This is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting [”Sergeant Peppers” inspired Appalachian music] I realized I was a West Virginian when I went to Orlando one time when I was little and my little brother Jesse and I were in the pool.

And this little girl from Rhode Island told us that she asked us if we were on The Beverly Hillbillies.

[Friend] [Laughs] Your making that up!

No, I swear to God and I, at first didn't really understand that she was making fun of us.

And then I got so mad and I just wanted to beat her up you know, I was going to go off on her.

[Friend] That would have been cool.

She's like, "Are you Elly May?"

Hillbilly, hillbillies.

Hillbillies, Hillbillies, Hillbillies, Hillbillies Poor white trash Dag nab it.

This doesn't strike me as a way of life much worth preserving.

I think you've all had enough fun at the expense of my family.

So if you don't mind, you better leave, [CROWD COMPLAINS] You heard what I said, now git, gall darn it!

[Regae] 🎵 Country roads, take me home 🎵 🎵 To the place, I belong 🎵 🎵 My West Virginia, Mountain mama 🎵 🎵 Take me home, Take me home 🎵 [CROWD ROARS] [RUMBLE OF THUNDER] [J. W. Williamson] I teach Elderhostel class and I get groups of senior citizens from all over the country.

And the first day in those classes, invariably, I don't have to ask.

They tell me.

They tell me everything they know, and they know it's the truth because they've seen it all their lives.

Mountain people are isolated, they're uneducated, and they just start going down the list of stereotypes.

And every year I'm saying to myself, we never make any progress in talking people out of this stuff.

[HAUNTING CELLO AND PIANO MUSIC] [Silent Movie from 1922] Well, what are we going to do about it?

About what?

About Chris?

What do you suggest?

I don't know.

I mean, we can't just let him be shipped off to West Virginia.

Besides, didn’t you seek “Delliverance,” squeal like a pig?

I mean, if that's what they do on camping trips, think what life is going to be like for Chris in the big house.

Ehhhhh Ehhhhhh [MENACING LAUGHTER] [CLAWHAMMER BANJO - DWIGHT DILLER] [David Morris] In West Virginia we come from a pioneer culture the people that moved in and settled in this state Lived a brutally hard life, and it was a major struggle just to keep a roof over your head and to keep food on the table and clothing on your back.

But those people, they set a standard that continues to this day of toughness, of self-reliance, of taking care of your own.

I've taken care of family, family, closeness.

I love of a good time of music and song and story and dance and that echo we still live in that echo.

One of the interesting dimensions of studying Appalachia is that anybody who looks at a focused community or an event or a small place, are they come away convinced whether they're a historian, anthropologist, sociologist they come away convinced that they really are in the presence of a distinctive alternative version of American culture.

But if you're trying to look at the region whole, it's just you don't know where to draw the boundaries.

And there have been several people who have taken that approach.

Try to see the region whole and have come away convinced that Appalachia is just a figment of the American sociological or anthropological or historical imagination.

[FUNKY MUSIC] The term mountain culture is thrown around loosely.

What is most problematic are people who want to talk about ”A mountain culture” “THE” in fact “THE Mountain Culture” and assign it certain traits, characteristics that allow them to pigeonhole everybody and sort of explain everything.

It's not something like that.

There's this list of things, “a mountaineer is this,” and “a mountaineer is not that” People just aren't like that.

You know, human beings aren't like that.

They don't fit in boxes like that and say oh, mountain people are independent and feisty and rugged and all mountain men are this way and all mountain women are that way.

Actually, I think one of the characteristics I would say is one of the things I like about it is that there is a variety.

And I think that there's a great scope of ways you can be and still be comfortable here.

What defines you, I think, as a mountain person in my experience, is not that you have a certain personality trait that fits into that category, but that if you belong here, if you grew up here, if you were born and raised here, you belong, no matter what you're like.

I'm glad I was born in West Virginia.

I wouldn't want to be born in Russia or England or Germany or somewhere else because West Virginians, I think, has a big advantage Some places you had to live by rote you had to live the way they think you ought to live.

But West Virginian’s not that way.

[”West Virginia Hills“ played by Clyde Case] My father and mother was mountaineers.

And they was raised, just like I was, they was raised to do for themselves ”Mountaineers are always free” It means not only of freedom of expression but even a physical freedom a sense of freedom.

I love the mountains.

