A personal 'song bag'

I sing to my infant daughter.  Granted, I am not the best singer, but I can carry a tune.  My grandmother claimed the same when she would sing a few verses of some of the old songs she knew, songs that had been passed down, or songs she remembered as a girl.  My grandmother was born in Coe, West Virginia, which is on the Webster/Nicholas County line.  She grew up in the Cranberry area (I cannot say where for certain as my grandmother took me to the property once as a child), far off the beaten track and amongst the trees.  She told me once that it was not until the government came into the area in the 1930s that roads were blazed through the forests.  The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) set up camp in Woodbine, and until then my grandmother knew only paths and a few old wagon roads through what is now considered the Cranberry Back Country and part of the Monongahela National Forest.

My grandmother's stories of growing up during the Depression up Cranberry way is another story for another time.

I digress.

My family is not overtly musical, but my grandfather played the fiddle and the dulcimer.  He would sing to me and my sister with the dulcimer only when begged.  The songs he sang were things like "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" (1952) and "Little Brown Jug" (1869).  My grandmother, on the other hand, would sing old standards, hymns, and hum tunes she could not remember what they were called or the accompanying words.  However, when I was going to Fairmont State College (now University), I lived with my grandmother and together we began listening to a lot of "mountain" music and classic country.  Time and again we came back to the Carter Family, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams Sr., but it was really the Carter Family that would stir memories for my grandmother.

The song "Wildwood Flower" was a particular favorite, but I guess that could be said of just about anyone growing up in the mountains.  The tune of "Wildwood Flower" was the first I learned to play on guitar (taught to me in the First Baptist Church in Cowen while my father was helping with some electrical work in the church).  The song itself was written in 1860 and has undergone a type of evolution as it has passed from person to person, played from one family's porch to another, until it was recorded by the Carter Family in the 1920s.





My grandmother and I would sing this song together, and to me, that is one of my greatest memories.  I sing it to my daughter now, and hopefully we will sing it together someday.

Another song that my grandmother would sing was "In the Pines" from the 1870s.  Doing a little research, I found it is also referred to as "Black Girl," and better known "Where Did You Sleep Last Night."  My grandmother sang "Little Girl, little girl" instead of the original "Black girl, black girl..."  My grandmother also included the stanza starting with "The longest train I ever saw..."  A simple search about the song on Wikipedia, places the origin of the song in southern Appalachia...wherever that really is...



I also sing quite a bit of Hank Williams to my daughter, simply because it is fun to sing...  My grandfather, my mother tells me, sang "Settin' the Woods on Fire" (1952) to her when she was a little girl.  I love this song, as it is nice lighthearted contrast to "In the Pines" and ballads I remember about various disasters, crimes of passion, etc.





The Smithsonian Folkways Project is a treasure trove to finding recordings of a lot of songs I have heard from my family and from family friends.  Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb have become favorites as of late.



My grandmother sang parts of this song to me, and it was not until recently that I read the story behind "John Hardy":



There is a wealth of music and music makers in West Virginia, and recently I have been listening to Hazel Dickens (a Mercer County native).  This song really sums up a lot of my feelings as of late:

From R. L. Thompson's 'Webster County: history [and] folklore, from the earliest times to the Present'--Folklore

Sunset near home...

Transcribed from R. L. Thompson's book, the chapter on Folklore, in honor of October and Halloween:

"Belief in witchcraft, spells, incantations, omens, charms, and so forth were common among early settlers.  The “Witchball” was frequently found. This, made from the hair of a cow, or other short-haired animal, could be made or unraveled only by a witch or some one in league with the devil.  A guest who balanced a chair on one of its legs and rapidly revolved it was looked upon as an enemy of the family and ordered off the premises.  Implicit belief in lucky and unlucky days was common.  The making of no article of dress was commenced on Saturday; the person for whom it was intended would never live to wear it when completed.  The child born on the thirteenth of any month would die in infancy or bring disgrace upon its parents.  If a hoe was carried through the house a death in the family would occur soon, unless the hoe was immediately carried back with the handle pointed toward sunrise.  The burning of sassafras wood in the fireplace would bring certain destruction upon the entire family by fire or flood.  Dogs were spelled by a witch or other person of evil nature.  A do under a spell would take the back track in a chase or run in the opposite direction when called.  To cure the spell the Lord’s Prayer was written on a piece of bearskin, baked in corn pone and fed to the dog.  The roasted foot of a raccoon would start the dog on the right end of a trail. Cows were bewitched and gave bloody milk from which butter could not be made. By stealing the suspected witch’s dishcloth and massaging the cow’s udder nine times with it in the full of the moon, the spell was broken.  Quoting certain words from the bible would stop the flow of blood from a hemorrhage.  These words could by told a woman by a man or a man by a woman.  When starting on a journey it is unlucky to return to the house for any purpose.  The bad luck, however, could be averted by sitting down for five minutes.  The hunter who counted his bullets returned from the chase with an empty game pouch.  The baby which saw its reflection in the looking glass would fill an early grave.  Crops are planted, houses built or covered, and fenced laid by signs of the moon.  Illness was treated by home remedies or incantations.

