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Mountaineers

Mountaineers with all their pride, prejudice, and poverty play a colorful part in Americana. Their wit and wisdom are reflected in yarns from the hills and tales from the cloud country. Peering up the roaring creeks you see mountain shacks that seem ancient as the hills surrounding them. Each shack boasts a packed-dirt floor, a lopsided door swinging on a leather hinge, one small, rag-stuffed broken window pane that serves as a lookout . . . and a chimney fashioned of sticks and clay to carry the wood smoke up and away. Each sagging stoop is festooned with tattered men folk and flea-bitten dogs lolling in almost indescribable attitudes of repose. Some of them are out early when the morning mists are fresh . . . and others stay through the day and on until the lonesomeness has moved down from the hills and the moon is “middle ways of the sky.”

Even today shaggy old coots back there in the hills take pot shots at one another … still feuding for reasons they’ve long since forgotten. They cling to a grudge like a flea to a hound . . . and as for their shootin’ they can knock the eyes right out of a somersaulting squirrel. At long range some of these lanky sharpshooters get so good they have to rub rock salt on their bullets to keep the game from spoiling before they cut their way through the cat claws and briar patches to pick it up. These men of the hills manage to keep their women barefooted, pregnant and busy … that’s why mountain folk have more kin than a microbe. A want-ad in the Mountain Country Clarion Call tells the story of these work-worn women:

WANTED: A mule fit for me to ride to go fishin’ and gentle enough for the old lady to hitch to her plow.
The same Mountaineer stopped at the store one time to get a present for Samantha. “A presunt?” she blinked in surprised delight. “Yep,” he told her, “Doc says you gotta take it easier and durned if I ain’t a gonna git ye a lighter axe.

In the more remote regions, snuff-sniffin’ women do all the chores, raise a dozen kids, and make hooked rugs in their spare time. Mountain men have been known to wear out three wives in a lifetime. They begin with child brides taken to wife before they’re half through teething. According to their peculiar way of thinking, a woman who waits too long either gets to spittin’ like a wildcat, or she gets to lookin’ sullen like a hoot owl and you gotta near whup her to death to make her work!

Out in the jackpine flats and misty river bottoms, a sprinkling of the natives still put stock in “spells.” Way back there where neither railroad nor telephone reaches and the last carrier pigeon went into somebody’s stew, some primitive souls hold with relics of sorcery although the majority are “smartenin’ up” to hear tell. With the coming of the highways, learning is seeping through to people up and down the creeks and in the hollers. One proud lad boasts that he kin read numbers but cain’t read writin’ … he can tell from a sign how fur to but not whur to. And his baby-havin’ tater-hoein’ sister brags, “we talks about the same as other folks, ‘cept we ain’t got no accent.” Mountain men are frugal folk; when a visitor spied a little four-legged cook stove set on tree stumps he asked whether the housewife had such a weak back she couldn’t bend . . . and her man explained, “Nope, tweren’t thet . . . it’s jes that that ther’s all the stovepipe whut we had.”
When he saw his first avacado, the storekeeper asked Zeke if he wanted to try one, but “Nope” he drawled back,

“I already got me so many tastes I cain’t satisfy I ain’t about to take on no more!”
According to fact and legend, these people consume quantities of corn liquor, a circumstance explained by the Bald Hill boy who said, “You got to remember a keg of likker don’t last long in a fam’ly that cain’t afford to keep no cow.”
Some of these hill folk wilt at the thought of work and others are too lazy to entertain a hope. One hillbilly sat with his son in front of a warm fire, crossing and uncrossing their skinny legs. After a while the man told the boy to “git outside and see if it’s a’rainin” . . . but without looking up the boy whined back, “Aw, Paw, jes’ call in the dawg and see if he’s wet!” When the same dog kept howling one day, the boy told a passing salesman, “Ain’t nuthin’ ailin’ him; he’s jes bin a-layin’ ‘ginst a busted jug an’ he’s too lazy to turn hisself over.”

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Michiganders

Some thirty miles off the Lake Michigan shore at Charlevoix, isolated Beaver Island is rich in folk lore about French trappers and Irish lumberjacks. A cumbersome ferry plies between the island and the mainland, except in midwinter when dog sleds haul supplies across the frozen waters.