I wouldn't be satisfied anywhere else.

And I love I love the earth.

I love the ground.

Now a lot of people loves it because it's worth money.

But I don’t... never considered the money nor what it will grow or nothing like that I just love it.

I love the contours of it and love to walk over it.

[Irene McKinney] The mountains themselves are extremely powerful presences here.

Just the physical mountains are extremely powerful presence.

And so in the term “mountaineer” you're aligning yourself with that ancient power in the land itself which is neither good nor bad It's just a power.

these are mature, evolved mountains, whereas the Rocky Mountains are, I suppose, adolescence or early adolescence, and these are rounded These have evolved into the shape that they have now for 70 million years.

And I don't think you can live on this land without feeling that presence.

[ROLLING THUNDER] It give you a certain amount of feeling of independence.

You can live off the land society would deteriorate I could always go to the woods and make a living, just like the Indians did.

There's a feeling of security here in the mountains.

The mountains protect you from the tornadoes and the weather.

I don't feel good when I get in flat places.

I don't like that.

You know, I, I like these hills around me.

It makes me feel maybe it's a security blanket.

I feel hugged, I feel enfolded.

And I went out to Iowa and I could see what somebody was doing a mile away, and they could see what I was doing, you know, it just it made me feel small and I felt a conservatism, you know, a sameness creeping in on me.

[Music: “Mountain Dew” homemade Banjo played by Charlie Blevins 🎵 Down the road here from me 🎵 🎵 there's an old holler tree 🎵 🎵 Where you lay down a dollar or two 🎵 🎵 Oh you walk round the bend 🎵 🎵 And you come back again 🎵 🎵 With a jug full of that good old mountain dew 🎵 🎵Ho!

call it that good ole mountain dew🎵 🎵Lord them that refuse it are few🎵 🎵 I'll hush up my mug if you'll fill up my jug 🎵 🎵 With that good ole mountain dew 🎵 🎵 The preacher rode by with his head hasted high 🎵 🎵 Said his wife had been down with the flu 🎵 🎵 He!

thought that I o'rt to sell him a quart 🎵 🎵 Of my good ole Mountain Dew 🎵 🎵 Ho!

they call it that good ole 🎵 🎵 Mountain dew, dew, dew 🎵 🎵 Lord them that refuse it are few 🎵 [Everyone singing] 🎵 I'll hush up my mug if you'll fill up my jug 🎵 🎵 With that good ole mountain dew 🎵 They didn’t want all these rules and regulations on their back They didn’t want to be ruled by these here people telling you have to do this and you had to do that and we was independent we knew what we wanted to do there What I mean now, we obeyed the laws there.

As long as they were watching us there.

And, but we went ahead and done our own thing and that was our independence.

We didn’t want nobody interrferring with, nobody fooling with our affairs or nobody messing into our business there.

But now if a stranger comes through or something, we'd help him out, too.

But we didn't want him on our back and telling us what we had to do.

That's what we had to do and the way we had to live.

We knowed how to live.

And that there is your independence.

And if we take that away from you, that’s all you got is your indepencence that self-sufficient and every man got a brain up there He knows how to use that brain there he can make it.

‘Cause now you take an old mountaineer, who’s self-sufficient, He can make it on a rock You turn him loose He'll make it, he'll come out with something there.

[CLAWHAMMER BANJO] [J. W. Williamson] The pioneer, the frontiersman, the leatherstalking, the coonskin capper, and the modern mountaineer they all share the same essential ingredient They've all been to where the ground is uneven in more ways than one.

Where city people fear to tread.

They have been there.

They live there.

They partake of that.

So they all share that.

The Mountaineer in our national imagination is a kind of pioneer.

We don't always celebrate that in his image, but that's part of his image.

Another part of his image is the clown, the fool who doesn't understand city ways.

What are you folks doing here?

I thought you went back home to West Virginia.

We sold all.

Our earthly possessions.

Just to start this business, your honor.

The pickup truck, All the livestock.

Granny even wanted us to sell their wheelchair.

but Bob wouldn't hear of it.

Well, isn’t really a wheelchair.

It isn't?

No, sir.

We strapped our Barcalounger to a furniture dolly.

Let's just hang them.

Put them out of their misery.

[J. W. Williamson] In 1934, sort of at the height of the Depression.

that that one year there appeared three different cartoon hillbillies almost simultaneously.