Potatoes panted in the light of the moon grew to the top of the ground; in the dark of the moon, under ground.

Boards rived in the light of the moon will curl; in th dark of the moon will lay flat.

Cucumbers and other flowering vegetables planted when the moon is in the sign of the Virgin will bloom profusely, but bear poorly; planted in the sign of the Twins will bear heavily.

Turnips, onions and potatoes planted in the light of the moon will grow larger and nearer the top of the ground.

A rail fence if laid in the light of the moon will stay on top of the ground; if laid in the dark of the moon will sink into the ground.

A house foundation if put when moon is rising will remain on top of the ground; put when moon is falling will sink into the ground.

The nearer the house of midnight the moon changes colder the weather.

Each star in a circle around the moon indicates a rainy day.

Thunder in January indicates a frost on the corresponding day in May.

Thick bark on the trees indicates a cold winter.

The heavier the fur on the animal the colder the winter.

Heavy husks on corn denotes a cold winter.

The thickness of hide of cattle was a way of forecasting winter temperature.

If the woolly worms are brown in the autumn the winter will be mild, if black the winter will be severe.

If the eaves drip on February there will be a good fruit crop.

Warts are caused by playing with toads.

To remove a wart, when you see the moon keep your eye on the moon, reach down and pick up some object from the ground.  Rub the object over the wart ten times, reciting:  “And what I see increase, and what I feel decrease.”  Cast object over shoulder and forget it.  The next time you look the wart will be gone.

Milk from the milkweed will remove warts.

When walking through a field and finding the bone of any kind of animal, pick this up and rub over the wart, place bone back in exact position in which it was found and wart will disappear in nine days.

Tea made from boneset will cure colds, from horehound will cure coughs.

Soot or cobwebs will stop bleeding.

A bag of asafetida hung bout the neck will ward off measles, diphtheria and whooping cough.

An amber necklace prevents goitre [sic].

Rubbing a greasy dishrag over a baby’s face stopped convulsions.

Piercing the ears aided weak eyes.

For fever or pleurlsy [sic] dig a sod about eight or ten inches square, taking care it is not crumbled or broken.  Bake sod on fire until thoroughly dry.  Pour water on sod until it is soft, place on side and relief will come almost instantly.

If a rooster crows in the middle of the night it is a sign of death in the family.

If a whip-poor-will calls in your yard it is a sign of a death in the family.

When visiting away from home enter and leave by the same door or you will have bad luck.

The last person that leaves a cemetery will by the next person to be buried there.

When moving from one house to another to move the broom is bad luck.

To find a four-leaf clover is good luck:  a five-leaf clover bad luck.

For a rabbit to run in front of you is good luck.

If a dog howls in front of your house it is the sign of a death in the family soon.

If a cats rolls on its back with is head toward your house there will be a death in the family.

To kill a cat or break a mirror brings seven years of bad luck.

If deathbells ring in your ears you will hear of a death soon.

If, when you first see the new moon there are no obstructions between you and the moon, you will have good luck all the month.  If there are obstructions such as tree-tops, etc., you will have bad luck all the month.

Sew on Sunday and root the stitches out in hell with your nose.

Every stitch sewn on Sunday must be picked out in hell with your teeth.

Always trim your fingernails on Friday and you will never have a toothache.

Nutmegs worn around the neck prevented indigestion and colic.

Blood from a black cat cured erysipelas.

