Hero - Doug Wallin

Doug Wallin, Folk Festival, Cullowhee, North Carolina

Doug Wallin, Folk Festival, Cullowhee, North Carolina

It’s hard to think of Doug Wallin and not smile. One of my first times around him, I helped him and his brother Jack hang tobacco in the barn next to their cabin on Crain Branch. Doug was high in the barn, moving between the top two tier poles. I was new to the work and he didn't want me handling the heavy sticks of burley while up too high in the barn. After we got into a rhythm with the passing of the tobacco, Doug began singing. His voice echoed from the tin roof and filled the barn with his unique soft voice, eloquent phrasing and unaffected style. It gave me goosebumps and made me smile back then and does the same thing now as I write about it.

Doug always made me smile. He was a bit of a jokester and player of pranks as his father, Lee Wallin, was noted to be. He had a song to fit most any occasion and reputedly knew over 300 ballads and songs. Doug could be cantankerous and suspicious and he didn't suffer fools or what he perceived as disrespect. When his mind was made up about something or someone, he wouldn't change it. He would quickly drop an offender from his life. He was an incredibly gifted singer, many say the best Madison County has ever produced.

I was fortunate in that Doug’s mother Berzilla, Dellie Norton's 83 year old sister, really liked me. Her daughter Berthie once said her mother used to daydream about me, which I find amazing and flattering given our 55 year age difference. As is the case in any community that celebrates family as Madison County does, my relationship with Berzilla carried over to Doug and over the years we grew fond and comfortable with each other.

Years later, after Berzilla died, and Jack was needing increased attention at the VA Hospital in Asheville, the brothers moved to a small apartment near the Marshall bypass. As much as I loved spending time at the cabin, listening to music and stories, eating, working, sitting on their porch, my favorite memory is from the time when they were living in town.

 

Doug Playing Fiddle for Kate, Crain Branch, Madison County, North Carolina, 1992

I stopped at Ingles on the way home today. I had Benny and Kate with me and walking through the canned food aisle we ran into Doug and Jack who were doing their weekly shopping. We visited for a time and talked briefly of their lives in town. I begged off, needing to get the kids home and fed, and told them I’d come by soon for a visit. As we turned to go, Doug and Jack both reached into their pants pockets and pulled out their wallets. They each found two one-dollar bills and ceremoniously presented one to each of the kids - a gesture so stunning in its simplicity and sheer goodwill.

 

Seldom Scene - Farmworker

Migrant Farmworker, Tarboro, North Carolina, 1999

This time of year hurricanes and tropical storms are not far from my mind. I’ve photographed the aftermath of many storms and the people affected by them over the years and I’m always struck by the numbers of unsung heroes who play a role in the clean-up and rebuilding.

This image was made near Tarboro, North Carolina, in 1999 after Hurricane Floyd and the ensuing flood that covered most of the eastern third of the state. This young man was working on a poultry farm that had been washed over. The barn was knee-deep in thousands of dead chickens, water, and fecal matter. His job was to help remove the feed and water lines before front-end loaders were brought in to remove the toxic soup. I think it is important for us to see the people doing this incredibly awful, but vital work in our communities and take that into consideration as we debate our nation's immigration policies. 

 

Of Quiet and Dark

Full Moon,  PawPaw, Madison County, NC, August 22, 2013,

When my mother was alive and visiting from Maryland, she would invariably complain at some point during her stay that she didn’t like it at our place because it was simply too dark and too quiet. I think about her comments most every night as I sit on our deck relishing the depth of our night sky and listening to the same sounds people have heard in our holler for hundreds of years – frogs peeping, the wind, a duo of screech owls calling one another.

I inherited many of my mother’s fears and as a child growing up in suburban Washington, D.C., I was petrified of the dark, avoiding it whenever possible. The walk from late-night basketball practice at school was especially traumatizing because the preferred, shorter route home cut through an unlit section of woods. At bedtime, I insisted on a nightlight and fell asleep to the sounds of a local rock n’ roll radio station. More than once I called out to my parents in the middle of the night, convinced there was a predator in my closet, and I regularly poked under my bed with my baseball bat in a futile search for alligators.

It happened over time and with the help of many different experiences – night compass hikes in Junior ROTC, working in the darkroom, and living by myself among them – that I eventually outgrew those fears. But it has been living in Madison County that has taught me not only to be comfortable with quiet and darkness, but also to embrace and anticipate them for the healing, solitude and connectedness they offer.