Al Capp started in 1934 “Li’l Abner.” “Snuffy Smith” was created the same year as a character in the “Barney Google” cartoon strip.

And Paul Webb began drawing his “Mountain Boys” in Esquire magazine.

This stuff began to appear, I think, in direct response to a real threat in this country that the entire economic shebang was about to collapse in on itself and we were all - All Americans were going to end up back in rural subsistence hell.

You know That we were all going to be back scratching the soil and trying to eat [rock instrumental] It's deeply ingrained in our mainstream culture to make the urban the standard and the rural the substandard.

The hillbilly as a character is there to inspire vastly different emotions, on the one hand humor, laughter, but on the other horror, when he's in “Deliverance” he's no laughing matter.

When there's a cartoon, we can laugh him off [rock instrumental continues] [WOOD FALLS [MARCHING BAND DRUMMING] [BANG BANG] [BANG] [LOUD LAUGHTER] [Man] Pee on him!

[LOUD LAUGHTER] [BANG] [wheels shut down] Yea!

[APPLAUSE] [OLD-TIME MOUNTAIN FIDDLING] [J. W. Williamson] The fear of mountains is deeply ingrained in us.

The Greeks thought of mountains as chaotic places beyond the control of logic and order.

The ancient Hebrews associated mountains with pagan worship, with being outside the grace of God and mountains Mountains have just regularly reappeared in our European thought As breeders of evil.

[SLIDE WHISTLE] 🎵 Let's get out the shooting iron and start right in a-firin’ 🎵 🎵 We’ll wake the critter up 🎵 [BANG BANG] 🎵 Draw a bead right on his punk it's the same as pluggin' skunk 🎵 🎵 Them McCoys is a mangy ignorant pup.

🎵 [announcer] Do you need money?

Borrow on your old shotgun, paid for or not.

[John Williams] The stereotype that mountain people are violent is a very deeply seated one And it has persisted in the face of all sorts of evidence that that is not the case.

There have been violent episodes throughout Appalachian history, beginning with the Whiskey Rebellion, the guerrilla warfare of the Civil War, the incidents that metropolitan newspapers called “feuds” [BANG] It's either them or a stranger.

The Hatfields and the Slacks have been feuding aye on 80 years, and they got us out ten to four.

Nine to four.

The metropolitan newspapers, particularly those that were supporting economic development in the Appalachian region - industrial development, they they took these out of context and blew them up as excuses for, in effect, expropriating mountain people.

And as of all along I think was the Baltimore Sun set in 1912.

These people need to be educated or exterminated.

It was a justification for adopting policies that worked to the disadvantage of the people who lived in the region and worked to the advantage of the people who were promoting industrialization there.

Can I shoot em, Pa?

They look like revenuers to me.

Wait a minute we aren’t revinuers, Can't you see who were are?

We're hilll-ba-ba-ba-billies what in tarnation’s a “hillbilly.” I mean, “if they're just hillbillies, then we can pay them minimum wage and not feel bad about it.” “If they're just hillbillies, we can take their timber and cart it out of here.

And not feel guilty about it.” “If they're if they're just hillbillies, we can strip mine their hillside and let the overburden slide down into their houses.

Hey, they're just hillbillies.

You know?” So the workings of stereotype is a very serious thing.

The fear that I find among my friends, particularly, I find this in New York, but you find it elsewhere to people who are you know, scared to visit West Virginia.

You know, you think of somebody who lives in Manhattan, is scared to come down here.

You think, well, that's that's the silliest thing I've ever heard.

This is terra incognita for them.

This is just a great blank spot on the map of the United States as far as they know, uninhabited, as far as they know, utterly uncivilized, dangerous, exotic, dreamlike.

Who can tell what we might do down here?

Who can tell what we're actually like when we're on our home turf?

I'm quaint when I'm in New York City, but God knows what I'm like when I'm around my own people in my own hardware.

[BANG] Southern Appalachia I've heard described as the id of the Northeast.

You know, that's the id of the intellectual Northeast They can imagine any horrific thing that they would never engage in in their sanitized lives.

They can easily imagine happening here in West Virginia.

“Incest means nothing to those animals who live in the mountains.” “Casual violence in bars?

No problem.” This is where, as they see it, their dark fantasies live.

