Overalls

Have I said “Thank you” for reading my blog lately?  Certainly whenever I talk personally to any one of you, I’m always thanking you for stopping by my website but please allow me to extend a word of thanks to all of you on this New Year’s Day.  I certainly hope we’ll have some good times blogging in 2015!

Tom Norris home from the fields wearing his familiar overalls

One of the blogs that I enjoy following   is AppalachianHistory.net and a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Tabler posted a story about “The Overall Club Movement of 1920.”  It was really educational for me (that always makes me feel like my web-time was well spent when I can learn something) because I was unaware of this movement.  I encourage you to click here and read his article but essentially these clubs were established to protest the high cost of clothing and their means of protest was vowing to wear overalls (the women would wear gingham) until the prices came down.

When I read about overpriced clothing, I couldn’t help but smile when and wonder what my great-grandparents would say about hundred-dollar-designer-jeans or the prices any of the star-sponsored sports apparel demand.  But the bigger thought it evoked was how often did men put on the standard, mountain apparel in the 1920’s and later? 

Only known picture of Bob Livesay

Unfortunately, I no longer have anyone to question who was making clothing choices in 1920 but I surely have pictures and stories to refer to.  The only surviving picture of my great-grandpa Bob Livesay shows him in overalls.  While he had a suit, saved for very special occasions like Decoration Day, he chose the overalls almost all of the time.  He even wore his overalls when he went into town.  That’s exceptional because all of the stories refer to town-trips as somewhat special due to their rarity and therefore deserving of one’s best clothes. 

The Overall Clubs chose their attire because the denim outfit was some of the cheapest available clothing and no doubt their popularity on the mountain reflects the poverty which we are well aware of.  While I sense no prejudice in the community toward those wearing overalls, there certainly was a sense that you should do better when you could – such as in going to town or to church events.  My grandfather, Berris Stepp, would gladly have worn his overalls all the time but Grandma refused to allow it.  She insisted he change when not working on the farm.  He worked at Oak Ridge for many years as a welder and while the company supplied coveralls for the workday, he wore twill trousers and sturdy shirts for the trip into the plant; in very cold weather, he would dawn his overalls on top of his other clothes and Grandma fussed every time about him going into work wearing overalls.

Most everyone had a single “good” suit of clothes – but we must remember that even our best outfit eventually becomes worn.  I may have mentioned before an oft repeated tale of Coy Key (but as Coy would have said, “I want to hear it again myself” so I’ll share it here).  He started walking to town and met Rufus Todd on the road.  Rufus had a little better suit of clothes so Coy talked him into swapping; so they found a spot along the creek and changed clothes then continued on their way, Coy on to town and Rufus toward his own destination.  That story just seems the embodiment of wearing the best you can – even if it isn’t your own.

Because most families shared a common standard of living, people rarely ridiculed another man’s poverty.  However, when a visiting preacher showed up at church wearing overalls the women in the congregation – always more vocal than their menfolk – were astonished.  ‘Surely he could do better than that’ they reasoned.  And it was the worst disgrace of all if you were laid to rest in overalls.  

Today we have a lot more choices and much better means to dress ourselves yet overalls are still around, and maybe they always will be.  In fact, it isn’t uncommon to see men or even women out and about in the familiar denim garb.  I wonder if those men of our community knew of this move and sure wish I could hear their thoughts about it.  Perhaps the next time you buckle a gallus or see an old man hook a finger over his bib, you’ll remember those men who took to wearing overalls in protest in the 1920’s. 

Merry Christmas

Christmas is an incredible time of year – a time when kindness blossoms toward strangers as well as loved ones.  We deck the halls with green boughs and glittering tinsel that brings a smile on dark winter days.  And we like to believe that it is a celebration that began over two thousand years ago when our Savior was born.

I have researched American Christmas traditions in the past and was surprised to discover that instead of the quiet, reflective holiday I expected to learn about, the holiday more closely resembled the Fourth of July in nineteenth century America, particularly in northern cities.  Where available, fireworks were set and in their absence firearms were used in the apparent goal of creating as much noise and chaos as possible.  In fact, a hundred years before in Colonial Virginia, Christmas was similarly celebrated. 

