Appalachian Characters - Josh Griggs

so appalachia is full of characters unique people very colorful stand out in your mind and today we're going to talk to one of them a family friend so we'll find out a little bit more about him i'm going to ask him some questions so you can start with what's your name and where were you born and where you live well my name's josh griggs but the problem i had from when i was born forward was my folks um i was a miracle baby for them they didn't think they were gonna have any children so when i was born they thought i was the only one so they gave me five names so my real name is jonathan charles joshua lynn griggs with a name like that you don't need a social security number and uh surprise surprise three years later when my other brother was born they got to be fair to him so they gave him five names and then three more years later my littlest brother was born and so they gave him five names too so it's a it's something else but i'm just josh just josh griggs and where do you live josh right now uh i live in ducktown tennessee just about uh five miles from where i've lived all my life uh so you said you had two brothers so tell us a little bit about your family about your parents and your brothers my mother and my father my dad worked at carpet mill and dalton for all of our lives and before we were born he was john griggs and my mother was alice rebecca griggs or alice center that was her maiden name and uh she was born and raised in mckaysville copperhill and that's where her people are from my father's people were from atlanta and elijah so what about your grandparents did they live nearby yes my grandparents were business owners in the copper basin they had a actually uh two generations of business owners the centers they had a dry goods store and a cold store they sold coal and then in later years in the later 60s it converted from a dry goods store to a paint store kind of like i guess sherwin-williams now but it was uh independent paint contractor store and we did a lot of paint contracts for the company and all kind of stuff like that for the area did you spend a lot of time with your grandparents oh yes all the time we we all lived in the same piece of property my grandparents had a house and my my mother and father built a house on the back side of their farm property and grew up around my entire life so when you said the company the you sold paint to the company i assume you're talking about the copper tennessee copper company or tri-cities no it was city service is what they call it but yes it was tennessee copper company so but the copper mine most people just think of it as the copper mine yes so um i know in my family my mother's family a lot of her her brothers and uncles and those kind of people they worked there so in your lifetime tell us a little bit about the company was it still going strong or it had it kind of died out i was born in 1988 so it was closing right around the time i was coming into this world they were doing a staggered closing it was it was everyone knew that it was closing down um the reason it closed down was actually uh quite it well it was political is what it was it was a there was still plenty of years worth of ore in the ground that's always been the story i heard somebody tell me one time there was at least 200 years worth of copper left in the ground around here the problem was was copper became cheaper in venezuela brazil places like that and copper could be imported here and not have to be dug out of the ground and dealt with the epa and so it started slowing down and they were still selling acid out of the acid plant when i was born and then by the by about 93 i'm assuming 93 94 it was pretty well gone that was the end of it uh but for many years would you say that's really what created oh of course it was the heartbeat of the community at its height they was uh and this again was a little bit before my time there was over 5000 workers went through that that industry they they went down deep in the ground i'm no expert on the copper company by any means but i my grandparents actually got a tour because they sold so much paint got a tour of the mines they took them all through there and i remember my grandfather talking about just how extensive all of that mine was and it was a big operation and they ran nonstop there's pictures i've seen of be at 3am you know at night pitch black and that company lit up like a you know lights smoke rolling out of it everything it was it was still very much of a big industry and that allowed everything at one time copper hill had like four car dealerships uh just in copper hill and then there was uh two or three clothing stores and um gosh television repair and they it had its own radio station and to be a town uh as small as it is it had everything it was basically the the hub of pope county that's where all of the uh money came from all the money flowed through that area that's where the money was so compare that to today i guess there's there's not as much industry or as much economy a large economy the economy today is more tourism uh people come here to kind of see the the mountains and the cabins and and people that had big land stakes are now selling them off piece by piece and uh building cabins same as with our neighboring county in cherokee county uh just it's uh it's a more of a retirement area just out of my graduating class they might be seven or eight of us left that stayed in the area and became the cook bakers and candlestick makers you know to do the jobs everybody else moved away and it's kind of sad because i can remember my grandfather when when i was little and we would go to town my grandfather knew everybody because he graduated you know with his class and the people he graduated with became business owners and went to the company he'd say hello to somebody i didn't know who they were i was a baby but i thought my grandfather was the president because he knew everybody you know he was just involved and that was just how it was it was a very tight-knit community in those days and it still is to a degree there still is a a lot of the old i call it old south the old south the old uh blue bloods of you know fanning county and and polk county that still hang around and know these families and they still stay around but for the most part i can walk down copper hill now walk down tennessee avenue and i might see maybe one person if i'm lucky that i know it's just so many people sorry about that so many people come in and out all the time so when you were growing up was church a big influence in your life oh yes very much so let me silence that yes very much so um raised in the old baptist church um we call them sometimes it's called fire breathing baptist sometimes it's called the church you walk in baptist but that's how it was it was you know hell was preached hot and salvation was preached regularly and it was very much a real a real thing it's not like it was now and i'm not throwing off on any particular religion type or anything like that but there was an old stripe of people in fact one of the pastors that i grew up around was a worker in the company that was one of his things and looking at it now and when he's talking about eternity and and talking about when he was talking about all these things i realize now what that man's faith must have been like to ride an elevator a thousand feet down into the ground and walk around in a mine all day and not know if the mind might cave in on him if he might not see his children again if you know that they lived with that every day and um so that that made a very real experience for that person when when that pastor got up behind the stands and and got up to preaching you could feel it you knew what he was talking about was real that wasn't a put on it was real so that was one of those things so a lot of times church is where people are exposed to music you're a musical person is that where you were you were influenced by music or was it from someone in your family my grandfather and my mother and it was with church but i'll have to back up and do a little explain my grandfather was a genuine guitar picker he he could really play and my mother was a fine is she's still with us is a fine piano player she was trained to play she didn't play by ear she played by the book but my grandfather played by ear and before that my great-grandfather was a was a musician he actually wrote southern gospel music and one of his big songs was i'm living in canaan now uh the happy goodmans got it and made it big but he wrote that song and he was a piano player and as a child growing up and he died in the 60s but as a child growing up i can remember people saying that's claude sinner's great grandson that's curtis sinner's grandson that's who that is son i remember your grandfather playing the keys off the piano i remember your great grandfather playing i remember and so that was that heritage you know people talked about that and how well they could play and my grandfather tragically passed away with cancer when i was in the fourth grade he uh he was as healthy as could be and he never smoked or or used tobacco or or anything but but he developed cancer uh quickly it eat him up it just he was gone um and i was in the fourth grade and i i wanted to play the guitar because i lost him that was my way of trying to feel i guess coping i could look back now and you know i wanted to carry that on and so i i worked really hard to try to try to learn it my dad had some people he worked with and they could play the guitar and so dad um worked it out to where they they could show me a few things on the guitar and it's interesting a funny story and i guess i'll do a little meandering here but maybe you'll like it um while we always had plenty you know we never went without i'll say that we never went hungry you can tell i never went hungry and we always had plenty you know good clothes and all that stuff buying something like a professional grade guitar was just not feasible at the time because again my father was having to drive a hundred miles to work round trip to come home and dad found an interesting little niche at work everybody that was there started wanting breakfast they was wanting breakfast and dad coming i don't know how it got started one morning but you know mom was always making dad a a biscuit and egg and bacon and whatever and dad take it and eat it you know and uh he must have given somebody some of his breakfast whatever and they said hey get your wife to make me one hey you know and before dad knew it mom was making and i'm serious when i say this mom was making 50 biscuits at a time for the next day and she would make breakfast and so dad started selling biscuits selling selling breakfast selling whatever and he used that money to buy me my first guitar he bought me a sigma martin guitar uh that was my first real guitar because i had a something from the jc penny catalog you know to plump and bump and beat around on and try to learn a little bit and when dad saw that i was learning so he sold mom made biscuits and eggs and bacon and whatever would make them to order and dad would sell coffee for him and he had a little you know over there in his shop where he was working and people would come through and pay for it and that's how dad bought me my first guitar i've still got it and i think about that a lot and um he bought my my middle brother caleb wanted to learn how to play the banjo they bought caleb a banjo the same way so that that's always been very special to me because of that but so did you learn to play the piano from your mother well that was a another thing i always wanted to learn to play the piano my mother could i could sit and listen to my mother play for hours at a time my mother has a beautiful voice singing and i couldn't make it work i could i took a few lessons and i could not just make it happen and so i resigned to myself i played the guitar and then but yeah well uh i was going to the little community college in epworth and we had to write a paper one time it was in a math class uh i had to write a paper on the golden ratio pythagoras finds the golden ratio and it occurs in nature and it's the whole and i'm at home and i'm trying i don't know what my heart wasn't in it i just didn't want to write the paper i didn't want to do you know and i was just listening to mom play and i walked over there and i was watching