For those who do not have a hankering for work in the foothills and
industrial centers there is today a greater incentive to go back to the
farm or to stay there than ever before in the history of our country.
For the young mountaineer there is the Future Farmer Association which
not only trains him in soil conservation, guides him in what is best for
his type of farm, or what stock he can best produce, but also holds out
the spur of reward. It is a fine plan for promoting friendly rivalry and
spurs the future farmer to excel his young neighbor. Each fall there is
a great state fair in a leading city of each of the Blue Ridge states,
where the young future farmers of America gather with their exhibits in
livestock, poultry, exhibits of their own crops. There is even a revival
of the prettiest baby contest so familiar to the old county fair of the
long ago. However today the contest has expanded beyond mere beauty;
there is a health baby contest. The grand champion rural child is given
an award with much pomp, and to complete the spirit of friendly rivalry
and to bring about better understanding and fellowship between country
and town there is also a contest for the champion rural and city baby.
The mountain boy, because he is no longer isolated by rugged roads,
meets his city cousin on common ground.
The scene has changed along the once rugged creek-bed road. In place of
the saddle hung on a wall peg on the front stoop for passersby to view
and perhaps envy, a new saddle once the joy and pride of the mountain
lad, today there is a spare tire and there is an auto in the foreyard or
in the garage, a garage which is often bigger than the little cabin
itself.
The mountain farmer is being taught by skilled leaders to help himself.
Even if the mountaineer's farm is on a forty-five-degree slope there is
hope for him today, thanks to the Farm Security Administration. A
workable plan for soil rebuilding was the first step. To reclaim wet
land the mountain man digs drainage ditches. Stone, heretofore hidden in
the mountain side and unused, is now utilized for building barns and
houses. On fourteen acres a man and his family, including a couple of
grown sons and their families, can today raise a living and be
comfortable. With a loan of $440 from the Farm Security Administration a
once unproductive miserable farm can be made liveable and productive.
The farmer of the hill country is being trained to put to use the things
at hand.
Second-growth timber is coming on and is conserving the productive
qualities of the hillside soil which was drained away by ruthless
cutting of timber a quarter century ago. Today the farmer is taught to
treat his farm and pasture land with lime and phosphate, a thing unheard
of in the early days. And the greatest of all his blessings today, the
mountain farmer will tell you, is the good road.
Why then should he want to leave the mountains he knows and loves so
well?
It was tried by the young folks, but finding themselves ill fitted for
work at coal camps or steel and iron mills or factories or industrial
centers, they returned eagerly to the hills, at least during the first
five years of the thirties.
To this day, though some have remained in the mill towns, it is not
uncommon to hear the womenfolk--whose men have provided them with modern
conveniences, a frigidaire, a gas range, an electric washer and iron, a
spigot of running water--say, "Wisht I had back my cellar house, my
cedar churn, the battling block to make clean our garments. All these
here fixy contrapshuns make slaves of my menfolks at public works to
earn enough cash money to pay for them." And again, "I'm a-feared of
that 'mobile. I'd druther ride behint old Nell in the jolt wagon."
Recently a Harvard sociologist, Dr. C. C. Zimmerman, has suggested that,
because the Appalachian and Ozark farmers are producing children in
excess of the number "required to maintain a population status quo,"
they pull up stakes and settle in "declining rural New England."
However, those in a position to know, through long years of close
contact with the southern mountaineer and his needs, point out that no
resettlement or colonizing plan can be worked out until a better program
of regional analysis is first accomplished. They point out that many a
mountain farmer would not earn in a whole lifetime of toil enough money
to make a down payment on "even a rundown New England farm."
Besides there is still in the makeup of the mountaineer that spirit of
independence. He does not want to rent. He wants to own outright, even
if his property is no more than a house seat. There are few
sharecroppers in the southern highlands. A mountaineer would rather
suffer starvation than be subservient. Though he may be illiterate he
still remembers, because the story has been handed on by word-of-mouth,
the suffering and mistreatment of his forbears across the sea.
