Listen Here

by Sandra L. Ballard

  Granny McNabb leaves for a moment and goes into the next room. She walks slowly because in the past year she's broken both hips. When she comes back her bright blue eyes are shining above the faded blue denim of the bag she's clutching. On her lap she sorts through the remnant of necessaries left in the little bag that has gone with her over so many lonely trails during so many strange hours, helping deliver life in the French Broad country. The white cap that folded to cover her head, crowned by a bit of yellowed lace sewed with tiny stitches. As she handles the flannels and cottons and bottles, a smile creeps across her face.

  “Some folks think the moon changing has something to do with the time a baby's born. It don't have anything to do with it. When the apple's ripe, it'll fall. The baby wasn't got in the moon, it'll not be had there, neither.” Remembering something else, her face sobers. “A few times I had to tend a girl as young as fourteen. That's not right. A man ought to stay off that marriage till the girl's of age to have a baby. No matter what age, a man can't ever be too good to a woman has had his children. I've seen them come to their time and I know. I remember once a father came after me to help his daughter. She wasn't married, but her folks were looking after her all right. They don't always, when it's like that. I went and stayed with her and when her baby come, it was black. What'd I do? Just what I did for every one of my babies. Spanked the breath of life in it and put drops in its eyes, give it a bath and dressed it and put it to the breast. It was another soul, and its mother was another mother. I'd never lower her name none either. But I watched that baby grow up, and sometimes it pretty near broke my heart seeing him neither black nor white and neither side claiming him. He went away from North Carolina finally. I don't know where he is now but I hope he's found his Lord, wherever he is.

  “My babies are scattered all over. Whenever I go to our church up here I can sit and count folks I helped bring in the world. That was my talent. I never had an education but the Lord give me my talent. And I never heard a knock come on that door at night that I didn't start talking to the Lord. He can do anything. He made the leaves of the herbs for the healing of the nations, and He can carry a body through any trial. I'd ask Him to help me. I'd tell Him it was a mother I was going to help and He'd have to show me what to do. All the way going, on horseback or walking, riding behind mules or maybe even oxen, I'd call on the Lord. This was my mission in life and I did it with His help the best I could. Because there's nothing on this earth like seeing a new life come into the world.”

  SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT

  (November 29, 1848–August 30, 1928)

  Sarah Barnwell Elliott was the daughter of Charlotte Bull Barnwell Elliott and Bishop Stephen Elliott, one of the founders of the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. Born in Georgia, Elliott spent most of her life at Sewanee, with the exception of a year at Johns Hopkins University (1886), and seven years in New York City (1895–1902).

  Elliott was part of the nineteenth-century local color movement, a genre which flourished after the Civil War and was based on the ideal that the local fiction writer could interpret her own area better than someone from the outside. One of the genre's trademarks is the heavy use of dialect. Most critics find Elliott's handling of dialect inferior to that of fellow local color writer, Mary Noailles Murfree.

  Known primarily as a novelist, Elliott also published a collection of short stories, An Incident and Other Happenings, and a biography, Sam Houston. She is credited with introducing feminist views into the local color genre, most notably in her novel The Durket Sperret. Her most critically acclaimed work was the novel Jerry, which opens in the Tennessee mountains but is primarily set in a western mining town; it was originally published as a serial in Scribner's Magazine (1890).

  Elliott returned to Sewanee in 1902 and, in later life, was known as much for her suffragist activities as for her writing. She was president of the Tennessee State Equal Suffrage Association and vice-president of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference.

  The main character of The Durket Sperret is Hannah Warren, a poor but proud mountain girl who defies her grandmother's demands that she marry “well.” A reviewer for The Nation noted that Hannah “is made to pass through an improbable experience, but she herself is never improbable.”

  In this scene from The Durket Sperret, Hannah has ventured into Sewanee to peddle produce and encounters the townsfolks’ underlying prejudice towards the mountaineers.

  OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

  PRIMARY

  Novels: The Making of Jane (1901), The Durket Sperret (1898), John Paget (1893), Jerry (1891), A Simple Heart (1887), The Felmeres (1879). Short stories: Some Data and Other Stories of Southern Life (1981), ed. Clara Childs Mackenzie. An Incident and Other Happenings (1899). Biography: Sam Houston (1900).