her play and she was playing something in like five flats you know you know i was watching i said why are you hitting all those black keys and she said because they're flats i'm hitting five flats and i was looking at it and looking at it looking at it and it just kept i couldn't get it out of my mind i dreamed about that i couldn't you know a couple of nights and get up and i'm looking at it and then hit me one day i'm like i think i can make the golden ratio work on this piano you know and uh i got to tinkering with it in about a week's time i had it hammered out the rules on what you could do to play and i wrote the paper and got an a and uh i was hooked then i just you know see what other songs it would work with and i had a good time i i figured out floyd cramer's uh little style what he did a little bit and so i i put that in there and i just got to messing with it and but that was later i was in college by the end and that was something i messed with and i still tinker with it from time to time so but it's all black keys play all the black keys i it it don't sound bad when you're just playing it all at once but if somebody tries to sing with it you've got to have a real high voice or a real low voice to make it work so so um when you were growing up was school something you enjoyed i hated school and of course now i'm school teacher so you know but no i was i was the kid that that hated school and um there's a long story on that i don't know if you want me to go into it or you do okay well i don't know if the camera can see or not but that finger right right there all right this finger's shorter well when i was um gosh i guess two months old maybe three months old mom could tell you better i i had a little accident my my hand got hung in a rocker recliner and it got completely the finger tip in got completely severed on my right hand and um they mom and dad you know mom mom talks about it still you know uh heading down to cleveland you know with a with an infant baby screaming bloody murder you know because his finger's been cut off anyway they said well mr miss griggs it'll we can we can fix it to where he'll have full dexterity with it he'll just have a funny nail looking you know and so i had a that's why this pinky's curve too it was all wrapped up in a bandage for a long time anyway um when i get up into school because of that nail and whatever else and i was still trying to get it i couldn't write worth anything and i'm right-handed so i get into the i rocked along in school fine kindergarten first and second grade but i got up in there and i had a teacher and um we didn't we didn't jive she didn't see on my level and i didn't see on her level we just couldn't relate and uh let me let me uh flip this phone off sorry about that um we didn't jive and um the thing then was to write on the chalkboard long sentences we had to copy everything down in cursive then and i couldn't keep up and i would start my hand cramped really badly and i would start on the corner of the page and try my best to keep it and it would run all the way down to the other corner of the page corner to corner and i could not keep it going it just i couldn't make my hand do what i wanted it to do and that teacher was personally going through a hard time personally she had other personal issues and so i became the favorite target to be persecuted i guess in third grade and i can remember her calling my mother of an evening and telling her your son just don't have it there's something wrong with him he's he's lazy he's this he's whatever my folks believed and i got a lot of weapons because of all of that and i was trying desperately to keep up well uh out of all that they uh they wound up putting me in special ed and my folks my dad again dad working in a carpet mill mom working she worked over it at uh at a nursing home and they were you know working really hard and trying to make a go of things and they believed the professionals when they said your your child needs but that was the bad old days in special ed when they took the burn up teachers that you know were about to retire or had something wrong with them anyway and they put them down there and so i got put down in special ed and i stayed there from third grade on up and you get in a position like that sometimes and you get to believe in it yourself and i got into middle school and by this point i guess that's where some of my humor developed i should note that during this time i'd i give up to it and i decided by golly i'll just make money then i was a kid so i i started selling stuff at school again i saw dad selling biscuits i saw whatever else so i started selling stuff at school and one day uh it it hit me that i could charge my lunch and keep my lunch money and so i started loaning out my lunch money and exorbitant interest rates and until my mother gets the bill one day this wasn't helping my case any about being in special ed uh i was you know labeled a deviant but my mother gets a bill that the lunch tab hasn't been paid in a month and ready to mount it up to like thirty dollars or something like that and mom comes down and wrecks out my backpack she finds thirty dollars and then about twenty five dollars worth of interest where i collected and so i got a whipping and i think the money got redistributed to my peers but you get you get to believe in that narrative long enough there are some other things going on too and you get to believe in that narrative long enough so you just develop a way to deal with it you develop a sense you try to develop a sense of humor and you try to shield yourself from it well i got up to middle school and by then i was hard-boiled i was ready to just you know i didn't care i'd just give up to it i've been told i wouldn't amount to anything more than a pulpwood cutter no offense to any pulpwood cutters out there but that's a hard job and i was told i wasn't out to anything and i could remember my daddy telling me you know and after i sometimes believed it dad would whip me and only say you were to never be like that you will be a doctor although you're a schoolteacher but you will not give in to this you know there were some hard times with that and i got up into in the middle school