[MUSIC: Relaxed flatpicking & banjo [J. W. Williamson] Anyone who lives beyond the boundary is suspect.

Because to live beyond the boundary, beyond the walls, is not only to be in nature, but it's to be of nature.

It means being savage yourself if you're living out there.

Hence Daniel Boone wears coonskin cap on his head as a symbol that he's not only in nature, but he's mastered it.

He wears the slaughtered animal on his head as a symbol of being a part of that.

We're really conflicted in our minds about who this character is and how we deal with him.

He's fine as long as he's out there on the frontier.

The problem is, is when he comes back into our walls, into our cities, back into our parlors, what do we do with him then?

Because he brings back with him this knowledge of nature that's real difficult for us to deal with.

[Irene McKinney] I think the strongest part about my growing up here and the part that was most valuable to me and I think it is to any human being if they have a chance to live that way, And that is simply being in day to day contact with everything that goes on in the natural world.

That sense of paying attention to the cycles in nature.

You know, you got to when something woke you up.

When the sun came up or the rooster crowed, that felt natural to me and that felt right and it still does.

everything had to do with cycles and seasons the cycle of day and night, the cycle of animal life, all those things make you very, very aware that human life is just a part, just as important as, but just a part of all these larger natural cycles.

[HUNTING CALL] [Bill Mullenix whispering] These fellas got all kinds of rifles and scopes, still can’t kill these cockeyed groundhogs.

That’s pathetic.

[HUNTING CALL] That’s a turkey.

Do you what a turkey is?

I’ve called many a turkey are like that.

Sometimes they go the other way too.

[Laughs] [BANG - THEN ECHO] A lot of mountain men couldn't stand society they wanted to get in the “high lonesome,” break all contact with any of the world, down here below.

It's like us today.

Some of us can’t stand I can’t stand society some of the society we've got today.

but I have to live with them and I try to accept them.

When you're out like this why you’re really close to Heavenly Father a little more You get on top of one of these mountains, and if the wind was blowing from the west You turn around, look to the south and it’ll blow in this ear and blow the garbage out this other ear.

It helps to get on a mountain.

You know, it speaks to that in the scripture, about people going through valleys, hardships, toils, troubles, that's called the valley, And you get out of all that trouble and then you climb you get on top of the mountain.

[MOUNTAIN WIND] [Pinckney Benedict] Loneliness, I think, is mystical Maybe loneliness is the wrong word.

We don't get to be ‘alone’ very much, although I think perhaps we are lonelier than at any other time in history.

In West Virginia.

You can be alone if you want to.

You can go someplace where nobody's going to bother you, where nobody's going to look you up.

gives you time to think.

And there's nothing better than that.

And it's amazing how long you can go, or at least how long I can go.

without thinking, without realizing that I've gone without doing it until I am able to be alone, until I am able to get away and to realize how much I have missed the clattering of my own mental processes.

[CRICKETS] [Irene McKinney] A friend of mine who grew up in New York City came out here, and I think she was panicked by the silence and the darkness.

You know, here at night, I don't really have any I've got a couple little outside lights on the outside of the house, but I walk in and out of that road in total darkness.

And I would be taking her around and she would get the shivers.

She would get the shakes.

It may have been the first time she'd ever been in total darkness, because when you turn the lights off in the city that just lowers light level in your room or your apartment.

People who haven't been out in a place like this don't even know it still exists.

They aren't conscious that it can be that dark and that unmarked.

And it's a real primal fear that I’m sure all human beings feel, fear of darkness.

The idea that you really can't identify what's out there.

And at that point you realize how small you are.

[BOYS’ CHOIR VOCAL WITH NO WORDS] 🎵 I hear the voice in the morning 🎵 🎵 when she calls me, 🎵 🎵radio remindes me of my home, far away🎵 🎵Drivin' down the road, I get a feelin'🎵 🎵That I should've been home yesterday,🎵 🎵 Yesterday, 🎵 🎵 Country roads 🎵 🎵 Take me home 🎵 🎵 To the place I belong 🎵 🎵 West Virginia, Mountain Mama 🎵 🎵 Take me home, 🎵 🎵 Country roads 🎵 [Bluegrass] 🎵 Howdy neighbor, Come in and sit right down 🎵 🎵Come on and tell us all the news how are things are in town.🎵 🎵We're so glad to see you been a wonderin' how you've been🎵 🎵 Everybody's feelin' fine so let the fun begin 🎵 All right, hot dog.

