SYLVA–Once, at one of the little-kid birthday parties we frequent these days, the pinata wouldn’t break. No matter how many anklebiters smacked it with the broomstick, and how hard they hit it, there it swung.
The father of honor, Tobias, was beside himself. “The one thing you buy from Wal-Mart that’s supposed to break …” he fumed.
Well, there will be no such letdown at little Araceli Anahi Oroz’s party on Sunday, we hear. She’ll be celebrating way up at Sol’s Creek Baptist Church, in Little Canada, and her mom says they won’t need any bootleg pinata at their place.
Candy aside, it’s not every day you go to a party nine miles up Canada, even if you live nine miles up Canada, and the invitation brought to mind a list of sayings, compiled by Loyal Jones. A folklorist and humorist, Jones, a North Carolina native, was the longtime director of the Appalachian Center at Berea College in Kentucky, and you see his writing here and there.
Once he collected a few aphorisms about living off the beaten path, and I came across it and tucked away. Here are some favorites:
- We live so far back in the sticks that the sun sets between our house and the road.
- And we use hoot owls for chickens.
- And we go towards town to hunt.
- And we have to grease the bushings three times to get to the store.
It’s hard to dip into Jones without being carried away by the current, though, because here is one of those rare, gentle, funny and altogether thoughtful people from whom its nearly impossible to turn away. His knowledge of southern mountain folkways is eclipsed only by his understanding of how the people of the mountains fit into our great national story.
While I was scratching around for the living-in-the-sticks list, I came across several more items of Jones’s that I’d put away.
One was a transcript of a speech he gave in Prestonburg, KY, a few years back, which was as concise a summary of the appalachian “war on poverty” as you’re likely to find.
Here are a few excerpts from that speech:
Down in Harlan County there was a man named Fiddler John Lewis. He was an old nineteenth century man. And he played the fiddle very well and he spoke in a very ancient English and so, a lot of people had played attention to him. Well, eventually, a professor at Berea who was interested in fiddle music went down there to interview him and he had him play and he played several tunes and he said, “Those are wonderful tunes. You play well, have good technique. Why don’t you play me your favorite tune.”
So he played one. And [the professor] said, “That’s really nice. What do you call it?” He said, “I call that ‘Napoleon crossing the Rockies.’”
Well, this was a professor, you see, who feel that they have to confront falsehood and establish truth whenever the occasion arises. So he said, “Well, you play well and you have good technique, but you know, Napoleon never crossed the Rockies…”
Clever John reflected and said, “Well, historians differ.”
Truer words were never spoken, of course, you know.
Another …
I had a real good friend. He was fighting the war on poverty … He had had a modest Dodge Dart, which, you know, was an appropriate poverty fighting vehicle. But he got hit by a coal truck, and he had, it was totaled, and he was almost totaled. But he got out, and got through, rehabilitated himself.
And he was getting’ ready to buy another car and a friend of mine told him, “You need to get a Buick. A used Buick is better than any Dodge Dart you’ll ever get,” he said. So he bought a Buick Electra – this was probably a 1962 Buick – and it had fins and it had chrome and it had … Electra … So anyway, he went over in eastern Kentucky, got lost going to a meeting in Leslie County and … he saw a fella standin’ on the side of the road and pulled up beside him – he’s over on that side, he reached over here and put down the window on that side – said, “Could you direct me to Lower Grassy?” This fella said, “Yeah, you go down here and turn left, you can’t miss it.”
They always say that, you know.
He said, “Thank you very much.” He put the window up and this fella, he wanted do a little talkin’. He pecked on the window and he put it back down again and he said, “What line of work are you in?” and Larry, not knowing what else to say, said, “I’m with the war on poverty.”
Fella stepped back, looked over that Buick, said, “It looks like you won.”
And one more:
Ron Thomas’ son, who has that wonderful band called The Dry Branch Fire Squad, said that when the war on poverty came his grandmother came down to the courthouse and offered to surrender.
Of course that show was in the summer of 1986, and they were warming up the crowd for 
Announcement of WCU’s selection for the trophy, awarded by the John Phillip Sousa Foundation, came Monday, May 18, from Paula Crider, chair of the Sudler Trophy Committee and director emeritus of the Longhorn Bands at the University of Texas. “The purpose of the Sudler Trophy is to identify and recognize collegiate marching bands of particular excellence that have made outstanding contributions to the American way of life,” Crider said “I think that Bob Buckner and the Western Carolina band are on the cutting edge of the 21st-century marching band. The high degree of both musical and marching excellence, combined with an extraordinarily and creative ability to entertain, make this band a most worthy recipient of the Sudler Trophy.”
