Authentic Mountain Culture

                                                                 “The Jamestown Flea”

Anyone who wants to experience authentic old-time mountaineer culture, should make a Saturday morning trip to the Jamestown Flea Market in Old Crazy Town. It covers about ten generous acres and on Saturday has anywhere from one hundred to four hundred vendors. My visit occurred just before Christmas, 2007. I was planning a trip back to Birmingham for the holidays, and needed to pick up a few gifts. The Flea was already hopping at eight o’clock on a frosty, forty-degree morning. I'm not exaggerating when I say that everybody-who-is-anybody from a six county area was there. Parking places in the raw, red-dirt lot were at a premium. I had to circle a bunch of times before I found a spot half a mile from the action. Black barrels with fire leaping out of them were located here and there. People stood around, warming their hands, talking loud and laughing. It was a raucous atmosphere, not unlike the tail-gate parties in Tinsel Town when Alabama and Auburn play in the Iron Bowl. In fact, as soon as I got out of my car, I smelled a familiar smoke and heard, “Sweet Home Alabama” blaring out of somebody’s car speakers. My first thought was, “Am I having a flashback?” Given the smoke-filled atmosphere, anyone who came of age in the 1960's would consider the possibility of such a thing. Take my word for it.

I brought my son, Ian, who loves to poke through other people’s trash, and his wife, Meg, who grew up with some pride, and would rather drop dead than poke. The time had come for their introduction to the shopping rituals of rural, back-woods, folks. Ian headed straight for the first stall and Meg, bless her heart, looked like she was entering one of those caves where Indiana Jones always finds snakes. I’m pretty sure she was expecting something worse than cooties to jump on her. She’s brave though. She hugged her coat around her, hunched her shoulders up, and plunged after Ian. Love will make you do dangerous things.

We saw everything from semi-automatic assault rifles and Confederate flag tee shirts--the same people were buying both--to funnel cakes and an entire Mexican food market. Old Crazy Town sports a large Latino population now. Laotian, too. The locals love them as workers, but they certainly aren't going to put “foreign food” into the Harris Teeter Supermarket. The Flea, though, that's an altogether different thing. There we found vendors selling old car parts, beanie babies, carnival glass ashtrays (in use of course), belt buckles with unmentionable words on them, sunglasses, and every sort of knife and ammunition imaginable. Mountain folks believe in arming themselves for all possibilities. One table had nothing but socks, so I bought a pair for every member of the family. They were two bucks a pop, but what the heck! I’m the generous type. We passed by two pet-shops. The puppies looked clean, healthy and frisky, but my daughter-in-law immediately began muttering about “back-yard breeders” and “puppy mills.” I guess folks from her neck of the woods send away to Russia or Bavaria for properly bred animals. I’m pretty sure most of the dogs I’ve had in my life were conceived in somebody’s back yard…or side yard…or in the street.

I saw an old boyfriend of mine. We were sweet on each other in the sixth grade when he was one of those freckle-faced, toe-headed, Huck Finn types. Cute as pie. We danced at lunch break to Johnny B. Good, and Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire. He gave me a silver cross on a chain for Christmas. To look at him now, you’d never know any of that. All traces of Huck were erased, poor thing. He weighed about three-hundred pounds and looked like a gravel truck had blown up in his face. He must have thought the same about me, because he couldn’t get away fast enough. I didn’t introduce him to my children. I thought it might be too much for Meg, who was only holding on by a thread as it was.

Of all the sellers at the Jamestown Flea, the woman with the candy-apple-red and green striped hair, running the gut-slasher knife shop, got my vote for most impressive. She fit my daddy's description of “rode hard and put up wet.” Being able to talk animatedly with a cigarette hanging out the corner of your mouth is a feat of muscular dexterity I’ve always found amazing. And, the knives on her table looked like the wet-dreams of a serial killer. I’m pretty sure they weren’t for carving turkey or slicing cake. You could tell, however, that the lady knew exactly what their uses were. Personally, I was afraid to ask, being a coward and all.

Second on my list of unforgettable characters was a young, tattooed guy who’d shaved his entire head except for a long pony tail at the back. In place of hair, a rattlesnake was tattooed, coiled and ready to strike. He was cool in a weird, creepy sort of way. We ran across him in the rug shop negotiating for an area rug with a cannabis motif. Meg said, “Well, that it will undoubtedly pull his décor together nicely.”

When we left the flea, we were all a little light headed and hungry, so we headed into town for lunch. Imagine our surprise when we found all the shops closed--on a Saturday before Christmas! I guess they knew they couldn’t compete with the Jamestown Flea. Come to think of it, those shopkeepers were probably out there doing their Christmas shopping, too. I actually wouldn’t mind going back. I kind of liked that smoky air out there.

Turning of the Year

Spring in Dixie

The very best thing about living in the deep South is that Spring comes early and in earnest. Our winters are typically tepid, and then, suddenly, it's Spring. We wring every thing we possibly can out of this season simply because it is a precursor, and the sweetest inhalation before a hellishly hot summer.

In winter, there are days when we can sit on our screen porches and sip iced tea. While everyone else is shoveling snow, or stacking sandbags, we're planting pansies and praising the sun. And then comes Spring, when everything turns pink and white, the jasmine blooms along back walls, and the dogwoods unfurl their tender crosses just in time for Easter.

Such beauty is almost enough to make all the idiotic politics, and just plain mean-spirited racism, bearable for half a second. When our mayor and a City Councilman punch one another in the face downtown, we can turn our eyes to the red-buds for inspiration. 

When our governor, in all his wisdom, decides to build three new high-rise prisons instead of reforming the sentencing laws, or providing money for drug rehabilitation and mental health programs, we can wind the bridal wreath spirea into halos and call ourselves free. When the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court announces that this state doesn't have to abide by the decisions of our nation's Supreme Court because...well, because we're special...we can pick a bearded iris for our hair.

Spring does not make any of this right, or just, or compassionate, but it somehow shows us that there is a Higher Power who's not bound by human ignorance and fear, but is, instead, full of color and delight, and that life abounds in spite of the backward tug of Southern politics.

Yoga-Southern Style

                                                Day Devoted to the Stomach

          Lisa calls the class together. She is a young thing, benign looking with her long brown hair drawn back in a neat scrunch, but in truth, she holds a black belt in karate in addition to being a yoga master. She takes herself quite seriously, and does not suffer fools. "Ladies, please roll out your mats, remove your shoes and take your places. You may want a bolster or two, because today we'll be working on your abdominal muscles."

          Groans echo around the jute-matted room. Sara, who's been a yoga junkie for years, prettily removes her Jesus-sandals to show pink tipped toes, then gracefully lowers herself into a dignified lotus position. In her grass-green yoga tights, she looks like a frog queen sitting on a lily pad.

          “She’s so damn self-righteous,” Candy, my hefty friend, whispers in my ear. “I hope she busts a gut today. That spandex looks like it's glued on.”

          “Ssh! She can hear you!” I haul my mat and bolster to the back of the room to get as far away from Lisa as possible. I know she’ll be all over me for improper postures and having this fat-roll around my middle. Abs indeed! Mine are buried in the sins of six decades.

          Allison comes in late as usual. Lisa frowns and quickly points her to a space up front. If you’re late, she makes you pay for it. Poor Allison will now make a pure spectacle of herself before the whole class.

          Finally, we’re all settled in place. Lisa takes a seat on her mat and nimbly draws her long, lean legs into a perfect lotus. She touches middle fingertips to thumbs, closes her eyes and begins the low OM.

          Every time I start to OM, it catches in my throat and comes out in a strangled croak. I cough and hack, attempting to clear it. After the third hack, I risk glancing at Lisa. She's giving me the evil eye. “Get it together,” she silently mouths. My croak turns into a whimper.

          “Now, come to your hands and knees, and let's do the cat-cow stretch. Bring your back up and your head down…stretch…stretch…and hold.” Lisa's voice is a humming sing-song.

          Turning my head to the right, I see Sara, beatific smile on her face, stretching perfectly into the cat and then down into the cow. She appears to be in a trance and I wonder whether she throws back a couple of Valium before she heads out to Yoga. That’s the only thing that would put a smile like that on my face.

          “Faces straight ahead!” Lisa bellows from the front, and I know she's heading my way. Sure enough, two hands grab my fat roll and pull my back up to the breaking point.

          “Now slide your right foot forward as far as you can, and drop that left hip toward the mat.” She's got to be kidding, right?

          I hear a grunt from Candy as she attempts to walk her right foot up to the front of the mat.  “Uh-oh, I think I’m stuck!” she squeaks. Candy looks like someone frozen while leaping a hurdle. Lisa hurries over and attempts to pull her up, but Candy is at least twice Lisa’s size. There is a nauseating sound of ripping spandex. Candy grabs hold of Lisa, and they both go down. Everybody scrambles to get out of the way except, of course, Sara, who’s stretched into her long legged pose, looking as if the angels are singing in her ears.

          Accompanied by much cursing and snarling, Lisa untangles arms and legs to extricate herself from Candy’s massive embrace. I help Lisa arrange Candy’s feet so she can stand up, her shredded tights now hanging from her crotch.

          “To hell with abs,” Candy roars. She stomps over to Sara and shoves her into a heap on the floor, then throws her mat at Lisa and slams out the door.

          We look at one another, shell-shocked, but Lisa strides to the front and takes her place on the mat.  “Deep breaths into the belly, ladies…”

Do you like...

Old Things

“I continue to be interested in new things that seem old, and old things that seem new.” Jacquelin T. Robinson

It's a bit daunting to know that the things you grew up with are now considered antiques—or I should say, “mid-century modern.” What does that make me, I wonder. Well if you want to take a walk down memory lane, I have just the place for you. It's called, “What's On 2^nd,” and is located on 2^nd Ave. North in Birmingham. It's not your grandmother's antique store with loads of Baroque furniture and pale green Jadeite coffee mugs. No, as the owners say, it's a nostalgia shop. It has a little bit of everything collectible, and lots of certain things—like vintage postcards, hundreds of LP records, tons of GI Joe,

Ninja Turtles, and Johnny West action figures, and some oddities that you won't see anywhere else. Old tin toys from the 30's and 40's sit cheek to jowl with blow-mold Santas and framed movie posters. Everywhere you look there is a vintage compact or cigarette lighter, next to a camera from the 50's, or a rusting gasoline or beer sign. There are pretty things and ugly things, tobacco tins from the 1930's next to African masks, nested against old apothecary bottles. There are photographs from the 1920's and video games from the 80's. Whatever you played with or dearly loved in your childhood, regardless of when your childhood was, you'll find there—three floors overflowing with memories.

The inventory is ever-changing because the material that comes in is on the backs, and in the trunks, and truck beds of individuals as assorted as the merchandise they bring. “Pickers” from all walks of life come through the doors and announce, “I have some old...whatever...that I thought you might be interested in.” You never know, but they seem to come in bunches the owners refer to as “Picker Palooza” days. One day there will be nothing, and the next day, twenty folks back-to-back and lined up waiting for inspection. Some of them will have bric-a-brac they picked up at a thrift store or out of an auctioned storage unit, others will have grandmother's old fur coats, and someone else will bring leather-bound first edition books from the turn of the century.

Lots of folks come in with their own toy or sports card collection they've been saving all their lives, and just this second decided to get rid of it. One day when I was in the shop, someone delivered forty pounds of vintage costume jewelry from their great-aunt's house, “We're trying to clean out her house to sell, and don't have any use for this stuff.” I saw the glint in the owner's eye! "Oh, well, I might be interested. How much were you hoping to get for it?" And so the negotiations began. This is as close to the marketplace in "Old Algiers" as you'll find in America.

If you're ever in Birmingham, and you want some place to hang out for a few hours, come on by. You don't have to buy anything. You can just look and look and remember and remember. It's a happy place that takes you back to that happy kid that still lives in you.

Jane

Honest Southern Speech

Southern Dialect

“At any one time language is a kaleidoscope of styles, genres and dialects.”

David Crystal

The South, and particularly the Appalachian mountain regions of the South, have a unique dialect that is unmistakable, and sometimes incomprehensible to others. I used the dialect growing up because it was what I heard around me, and quite frankly, I love it even today. I tend to drop back into it when I want to truly express myself. For generations, people have butchered the Southern dialect, and assumed that anyone who spoke it was simply ignorant. When we want to sound stupid we pull out the “ain't” and the dropped g's and reconstructed word order, but the Southern dialect is simply one variant of American English, as are the New England and the Mid-Western dialects.

The mountain dialect that I grew up with was a combination of Elizabethan, Scottish, and Anglo-Scottish border dialects. It is as uniquely American as the Valley-speak that Californians seem to favor. When I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, the rougher forms were common. The dropped or added R's in words such as hollow, usually pronounced “holla” if it's an empty thing, or “holler” is you mean a piece of ground between two mountains. The added R's could also show up in words such as wash, which became “warsh”. The z sound in contractions, became a dn't sound, as in wasn't to “wadn't” or isn't to “idn't”. In all Southern speech, it is common to drop the g at the end of words such as doing—doin' and going—goin'. The one I hear most here in Alabama is mixed tenses, such as seen for saw, as in “I seen him the other day.” I have to admit, that one drives me a little crazy. But there are some that I like a lot, such as adding un to pronouns and adjectives, such as “young-un” for child, or “big-un” for big one, as in “I caught me a fish! It was a big-un, too.” And, of course the ubiquitous y'all, for you all.

But when I was growing up, there were words in the lexicon that no one else used. Such things as “Afeared” for afraid, and “airish” for cool or chilly. I heard people say, “That's chancy,” meaning doubtful or risky, and “dope” for soda, as in “Bring me a dope when you come back.” A pancake was referred to as a “flannel cake” and a red squirrel as a “boomer,” and someone you don't like might be called a “peckerwood,” a “piss-ant,” or an “idjit.” That pronunciation for idiot comes directly from Ireland. “I'll be back directly,” meant, “See you later,” and a brown paper bag was a “poke.” The word, “recon”, replaced suppose, as in, “You recon we'll get some rain today?” And to carry something was to “tote” it.

The Southern dialect is hardly spoken by educated people anymore, and I'll be honest, I miss it. I love the things that make every region of this country unique. The Valley-girl dialect sounds just as dissonant to my ears as Southern speak sounds to yours, but in a good way, an interesting way. I had a friend from Massachusetts when I was a young woman, and I quickly picked up her lapsed r's and long a's. And I dare say, she learned a few new words from me. I will be glad for the day that we drop our disdain for differences and instead love and embrace them.

                                                                  Jane

My Quilts

Creative Clutter

“Creative clutter is better than idle neatness!”

Most of the quilts I make are neither useful nor warm. They are wall quilts, and most are designed for the person who commissions them and the place where they will hang. They range from strange to sublime,

 and from secular to sacred.

 I don't typically cut pieces ahead of time, I just begin with an idea. Unlike most quilters, I don't draw my patterns before I begin—mostly because I don't know what they will be until I am in the middle of them. My process is what I refer to as 'organic'. It takes shape as I go along. My dear mother, the precision quilter, would look at whatever I was doing, turn her head one way and then the other, and ask, “What does it mean, Jane?” I would respond, “Who knows!”