  SECONDARY

  Clara Childs Mackenzie, Sarah Barnwell Elliott (1980). Review of The Durket Sperret, The Nation, 19 May 1898, 389. “Sarah Barnwell Elliott,” American Authors, ed. Stanley Kunitz and Howard Haycroft (1938), 251. Robert M. Willingham Jr. “Sarah Barnwell Elliott,” Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary (1979), 143–44.

  THE DURKET SPERRET (1898)

  from Chapter II

  At the time this story opens, the railway station, known as Sewanee, consisted of a few shops, the post-office, and one or two small houses, built about a barren square. From this a broad road led to the “University,” and the other end of Sewanee. Up this road the butcher and shoemaker had planted some locust trees in front of their shops, and beyond them the confectioner had laid a stone pavement for the length of his lot, and planted some maple trees, that, in the autumn, burned like flames of fire. Beyond the confectioner's the road was in the woods for a short space, then more houses. About a half mile from the station this road ended in another road that crossed it at right angles, and up and down this the University town was built.

  Between the houses, between the public buildings, wherever any space was left free from carpenters and stone masons, the forest marched up and claimed its own, while the houses looked as if they had been convinced of their obtrusiveness, and had crept as far back as possible, leaving their fences as protection to the forest, and not as the sign of a clearing.

  Very still and bare the little place looked on the gray March morning, when, under Mrs. Wilson's guidance, Hannah made her entrance as a peddler. Down the road, beaten hard by the rain, and dotted here and there with clear little pools of water, Hannah led old Bess, bearing the long bags, in the ends of which were bestowed the apples and potatoes, the bucket of butter being fastened to the saddle.

  They had not stopped at the station, for Mrs. Wilson said the people in the town paid better prices.

  “They don't know no better than to tuck frostbit ‘taters,” she explained, “an they'll give most anything fur butter jest now. All the ‘versity boys is come back, an’ butter's awful sca'ce. To tell the truth,” pushing her long bonnet back, “thar ain't much o’ anything to eat right now. What with layin’ an’ scratchin’ through the winter fur a livin', the hens is wore out, an’ chickens ain't in yit, an’ these ‘versity women is jest pestered to git sumpen fur the boys.”

  Hannah listened in silence. She had her own ideas about trading, and besides had very scant respect for Mrs. Wilson, either mentally or morally. She knew that her things were good, but she was determined to ask only a fair price for them. It was bad to cheat people because they were simple or “in a push.” She was in a push herself, and felt sorry for them.

  “An’ ax a leetle moren you ‘llows to git,” Mrs. Wilson went on, “kase they'll allers tuck some off. Thar air a few that jest pays what you says, or don't tuck none, an’ I axes them a fa'r price.” They stopped at a gate as she finished, and she directed Hannah to “hitch the nag an’ stiffen up.”

  “I ain't feared,” Hannah answered, while she made old Bess fast, “but I ain't usen to peddlin', an’ I don't like hit, nuther.”

  Mrs. Wilson laughed. “Youuns Granny keeps on
a-settin’ you up till nothin’ ain't good enough,” she said. “Lots o’ folks as good as ary Warren hes been a peddlin’ a many a year.”

  “Thet don't make hit no better fur me, Lizer Wilson, an’ nothin’ ain't agoin’ to make hit better; any moren a dog ever likes a hog-waller,” and she took down the bucket of butter with a swing that brought her face to face with her companion. One glance at Hannah's eyes, that now looked like her grandmother's, and Mrs. Wilson changed the subject.

  “Leave the sacks,” she said roughly; “hit'll be time to pack ‘em in when they're sold.” She led the way in along a graveled walk, Hannah looking about her curiously, and trying to conquer her rather unreasonable anger against Mrs. Wilson, before she should meet the people about whom she had heard such varying reports.

  At the front piazza Hannah paused, and Mrs. Wilson laughed exasperatingly.

  “Lor, gal!” she said, “these fine folks don't ax folks like weuns in the front do'; weuns ain't nothin’ but ‘Covites come to peddle’; come to the kitchen.”

