Mountain Talk and the ways of the Southern Appalachian people

[Music] [Music] we all know what this is we've all been there and done that and i've lived even lived here as a young man in these in these cities i'm not trying to put them down not at all but this is where i'm from i'm from the appalachian mountains born and raised in these ridges run my whole life worked my whole life in these mountains under them and above them but we'll head back in these old ridges back into appalachian back to a simpler life and whether you're from east tennessee west virginia virginia alabama georgia the carolinas this is the southern appalachians and a lot of these places in these mountains and haulers the sun don't hit it but a couple hours a day being from the area you know exactly what i'm talking about and there's a lot of small towns with a lot of good diverse variety of people in these small towns hard-working mountain people if you don't know what i'm talking about the area here's the top of the appalachian circuit in yellow is the southern appalachians this is where i'll be talking about the saiyans and the mountain ways these people they've seen hard times and the stories they could tell and the life they've lived it's hard to believe but these mountain people had a way of talking and they had a way of saying things and a lot of people outside these mountains just don't understand they make fun of us call us hillbillies but these people know most of them don't have an education but they are good sense people worked hard and got more sense than most people you'll ever run around so this is a story of their ways and their saiyans a lot of people say donny that's not your voice they comment in these videos you're faking it no i'm not faking it my friends that's my real voice i born and raised in these mountains in the tri-state area of kentucky tennessee and virginia around these coal mining communities and worked my whole life underground and above ground and i'm just trying to pass on the story of our elders which are leaving us every day the stories they could tell the way they talked and the way they lived no most of them didn't have a big education they had to get out and provide for their families when they was young back in them days of the depression but yes i do have an education but i don't have a degree and i just want to share their story of these mountains before it's gone and lost forever [Music] now here in the southeast there's about five different styles of southern slang you got your general southern talk and you've got your coastal carolinas southern talk you've got your gulf coast southern talk georgian alabama southern talk but then here in east tennessee southeast kentucky you've got the southern appalachian mountain top now these old people come in from the old country back in the 1700s maybe a little poor a little after and they wouldn't much land in the east as done spoken for so they went into the wilderness areas into the appalachians to make their home make their living claim their land and yes they mingled with the indians and uh intermixed with them intermarried and they become all verse varieties of different styles of people but they brought their language with them from the old country and they spoke english but yes they had a lot of different sayings from the old language and they mixed it with the english language with their own home language and they made their own words their own saiyans and their own dialect and they stayed isolated in these mountains away from everybody else so that way of life and that way of talking carried on generation after generation and i'm just going to share with you in just a story of things of how it was when i was small and what they said and how they said it back when i was a little young thing about seven or eight years old if that old when in the summertime i'd stay with my grandmother and i'd help her out around the house and and just share things with her a lot of people called her the grandparents grandma granny me my mama i i've heard all kinds but i'd call one of my grandmother's mammy and my other side of my grandmother i would call her mama that was just the way it is and she was a really good cook anyway i'd stay with her she'd get me up in the morning she'd say boy get your butt up out of that bed and go out there and talk me in some coal and some kindling i got to make a bar not a fire a bar gotta make a bar and she'd get that thing stoking hot and she'd make me some best gravy and biscuits i could ever i could still remember that well i had a breakfast i'd go down the road here and see some of my friends down in some of these other mining camp villages it didn't matter what color it was i had a lot of little colored friends and they was as good as gold to me and we'd go out together and we'd spend a couple hours just to get us some pocket money to go to the store we find pop bottles there's three to five cents a piece back in them days and that was easy cash and we'd go down to the store and we'd cash them in and i'd have to go for ma'am all too she wanted me to do a little trading for them that's what they called shopping trading and we'd get in there and i'd do some trading for her first thing i would get a pound of bologna they'd slice up a roll of bloney i would pound and roll it up or you get a loaf of bread and some things that she'd want me to get at the house and i'd cash in pop bottles in we didn't call them soda pops we call them pop bottles and i'd get enough out of it to get me an old rc a candy bar or a knee-high and a bag of tater chips there wasn't nothing better than an old baloney sandwich and a bag of tater chips and you carried it off in a poke it wasn't no sack we caught a sack or a grocery bag a poke and we'd head on down there and take that back home and i'd go over here at my my friend's grandmother's house it was that time of year it was worse day today they didn't call it washing they called it worst day wars and it was just that time of year where the gardens were coming in and i'd sit and talk to his his grandmother and man they the tales they could tell me when they're sitting there doing their candy they're just prepping their canning stuff and you could ask all kinds of questions because you got them cornered in and the stories they could tell you now back in them days i love to ask them about ghost stories they tell me stuff that happened in these mining camps and in these mountains and they didn't call them ghosts they called them hanks oh did you see any