NOVEMBER 6, 2015
Growing up in Louisa – Disappearing Skills
Weekly feature . . . by Mike Coburn
One of my favorite sets of books that came out a number of years ago was written by high school kids in the hills of Georgia. The books called, ‘Foxfire’ were a major hit, especially since they were born out of an effort to erase a generation gap and at the same time, keep a bit of mountain history alive. A very wise teacher assigned his students with the project of talking with the older folks in the surrounding area and writing a paper that would become a chapter in the first book. The teens had to go out into the byways to find folks to interview in hopes of finding stories from their past. Better yet, the old folks were asked to teach the students about the things we no longer do. Whether it was churning butter, making a banjo, making pickles or a quilt, the kids soon found themselves immersed in real history. This is Americana at its best.
Inside the flap on the book the following is written: “In the late 1960s, Eliot Wigginton and his students created the magazine Foxfire in an effort to record and preserve the traditional folk culture of the Southern Appalachians. This is the original book compilation of Foxfire material which introduces Aunt Arie and her contemporaries and includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and “other affairs of plain living,””
Whether it was ‘putting up’ beans in the root cellar, making a quilt, helping with midwifery, digging a well, plowing with horses or oxen, turkey shooting with black powder, hog killing, divining for water, herbal medicines, telling family stories, or circuit riding, those tales are worth compiling and sharing.
I have several of the books on the shelf in my den. When I first heard of them I was in college, so I became interested in the carving of a banjo. Once finished, a professor from West Virginia taught me to play ‘Cripple Creek’ in the old ‘claw hammer’ style made popular by Grandpa Jones. Later I would learn to tan some hides (mostly rabbits), and actually used some of the information in a senior level class called Pioneer Ecology. I had to determine the placement of a homestead on a mountain, locate a water source, put in an outhouse and a spring garden. We made a number of trips into the mountains of Virginia and studied the differences between how the older folks lived as compared to us modern people. While we had advantages, we found out they were every bit as happy and did very well without some of the things we thought necessary.
My point isn’t to sell some books, although I can recommend them to you. Rather, I want to visit a number of ‘dying skills,’ that were common but now are all but gone. Whether it is the very common skill of a blacksmith, a wheel-right (wagon/buggy wheels), a cooper (barrel maker), or a fireman on a steam locomotive, these skills not only are gone, but nearly unheard of. Of course there are tradeoffs. They didn’t use many undertakers back then. They’d wash and sit up with the body and then put it in the family plot. Neither did they have much use for computer programmers, airplane designers, or heart surgeons. Grocery stores were more apt to be general stores, and the roads of the day were ‘trails,’ not so much roads as we understand them.
It’s not just the skill itself I’m talking about here. It’s the people. Those common experiences are becoming lost because they simply aren’t used anymore. Questions are in the millions as to how things really worked. For example, the blacksmith made iron tools, wagon-wheel rims, and horse shoes, but where did he get the iron? We’ve seen pictures of the big bellows, but kids today wouldn’t know what they were or how they worked.
The last of the ‘greatest generation’ are dying off faster than we can attend their funerals. These old skills actually preceded them. We haven’t heard the war stories in many cases. Some relatives saw things no man should have to see, but they didn’t talk much so we don’t know. Our kids surely won’t have a clue. History isn’t just family trees, but the stories that go with it, and the lifestyles that are long replaced with smartphones and tablets. Frankly, I’m struggling to hang on with the newer ways, and never learned much about the old.
How I would love to sit on a porch rocker and pass the time with someone who has stories to tell. One guy shouldn’t do that though; all of us should do that as much as we can. Send the students out with recorders/laptops and film the few they can find for posterity and personal growth. If someone can play a song, film it. If someone remembers something, film it. Then, unless you have your own plans forward them to me. I’ll write about it and attach the ‘tube’ video, and see if Mark will run it. If not, I’ll run it.
Please, please get the stories while we can and let’s share them. Go out, or take your kids out to go sit with some aged granny or grandpa and get their stories. If it goes well, make time to go back for more. They will love it and so will you. Collect the stories of farming or mining with horses, mules, and steam. Find out about treadle sewing machines and their first vacuums or electric appliance. Asking may well make them feel special. That’s a good thing, because they are.
Once you do that, send me a copy. I’ll look into how to use the parts you’d most like to see shared.