To add to his security today there is the Tenant Purchase program for
rehabilitation through the United States Department of Agriculture, and
mountain men themselves are selected as members of the committee. It is
a part of the FSA. The _Big Sandy News_, July 25, 1941, carries this
story to the mountaineer: "The Tenant Purchase program provides for the
purchase of family type farms by qualified tenants under the
Bankhead-Jones Tenant Purchase Act. Farm Security Administration
rehabilitator loans are available to low income farm families,
ineligible for credit elsewhere, for the purchase of livestock,
workstock, seed, fertilizer and equipment, in accordance with carefully
planned operation of the farm and home. About 150 farm families in
Lawrence county have already been helped by this program.
"The services of debt adjustment committeemen are available to all
farmers, as well as to FSA borrowers. The committeemen will assist
creditors and farm debtors to reach an amicable adjustment of debts
based on the ability to pay."
In this particular section of the Blue Ridge, while some are looking to
the soil, others have an eye on the waters above the earth. There is
being revived the plan of twenty years ago for the canalization of one
of the best-known and most important rivers of the Blue Ridge
Country--the Big Sandy. As a means to that end there is an organization
called the Big Sandy Improvement Association and, with a mountain man,
Congressman A. J. May, to espouse its cause, things look promising for
the project.
The mountain men and their city co-workers get together and speak their
minds and exchange views at dinner meetings down in the Big Sandy
Valley. A survey is being conducted to show to what extent a navigable
river would aid industry, especially the coal business. Mountain men are
joining their practical knowledge with the scientific knowledge of men
of the level land who are putting the plan of canalization of the Big
Sandy River before Uncle Sam for consideration and backing.
The people of the Blue Ridge mountains are learning slowly and surely to
mingle and to work with others. That again is due to good roads.
Once there was the simple manner of making sorghum, whereby the mountain
man paid for the use of the mill in cash or cane; today there is the
Sorghum Association which helps the mountaineer market his product.
There is even a Blackberry Association whose trucks drive to the very
door and load up every gallon a family can pick.
Conservation is evident on every side and mountain people are realizing
the benefits in dollars.
Where once timbering was carried on in an appallingly wasteful manner,
reforestation under the guidance of trained leaders is under way. Camps
of the CCC dot the whole southern mountain region and fruits of their
efforts can be seen in the growing forests on many a mountain side. In
Mammoth Cave National Park alone 2,900,000 seedlings were planted to
stay gulley erosion in an area of 3,000,000 square yards.
Mountain boys who have entered CCC camps are rated high in obedience,
deportment, and adaptability to surroundings. Some of them have never
been away from home before. Many have been no farther than the nearest
county seat.
Frequently the mother back home can neither read nor write but she shows
with pride a letter from her son. "My boy's in the Three C's. He's writ
me this letter. Read with your own eyes." You see her glow with genuine
pride of possession as you read aloud--perhaps the hundredth time she
has heard it--the boy's letter. The mother shows it to everyone who
crosses her threshold there in the Dug Down Mountains of Georgia. There
is another letter too. "Johnny's captain writ this one." She knows them
apart even though she does not know A from B. "Johnny's captain has writ
moughty pretty about our boy." So well does the old mother know the
content of the letters she is ready to prompt if the visitor omits so
much as a single word in the reading. And when Johnny came home, after
his first months of service were ended, he was hailed as a conquering
hero by family and neighbors alike. The mother was proudest of all.
"Look at this-here contrapshun." From the well-ordered case in the boy's
trunk she brought out a toothbrush. "He's larnt to scrub his teeth with
this-here bresh and"--she added with unconcealed satisfaction--"he don't
dip no more. 'Pon my honor he's about wheedled me into the notion of
givin' up snuff. But when a body's old and drinlin' like I'm getting to
be dipping is a powerful comforting pastime."
The mountain boy's older brothers and father too have come to understand
co-operation. They can work with others. They know the meaning of WPA
folklore. When the boss calls out jovially, "Come and grab it, boys!"
they, who have never heretofore worked by the clock, know dinner time is
up and they must start back to work. When the head of the work crew
calls out "Hold! Hold! Hold!" they know a fuse of dynamite is about to
be lighted to blast the rock from the mountain side and they hurry to
safety. "Dynamite is powerful destructuous!" one tells the other, and
they remain at safe distance until again the boss of the crew calls out
"All right!" and they are back with pick and shovel.
The mountaineer has become a good steel worker, a dairyman in the
foothills, a good mill hand.
