Harry Caudill: Appalachian Environmentalist

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PLOWBOY: Still, whenever you mention the Cumberland Plateau or the southern Appalachian Mountains-especially the parts taken in by West Virginia or eastern Kentucky-many people conjure up images of quaint mountaineers hardy, independent souls who live back in "hollers" and spend a lot of time fighting off revenue agents. Is this true? Does the stereotyped "southern mountaineer" still exist as a human species?

CAUDILL: I believe that, as a social type, he's already vanished except in a very few isolated areas. He's been replaced by the modern east Kentuckian/West Virginian, which is an entirely different character. There's a great deal of difference between today's east Kentuckian and the Kentucky mountaineer of an earlier time.

The modern east Kentuckian-in many cases-is relief fed, food stamp-fed, kept alive by Medicare and Medicaid and so on all of which were unknown factors in the life of the old Kentucky mountaineer. The mountaineer lived by fishing and hunting and farming and moon shining. He had his music and his fiddle tunes and his folk methods and his folk medicines, practically all of which have been lost.

PLOWBOY: Then you don't feel that the mountain culture exists any longer?

CAUDILL: I think that it exists as a dying influence, as a diminishing influence in the lives of the people who live here. Increasingly, however, these people look to television for entertainment and to doctors for the alleviation of ills and so on rather than to their own resources and their own culture. In my estimation, we who now live in this part of the Cumberlands and the Appalachians are in the process of becoming the most dependent people in the United States maybe in the world-which is the reverse of the situation, say, 50 or 60 years ago.

PLOWBOY: Yes, but the characteristics of the old culture still do exist in varying degrees. The music is still played, for instance, and the mountain people still do farm and hunt and fish .

CAUDILL: Well, compared to the old days, they do very little of all those things. Take the music., for instance. It now exists as simply a remnant of what it once was.

Today people get together once in a while and revive the old tunes and the old songs. But 50 years ago! Why there was a dance every Saturday .night in practically every community and people gathered with their musical instruments and vied with one another for the playing.

If you want a person who knows Appalachian music-the old traditional songs and ballads and fiddle tunes-you have to hunt to find him now. And when you do track down such a musician, he's a living museum piece whereas 50 years ago, he'd have been a living performer.

There was a time which I can remember very well when, on days warm and bright like this, the county seat would be filled with banjo pickers, fiddlers, and other musicians. They performed on the streets and wonderful songs sprang into existence spontaneously. When Floyd Collins died over in west Kentucky, for instance, people were playing and singing "The Ballad of Floyd Collins" within just a few days. When the Titanic went down, there was a great outpouring of homemade ballads across the Kentucky mountains.

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