and i had a sixth grade teacher and i won't call her by name but she said i will fail you miserably in sixth grade and i had you know she was a regular ed teacher because they moved towards inclusion but then i'll fail you miserably if you don't enroll in the drama club and they put me in the you know they put me in the drama club and i wound up being the starring person in that all through middle school made best actor all the years i mean that's nothing now but i got to get to do that and i could memorize things quickly and i'd give in to it and by ninth grade they had put me they kept me in special ed since third grade i made it to ninth grade stayed in there stayed in there stayed in there and i wanted out i wanted to be a schoolteacher that's what dad told me i needed to do and i i really wanted to do that and at the end of the year after i'd run the whole ninth grade year in those years they had the tracking system and you went tech track and you went college track and that was decided for you based upon your eighth grade year based upon a recommendation from the teachers busted it my eighth grade year hoping i could get on the college track and when it came down the end i had a math teacher in eighth grade tell me i just don't think you can do this and she said okay give in to it again i got put in the tech track with all them rednecks you know we used to as jerry clower would call them and and they had already given up two they were marginalized you could see it now and come into my ninth grade year the end of my ninth grade year and they all bring us in for a meeting my own iep meeting i find out later because i was age i could attend my own and they said they already had the papers fixed they was already i know how this works i'm you know i'm in it now they already had the papers fixed they said well mr griggs we're going to get you fixed up here you're going to graduate you're going to do just fine i said i want to be a what do you want to do and i said i want to be a school teacher they said you can't do that on this diploma you need i said i want a college education and they said miss griggs they looked over at my mother they said miss griggs what he's asking is impossible she said he's my son and if he fails he fails but you let him try well they said well we'd have to completely retest him she said retesting them well they retested me and i'll never forget a man who i'm very good friends with now i made friends with him later a doctor they brought in a doctor phd to test me we're best of friends i talked to him a lot and he tested me and he got angry with them and he told them they called us back in immediately and they said we need to apologize a grave error has been made on our case and they said well his mom said what's the matter what's men you know he said mr and miss griggs they told me they said your son has a 138 iq we can't find a reason why he was put in special ed other than him having a little deformity with his hand and we're sorry and they put me college track well i'd already lost a year ninth grade was done i had three years left that was it so i i double up on everything and i graduated on time with my peers not first out of the class i wish i could have been first out of the class but i think i was probably well i was in the top 20 and there was a class of 200 and or 20 something like the big class one of the biggest classes come through fannin county schools graduated on time with my peers in the top top 20 with one of the only dual track diplomas ever issued by fanning county school system and that was my little my little victory there i was proud of that and i still i ran from special ed i wanted away from it i wanted out of it i didn't want anything to do with it and um i my i did i didn't want anything to do with with special needs or anything like that i was put in there i didn't want to be involved in my first job out of high school was working for a place called burnt mountain with adults with special needs it's funny how the lord puts you in places and they they had me over a work crew in charge of a work crew in jasper that was my own age peers but they had told them i was older you know i was in charge of it so i was having to drive from fannie county down here every day and work with kids with disabilities and we went into the school systems helped the janitors clean and i had to help them manage their money and whatever else i did that for a few years but i couldn't get away from it it's just always been in my life so so when you went on to college to become a teacher then that's when you decided that special ed's where your heart was i wanted to be a history teacher that's all i've ever wanted to be and the the the first thing i did sorry the first i knew that was going to happen the first thing i did was um enroll in college we had a little community college out here at epworth and i got my two-year degree and i it's same thing happened i've had this happen to me a lot we had to take a introduction to college and there's this lady and i later became friends with her but she was very happy she come in there she she comes in there and she says you know i want you to know when she says this to everyone she goes uh don't take more than four classes this is college this is not a joke this is not high school you must you know study and you must this and you must this and this and this okay and she basically let me know we didn't jive either she let me know right away that this was not you know a game and that you know we need to get it done well i pulled the first semester and i pulled she was the registrar i pulled four a's she didn't like that burn her up and the next class the next semester around she put me in six classes the very person that said that i couldn't do four puts me in six i pulled five a's and a b plus and then she put me in ten classes and she finally had me in everything going coming trying to make me fail and i kept kept pulling and it just frustrated her to death but i made my two-year degree and then because of the economy that was when the economy crashed in 08. they ran out of money and they started closing the school and i was heartbroken because i felt like i was on my way to a teaching