The old folk, however, still cling to the old order of things. Once
there was an old schoolmaster in the southern mountains who refused to
give up teaching from the McGuffey Readers despite the fact that
legislation had ruled out the old familiar classics. So persistent was
he in his decision it eventually brought on a heart attack which caused
his death.
Men of the hills have been quite baffled by CIO and other union cards.
Young men first joining the CIO were heard to boast, "We can have
anything we want. The CIO is going to buy me and my woman and the kids a
nice, fine, pretty home. Pay all our bills if we get sick."
Only a few short years ago in a coal camp in West Virginia a mountain
man, who was then working at public works for the first time, found
himself haled into court at the county seat on some misdemeanor charge.
When asked "Who is the President of the United States?" he
unhesitatingly gave the name of the sheriff who had arrested him. So
long had his family lived apart that he knew nothing of the workings of
his own government and nothing about the various offices, high and low.
Yet in the family burying ground of that mountain man inscriptions on
the tombstones of his ancestors show that three of them served with
distinction in the War of the Revolution.
Lest the coming generation forget the ways of their forbears and the
America for which men struggled and died--the America of yesterday--the
scene is being faithfully reconstructed in various ways in national
parks. The boys of the CCC camps are having a very important hand in
reconstruction and conservation.
Some years ago a nephew of Fiddling Bob Taylor of Tennessee met with
several friends on hallowed ground in that State, not for a patriotic
celebration but merely for the joy of roaming in the great out-of-doors.
The ex-governor's kinsman, like his forbears, had been born on the site
where in 1772 the first step was made in American independence by the
Watauga Association. This autumn day these sons of those early
patriots fell to talking of the country, its scenic beauty, its
resources--particularly in the mountain region. "Fitting shrines set in
the beauty of the great out-of-doors are the finest monuments to our
patriots, it seems to me," said one. Another said, "The world's history
shows that from the time of creation the successful men were those who
really loved the out-of-doors. Abraham was a nomad whose home was
wherever he pitched his tent. Moses sought the silence and solitude of
Midian before God could speak to him. David was a shepherd boy on the
Judean hills. Elijah dwelt in a cave. In the New World we see
Washington, the surveyor, a lover of the out-of-doors; Thomas Jefferson,
finding happiness and contentment in roaming the hills of Virginia; the
immortal Lincoln, coming from the backwoods of humble parents; Theodore
Roosevelt, cowboy on the plains of our western country."
With a smile Fiddling Bob's nephew turned to his friends. "Fellows, I'll
wager there's not one among them from Abraham down to Teddy but would
enjoy a canter over a good highway to take a look at the Blue Ridge
Country. The most beautiful forests and parks in the world. Ought to
link 'em up with a highway."
"Not a bad idea," chorused the friends, and they took another round of
mint juleps to celebrate the birth of a thought.
"Ideas grow and thoughts travel fast," Fiddling Bob's nephew remarked
some years later when setting out on a cross-country journey. "The
Park-to-Park Highway grows annually and this Skyline Drive, which is a
part of the plan, is one of the most alluring of all modern roads."
Starting at Front Royal, the northern entrance to the Shenandoah Valley
Park, it continues to Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro on the south, a
distance of 107 miles. It is a broad mountain highway following the
crest of the Blue Ridge, invading a world that was remote and known only
to mountain folk. Today over its smooth, paved surface cars climb
quickly to airy heights from which may be viewed innumerable vistas of
the Piedmont plateau and the Shenandoah Valley. At strategic points
parking overlooks have been constructed, from which are seen tumbling
waterfalls, deep and narrow canyons, cool shady forests, open meadows,
and wild flowers of every shade and hue throughout the summer. Autumn
presents a boundless riot of color and winter a snowy, sparkling blanket
pierced by tall green pines.
The Skyline Drive links with the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rockfish Gap
which will at last connect the Shenandoah National Park with the Great
Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee.
"In case you don't know," Fiddling Bob's nephew likes to remind a
stranger, "Shenandoah Valley Park was presented by Virginians to the
nation in 1935 and more than three million dollars have been spent on
the Skyline Drive alone--a drive that hasn't a parallel in America.
Through this wilderness the Father of his Country once trudged on foot
as a surveyor and looked down upon the beauty of the Shenandoah Valley
from the lofty peaks of the Blue Ridge. His was the task to survey lands
for the oncoming settlers. He had no moment to explore under the earth.
