I Never "Stomped" for Grandma

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I Never "Stomped" for Grandma Brian Jones One segment of the Appalachian heritage that has been granted much less attention than it deserves is the literature of the region. It is passing strange that many readers and scholars outside of Appalachia are illiterate on this subject. It ispossibly tragic that so many who live in the region have never been aware of their literature. After all, one ofAppalachian earliestfiction writers influenced the work of Mark Twain and William Faulkner, a not insignificant contribution to American letters. Of equal importance, in my judgment, is the influence Appalachian writers have had, and can have, on those in the schools and the larger community who need to see reflected in literature their own experience. That experience may be one ofsimple, daily nobility, or it may be negative and hobbled by hopelessness. But whatever the reflection it can do what literature worthy ofthe name has always done, bond the unique individual to the universal human experience. A young man with an Appalachian heritage he had never discovered beyond the "hillbilly" stereotype which identified him to strangers recently discovered some of "his" literature. Authors of the books he read (no, devoured) would be rewarded by the eagerness with which he incorporated their characters, stories, insights into his life. He writes of his experience in a way that may be a challenging statement on the Appalachian heritage—that one receivedfrom the past and the one being shaped for the future. —Wilma Dykeman "It was as if I had experienced a great awakening," my grandfather rasped. I had heard this story a hundred times if I had heard it once. His hands, calloused and gnarled, trembled every time he told of his Brian Jones, a student at Berea College, first encountered Appalachian literature in a class taught by novelist, historian, and guest professor Wilma Dykeman. 12 "conversion." "I was plowing that day. At the time I had them two mules, Shem and Jasper, that I had bought off of Russell Pastine." It was at this point in the story that his eyes would get as big as half dollars. Once I thought they were going to pop clean out of his head. He would get all fidgety, like there were ants in his overalls. When I asked him why he got so jumpy he would say, "The Holy Spirit is working in me." "I was halfway through a row when something struck me so hard that I thought Shem had taken an urge to kick me clean into Barbour County," he said, "but when I felt my head there was no blood and I realized that there wasn't any pain. It was at this moment that an allwhite pheasant came flying out of the woods and landed right there in the field with me. I knew that it was the Lord sending me a sign and I've been a changed man ever since." I'm not sure if it was the Lord or a bad batch of Isaac Jefferson's moonshine that leveled Grandpap that day. He always carried a pint bottle in his overalls and when he plowed there were two Mason jars set one at each end of the field, so he could get a "taste" after plowing each row. Either way it brought a change in Grandpap. He traded his pint bottle of whiskey for a pocketful of the Holy Bible. He said he saw things in his everyday life that he had never seen before. The Lord or liquor had opened my grandfather's eyes. To some extent, this is what studying Appalachian literature has done for me. The early writings of Emma Bell Miles, Horace Kephart, and Charles Egbert Craddock to the recent literature of Denise Giardina, Lee Smith, Wilma Dykeman, and James Still have provided for me my own "great awakening." I see Appalachia in a new context. The care and the respect the majority of the authors used when writing their stories show me the real Appalachia. This is the Appalachia I never knew as a child because I was ashamed of myself, my family, and my culture. Night after night was spent out in the barn, reading...