the
sixth century to which mountain folk for generations adapted the words
of their traditional hymns, is in swift tempo, almost jazz such as can
be heard at any point on your radio dial any day in the week.
The jolt wagon, with its rows of straight hickory chairs, carrying the
whole family to meeting with a well-filled basket with victuals for all,
is a thing of the past. At a recent foot-washing down in the Georgia
mountains there was but one wagon in front of the little church. A
string of automobiles of all sizes and makes was strung along the road
for a mile.
The solemn funeralizing with its simple beauty is almost a thing of the
past in the southern mountains. Today it is accompanied by the barking
of the hot-dog vendor, "Get your hot dogs here. A nice ice cold drink of
Coca-Cola here! Here's your Doctor Pepper! Cold orange drink!"
The decorations on the grave--once paper flowers made by loving
hands--are garish factory-made flowers in cellophane covers. Mother's
picture in the glass-covered box beside her headstone is gone long ago.
The favorite hymn is sometimes sung and a few of the old-time preachers
survive to weep and pray and sing and offer words of praise for the
long-departed friend. The present generation do not speak of the
funeralizing. Today it is a memorial. Strangely enough, however, only a
few miles from the heart of the Big Sandy country, a memorial service
was held for O. O. McIntyre for the second time on August 11, 1940. A
twilight memorial it was called and his good friends and close
associates came to hear him eulogized.
The mountain preacher of yesterday is passing fast. Then, his was a
manifold calling. When he traveled the lonely creek-bed road with his
Bible in his saddlebags, he was the circuit rider bringing news of the
outside world to the families along the widely scattered frontier. He,
like the mountain doctor, was truly counselor and friend. The people
looked to him to tell of things that would be happening in the near
future. They hung upon his every word from the pulpit. His reasoning in
spiritual matters was sound and his eloquence impelling. His sermons
often combined quotations from the early writers of England, passages
from Shakespeare, true echoes of Elizabethan English, as might be
expected considering his ancestry. Words flowed freely from his lips.
The mountain preacher to this day has a natural gift of oratory. It has
been handed down through generations. He needs only the spur and the
occasion to burst forth. The mountain preacher, as some may imagine, was
not always untutored or illiterate--of the type we sometimes encounter
today in remote mountain regions. In early days he was quite often both
preacher and teacher, such as William E. Barton, father of Bruce Barton,
who after preaching in the thinly settled parts of Knox County,
Kentucky, became the pastor of a Chicago church in later years. Some of
the early roving preachers even studied theology in the great centers of
learning both in America and Europe.
At one time, even as late as the last quarter of a century, there were
strait-laced Baptist preachers (my own blood kin among them) who would
not permit an organ in the church. But today it is quite the vogue for
young evangelistic couples to hold forth with piano-accordion and
guitar. "It peps up the joiners," the evangelist says. On the other
hand, in remote churches, where preachers still hold that note-singing
and hymn books with notes are the works of the Devil, these same fellows
will play up the hysteria of the audience with the "Holy Bark," the
"And-ah," "Yep, Yep," and the "Holy Laugh," chiefly at foot-washing
ceremonies.
The number of young people, however, who cling to the custom of
foot-washing is comparatively small. One reason may be that they are too
busy with other things, or that they consider such practices
old-fashioned.