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Our Appalachia: An Oral History
Many books have been written about Appalachia, but few have voiced its concerns with the warmth and directness of this one. From hundreds of interviews gathered by the Appalachian Oral History Project, editors Laurel Shackelford and Bill Weinberg have woven a rich verbal tapestry that portrays the people and the region in all their variety.
The words on the page have the ring of truth, for these are the people of Appalachia speaking for themselves. Here they recollect an earlier time of isolation but of independence and neighborliness. For a nearer time they tell of the great changes that took place in Appalachia with the growth of coal mining and railroads and the disruption of old ways. Persisting through the years and sounding clearly in the interviews are the dignity of the Appalachian people and their close ties with the land, despite the exploitation and change they have endured.
When first published, Our Appalachia was widely praised. This new edition again makes available an authentic source of social history for all those with an interest in the region.
The words on the page have the ring of truth, for these are the people of Appalachia speaking for themselves. Here they recollect an earlier time of isolation but of independence and neighborliness. For a nearer time they tell of the great changes that took place in Appalachia with the growth of coal mining and railroads and the disruption of old ways. Persisting through the years and sounding clearly in the interviews are the dignity of the Appalachian people and their close ties with the land, despite the exploitation and change they have endured.
When first published, Our Appalachia was widely praised. This new edition again makes available an authentic source of social history for all those with an interest in the region.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
408 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 10, 2015
I love this book. The man in the cover photo is my dad, I am proud to say. I love his account of what life was like in the coal camps of Southeastern Kentucky during the depression.
July 31, 2011
Mountain people had a history of adapting their surroundings into means for living. Creek beds were roadways. Felled trees became log cabins, barns, churches, schools, farm tools, brooms and bedsteads. Seeds of fruit and vegetables were harvested in autumn, dried during winter, and replanted in the spring. These labors required a strength beyond brawn and mountain people accepted the challenge.
In many ways it was the kind of back-to-nature living that people who feel trampled and smothered by metropolitan life seek today, or think they seek. On the surface there is something romantic about making a house from poplar logs held together with a mixture of yellow mud, water, and horsehair, or creating a Drunkard's Path quilt from scraps of handwoven fabric. However, when a person's day-to-day existence depends upon his ability to transform nature's bounty into life's necessities, the challenge loses its romance and becomes hard, sometimes desperate.
This is one of the best oral histories I have ever read. Filled with firsthand accounts from people all over Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and the Carolinas. It's about hard people beget by natural struggles and the struggles of industrial exploitation. It starts with the trappers, farmers and hide-hunters. It then moves into mining, timber and tourism. It's sad but true, and you can't help but love the sweet honesty of these hearty forgotten souls.
You hear instances like this: He said mining was in his blood and he wasn't afraid, but he always told his children never to become a miner. He'd say, "Look what i go through, I'm not much better than a slave." His hands was skinned and broken and he'd get pretty tired. Sometimes he'd come out of the mines and he'd be wet all over from where he had worked water and ice had formed on his clothes. When he'd take his clothes off they'd stand up. But he was young then and able to take it. People wasn't soft. They'd been raised on the farm and they was tough mountaineers and they adapted to coal mining very well.
But they are followed by an almost uncanny sense for survival. It makes you believe it's just inert in people:
I mean there was a lot of silliness, like carrying a buckeye in your pocket to cure rheumatism, but he didn't believe in that. They just really believe in honest prayer, in connecting with the higher power to help them. They learned a lot of this from the Indians, I imagine, and [from] grandfathers. Like they used this pussy-willow bark, they called it "possum bush," to cure the headache. And there's the same thing in it that's in aspirin. The catnip is really a plant tranquilizer. I made some the other day, it makes a good tea, and it really helps colds and it makes you sleep. We used slippery elm to cure fever. You take it, put it in water, and it makes a kind of jelly. And they used peach bark for tonsillitis and they'd use it also if you vomited. If something didn't have a rational reason to it he wouldn't believe, nor would he let us.
The secret to a good oral history is an information you can really gain something from, whether it be technical, inspirational or philosophical. This book really sets a tone that a cultural shock could naturally give. These interviews, by an ordinarily reclusive and/or insular people, sounds very forthcoming. Laurel Shackleford is great for gaining us the extraordinary insight to his Appalachian neighbors. You hear this sort of wise business--it doesn't bode well with how we know commerce. A man who owns an orchard and gives away apples rather than selling them, for the sake of the barter: Actually, I'll tell you what makes a right smart believer out of me: when apples quit bearing out here, nobody had none hardly, we used to have them every year.
Or from this trapper: I'm forty-one year old and never was put in jail in my life. I won't lie in trading because when you start that you'll just about go out of business. Always tried to tell them the truth.
If you come out with the bad end of the deal you'll just think a whole lot about it and say little or nothing. I always figure if a man was big enough to burn me, why I'd just wait and burn somebody else. An old man by the name of George Stanford burnt me so many times that i was waiting for him to get his burning back. I had a mule that took the studs with me. In other words, it stopped and didn't want to go on. That was a stubborn mule, very, very poor in its class. It was a good-looker, and good age, but it was a bad equality. I swapped George a eight-year-old five-gaited saddle horse to that mule. he got on that mule and took off down the road. I was on my way back home when he caught up with me and said, "Now, tell me the truth, Oscar, about this mule."
