There has been a series about Appalachia this summer that has gone viral. Inside Appalachia by Youtuber Peter Santenello that his wife edits. I love it. I love how they portrayed us and let people here speak. It's SO MUCH better than the Poverty Porn we are used to. I hope I helped it to go viral by sharing it EVERYWHERE I could. I highly recommend this series.
His series on the Border is very good too. I sent that one to politicians and told them get legislation going and fix THIS. Stop blaming Presidents, when it's Congress that's not done the job they are elected to do.
But there are a few things I wanted to mention that he didn't cover, because he didn't run across it to gain an understanding as someone from Appalachia would know. I missed the live streaming last video. I watched it and so I'm commenting mostly to it. But I encourage you to watch all 8 of the series Peter Santenello published on Youtube on Appalachia.
If you read this blog, you will know I'm an Appalachian woman whose family history can be traced to Appalachia since 1745. I'm a historian on Appalachian history. One of many. I only cover what I know from family history and working in the tourism industry for years.
The Economy of Appalachia
There is this misconception that Appalachia was always poor and only ever had the existence of subsistance farming. No, Appalachia was always rural, with smaller farms that were NUMEROUS. Every small farm grew extra agricultural products shipping them to the East and mostly to the South. We were the breadbasket of the lowland south prior to the Civil War. The South grew cotton, we grew food and sent it south.
I've come across many assessments of estates in wills that would include the crops being grown on the land for shipment. Corn, barley, rye, wheat, orchards of apples, nut trees etc. Then farm animals: sheep, (my great great aunt and uncle raised wool to sell) horses, cows, PIGS, (big one was pigs) duck, geese, chickens, turkeys. Alcohol in the form of wine and whiskey would be included in those assessments too. All the products were sold at market day, with promises to deliver it or drivers and drovers would come by and pick it up for transport.
Pigs were a staple for funding. Pigs were marked and allowed to roam and feed in the forest on the mast nuts of the giant chestnut trees that used to grow here. American Chestnut The Chestnut trees were wiped out in a blight in the 1920s.
Drovers were hired to round up livestock from the various farms and move them to market in places like Asheville, NC. There is a pig statute in Asheville marking this history. Asheville is pretty hauty these days but imagine 80,000 pigs a season going through it from the mountains. The Hatfields and McCoys feud began partly over a pig. It was a big cash crop.Article about 80,000 hogs through Asheville
The farms were smaller, not plantation size, but a large family could maintain it and thus no need for slave labor. But they were profitable. My dad was a farm laborer, in 1939 when he joined the Army. He was kind of mad because he took a pay cut to join the Army! He also talked about his dad gathering chestnuts in 100 pound sacks to sell to his great uncle. Who would then sell the chestnuts east of us around Christmas. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? That money bought him a pair of new boots every year.
Plus the timber industry. Timber has been a market for Appalachia from the earliest settlements. But everyone thinks there was never an economy of any note, in Appalachia until the coal boom. That we were so isolated and poor. Well...it's just not true.
We suffer from first, from not knowing our own history and secondly, from color writers. SOMETIMES OF OUR OWN MAKING in book media form that romanced the "isolated" Appalachian. John Fox Jr., one of our own people, Appalachian raised, Harvard educated, did more harm to spread a stereotype to sell books than any one person I know. He embellished alot. See Here
There were others too. Not just novel writers but "historians" like William Connelly. My Jenny Wiley series proved that his written history was embellished writing, selling a story, with some base of fact but that was SO not true, on another level.
Our economic history, in reality, is like any farming community in the U.S. We were just in the mountains, with not many large flat farms but numerous smaller ones.
In the 1890s, with the opening of the Pocahontas Coal fields, our economic focus became predominantly coal in middle Appalachia. THAT changed Appalachia. Farms were bought out. Millions of acres of mountain land purchased for holding companies in the chance coal and other minerals, might be harvested and mined underneath the land.
Much of it still being owned today by corporations. In 1981, there was a land survey on who owns Appalachia. Over 43% was outside corporate owned, 8% government owned. Appalachian Land Survey
But even the land NOT owned by corporations, in many areas, would be part of what is called a Broad form deed system. Where companies bought the rights to the minerals in the ground, but not the land above. Mineral rights deeds have been a HUGE bone of contention. Because they own the rights under the property, they can destroy what's on top, that they don't own and many times did. There have been a few bits of legislation passed to protect land owners, but it's energy companies. When you have a state government that caters to energy, they usually win.