  That people lived who thought themselves better than the Warrens or Durkets was a new sensation to Hannah, and she wondered if her grandmother knew it. Her astonishment stilled her wrath until the thought overwhelmed her, that perhaps these people would look on her and Lizer Wilson as the same! She had followed mechanically, and before she had reached any conclusion they were at the back door.

  A negro woman stood wiping a pan, while a lady, holding an open bucket of butter, was talking scoldingly to a woman who, as Hannah saw instantly, looked very different from the lady, and very much like Lizer and herself. There was a moment's silence as the newcomers appeared; then the negress spoke.

  “Mornin', Mrs. Wilson,” she said familiarly.

  “Mornin', Mary,” Mrs. Wilson answered, in an oily tone; then to the lady she said: “Mornin, Mrs. Skinner.”

  “Good-morning, Mrs. Wilson,” the lady answered, while the woman she had been scolding turned, and Hannah recognized a person who lived near the Durkets, and who was looked down on by them just as Lizer Wilson was by the Warrens. They did not greet each other, but Hannah felt the woman's stare of wonder, that “John Warren's gal” should peddle with Lizer Wilson! She seemed to hear the story being told to the Durkets, and repeated to her grandmother by Si. Things seemed misty for a moment, then, through the confusion, she heard Lizer's voice. “No, I ain't got nothin’ left but a few aigs; but this gal has a few things she'd like to get shed of ‘fore we starts home.”

  Hannah listened, wondering, and remembered a saying of her grandmother's, that Lizer could “lie the kick outern a mule.”

  “What has she?” questioned Mrs. Skinner.

  “Taters, an’ apples, an’ butter,” Lizer answered; “nothin much to pack back if the price ain't a-comin'.”

  “What is the price of the butter?”

  “Thirty cents; I've done sold mine at thet; the taters is a dollar an’ a heff a bushel, an’ the apples a dollar.”

  “I have just paid twenty cents for butter; why are your things so high?” was questioned sharply.

  Ourn is extry good,” Lizer answered. The negro woman smiled. Hannah's indignation was gathering, but she did not speak. Mrs. Wilson must know the ways of the place—she would wait.

  “I'll take the apples,” the lady began compromisingly, “but I will not take the butter nor the potatoes. How many apples have you?” to Hannah.

  “A bushel,” Hannah answered quickly, afraid that Lizer would say a cartload.

  Mrs. Skinner looked at her keenly. “I have never seen you before,” she said.

  “She ain't never peddled befo', an’ ain't got no need to come now,” Lizer struck in, looking straight at the woman from the other valley. “She jest come along fur comp'ny, an’ brung a few things fur balance—she ain't pertickler ’bout sellin’.”

  The first part of this speech soothed Hannah's feelings somewhat, but the final clause, representing her as coming for the love of Lizer Wilson, was worse than the peddling.

  SIDNEY SAYLOR FARR

  (October 30, 1932–)

  A native of eastern Kentucky, Sidney Saylor Farr is a poet, an essayist, an editor, and a writer of short fiction. A graduate of Berea College (B.A., 1980), Farr grew up near Pine Mountain, Kentucky, an experience she shares in her books, More Than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections and Table Talk: Appalachian Meals and Memories.

  She married at the age of fifteen, in part, she says, because the nearest public high school was fifteen miles away and her family didn't have the money to send her to boarding school. Determined to graduate, Farr took courses by mail and eventually earned her diploma.

  In the early 1960s, Farr, her husband, Leon Lawson, and their two sons moved to Indianapolis, then to Berea, Kentucky, where she earned a degree in English. She and Lawson divorced in 1967; in 1970 she married Grover Vernon Farr, a counselor.

  Farr was the associate editor of Mountain Life & Work from 1964 to 1969. In 1976, she became the assistant to the Special Collections librarian at Berea College and served as the editor of Appalachian Heritage from 1985 until her retirement in 1999. Farr's groundbreaking annotated bibliography, Appalachian Women, was published in 1981 by the University Press of Kentucky, and it remains an indispensable guide to the region's literature.

  Farr's autobiographical essay “Shall We Gather in the Kitchen” appears in her collection More Than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections.

  OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE

  PRIMARY

  Nonfiction: Tom Sawyer and the Spiritual Whirlwind (2000), Spoon Bread Cookbook (1997), Table Talk: Appalachian Meals and Memories (1995), What Tom Sawyer Learned From Dying (1993), More Than Moonshine: Appalachian Recipes and Recollections (1983), Bered's Appalachian Ballad Collectors: James Watt Raine, John F. Smith, Katherine Jackson French, and Gladys V. Jameson (1980). Poetry: Headwaters (1995). Bibliography: Appalachian Women: An Annotated Bibliography (1981). Autobiographical essay: “Women Born to Be Strong,” in Bloodroot (1998), ed. Joyce Dyer, 112–19.

  SECONDARY

  Contemporary Authors, Vol. 114, 154. Joyce Dyer, “Sidney Saylor Farr,” in Bloodroot, 111.

  FROM MORE THAN MOONSHINE: APPALACHIAN RECIPES AND RECOLLECTLONS (1983)

  I read the other day that a cook in an old-time country kitchen walked at least 350 miles a year preparing three meals a day. My mother, grandmother, and Granny Brock, as well as other women in the Appalachian Mountains, probably walked three times that distance as they scoured the garden rows and hunted the hills to get food. They did not have cash to buy much, and the corner grocery was miles away. They did not own a cookbook among them, just ancient knowledge and skillful hands, and an instinct born out of desperate need to feed their hungry children.

  Families ate what they grew on the place or found in the hills. Busy from dawn to dusk, buying nothing that could be raised, cooked or handmade at home, Mother worked as her mother and grandmother worked before her. Father did outside chores, using handmade tools and methods that Grandpa and his father used.

  In the years before and during the Second World War, the hills had plenty of huckleberries, blackberries, raspberries, elderberries, mulberries, strawberries—until timber and coal companies came and stripped the land. There were both orchard-grown and wild fruits: apples, plums, grapes, persimmons, and pawpaws. The trees in the mountains produced black and white walnuts, hazelnuts, beechnuts, and hickory nuts. Father hunted rabbits, possums, coons, squirrels, and groundhogs. He brought in wild ducks, geese, grouse, and quail. There were rock bass, trout, catfish, and other varieties of fish in the streams and rivers. Wild bees swarmed and settled, reswarmed and settled again, until numerous colonies were to be found in hollow trees. The honey was taken for use on the table, the bees put into new bee gums to start all over. The men planted cane and made molasses. They raised crops of white and sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkin, corn, and beans.

  Each little homestead had its cornfield, its patch of cane, an
d its bee gums (hives). Somewhere along the creek there would be a watermill where corn was ground into meal. And somewhere in the hillside thickets there would be moonshine stills where corn was bottled, sold, and drunk.

  The kitchen has been central to my life as a mountain woman. I was born and raised in Appalachia—on Stoney Fork in southeastern Kentucky. Straight Creek, one of many creeks and small rivers in eastern Kentucky, has its beginning on Pine Mountain near where Harlan and Leslie Counties join. For thirty miles or more it is fed by smaller streams and gets deeper and wider before it is lost in the Cumberland River at Pineville. Stoney Fork is one of the little creeks running into Straight Creek. From where it merges with the latter up to its headwaters at Peach Orchard, Stoney Fork is about ten miles long.

  …

  Wilburn and Rachel, my parents, lived on Coon Branch until they had three children; I was the firstborn. When I was five they moved a mile below the mouth of Stoney Fork and the one-room school we children later attended. Father bought logs and lumber at Sonny LeFever's sawmill and built a house in the center of an old orchard near a sulfur spring. Pine Mountain rose up steeply from our back yard.

  Pine Mountain is one hundred miles long, running through three counties in Kentucky and on into Tennessee. It is filled with limestone caves and covered with scrub trees. A footpath ran up in front of our house across the mountain to the Cumberland River side. A cliff hugged the highest peak near the footpath, and from a crevice a pine grew, gnarled and twisted from endless winds. I loved to stand or sit on the rock, feel the sun on my face, the wind blowing through my hair, and listen to the sound in the pine branches. Far below, Straight Creek was a crooked silver ribbon and the buildings seemed like doll houses scattered along the road. On the Cumberland side, the railroad played a steel counterpoint to the river. Long trains filled to overflowing with Harlan County coal shuttled along to Pineville and points north and east, blowing their whistles at every small crossing.