Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community

Ezra's Journal and Andrew Nettles

226 Ezra’s Journal and Andrew Nettles From Hiding Ezra Rita Quillen Introduction to the Excerpt by the Author Ezra Teague makes the difficult decision, as did many others during World War I, to abandon his post at Camp Lee, Virginia, and return to his native Scott County home. Andrew Nettles, the man the army sends to find Ezra and other deserters, is also from the mountains of southwestern Virginia —specifically, Big Stone Gap. But Nettles is a man who looks down on his neighbors, thinking that to be like them, to talk like them, to think like them is to be inferior and unsophisticated. He begins his search for Ezra certain that he’ll have no trouble besting this “rube.” There is a lyric intensity here, a vivid descriptiveness, a musical cadence , a different syntax and vocabulary that are now almost gone from our language. An acknowledgment of the power of the oral tradition is something I also associate with our region’s spoken language, as much as the pronunciations and unusual vocabulary. It’s no accident that there has been both popular and academic recognition of the wonderful storytelling tradition of the Appalachian South in recent years; it is an integral part of our linguistic history and legacy. Ezra’s Journal and Andrew Nettles: From Hiding Ezra 227 From EzraTeague’s Journal Dec. 12, 1918. I wish I was back at fort Lee. Everybody was sad about me going in the Army and some fellows I talked to said I was heading straight to hell. But I kind of like it. I got to know some fine people there. The food wasn’t bad, they had some fine weapons. I even liked the training, the rope climbing and the obstacle courses. A man needs a test ever now and then, He needs to know how he stacks up. I done alright for myself. I was proud of my shooting up there. Pa would’ve grinned like a mule eating sawbriers if he’d seen me put nine out of ten shots right in that bullseye like I did. I woulda been a good soldier, I think, but I guess I’ll never know now. Ain’t no way the Army would have me back now. From “Lt. Nettles’ Mission” Andrew Nettles grew up on a quiet street in Big Stone Gap, in southwest Virginia, not too far from Ezra Teague’s Scott County home. His father had been a successful businessman, owning a hardware store in town. His mother, Roberta Arnott Nettles, was the only daughter of one of the town’s old families who “had money,” people said. In truth, they didn’t have much money, but they had property and status and pretensions. Roberta ’s mother had insisted on dressing for dinner, always wearing a hat whenever she went out, having ladies over for a book club luncheon, all things her mother had told her went on every day in the world outside “these hills.” The Arnott family had come to Big Stone Gap when almost everyone else had: during the coal mining, railroad-building days in the 1880s. Stories still circulated in the local lore about Roberta’s mother, whom everyone referred to as “Miz Stella,” getting off the train in a beautiful burgundy silk dress and a hat with a big feather, with ten trunks of clothes and household items loaded off on wagons. Miz Stella never completely adjusted to the mud, the grey fortress of hills around her, the roughness of her Big Stone Gap neighbors. While her husband Jacob worked in the railroad office, she ran their home like a business and raised her children with one purpose: to persuade them 228 Rita Quillen to leave the godforsaken place and make something of themselves. She punished any hint of a mountain accent in their speech, visibly shuddered if they used words like “recollect” for “remember” or “hit” for “it.” But to her bitter disappointment, it didn’t work. Roberta, her pride and joy, fell in love with a smooth-talking, handsome local boy named Jimmy Nettles and settled into a house right down the street. Jimmy was one of those mountain men for whom words were currency. He was a storyteller extraordinaire , his talk vivid and imaginative and original. Roberta was as spellbound by him as everyone else, and soon her own speech was sprinkled with his imagery and colorful...