We’re fortunate, here in Madison, to have the stars close at hand, and the crickets as background music. It’s not the case in most places, certainly not east of the Mississippi River. I recently read an interview with the author Paul Bogard about his new book, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. In the Verve magazine article, linked here, http://v-e-n-u-e.com/In-Search-of-Darkness-An-Interview-with-Paul-Bogard, the author talks about the importance of darkness in our lives from health, security and environmental perspectives, as well as, the fact that it simply isn’t as dark as it used to be. He includes a map of North America made by Fabio Falchi that illustrates the change in artificial lighting from the 1950s to the projected level in 2025. It clearly shows that even the northeast corridor, around the time I was trolling for alligators and dreading my late night walks home, was much darker than it is today. The eastern mountains, including Madison County, stayed pretty dark until the early 1980s, but have steadily brightened over the last thirty years. We see immediate evidence of it in the increased numbers of security lights around people’s homes, the over lit convenience stores, and the broadened glow of Asheville. It’s disheartening for a now lover of the dark. But for my mother it could never have been bright enough.

 

Blinking and Staring

Sylvester Walker's Granddaughter Playing Basketball in the Back Yard, Spivey's Corner, North Carolina 1989

I love it when photographs both stare and blink.

When they look intently, with time spent in the seeing.

Revealing detail as only a photograph can.

The background and backboard.

Chickens frolicking with tires.

Piled-up stuff you know has been there for awhile,

And will likely be there a while longer.

A freezer on the porch - so Southern.

Staring is like that – it offers us the particulars.

 

But there is nothing like the blink of an eye.

The instant the crux is revealed.

The Decisive Moment, the master Henri called it.

To trust eye and hand, and mostly instinct.

Knowing to push the button right Now.

With ball poised between hand and ground.

The foot in ballerina pose, anticipating the next movement.

A shoelace, attached to the shoe, but seeking its own direction.

Blinking is like that – it lets the breath of life invade our stillness.

Rice Cove Grave Decoration

We always celebrated Memorial Day when I was growing up - a day of remembrance and thanks that always included a visit to the cemetery to place flowers on the graves of family members who had served in the military. The visitation was usually followed by a picnic and barbecue back at the house. Memorial Day also marked the beginning of summer vacation.

 

Grave Decoration at the Rice Cove Cemetery, Madison County, NC 1977 from Sodom Laurel Album

I was introduced to grave decorations when I moved to Madison County and they were different than I was used to. I learned that each of the hundreds of small family cemeteries in the county has its own unique Decoration Day – all held on Sundays between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Prior to the actual Decoration Day, family members would tend to the cemetery – mow the grass, rake the grave mounds, and remove last year’s plastic flowers. On the appointed Sunday, relatives would gather first at someone’s house for a reunion and dinner and then move to the cemetery to honor the deceased and to listen to preaching. This wasn’t the case with every cemetery in the county – some were only mowed and others weren’t touched at all. 

I went to the Decoration at the Rice Cove cemetery this past Sunday. I was last there in 1977 when I had gone at the invitation of Bonnie Chandler who hosted a huge meal and reunion at her house. I made photographs at the reunion and cemetery, a number of which were included in my book, Sodom Laurel Album. Bonnie’s children and their spouses continue the tradition today and Sunday’s meal was every bit the feast it was when Bonnie was alive.

Preaching and Witnessing at the Rice Cove Cemetery Grave Decoration, Madison County, NC 2013

What struck me about the day was how little it had changed from thirty-six years earlier. Yes, faces were different – some older with more lines and wrinkles; some faces not there; other new faces in their place. The massive tree in the cemetery was bigger, offering even more shade and respite from the heat of the day. And there were certainly more graves. The road to the cemetery was improved and easy to negotiate, even with all the rain. But the placing of flowers, the singing of hymns, and the preaching and the saving were old and comfortable rhythms, as they were meant to be. In this time of seemingly constant and drastic change, it was reassuring to be in a place where the rituals and traditions remained constant.

 

Grave Decoration, Rice Cove Cemetery, Madison County, NC 2013

 

Spraying

One day a couple of weeks ago, French Broad Electric Membership Corporation arrived to spray the right-of-way for the power lines with a toxic mix of chemicals produced by everyone’s favorite corporation, Monsanto.

We were expecting this and, in anticipation of it, had posted “no spraying” signs in English and Spanish around the targeted portion of our land. Our thinking was to stall the process, hoping an early freeze might solve the problem. But that wasn’t to be and we were faced, as is every homeowner who contracts for electricity with FBEMC, with allowing them to spray the right-of-way, or clearing our 50’ x 500’ swath of head-high briars ourselves by hand, or by goat. FBEMC, by right of eminent domain, can do whatever they deem necessary to clear right-of-way under power lines. Up until three years ago, clearing was done by hand by FBEMC when, in an effort to save money, the company switched to chemicals.

 

The arrival of electricity to small mountain communities, as late as the 1950s and 1960s in some places, was a culture-changing event and it significantly altered people’s lives and lifestyles. Few of us could get by for very long without electricity - I know I wouldn’t be writing this blog without it. And I think French Broach Electric does a reasonably good job of keeping us supplied with a steady and reliable source of power. Part of that reliability comes from keeping the right-of-way cleared and to that end I have no problem with cutting problem trees and overhanging limbs.

But I have a problem with chemicals. Annually in the United States, we apply over 500 million pounds of herbicides to our land. Most of these poisons are considered endocrine inhibitors by the EPA, which means they alter the reproductive systems of animals and invertebrates, not to mention what they do to plants. These poisons ultimately end up in our streams, creeks, and rivers; they drift over our crops; and they imprint brown, sterilized swaths onto our verdant green landscape. It looks atrocious and reminds me of a piece of mountain wisdom about fouling your own nest.

 

I, and I suspect many of my neighbors, have a problem with anyone claiming the legal right to poison land we’ve spent decades nurturing and stewarding. Eminent Domain is supposed to be for the good of the community and I simply don’t understand the good in spreading a blanket of chemicals over our landscape.

 

Bobby's Birthday Portraits

By now, everyone knows Marshall resident and Bluegrass wonder, Bobby Hicks, celebrated his 80th birthday on July 21 with a concert on the island in Marshall. It was nothing short of a wonderful day for the music, the setting, the sense of community, and the pride everyone felt in our little place. There have been many wonderful photographs published from the event. Here are a few more to add to the mix. 

Madison County Fiddlers, Roger Howell, Bobby Hicks and Arvil Freeman, Marshall, 2013. 

Madison County Fiddlers, Roger Howell, Bobby Hicks and Arvil Freeman, Marshall, 2013. 

Bluegrass Legends Bobby Osborne (left), J.D. Crowe (middle), and Jerry and Del McCoury (right). 

The Masters of Bluegrass, Marshall, NC 2013

Bobby Hicks, Marshall, NC, 2013

Ticks: A Conversation

“Lots of ticks this season.”

“Yeah, I think it’s ‘cause of all the rain we’ve had.”

"Might be all 'em damn dogs you got around yer house." 

“Maybe, but ya know, I’ve heard a tick can live twenty years, waiting for a warm-blooded something to jump on.”

“That's hard to believe.”

“They say one in a thousand carries the Spotted Fever.”

“Hard to figure what a tick is good fer, besides killin’.”

“And they ain’t that easy to kill at that.”

“Dropping ‘em in a jar of gasoline works and you can see ‘em pile up over time. I like that.”

“Yeah. We generally stick ‘em onto surgical tape – it keeps 'em from moving and soon smothers ‘em. I only wonder if they’ll outlive the tape.”

“One killed my Grandpa when I was a baby. Never had much use fer ‘em since.”

"Yep. They're won't be no ticks in my heaven." 

 

A Once Common Sight

Not so many years ago, this was a common sight throughout the Smokeys. Black bear, trapped or orphaned, housed in a small, inhumane, metal, and just plain awful cage, where it will surely go crazy, for the amusement of human beings. Most of these operations have long been shut down, but for years they were a staple of the tourist industry in the mountains. I'm sure there are people who would love to bring them back.

Seldom Scene - Liz Smathers Shaw

 

Liz Smathers Shaw of Canton, NC, at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival,

Asheville, North Carolina 1974

The Mountain Dance and Folk Festival was started in 1928 in Asheville, North Carolina and claims the title as the earliest folk festival in the United States. It was founded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford of Madison County and it continues to this day.

The nation experienced a revival in folk music that began in the 1960s and brought deserved attention to musicians, singers, and dancers in western North Carolina. It also sparked an interest in mountain music among young people, many of who moved to the area to learn music from the source. Others who were from the area were just beginning their lives in music. Musicians like David Holt, Sheila Kay Adams, and John McCutcheon and Liz Smathers were in the beginnings of their careers and the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival was an important venue for them.

Liz Smathers Shaw is a member of the musical Smathers Family of Canton, North Carolina, a heritage that includes her father, Quay Smathers, a shape-note singer and leader, and cousins, Luke and Harold Smathers, had their own very popular swing band. Liz lives in Athens, Ohio, with her husband Lynn Shaw and continues to perform and teach fiddle.

 

 

Hero - Gram

 

My Grandmother, Jennie Lozupone, ca. 1915

Today would have been my Grandmother’s 114th birthday.  She died in 1995. I was asked to give the eulogy at her funeral, which I’ve reprinted in this post. Rereading the eighteen-year-old text, I understand how much I’ve learned in the ensuing years from a series of great editors and teachers. I’m resisting the urge to correct grammar, syntax, and sentence structure within the text. There are also some factual errors that I’ve corrected at the end of the post. 

5/30/95

So, what’s in a name? The woman we are honoring and saying goodbye to today was known by many names. Jennie Lozupone. Mrs. Galeano. Aunt Jennie. Mama. Gram.

Her life spanned the length of the 2oth Century and encompassed many of the great events of this county’s history during the Century. But as we know, history is more than great events. History is also the past and the past is both personal and intimate.

Jennie Lozupone was born in 1899 in Bari, Italy. She arrived in the United States in 1907, part of the great Italian migration. She landed at Ellis Island and her family first settled in Albany, New York, before moving to Washington, DC, where she lived her entire life.

In 1916, she married Joseph Galeano, a fellow immigrant, he from Sicily. They bought a home on Morse Street in Northeast Washington. It was there they had their four children – Vincent, Louis, Catherine, and Charles.

When the Great Depression struck this country in 1929 Jennie joined the workforce to help support her family. She began a career as a seamstress with the late Jimmy Bello. While her clients included President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Supreme Court Justices, she was most proud of the First Communion dresses, the dance recital outfits and the Easter clothes she made for her nieces and grandchildren. She was always there to hem a pair of pants or sew on a button.

Two of her sons served in the Armed Forces during World War II. She suffered the insecurity of not knowing her baby son’s whereabouts for two years during that conflict.

After the war, as the middle class in this country grew, her family became part of that movement. She and Joe bought a house in suburban Maryland on University Blvd. Gram always accepted what life had to offer her – sometimes with resignation, but more often with grace and a willingness to make the best of any situation. Her husband Joe died unexpectedly in 1948 and it was then the second half of Jennie’s life began.

Gram loved life. She loved food – not jus the cooking and eating of it, but she loved to feed others. Her lasagna and eggplant are famous across the country given the travels of her children and grandchildren. She loved to gamble – bingo, horse races, poker. She loved to win, but really she was a safe bettor. Mostly, she loved the Fellowship that the gambling provided.

Gram understood the value of money. I remember a story of her getting held up at knife-point by a young boy whose situation was even worse than hers. She said she looked him in the eye and said, “You’re not getting my hard earned money” and started swinging her oversized purse at him. She was a giving and generous woman who understood that by giving she would receive.

As she got older and her eyesight worsened, she switched from sewing to knitting afghans although she never could get the name right, calling them Africans until the end. Hundreds of Africans that now reside all over the country. She made them for weddings, births and graduations – or simply because she liked you. Every Christmas and birthday each of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren received a savings bond.

When she was 67 years old she made the first of seven trips back to Italy to visit her late husband’s relatives in Sicily, often taking one or more of her grandchildren with her. She loved those trips – talking the language again, the food, the attention.

She was devoted to St. Camillus Church and was an active member of the Leisure Club. She put her sewing skills to use for the Church and often made Baptismal bibs for the newborn and did laundry for the parish priests.

Gram represented a sense of security and safety for all of us. She has been with us all our lives. Not just the literal security of a home, a meal, clothing or help when we needed it, but also a symbolic security of a safer place, a safer time.

So, what’s in a name? I can’t help but wonder if this Jennie Lozupone, this Mrs. Galeano, this Aunt Jennie, this Mama, this Gram had any idea she would be so blessed in her life. That she would leave such a wonderful legacy – four children thirteen grandchildren, 37 great-grandchildren with two more on the way and seven great-great grandchildren.

The last few years she had forgotten most of our names although she still delighted in our company, especially the young children. She seemed to become more of a child herself. The last time I saw her was last November. She let me feed her her supper and carried on a long conversation with me – in Italian. As she finished her meal I struggled with my Latin and Spanish to ask her if she was done eating. “Fini?” I asked. She looked me in the eye, always the teacher, and answered, “Finito.”