The first rollicking voyageurs who came to Beaver Island practically destroyed the industrious beavers, and on their heels came the boisterous Irish intent on ravishing the virgin timber. They left the land denuded as a molting pullet a barren condition that existed until a slow, steady regrowth restored the sylvan charm of the island. Thanks to those ancient despoilers, a wealth of stories has lived through the years, and as they’re told by the present generation of island people there’s some suspicion that the tales have improved with age.

Visitors are attracted by an ill-kept enclosure not much bigger than a pint-sized living room and boasting but a few markers. It’s identified as the Protestant cemetery, resting place of the very few departed worthies who were not French or Irish folk, and ardent Catholics. Local lore has it that these few turned Protestant to escape early mass on the Lord’s Day.

Naturally, the course of conversation turns to Irish wakes and somehow always gets around to Jerry McCarthy’s. In logging days, a wake was a mighty important occasion-on a par with any National Democratic convention. When winter held this northland in its icy grip, a wake would be a protracted event to boot.

When Jerry departed this earth and Tom Hogan failed to join the rest of the mourners in paying his respects, two of the soberest among them set out to find him. On reaching his cabin, there they found poor old Tom slumped in his chair, dead as a mackerel. The mourners decided between them that it wouldn’t be right or proper to hold two wakes at one and the same time . . = that wouldn’t be respectful to the deceased. So … they left Tom’s body in his cold cold cabin and went back to bury Jerry.

Once those services were over and the mourners recovered enough to stir themselves … old Tom was “officially” found to have joined the dear departed … he was thawed out, laid out, and given his own Irish jamboree.

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An Oklahombre

Very few Old Timers are left who watched the West through its growing pains. The rash of Westerns on our screens attempt to recapture the ways of the West, but they fall far short, for a true son of the prairies would put even Shane to shame.

No make-up man can grease paint a character to truly portray one tall straight-backed, hefty Oklahombre of a mere 83, who showed no signs of age but in his snow-white hair and the erosion that creased his face in a disarming grin. Even before he bellowed “By God” in his deep and heavy voice, you knew him to be a character right out of a covered wagon.

Like Kit Carson, he’d earned all the merit badges for scouting; he’d herded longhorns along the Chisholm Trail and been the flame of many a Kickapoo squaw. There’s a yawning canyon between the saddle-sore truth one could hear from him, and the reach-for-leather fiction about a cowpoke’s life in the beginnings of the West. The good cowboys didn’t all wear white hats any more than the bad ones all wore black ones. Every Indian didn’t ride a Pinto pony any more than they used a blanket or saddle. Every quick-on-the-trigger hero didn’t carry 20 notches on his gun, nor did he ride a handsome Palamino weighted with silver trappings!

Piney Woods People

Back in the East Texas Piney Woods, Zeb Hill farmed a clearing and batched in a cottonfield with a tabby and her four kittens as company. He had five arched openings cut low in his cabin door. One was cat-sized and the others were smaller. His pets slipped indoors and out through these holes, and one day when a croney asked Zeb why just one big hole wouldn’t be enough, Zeb answered, “Because when I say ‘Scat,’ I mean SCAT!”

This way-down part of the chitlin’ belt is known sometimes as shake and bake land. Zeb would always make his laziness pay off when he felt the chills coming on … he’d have his friends tie him to a persimmon tree in order to bring down the fruit. The listless effect of the weather has left its print upon these people; they’re a lackadaisical lot that like to get the biggest return from the smallest effort-a characteristic that dominates even their talk. A favorite expression in appraisal of the spring rains when one piney woodsman talks to another is “I reckon it’ll green up some when it fairs off!”

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One man’s creed

Many oldsters are given to philosophizing, as did Thed-ford Russell a while back, as he sat on his cabin stoop deep in the Piney Woods of Texas. Thed is no scholar-just a sage from the spittoon age. He talks about cars and telephones when they had to be cranked, and when a nickel’s worth of candy was enough to pass around. He even remembers when men didn’t expect girls to be sunburned where they are now!