I said, "I told you the truth: it's a good family mule. When i said 'family' i meant it took the whole family to tan her." George wound up coming back with a few that looked like they's sick. He laid for trying to get that burning back but he never did.
And it's funny, because that seems so awkward--the transference of exploitation. But that' the truth, a trusting people withstands themselves, barters trickery and everyone's moral qualms dissipate into a blameless ether of white-lie selfishness. The charm of that gambler's vagrancy loses itself to the industrial quagmires that robbed people of their lives and homes and property, rather than just the daily jibe:
You had no safety precautions back in those days other than what you learned yourself. They didn't care if you didn't put any timbers up in the mines. They'd never come around and say, "You've got to do this or that about making yourself safe"; they left that up to you. They was interested in one thing and that's a ton of coal. The percentage [of miners killed per number of hours worked] back then was much greater than it is today. Now they've got it up to about a million hours per man killed. They didn't' keep statistics back then, but a little mine like Acme Hill [where] my father was mashed up one time, they worked about thirty men and I'd say averaged two men a year killed in the mine
And then there's these elaborate ornate anecdotes:
A big coal mine is similar to walking into a hotel. You're on a certain floor, you go down the main corridor for a ways and then you'd turn off on a wing. Well, that wing is what we call "sections" in the mines. Then when you turned little places off the section that's your "rooms." You're assigned to a room just like if you got to a hotel and register you're assigned to a room. you go in there and you go to sleep. The coal miner goes in there and he loaded him sixteen ton of coal in that room.
The temperature is about sixty-eight, seventy degrees year round. You have a moisture period in July, August, Septembe--what you call your "sweaty months"--same as you'd have in the basement of your home. It's just like being in a cave only the cave doesn't run so smooth like a seam of coal. That seam of coal is absolutely smooth. Mines in the big Elkhorn seam of coal usually run on a level grade; you don't go down or up much. I have walked from here to Haymond, three miles up the road, through the mines if it was raining, rather than walk outdoors. I enjoy working in the mines, myself. I never was afraid in there. It's not a place to take a vacation, or loaf--it's made to work in.
Or this one:
A friend of my uncle had gone into the county seat for more apple-tree spray, having run out about halfway through the orchard. He had to wait, so he walked uptown in his smelly, yellow, spray-splattered overalls and sat down on one of the long green benches which lined the sidewalks of the summer resort town. tow matron-type ladies from Florida occupied the other end of the bench. After he had been there for a few minutes, one of the ladies sniffed critically and remarked that mountain towns certainly had some dirty, undesirable people in them. The orchard man turned, looked at them carefully, and agreed with the lady's observation. he added, "one nice thing about it, tho'--come frost and they all go back home."
And that's the trick of Appalachia. You had a society of range competitors whose range was taken over by the fatcats who don't care about being clever, they just sidehill the hell out of the whole chacanery and the people are forgotten. The game is forgotten.
In many ways it was the kind of back-to-nature living that people who feel trampled and smothered by metropolitan life seek today, or think they seek. On the surface there is something romantic about making a house from poplar logs held together with a mixture of yellow mud, water, and horsehair, or creating a Drunkard's Path quilt from scraps of handwoven fabric. However, when a person's day-to-day existence depends upon his ability to transform nature's bounty into life's necessities, the challenge loses its romance and becomes hard, sometimes desperate.
This is one of the best oral histories I have ever read. Filled with firsthand accounts from people all over Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and the Carolinas. It's about hard people beget by natural struggles and the struggles of industrial exploitation. It starts with the trappers, farmers and hide-hunters. It then moves into mining, timber and tourism. It's sad but true, and you can't help but love the sweet honesty of these hearty forgotten souls.
You hear instances like this: He said mining was in his blood and he wasn't afraid, but he always told his children never to become a miner. He'd say, "Look what i go through, I'm not much better than a slave." His hands was skinned and broken and he'd get pretty tired. Sometimes he'd come out of the mines and he'd be wet all over from where he had worked water and ice had formed on his clothes. When he'd take his clothes off they'd stand up. But he was young then and able to take it. People wasn't soft. They'd been raised on the farm and they was tough mountaineers and they adapted to coal mining very well.
But they are followed by an almost uncanny sense for survival. It makes you believe it's just inert in people:
I mean there was a lot of silliness, like carrying a buckeye in your pocket to cure rheumatism, but he didn't believe in that. They just really believe in honest prayer, in connecting with the higher power to help them. They learned a lot of this from the Indians, I imagine, and [from] grandfathers. Like they used this pussy-willow bark, they called it "possum bush," to cure the headache. And there's the same thing in it that's in aspirin. The catnip is really a plant tranquilizer. I made some the other day, it makes a good tea, and it really helps colds and it makes you sleep. We used slippery elm to cure fever. You take it, put it in water, and it makes a kind of jelly. And they used peach bark for tonsillitis and they'd use it also if you vomited. If something didn't have a rational reason to it he wouldn't believe, nor would he let us.