So many people were actually displaced in Appalachia by mining companies buying up property and by government creating national forests and dam projects, it has always been an issue. Eisenhower administration built highway systems to include what they called, "growth centers" for Appalachia. Think bigger towns along the interstate like Princeton WV, Charleston, Beckley, etc.
This goes along with the solutions for plumbing, water systems etc. Their thoughts were to bring in manufacturing for those not employed in mining and displaced from farming to be located in growth centers. And with more people concentrated in an area, things like putting millions of dollars into building sewer, water and infrastructure for more people. made better economic sense. It played out exactly that way, not just in Appalachia but the entire US. Until NAFTA sent the manufacturing jobs out of the country. In Appalachia, we have dying coal towns and dwindled growth centers.
But a word of warning to ANYONE thinking to buy land, especially farm land and moving to Appalachia. One needs to understand about mineral rights etc. Make sure there is a search with the deed that includes mineral rights, water rights, rights of way etc. and contact the state house to see if any permits are being applied for mining etc. in that area.
Coal
Coal....there are many employed in coal but obviously not enough to employ all the people needing employed. No one should be fooled, it is still a dangerous job. Black Lung disease is rising again. Many of the coal areas suffer from memories when coal mining hired a LOT more people and coal towns were built by coal mine owners. That world doesn't exist anymore.
It's not that they are mining less coal...it's that technology has developed that you don't need that many people to mine coal. Add to it more independent operators that don't use Union labor.
In one of the videos Peter recorded, was a woman recalling how a man she knew would lay on his back and shovel coal. Well... put it on a conveyor belt. My ex husband did that too. He was 6 ft and worked in 18 inch to 36 inch high coal. A yardstick is 36 inches.
Well now they have this machine that as coal is being dug, these two clawed flippers on either side make sure it goes on the conveyor belt. It just does not take the number of bodies to mine coal as it once did. Also flattening the mountains with strip mining takes less miners to get the job done than underground.
But EVERYTHING in our economy is still focused on coal jobs. An industry that doesn't provide ENOUGH jobs. The "friends of coal" campaign. Sigh...we tolerated coal in my family, but we were never Big Buds.
Most of my folks were railroaders. They worked on the railroad hauling freight and coal. My ex went from mining to working on the railroad as a brakeman. Recently, the railroads got rid of all the cabooses. Half the railroad jobs in the country were wiped out with that one move.
AND Listen UP East Palistine Ohio, it used to be the conductors or brakeman that would ride in the top part of the caboose and spot to see if they saw smoke or any irregularities from the back of the train. The fact the railroads don't want to invest in equipment to monitor that now, to save money, tells you all you need to know.
Transportation, you don't have a car today, you are in trouble in Appalachia. PERIOD. Unless it's a larger town or city, there is no public transportation. Used to be, when the railroads were hauling coal, they also had passenger service. You could ride a rail car to any holler in WV where there was a mine. When Eisenhower built the road system and pushed cars, the railroads discontinued passenger rail to all those little places. It shut down a major part of transportation in Appalachia.
I recall miners also using Greyhound bus service. Greyhound used to travel to every little pit stop in the mountains. They would ride the bus to the mines, stay at a boarding house and then ride the bus home on weekends. Or they car pooled. Today Greyhound only seems to go to the growth center towns.
Plumbing
About 20 years ago, we got a public water system put in my area. We had well water. But not all wells are alike either. If it's not deep enough you may get iron water, which turns everything orange in the washing maching. Or sulfur water that smells like rotten eggs. Ours was fair, but in the summer dried up or got really low.
A big issue is the wells and the water tables are susceptible to contamination and to mining. BIG arguments of folks wells being contaminated by mining miles away and the companies denying responsibility. Building public water systems makes sense but these are rural areas and only so many folks to support it. You may have 300 homes spread out in a 5 or 10 mile area. Running a costly public sewer system is not economically feasible for local governments.