And a good morning to you from Garland Cheryl on “Country Plus” A little bluegrass a little gospel, a little funny.

And we got a little funny coming right Cheryl Ann?

Back with these Croon, Coon Creek Girls Coon Creek Coon Creek... that's right.

You can tell she's from Georgia, can't you boys, huh?

You don't have to be around her all day to find out She come from Georgia.

[with Georgia accent]“Right, night, there” [Cheryl] Coon... Creek...

Girls Right, and they’re going to sing, “Ain't going to work tomorrow.” [banjo starts} And I ain't sure about today.

I'm a full fledged hillbilly.

I've been up here...

I know, but you're going to get rid of that drawl.

I mean, you're looking like a hillbilly.

and acting like one, but you just ain't talking like one.

I thought I was doing good.

There's a way of not letting a label make you flee to turn around and run into the label.

Take the label back.

A sort of in-your-face response.

You think we're hillbillies?

We'll show you hillbillies.

I understand that.

I understand the psychology of turning that around and embracing the very thing you've been running from.

There's power in it.

[raw rockabillly guitar] [laughing] In the honor of Sadie Hawkins who couldn’t get no man no other way.

but to chase him down A day set apart for any woman who doesn't have a man if she can catch him in that day He is hers.

[Commercial] Have you got what it takes to be a mountain man.

GO!!!

[yelling and screaming] [sings] 🎵 Haaa Hooo 🎵 [yelling and screaming] [rip] I got his shirt!

[Mud sloshing] [yelling and screaming] [splat!]

[yelling!]

Well yeah, I’m a little rough, but about 20 girls on you you can’t do nothin’.

These are Man girls, bud.

You know what you look like to me with your good bag and cheap shoes?

You look like a rube.

A well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.

Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, But you're not more than one generation from poor white trash are you, Agent Starling?

And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed?

Pure West Virginia.

What’s your father, dear?

Was he coal miner?

Does he stink of the land?

You know how quickly the boys found you.

All those tedious, sticky, fumblings in the backseats of cars.

While you could only dream of getting out.

Getting anywhere.

Getting all the way to the F B I.

You see a lot doctor.

People are taught in the schools.

If you're going to succeed, you have to get this out of your system.

The more you learn to be like people from the outside, the bigger success you're going to be.

And then I think when you go to college, I know when I went to Marshall one time to take some courses, they actually had a course over there to teach people from Logan County how to lose their accents.

And the people from Logan County would go into that.

And it was amazing to me that no one ever, you know, Think what a degrading experience that would be to go in and to learn, I don't think they have that course anymore, [sound man’s voice] Yeah, I took it at WVU You took it?

When I first became an English teacher for about the first three years I was very conscientious and I thought if I am an English teacher in a college or university I ought to lose my accent.

And I worked very hard to lose it and to sound like middle America.

And I think probably on campus and in the classroom, I succeeded.

But just gradually this made me very angry.

I had a kind of angry reaction.

And then finally I got to a place.

At some point I thought, this is the way I sound.

This is a voice.

I hear in my head.

The people I grew up around sound like this.

And most of all, when I write, I hear an accent.

And if I don't, I can't tell the truth.

I tell somebody else's truth.

I don't know who you are, but thanks.

You're not human.

There's this episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show.

Oh.

yeah.

Oh, no, don't mention it.

But that's exactly what you're gonna do.

It’s them, the hillbilly heisters!

This won’t hurt a bit ladies.

Say cheese.

I'd rather say, “Hayseed.” A mother depicted as the leader of a bank robber gang consisting of her sons in an old pickup truck, their teeth knocked out, and talking in a [bad stereotyped accent] “Well, Hey Ma” I’ll be ding dong.

It was shotguns, pickup trucks, rob the banks, and get chased every misconception that you could have.

Yahoo.

Children all over the mountains saw that and children all over the country saw that [bodies landing in dumpster] Good riddance to bad rubes.

If anybody else had had been depicted in the way these people were shown, the hullabaloo wouldn't have died down yet I mean, there would have been people in the streets over it.

But yet, they they feel free to to show mountain people in this way.

You ain’t takin’ in my truck.

You ain't?

You a f___ing hillbilly, aren’t you?

If God made it, I've seen it.

