Hospitality in Appalachia

i've been thinking about the wonderful hospitality you've shown me here on youtube i just started my channel last july and i just can't believe the outpouring of support that i've received every time you leave a comment sharing a story about your family or an experience or telling me whether or not you're familiar with a word that i share or if you're your favorite cornbread recipe or any of those things it means so much to me and i truly appreciate it as i was thinking about that hospitality i began to think about my favorite book on personality traits appalachian personality traits and kind of the traits of appalachian culture it was written it's appalachian values it was written by loyal jones so loyal jones is most famous for being the first director of the appalachian studies center there at berea in kentucky but loyal jones actually grew up right here where i live so brass town where i live is a divided community half of it's in cherokee county and half's in clay county and he grew up in clay county north carolina so i want to read to you today what he had to say about neighborliness and hospitality our independence is tempered by our basic belief in neighborliness and hospitality survival on the frontier sometimes required people to be hospitable to take people in when not caught them on a journey or keep them indefinitely if their house burned down until recent times neighbors joined to help build houses and barns for those who needed them no greater compliment could be paid a mountain family than that they were clever folks meaning that they were quick to invite you to visit and generous with their food my father told of eating at one home where the only food was sorghum and cornbread but the host said graciously just reach and get anything you want we who were brought up on the value of hospitality will always have the urge to invite those who visit to stay for a meal or to spend the night even though this is not the custom over much of america now unless a formal invitation is sent out well in advance so this is just a fantastic book if you can find it it has wonderful photos in it and the photography is by warren brown brunner brunner warren brunner that's a that's a mouthful anyway it's a great book if you can find it but as i begin to think about that hospitality that lord jones is talking about i was reminded of of kind of the saiyans the common saiyans of hospitality that i hear here in my area of appalachia i'll be interested to see if you're familiar with them too but i remember one time i was telling paul my brother paul one of my friends good friends mildred johnson she had been telling me she grew up in swann county north carolina on cable branch and back when she was a little girl that's where she lived but then the park it's now that's part of the park now is cable branch anyway she was telling me that when she was a little girl that her family would go about once a year or maybe more and they would walk all the way to see family in cades cove of course they were going over the mountains there was no you know no main roads like there is today and and i was just amazed that she walked that far and she said well back then we all walked you know that's just what you did you walked to where you went but she said when they would go they'd stay at least a week you know before they come home they weren't making any short trips over there and back unless there was some kind of emergency that they would stay you know and enjoy time with their family well i was telling paul this and somehow we got on the got silly and started thinking about when we were little kids and pap and granny would be over at somebody's house you know maybe late at night and there's always picket and grinning going on maybe some good food and and kids running around acting crazy and wild and when it come time to go home you know the people leaving would say come go home with us the people that's that the owned the house where you were leaving they'd say oh just stay you ought to just spend the night you ought to just spend the night and me and paul got to talking about that how that was so common in our childhood and we've got to be in silly and saying we wish we could go back one time and and you know all of us convinced pap and granny to say well you know what we will just spend the night where will we sleep or you know what if we were there if it's the other way and people was at our house and we were saying and they said come go home with me we'd say okay i believe i will even though it was you know midnight or whatever anyway we were just being silly but those are two really common ones from when i was a child is if you were leaving somewhere you'd say come go home with me and if you were somebody was leaving your house you'd say you know don't hurry off you ought to just spend the night a local older lady told me that a lot of times her family would just spend the night when they were visiting with other family even though they lived really near each other if they wanted to spend the night they'd just spend the night well knowing that both families had a whole lot of kids i said how did that work and she said oh we'd sleep uh crossways in the bed and you could fit more kids that way so sometimes that actually actually did happen i've jotted down some other ones though to talk about of course if you didn't all fit in the bed you know you could have a pallet in the floor and you could sleep on that if you know what a palette is mary lou