Sherry Chandler

A backwoods Christmas, 1796

Back in June, I shared with you some excerpts from the journal of Francis Baily who was Running Mad for Kentucky in the winter of 1796 when his party got caught in a great freezing of the Ohio River, followed by a thaw. The freezing was bad but the thaw produced huge ice floes that stove in the party’s Kentucky boat. They managed to offload most of their goods and haul them up the river bank, where they took shelter in an abandoned hut.

Here is Francis Baily’s diary entry for Christmas Day, 1796:

December 25th, Christmas Day-Two of our party being ill with the fatigues we had undergone on the 21st, the task of superintending the conveyance of our goods devolved upon me. We had been employed at it the whole of yesterday; and as soon as daylight approached this morning we began the same career again, nor did we cease this routine, except to take the scanty pittance we had saved from the wreck, till the setting sun and our own weary limbs told us it was time to close the scene once more. I could not think of the happy moments which were enjoyed in my own country on this auspicious day, and perhaps by those whose remembrance is the most dear to me, without contrasting them with my present situation. Here am I in the wilds of America, away from the society of men, amidst the haunts of wild beasts and savages, just escaped from the perils of a wreck, in want not only of the comforts, but of the necessaries of life, housed in a hovel that in my own country wou1d not be good enough for a pigstye, at a time too when my father. my mother, my brothers, my sisters, my friends and acquaintance, in fact, the whole nation, were feasting upon the best the country could afford. I could not but picture to myself the fireside of my own home, where I saw them all assembled round; a beam of happiness perhaps glistening in every face, save when after dinner I was remembered in their glasses; then, perhaps, a sigh broke out from some of them, and the conversation might turn upon “where I was,” and “what I was doing;” but this dying away, I should soon be forgotten again, and they would return to spend the day in mirth and happiness. Ah! little do they think of the hardships I have undergone, or of those which seem to continue to press us. Little do they think that, while they are partaking of all the bounties of nature, that I am suffering the contrary extreme through want; and would gladly partake of the refuse of their table, or thankfully receive what they would give a common beggar at the door. Methought, if I could but make my appearance in the midst of them at this time, that I should scarce be remembered by them, my long beard, my rough and tattered clothes, and all together would puzzle them at first to conceive what stranger was come amongst them; at least, I think they would begin to chide the servant for admitting so uncouth a visitor before they would recollect or discover who I was. [pp 202-203]

Miserable he may have been, but he still conjured up a scene worthy of Dickens.

The temperature here in Kentucky at the dawn of Christmas Day, 2009 is 51 °F with a southeast wind gusting to 22 mph. The forecast says the wind will turn southwesterly during the day and temperatures will fall into the high 30s. The Ohio River is long since dammed to within an inch of its life and while it may well be running high, it is highly unlikely to freeze.

Wherever you are and however you may or may not celebrate Christmas may you be sustainably well housed and well fed.

Peace and good will to all.

And just to give you something to look at, here is a photo TR took of the redbellied woodpecker at our feeder on the solstice.

“Not so much seedy as downright abject”

It is the sad poetry of that line that expresses Peckinpah’s vision, in which people find the courage to do what they must do in a world with no choices.

So says Roger Ebert about Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).

The line in question is Elita’s. Elita the prostitute and Bennie the bartender’s lover. She says it to Bennie as she is being led away to be raped by a nameless biker, played by Kris Kistofferson. “‘I been here before and you don’t know the way.”

According to Susan Compo in her biography Warren Oates: A Wild Life (Univ Press of Ky, 2009), Peckinpah had originally intended the movie as a vehicle for Lee Marvin and Jane Fonda, a casting that, in hind sight, I find utterly unthinkable. Cat Ballou, this is not.

Compo says that Peckinpah also tried James Coburn and Peter Falk before he finally offered the part to Warren Oates.

Oates was never, ever going to say no. “If a director like Peckinpah offers me a film tomorrow, I’m not going to read the script,” he told Image et Son. “I wouldn’t know how to stop myself. There aren’t many people I’d say that about.” [p. 275]

If it had not been for my interest in Warren Oates, I would not have watched Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Having seen it, I can’t imagine anybody but Warren Oates in the lead role. With any of those other actors, the movie would probably have been a more typical Hollywood adventure, and a Hollywood adventure is not what Peckinpah had set out to make.