Jennie Lozupone Galeano, 1992

 

Appendix

My grandmother and her family lived in Gioia dei Colle, Italy, which is a small village just west of Bari. Gioia dei Colle means Joy of the Hill – if there could be a more perfect name for a town I haven’t heard it.

I’ve listed Gram’s birth year as 1899, which would have made her 95 when she died. After her death, we discovered a document that indicated she was actually born in 1897.

The number of great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren has mushroomed since 1995 to a point where I can no longer keep up.

Seldom Scene - At the Rock Cafe, 1979

At the Rock Cafe, Marshall, Madison County, NC 1979

This photograph was made under the auspices of a Photographic Survey Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts awarded to me through Mars Hill College. Prints from the grant period are now housed at the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution. This was a period of time when our leaders and our citizens understood the role the Arts and Humanities play in our lives. They teach us about life itself - knowledge increasingly threatened by the present political and social climate in our country.  

 

Digging John Henderson's Grave

  

 

John Henderson at Home, Big Pine, 1978

I almost didn’t recognize him in the grocery store. After I moved from the community four years earlier, I lost touch with many of my neighbors on Big Pine – John Henderson among them. There were a couple of years before my divorce and move when I saw John most every day - helping him with tobacco, mostly, but also socializing together on many occasions. He was older, a local man, a tobacco farmer who was also a substitute driver at the post office. During World War Two he was in an engineer battalion at the Battle of the Bulge, in front of the front lines. He was tough, strong man with unlimited stamina. He enjoyed hanging out with the new people in the community, the hippies, and he loved to work.

But here in the grocery store was a spent man – his face and frame gaunt and hollow, while his stomach extended like a ripe melon. He would have been about 70 years old then, not young after a lifetime of work, but he moved with the gait of someone beat down. It had been some years since we had spoken and I asked what was going on with him. “It’s the cancer,” he said. “They say I likely got it from all that sprayin’ I did for the tobacco and other stuff. All them chemicals.” It wasn’t long after that conversation that I got word he had died.

 

Digging John Henderson's Grave, Big Pine, 1988

A group of men gathered at the graveyard one morning to dig his grave. It’s a very precise endeavor, grave digging, and there were men there who knew how to do it – the squaring and leveling, and the deliberate work of digging. Others stood around talking, waiting their turn at the shovel. The talk was of John and his commitment to the community. He wasn’t a churchgoing person, but he was always ready to pitch in or lead when something needed doing – kind of an individual neighbors-in-need program. The men talked about that. What they liked about him. His character. Funny stories. Sad stories.

At the Worley Cemetery, Big Pine, 1988

From the left, front, McKinley Massey, Jim Woodruff. Rear, George Marler, Cylde Anderson, Clyde Randall, Randy Fowler, Robert Buckner, Unknown, Alan Payne, Earl Roberts, Jerry Anderson

John would have enjoyed the mix of work and talk and the words being spoken by his neighbors - people he had lived with his entire life. I remember thinking how deeply intimate and spiritual this act was – the digging and handling of the earth John would be buried in. And also, how fortunate we were to live in a place where those rituals remain - men gathering, offering their backs and their memories to John one last time. Funerals remind us of our mortality; grave digging even more so. As everyone gathered for this photograph, we were aware that at some point in the future we, too, would no longer be in the picture, but would only exist in the memories of our friends. 

Dad

 

My father, Robert Warren Amberg, High School Graduation Picture, Chicago, 1935

 

Dad,

I’m a day late with this thank you. I’m sorry. But I born a few days late so I sense you learned early on to wait on me. Thank you for your patience that lasted throughout your lifetime.

Yesterday, on Fathers Day, my oldest, Benjamin, called from work, unable to talk for very long and we made plans to speak later in the week. Kate has been home for a couple of months and she, Shu, and Kelsey fixed a great supper for all of us, our friend Cedric included who is visiting from South Dakota. A great meal and greater evening. I am a fortunate son.

I thought to call you in the middle of the evening, but that, of course, is impossible. It’s been over eleven years now. It’s been an eventful stretch of time, marked most clearly by the evidence of time’s passage on each of our faces, and in our lives. Know that I think of that, and of you, daily.

I mainly just want to thank you for bringing us to the world so that we may make our own imprints on time’s journey. And I want to add that this is a killer tie you are wearing. I trust you are resting well.