We don't have a public sewer system here. We have an individual private septic system we maintain. The treated public system water is not good for it. I have to keep a box of Rid X poured down it and it has to be pumped about every other year. Much of it is geography too. The make up of the ground. We dug a 30 foot water line, 18"? 24"? deep, whatever was the requirement. The rock we pulled out would have filled a large room completely full. Even had a few boulders we had to dig out. For 30 FEET!
There may have been places Peter visited, he didn't know, were also what I call modern day outhouses. Pump and haul systems. Places where they can't put in a septic system drain field because the land just will not drain or no public sewer system exists.
Many businesses can have a tank in the ground to accept waste. When an alarm goes off in the building you know it's time to call the "honey wagon". A sewer truck that comes and pumps out the tank, and hauls the waste 40, 50, miles, however far the waste water treatment plant is. And most folks visiting never know they just went to the bathroom that is the equivalent of a modern outhouse.
There are developers building houses in new housing developments for newcomers. Those wanting to move to Appalachia. It's a problem because they are sucking up the grant money, state money, for sewer, water and road systems. Part of the gentrification of Appalachia. It raises taxes for sure and prices locals out of the market. You can own your property outright but can't afford the taxes on it because even if your home doesn't have public water and sewer, you will be supporting the homes that do. These are modern issues for the development of Appalachia.
Politics
I hate this subject and that's why I love Peter's series. It does not touch on politics until the last live stream and then just a little bit. But why did WV go from Democrat to Republican? West Virginia, in the democratic primary of 2016, they went whole hog for Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton didn't win the democratic primary in WV.
When it came time to vote, I had to hold my nose to vote for Hillary. It's not that she's not a capable politician. Had nothing to do with the nonsense of Benghazi and the emails. It had to do that she is, what I call, a "corporate" democrat. Some of her votes as a Senator, you could not tell her apart from corporate Republicans. Being Appalachian, we understand corporate control.
I'm like what Robin Williams, the comedian said. Politicians should have to wear patches like NASCAR drivers of who is funding and influencing them. But I'm old enough to know who and what Trump is and was and I wasn't wrong.
They always point out how red McDowell County WV was in 2016. They didn't look that it was the lowest voter turnout in recorded history. People didn't like either one of the candidates that year. So many didn't even VOTE!
In the same election cycle, WV Governor Jim Justice, ran as a Democrat, won as a Democrat and then changed his party affiliation to match Trump. It don't mean anything, it's about power and money.
Manchin and Justice both have coal interests and it's what motivates them. Manchin has since turned from Democrat to Independent. As most of the Republicans I know these days. Alot of left leaning, moderate business owners in Appalachia are Independents.
Many Independents have been created from the GOP since 2010 with the GOP demanding loyalty oaths. I'm a registered Democrat but I used to vote for Republicans for local office. I voted for the person I thought could do the job. Now when I see an R beside their name, I have to wonder whether they will represent all of us that voted them in and their area or just the policies of their out of touch new leaders in their party.
We are still union strong here. The WV teachers union took on the state right after this....and won.
The Confederate Flag.
I wrote a whole blog post on this issue. See Here The Confederate flag popularity before this time, came in with Southern Rock in the 1970s and the national TV show, Dukes of Hazard. BOTH of which I Loved the music and the show.
It was a popular cultural push, that I DID NOT THINK, I DID NOT KNOW, I DID NOT UNDERSTAND, what that flag represents to others and what that symbol truly means. To me, in the late 70s early 80s, I was boot scootin along to tunes in a bar, and knew I had Confederate history in my family, and I thought it was cool to honor them.
It wasn't until I became serious about really researching my family history, and learned that the version of history of the Civil War, I was taught, from grade school on, was a complete BS lie, that I changed my mind. Definitely learning how much it was a rich man's war, and a poor man's fight, and a scolding from my military dad, that changed my mind.
Out of 6 Confederate grandfathers only one joined. The rest were forced by conscription or drafted. The one that joined, was an old man, at 46, traded places for a cousin, who gave him 960 acres to serve. He died for it. Is buried in Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond VA same place Jefferson Davis is buried.
One Grandfather wouldn't fight. It was his story that set me off to understand my family history. I remember my Great Grandmother Flora May, talking to my Great Grandfather and my Aunt about him. I was ease dropping, I think I was 9? As soon as you came into the room they'd shut up. So I stood outside the kitchen door and just listened.
Granddaddy Stewart was saying he was a "coward", and it was his grandfather. My great grandmother said, "No he wasn't. He was a conscientious objector". Grand daddy Stewart was saying, "Well he caused his family a bunch of grief." I didn't understand that "grief" until much later. The Lost Cause Myth would have looked down on my grandfather and his family history of service in the Civil War. Per that myth, the war was a righteous cause regardless of how much death and destruction. It wasn't.
Grandma Mae told me later, he had a brother fighting for the north and one fighting for the south and he wasn't raising a gun with or against either one. He kept deserting. 3 weeks before Lee's surrender, he was hung as a traitor to the Confederacy, less than 20 miles from home.
Even with this kind of history, doesn't mean my ancestors were not racist. They probably were. Though it gets a bit complicated. During the 1920s there was a "eugenics" movement in Virginia for a misguided notion of racial purity. Led by the State Registar for the State of Virginia, Walter Plecker. Plecker, in his official capacity, ordered County clerks to go through their marriage and birth records and change the race of people he said had "passed" white. It would annual marriages, bring charges and force people to move out of segregated white areas.
It's amazing how many marriage records and birth records from different counties disappeared that recorded that information, at that time. There were county clerks themselves that ignored the order.
Just this uncanny movement of a lot of my kin selling out and leaving Virginia at that time. DNA tests, and family history have us as majority Scottish (Over 50% of those who test) more then any other ethnicity but also there are links to Melungeons, (who are black, white and Native) and Native.
There were Jewish folk in Appalachia too from WAY BACK. I learned of a man named Daniel Joseph, who served with George Rogers Clark during the Revolutionary War. Yes, there were Jewish Communities serving during the Revolutionary War. The Declaration of Independence mentions God, but not Jesus Christ. The Constitution, God is never mentioned and it's on purpose. Religious freedom was that important to our founders.
In the 1920s members of my famil sold out homesteads and moved and they didn't go into the coal mines. They just moved to another state. Now knowing my family history, I think Plecker had something to do with that. And anyone flying that flag spouting the worst, racist BS, better have a DNA test to back it up...because you never know.
The only thing I can tell folks who today who want to fly that flag and want to use it as a symbol of being Southern or heritage? The atrocities committed under that flag cannot be cleaned up and rescued. It's like the hand salute that Hitler took over. The atrocities committed using those symbols are so great, you can't repurpose that salute or that flag to represent some new heritage symbol today. You can't extract it from the history of those that used it to cause a lot of evil harm, death and destruction in the past. It's just not going to happen.
The Confederacy fought to keep the system of slavery, that even the founders who were slave owners knew it was an evil system, but couldn't extract themselves from the money and power it represented during their time. It was states rights over the issue of slavery. The majority who served in that war, didn't own slave and were forced to serve. YEP...Rich man's war, poor man's fight. Actual factual research has blown up the Lost Cause Myth. Try this thesis for a different view Those flags and that salute are both tainted for all time. We have a lot of things and history to be proud of, that symbol, that war, isn't it.
Dialects and Discrimination
The way we speak. One thing that's apparent you are speaking to a Southern Appalachian is when we open our mouths and talk. My Dad was in the military from 1939 to 1970. Two branches of the service and 3 wars. I was born in a military base hospital...delivered by a dentist. Only corpsman on duty that night. So we were the "hillbillies" in the neighborhood. I spoke like my parents spoke. We traveled many, MANY times "UP HOME", which kept us connected to our culture.
The harrasement was relentless for the way I and my siblings, parents spoke, and lived. We went to school near the military bases where dad was stationed. I remember a teacher whacking my hands with a ruler for saying the word "Ain't". I would love to show her today, it's now in the Cambridge dictionary. I was whacked for speaking in a venacular that used double negatives. I tried to be very quiet in her class and not talk. She made it her mission that year to hone in on me and correct my speech every single day. One of the most miserable years in school in my memory.
Later I learned to what I called cross talk, or what is called "code switching". I learned to speak to fit in with those around me, as best I could, but the dialect would still slip out. But when I was home I reverted back to our own dialect. Because if I spoke as the outside world, with "proper English" especially if I went home to my grandparents house, they would accuse me of "gettin above yer raisin" or "puttin on airs".
