Letters from Appalachia - Chicken wrangling, museum building, and a Red Carpet soiree
Hello from Appalachia where there’s a tug of war underway, a grab for power that makes the current Presidential campaign-turned-circus look like a game of CandyLand. One day, it’s a jerk to the left with a plunge in the deep freezer. Next day, hard jerk to the right, and it’s practically the Dominican Republic here in the hills of Tennessee.
Old Man Winter smugly thinks that he’s got this thing wrapped up, that Lady Spring is about to go face-down in the mud hole that marks the middle of this meteorological show of strength. But here and there, I’m spotting the tiniest signs of O.M.W.’s inevitable defeat.
My neighbor’s forsythia - trimmed weekly through the growing season to maintain its perfectly spherical shape - is dotted with tiny, yellow blooms like points of light scattered across the ceiling of the planetarium at Bay’s Mountain Park over in Kingsport.
Buds stand poised on the tips of our azaleas, just waiting for a warm and sunny day to unfurl their pink and white dresses like Lady Di getting out her carriage on her wedding day. I remember watching that on TV! It was probably all you could find on all three channels...
My wife saw the azaleas and immediately began to worry. “Poor little buds, they’re going to get zapped dead and snowed on tomorrow night!” And of course she was right. But as so many Easters have taught us, death - and Old Man Winter for that matter - just look like they’ve won. Life finds a way. Spring will be spring. Death is the veil through which life seems to love to hide, only to burst through in the end shouting, “Surprise! Fooled you all!”
Lady Spring knows - she always wins.
And that’s just fine with me because, these days, I’m weary of cold ears and hands as I run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Some, by the way, use that phrase without any first-hand knowledge of what that gore-fest actually looks like. But here in Appalachia, more than a few of us remember the weirdly comical brutality that came the day before our mountain ancestors sat down to a delicious Sunday lunch.
Saturday afternoons on the family farm in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee, my Grandma would finish the lunch dishes, stroll out into the yard wearing her work dress and an apron, march straight to the chicken coop, and grab an unsuspecting hen by the neck. My brother and I would watch, stunned by the whole production, tempted to run and hide because we knew what was coming next. But because we knew what was next, we’d just stand there and watch, frozen with awe.
With her (we usually thought) delicate hand around the chicken’s neck - the hand we held walking to see the cows in the barn, the hand with the cameo ring and the gold band worn thin by decades of doing dishes and making cornbread - she’d hoist the hen high in the air, snap her wrist, and then rapidly jerk the thing back down like a kid with a yo-yo.
Then, with the speed of a surgeon, a hatchet would appear out of her apron, and off came the poor bird’s freshly-snapped head! Blood covered a spot on the grass as what was left of the wretched fowl sprang to its feet powered by some mysterious energy that reflexively bolted through its body and caused it to run in circles around the yard.
“Drunk chicken!” my brother and I would yell as the poor thing staggered around and eventually flopped over like a car running out of gas. “Good chicken,” Grandma calmly corrected us, hardly even winded by the run-of-the-mill chore she’d done every Saturday for so many years. “And wasn’t it good of the Lord to provide it!”
Sorry for the gross aside, but all that to say… that’s how I’ve been running around for the past few days. Fortunately, my head is still attached to my shoulders, and that’s allowed me to enjoy all the new things that are coming my way these days.
A few months ago, a friend asked me to join her on the board of the new Johnson City Railroad Experience, Northeast Tennessee’s newest museum and the new home to the beloved George L. Carter Railroad Museum on the East Tennessee State University campus.
George Lafayette Carter had the good sense to make a fortune in the late 1800’s and use it to build rail lines across Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. And he had the good sense to live for several years in the relatively new town of Johnson City, where he would donate money and land to found what would become ETSU. Carter helped develop nearby Kingsport, Tennessee and towns across Southwest Virginia too. Come to think of it, he was the original champion of regionalism, a frequent topic of conversation here in this part of the world. And my favorite Carter factoid - the notoriously private industrialist founded what would become the Bristol Herald Courier newspaper just so he could force the editors to keep his name out of the headlines.
When my kids were little, we’d take them to see the model trains at the little museum tucked away on the ETSU campus named in honor of Mr. Carter and filled to the gills with model railroad layouts. Progress on campus demanded that the museum relocate, and that inspired an incredible group of local volunteers to take action. They’ve already found a new home in the city’s downtown, and passionate volunteers who adore anything to do with old trains (real and model) are busily trying to make the museum ready for the public sometime this spring.