Thed adopts no recognized religion, but by living close to nature he’s learned a tolerance toward all men and all creeds, believing that Jew, Gentile, Protestant, Catholic, aborigine and modern Indian all share a basic belief in a Supreme Power that guides their destinies. He abides by old quotations that admonish man not to hurt others in ways he himself would find hurtful. He adheres to the thought that no one is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. He regards his neighbor’s gain as his own gain-and his neighbor’s loss as his own loss. This common creed is all that counts with Thed, and he describes separation into sects on a par with people who look at the same picture-but through different lenses.

Peg Leg Pete

Now that we’re becoming a nation of act-alike, talk-alike, dress-alike people, our individualities are stifled and how rarely we see the colorful characters so prevalent in the past. Usually they were the salt of the earth and full of fun about their infirmities-particularly Peg Leg Pete. He was poor of purse but rich in recollections. Pete’s beard was sparse as second-growth timber in a clearing. He wore his overcoat until it was scorched by the summer sun and clung to his battered straw until the season’s first frost.

Pete had problems with his wooden limb but what a line he had about the troubles he had! To hear him, the sap of his first one froze when winter set in and split the limb in two. His second got so soaked in a storm that it warped and never tracked quite right after that. For the third, he chose a rich mahogany only that didn’t match the furniture at home so his wife made him toss it out. On the next try Pete picked a crabapple branch … but it lasted only until spring when it started to sprout … so he finally turned to sound and wormy oak. Then, darned if the woodpeckers didn’t give it a fit!

Looking back, how much more colorful were Pete’s troubles, than our current complaints about putting on pounds, taking off inches, catching a virus … or fighting the common cold!

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The lush

Everybody has his own idea about what makes a person an alcoholic, and opinions about drinking vary as much between people as between nations. (And depending on who’s doing the drinking!)

Recently a Russian newspaper account carried an item about the increase in alcoholics. It set out that excessive drinking in capitalistic countries is due to the despair people feel over being exploited, poor working conditions, and their constant fear of hunger and unemployment. By contrast, the item went on that the increase in drinking in the Soviet Union stems from an overwhelming joy about a better way of life than they ever dreamed of enjoying-and from their urge to celebrate the outstanding achievements of socialism! Americans sometimes start drinking as innocently as with a hot toddy to cure a cold-and end up being skunk-drunk on Skid Row.

Louie the Lush was one who never knew where to stop. He’d drink to steady his nerves and they’d get so steady he couldn’t move. He spent his mornings living down what he lived up the night before. Louie enjoyed being high and feeling mighty, one short snort always made1 the small shot feel like a big one. When he had champagne, he saw double and felt single. Only once when he was sober did he admit that dignity can’t be preserved in alcohol . . . that it was always easy to see through someone who made a spectacle of himself.

Louie’s drinking pal had a habit of ordering two martinis, as he said, one for a departed buddy and the other for himself. When his girl urged him to stop drinking, he told his favorite bartender, “Just one today, I’ve gone on the wagon.” Harold Bos is a popular River Forest, Illinois, quarter-horse breeder. He tells about a rider from his stable who stopped at a tavern near a bridle trail one cold, wintry day, and ordered fifteen martinis. He said they were for his mare, and for the barkeep to put them in a bucket but leave out the olives. When he returned the bucket, the tavern owner offered him a drink “on the house,” only to be told, “Thanks, fella, but I can’t drink. I’m driving!”

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Colorful Characters

Philosophers

Whenever someone starts to talk about philosophers in general, somebody in the group says he thinks they’re a gloomy lot, always pointing out the follies of the past and predicting some sort of doom for the future. But what better is there to do than philosophize after our dancing days are done, and we nurse our sciatica by the fireside? And sooner or later we get around to reminiscing about colorful old-timers and comparing them with people today.

Those old-timers didn’t live under the current pressures; life was far more simple and people lived pretty much as they pleased. We think of many of them as “characters,” though they had a lot we don’t have because they retained the individuality with which they were born. Our own modern lives have honed even the roughest and toughest among us down to a nice round smoothness that not only gathers no moss . . . but is apt to wind up as nothing but sand.