I have to say that he got me in this one. Two-Lane Blacktop, the other cult film for which Oates is famous, struck me a pretty lame. The only vital thing in it was Oates’s performance. But Alfredo Garcia is a gripping film.

According to Compo, Oates got $50,000 for doing the film and his co-star Isela Vega got $7,000 for the role of Elita. Vega’s performance is compelling. I have a lot of respect for Jane Fonda, but she could not have done this role the way Vega did it. Jane Fonda has no idea of a world where there are no choices.

Indeed, when Bennie proposes to Elita during a picnic, there were tears from onlookers and actors. “I just knew there was no place to hide in that scene,” Oates told Donnie Fritts, who played a biker in the movie. “She had me, and I was cryin’ too.” [Compo, p. 280]

For a plot synopsis, see Wikipedia. For a great review, see Roger Ebert. For the story of on-the-set hi jinks, see Compo’s biography.

“The script deals with female vengeance,” Peckinpah said. [Compo, p. 275]

So it does. Maybe that’s why it resonates so with me.

Esther Whitley

Feminine derring-do on the Kentucky frontier from Helen Deiss Irvin’s Women in Kentucky (Univ Press of Kentucky, 1979):

Of those who survived the immigration, some were better equipped than others for the rigors of frontier life. One who flourised naturally there was teh vigorous Esther Whitely, who came to Kentucky early, in 1775, when fine land was still plentiful. Esther and her husband, William Whitley, were colorful people, tempered by violence, and cool hands in a crisis. A crack shot, Esther Whitley was depended upon as a defender of Logan’s Fort. While other women molded bullets, Esther, along with Jane Manifee, took her place among the riflemen.

Her son related with pride that once when the men at Logan’s Fort were holding a shooting match in 1777, William Whitley walked in from hunting or scouting, casually handed his rifle to Esther, and urged her to join the contest. With her first shot, she beat all previous shots. Although the competition went on until nightfall, no one could beat her, and she took the prize: all the bullets scraped from the target, no insignificant matter in a poor frontier settlement where lead was scarce. [pp. 6-7]

Esther Whitley gets 4 pages in this terse little book that covers a couple of centuries in 125 pages.

Jane Trimble and Mrs. William Erwin

Another tale of feminine derring-do from Helen Deiss Irvin’s Women in Kentucky (Univ Press of Kentucky, 1979):

Unexpected hardship . . . lay ahead for [a] large and well-prepared party of about five hundred, making the long trek [over the Wilderness Road] in 1784. Robert L. Kincaid tells us that travelling single file, as they had to, the line of immigrants stretched out for almost two miles. Well-equipped as they were, they had no defense against an epidemic of measles that swept through the train, striking almost every family. No matter how sick, they had to keep moving. In this migration as in many others, some women must have realized dthat in spite of all they could do, a sickly baby or a frail child would make a fresh grave on the route. The trail to Kentucky was no place for the dellicate or fearful, though the women who traveled it are sometimes so described.

Sturdy people, those who survived. In the large migration of 1784, before the measles epidemic, another disaster was narrowly averted. Arriving at the rain-swollen Clinch River in late October, the advance guard of armed men decided that the usual fording place was too dangerous, and they rode upriver, around a bend, to make the crossing. Then the women’s party, on horseback and mostly armed with pistols, arrived at the usual ford. Jane Trimble, their leader, seeing guards on the other side of the river and not warned that they had crossed upstream, plunged into the rushing water. In her arms was her baby, Allen, and clinging to her back was her three-year-old, William.

Following her into the cold water was Mrs. William Erwin, who carried with her two small black children, one on either side of her horse, riding in a large wallet or pouch. As the current caught them up, wallet and children were swept from Mrs. Erwin’s horse, but a man on shore managed to rescue both children. Her horse was washed against a ledge on the far bank, and as she urged him up the bank, he managed to find a foothold in the rocks.

Jane Trimble’s horse was still struggling in the current. Gripping bridle and mane with her right hand, she clung to the baby with her left arm and shouted to William to hold on tight. At last they made it to the opposite bank, where her exhausted horse struggled to shore.