That was the task of later men. Today for good measure, after you have
beheld the breathtaking beauty from the heights, just travel seven
eighths of a mile from Front Royal to the Skyline Caverns where you'll
see the most unusual cave flowers that man has ever looked upon.
Why"--Fiddling Bob's nephew puffs vehemently on his corn-cob pipe--"do
you know that Dr. Holden, he's professor of Geology at VPI, says these
Hellicitites, that's what he calls 'em, 'these weird, fantastic, and
pallid forms' warp scientific judgment. And, friends, it's nature's
work, these inconceivable structures hidden from the world for millions
of years down under the ground."
He turned with a beaming countenance when we had emerged from the cavern
of matchless wonders. "Young Americans don't have to study geography
books these days. All they have to do is get a second-hand car, fill it
up, and strike out on the Park-to-Park Highway. They'll get an eyeful
and an earful too from native sons, and learn more about America than
they can dig out of the dry pages of a book in a year. Why, right down
there at Charlottesville there's Ash Lawn where James Monroe lived and
meditated. His friend, Thomas Jefferson, set about building the place in
1798 while Monroe was in France looking after Uncle Sam's business. Even
great and busy men in those days were neighborly. Thomas Jefferson did a
good part by his neighbor James Monroe when he built that house, and the
ambassador thanked him generously when he came back to occupy the place.
The two used to roam the grounds together and spent many happy hours
there. They visited to and fro; you see Monroe lived across yonder
within sight of his friend's home. The great of the past take on reality
when you actually set foot upon the ground they have trod. Places come
to life when we see them with our own eyes. That's the purpose of these
great highways, the Park-to-Park highways that connect the scenes of
American history."
As the terrain changes there is a great variety in the scenes along
Skyline Drive. Sometimes the road leaves the crest to tunnel through a
rocky flank of mountain and you come unexpectedly upon sparkling streams
tumbling down the mountain side to the valley below. The eye follows the
cascade to the very edge of the drive. It disappears beneath the wide
surface and reappears beyond a rocky wall, cascading down and down to
fertile valleys below.
Virginians, and people of the Blue Ridge generally, count one of their
greatest prides the restoration of the capital at Williamsburg through
the generosity of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Old and young who pass
through the graceful wrought-iron gates to the Governor's Palace thrill
at the sight of the restored colonial capital named for King William
III, a scene which all in all reflects old England in miniature, "as the
state of mind of its citizens reflected the grandeur that was to be
America." Here are the stocks in which offenders were locked while they
suffered jibes from passing tormentors. Elegant coach-and-four remind
the visitor of days of grandeur of Old Virginia when the FFV's were
entertained at the royal palace. Across the way is the wigmaker's shop,
and the craft house, displaying the Wolcott Collection of ancient tools
and instruments. Here too is seen the Wren building, oldest academic
structure in English America, "first modeled by Sir Christopher Wren."
Even a youngster of the Blue Ridge knows about Yorktown where Lord
Cornwallis surrendered in 1781. "Here's where we fit and plum whopped
the life outten the redcoats," we overheard a mountain boy from a
mission school boasting to his companions.
Within a few short hours I had left behind Old Virginia and its
reminders of colonial days and crossed into the Mountain State.
"There's plenty of beauty and culture in Old Virginia, I'm not denying
that--" Bruce Crawford looked over his spectacles at his inquisitive
visitor--"but there's just as much on this side of the Blue Ridge. We've
got as many wonders under the earth as above it. And"--he turned now in
his swivel chair in his quarters in the Capital to look far up the
Kanawha River--among the many duties of this Fayette County man is that
of letting the world know about his state--"I'm not forgetting Boone
roved these parts. Trapped and hunted right here on the Kanawha. But
what I started to talk about was not the hills, the rivers, and the
caves, but the people." He spoke slowly, deliberately, this sturdy,
well-groomed hillsman. Like Sergeant York of the Tennessee Mountains
Bruce Crawford can, if need be, drop easily back into the dialect of his
people. And he is an accomplished writer. "I don't care enough about it
to follow the profession of writing," he said, and fire glowed in his
gray eyes. "But as old Uncle Dyke Garrett used to say, 'I takened all I
could a while back from furriners' so I cut loose and wrote my notions
about it and it was published in the _West Virginia Review_. Take it
along with you on your travels through the Mountain State and see if
I've come near hitting center."