Daddy always loved setting up his model train layout, but I unfortunately don’t know an N-Scale from an O-Scale or a Coupler from a Caboose. So I’m along for the ride to help wherever needed. And, I’m excited to see the creation of a new space where families and visitors to town can put down their phones, marvel at the tiny details on the train layouts that depict the way things were in days gone by, and experience in a new and modern way what life was like workin’ on the railroad and living in towns like Johnson City that owe their existence to the arrival of the tracks.
I’ll probably be yammerin’ about this in letters to come, so you’ve been warned.
The other new thing arrived last Friday in my hometown Elizabethton where, for just a moment, we got to feel a little like Hollywood.
After months of work, the folks in charge of Main Street Elizabethton premiered “Old Soul, New Stories” - a documentary about the city’s unique downtown. Through interviews and pictures, everyday people shared what the downtown has meant to them. Archival images reminded everyone that downtown was THE place to be before the strip malls and outlet stores and Amazon came on the scene. I’d forgotten that there used to be a big hotel downtown, long demolished in a regrettable move toward “progress.” And there once was a big metal sign spanning the street near the Doe River proclaiming Elizabethton to be “The City of Power” - a boast based in the city’s early 1900’s adoption of hydroelectric power generation, long before FDR came up with the TVA.
A huge crowd packed into the historic and soon-to-be-renovated Bonnie Kate Theater where a red carpet guided guests through the art deco lobby to fancy snacks (excuse me, hors d'oeuvres), a cash bar (gasp!), and even a spot for photos (sans paparazzi, thank the Lord). Then guests poured into the theater, the same place where I watched “E.T.” as a kid. “Jaws” too, and I was so scared I wanted to hide behind the musty maroon curtains that still cover the side walls.
There, we all sat and watched and mindlessly grinned from ear to ear as our friends and neighbors shared memories of growing up downtown. The hands-down star of the show was Dr. Virginia Laws, the city’s matriarch who, at the age of 103, came to the party with perfectly coiffed blond hair, flawless make-up, an outfit and jewelry Queen Camilla would have envied, and - I’m not lying - knee-high leather boots with a heel.
During her documentary interview, Miss Virginia spoke with the clarity and eloquence of a university professor (which she was) about the joy and wonder of visiting downtown as a little girl before the old theater in which we’d gathered was even built. Smiling like Betty Grable, she stole the show with recollections of visiting the four - count ‘em FOUR - movie theaters that once competed for business in our little village by the river. She told about her job at a downtown department store demonstrating the new high-tech kitchen gadget of the day - a potato peeler. And she celebrated the progress she’d witnessed in her century-long life, determined to point everyone to the future with confidence and gratitude.
When the movie ended, I hopped up on the stage (because that’s what MC’s do). The Main Street folks behind the idea joined me, and we thanked everyone and everybody for everything. Then, we invited the documentary storytellers to join us on stage for a final bow.
The stage at the Bonnie Kate is, shall we say, temporary. Upcoming renovations will make way for something more...sturdy, I’m told. So I could feel the crowd hold its collective breath as, you guessed it, Miss Virginia stood from her reserved spot on the front row and began to walk toward the dimly lit steps, painted black as if to make them even more treacherous. Before I knew it, there she was, smack-dab in the middle of the group on stage with the Betty Grable megawatt smile that lit up the place, all the way to be back of the room.
Without thinking, I walked with the microphone and stood beside Miss Virginia as I told the crowd that we were in the presence of greatness.
Thunderous applause.
Speaking right into my microphone, she offered the first reviews of the show we’d just seen saying she loved the documentary and loved Elizabethton more than ever. And then I asked the dumb question that she’s probably tired of answering - “What is your secret? HOW, at 103, have you stayed so young?”
Her answer embodied the wisdom of Appalachia, the same advice that my Grandma or anyone else’s Grandma in the room would have uttered.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart!” she said without having to think about it. “And eat plenty of good food!”
Thunderous applause. Hoots and hollers. A standing O.
So there are your marching orders. Trust in the Lord…. and enjoy. Wisdom straight from an expert at living. Simple as that.
I’m off to eat dinner. Chicken, don’t you know. Thawed out after we found it in the back of the freezer. No farmyard carnage, thank the Lord.
The way you write makes me feel as though I were right there....and I've seen chickens meet that same fate on the other side of the world! Sure beats a mass production slaughter house!
What an inspiration Dr. Virginia Laws is to us all. Thanks for sharing that experience with us.