career and i worked hard with now my wife she was she was at the college that's where we met we worked really really hard we got petitions together and we tried to get a state college to come in and we tried it i talked to then senator saxby chambliss and i talked to chip pearson and i went on television and i spoke at the rotary clubs and whatever else i went all over making speeches and talking about being a college man and trying to raise money and it just wouldn't happen and the one thing that i worked really really hard and we finally things got going i i didn't have anything to do with it but they brought in another school there for a little while i was another private school but they they just couldn't they weren't together they just didn't have it together and i was in there and i sat through one class one time half a semester and had already paid the tuition and they didn't have me registered for the class i became very frustrated in that time in my life i felt like the lord had me in a waiting period and i wanted to move on and uh i got angry and i left i got outside the school and i closed the doors i looked up at heaven i looked up in the sky and i said lord you call me to be a teacher if you're serious if you're serious i said stop wasting my time and i'll stop wasting yours let's get on with it shall we in about 10 minutes later i was in an automobile accident and it i was in a little pickup truck and it didn't even hurt the truck it bent the bumper a little bit i don't know how i come out of that unscathed the truck was in perfect condition it was a little cheap pickup truck i'd had i think i had eight hundred dollars in it and it was the other people's fault they they had turned in front of me and they they were at fault i get a phone call from the insurance company and the insurance company gave me a check i think it was for five thousand dollars and that paid my first year back to lee that was everything i needed to do to get back to lee and i didn't have a job then i couldn't get a job i'd lost my job with burnt mountain they lost their funding the school lost their funding i'd had such a you know got down and then i got to going to lee university and i started out to be a history teacher at lee and i just i had a hard row i couldn't make it i couldn't make a go of it i just had door after door clothes on me until and there was a professor over in the corner just approached me said you ever think about doing special lead and he just flew all over me and i think i he hauled and horse laughed right there in the parking lot i said why not let's do it and uh every door opened then that's where i was supposed to be and then later on you want me to go into what happened to well i stay at lee for a couple of years and i'm getting through the classes and uh it was coming on down to my practicum placement need to be put places and i wanted to be put over here at ducktown because it was easier and i had the licensure specialist now he was one of these guys it was a hard apple you couldn't do anything with him bald headed is an onion and uh it looked like he had he just mean he just looked mean with a name like you know with a name like ira you you know somebody's mean you just know anyway i've changed that name by the way don't anybody try to look him up that's a different name i thought you'd get me didn't you anyway he was the licensure specialist at lee and he was hard to deal with he was a bureaucrat's bureaucrat muted and you didn't you couldn't cross him and uh he would not let me do my practice practicum at ducktown because i'd requested it he said you'll go where i say and he put me in one of bradley county's middle schools that had over 5 000 kids over 300 kids in the special ed department and then they put me down in intensive intervention and right back where i had to deal with you know right back all those years went back to where i was in third grade and i was there all by myself again you know i had a hard go of it we had kids that were just very very pitiful in there and they anybody that can do intensive intervention is angels in my book because that's just it's it's rough and finally i just had a just a terrible day just i mean a terrible day and that was there's a lot of color that went into that terrible day but i can't tell you what happened on the way home i'd had it i just could not deal with it anymore i was just to my breaking point and it's funny how when you get to your breaking point with the lord when you get to your breaking point with the lord that you know that's when the help comes that's when the the calvary comes in that's when the you know i had me uh i had me a little cadillac sls then i thought i was hot stuff then you know in college and i was coming back up that river road just pouring my heart and soul out to the lord you've called me to do this i've thrown it back up in his face you moved you moved all these mountains for me then where are you now because i can't do this you know i'm just well as i'm coming up the river road i see little pings of gravel hitting my car on the new bridge section when you come up up there now these pings of gravel hitting my car and i was coming through i said just bring them on down lord just come on just take me on i'm through i can't do this anymore and when i got back home the katrina and i just got married that was our first year of marriage i i come home home and i get in the house and just exhausted i sit down in the chair my phone goes off the hook and it was dad he was calling me he said are you okay i said yeah i'm fine what's the matter you know my mom was there she said you were at home i said yeah i just pulled in the driveway i just got home and then my phone went off again and it was katrina calling me where are you are you okay i said yeah i'm fine i said what's the matter and they said the river road just fell in you were driving right through a rock slide well with that river road and it took the road and all you know everything gone you know uh that bureaucratic lee had to make a had to put me at ducktown because i was there you know and oh it just eat him up but i always look at that i know the lord moved that mountain for me i always say that's my mountain when