Carrying buckeye or horse chestnuts in the pocket warded off rheumatism.

A coin held under the upper lip, or a cold key dropped down the back, would stop nose bleed.

Putting a baby’s clothes feet first insured normal growth.

Nine sips of water, counting nine backwards and turning around nine times will stop hiccoughs [sic].

Wearing the kneecap of a sheep on the leg prevented cramps.

Placing a pan of water under the bed stopped night sweats.

Wearing a rattlesnake belt prevented lumbago.

Rubbing snake oil, skunk fat or angle worm oil into the joints cured inflammation.

Wrapped a warm red woolen sock around the neck cured sore throat.

To cure asthma the patient was placed with back against a tree, a lock of hair pegged into a hole bored into the tree and snipped off.  When the back grew over the hair the asthma would be gone.

When you find a small hen egg wave it around your head three times then throw it over the house to keep the witches away.

On May day go to an open well and hold a mirror so as to flash the sun rays on the water and say, “If you love me your countenance will appear,” and your future husband or wife will appear.

When you stub your toe kiss your hand as soon as possible and you will see your beau.

The first blue bird or robin you see in the spring, make a wish and it will come true.

If you see a red bird you will see your sweetheart tomorrow.

If you tell your dream before breakfast it will come true.

When you sleep in a house for the first time you dream the first night will come true.

On the first day of May ash in the dew and you will have beautiful skin all the year.

If you right eye itches you will see a friend.  If you left eye itches you will see an enemy.

If your right hand itches you will shake hands with a friend.  If your left hand itches you will get money.

If your right foot itches you will get a new pair of shoes; your left foot, you will walk on strange ground.

If a child talks to itself it will become wealthy.

If you talk to yourself the devil is after you.

Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger;

Sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger;

Sneeze on Wednesday, sneeze for a letter;

Sneeze on Thursday, something better;

Sneeze on Friday, sneeze for sorrow;

Sneeze on Saturday, see your sweetheart tomorrow;

Sneeze on Sunday, sure of deceit,

The devil will have you the rest of the week.

Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for health;

Sneeze on Tuesdays, sneeze for wealth.

            (Balance as above)

The foregoing in no wise exhausts the available material, but will suffice for this volume."

Cowen Memories Part 1 - Cowen as of 1911, 1942, and the 1980s.

Bird's Eye View of Cowen, WV, c. 1912

Cowen, West Virginia is my hometown, as far as towns close to my home are concerned.  My parent's house is somewhere between Cowen and Camden-on-Gauley, but by the early 1980s, Cowen had the closest grocery store, post office, and elementary school.  Historically speaking, Cowen was incorporated before Camden-on-Gauley. 

This is what Mr. R. L. Thompson had to write about Cowen in his book 'Webster County:  history [and] folklore, from the earliest times to the Present,' 1942:

"COWEN, some times called "The Savannah of the Mountains" is the principal town in Glade district.  It is located on a plateau at an altitude of 2,244 feet above sea level.  Although in the vicinity were many pioneer settlers, the town was not established until the building of the railroad in 1898, and incorporated in 1899.  The municipality was named for John F. Cowen, a director and one of the larger stockholders in the West Virginia Railway Company.  Several lumber mills had offices in the town.  The Glade district high school was established and located there in 1908, and the building erected a short time later.  W. W. Trent was the first principal.  The first graduating exercises were held in 1911, when a class of three was graduated.  [...]  Located on a branch of the B & O Railroad and State Route 15, the town was for years the principal shipping point for a large territory, including Webster Springs.  With the removal of the railroad shops from Gassaway and Weston to Cowen in 1942 and the expected development of rich coal deposits in the vicinity, the citizens looked forward to an era of expansion and prosperity for the town and surrounding territory."

 Of course, in 2010, Cowen is much changed, and prosperity is subjective.  In the above picture, I can only recognize two buildings that are still wholly standing.  On the far right is the Methodist Church on what is called 1st Street, and toward the middle of the photo is the little building in the intersection of Cowen.  This little building, I have been told, was at one time a watch and shoe repair shop.  I remember it being a flower shop at one time in my child hood.  It is now a home.  Beside it is/was a house now in extreme disrepair, the Clark house, which looks down Webster Road.  The Clark house was built later on, but beside this house, and visible in the photo is another building that is now in ruins still.  If I remember correctly, it is owned by a Mr. Blyler (?) and rests next to the Cowen #105 Rebekah Lodge/Odd Fellows building and newer post office.  Then again, Cowen has burnt before, buildings torn down, and I can only remember what existed from the early 1980s on.  Yes, I am of the 'younger generation,' but the steady changes, mostly decline, have been noticed in my generation.

