Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 21, 1995 TAG: 9511220002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We have a lifestyle and a code. Outsiders say it is not the noblest or wisest - that it is out of date. Yet we still keep it, because it is ours, forged over almost four centuries. We want to retain the good points and discard the bad; we can't do more, and we would not do less.
Perhaps our old (and now banned) state song was a bit sentimental when it claimed Virginia's birds "warbled sweet in the springtime." But I have heard them warble - and it seemed sweet.
I find myself, here at the very end of the 20th century, responding warmly to this comment by the University of Virginia President Edwin A. Alderman almost 80 years ago: "We Virginians are sometimes laughed at for our sensitiveness to local things and our pride of state. Let us not be laughed out of this sentiment."
Many Virginians still feel this way, as we speed down the postmodern Information Highway towards the millennium and the 21st century. We hear talk of the Global Village: but "village" for us still means places like Ferrum, Floyd, Fincastle, Natural Bridge, Ivanhoe, Scrabbletown and Rural Retreat.
Call this sense of place. Let me (like Shakespeare before me) "give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." I believe in localism, which, like the fabled cat, seems to have many lives. The more that local customs, friends and memories fade, the more valuable they seem.
That's why we like local holidays, family reunions and climbing in family trees. Genealogy is our obsession. Localism and love of place will flourish as long as human beings are affected primarily by what they see, hear, touch and complain about.
The world "out there" may be virtual or electronic - but most people still like to have eye contact. and to press flesh. My father always said the way to make a contract or agreement was to shake the other person's hand. He never needed lawyers or witnesses or computers - and he never failed to keep his word. Yes, he lived in another world. Too bad we have lost it.
Let me mention some local events or places that bolster my case and my hopes. People in Ferrum recently staged the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival. Orville Hicks, a big bearded man in overalls who makes his living telling stories, captivated a large audience with a Jack tale. Jack is a poor mountain boy who is somewhat of a trickster. This particular story centered on Soldier Jack, who came home after 30 years in the wars to play poker with the devil - and won.
Meanwhile, Allen West from Vinton was guiding his two workhorses through a series of cones in the log-skidding contest. Across the way, people were busy at historic crafts, making quilts, molasses and apple butter; getting ready for the coon dog and horse competitions.
Daniel Womack, a 90-year old black gospel singer born in Pittsylvania County, was warming up for a good sing. Take your choice: ballads, country blues, hillbilly. There were seven bands, and gospel and sacred music in the Vaughn Chapel lasted seven hours. It's hard to say there was a favorite tune, but old-timers said "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," picked by banjo player Tim Lewis, was hard to beat.
Food? All kinds - barbecued chicken, Brunswick stew, pork rinds, ham biscuits, spare ribs, fried chitterling sandwiches. No one went home hungry.
This is grass-roots culture and it still flourishes throughout Southwest Virginia - the Galax Fiddler's Convention, the farmers' market and the transportation museum in Roanoke, the Barter Theater in Abingdon, the Saturday-night clog dances in Floyd. And there are many more.
Nineteen counties spread from Roanoke 260 miles to the Cumberland Gap. West of the Shenandoah Valley the geography changes. Ridges and valleys form a jigsaw of compartments, everyone different from the others.
You can see all this from the Skyline Drive. The air is crisp and clear; a misty haze, like a velvet mantle, veils distant peaks. If a storm comes, thunder will rattle and rumble, and the trees will tremble. Then the clouds will lift and the mountains emerge once more, like giants struggling to be free.
In the fall, you will see the valley aflame with gold and scarlet. Glory be to God for dappled things. The maples are red-wine, the sumacs yellow and orange, the oaks a deep umber. Virginia creepers and trumpet vines will be moving over dead trees, adding touches of white and crimson. Painters would marvel at all this - but none could capture the full grandeur. A line springs up from my inner self: "Be still and know that I am God."
I will come back in the spring, to see the fresh green buds, the flashing white dogwood blossoms, the blushing red buds, the great masses of mountain laurel, and the gentle touch of royal purple supplied by the violets.
There, for a while, I can forget the trash-talk shows with barkers named Carnie and Ricki and Sally and Rolonda, giving us what Stephen Schiff calls a carnival of prurience; shows that are like giant Dumpsters from which tumble half-digested scraps of degradation. Nor will I be assaulted by gangster rap, tabloid journalism, psychobabble, hypes, sound bites, quips and quacks. That silence is golden.
Yet we are told, with much bravado, that we are moving forward with (according to the favorite cliche) the sound of light. But soon the light is turned off, and we are back with our perennial problems and confusions.
The wind is blowing, the leaves are falling, the hucksters are braying. We are promised bigger and better things just down the postmodern Information Highway Think cyberculture! Think tomorrow!
Instead, I prefer to think of my rainy-day trip along the Skyline Drive, then through the back roads (with three digits) in Southwest Virginia. It was the kind of day that brings back long-dormant poets, like Gerard Manley Hopkins:
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wilderness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Is our new highway a one-way street? Might we not pause to examine what we are leaving and losing? Asking that question might be Virginians' best contribution to the 21st century.
Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities and communication studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB