Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story

27. My Religion

K N < E K P $ J < M < E My Religion Throughout all the bad times, and the good times, and the middling times, there was one steady thing in my life—my religion. When I was little, I went to the Baptist Church on Sundays. During the summer I went to Vacation Bible School every day for six weeks. I really loved Vacation Bible School. I remember how we would make a tray out of a big oak leaf. You lay the clay out flat and then you can make an imprint of the leaf. You paint it and you have it fired and it comes out glazed. Funny, that has never left my mind. I’m not so sure what that has to do with religion, except if they meant us to learn that all of nature, the flowers, the leaves, and the trees are God’s work. But of course there was also other stuff, stories like Jonah and the whale and David and Goliath. And religious ideas about being good to other people and such. But when I grew up, I began to have my doubts about some of the religious leaders, and also some of the religious teachings. (Not the one My Religion 226 / pressing on about being good to other people—no question about that one.) Southern mountain women let the men take the lead, and the religious leaders say that’s the way it is in the Bible, you’re supposed to submit to your husband. When you get older, you might find yourself thinking, I don’t have to put up with that. And you’re almost shocked at yourself for having such a thought. Like when I was married to George and he was beating up on me. I was just trying my best to do the right Christian thing. So I had the preacher come to the house to talk it over. I said, “I’m having severe trouble in this home. And I think the demons are here—when George is so mad and so hateful.” The preacher said, “Well, we can go into each room where he drinks, and pray.” So we did that. And this went on for five straight weeks of praying (the preacher would bring his wife so it was totally on the up and up). This was about in the middle part of the marriage. I was living in that big fine house that I bought. I was fed up, but I thought, I’ve been married before and I can’t just hop from one man to the other. The minister said, “Well, you gotta keep trying to heal the marriage. That’s what a woman is supposed to do.” And I assumed that the praying would get the devil out. But you can’t pray it out. The man’s gotta do something too. It does help the woman if she prays a lot, though, because it will give her strength, and her mind will get clearer and clearer. And so finally I told the preacher I’d had enough. I told him I knew God wouldn’t want me to abuse my mind anymore. I said to him, “Here’s a song I wrote for you.” I picked up the guitar, and I sang: The preacher stopped by awhile today to pray / To pray awhile with me / If you really want to know what hell’s about / I’ll give my man to you / Then you can figure it out for yourself / I ain’t livin’ it anymore. His wife was sitting there. She just looked at him and blinked. That preacher was not a bad man, but some of those so-called ministers . . . Well, a few years ago, I had a run-in with somebody of the other sort. Remember Jimmie Davis, who wrote “You Are My Sunshine,” and was the governor of Louisiana? Well we were playing the Lewis Family Festival, and Jimmie Davis came. I went up to his bus. “Jimmie Davis, it’s so good to see you,” I said. And he looked fabulous. He was very pressing on / 227 handsome, an older, distinguished gentleman. And his wife was gorgeous —used to be a famous gospel singer, Anna Carter Gordon Davis. And from the back of the bus, here comes out this squirrel of the world, with a silver-looking Pentecostal hairdo. For those of you who don’t have too much experience with the expression “Pentecostal hair,” it’s hair that looks like a piece of plastic, like it’s drawn on. It’s thick and every hair is in place, with hairspray that’s enough to start your own company. I call it Pentecostal hair because most of the gospel preachers that you see on television have it. If anybody’s real . . . well, you don’t see Billy Graham with it. It’s just on the phonies. They are the people that give us Christian people down in the South a bad name. Now if you make a statement like “Oh, Roni, guess what? I got all my work coming in and I’m really doing wonderful,” I’d say, “Well, praise the Lord! That’s great. Thank God for that!” That’s the way we do it in Nashville. That’s our Christianity. We don’t need some squirrel with a hairdo that smells like Aqua Net. Anyway, back to Jimmie Davis’s bus. This guy came from the back, this deacon or whatever, and he had gold rings, and diamonds, and he had that Pentecostal hairdo. “It’s real nice to have you here,” I said. “What religion are you?” It’s the first thing he said to me. And I looked up at the man, and I despised him immediately. “I’m not!” All three of them gasped. “You’re not?” “No, I’m a Christian.” And Jimmie Davis’s wife says, “Oh I love that! I love that!” “Uhhhh uhhh,” blabbered the squirrel. “Thank you,” I said to Jimmie Davis’s wife, and I didn’t go any further with it. When we were growing up, Daddy used to say, “Any religion is good if it’ll make you do good for one day, even one day.” In our family there was a Catholic, there was an Episcopalian, there was a Presbyterian, there was a Pentecostal, there was a Baptist—there was a variety of all religions. I just say, pray to God. 228 / pressing on Now in the mountains there’s also another strong kind of spirituality. Daddy would say that my mother’s people were very “talented” people, “unusual.” My mother’s Aunt Phinney was, people said, like a witch, able to foretell the future. Just about everybody in the mountains in the early 1900s, they always felt that this is a talent some people are born with, being able to foretell the future, or to see light at night upon the mountains. It’s where tales about seeing ghosts got started. Like “Bringing Mary Home,” the song about a driver stopping his car and picking up a little girl and then she disappears and it turned out she died thirteen years ago and every year her ghost comes back and gets picked up by some driver who brings her home. That’s a true story, they say. When you live in the mountains and all you go by is the moonlight and the sun, and when the sun goes down, it’s pitch black, and then the moon comes up—when people live that life, and that was the era that Momma was raised in, they would get these kinds of ideas about the other world. Aunt Phinney only had one child, Dowe Leonard, Dowey. He was somehow connected to “Grandaddy” Green Leonard, one of the master fiddlers of Galax. That was the worst haint story that ever was for children , that Grandaddy Green