In his farewell speech to this large migration, Colonel James Knox praised the horsemanship of Mrs. Trimble and the courage of the women. Jane Trimble’s children Survived the hazards of a frontier childhood, Allen to become governor of Ohio, and the tenacious William to have a distinguished career in the War of 1812. [pp. 4-6]

Polly Mulhollin

Here’s an intriguing tale from Helen Deiss Irvin’s Women in Kentucky (Univ Press of Kentucky, 1979):

Few [women settlers] were as enterprising as Polly Mulholliln, who lived on the Virginia border. To get to America, the young Irish woman had indentured herself to a neighbor. After working out her time of servitude, she was free and on her own. By “cabin rights,” she learned, a settler who built a cabin received a hundred acres of land surrounding it, and Polly Mulhollin realized that nothing was stipulated about actually living there. Putting on a hunting shirt, trousers, and moccasins, she took an axe and went to work. She not only built a cabin; she built thirty cabins. At a time when naive pioneers were often cheated out of their hard-won land by sharp operators, Polly Mulhollin got her 3,000 acres and held on to them. When she had time, she married and eventually had many children and a large clan of descendants. [pp. 1-2]

Sketchy information this. Who was this Polly? When was this Polly? Google turned up this transcribed passage from Roots Web, which seems to be from The Common Place Book of Margaret Lewis nee Lynn, of Loch Lynn Scotland, being a rest of my soul’s repose in the troublous times which hath befallen. This also seems to be known as The Valley Manuscript.

By this time Burden’s settlement is fast filling up. There be some of the Established Church among them but mostly our neighbors are Scotch Irish Presbyterians. It soundeth like the gathering of the clans to call over the M’Kees, M’Cues, M’Campbells, M’Clungs, M’Kowns, Carutherses, Stewarts, Wallaces, and Lyles together with the Browns, Prestons, Paxtons, and Grigsbys with them associated.

I am led to think of them the more now by an accident which occurred here the last night. –About sun-down a traveler, in hot haste, tricked out in the rough costume of the country, rode up and asked lodging. This was readily granted, together with such entertainment as we had at hand. He was an ungainly looking person, though setting his horse well.

An hour afterward other horsemen came clattering up and rushed afoul of this stranger, who happened then to be without doors looking after his horse, for there was quite a good light from the moon.

I heard from my seat by the fireside hilarious voices and the words “Confess! confess!!’ echoed in a roughly jocose way. “We have been seeking you for some days!” I then heard, and knew not what to think, but this story which the pursuers told as they came into the house, and to which the culprit did good naturedly attest,– with somewhat of shame, too, explained all.

When Ben Burden, the younger, came to make deeds to such of the settlers as held cabin rights, the name Mulhollin so often did appear as to be a matter of wonder to him. He sat about making inquiry, and so found that Mulhollin had been a person most efficient in deeds of enterprise among them. So far it was well. Inquiry was now made for one Polly Mulhollin, who, to pay her passage from Ireland, had sold herself to James Bell, who advanced the money for her. She served his family in all honesty, the time out, then disappeared.

Now it turns out that this same Polly Mulhollin did put on man’s gear, hunting shirt, moccasins, etc., and go into Burden’s grant for the purpose of becoming a landed proprietor and erected thirty cabins. The thing hath caused much merriment wherever known. Polly with some chagrin and much meekness, hath gotten on woman’s attire, borrowed from some one in the settlement, and will betake herself henceforth to womanly pursuits.

Margaret Lynn Lewis was the wife of John Lewis, who came to Augusta County, Virginia in 1732 from County Donegal. His tombstone reads, in part:

I suppose Margaret Lynn had some part in all that, and she kept a diary.

But I digress. Mrs. Lewis has given us an era – the 1730s. George Washington was born in 1732 and Ben Franklin began to publish Poor Richard’s Almanac. Daniel Boone was born in 1734. But the 1730s seem to have been a period of quiet in the continous French and Indian Wars that spanned the years 1689-1763.

Nothing Like an Ocean

Back before I went travelling all over the southeastern mountains, I took time to read Nothing Like an Ocean, Jim Tomlinson’s new collection from the University Press of Kentucky.

I consider Jim a personal friend. We are craftsfair widow[er]s together. When, in the story “Overburden,” Ben and Sarah load her artwork in an aging van and set off across country for an arts & crafts fair, wondering whether the van will, in fact, last out the trip, I say yes! I know that journey. So I may be inclined to be prejudiced in Jim’s favor. Still, this is a collection of merit that I would recommend to anyone.