The Colonial Virginians sought to celebrate Christmas as they believed English lords were doing, feasting, hunting and gambling.  However, in that era, New Englanders were prohibited from celebrating the holiday.  This difference reflects the deep cultural differences of early Americans since New England was populated by Puritans seeking religious freedom while early Virginians were entrepreneurs looking for riches. 

Our modern sentiment would expect the Puritans would be more likely to celebrate Christ’s birth. However, they believed that The Bible was silent about Christmas festivities and therefore they too chose silence on the issue.  While the Puritan’s European persecutors did celebrate Christmas with some degree of the pageantry we enjoy today, their early Christian ancestors probably did not.  Church history indicates that the celebrations didn’t really begin until the fourth century and they have been surrounded with controversy ever since. 

Certainly, that day in Bethlehem was heralded by a heavenly chorus however, after Christ’s crucifixion, it was the resurrection which those first believers celebrated.  They were looking forward to the second coming of Christ and spent little time remembering his humble birth. 

Christmas was declared a national holiday in America in 1870.  Those years following the Civil War saw many cultural changes in America and our holiday traditions began to really solidify.  So, the Christmas pudding and mincemeat pies of the old world were quickly replaced with sweet potato pie in the South and clam soup in the North.  It took a few years for marketers to build the industry of Christmas, but we were enjoying decorations from the beginning – no doubt some of those practices came with the earliest immigrants.  The Kansas Home Cookbook detailed the Christmas dinnertable’s adornments as early as 1886 and I would be hard-pressed to lay the table they describe. 

Many of us enjoy a simpler Christmas, decorating with homemade ornaments and using sentimental pieces to remind us of past holidays and family members no longer with us.  But when you long for the simpler, old fashioned Christmases of the past, try to clarify just how far past you wish you could go.

Regardless of how you celebrate, today we must remember Jesus Christ’s birth; let us do it in a beauty of spirit that reflects the gift He gave us this day and in fact, the gift we receive with each new day. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Herman Stepp Heads West

My family recently lost a beloved cousin, Oliver C. Stepp. While his roots were sunk deep in the mountain, he lived his adult life in Westminster, California and thinking about him made me want to share some of his early experience with you. 

When Oliver was twelve years old, he left Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau with his parents, Herman and Delilah Stepp along with Herman’s sister, Opal and her husband Eugene Welch.  They were headed West in hopes the more arid climate would help Herman’s health.  Eugene and Opal accompanied them hoping to find work. 

Herman had been diagnosed with Tuberculosis and he certainly suffered from breathing problems.  However, he did not allow his illness to prevent him working in the Wilder coal mines while living in Martha Washington.  Now, I’ve mentioned here before how many men from the Campground, Martha Washington and Clarkrange communities  walked to Wilder each day to put in a hard day’s work and we’ve established that while the distance wasn’t insurmountable, the mountain they had to climb certainly seems impossible to us today.  Years after Herman’s death, his brother Edsil would remark that he may have been sickly but he didn’t let it stop him from walking across that mountain and working in the mines. 

Herman, Delilah and Oliver Stepp
Taken just before they left Tennessee

In fact, Herman was prospering while living in Tennessee.  He was one of the first in the community to own a car, as well as a radio.  This prosperity reveals just how hard he worked, for the miners were paid by the ton – the more coal a man pulled out of the earth, the higher wage he received. 

But prosperity cannot be measured by wage and property and in 1940 tragedy struck the Stepp family and undoubtedly sealed the decision to leave the mountain.  Herman and Delilah had two children at that time, Oliver and Anna Rhea.  Anna Rhea took sick with a somewhat mysterious ailment that was never really diagnosed.  I believe they were able to get her some medical care at Pleasant Hill’s hospital but she eventually passed away at age nine years. 

Herman and Delilah are remembered as excellent neighbors and Delilah’s heartbreak touched the entire neighborhood.  Studying history is sometimes a rather sterile process – it’s seems easy to recount dates and facts without empathy but my heart breaks anew as I imagine what that little family went through.  Death is a part of all our lives and certainly during the early twentieth century, especially in rural America, was almost accustomed to losing infants.  However, the loss of a child you have loved and cared for nearly ten years seems almost unbearable.  We have always believed the decision to move west was driven solely by Herman’s declining health, yet considering their loss I can’t help but believe that a fresh start in a new environment was a welcome prospect.