For example, the building that had once been Cowen Grade School still stands.  See below...

Gauley Summit Sanitorium, later Cowen Hospital, then a girl's dorm, Cowen Grade School, Brinson's Furniture, and now a private residence.

My father attended Cowen Grade school, but the above picture compared to what the grade school looked like...it is a bit difficult to see the resemblance.  By the time my father was in grade school in the 1950s and 1960s, the embellishments on the building were gone and a new section was built in block on the left hand side.  Then, by the time I knew the building as Brinson's Furniture, there were no trees out front and no porch.  In fact, the central section of the building had been totally changed.

 

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Even now, the above picture is not current.  The building is being quasi-restored by a private owner.  The are new windows in the second story, but these windows are nothing like the originals...

My memory of this building is strong.  I dream of this building often.  As a child, "Red" and Kitty Brinson had furniture in this building, and the office was on the backside where the driveway ascends just below the bank on Arthur Street just above, near Rose Street.  I write 'street' but it is more like narrow little barely paved roads on the hillsides...  The angle of the above photo comes from the sidewalk along Howard Farm Road (called Old Birch River Road by Google Maps), across the street from Mrs. Keyser's house on the corner (now owned by a new family).

The building, as I remember it, was not heated except for the office and, naturally, the furnace room, which used coal.  The furnace room frightened me as a child.  It was in the basement, it was dark, and the coal smoke that permeated everything was hard on the lungs.  The basement was closed for the most part, except for the old cafeteria space, which was in the basement of the block addition (in above picture, seen on the far left).  This space was uneven, meaning that there was a sloped floor toward the outside wall.  There was an old piano with a roller, but no roll.  The piano was mournfully out of tune, dusty, and sporting many broken keys.  That did not stop my sister and I from trying to play "Heart and Soul."

The classrooms were filled with furniture, plastic covered mattresses and fine cherry chests of drawers.  My sister and I would run through these rooms, playing hide and seek, our breath coming out in steam during the colder months.  We found the old light fixtures eerie, as well as the true slate chalk boards still on the walls.  We thought the washrooms were frightening, and the stale odor of chalk dust disturbing.  It was the fact that building was old and the floors creaked ominously that we loved and feared the building.  The old grade school building was fodder for strange dreams.

I hope that the new owner keeps this old monster of a building from falling in on itself.  It is over one hundred years old, but I doubt many people on Cowen think about that fact often, if at all.  Ah well, sadly, that is the way of things, I suppose...

Don't know what you got 'til its gone...

Fallen Twist  by   

'Don't know what you got 'til its gone,' is a phrase the everyone knows, and at some point realizes in their life.  When I left West Virginia, I was filled with hope of success and contentment, and for all intents and purposes I had found it.  I finished an education and was lucky to find a job right out of graduate school in the field I had spent eight years studying.  North Carolina is not so bad, I thought at first, it is not like I am moving across the country, working a job with a salary only large enough to make ends meet.  With a job in North Carolina, I could start saving, work on a retirement, etc., and so I have...  I met a man, fell in love, got married, had a baby, and grew up.  Gone were the student days of partying in Morgantown, tailgating at WVU games, smoking cigarettes, and being getting by on caffeine alone.  I was a grown woman, I was married, I was a mother, and now, sitting at my computer in North Carolina, you would think that I found the life I had wanted--a grown up life with grown up concerns.  I am happy, for the most part, except for one small thing.

There is a hole in my heart, a heaviness in my lungs, and a grime on my face.  I live in a city, that being, a city compared to what I knew in West Virginia.  In the city, the air is thicker.  In the city, you cannot be carefree, trusting that if something should befall you, someone would help.  In the city, no one knows you, cares about you, thinks about you...  Anonymity can be a blessing, yet, when you grow up in a place where people know your name, know your family, there is a connection, a security, and a motivation to keep living a clean life.  Growing up in Webster County, West Virginia, there is little that goes on that someone does not know about.  In a county of approximately 10,000 people, high unemployment, rough terrain, and isolation, gossip is rampant.  All the same, people take care of each other, although stubborn pride may get in the way.