So, when we speak of those old characters, we’re talking about people who stood for something and refused to be lost in the sands of the sea. Despite a few faults, there’s much to admire in the individuality of the lone wolves, the go-it-aloners, the dissenters, hermits and “aginers”.

How can we help but glory in the “colossal gall” of Mark Twain who put American vernacular into prose and color into conventional English; or admire Sinclair Lewis whose Main Street prodded the smallness out of our small towns; and do anything but revere Will Rogers. His candid comments wrapped with nothing but rope, could make even a king look like an ordinary kind of guy. And make him like it, too!

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Polite people

To be polite means more than wearing a surface veneer because, as an old Mammy often said to her young charge: “You mind your manners, honey-chile, ’cause some day dey is comin’ back in style again!” Thus the little fellow learned early in life that politeness is much the same as an air cushion; maybe there’s nothing in it-but it sure can gentle the jolts!

Enthusiast

There’s a very special quality about an enthusiast when you consider that enthusiasm can convert drudgery into a crusade, and even cloak menial labor with glory. Yet, enthusiasm itself is hardly enough-unfortunately it isn’t a self-sustaining thing. It may flare up quickly as the excitement of a kid with a box-top to mail. . . but often it is no more lasting than the match that burns itself out. Today’s rapid pace takes more than fleeting flames of something as fickle as enthusiasm; the important thing now is continuing stimulation. Just “getting a kick out of” one new thing after another doesn’t carry with it the sustained glow of dedicated devotion to duty.

Tolerant

In order to be considered tolerant, one must recognize that everyone has a right to his own ridiculous opinion. There’s nothing finer than the person who practices true tolerance, but frequently, the phrase is abused and oftentimes by those who are deeply religious people . . . because they are not tolerant of those who don’t believe as they do. Probably Quakers go down the tolerance trail farther than any other sect, but some of these sometimes feel the strain. Richard Nixon tells of a Whittier, California Quaker who was spattered from head to toe by a speeding driver who ran a red light. Standing at the curb trying to collect himself, our friend recalled his teachings of toleration and muttered: “May thy soul find peace. And the sooner the better!”

Flatterer

When a flatterer pays a compliment and an embarrassed friend says, “Flattery will get you nowhere” that’s utter nonsense! Everyone is pleased by praise and attention, and tender words for women and flattery for men, have been known to work wonders when everything else has failed. Don’t sweet young things practice the theory that a little flattery now and then makes husbands out of single men? Take a look at Mr. Milquetoast. He’s the kind of guy who can’t lick his own weight in mice-yet he always falls for his wife’s sweet talk when she tells him he has the physique of a half-back and as much appeal as Apollo!

Everyone basks in the popularity of a V.I.P., and most of us know one or two who carry a heavy load yet never up-nose the rest of us. They know how to make people feel they’re big shots too just because they’re acquainted with “himself” . . . One of these can get a lot of mileage out of his malarkey among men . . . and as a wizard of ooze, his way with women is smoother than saddle soap.
Flattery will get you nowhere? Humbug!

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The patient kind

Doctors are not the only ones who need patients. Patience and energy don’t go together, and some of the most frustrated people we see are the energetic fireballs who haven’t learned about patience. A patient man is one who idles his motor when he’d rather strip his gears-it takes time for him to realize that even a waiter finally comes to him who waits.
The secret of being patient is to do something else in the meantime, and thus make the waiting time pay.

Screen idolizers

Hysterical, awe-struck demonstrations that go on whenever a celebrity shows up, add up either to fun or to foolishness. It’s a pigmy ego popping off when an impressionable nobody goes into ecstasies because an actor looked in her direction or a singer winked as he went by. It’s newsworthy when a visiting V.I.P. says or does something-but when the press plays up the diet of a screen star’s pet poodle we get a pain . . . and you know where!

It’s one thing to drop by Chicago’s Svithiod Club when Lauritz Melchior comes to town and catch him giving out with a spontaneous aria as he’s been known to do after an “acquavit” or two; but when Wiggly Willie’s train comes down the track and a horde of squealing bobbysoxers jams the station traffic-that’s something else again. When these teenagers pass out all over the place because they got a peek at the back of his head, what else can you say of them except that they’re a bunch of crazy mixed-up kids?

