No Sweat: Memories of Southern Appalachia

“They called the president ‘Ruz-velt’ or ‘Rosy’; but after Pearl Harbor, with boys going off to war, Rattlesnake Ridge folks did let up on him a little bit.” The USS California ablaze, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 1942, courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress.

In the late 1930s, folks living on Rattlesnake Ridge, Kentucky, saw signs of trouble. Way off. Men and women talked about news from over the waters; an uneasiness showed in their faces. I heard it from hungover veterans of the First World War who picked up stories from meetings of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars clubs in Catlettsburg, Kentucky, an old Ohio River town with a southern aura; a town where locals recollected past days when packet boats from New Orleans used to put in after a slog up the Mississippi to the Ohio and on up North. Getting off the ridge once a week, men, women, kids, and hired hands crowded into old Model A Fords, shuffled over to Simms Grocery and Dry Goods in Flatwoods, Kentucky, to trade eggs and chickens for sugar and lard, look over new Home Comfort stoves. A worker in the store demonstrated ways to use white oleomargarine, mix it with a yellow powder so it looked like butter. Few were interested. They’d been making pure butter from raw milk all their lives; it was bad enough to fool with ration stamps for sugar and gasoline. Gossip about recent arrests by the constable, new candidates up for county commissioner, and the sweetness of Stone Mountain watermelons passed among the shoppers.

Cooney Simms, the grocer, had a big Philco floor-model radio with push buttons and short wave. Neighbors gathered around when Joe Lewis was fighting. And wasn’t he always, this good giant who whipped Adolph Hitler’s man Max Schmeling? Static wasn’t too bad; one could hear Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats if they didn’t come on the same time as the Grand Ole Opry. Gabriel Heatter broadcast out of New York City on Sundays, signing on with, “Ah, but there’s good news tonight.” Good news? Maybe a laugh on Jack Benny or “Fibber McGee and Molly.” If another war was coming, men wondered if the price of tobacco would stay up—still hating Roosevelt, even though they got more cash money with fewer pounds than they used to. Republican, Protestant, conservative—however, they took to electric power and price supports on tobacco. Refrigerators, washers, lights, radios became common. Tractors replaced horses. Small farmers who didn’t have a truck hired someone to carry their chickens to market or to haul a bulling cow up the road to a neighbor well-off enough to keep a bull for stud. They called the president “Ruz-velt” or “Rosy”; but after Pearl Harbor, with boys going off to war, Rattlesnake Ridge folks did let up on him a little bit. Funny songs like “You’re a Sap, Mister Jap” drew smiles as they came in clear by radio on cold winter nights; something to hum while they milked instead of Jimmie Davis’s “You Are My Sunshine.”

Elton Britt sang: God gave me the right to be a free American/And for that precious right I’d gladly die/There’s a Star-Spangled Banner waving somewhere/That is where I want to live when I die. Jukeboxes, radios, and record players spread the words and melodies. Young men from the ridges and bottoms—drunk at Shorty’s beer joint in Catlettsburg—heard the song over and over, groused out the next morning, and joined the Army. Might as well. Uncle Sam’s draft notices came by Rural Free Delivery to men from ages twenty to thirty. Forget mama, papa, girls, basketball, putting up hay, and dreaming of good $300 used Fords and Chevys, sharp roadsters with rumble seats, suicide doors, spare tire covers with burger beer written on them.

“Uncle Sam’s draft notices came by Rural Free Delivery to men from...