Mountain Talk and the ways of the Southern Appalachian people

We all know what this is. We've all been there and done that. And I've lived, even lived here as a young man. And I'm not trying to put them down, not at all. But this is where I'm from, from the Appalachian Mountains, born and raised in these ridges. Run my whole life, worked my whole life under them and above them. But we'll head back in these old ridges, back in the Appalachians, back to a simpler life. And whether you're from East Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, this is the Southern Appalachians. And a lot of these places in these mountains and hollers, the sun don't hit it but a couple hours a day. Being from the area, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And there's a lot of small towns with a lot of good, diverse variety of people in these small towns, hard-working mountain people. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the area, here's the part of the Appalachians. The circuit in yellow is the Southern Appalachians. This is where I'll be talking about the Sands and the Mountain Ways. These people, they've seen hard times. And the stories they could tell and the life they've lived, it's hard to believe. But these mountain people had a way of talking and they had a way of saying things. A lot of people outside these mountains just don't understand. They make fun of us, call us hillbillies. But these people, though most of them don't have an education, but they are good-sense people, worked hard, and got more sense than most people you'll ever run around. So this is a story of their ways and their sayings. A lot of people say, Donnie, that's not your voice. They comment in these videos, you're faking it. No, I'm not faking it, my friend. That's my real voice. I was born and raised in these mountains in the tri-state area of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, around these coal mining communities, and worked my whole life underground and above ground. And I'm just trying to pass on the story of our elders, which are leaving us every day, the stories they could tell, the way they talked, and the way they lived. No, most of them didn't have a big education. They had to get out and provide for their families when they was young back in them days of the Depression. But yes, I do have an education, but I don't have a degree. And I just want to share their story of these mountains before it's gone and lost forever. Now here in the Southeast, there's about five different styles of Southern slang. You got your general Southern talk, and you've got your Coastal Carolinas Southern talk. You've got your Gulf Coast Southern talk, Georgia and Alabama Southern talk. But then here in East Tennessee, Southeast Kentucky, you've got the Southern Appalachian Mountain talk. Now, these old people come in from the old country back in the 1700s, maybe a little before, a little after, and they wasn't much land in the East as Dunn spoken for. So they went into the wilderness areas, into the Appalachians, to make their home, make their living, claim their land. And yes, they mingled with the Indians, intermixed with them, intermarried, and they become all diverse varieties of different styles of people. But they brought their language with them from the old country, and they spoke English. But yes, they had a lot of different sayings from the old language, and they mixed it with the English language, with their own home language, and they made their own words, their own sayings, and their own dialect. And they stayed isolated in these mountains away from everybody else. So that way of life and that way of talking carried on generation after generation. And I'm just going to share with you in just a story of things of how it was when I was small, and what they said, and how they said it. Back when I was a little young thing, about seven or eight years old, if that old, in the summertime, I'd stay with my grandmother. And I'd help her out around the house and just share things with her. A lot of people called her, their grandparents, Grandma, Granny, Meemaw, Mamaw. I've heard all kinds. But I'd call one of my grandmothers, Mammy, and the other side of my grandmother, I would call her Mamaw. That was just the way it is. And she was a really good cook. Anyway, I'd stay with her. She'd get me up in the morning. She'd say, boy, get your butt up out of that bed and go out there and tote me in some coal and some kindling. I got to make a fire. Not a fire, a fire. Got to make a fire. And she'd get that thing stoking hot. And she'd make me some best gravy and biscuits I could ever, I could still remember that. Well, I had a breakfast. I'd go down the road here and see some of my friends down in some of these other mining camp villages. It didn't matter what color they was. I had a lot of little color friends. And they was as good as gold to me. And we'd go out together. And we'd spend a couple hours just to get us some pocket money to go to the store. We'd find pop bottles. They was three to five cents a piece back in them days. And that was easy cash. And we'd go down to the store and we'd cash them in. And I'd have to go for my mama too. She wanted me to do a little trading for them. That's what they called shopping, trading. And we'd get in there and I'd do some trading for her first thing. I would get a pound of bologna. They'd slice up a roll of bologna, a pound and roll it up for you. Get a loaf of bread and some things that she'd want me to get at the house. And I'd cash in pop bottles in. We didn't call them soda pops. We called them pop bottles. I'd get enough out of it to get me an old RC, a candy bar, or a knee high, and a bag of tater chips. It wasn't nothing better than an old bologna sandwich and a bag of tater chips. And we carried it off in a poke. It wasn't no sack. We called a sack or a grocery bag a poke. And we'd head on out there and take that back home. And I'd go over here at my friend's grandmother's house. It was that time of year. It was Warsh Day today. They didn't call it washing. They called it Warsh Day, Warsh. And it was just that time of year where the gardens were coming in. And I'd sit and talk to his grandmother. And man, the tales they could tell me when they're sitting there doing their canning. They're just prepping their canning stuff. And you could ask all kinds of questions because you got them cornered in. And the stories they could tell you. Now back in them days, I loved to ask them about ghost stories. They'd tell me stuff that happened in these mining camps and in these mountains. And they didn't call them ghosts. They called them Hanks. Oh, did you see any Hanks when you was little? I loved them stories. And I'd head down to my uncle's house here, down on the creek. They didn't call it creek. They called it creek. Down on the creek here. He had an old place here. And he didn't work in the mines. He just pilled around on the farm and worked on automobiles. He had a bunch of old cars out back. He's always working on somebody's car, doing something. And these old cars, you know, he's always working on the tires on them. Well, they didn't call them tires. They called them TARS. So how many TARS you got on that car? How good of TARS you got? That was just a saying how they called it. And come to find out, I didn't find out until I was older, that a lot of his friends, he worked on their cars for him. Because they run moonshine. So he kept their vehicles running for them, souped them up when he can. I didn't find that out until I got a lot older. We'd get with him sometime, he'd take us down to the, we call it the mall. Nowadays, I laugh about it. But it was the flea market. That's where people brought all their goods and what they had off the farm. And they would trade for this and trade for that. And that was just the early versions of the strip malls that you got nowadays. A lot of stuff changed hands there. And when we get back, we'd come on back down through there and see some of our other friends. I see one of my dad's working buddies there, and mine, and his kids, good people. And you call these people here, you don't understand unless you're in these mountains. It was up to the 60s before people really got running water in some of their houses. And it was a lot longer before anybody ever got indoor bathroom. You could see in this picture there that that was your bathroom, an outhouse. And for toilet paper, you know them old Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward's magazines we get, catalogs, we called them wish books. That was your toilet paper hanging on the wall. And I always seemed to end up around these railroad tracks, around these old coal temples. I loved it, just fascinated around these old train cars. And it was dangerous. And I'd been warned many a time to stay away from them. But being an old young boy like I am, I'm still in them. And I got many a whooping because of it too. And I kept getting whoopings over them. Well, mom and grandma would get supper fixed. We'd, supper was nothing better than supper, mostly soup beans. She always had soup beans on the stove, always. That's what they called pinto beans. That was soup beans, soup beans and taters. And on Saturdays, if my dad didn't have to work in the mines, when I was knee high to a grasshopper, or just big enough to walk, I was following him in these mountains. He took me squirrel hunting. And I loved it to this day. That's just a routine in these mountains. Of course, we'd have to walk a long way because people about hunted to game out during the depression. That's how they put meat on the table. And then on the Saturday evenings, there was always a shindig going on somewhere. And they was some good musicians come out of these mountains, fiddle players, banjo, guitar, you know, good musicians. Some of them went on to be really good musicians and made it in a big time and most didn't. But that's the way it was in these mountains. They loved their bluegrass and country. And a lot of them went into rock too out of these mountains. That's nothing new. And come Sunday morning, you wanted it or not, you was made to go to church. Your parents, if they had to whoop you, you're going to church. And to this day, I understand why. You'll never forget this, the way you was raised. And on a Sunday afternoon, if the weather's right, there was always a baptizing in the local creek. A lot of people got baptized in these countries. They were God-fearing people and they believed in the Bible. And many people got baptized. Now this old country, things has changed. It's changed a lot. What I'm talking about is growing up in the late 50s, early 60s. It's changed so much. A lot of people's died off. Homes are abandoned or they're just falling down. History gone by. This way of life has changed so much over the last 50 years. And yes, we have our modern conveniences just like any other big city. We just don't have as much of it, but it's just as modern here as it is in New York City or any other big city. Sometimes I wished we wasn't, but it is a good thing. And we have all the modern conveniences. These people, they lived hard and they're slowly dying off. And I wish to this day that I could sit and record and write down all the little stories that these elders has told me. My friends, mom and dads and grandparents, my grandparents, they just so much history that's going to go away. So in a couple of generations, our way of talking and our way of life will change, but it'll always be here and always be remembered. That's what I'm hoping for. Well, anyway, if you think I talk bad, let me give you a little glimpse of how some of the other people talked. I talked to an old buddy in Clay County, Kentucky, and you want to hear how he talks. Listen to this. Yeah, that was when I was growing up. My granddaddy owned, uh, it's out in Las Casas, way out next to Stone River. My grandpa and I tied a place up a little hard. That's all rubbed cedar country down in there. Flat rock, limestone rock, rubbed cedar, and you just get fields here and there. And when you find a good field, you get a lot of... good brand up there in Southeast Kentucky. Some of them people, you think I talk country. I can't understand some of the things they say, but there's some good people in these mountains, and I sure don't miss none of this. Being an old mountain boy from the country, this would be like a prison to me. I had to live it when I was young. But anyway, here's Gatlinburg. We have a price for progress, too. Here's Gatlinburg in the 1950s when I was a boy. Simple and peaceful. Here it is today, 60 years later. So, I hope y'all enjoyed this little thing of just mountain talk. I wish I had more recordings of these old people, so cherish your people before they're leaving, before they're gone forever. So, thank y'all for watching, and I'll see you next time.