Posted on 02/09/2010 5:39:32 AM PST by jay1949
Two major Federal projects, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Tennessee Valley Authority, brought the outside world irrevocably into the Tennessee high country, displacing whole communities from ancient abodes and altering forever the way of life that had endured from the Colonial period. Among the archives from that time are a scattering of photographs which recall an independent, hardy, resourceful, and industrious people, worthy descendants of the Backcountry settlers of long ago. [Many vintage photographs.]
(Excerpt) Read more at backcountrynotes.com ...
Trust me. There are some real idiots up here. Serial killers, child abusers and yes, incest does happen. They will shoot you over a dog and kill you if you are hiking and find their patch of weed. We have lots of crazies.
But on Memorial Day, the cemeteries are filled with flags because a lot of men left the hills to join the military.
My brother-in-law dated Loretta Lynn’s sister Brenda Webb, now known as Crystal Gayle.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
Wonderful pictures! Thanks for posting.
Nice article. Thanks for posting it.
I was born and raised in Townsend...Hi neighbor...
When asked to describe the people who populated this area in years past I always share that they were uneducated, but not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. They were a proud, fiercely independent people (black and white). Funny, everyone spoke the same dialect until the liberals got the blacks off their farms and into the projects. Once black families moved to the cities, their standard of living continued in a downward spiral that was sped downward with the social welfare programs of the sixties. Now, we have generational poverty with daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers all living in the same project. Before “modern life” discovered this area, everyone had pretty much the same income and lifestyle.
There’s a wonderful gravemarker in a cemetery beside Cooke Funeral home in Maynardville that talks about granddaddy losing his property first to the Reconstruction plan. Then, being moved off his new property by the TVA project, and again by TVA on his last property. Something along those lines. I’ve always meant to take a picture of the exact wording, but haven’t made it up that way lately.
The picture of the family on the porch in Andersonville looks very similar to the house my great-grandfather lived in.
If anyone gets the chance, visit the Lenoir Museum in Norris (a couple of miles from the dam). There are albums and albums of old photographs pre-dam and post-dam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norris_Dam_State_Park
Nope! Algore was born and raised in DC, not Tennessee. This is a common misconception that Gore himself likes to spread around to make him appear more "normal" and less like the pampas ass that he is.
Speaking for Tennessean's everywhere, we don't claim him as one of our own! He's a creation of Washington, DC. That 'splains a lot, doesn't it?
As the son of a East Tennessee hillbilly... I claim with pride my mountain DNA. My dad, uncles and aunts (cousins by the dozens) were the most independent and resourceful people I knew... totally independent despite the federal intrusion into their lives (I’m from the government, I’m here to “help”). The word “CAN’T” was NOT in their vocabulary! As a young boy, I watched by dad take an old metal army surplus water tank (found in the woods), a discarded old kerosene space heater... and fashion a water heater we used for 20 years! He also could break a pencil in half at 30 yards with a .22 rifle...(I never could do better than 20 yards)!
We also got Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs and the Stanley’s... and what became known as Bluegrass music, that made Dolly wanna sing! (and which “nobody” likes... until they hear it!)... Gottaluvit!
Unlike Loretta, Crystal Gayle is not proud of her roots and is fearful of being associated with mountain people. This is a common perception throughout Paintsville, Kentucky.
No doubt there are some loony loons up in the mountains. I know that incest occurs, I know that they breed a particularly violent set sometimes and God forbid you do stumble on their weed which is the modern day version of moonshiners. However I would still trust them over a liberal city democrat anyday. At least with the hillbillies, I know what I’m dealing with. Most city slicker libs I’ve met are liars and cons.
Thanks Boonie! I will check that out.
My paternal grandfather’s family came from this part of Tennessee but they left very early to come to Texas.
COTTON ON THE ROADSIDE, COTTON IN THE DITCH
WE ALL PICKED COTTON BUT WE NEVER GOT RICH
DADDY WAS A VETERAN, A SOUTHERN DEMOCRAT
THEY OUGHTA GET A RICH MAN TO VOTE LIKE THAT
SOMEBODY TOLD US WALL STREET FELL
BUT WE WERE SO POOR THAT WE COULDN’T TELL
COTTON WAS SHORT AND THE WEEDS WERE TALL
BUT MISTER ROOSEVELT’S GONNA SAVE US ALL
MAMA GOT SICK AND DADDY GOT DOWN
THE COUNTY GOT THE FARM AND THEY MOVED TO TOWN
PAPA GOT A JOB WITH THE T.V.A.,
HE BOUGHT A WASHING MACHINE AND A CHEVROLET
...’wish I were on old rockytop, down in the Tennessee hills...’
Lets not get too stuck on the romanicized notion of a self reliant people stubbornly sticking to their roots. Many of these people have been poisoned by government handouts. Multiple generations have learned to seek out welfare and medicaid...very similar to what has happened in the inner cities. A portion of the human spirit has been taken from these people.
Speaking of the blacks from the hills... many assume that bluegrass style was only a white man’s music since country music was evolved from it.
There is a WONDERFUL group from North Carolina, a trio, called Carolina Chocolate Drops that are made of up of three young black musicians who studied with an elderly mountain man. He taught them that mountain music didn’t just belong to the white world and they studied with him for several years.
Rhiannon, the singer in the trio is a classically trained opera singer and also is married to an irish man and sings a lot of gaelic songs. She can also play the hell out of a fiddle. The whole group is amazing and I love to go see them when they come near me.
For those who are interested, here is a good song of theirs called “Cornbread and butterbeans”. They also do some fusion of hip hop and bluegrass which is oddly fabulous! The banjo, jug and fiddle are just wonderful! Seriously, check them out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xOxHyTP91c
“My family settled in Jamestown before the Pilgrims landed and I was born and raised in Ky.”
We have much in common, although it was Western Kentucky for me.
Cade’s Cove- insn’t that in Smokey Mountain National Park?
I loved that place.
If you ever get a chance, watch an old movie (1960) called Wild River.
It's an Elia Kazan film, starring a young and beautiful Lee Remick as the local girl and Montgomery Clift as a young TVA man who comes to convince the family that it's time to move off of their island farm because the dam's going to get built and the river's going to cover it.
Jo Van Fleet as the family matriarch is amazing.
One of the things the TVA did to drive a wedge between the locals was to hire black workers to build the dams, while refusing to hire local whites. In an area where everyone was equally poor, but self-sufficient and mistrustful of outsiders from Washington, it caused a lot of problems that linger to this day.
It's filmed in black and white to reflect the time of the story. It's long been one of my all-time favorite movies.
I have lived both in urban areas and Appalachia and at a rough guess I would say that the per capita rate of idiots, serial killers and crazies is about half, maybe less, in Appalachia. I think they stand out more obviously in the pastoral context.
I once forgot to lock my front door (here in Appalachia) when leaving for a four-day weekend. When I returned, nothing had been disturbed. An urban-dwelling friend left her door unlocked for four hours and returned to find her camera and jewelry had walked out the door. Of course, it is a matter of odds — you can get burgled in the hinterlands — but I’ll take the odds out here any day.
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