So the little band set out seemingly with only the wide West as their destination.  The first day they barely made it to Memphis and they quickly lost track of the number of time they had to stop and repair flat tires.   Eventually, they made it as far as Oklahoma when Herman declared they would stop for a while.  Four years later, Herman’s family resumed their westward journey while his sister Opal and husband decided to return to Tennessee.

The family made it to California, found work and began building their life there.  Unfortunately, the arid climate had not improved Herman’s health as they hoped and just four more years passed before he passed away.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I am continually struck by the difference in medical care today and yesterday and this is another example.  While Herman was hospitalized in his last days, he never once had a positive test for Tuberculosis.  His wife would always believe he died from Black Lung, contracted from his years in the coal mines where he started working when he was just sixteen.

We began with Oliver’s life with Herman’s passing the young man’s life was forever changed.  Prepared to enter college after high school, Oliver instead found himself the head of his family caring for his widowed mother and infant brother.  This began a lifetime of service which Oliver rendered with neither bitterness nor complaint.  He would be drafted to the Army and serve in Germany while sending his entire check home to care for them.  Even after marrying and fathering two children of his own, Oliver continued to selflessly care for friends and neighbors.

I am ashamed that I don’t better know these West Coast cousins and in talking with them there is no hint of our Southern-Appalachian accent but there is a definite sense of family.  Whether they realize it or not (and I sure hope they aren’t insulted by the observation), Oliver imbued his daughters with many values he learned on our mountain.  As I listened to his oldest daughter talk about her daddy, I kept hearing a description of his grandmother or his aunts and uncles who I have been very blessed to know.  I suppose you can take the boy out of Tennessee but you can’t take Tennessee out of the boy.

Finding our Way

Things move a little slower in the country – and we like it that way.  But, as we discussed a few weeks ago, change happens everywhere.  We know our way around the mountain roads as well as we know our own houses; even the wilderness paths are no stranger to many of us.  We know, and we’ve discussed here, how communities long since abandoned are still visible if you look carefully.  And yet our roads do change, and have changed many times through the years and I find it a fascinating challenge to search out routes of travel at different points in time.  And for that challenge, I have been on a quest for antique maps.  Knowing of my hunt, my brother-in-law recently came across an 1850 map of Tennessee and he was good enough to share it with me – thank you very much Derek.  Like so much historical research, this map leaves me with more questions than answers. 

I could write pages about the differences in this map and a modern representation of the mountain and could include a long list of questions that arise from studying those differences.   But what most impresses me is our shifting perspectives and focus.

This map has no road names.  Of course there is no interstate system and it often appears there’s no good way to get from one major location to another.  Ah, but perhaps what was major has changed; perhaps where one would most need to go was very different in the mid-nineteenth century.  No railroad would cross The Plateau until 1890 so in 1850 to ride from Nashville to Knoxville, you would have to travel to Chattanooga, with a significant jaunt through Northern Alabama, and then ride northeast up to Knoxville (and I think you had to change trains a couple of times on that trip too).  The roads seem to connect one little town to another with no idea of traveling great distances. 

Every little creek and branch seems to be labeled on this map.  That seems a little funny to us since there aren’t lots of signs along the water.  I would imagine the nearest source of fresh water was a far better landmark than a road and therefore of greater importance to the map maker.  Have you noticed that our modern maps, so criss-crossed with interstates, streets and lanes no longer label the small bodies of water?  I even checked the highly detailed aviation charts and found only names of major waterways.  Today we can pull up a satellite image of our community and zoom down to identify individual houses and yet we would never know the name of the creek running nearby.