It seems to me he came mighty near hitting center and with Bruce
Crawford's permission, here are his sentiments:
"In recent weeks two ignorant jibes were flung at the State of West
Virginia, one by a Southern editor and the other by a Northern
cartoonist.
"The editor, a Virginian, moaned that rude mountaineers had routed
Democrats of the 'old Southern type' from the Capital on the Kanawha and
that the Lost Cause was lost all over again. He was still sad because
Senator Matthew M. Neely had been elected Governor on a platform to
restore democracy to the Democratic Party, and government to the
governed, in West Virginia.
"The cartoonist represented us by a stock hill-billy character with
bushy beard and rifle in hand, gunning for someone around the mountains.
"Both editor and cartoonist have their heads in the sands of the past.
"West Virginians are Mountaineers by geography and tradition, and proud
of it. Originally they were induced by wily Virginians to come into
these mountains and form a buffer back-country against Indians, French
and British. Here they grew sturdy, self-reliant and independent. They
fought the first and last battles of the American Revolution, as well as
the first land engagement of the war to preserve the Union. They were
shooting for liberty while Patrick Henry was still shouting for it among
appeasers of King George. A continental commander, it is told, refused
to enlist more volunteers from the Colonies, saying he had plenty of
West Virginians. General Washington, too, thought these mountaineers
were tops, for in a dark hour of the Revolution he said: 'Leave me but a
banner to place upon the mountains of West Augusta, and I will gather
around me the men who will lift our bleeding country from the dust and
set her free.'
"These mountaineers saved piedmont and tidewater Virginia from Indians,
helped win the American independence, and made possible the opening up
of Kentucky to the West. They then expected a fair deal from the
Virginia Government, but they did not get it. So when Virginia seceded
from the Union, they seceded from Virginia. And proudly they adopted the
motto, 'Mountaineers are always free,' a sentiment so generally
subscribed to that it appears over the entrance to our penitentiary.
"The slurs persist through ignorance.
"True, we have had all-out clan wars. We have had violent chapters in
our industrial story, under state governments apparently considered
benevolent by the Virginia editor. We tolerated waste of both human and
material resources under wild individualism. But a new day has come,
promising the greatest good to the greatest number, and we shall have
much to advertise, as envisioned in Governor Neely's inaugural address
when he said:
"'Fortunately impoverished land can be reclaimed; denuded areas can be
reforested; unnecessary stream pollution can be prevented; and in our
purified watercourses fish can be made to thrive.... For our posterity
and ourselves, we must restore as much as possible of the matchless
heritage which we wasted as improvidently as the base Indian who threw
away a pearl that was richer than all his tribe.... If to West Virginia
scenery, which is surprisingly diversified and transcendently beautiful,
we add the lure of fully restored forests, fish and game, the State will
eventually become a happy hunting ground for the sportsman; a paradise
for the tourist; and the home of prosperity more abundant than we have
ever known.'
"Progress toward these aims is being made under the direction of various
heads.
"In addition to mining areas producing more soft coal than any other
state, plus our varied manufactures, we have fertile valleys and slopes
from which ... an increasing harvest is reaped. The State's diversity of
activity should, in the fullness of time, make West Virginia the most
progressive, the most socially balanced, and therefore the most truly
civilized State in the Union.
"Our road system is being rapidly improved.... Many of our historic and
scenic spots and recreational areas, hitherto locked in the uplands, are
easily reached as more and more tourists travel pioneer trails on modern
highways.
"All these things now are being discovered, or soon should be, by the
whole Nation. Ours is the Vacationland at the Crossroads of the East.
"Just as in other times of national peril the human and material
resources of this region figured indispensably, so today its great
strength will be used against the Hitler menace.... West Virginia, with
its industrial development and strategic isolation from attack, may
become the Defense Hero of a war in which states little and large have
fallen before the juggernaut of tyranny. Again, as in the time of
Washington, the Nation may look to these West Virginia hills, and plant
here the oriflamme of freedom.