People in Webster, as locals all it, are proud--poor, but proud.  Thirty-two percent of the 10,000 people in Webster County live below the poverty line, and a good number of those people are elderly.  I could go on about numbers and demographics for Webster, even West Virginia, but the fact of the matter is this:  we are poor, but we are not beaten.  These are families of coal miners and loggers, mainly, and that is what many of these people will be for the rest of theirs and their children's lives.  Working in the dark of the earth or in the trees has been generational work, and as long as there is a demand for coal and timber, there will always be people living in Webster.

As for me, I am part of the first generation not to work in the mines or woods in my family.  Working in the mines now, most of the fellows who ride the man trip in or drive up the mountainsides to the strip, are older and veterans of the mining profession.  It is hard to get into work in the mines now--now that production has been scaled back and moved away from Webster.  There are no community college classes on how to be a miner, it is experience, a type of apprenticeship, coupled with trial and error that makes a miner and miner.  Most of the young guys do not want to learn, or cannot learn due to how these companies want to hire miners.  Yes, it is a generational profession.  Fathers teach sons, fathers 'have it in' with operators and get their sons hired, and when a mine blows, a whole family dies...

The same goes with working in the woods, and the trees fall and the mountain sides ring with the sounds of chainsaws and the engines of cherry pickers at load points, taking logs to the saw mills in and out of the county.

This is Webster, and this is only a taste of what I came from, but there is so much more to Webster than mining and timber, poverty and isolation.  There are the mountains and the rivers, the soil and the sky, the harsh winters and mild summers, the smell, the sight, and the sensation that is home.

I spent my teenage years trying to get away from the close-mindedness, the poverty, and the pain associated with it.  I wanted anything to get away from the gossip and the tedium that were the people of Webster.  If I could escape and never look back, I would have considered myself lucky.  Unlike most people in Webster, my family is small and not nebulous like many others there.  I could get away from Webster, or, at the very least, avoid seeing people there by staying at my parents house and never going into Cowen or Webster Springs.  I could forget and be forgotten by the kids I grew up with, and I could come and go without notice if I pleased.

Not so.  The sense of community that exists in Webster is a strange thing.  Though I did not know it at the time, everyone knew when I was home from school.  My family's church knew, and from the point of a congregation about about twenty, most of Cowen knew that I was home from school.  Now, whether that made for much gossip or not, I do not know, but it was something to talk about.

Moving away from West Virginia was new and exciting for me.  The furthest I had ever been from home had been a summer spent in Italy, studying history and Italian, and that had been the first trip I had ever taken on a plane.  The culture shock was nearly crippling, and by the time I was flying the nine hours back to the US, I was an emotional wreck.  I was so homesick that I was, in actuality, physically ill.  Granted, the stay in Italy had been in the north, in the Dolomites, the mountains, with the people very similar to those in the Appalachians.  It was not home, not in the least.  After that, I had flown as far as San Antonio, Texas, taken trips to New York City, Baltimore, and Boston, but home was home, and upon returning from these places, I was content to sit on the porch swing of my parents house and stare up into the trees and to the impossibly blue sky.

There is no place like home, and you cannot appreciate it until its gone.

So, I write again, here I sit in North Carolina, a hole in my heart.  I am homesick for the mountains and the air.  The city is stifling, the people so disconnected from each other.  The air is loaded with car exhaust and the stench of garbage.  Everything seems so dirty, and unsafe.  Suspicion abounds, and yes, you better remember to lock your doors.  People are different, unfamiliar, and unreliable. 

There are pros and cons about all things, but recently, with the birth of my daughter, I have really been weighing the pros and cons about living in the city.  My homesickness for the familiar mountains has been a factor of weighing these pro and cons.  I want to move back to West Virginia. 

Why would I want to do such a thing?  Well, that's a complicated story, one I hope to tell in this blog.  I will not be able to go home any time soon, and so I live in my memories and dreams.  I delve into the history of Webster County, and have found, to my surprise, a wealth of culture that I never knew, or took for granted while I lived at home.

Yes, you will never know what you got 'til its gone...