(EDITOR’S NOTE: Pete Seeger is a Harvard student who is studying folk lore and is seeking out and collecting the unpublished songs of the people. In looking for these songs he lives among the people who have preserved them and know them best. He is a good banjo picker and has been a welcome guest in many Southern homes.)
When I was in Kentucky last week a young man offered to give me a lift down the road to where I was going. When we came to the crossroads where he let me off, he asked me where I was staying that night as by that time it had grown dark.
“Well, I had rather thought of keeping on hitchhiking all night, to try to get to Knoxville tomorrow,” I replied.
“Why don’t you spend the night with me and my wife? We’d be glad to have you.”
That was a fine idea with me, so I climbed in again, and we turned off the main highway. “Hold on to your seat!” he said. “This is just a mountain road, and we live a mile and a half up the hollow.”
Man alive, I’m telling you, that was a ride. Road? After a hundred feet it ceased to be a road, and we splashed up the rocky bed of a creek. That Model A Ford could take it, though. Then we climbed to a trail along the edge of a regular cliff. Six inches to the left, and zoop! down we would have gone. Then it was back to the creek again, and finally we pulled up before a little cabin.
His young wife came out and kissed him. “I’ve been expecting you for a long while; supper’s been waiting,’ she said. (Ah, newlyweds, I made a mental observation.)
SOURCE The Southern News Almanac, November 14, 1940, 3.
And when we went inside, I could see it was different than the usual mountain cabin. The walls were freshly papered, there was a long shelf of books on one wall, and a good radio in one corner.
So here I’d like to introduce you to two of the swellest people in all Kentucky. Mr. and Mrs. Lan Creighton. They met each other while in college in Nashville, Tennessee. She was born right in this very hollow, and has come back to take on the job of district supervisor of schools (though she’s only 23) and to work right among her own people. Lan himself originally hails from Wisconsin, but he wants to settle down now and make the mountains his home. At the moment he is busy repairing the house, building furniture, and tending a fall garden.
If you’ve ever been in the Kentucky hill country you’ll know what I mean when I say the gardens are planted right on the sides of the hills. There’s no such thing as level ground—you can either look up or down, but no other way. I asked Lan how he managed to plant and cultivate on a 45 degree slope.
“It’s not so hard, once you get used to it,” he answered. “Local folks have lots of stories as to how it’s done. Like they have to shoot the seeds in with shotguns to make them stick to the sides of the mountains. Others use a special brand of mountain glue for this. Mules get so used to plowing on the mountainside that their left legs are longer than their right legs. Round here they’ve cultivated a variety of square pumpkin so it won’t roll down the hill before it’s ripe—then it becomes round like the usual kind. A man I know plants potatoes in rows running up and down hill, so in the fall all he needs to do is open up the bottom of the row and all the potatoes just naturally tumble out the end into his bin.
“Then there’s the story of the time my neighbor was walking along the road and he heard a great noise. RRRRRRRRRR- Bang! and right in front of him landed Uncle Johnny, cussing to beat the band. ‘Dagnabbit,’ said Uncle Johnny. ‘That’s the tenth time I’ve fallen out of my corn patch this morning.’”
Lan’s wife broke in, “And if you think the road you came up on was bad, you should see some of the ones I have to go on visiting these little mountain schools. Last week it was raining hard, and I tried to cross over this mountain to make a visit I’ve been putting off for weeks. I was right near the crest when my wheels started slipping to the edge of the road. Oh, and I looked down and there was the valley a thousand feet below me on my right! Well, I just never thought to jump out of the car, but I was determined that since I’d got that far I’d make it over the top. So I stepped on the gas, and my wheels spun round, and I just made it. When I was down on the other side I met a man. I just had to talk to someone. ‘Say, did you ever see anyone that died of fright?’ I asked him.
“He just stood there, wondering.
“‘Well, take a good look at me, mister, I’m scared to death.’”
“‘Lady,’ he said, ‘you hadn’t never ought to come over that mountain in this rain.’”
I asked Mrs. Creighton what she had to do when she visited a school.
“Most of the teachers, they’re just young girls,” she told me, “and mostly I do what I can to help them by giving them advice, and ideas, and demonstrating by talking over the class for an hour or so. Then usually when I go around I teach songs to the children.”
I asked what kind of songs she taught.
“Well, when I was in college, I saw lots of songbooks meant for children, but you know, they weren’t any of them the kind which our mountain kids know so I’ve just taken to teaching them old Scotch and English ballads, the kind we were all raised on round here.”