"Let us sing of the soft, folded beauty of the Alleghenies; of rivers
roaring with primeval discontent and streams crystal-clear (save those
running red from wounded hills); of Edenlike forests in Monongahela's
million acres; of Ohio's fertile valley, placid and hill-bordered, where
once 'warwhoop and savage scream echoed wild from rock and hill'; of
clean-trimmed rolling landscapes of Eastern Panhandle, famed for history
and old houses; of lovely pastoral valleys of the South Branch,
Greenbrier and Tygart; of wild, boulder-strewn New River Canyon; of
Webster's forest monarchs and her deep, cool woods; of the 'brown waters
of Gauley that move evermore where the tulip tree scatters its blossoms
in Spring'; of the green hills mirrored in starlit Kanawha; of
white-splashing Blackwater Falls, awe-inspiring Grand View, enchanting
Seneca Rocks, and the remote Smoke Hole region with its Shangri La
inhabitants.
"Sing of our rhododendron and its dark-green, wax-like leaf and purple
flower; of Mingo's mighty oak that weathered six hundred winters; of our
highest peak, Spruce Knob, bony above the lush forest; of Cranberry
Glades and their strong plants native to Equator and Pole; bracing
altitudes, averaging highest east of the Mississippi.
"Sing a lay for the strawberries of Buckhannon, buckwheat of Kingwood,
our lowly but uprising spud, tobacco at Huntington, and the wine-smell
of orchards in Berkeley; for the horses of Greenbrier, Herefords of
Hampshire, sheep on Allegheny slopes, deer in a dozen State Parks, and
bears in the pines of Pocahontas.
"Sing of timber, iron and steel; of coal heaved by brawny miners into
the bituminous bin of the Nation; of oil gushers and gas flow; of
vitrolite and chromium, plastics and neon, rayon and nylon; of glass
stained for cathedrals of Europe; of billions of kilowatts from coal,
and potentially more water power; of fluorescent bulbs at Fairmont, and
poisonous red flakes in the Kanawha sky from metallurgical plants--fire
poppies blooming in the night.
"Sing of deeds and events of deathless renown; of Morgan Morgan and his
first white settlement at Bunker Hill; of James Rumsey and his steamboat
on the Potomac; of Chesapeake and Ohio's epic completion across the
State in '73 to the tune of legendary John Henry's steel-driving ballad
in Big Bend tunnel; of turnpikes, taverns and toll houses long
abandoned; of our leaders, Negro and white, in business, industry,
education, religion and government; of our stalwarts of union labor
whose vision, social comprehension and courage helped to bring a new day
for all; of our cherished democracy, flexible and self-righting in a
world where popular rule is a rarity.
"I have catalogued in clumsy prose what a Thomas Dunn English or a Roy
Lee Harmon could peel off in crisp, singing lines. Surely we have gifted
souls who can illumine our story in song--the story of Mountaineers
Always Free, of West Virginians always Mountaineers--for a better
understanding by the country at large ... of this land of heroic past,
exhilarating present, and promising future."
A journey through the Mountain State convinces the traveler that on her
side of the Blue Ridge West Virginia offers as many wonders under the
earth as above it, if one is not a claustrophobe. There's Gandy Sinks
where my friends of the Speleological Society were trapped by a
cloudburst on August 1, 1940; and Seneca Caverns, in Monongahela
National Forest, once the refuge of Seneca Indians about twenty miles
west of Franklin on U. S. Route 33, and six miles from Spruce Knob.
Caves as unbelievably beautiful as the Luray Caverns of Virginia, where
the great council room of the Seneca tribe remains as it was in the day
of the redskins. There is even a legend about Snow Bird, the only
daughter of Bald Eagle and White Rock, his wife. Inside the cavern, if
you look carefully, there is to be seen the outline of the lovely face
of Snow Bird on the great stone wall. There are a Wigwam, and an
Iceberg, an Alligator, and the Golden Horseshoe and Balcony of the
Metropolitan, all in natural stone formation.
West Virginia has developed 84,186 acres in its state-park and forest
system. Sparkling rivers flow throughout the state. At the junction of
the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers where Daniel Boone once roamed there is a
monument commemorating the battle of the Revolution between colonial
troops and Indians. Here too are the graves of a woman scout, "Mad Anne"
Bailey, and a Shawnee chieftain, Cornstalk. There are hundreds of miles
of trails, safe underfoot, but flanked by as wild and rugged lands as
ever infested by the Indian.