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Foxfire 12: Square Dancing, Crafts, Cherokee Traditions, Summer Camps, World War Veterans, Personalities (Foxfire Series, Band 12) - Softcover

Buch 6 von 9: Foxfire Series

Foxfire Fund, Inc.

 
9781400032617: Foxfire 12: Square Dancing, Crafts, Cherokee Traditions, Summer Camps, World War Veterans, Personalities (Foxfire Series, Band 12)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 140003261X ISBN 13: 9781400032617
Verlag: Anchor, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

For more than thirty years, Foxfire books have brought the philosophy of simple living to hundreds of thousands of readers, teaching creative-self-sufficiency, the art of natural remedies, home crafts, and preserving the stories and customs of Appalachia. Inspiring and practical, this classic series has become an American institution.

In this twelfth volume of the series, you'll find reminiscences about learning to square dance and tales about traditional craftsmen who created useful items in the old-time ways that have since disappeared in most of the country. Here are lessons on how to make rose beads and wooden coffins, and on how to find turtles in your local pond. We hear the voices of descendants of the Cherokees who lived in the region, and we learn about what summer camp was like for generations of youngsters. We meet a rich assortment of Appalachian characters and listen to veterans recount their war experiences. Illustrated with photographs and drawings, Foxfire 12 is a rich trove of information and stories from a fascinating American culture.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Founded in 1966, FOXFIRE is a nonprofit education organization. Foxfire's learner-centered, community-based approach is advocated through The Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center and grounded in the Southern Appalachian culture that promotes a sense of place and appreciation of local people and culture as essential educational tools.

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For more than thirty years, Foxfire books have brought the philosophy of simple living to hundreds of thousands of readers, teaching creative-self-sufficiency, the art of natural remedies, home crafts, and preserving the stories and customs of Appalachia. Inspiring and practical, this classic series has become an American institution.
Foxfire 12" is the latest volume, the first in more than five years. Here are reminiscences about learning to square dance and tales about traditional craftsmen who created useful items in the old-time ways that have since disappeared in most of the country. Here are lessons on how to make rose beads and wooden coffins, and on how to find turtles in your local pond. We hear the voices of descendants of the Cherokees who lived in the region, and we learn about what summer camp was like for generations of youngsters. We meet a rich assortment of Appalachian characters and listen to veterans recount their war experiences. Illustrated with photographs and drawings, Foxfire 12" is a rich trove of information and stories from a fascinating American culture.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

CHES McCARTNEY:

THE LEGEND OF THE GOAT MAN

"The goats have taught me a lot in the past thirty years. They don't, for example, care how I smell or how I look. They trust me and have faith in me, and this is more than I can say for a lot of people." -Qtd. in Patton 7

I am not originally from Rabun County. Because I am from the Lone Star State-Texas-I had never heard of the Goat Man. Although I now know that he has been in forty-nine of the fifty states of America (all except Hawaii), he is not as well known in Texas as he is in Georgia. I've lived here in Northeast Georgia for three years, and his name has been mentioned off and on in conversations with home folks. As everybody does, when, as an outsider, you're unfamiliar with a subject, you often tend to pay it no attention because the name means nothing to you. My lack of knowledge on the subject of America's Goat Man was about to change.

After I was chosen to work at Foxfire during the summer program and had completed some unfinished articles, someone mentioned the Goat Man. I was intrigued. This man, for many decades, up to 1987, with and without goats (mostly with), traveled all over the continental United States. At the time, most did not know his real name or where he was from.

I learned that the Goat Man always appeared, along with about twelve to thirty goats-which "he proudly called his maternity ward" (Patton 3) or his babies (Patton 19)-and wagons full of junk, around the time of Clayton, Georgia's Mountaineer Festival, a celebration that used to be an annual event. There are various accounts of Charlie, Chester, better known as Chess or Ches McCartney, aka the Goat Man, that tell of sightings of his strange caravan over the span of thirty-eight to fifty-five years. (For the record, I have found various names and many different spellings of Mr. McCartney's name, but in an effort to remain as historically accurate as possible, the spelling of Ches McCartney's name is the same as his signature.) The sightings became rarer until finally there were none at all. Georgia newspapers began reporting that the Goat Man had retired from the road, and folks began telling tales of his demise. I wanted to meet this national legend, so in trying to find out anything I could, I called local libraries and newspapers. My search ended successfully: Mr. McCartney was in a nursing home in Macon, Georgia. Having fractured his hip, he, at a self-professed one hundred and five years of age (he was probably several years younger), was in a wheelchair. His white hair peeked out from underneath his blue cap, and his blue eyes, set in his weathered face, sparkled and danced as he recounted the tales of the roads he has traveled.