i go down that was the one that was moved for me and um the state had to come in and spend millions of dollars and put a new bridge in that was done because i was needing it done i reckon but they put me at ducktown and i stayed at ducktown for a month sweet people over there i love that place i mean that was just his that was a walk in the park the kids were great the teachers were great it was just you could breathe again and my wife got word that cherokee county schools was looking for special ed teachers right up the road here at ranger i said well there's no way they'll hire me i don't this is october and i won't graduate till december she was go up there and ask him and i sent in an application and i got called and when i got called into the interview i got called in to interview in there and did my thing and did the interview and i drove out thinking well they'll never hire me and i wasn't back to ducktown until i got a phone call from the assistant superintendent saying can you start monday i said i'd love to i said but i'm not graduated yet and he said who do i have to talk to when i gave him the bureaucrat's name at lee i thought boy that's over with on every and they made it happen raleigh had to talk to nashville to make that happen and they did and i started october the 13th 2013 and i've been there ever since long story interesting story so when you mention the the drama uh and the humor of course i already know you're a humorous person but um so how did one thing that i think you're well known for is your voices so how did that come about how did you just i've been around people before that could imitate others but i've never tried i'm not one of those people but you seem to be very very good at it it hit me one day i don't gosh i was i was a little kid and with my dad and we love to watch movies and we would do movie lines in fact that's how dad knew that i wasn't what the teachers said i was about being low i could memorize whole movies from start to finish a couple of movies in particular and i always had a fascination for old automobiles and dad discovered i'll go ahead and tell you it was the movie driving miss daisy i loved that movie for the cars i didn't know the themes above it you know i was little then it just come out no we'd seen it in the theater and oh man i just thought those those cars were great and i had a little power wheels jeep then i was a kid and a suit that i'd wear on sunday to go to church and i put the suit on got a little you remember the cassette tapes that go in that looked like a briefcase i got that and put it over in the jeep and i'd be driving around the backyard doing the movie lines talking them out and doing the voices i just did it i just was reacting that movie and it just floored my dad and dad and i could jump from movie line to movie different movies with different references almost like we were talking a code to each other uh i do it a little bit with some friends i have paul wilson's one i can do it with some it's like quoting books or quoting scripture or it's just quoting you're quoting it and putting it in there and then as i got older i started studying characters be they the you know the president of the united states or just the person at your local tire shop there's a character there the the more they acted out the more colorful they were the better it was and i loved to try to find out what they sounded like or what how they walked or what would they do and then i'd imitate the pastor at church and i you know not mocking or whatever but just how would he say this and i noticed that when the pastor at church when he was talking he was down here but when he was up and excited in assignment he would be up here you know and he would be talking you know and and it would it would get everybody tickled and so i could i could just do that and that's how i learned to play it off and then in that interim time when i was trying to get the college down my now father-in-law i was starting to date my wife uh he had he had worked on the radio he had been a morning personality on the radio and they had hired him uh to do uh mornings at wlsb 1400 in copper hill and he said i've got to have a partner and he thought of me and he called me and he said you want to do more in radio and man i loved it that was something i'd i loved doing and when he found out i could do voices that was it we did all kinds of voices we had a good time doing voices and uh isn't there a is there a story about is it jimmy carter brother jeremy yes that you did one time that you well i have to tell it's heard the owner of the radio station uh was jimmy carter's lawyer i think it was he was big wheel with the car with the carter administration and he buy and he bought the radio stations a bunch of them as just a something to play with anyway we didn't i didn't know you know and i didn't know he was listening whenever he was listening and so for april fools one time we developed a story that we ran and this was when the economy again the economy was crashing obama had just got elected everything was rough then we people losing their jobs states budgets were wonky they were cutting everything back so april fool's if 09 april fools of 09 we got in we decided we was going to run an april fool's joke and see who caught it and so we come on there and we said that tennessee was having to cut its budget back so much that they had closed one of its historic parks more more on the nine o'clock news and so we got the listener base agenda and i wrote up a story and and my father-in-law allen wrote up a story we made we worked on it all in and the story was that the tennessee's national historic lighthouse was in disrepair and closed tennessee's landlocked there is no lighthouses for those of you that don't know right up here and it's landlocked anyway there is no such thing and we uh we said it was in such disrepair and then alan when he said we need a president to have a sound bite for to talk about and we tried everything you know we could we tried them all you know what would george bush say about it no that wouldn't be funny you know ronald reagan had already passed away so well we couldn't do him we couldn't talk about that because he had already gone they know it was a joke we'd blow that and bill clinton wouldn't care about a lighthouse and so we didn't worry about that and so we come down we landed on jimmy carter jimmy carter would be perfect so brother jeremy brother gemma let me be clear rosalind and i truly believe and we we did it and i stepped outside the box and i called the station back to do the voice wash it through the phone line called the board and patched it in and and alan goes and we're live with brother jimmy carter uh our i won't say brother he said president jimmy carter is weighed in uh president carter it's great to have you on that well thank you alan uh uh we we just roslin and i are truly truly upset that tennessee has decided to close the lighthouse if they had taken their stimulus money if they had taken their bailout money they couldn't they wouldn't have closed that lighthouse and it's just uh it's just terrible i've been talking to doctor and and when we said this we said he had talked to a doctor who had had a plan to fix it and the doctor's name was i see no veritas and to show you how dry my humor is i see no veritas is latin for i see no truth okay and so we we did that whole thing we run the story everybody believed it but a.d frazier was listening to it and he called he said that's not funny don't do that ever again you know so we had to be careful it was all right as long as you was making fun of the other political party but if it was ads party you didn't make fun of them you know but we had a good time with it anyway it was fun so one of the ones that uh is my favorite and the girls cory and katie's favorite is ninani because we've all known people like her just a lovely soul of a lady who maybe you met at church or maybe at the local grocery store or something so how did you how did neoni come about ninani is a she was a character we had on the radio that would call in and weigh in on a story one way or the other and we took a composite she was a composite character two of the three ladies have now gone on to be with the lord and so they're done lovingly and it's done lovingly with a voice but i pictured a lady a southern lady and this is they're they're a holdover from the time when it was socially acceptable smoke so that's number one number two their hair is either platinum blonde or it's completely white but it's yellow right here in the bang area because of the nicotine their hand always trembles just a little bit when they got a cigarette in there you know and it makes little trickles of smoke as it's coming up there that's part of it you know and they've got the voice and they'll look at you they have these little glasses on and they'll look at you and then they look at you they'll just cut you to the bone you know just like you better not ever even cut down on it and they'll draw on that cigarette all the time and their voice is way down here like is and they'll do that number and they've got dentures in or whatever else and they'll blow that cigarette out and they'll talk like that and then they'll have words that they rely on and a lot of times they never ask questions they don't already know the answer to they already know the answer to what they're asking they just want you to know that they know and so they they get in there and so it plays it off they'll come through and they'll say they'll they'll come through and my favorite thing to watch and i saw it all the time and growing up in the south was the funerals whenever there was a funeral this was a community event and they would gather in and these little old ladies would be in there fixing food for the family you know that's what you did at some point in time in the 80s we quit setting up all night with the dead and having a funeral at the home and went to an actual funeral home and instead of setting up all night you had your visitation and then everybody brought food well your problem is this this little lady social club of the church ladies got in there and it's fine and you're in good with the club unless you cross them and if you cross them your name is mud and there's certain things you don't do and the thing the big no-no is you do not bring store-bought food to one of these funeral home food gatherings you don't or you'll be talked about and i watched this happen just being a young boy and sitting over in the corner and watching it happen they'll be over there fixing food and they'll go hey lena look here is that inez's tray of food she brought she may think she's fooling some people everybody knows that chicken come from ingles she put it in a pry rex bowl but that ain't her chicken she getting lazy terrible terrible bad and just look off you know just mad and their name was mud for the rest you know and it just tickled me that they would be so intense with one little detail and so i i worked it off of that and we got a good a good um a good blend of that character but there it's so funny and i've got the ladies at work at school the secretary even my principal everybody i'll come through and i can key down on that little old lady and i'll just look and say lord help bless your hearts everybody know about it and just walk off you know if they'll say something you know mr griggs we got to do so and so and so well you knowed all about it let's go you know and go on so that's their their phrases and that's what we did and i've had some good mileage out of it anyway so when you were growing up did your family raise a garden did they put up food lowered help a bit of it sugar we raised tomatoes and butter beans and corn no we did all of that stuff in fact uh it was a it wasn't a garden it was a field the difference between a garden and feel a garden is 20 by 20. a field is 20 acres by 20 acres it's cradle big thing lord haven't no it it was a big garden it was always a big garden and we cut corn and string beans and boiled beets [Applause] outside on in a pot with a fire and you know watch south meat be made i've never been the same since no it's fine i watched all that stuff happen that was just part of your just part of growing up summer traditions i guess watched them kill chickens you know that was the way the old timers did i watched that go on i'm what sugar can't get made one time but you know it's just that was a it was dying out then and it's just not how it is now my grandmother would can oh man or how she lived in a brick house and she'd go to putting all this all the stuff up for for winter and she'd can and that house would be so hot because she can do i mean she did she could have two or three pressure cookers going at one time running but she always kept that stuff up you know that was the big thing what about any other traditions did you have your family maybe thanksgiving or christmas or birthdays or something they were all traditional get togethers we all got together we all late you know a big meal we that was just you know the way things were uh i it wasn't necessarily a tradition one time but i thought this you might like this this was and again this was before the days of the internet and before you'd know anything you how to just fix things up my grandfather before he passed away decided he wanted to try a groundhog he'd never eaten groundhog and somebody he'd had told him he needed to try a groundhog and my dad and my grandfather trapped one caught one that one had been in the garden and getting into things and they cleaned it and thought they could cook it to eat it but what they didn't know was that there's a gland in a groundhog that you've got to cut out or else it will ruin it well they didn't know that and they get to cooking that groundhog rent the house it just you know i think we had to peel the paint off the wall she had to you know fumigate the thing it was awful we you know we had to sleep that night in the carport it was that bad you know it was rough you know so when you think about appalachia since that's where you've grown up spent your life when you just hear that word what does it bring to mind oh wow um it's home i didn't realize as a child growing up that people lived differently than us i guess you do you just that's the way it is and it wasn't until i got older and got out and about a little bit uh to where i could see how things were so much different i love it here i wouldn't change a thing about it i think that's why a lot of people are now wanting to retire to this little area in this little community there's just something special about living up here in the mountains uh in this lo especially in particularly this little region in the three states you know north carolina tennessee and georgia it's just a little special area and it just doesn't happen all that much um you don't ever hear people retiring out to you know the midwest and getting them a place out there they don't retire out there they don't retire to chicago they they retire to florida to a beach maybe or you know down on the coast and then when a hurricane or two hits they decide maybe we want something a little less crazy and so they they meander up this way and and they found out what we knew all along that you can travel a lot of places but you only want home and this is just home that's that's right i think so when it comes to celebrating that home celebrating appalachia what do you think are the things that's worth celebrating about the appalachian culture well there's a lot this area particularly was settled by the scots and the irish and the indians that was you know the native americans you know this is where the trail of tears really started in this little area and the scots irish and indians were you know they intermarried that's partly my my family i've got a lot of indian in my heritage uh that needs to be celebrated a lot the uh to me just the rugged individualism that it took we're living in a technological age now and pick up the phone and find out anything i want to i can do whatever i want to but if you look at copper hill and just look at how extensive for instance those mines were those things are over 100 years old actually nearly 200 years old and they dug that stuff out with shovels and pickaxes to start with because they needed to get something to eat this was carved out out of nothing that takes a lot when you look at that big pile of purple dirt sitting out there where that company was and just look what the people dug it out with their hands you know they cleared acre you know you clear a house a spot for a house now with a bulldozer in a day these folks did it with team of mules and and shovels and pickaxes that i think that really needs to be celebrated um people have forgotten what it took just to get here to get to this particular point and where we're at and there was nothing here so that's my thoughts and we still got most of it left go ahead and then finally about the fourth or fifth ring she'd reach over hello blow in that receiver blow that smoke out in there and it was always her phrase was she always had one tour down you'd have something broken you needed to go somewhere and you needed like a universal joint take five minutes to put it in and you got the part i just need you to do you know lord help you're gonna have to call back next tuesday they've got three torn down in there on the rack and harl's gone to copper hill to get parts it's gonna be ours before we can get back here and you'll be in there just take your magazine and wait right turn ma'am i really needed to i told you to wait come back to her cigarette following them nails where were we at oh darn they done got virgil how'd that happen oh well i'll watch it tonight when they re-air it flip it over to oprah and sit there and watch for the rest of the day you couldn't do nothing with her you couldn't you know like i done told you you're gonna have to wait he's on here

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 34,136

Rating: 4.9333987 out of 5

Keywords: Appalachian Mountains, Appalachia, Characters in Appalachia, strange people in Appalachia, Appalachian comedy, comedians in the south, Southern comedians, Southern humor, Copperhill TN, Copper mine, Appalachian people, interview from Appalachia, Interviews with Appalachian Mountain people, Mountain people, Ducktown TN, McHayesville GA, teachers, teachers in Appalachia, Teacher stories, Epworth TN, Special Ed Teacher, Inspirational story, God's plan, The Lord's plan

Id: MUDmu-jJwEo

Length: 58min 53sec (3533 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020