The Pond Mountain Chronicle: Self Portrait of a Southern Appalachian Community by Leland R. Cooper and Mary Lee Cooper (review)

Leland R. Cooper and Mary Lee Cooper. The Pond Mountain Chronicle: Self Portrait of a Southern Appalachian Community. Jefferson, North Carolina, 1998. 226 pages. Index. Paper. $25.00. This is a most interesting oral history collection of thirty interviews with thirty-two traditional folk ofnortheastern Avery County, North Carolina. All are residents of a six-mile-long valley below Pond Mountain. McFarland and Company, a scholarly reference publisher, is wholly owned by neighbors ofDr. and Mrs. Cooper, who felt that "there is much to be learned from the people of rural Appalachia." Dr. Leland Cooper is Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Higher Education at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and his wife, Mary Lee, had a distinguished secretarial career, including tenure with ASU's College of Education, and the outdoor drama, Horn in the West. In early 1989, the Coopers began seeking "a scaled-down retirement home," then bought, and extensively repaired, a farmhouse plus acreage in the Flatwoods, Big Laurel Creek area below Pond Mountain. In the course of repairing their house and getting acquainted with the neighborhood, Dr. and Mrs. Cooper began their interviews. Though not trained anthropologists or oral historians, the Coopers were guided by Jan Myrdal's Report from a Chinese Village and Ronald Blythe's Akenfield: Portrait ofan English Village. The result is this interesting and revealing collection of oral history interviews. Most ofthe interviews were made between the spring of1992 and the fall of 1993, though two were made in the late winter of 1994, and seven during the summer of1996. The Coopers interviewed thirty-two oftheir neighbors, ages thirty-eight to ninety-four. All were traditional rural folk, most with a long association with the Flatwoods area. The data is wonderful, but its "raw state" is both its strength and its weakness. The Coopers were careful to get the approval of each of the interviewees before allowing that interview to appear in print. The language of the transcriptions appears to be fairly close to the language used by the interviewees, yet it is easily read. And the authors' twelvepage intro-duction sets an adequate context for the interviews that follow, as well as including illustrations and two very helpful maps. As editors, however, the Coopers leave several important questions unexplored. For example, where in the Flatwoods area are the interviewees located? And what is the total picture ofthe population ofthe area, and where are nontraditional newcomers like themselves located? Furthermore, some presentation ofthe kin relationships would have been helpful, rather than have the reader struggle through each interview for relationship clues. 70 Finally, the location of key traditional institutions, such as the stores mentioned as well as the often-referred-to schools and Mountain View Baptist and other churches, would have been most helpful. But the interviews here are a treasure. The Coopers claim that "ifwe look for a mountain culture, we will not find it. We find instead that the people resemble people in other parts of the United States in some ways, and are different in others." Yet the interviews revealed to me a people with an unusual loyalty to place, and a remarkable persistence ofold-style "yeomanesque farming" well into the 1960s. In those days, these traditional folk "just farmed," and grew their oats, corn, vegetable gardens, hogs, chickens, and milk cows, and raised large families mostly on their own acres. Ofcourse some prospered and moved into various enterprises . After "the War" (World War II) when the roads became better, more and more they took jobs in surrounding towns, mostly in furniture and textile plants. Today the people ofthe Flatwoods area don't really live by farming, though they live in a rural place. Other important institutions besides kin and the family farm are clearly revealed also. Several interviews indicate the importance of the church and religion. And thanks to the questions asked by the Coopers, the role of the school is rather well explored. Actually, high school graduates and those who have some exposure to higher education appear only among the younger persons interviewed. The recent establishment of a volunteer fire department in the heart of this extensive and formerly ignored portion ofAvery County seems to reveal...