Leonard’s fiddle was haunted. Somehow we got it, and it was under our bed, in the old case that had been made for it, and every once in a while you really could hear a sound coming from it. To me the fiddle was like the monster—the Waron. Back in World War II, when I was a little kid, they’d say, “Now behave yourself! Don’t you know there’s a war on?” And, honest to goodness, I thought the “Waron” was a monster. And you just knew it was going to get you. Between the fiddle that was playing all by itself and the “Waron,” you was up a creek! “Ma,” I’d say, “there’s a Waron under my bed!” To me that was the name of the most Godawful monster in the world. I guess it really is, but not under the bed. Aunt Phinney’s in a picture in the book about the Stonemans, playing a big autoharp. She was known as a very “handsome” woman. People didn’t say beautiful, gorgeous, glamorous, sexy. They said “handsome” and that was it. Her son Dowey got to be drinking very heavy, and he’d go from one house to the other and fall asleep on somebody’s porch. So pressing on / 229 one time he went down to an old buddy’s house about 2:00 in the morning and fell on the porch and lay there. And a man came out there, didn’t recognize him, thought he was an intruder, and shot him. Dowey was a very dashing, debonair type of gentleman, always dressed nice, in his thirties. And there he was, deader than a mackerel. But Aunt Phinney, at the same time, was lying dying from a heart condition, heart dropsy. Everybody all gathered around her bed and she looked up, and her eyes half closed, and she said, “Dowey’s dead, isn’t he?” They all stared at each other—they had been trying to keep it from her. And then she died. Momma was standing there beside Aunt Phinney’s bed when it happened. Momma would tell me these things when I was a little girl. They would scare me and make me have nightmares and then I’d pull the covers over my head, and not want to get out until I heard the rooster crow. If I heard the rooster crow, then I knew that I was okay, I had gone through the night without getting caught by a bogeyman—or the Waron. I don’t think anybody else in the family remembers that sort of thing, but it stuck in my mind. It’s as if the older people were saying, “How can we carry this from our generation to yours? Well, you’re the one, Roni. We’ll latch it onto you.” I guess that’s the way these things get passed on. And, in spite of my daughter saying, “Mom, don’t tell Virginia those tall tales,” I tell them to my granddaughter. So Aunt Phinney had that special power, and then it came over onto Momma. In the twenties, when my momma was dressed the prissy way she was and always playing music for Daddy, you didn’t see it. It was when she got older and times got harder that she relied on her superstition to help her. During the Depression my sister Nita was ailing. She had pneumonia and mastoiditis—where they had to cut into the ear and lance it every day or so. She would be screaming. As Momma told it, before Nita died, she knew. Five years old, and she said, “Momma, I’m gonna die soon. And I want you not to cry.” Anita was so smart and beautiful, and she’d just sit there. One time they had the window open—it was a pretty summer day—and a bird came in and flew onto Nita’s hand. Then after a minute the bird flew out. Momma said, to humor Nita , “Just a minute, I’ll go get it for you.” The bird was way out there in that woods, but Momma 230 / pressing on was trying to get Nita to think of something else besides her sickness. She went into the woods and held out her hand and the bird flew on it! Then Momma walked back in the house and handed it to her sweet little girl. And she sang “You Pretty Bird.” The next day Nita died. From that time on, if a bird got into the house, Momma would start crying because she thought it was a sign of death. She always said that she was like Aunt Phinney—she was born with a veil over her face, which meant she could foretell the future. Now sometimes I can tell little things. One night I was down at the Nashville Palace, and there were some guys that came in from a convention . I was just sitting there waiting to go on. “Hi, how are you doing?” they said. Blah, blah. “I know you’re a captain,” I said to one of them. “I know you fly planes.” “How’d you know?’ “I don’t know. I just knew.” “What the hell is this? A psych person? Are you targeting me?” “No, I just could tell.” “Come and listen to this,” the captain says to his buddies, “you won’t believe this girl.” “Well, you were easy to figure out. And this other guy is too,” I said, turning to his friend. “You are too careful sometimes. Just recently you lost a lot of money because you were too careful. You’re too afraid to take chances.” It turned out he was a stockbroker and had recently missed making a lot of money because he hadn’t taken a certain risk. “My God, how’d you know that?” he asked. I really don’t know how I know. It may be partly from reading audiences . I don’t like to think about it much—the whole thing’s pretty weird. When I was a little girl and I was psychic a little bit, I said, “Mommy, what do I do?” She said, “Pray it away, it’s not fittin’.” So she was definitely bothered by it. Well, to make matters short, I believe in God and the Bible, and I believe that there’s things we don’t know. I also really believe that ev- pressing on / 231 erything I’ve accomplished in this world that was good was His work. Not me. I owe it all to Him. In California we played at the folk festival in Monterey. What a beautiful place. Almost scary. You know how strong God is. Whooo. Those big redwoods and the roaring surf. Now, one day when I was going to do a show, I was sitting in my hotel room watching television and had on the Learning Channel, and there was a professor of Duke University. He was talking about how you could get strength from things. He said, “Hug a tree. If you ever need strength or get bluesy, go find a forest and hug a tree. Put your arms as tight as you can around it.” And I thought, Hot dang, that’s pretty cool. So when I was at Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina with my friend Peggy Stanley and we took a walk, I told her about it. I said, “Well, you know, as mountaineers we never paid much attention to such things as hugging a tree. But we respected nature. My father’d go in the forest and could tell every tree and so could my granddaddy. I guess I could too. Everybody could.” Anyway, right then and there on Grandfather Mountain I hugged a tree. I did it. And it works. This sounds far out, like left field, but any time you get bluesy, or sad, or feel “poor old me”—or if you’re happy, even if you’re happy—hug a tree. And thank it for being there. And let Him give you some blessings. ...