I wrote about a family member, that works for a big international company, taking diction courses to get the "twang" out of his dialect just to be employed. You know, they are saying Johnny Depp living in England has adopted a way of speaking like the locals there. If his mother was Appalachian I can guarantee, she code switched her language and so would he. Many people do, not just Appalachians. Makes for a good practice for a character actor.
On discrimination, we were once evicted from rental housing because my Dad planted 3 tomato plants in the flower garden instead of all marigolds. I remember the home owner saying he would never rent to hillbillies ever again. Now days whole plots around houses in the city have been turned into food gardens. So yes, I have seen and experienced inside and outside the area the discrimination of Appalachians.
But one of the proudest I was to be a hillbilly, was an incident when I was in my first year of school. I'm left handed. My teacher insisted I write with my right hand. I kept screwing up and so she tied my left hand to my desk to make me learn to write with my right hand.
When I got home, one day I had these whelps on my wrist because I dropped my pencil and pulled against the rope, pulling against the desk attached to the floor, trying to reach it. My mother asked me what happened to my wrist? I told her what the teacher was doing. She didn't say anything. She just said, "I'm taking you to school tomorrow."
When we got to school, she took me to the Principles office and asked about me being tied to a desk. The teacher was called in. She told my mother it was her "religious" belief all children should learn to write with their right hand and left handers have a harder time functioning in life. My mother gave her the look.
My mother's face, you knew when she had reached her limit. Her eyes would squint and she'd cock her head slightly to one side where her eyes would cut you like a knife. When we saw that look from my mom...look out. We always said when mom gave that look, it was like the look of gunslingers in the movies. Scary. She very rarely had to give us a butt whooping, she just had to give us that look.
She told her, "You will let my daughter learn to write the way God created her. And if I have to come back down here about this, or you tie her up to her desk anymore, this "hillbilly" will find you and whip your ass. Do you understand me?" The teacher's mouth was open in shock and the principal just set there.
It was shocking to me, because my mother never cussed in public. Very rarely cussed at home. She didn't get to graduate high school, making it to the 11th grade. Instead she quit and went to work to help support the family. But she went to school in Bluefield, WV with John Nash, (the Beautiful Mind John Nash), and was VERY well read. She read ALL THE TIME. She kept us up with our school lessons. None of us, or her college graduated offspring wanted to tackle her at Scrabble. She'd win every time.
But her use of the word, hillbilly, I took that it meant she didn't see it as something to be ashamed of. Though her words that day seems harsh by today's standards, threatening even, it was the way she defended her children AND her grandchildren, mulitple times over the years.
She was tough. My Dad was sent all over the world and she raised 6 children mostly while he was away. People wanted to call us "hillbillies", she took the stance, she'd show them what a hillbilly could do. So I grew up not being ashamed of being a hillbilly or Appalachian regardless of how we were treated. It was just who we were.
My mother repeated, louder, "Do you understand me?" and she said, "Yes, mam". Then she told me, "Denise, go to class." I don't know what else was said after I left but I never had anymore problems out of THAT teacher and I write left handed.
When my dad retired, we moved back home. The skills I learned living away from Appalachia? I've code switched for a job. But when around family and kin always the dialect gets thick. But we are losing it. The more our children have outside influences of TV and media, it's dying out.
So that's my thoughts, to add to the Inside Appalachia series. Do check it out. It's VERY Good. So are their other series. I hope corporates don't get ahold of em. They always ruin everything.
I've been working on trying to figure out Youtube myself. I'm such a boomer. I'm trying to learn how. I bought some equipment, got an editing program but......YEAH...I'm a boomer. I want to put my corn husk craft tutorials on there. I have arthritis that is getting worse in my hands. It's taken me all day to type this and my one hand is in pain. But if I teach it in a video, only have to demonstrate ONE time. I no longer go anywhere to demonstrate. It's just too hard for me. My hands are swollen for a week after I try to.
Plus there are 10 boxes of research history, I could share in stories. Things I researched over the years. It's a lot. But some incredible, unbelieveable real history of Appalachia to share. I'm working on it.