But you f___ing “hillbillies” you're the dumbist I ever met.

[spit] You go to hell.

[Christine Morris] I don't want to be called a hillbillie either.

And I'm not a hillbilly.

To me, that word denotes the same meaning as any racial slur that that that occurs.

And I really.

I really think that West Virginians themselves who consider themselves hillbilly are even using the word “hillbilly” must think about that in this time.

I know that growing up outside of this state, I did not tell people that I was from West Virginia because I had heard so many negative remarks.

The word hillbilly and and ALL the meanings that come with that, that the only person when I was in high school that knew that I was from West Virginia was another West Virginian.

And we held that secret very close to each other.

[sound of soft clogging with banjo] I was embarrassed about my own family.

I was embarrassed over the family gatherings that I wish in the world that they would have today.

That happened every Saturday night when they played their music and shared their songs and people danced and had fun [sound of clogging with banjo] and I think now, you know, at the age of 30, I finally got to the place that I could stand in front of people and in front of my family who would come to watch me dance, who had not yet admit to the fact that they were West Virginians.

I could stand up and tell that I was, and that I was proud of it!

[sound of clogging with banjo] People who live in towns are usually no more than one or two generations back rural, and they either have connection with that through relatives or through family stories or simply the knowledge that it was a very short time since they were part of that cycle of living in the country and everything that that entails.

Some people try to hold on to that in some way, but upwardly mobile people, I think, maybe deliberately try to let go of that.

My idea is that you can't let go of it.

You know, it's there.

You're still very much pressed up against the countryside.

If you live in West Virginia at all and you take a drive anywhere and you're going to go through past streams and forests and fields of cows and so on, and they aren't merely decorative when you live with them that way.

You do soak that up in some way.

And also, you know, in the back of your mind that your grandfather or your great grandfather lived that way.

So it affects probably everybody in this state and is a part of their knowledge, is a part of their self-knowledge.

[joyful clawhammer] [giggling] [sound of gushing water] Go!

[chain saws start up] [crosscut sawing] [thwack] [clapping] Most of your people cause it the spring tonic.

They want that ramps in the spring of the year after not having a greens or anything throughout the winter.

They want that ramp as a spring tonic.

What makes people not like ramps is someone else’s eat a big mess ramps and are in close quarters with them and they've got to smell them.

But if you eat just one ramp, then it's on your own breath and it don't bother you near as much It's better than a sleeping tonic.

You can just eat a big mess of them, go off to sleep.

I don't know anyone who doesn't eat them, do you?

No, just a part of spring.

Just like football is a part of fall.

Something you have to do.

when you eat them you do sort of feel the ramp, of course, because it certainly burns in your mouth a little bit, and it's got that good taste, that ramp taste, which is very indescribable.

For the GI tract, too.

Yes.

Certainly takes care of your bowel movements for a few days, and it's just one of those things.

It's sort of a purging and cleansing of your system, like garlic.

If you eat a lot of garlic, it's supposed to clean your blood.

This does the same thing.

And it but this is better for you.

Well, these are natural.

[sizzle of ramps into bacon grease] That's smell of ramps will permeate this whole house.

What you're cooking tonight, Granny?

Mustard greens and possum innards.

Mmmm, mmm.

Did you hear that Mr. Bruceton Very clearly.

See, well this is a pure juxtaposition of we've bought into with modern society, by coming the university, being educated, trying to better ourselves some, and move out of the poverty that we're from.

But we’re work cooking in teflon.

but we're still eating ramps [others laughing] I like that answer!

Come and get it.

Well!

[scuffling] Here your are.

There, oh, yeah.

Ooooooh, now.

Now that’s a mess of ramps!

Fat dripping off there, oh that’s good.

[fast, traditional mountain fiddling] She’s from Nicolas County and never eaten a ramp.

I’d be ashamed.

Here she goes, she holding her nose, and in it goes.

I'd rather set down to that than I would a T-boned steak.

[singing “Sally Ann” This is a unique something that God gave only to wild wonderful West Virginia, The Ramps [loud ringing of a triangle dinner bell] [1950s TV announcer] The Real McCoys 🎵 Want you to meet the family, known as the real McCoys 🎵 🎵 From West Virginia they came to stay in sunny Californ - I - A 🎵 [Denise Giardina] This assumption that people just can’t wait to get out of this Appalachian region and the few lucky ones go to California And there's no, absolutely no comprehension, and still today isn’t I don't think a comprehension that people actually would prefer that people actually would prefer to be here That people who had to move to Detroit you know, for jobs in the fifties didn't want to be there they wanted to be back here.

If you read Harriette Arnow’s “The Dollmaker” the great novel that came out of the fifties, what Gertie Nevels,the heroine is up again is they demand that she adjust to the city, to Detroit And Arnow’s saying, why would anybody want to adjust to Detroit?

[Teacher] That's the most important thing in life That's what you're a-learning my youngins?

Of course.

So’s if one day they was to go to Germany, they they could adjust, learn to get along with with them Nazis and Hitler.

How dare you twist my words that way.

When you look back, that novel was really anticipated by 20 years a lot of what was has been written from the late seventies on, which placed a very positive value on Appalachian culture and a negative value on those aspects of mainstream culture which required Appalachian people to adjust.

He said he reckoned I’d be moving away from here soon.

What do you think, Pearl?

Do you think I ought to move?

[small audience laugh] Jed, how can you even ask?

Look around you.

You’re eight miles from your nearest neighbor, you’re overrun with skunks.

possums, coyots, bobcats You use kerosene lamps for light, You cook on a wood stove, summer and winter, you're drinking homemade moonshine, washing with homemade lye soap, and your bathroom is 50 feet from the house.

and you ask should you move.

Yeah, I reckon you're right.

A man be a dang fool to leave all this.

[sound inside a passenger train car] [train horn] I think a lot of times people come from the outside and they just see the negative things they say, why don't we have Haagen-Dazs ice cream?

Or why don't we have this?

Or why don't we have that?

And, well, you just don't have it.

But you don't have a lot of other things here too that are not nice.

[Bach: Goldberg Piano Variations] Every lesson about the universe, everything you need to know about people is all here.

It's like the town I grew up in.

There was one of every kind of person.

It's like a Russian town.

I always think of, you know, 19th century and in Russia, you know, the great novels were written in these depressing small towns.

But it's where you have the chance to get to know human nature.

And people Some people feel they can't find that here And so they leave.

My whole life has been a struggle to stay here.

I think it's an achievement that I'm still here.

I keep staying for different reasons.

It's changed in different parts of my life why I'm still here.

And sometimes I think I stay because I feel that I have a right to be here as much as anybody.

And I'm a sixth generation West Virginia.

This is my state, and I have a right to be here, And I don't think it's fair that I should have to leave.

🎵I live back in the woods you see🎵 🎵The woman, and the kids, and the dog, and me🎵 🎵I got a shot gun rifle and a four-wheel drive🎵 🎵 and a country boy can survive.

🎵 🎵Country folk can survive.🎵 🎵 I can plow a field all day long 🎵 🎵 Catch catfish from dusk to dawn 🎵 🎵 We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too 🎵 🎵 Ain't too many things these old boys can't do 🎵 🎵We grow good tomatoes make homemade wine 🎵 🎵 and country boy can survive 🎵 🎵 Country folk can survive 🎵 🎵 Country boy can survive 🎵 Hey, hey, right on [clapping] We love that, Charlie.

[clapping and yelling] Anybody can survive at the Red Robin Inn can’t they [clawhammer banjo] [creak of a porch swing] I got a man lives up here in the hollow is as good a neighbor as anybody but me and him gets along real good would help each other and I ain’t been to his house for over a year and he ain’t been mine but once.

That just goes to show you we’re not like we used to be.

Not friendly like we used to be.

Used to be everybody around for 10 miles well you knowed their dogs and cats and knowed what their names was and all their kids.

Now that people lives in rock throwing distance I don’t even know who they are And that's altogether different from what it used to be.

Used to be that everybody around for ten mile around, you know, the only thing you can depend on is change.

It’ll go on forever.

If you’s to tap in on any civilization at any certain time.

And come back 100 years later, you're going to find change.

Yeah.

The thing that we ought to try to concentrate on is keeping the good things, And not adapting the bad things.

This is a lot more civilized than it was when I was growing up.

We heard the bobwhites when I was a kid and now you never see one.

Of course, there's a lot more deer now than there used to be.

and there's a lot more people and a lot more traffic.

But that's “Future Shock” because I have a hard time adapting to that change.

That's why we get old and die, isn’t it?

because new people come along and they adapt, don’t they?

You have too many old memories and too many “that the way it used to be,” And first thing you know, you're obsolete.

That’s why you get old and die.

I think we're scared to change.

I don't think we're able to change.

I'm scared to change I don’t want to see But I’m scared of change in a way that I don’t want to see a lot of the places grow up to be like big metropolises and stuff.

I don't think that would be right because I don't think it was ever meant to be here.

And I don't think it would be I don't think it has the capacity to be here, I mean, you can only go so far in a holler I guess that's how you say it There's not much room for expansion.

You know, it's it goes that far and there it goes.

Right there I think that's what's going to save us.

I don’t want to see Appalachian culture be something in a museum where once a year you go listen to banjo picking and that's our idea of mountain culture, you know, going to some festival or something and hearing traditional music or something.

As much as I love it!

but if that's all mountain culture is, then it is dead.

It's just something that we visit every now and then, but we're not living it.

And I'm trying to say that there's something broader than just that, that is mountain culture.

that it has to do with how people are adapting to their landscape, how they're living their lives in the mountains at that time.

That is mountain culture.

And I think the geography itself, the mountains themselves are going to ensure that there's something unique about it, no matter what’s going on in the rest of the world or what kind of mass communications there are.

There's something about living in this landscape that's going to make people's lives here unique.

Tradition doesn't stop a couple of generations ago.

I consider myself part of the tradition.

I want to know and root myself in the old, let's say, music or whatever it is I want to read the writers who were writing 80 years ago.

But I also want to create new literature and new songs and I don't want somebody to tell me that tradition stopped 30 years ago.

I want to be part of the chain.

[Natalie Tennent] Let's go [crowd] Mountaineers!

Let's go [crowd] Mountaineers!

[Dave Morris] I know West Virginia has problems.

We have economic problems, we have educational problems, we have social problems.

But when I look at the rest of the country, that can't seem to look at the past or that have become what others might think that we should become, like everybody else, the homogenous society that we're all blending in.

This is kind of the melting pot kind of thing.

When people get away from a knowledge of their past, of their history, even of their family history, they're just cut loose in the world, And I look around at what has become of this country and the things that are going on in a massive scale in this country, the social and economic, the educational problems that that exist, the tension between the races and and all of these things.

And I don't want that for West Virginia.

I don't want us to become that.

I want us to maintain our sense of history and who we are and of caring for each other and of caring for the young and for the old.

And I'm sure that that people might be able to make an argument that this independent spirit has has held us back perhaps in some ways.

And I don't see that necessarily as a bad thing.

I see that maybe as a positive thing that we in some in some collective wisdom that we have, that we have approached things in a little slower manner, a little more contemplative manner.

And we've looked at we've looked at the world and said, I'm not sure about this.

Let's go real slow here.

[Irene McKinney] Whatever direction this state takes, my deep hope is that the sense of self-governance and self-sufficiency will hang on not just for us, but because really there are a lot of mainstream people that look to cultures like this to see how you do it.

They know that somehow or another, their background hasn't given that to them And they went to look two cultures where it does happen, still to some extent.

That people feel that it's a virtue to be self-sufficient, not a weakness, not a psychological peculiarity.

not a neurosis, but a virtue, an accomplishment.

[sentimental, sweet bluegrass song] [camera shutter] My grandpa’s house 🎵 Don't be afraid of the darkness 🎵 🎵 and don't run away from the storm 🎵 [man] Dag burn Hillbilly” [laughs] 🎵 Stand up and face your reflection 🎵 🎵 and feelings you try to ignore 🎵 🎵 cause after the tempest is over 🎵 🎵 and you let yourself go on through 🎵 🎵 You’ll hear a voice in the silence 🎵 🎵 is tenderly calling to you and it's singing 🎵 🎵 Home, come on home 🎵 🎵 Ye who are weary come home 🎵 🎵 softly and tenderly calling 🎵 🎵 Home, come on home 🎵 🎵 softly and tenderly calling 🎵 🎵 Home, come on home 🎵 🎵 got my hand on the gospel plow 🎵 🎵 Wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now 🎵 🎵 Put your hands to the plow and a go right on 🎵 🎵 Hold on, hold on 🎵 🎵 Put your hand to the plow and go right on 🎵 [applause] [”Mountaineer” theme music ] This has been a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.