THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603180181
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
The beginning of the end of the oral tradition in the Shenandoah Valley might be traced to the mid-1890s, when the crank telephone came to southwestern Rockingham County.
The story goes that Ben Southland, the Rushville blacksmith, had a fiddle band going over at the general store Saturday evenings. One night Southland had an inspiration, lifted the telephone receiver there and cranked out an ``eleven shorts'' emergency signal. He knew that folks all along the line would pick up to find out what was going on.
``Hello,'' he drawled. ``No emergency, folks - just Ben and the boys down at Smith's store. Would you like to hear some good music?''
Well, they would, and what ensued just might have been the first live musical broadcast in the country.
That family jewel is one of a chestful stored in Shenandoah Voices: Folklore, Legends and Traditions of the Valley (Rockbridge Publishing, 147 pp., $25) by John L. Heatwole. The author, a Bridgewater sculptor whose craftsman/storyteller family has worked this turf for generations, spent 20 years collecting riveting yarns of rural Virginia. In the not-so-distant days before radio, television and the Internet, people spread home-grown stories in conversation.
Before talk shows, we talked.
``For me,'' Heatwole explains, ``folk tales have always risen from the lives of real people, and although they are often about fantastic happenings or superhuman deeds, somewhere back in time there was a kernel of truth that sparked the telling. These stories take us to a time when the pace of life was governed by the seasons and everyday needs of the community. They should be cherished and preserved, because they are the color commentary to straight history.''
He was in the nick of time to scribble down first-hand wonderful stuff nobody else had the foresight or equipment to commit to tape. Shenandoah Voices is formed from ``extraordinary events in the everyday lives of real people.'' Among so many others, Heatwole saved for us Ben Southard:
Once, a fellow saw a rifle that Ben owned and took a powerful shine to it. He said if Ben was willing to sell, he was in the market to buy if the price was right. Now Ben Southard was a sharp salesman. He said he'd consider selling, but first he had to tell him about the gun's special feature. ``You got to put salt in the barrel before you fire it.''
The prospective buyer was baffled and asked why that should be done.
``Well,'' said Ben, ``this gun shoots so far and so accurate that you got to use salt so the meat won't spoil before you can get to it.''
Included in Shenandoah Voices are considerable superstitions, signs and remedies. Some still make sense; all bemuse. For example, the belief was that if one entered a house in the Valley and left it without sitting down, it was bad luck - and in Rockingham County it was particular bad luck to do so and leave by a different door.
Seems logical that one might not have any business at a house in which one had no time to set a spell, and only a burglar would depart another way.
In Augusta County, folks said that if a baby smiles in his sleep, ``the child is talking to the angels.''
I'm not so sure about the efficacy of a tea made from the hind legs of mice for kidney ailments. Still I haven't tried it, so I won't knock it. But how about spreading skunk fat on the chest for croup?
It might not cure a body, but it would certainly keep interruptions away while one was recuperating.
Far and away my favorite Shenandoah voice is the one recounting the tale of the haunted house near Trissels Mennonite Church. A man was supposed to have been murdered there, decapitated on a stair landing above 11 steps. And, years later, trespassers who happened on the hallway would hear the silence suddenly broken by ``thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. . . .
``THUMP.`` MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. by CNB