mckillips she's a blind pig reader and she shared with me that when she was a young girl she grew up in marble north carolina that they would say somebody knocked on the door they'd say come in if your nose is clean so maybe they were really wanting to know if you were sick but it's more than likely that's just kind of a teasing thing and i've never heard anybody say that but when mary lou shared that i just thought that was really cute and really it made me smile for sure in the wintertime it's getting to be spring of the year now but in the winter time one of my favorites is somebody will say if you go to see them or maybe you're not even planning on going in you just had to deliver something or take something to them and they'll say oh come in and warm come in and warm you know come in and sit by the fire come in and warm so i really like that one another one kind of goes back to the come go home with me as you'll hear people say younes youn's come youn's come so if you're seeing somebody maybe you run into them at the store and you've been chatting and then you're about to walk off they'll say now guns come just mean and come see us you know and that's another one come see us um that's a really common one come see us and when you're leaving and a common one is just to say see ya we'll see you when i was a teenager i don't know why for some reason that got on my my last nerve i just got to where i hated to hear people say we'll see you and i heard a lot of people say it so that was bad but that was just my superior you know how sometimes when we're teenagers our brain gets a little superior that's all that was because it doesn't bother me in the least now when somebody says we'll see and in fact i say it myself when i'm leaving i'll say okay we'll see you so that's a good one another one is if somebody knocks on the door you might say come on in the house or you see them in the yard or outside you know you hear them drive up so you go out and say come on in the house we'll get to a bite to eat that's another one about to eat another especially in older books you'll read about and days gone by when people maybe didn't hear you arriving if you arrived on foot or something that they called it hello in the house so you're supposed to alert people that you were there you know you hello the house to make sure they knew that you were you were on the property and you were about to come in um thinking about not about coming seeing people but just about how you are how you're doing those come to mind so of course if you ask someone how they're doing they may say they're fair to midland that's a one you'll hear that's really common my favorite one and i don't really hear this at all but i heard pap say it is someone ask you how you're doing and you'll say i'm as well as common so that's a really old way of saying that you're doing okay and i was privileged one time to get to read one of my great grandmother's letters that she had written someone and in it she said we're all as well as common she said that that was common pap would just say very well if somebody asked him how he was doing he would say very well and i think i say that sometimes i'm sure because i got it from him a cute one when the girls were little that i would say to them is a good night sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite one time they had a little girl spending the night with them and i got them all situated and and they were about to go off to sleep you know when i said that i said okay good night sleep tight don't let the bed bugs bite and that little girl just looked at me real serious you know and then i knew what it was i said oh your mama says that too doesn't she and she said yes my mama says that so she couldn't believe cory and katie's mama said it too you know one common one i'm sure you've heard of is just have you eat yet so we're always wanting to feed people have you eat yet that's common throughout the south for sure and one last one uh proud to be here and that's kind of how i feel what i'm trying to say with this video is that i'm proud to be here i'm proud to be on this channel with all of you who have supported me in appalachia of course pride or proud is used in the common way that you'd be familiar with you know pride goes before a fall all those kind of things you know it's bad to be prideful that you should be humble but it's also used in a different manner so proud in appalachia the way i'm using it i'm proud to be here is more of showing sincerity i'm being sincere i'm being respectful it's almost like i'm saying i'm honored i'm honored to be here with you i'm honored by the support that you've shown me so far so when i say i'm pr proud to be here that's what i mean i'm honored by the support that you've showed me and i so appreciate it and as always i hope you'll drop back by often as i celebrate appalachia

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

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Keywords: hospitality meaning, hospitality definition, hospitality quotes, hospitality sayings, hospitable, welcome quotes, hospitality words of wisdom, old Appalachian Quotes, Southern Phrases, Appalachian Mountain Talk, Appalachian mountains, Appalachia, Appalachian language, Appalachian accent, unusual words used in the mountains, southern accent, the way people talk in the south, Appalachian phrases, Appalachian Dictionary, Mountain Accent, Southern Appalachian Accent

Id: Vb80SV4e5X8

Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021