Psychological Bridges and a Christmas Jam Cake

Abstract

Psychological Bridges and a Christmas Jam Cake Sidney Saylor Farr (bio) Can a person make the transition from physical, mental, and spiritual poverty into modern society and have a realistic image of self? I grew up in an isolated community in Southeastern Kentucky. We had no radio, no newspapers, and no books when I was a young child. Later workers came over the mountain from the Red Bird Mission to teach Sunday School in the one-room schoolhouse. My world opened up through them. I struggled to walk and talk like they did, to adapt mannerisms like they had. I become convinced that to ever become a respected writer, I would have to get a college degree and learn to carry on conversations as people did outside the region. It didn’t matter to me that I had been writing most of my life and even had some area publishing credits; still I longed for that stamp of proper language and education. Years later I would regret my hard work trying to change my mountain dialect. So successful was I that I lost it almost entirely. I could still climb the hills and swing on grapevines, but I did not reclaim my dialect. Along with that I lost for a while some of my fresh original expressions in writing poetry. A dropout in the seventh grade (Mother was ill and I had to stay home and take care of the younger children), I never got to go to grade school again. I married when I was barely fifteen. My introduction to the world beyond the mountains came when I was nineteen. The people at the Red Bird mission brought me books to read, taught me to play the piano, and told me about places such as Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Europe. The missionaries were talented, educated, intelligent, good people. I adopted their mannerisms, accents, and style of clothing, which disgusted my family and friends. I told myself they were just uneducated, narrow-minded, apathetic people, not to be emulated. I was driven to “get above my raising,” as they accused me of doing. [End Page 86] Indianapolis in 1960 brought me the first experience of working in an office. I worked doubly hard to prove to everyone that I was just as good as they, even if I did come from Appalachia. We moved to Indianapolis in 1960 and to Berea in 1962. The years passed. In 1967 our unhappy marriage frayed to its last thin fiber and broke. I picked up the loose ends and tried to weave security for my fifteen-year-old and five-year-old sons. In 1964 I began working for the Council of the Southern Mountains on the staff of Mountain Life & Work. It was there that I was brought face to face with my people and Appalachia again. In 1964 the Council was becoming very involved with the War on Poverty. College students, community activists, social workers, and educators came in on the wave of money from Washington, D. C., and streamed out into the mountain communities to live and work. On a regular basis they came back to Berea and the home office for various reasons. Although I was not in the mainstream of the action, still it spilled over into the magazine offices, and I heard them talk about the people and Appalachia, giving opinions, searching for answers. Eventually I got over my shyness learning to speak up and say, “Oh no, it’s not that way at all…” I got a second-hand look, and didn’t like what I saw. This forced me to examine what I knew from experience, and I came to know my people and my place in the mountains the way they really are. My great-grandmother, Granny Brock, had to cross a physical bridge from isolation to Cumberland Gap, and out into other parts of the state. I feel my bridge was a psychological one—from Stoney Fork to the cosmopolitan college town of Berea. It has been said that emigrants to this country take three generations to become Americanized. When Appalachian people migrate to other states and bigger cities to live and...