hanks when you was little i loved them stories and i head down to my uncle's house here down on the creek they didn't call it creek call it crack down on the crack here he had no place here and he didn't work in the mines he just peeled around on the farm and worked on automobiles he had a bunch of old cars out back he's always working on somebody's car doing something and these old cars you know he's always working on the tires on them well they didn't call them tires they call them tars so how many tars you got on that car or how good a tars you got that was just a saying how they caught it and come to find out i didn't find out until i was an older that a lot of his friends he worked on their cars for him because they they run moonshine so he kept their vehicles running for them souped them up when he can i didn't find that out till i got a lot older and we'd get with him sometime he'd take us down to the we call it the mall nowadays i laugh about it but it was the flea market that's where people brought all their goods and what they had off the farm and they would trade for this and trade for that and that was just the early versions of the of the strip malls that you got nowadays a lot of stuff changed hands there and when we get back we'd come back down through there and see some of our other friends i see one of my dad's working buddies there and mine and his kids good people and you've all these people here don't understand unless you're in these mountains it was up to the 60s before people really got running water in some of their houses and it was a lot longer before anybody ever got indoor bathroom you could see in this picture there that that was your bathroom an outhouse and for toilet paper you know they're more sears and roe buck or montgomery wards magazines we can't catalogs we call them wish books that was your toilet paper hanging on the wall and i always seem to end up around these railroad tracks around these old cold temples i loved it just fascinated around these old train cars and it was dangerous and i've been warned many times to stay away from them but being an old young boy like i am i'm still in them and i got many a whooping because of it too and i kept getting weapons over well mom and grandma would get supper fixed we'd [Music] suffer with nothing better than supper mostly soup beans she always had soup beans on the stove always that's what they called pinto beans that was soup beans so beans and taters and on saturdays if my dad didn't have to work in the mines when i was knee-high to a grasshopper or just big enough to walk i was following him in these mountains he took me squirrel hunting and i loved it to this day that's just a routine in these mountains of course we'd have to walk a long way because people about hunted the game out during the depression that's how they put meat on the table and then on the saturday evening there was always a shin dig going on somewhere and there was some good musicians come out of these mountains fiddle players banjo guitar you know good musicians some of them went on to be really good musicians and made it in the big time and most didn't but that's the way it was in these mountains they loved their bluegrass and country and a lot of them went into rock too out of these mountains so that's nothing new and come sunday morning you wanted it or not you was made to go to church your parents if you have to whoop you you're going to church to this day i understand why you'll never forget this the way he was raised and on a sunday afternoon if the weather's right it was always a baptizing in the local creek a lot of people got baptized in each country they were god-fearing people and they believed in the bible and many of people got baptized now this old country things has changed it's changed a lot what i'm talking about is growing up in the late 50s early 60s it's changed so much a lot of people's died off homes are abandoned or they're just falling down history gone by this way of life has changed so much over the last 50 years and yes we have our modern conveniences just like any other big city we just don't have as much of it but it's just as modern here as it is in new york city or any other big city sometimes i wish we wouldn't but it is a good thing and we have all the modern conveniences these people they lived hard and they're slowly dying off and i wish to this day that i could see it and record and write down all the little stories that these elders has told me my friends mom and dads and grandparents my grandparents they just so much history that's going to go away so in a couple of generations our way of talking and our way of life will change but it'll always be here and always be remembered that's what i'm hoping for well anyway if you think i talk bad let me let me give you a little glimpse of how some of the other people talked i talked to an old buddy in clay county kentucky and you want to hear how he talks so listen to this yeah that was when i was growing up that's my granddaddy yoga is that last cast way out next time to live my grandpa entire place up a little hard that's awesome cedar country down in there flat rock limestone rock scrubs you just get fields here and there and when you would find a good field was lucky good friend up here in southeast kentucky so many people you think i talk country i can't understand some of the things they say but there's some good people in these mountains and i sure don't miss none of this being an old mountain boy from the country this would be like a prison to me i had to live it when i was young for a while but anyway here's gatlinburg we have a price for progress too here's gatlinburg in the 1950s when i was a boy simple and peaceful here it is today 60 years later so i hope you all enjoyed this little thing just mountain top i wished i had more recordings of these old people so cherish your old people before they're leaving where they're gone forever so thank you all for watching and i'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: DONNIE LAWS

Views: 808,934

Keywords: Mountain Talk and the ways of the Southern Appalachian people, Southern talk, Mountain Talk, Southern ways, Appalachian History, Mountain people, Mountain slang, Country People, Sothern people, Appalachian culture, Hillbilly talk, Appalachian Coal fields, Mining Camps, DONNIE LAWS, Country Story Tellers, People of Appalachia, Mountain Folk, Memories of Appalachia

Id: gxhOZww_CEM

Length: 17min 47sec (1067 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021