If I make a quilt to go on a bed, which I don't often do, it is only out of duress and need of cash. I have made two queen-sized from athletic jerseys and two king-sized for my son's wedding gifts, and one for myself because I needed cover. Otherwise I stay away from huge quilts because they take too long and I lose interest about half-way through. I find I get into trouble when someone wants a particular pattern and particular size. Because my process is so organic, what comes out is often not what they envisioned. I do best and people are happier with the finished product, when they just give me some color guidance, show me the space where the quilt will hang, and then back off and let me do my thing. I like to fashion quilts around the interests of the people. This one, for instance was made for a lake house.

I also like to combine quilting with embroidery. I really enjoy drawing with colorful thread; making pictures with it. It is time consuming, but like my grandmother, I don't do well with idle hands, so when I sit down to watch television, I'm also stitching.

And, finally, I sometimes like to paint a design and then quilt it. These were made as a triptic for a friend from Australia. He was homesick and wanted something like the traditional art of the Aboriginal people.

A couple of years ago, my friend, Isie, brought me a tall stack of books of sample fabrics from her daughter, who is an interior decorator. Isie knows I like to “recycle and repurpose” things. I cut all those small blocks of sample fabrics off their cards, painstakingly pulled off the paper backing, and made a quilt. I also haunt thrift stores for used clothing made from interesting or vintage fabric and incorporate them into my quilts. Occasionally, I find a trove of vintage fabric, as I did when I cleaned out my mother's house after her death. Remnants of fabrics dating all the way back to when I was a child (hundreds of years ago) were stored in boxes in her basement. I gleefully brought those home and have doled them out sparingly into all sorts of creations.

All this is to say, that while every generation has a different motivation for making quilts, we have managed to continue a family tradition for longer than one hundred years. I may be the last, so I have to make it count.

                                                 Jane

Plain and Simple

“Twenty years ago I walked into Latham's Men's Store in Sag Harbor, New York, and saw old quilts used as a background for men's tweeds. I had never seen quilts like that. Odd color combinations. Deep saturated solid colors: purple, mauve, green, brown, magenta, electric blue, red. Simple geometric forms: squares, diamonds, rectangle. A patina of use emanated from them. They spoke directly to me. They knew something. They went straight to my heart.”

                                               Sue Bender (Plain and Simple)

Thus began Sue Bender's little book about her journey to Amish country to learn about their quilts. As with all art, quilts have a way of grabbing hold of you and not letting go. Amish women make quilts from the same fabrics they use to make their clothing, so there is a limited palette. And they use only simple geometric shapes and solid colors. You will never see a bold plaid or even a flash of batik in an Amish quilt. But oh, my, what they can do with those few colors and shapes!

The quilt above is one of my mother's unquilted tops. It is made entirely from diamonds and triangles, but you can see what is possible with such simplicity when colors and textures are varied. I pull this top out about once a year and study it. It helps me to better understand my mother. She was a woman of her time, who married at eighteen, seven days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. By the time my father shipped out a year later, she had a baby girl. She never worked outside the home, and was just about as unsophisticated as anyone I have ever known. Her name was Virginia.

In the years of my growing up with two sisters, one who was severely disabled with cerebral palsy, Mother spent her days working—cooking three meals a day, washing the never-ending laundry that had to be hung on lines outside because we didn't have a clothes dryer. I still remember our crinoline petticoats hanging, stiff with starch, on the backyard clothesline. Except for shoes and coats, she made all our clothes. Sewing was as close to a creative life as she came, and most of that was out of necessity. I remember her first electric sewing machine, a gift from my father in the 1950's—a White, in a little wooden case. It was still in her house, held together with duct-tape, when she died five years ago—and it still worked!

When my sister, Jerrie, and I were finally out of the house, Mother began to make things just for the delight she took in making them. This quilt top is a case in point. It's huge! Larger than a king-sized bed. And every stitch is hand-made. It seems as though she started and just couldn't stop. It is bold, and simple, and breath taking in its size and color. It grabs hold of me and speaks directly to my heart. I hope it speaks to yours, too.

Jane