In an interview at The Short Review, Jim has said:

Character desire brings a story alive.

Jim is adept at creating character with a hunger. From Ben, the novelist of “Overburden,” to Lynette, the working class motorcycling mother in “A Male Influence in the House,” Nothing Like an Ocean is peopled with characters pursuing their dreams in spite of all manner of difficulty.

One of the most vivid stories in the collection, “Angel, His Rabbit, and Kyle McKell,” throws together a young woman with artistic aspirations (photography), an Iraqi war vet trying to come to terms with his horrible war injuries, her Hispanic boyfriend and Victor, his prize rabbit. Even the rabbit wants a freedom that he isn’t prepared to for.

I sat beside Kyle on the couch and let him show me his injured arm. He talked about the attachments, the muscles and nerves involved, the finger numbness, all the ligament damage. I tried not to be squeamish. He traced things with his finger as if he could see inside. He kept talking about that injured arm in expert ways. He knew how it all worked together. He knew it like Angel knew cars.

“My father wants to hear nothing about wounds,” Kyle said. “He wants to hear about good deeds, what he thinks I was doing there. My mother leaves the room if I even mention the arm.”

“Or the leg?” I was more than a little curious about that.

He finished his beer. “She can’t handle any of it,” he said, handing me the empty.

The rage, the deep life wounds, are all there in Jim’s stories, smoothly revealed in beautiful prose and sharp dialogue, but there is also often that little bit of mischief, that probing curiosity, the drive of desire.

As Orgrease Crankbait states it:

Jim is a masterly writer; his stories come smooth to the reader but it is obvious that good honest labor, with a dose of pain and compassion has gone into creating them. As writer to a writer, and my knowing full well what it takes to get where he has got in his writing, I am sincerely impressed.

This is damned good stuff.

See also, a review at Largehearted Boy

Coal

This year’s Appalachian Writers Workshop featured many readings from good works on mountaintop removal.

MotesBooks has published We All Live Downstream: Writings about Mountaintop Removal, edited by Jason Howard with writings by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wendell Berry, Earl Hamner, Ashley Judd, Silas House, Denise Giardina, Erik Reece, Bobbie Ann Mason, Bob Edwards, Penny Loeb, Hal Crowther, Jean Ritchie, Terry Tempest Williams, Jeff Biggers, Ann Pancake, George Ella Lyon, Ben Sollee, Maurice Manning, and many more.

Wind Publications has published Missing Mountains edited by Kristin Johannsen, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall.

Ann Pancake read from her novel Strange as this Weather Has Been (Shoemaker and Hoard/Counterpoint). A detail from Jeff Chapman-Crane’s sculpture, The Agony of Gaia (pictured above), is featured on the cover of that novel, and on the night of Pancake’s reading, he brought the sculpture to the Great Room of the May Stone Building for all of us to see. (You can download a podcast of Ann Pancake reading from this novel at A River & Sound Review, episode 13.)

University Press of Kentucky has published Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal by Silas House and Jason Howard. The book is a collection of oral histories. Embedded below is a podcast from the University Press featuring Silas and Jason.

Unfortunately, the protests against mountaintop removal are being cast as a fight against jobs, and my friend Jeff Hess has drawn my attention to this article on confrontation between local residents and protestors: Violence Escalating Against Anti-Coal Activists. I am given to understand that some of these counter protestors are on the coal company payroll, though I can’t document that statement. The fact is, though, that mountaintop removal mining creates very few jobs. It doesn’t take many workers to blow the tops off the mountains and push the rubble into the valleys with bulldozers.

On Friday, we stopped for gas at the Mi-Dee Mart, which sits at the end of the Jethro Amburgey Bridge, just across Toublesome Creek from the Hindman Settlement School. Workshoppers stroll over to the Mi-Dee Mart to pick up forgotten toiletries or to buy a pop (forbidden inside Settlement School buildings). It’s about the only store within walking distance and Settlement School Director Mike Mullins has been known to say “If you can’t get it at Mi-Dee Mart, you don’t need it.”

As I stopped by to pay for my purchases, I was dismayed to see, prominently displayed by the register, leaflets advertising a rally in support of the coal industry.

Update: Coal Group Reveals 6 More Forged Lobbying Letters