The secret to a good oral history is an information you can really gain something from, whether it be technical, inspirational or philosophical. This book really sets a tone that a cultural shock could naturally give. These interviews, by an ordinarily reclusive and/or insular people, sounds very forthcoming. Laurel Shackleford is great for gaining us the extraordinary insight to his Appalachian neighbors. You hear this sort of wise business--it doesn't bode well with how we know commerce. A man who owns an orchard and gives away apples rather than selling them, for the sake of the barter: Actually, I'll tell you what makes a right smart believer out of me: when apples quit bearing out here, nobody had none hardly, we used to have them every year.
Or from this trapper: I'm forty-one year old and never was put in jail in my life. I won't lie in trading because when you start that you'll just about go out of business. Always tried to tell them the truth.
If you come out with the bad end of the deal you'll just think a whole lot about it and say little or nothing. I always figure if a man was big enough to burn me, why I'd just wait and burn somebody else. An old man by the name of George Stanford burnt me so many times that i was waiting for him to get his burning back. I had a mule that took the studs with me. In other words, it stopped and didn't want to go on. That was a stubborn mule, very, very poor in its class. It was a good-looker, and good age, but it was a bad equality. I swapped George a eight-year-old five-gaited saddle horse to that mule. he got on that mule and took off down the road. I was on my way back home when he caught up with me and said, "Now, tell me the truth, Oscar, about this mule."
I said, "I told you the truth: it's a good family mule. When i said 'family' i meant it took the whole family to tan her." George wound up coming back with a few that looked like they's sick. He laid for trying to get that burning back but he never did.
And it's funny, because that seems so awkward--the transference of exploitation. But that' the truth, a trusting people withstands themselves, barters trickery and everyone's moral qualms dissipate into a blameless ether of white-lie selfishness. The charm of that gambler's vagrancy loses itself to the industrial quagmires that robbed people of their lives and homes and property, rather than just the daily jibe:
You had no safety precautions back in those days other than what you learned yourself. They didn't care if you didn't put any timbers up in the mines. They'd never come around and say, "You've got to do this or that about making yourself safe"; they left that up to you. They was interested in one thing and that's a ton of coal. The percentage [of miners killed per number of hours worked] back then was much greater than it is today. Now they've got it up to about a million hours per man killed. They didn't' keep statistics back then, but a little mine like Acme Hill [where] my father was mashed up one time, they worked about thirty men and I'd say averaged two men a year killed in the mine
And then there's these elaborate ornate anecdotes:
A big coal mine is similar to walking into a hotel. You're on a certain floor, you go down the main corridor for a ways and then you'd turn off on a wing. Well, that wing is what we call "sections" in the mines. Then when you turned little places off the section that's your "rooms." You're assigned to a room just like if you got to a hotel and register you're assigned to a room. you go in there and you go to sleep. The coal miner goes in there and he loaded him sixteen ton of coal in that room.
The temperature is about sixty-eight, seventy degrees year round. You have a moisture period in July, August, Septembe--what you call your "sweaty months"--same as you'd have in the basement of your home. It's just like being in a cave only the cave doesn't run so smooth like a seam of coal. That seam of coal is absolutely smooth. Mines in the big Elkhorn seam of coal usually run on a level grade; you don't go down or up much. I have walked from here to Haymond, three miles up the road, through the mines if it was raining, rather than walk outdoors. I enjoy working in the mines, myself. I never was afraid in there. It's not a place to take a vacation, or loaf--it's made to work in.
Or this one:
A friend of my uncle had gone into the county seat for more apple-tree spray, having run out about halfway through the orchard. He had to wait, so he walked uptown in his smelly, yellow, spray-splattered overalls and sat down on one of the long green benches which lined the sidewalks of the summer resort town. tow matron-type ladies from Florida occupied the other end of the bench. After he had been there for a few minutes, one of the ladies sniffed critically and remarked that mountain towns certainly had some dirty, undesirable people in them. The orchard man turned, looked at them carefully, and agreed with the lady's observation. he added, "one nice thing about it, tho'--come frost and they all go back home."
And that's the trick of Appalachia. You had a society of range competitors whose range was taken over by the fatcats who don't care about being clever, they just sidehill the hell out of the whole chacanery and the people are forgotten. The game is forgotten.
March 3, 2020
My dad's family is from Appalachia and one of his relatives had a section in this book so was really interesting to hear about my grandfather's upbringing. This book is composed of several personal accounts mainly on how the coal industry affected Appalachia and just the life of the people there when outside money came in. I really enjoyed reading this personal accounts. As a Californian, it opened my eyes to what it's like growing up in other parts of the country.
February 21, 2025
Shoutout my home
July 3, 2021
I took my time reading this wonderfully informative book about the history and culture of Appalachia as revealed in dozens of first hand accounts of what has happened over time in Appalachia from coal mining to church, from welfare in all its various and insidious forms to family structure and reasons for migration to other parts of the nation and all the consequences of that. I took my time, reading the insightful commentary followed by a first hand account from an Appalachian resident and the stories were so compelling. Loved this book!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews