Lessons from Lyrics

Now y’uns know I love old music – we’ve talked about it here several times before.  So it won’t surprise you that my modern, fancy phone pipes into the wireless earpiece Bob Wills, Bill Monroe and The Spears Family.  I sing along, tap my toe and often don’t even think about the actual lyrics – well until the Spears sing “He’s Still in the Fire” and that one makes me cry (and maybe shout) everytime.

Bob Wills is the king of Western Swing music and if you can listen to him while you’re exercising the time will fly and you’ll be amazed how many miles or reps you’ll get in.  I was walking with Bob this week and really got to thinking about the words he was singing and I realized that these old songs can teach us a ton of history.

Bob Wills was at a career high in the 1940’s when he recorded “Smoke on the Water”, written by Zeke Clements.  Do you remember what else was happening in the world about that time?  War.  The second great world war raged and about 16 million Americans were in uniform while numerous others worked in munitions plants and even if you didn’t have a rank or title, the whole country served as supplies were rationed, services curtailed and families waited with baited breath to hear news from the front lines.  The music of the day was as affected as every other part of American life. 

As “Smoke on the Water” plays through my car radio, thanks to music streaming services that let me choose the kind of music I want to listen to, I realize my children not only cannot relate to the analogies he draws, they are hard pressed to understand the history lesson he presents. 

The chorus says, “There’ll be smoke on the water, on the land and the sea when our Army and Navy overtake the enemy.  There’ll be smoke on the mountain where the heathen gods stay and the sun that is shining will go down on that day.”  Verse 2 calls out the Axis leaders by name, “Hirohito along with Hitler will be riding on a rail, Mussolini’ll beg for mercy as a leader he has failed.  There’ll be no time for pity when the screaming Eagle flies, that will be the end of axis they must answer with their lives.”

I confess while I understood that these were WW2 analogies I had to look some of them up.  The smoke is easy to understand as artillery fire must have clouded every news reel of the day.  The mountain where the heathen gods stay must have referred to the Buddhist temples in Japan and the ‘sun that is shining’ would refer to Japan’s rising sun flag.   I especially loved the image of riding Hirohito and Hitler out of town on a rail – I understand that ride often followed tar-and-feathering, but I suppose those words would be hard to work into a song. And did you know what screaming eagle would be flying?  That’s the 101st Airborne division that delivered paratroopers into the thick of the battle. 

I wonder if listeners in the 40’s were as moved by these lyrics as I am?  As I located the image of the paratroopers tears welled in my eyes.  The courage of those men to step out of the relative safety of an airplane and fall into unknown peril awes me.  My own husband has jumped over 300 times and while he never faced German troops on the ground the Marine Corps trains as realistically as possible and jumping into the ocean at night would be just about as terrifying to me!  He would gladly strap on a ‘chute today and drop behind enemy lines to ensure his children would grow up in freedom – in fact, I’ve rarely met a veteran who would refuse to take up arms if the American way of life was threatened.  Perhaps I’ve digressed a bit but the songs of World War 2 celebrated a courage that our troops still display today.

It’s easy to imagine how listeners would cheer as they heard Bob croon a promise of victory and the humiliating defeat and even death waiting for the leaders that forced husbands, fathers and sons to march off to war.   

Throughout time music has been used to teach history and preserve culture.  Not all of the music I listen too is so deep, but even in the fun stuff there’s history.  We’ll look at some more of Bob Wills’ work next week.

A Legacy of Faith in God and Love for Family

The loss of a loved one always sets you thinking about days gone by and memories of him or her.  Well when I heard last week that my great Aunt Lois Key Roberts had passed away I couldn’t help but think of the whole Billy Key family.  Aunt Lois was the youngest of 12 children and the last to pass; they were my Grandmothers siblings and were always a huge part of my life.

What a blessing to be able to tell you that I knew all of these great aunts and uncles – lots of you may not have known your parents’ siblings so well, much less your grandparents’.  This family left a legacy of faith in God and love for family that has impacted every one of us and I hope will be an impact on my own children who will never know them in this world. 

Lois’ mother, Ida Todd Key (known to all of us for a few generations now as Grandma Key) raised 12 children on a hardscrabble farm in Martha Washington.  Daddy calls the place they grew up ‘holy ground’ on account of how they raised that big family with little to no resources – they were raised on prayer! 

Aunt Lois was more likely to talk to us than some of her sisters; and she had asked her mother questions too.  Maybe being the baby in the family she had more chance to get answer from Grandma Key since some of the older ones had moved off so Grandma had a minute to catch her breath.  Or maybe Aunt Lois was just more inclined to ask “why” – hmm, do you s’pose I got that from her?

She asked her mother how she survived losing her oldest son when he was barely 16 years old.  Grandma very practically told her that she had all these other children (there were 6 younger than him at the time) and she just had to keep going for them. 

Aunt Lois graduated from high school in 1948 – no small feat at the time and as far as I can tell she was the only one of her siblings to accomplish this.  You can see from her graduation photo that there were only a few other folks in the community graduating that year.  One of her classmates, Joyce Tayes Allred told me there were actually 8 in the class, one boy wasn’t in the photo.  Lois would go on to Carson Newman to study for a time, then she taught at the Martha Washington School. 

Clarkrange High School Class of 1948

This was a family of servants – they served country, community, church and family – and I really believe they were given this servant-spirit from their mother.  She raised them in church and even if they didn’t see the importance of their faith early on, this family proved out the promise of Proverbs 22:6 – “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

I’ve talked here before (maybe more than once) about our family reunion each September which has been recurring for nearly 70 years.  Well that’s Grandma Key’s family and her children were all faithful to come together really every chance they had but certainly that one Sunday each fall.  Aunt Lois has missed several reunions in the past few years and with her passing it’s now up to a new generation to ensure the Todds gather for another 70 years.  One of my cousins is fond of saying, “We were raised on it” and she’s right – we were raised on it and we will continue to gather and this year we will no doubt remember Aunt Lois and her sisters and Grandma Key and all the lessons we’ve learned from them.

Tennessee Mountain Stories chronicles the legends and lessons from the Cumberland Plateau.  Today it’s a legacy and I can’t help but wonder what my own legacy will be.  I pray it will be faith and service just like these ladies.

When your Lost for Words

I am so thankful that I didn’t grow up around profane and filthy-talk.  I well remember picking up from a girl in elementary school the use of God’s name in vain and I tried it out on Mama while she was washing my hair (back in the day we’d stick our head under the faucet in the sink you know and sometimes it maybe felt a little like torture) well I let out that holy name and thought for all the world Mama would drowned me as she declared we do NOT talk that way.  I don’t think I’ve ever said it again.

I do find myself repeating phrases long held in my memory.  Sometimes I don’t remember who I learned them from and others are treasures from long lost family or friends.  Now I get a lot of grief for these sometimes but my family all says the same things and my friends are used to me by now.

“Great Day in the Morning” was the closest I ever heard my paternal grandfather come to cussing and he used it often – no doubt because we were always underfoot and he was always flabbergasted by us.  If we broke something, “Great Day in the Morning”.  If we were arguing – and we were often arguing, “Great Day in the Morning.”  If someone dis something that was just unbelievable, “Great Day in the Morning.”  My neice never knew the man on account of he went home to heaven a decade before she came into this world but guess what I hear her saying all the time… well actually she often gets it a little wrong but that’s just part of her charm.  I think she’ll say “Great Day at Night” or something like that which if maybe funnier than the way Grandpa said it.

Now I never knew my Mother’s paternal Grandfather but his memory lives on in stories.  And some of those stories helped to inspire a character in one of my books; he always said, “By Jingo”.  One reader commented on that phrase after reading Replacing Ann and thought it made the story realistic.  Well I think that old man was realistic but I’m afraid his by-word was a pseudonym for using our savior’s name in vain.  We usually only say this when we tell the stories of that particular ancestor.

I guess what got me thinking along these lines was another of my familiar phrases, “You’re not long for this world.”  Now I confess this one is usually something of a threat, usually to my husband who pesters the living daylights out of me sometimes and when I’ve had enough I tell him, “You’re not long for this world” and I puncutate that with bucko and he knows it’s time to back off.  But it’s quite a worthwhile phrase as we sometimes just know someone ain’t long for this world.  Well I’m sure you can imagine how validating it was when recently a sister in church asked for prayer for a loved one who’d been battling cancer for a long time and she said, “I just don’t think she’s long for this world”.  It was not polite that my husband elbowed me just then.

I know we keep comin’ back to this topic of mountain jargon and Appalachian English  - you’ve got to admit though, there’s a wealth of worthy subject matter there!

By the way, if you weren’t quite so blessed as me in your upbringing and you had to hear ugly talk, I do hope you’re doin’ a little better by your own children, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors, pets, pests…

Psalm 19:14       Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

Travelin’ Around

The things you can see from a Country Road!

I love it when I bet the chance to see some of the countryside.  And I’ve talked here before about travelling a’foot and stage coach trips and all such as that.  Still, I am continually amazed by the terrain of our Cumberland Plateau – really all of the Appalachian Mountains.

We certainly recall that the rugged mountains were the primary reason our people were so isolated for about 200 years before World War II.  I guess that same rugged beauty is partly why so many people are drawn back to our mountains these days.  The Great Smoky Mountains National Park averages 3 MILLION visitors per year.  Can you even imagine that many people?  Now try to imagine what the first long hunters who crossed the Smokies from the civilized East Coast would think if you told them one day their tracks would be crossed by that many people!  A little closer to home, The Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area sees over 600,000 visitors annually and I have a hard enough time imagining THAT many people.

So I did have a chance to drive through Woodbury, Manchester and Murfreesboro this week and I always notice the old home sites along the way.  Those areas so significant settlement long before the Plateau and they were settlers who made a more lasting impression on the land.  Farms cleared and tilled two centuries ago can still be seen – some of them have rolls of hay or neat rows of sapling trees on them today while others are sub-divided and sprouting big, modern houses.  There are still of beautiful examples of homes – they look big to me and I can’t help but wonder if they were built to be fine or just to house the large families that were so prevalent in the 1800’s.  And there are small homes too that are obviously from a by-gone era with their multiple chimneys reminding us that a cook stove was necessary in the back of the house and another fireplace or stove in a sitting room.  Sometimes the brick have a different look – and the old brick are usually painted and I wonder why.  Often those homes seem to be in strange places – I notice them on a hill way back from the road and I realize that road moved since the house was built.  Sometimes the houses will have stairs down to the roadway because new roads had to be cut deep into the rolling hills so families added stairs to get down to the road – after all they were still walking out of their homes more often then driving out in an automobile.

I guess you can imagine that I prefer the secondary roads to our fast-paced interstates.  Really I relish the leisure to choose those routes because the usually do take longer.  Yet the extra time is always well spent and I either learn something new or at least come away with questions that drive my research!

Do you love our character-rich countryside?  Well I’d love to hear from you about that.  Please click the comments below and tell me where you like to drive on country roads and what you’ve noticed.

And if you always find yourself running 70 on the big roads, leave a little early, and check out the joy of a country road.

Taking a Little Break

As the summer winds down and school is about to ramp up I have to confess I’m finding myself just a little tad overwhelmed!

So The Stories will take a short break this week and be back with a bang next Friday (hmmm, is there a story in guns, cannons or other noisemakers!?!)

If you aren’t receiving Tennessee Mountain Stories in your inbox each Friday morning, this might be a great time to subscribe! Just click in the box on the right hand of the screen and leave me your email address.