Cities have long been created or broken by the location of a railway or interstate highway and as I study this map I can’t seem to tear myself away from the names of towns  that were significant enough to be labeled and those that are missing.  The intersection of the north-south route from Crossville into Fentress County with the east-west route from Monticello (which is the only town noted in Putnam County) is called Long View.  Now, that’s not a community I’ve even heard of and it appears to have been a good bit west of present day Clarkrange.  I found a Fentress-only map from 1888 online that does show Clarkrange, but no north-south road through it.  Thirty-eight years later, Long View is not mentioned, although Fentress County then showed several more communities including Boatland, Orchard Grove, Armathwaite, Barren Springs and Tinch. 

As I said before, there are just more questions than answers and so my quest continues.  Some of these pathways predate the European settlers so I know that until modern road-building entered the picture those routes would not have changed much for centuries.  I still want to know the names those roads carried over the years.  And now I want to know what happened to these lost towns!

Please take a look at the close up pictures I’m including here and let me know what you see.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a few weeks ago we talked here about Godey’s Lady’s Book and the influence that periodical had on nineteenth century women.  The magazine’s editor for forty years was a lady named Sarah Josepha Hale.  Our national holiday for giving thanks can largely be attributed to her and therefore I thought we should mention her today.

Contrary to what every American schoolchild learns, the turkey-laden tradition of Thanksgiving Day did not really start with the pilgrims and the American Indians.  Sure, they broke bread together and thanked God for the provision He’d given them in their new land and a bountiful harvest.  Given the difficulty of life in the seventeenth century and the religious persecution that drove those first settlers to our shores, it’s ironic that we celebrate just that one day of giving thanks because I’m betting they were breathing prayers of appreciation for every breath, sip of clear water or morsel of food.   Still we have some documentation of a particular feast in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts and that is traditionally the first Thanksgiving Day.

If we fast forward through history two hundred years, we find no national holiday for Thanksgiving, nor do we find Thanksgiving Day anywhere near universally celebrated.   Where it was remembered, it was largely a northern or New England holiday and was virtually unknown in the South. 

Enter one persistent lady:  Sarah Hale.  Sarah believed that The United States should be universally celebrating Thanksgiving Day and she expressed that belief to the President many times.  In fact, she expressed it to five different presidents – remember her tenure as Editor of The Lady’s Book far outreached any presidential administration – and finally a well-timed letter to Abraham Lincoln yielded the results she sought. 

As I read about Sarah Hale, it’s difficult for me to compare her to any of our modern female types.  She is not a women’s lib-er for she advocates women ruling and influencing the world from the home and through the family.  Yet, she was an early proponent of higher education for women and surely one of the very first female-American executives. 

Married at twenty-five, she was a widow by the age of thirty-four.  She was left with five small children.  Despite parents who believed in equal education for both their sons and daughters, Sarah had received no formal education learning only at the feet of her mother and brother.  As a widow seeking to feed her household, she began writing and her husband’s Masonic brethren helped her to get her first book of poems published followed by a novel expressing her views on slavery.  That novel brought her to the attention of magazine publishers and her editing career sprang from there. 

In the third year of a civil war which was supposed to end quickly – the first Confederate volunteers were asked to pledge just ninety days of service -  President Lincoln finally began to see the tide turning in his favor.  It was at this time that he received Mrs. Hale’s letter and believing the nation should be truly thankful at that time, chose to issue the proclamation she requested. 

You can read Lincoln’s proclamation here and I encourage you to do so as we enjoy a day of feasting and family-fellowship; maybe we should think about the nature of the holiday he suggested.  He attributed the peace and bounty of our nation to, “the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy”.  While he speaks of the Civil War when he urges the people, “while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers,” this is surely good advice for our present day as well as, “fervently [imploring] the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation”

I find Sarah Hale’s story absolutely inspiring.  In a day when work for women was largely menial and unrewarding, when a woman’s voice was scarcely heard outside her home and her sphere of influence was confined to the walls of her own house Sarah Hale stepped out and provided for her family while encouraging women across the country and even around the world.  While hers is not a name taught and remembered along with Lincoln or Lee, she left a legacy that we will all enjoy today.

On this Thanksgiving Day I enjoy more blessings than I can even count and I include you precious readers among them.  You have been so kind in continually returning to visit TennesseeMountainStories.com and giving me feedback on the articles and stories here.  Thank you and God bless you!