Flappers

When today’s generation asks, “What was a flapper?” the best way to explain is that fads and fancies since the Roaring Twenties have gone through a series of changes, fluctuating between starchy and casual, formal and flapperish.
In those Twenties, the modish gals of the moment were called “flappers” because, along with the clutch coat and cloche hat, went big black galoshes with buckles-similar to snow boots that men wear now in a blizzard. Only, the girls didn’t hook the gol-derned buckles, they walked with them open and flapping like fins on a seal. Hence-”flappers!”

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Active Americans

Being active marks the difference between having a wistful yen to do a certain thing and having a burning desire to accomplish it at any cost. The desire itself resembles warm water in a boiler; it doesn’t produce any steam. There has to be fire and force before the water will come to an active boil.

None of us is responsible for all the things that happen to us, but each of us is responsible for the way we respond to what does happen. It is characteristic of the active drive that most Americans enjoy, that they believe many things come fastest to him who won’t wait. This trait of activity sets them apart from most other people.

Bastard

One of the most talked about but least seen people, is the bastard. He has been variously defined. Mr. Webster says he’s “a natural child begotten and born out of wedlock.” To my cussin’ cousin he’s anybody who doesn’t agree with him; and to the County Clerk in Izzard County, Arkansas, he was the local Justice of the Peace.
Not long ago a couple from the hills came to this J.P. and said that now that their son was old enough to start school, they thought maybe they’d better get married. The Justice agreed, and asked for their license. When they handed it to him, he looked it over carefully and told them: “This is all in order except it doesn’t give the age of the bride; I know you’re old enough, Ma’am, but this license has got to show that you’re of marrying age. I could insert your age for you, but it wouldn’t be legal to do it that way.”

So, the couple returned to the Clerk who obligingly inserted the proper figure, and the pair went back to the J.P. He scanned the document a second time and shook his head: “That’s what I was afraid of; he inserted your age in a document that had already been sworn to; he should have issued a new license with your age appearing on it, and then had that new one sworn to. You’ll have to go back again.”

So the couple repaired to the clerk a second time and he grumblingly filled out the new form and affixed his seal. With that, the pair went again to the J.P., and after he’d checked the paper, he performed the ceremony. “Now,” said the happy wife, “our son is legitimate.” At that the J.P. explained to the couple that a marriage is not retroactive, and so the boy was still a technical bastard. “He is?” questioned the surprised wife. “Why . . . that’s what the clerk said you was!”

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The Helpmate

In some ways a successful political leader may be captain of his fate, but in many matters he takes orders from his mate. A few men have foresight, but all women have insight and the corridors of Congress are crowded with ambitious women pushing their husbands ahead. No woman makes a fool of a man, but many of them have made a man of a fool. Lobbyists stand in awe of feminine intuition, that womanly way of reading between the lies . . . and they speak of Solomon as the wisest guy in antiquity because he had the advice of so many. Another school of thought advances the theory that God made women last because He didn’t want any advice while He was creating man.

Our guest today is living proof that there is always a chance that a woman will give a man an opportunity to develop his natural capacities, and he’ll take it.

Royalty

Some of us look with disdain upon royalty’s unearned gains, a reaction Elizabeth dispelled when she moved among us and captured our affections by proving herself every inch a Queen.

Royal rank involves infinitely more than acknowledging curtsies and adulation; there’s an endless devotion to endless duties that demand more self-discipline than most of us could muster. In her royal capacity a Queen endures the strain of smiling until her muscles tremble from fatigue and she suffers exhausting hours when she stands supported by two tired feet. The wear and tear of being the constant center of attention is tremendous; pomp, protocol and tradition forbid her the freedoms of the ordinary girl who can powder her nose, straighten her hose, and slip a cramped toe from her patent pump.

Harry Truman used a folksy expression before Elizabeth ascended to the throne. He smiled when he met her and said, “Ever since I was a boy I’ve dreamed of seeing a pretty princess-and here she is!”

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