This article represents research from various sources: personal interviews with some eyewitnesses from Rabun County, Georgia, and others who have vivid memories of the Goat Man, and my own interview with Mr. McCartney, as well as quotes from the pamphlets he sold during his traveling years. Darryl Patton's book America's Goat Man (Mr. Ches McCartney), used with permission, was an invaluable resource.

Some who met Ches McCartney thought he was a friendly genius; others thought him filthy and crazed. All, however, remember the Goat Man as a mysterious, eccentric, legendary character, a gypsy mountain man, a folk hero who followed his own way, herding goats from Florida to Maine, from Washington, D.C., to California. "Like a Knight of the Round Table," Mr. McCartney once averred, "I am in search of the Holy Grail" (qtd. in Patton 55). -Stephanie Dollar and Angie Cheek

Ches McCartney was born in the early 1900s, on the farm of his parents near Van Buren Township, Keokuk County, Iowa, the son of Albert McCartney and Louise E. Russell McCartney. He lived there until he was fourteen years old. He ran off to New York City and, at the age of fourteen, married a twenty-four-year-old Spanish knife thrower who threw knives at him in local bars to make tips. Charlie (Ches) recounted that his wife "threw the knives in his general direction: she would throw a couple to attract attention; then as the coins hit the floor, she would throw all twenty-five. The closer the knives came to Charlie, the bigger the tips. Charlie was unable to grow a long, flowing beard during this time" (qtd. in Patton 73).

The pair discovered they were going to have a child, so Ches invested in a sturdy team of horses, some goats, and a twenty-acre farm near his childhood home in the What Cheer community of Iowa. Albert Gene (Bert/Gene) was born here. McCartney averred that his son thrived "on pure country air, vegetables, spring water, and plenty of goat's milk" (qtd. in Patton 74). Life was good for a time. Ches even became "a devoted reader of the Bible and started expounding the Gospel to his fellow man" (qtd. in Patton 74).

Then came the Depression. No market existed for their abundant crops, and during an extremely hard winter, they lost both their horses. McCartney related the misfortunes that befell him when the Depression of 1929 hit hard: "I lost my life savings in the bank failure and had to take a job on the Works Project [Progress] Administration-the well-known WPA" (qtd. in Patton 6). Most people farmed in that area. You were either a farmer or a log cutter, or you worked for the government in the WPA, CCA, or CCC. "While he was working for the WPA, a tree fell on him and left him with a crushed lung, a crushed left shoulder, a deformed left elbow, and a smashed right hip" (Patton 25). According to Darryl Patton, "He was left for dead for a while before they found him." McCartney said he lay there for hours before anyone came to help: "They thought I was dead and took me to the undertaker. He was sticking the embalming needle in me when I woke up" (qtd. in Patton 14). "Luckily," as McCartney so succinctly put it, "the undertaker was slow" (qtd. in Patton 6). The Goat Man ended up with a permanently mangled arm and shoulder. In fact, his arm was so crushed that he couldn't do heavy work.

After the physical limitations caused by his injuries in the WPA accident and the Depression exacerbated his problems, he came to a realization: He had a family and needed money. He needed a gimmick: He liked Robinson Crusoe and liked preaching. McCartney decided that there "were places to be seen, and a challenge to be met" (qtd. in Patton 74). He had his wife make them goatskin clothes. He hitched a number of billy goats to the front of a ramshackle handcrafted wagon, loaded his wife and son onto it, traveled around locally, and finally decided to hit the roads of America for good. McCartney related that the challenge "proved too harrowing for Mrs. McCartney (a 1984 article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Albert Gene's mother's name as Saddie Smythheart), and [Ches] awakened one morning to find that their party of three was now a party of two" (qtd. in Patton 74-75): himself and Gene. Ches said, "She went away and left me and the boy . . . took up with another man" (qtd. in Patton 33). Some purport that Ches soon returned to Iowa, left his son with grandparents who enrolled him in school, and, thereafter, returned to his travels. Many witnesses, however, testify to having seen his son with him, even as a teenager. In fact, most agree that Gene traveled, off and on, with his father until the age of fifteen. A Fayetteville, North Carolina news reporter commented about one encounter with father and son: "Gene's face clouded with petulance . . . The old man grinned at him. 'He thinks he knows as much as the Lord . . . but he's...

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Verlag
Anchor
Erscheinungsdatum
2004
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
140003261X
ISBN 13 
9781400032617
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
576
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

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