Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland

9. Gobble Like a Turkey

Gobble Like a Turkey 159 159 Chapter 9 GOBBLE LIKE A TURKEY: Alvin C. York and American Popular Culture MICHAEL E. BIRDWELL The image of Sergeant Alvin Cullum York etched into the collective consciousness of most people is not the famed Tennessee hero at all. They conjure up Gary Cooper’s portrayal of York in the Warner Bros. film, Sergeant York (1941), gobbling like a turkey, licking the sights of his Enfield rifle, popping off Hollywood Germans.1 Hollywood’s York claimed Daniel Boone was his personal hero, and Walt Disney studios made a conscious link to Cooper’s portrayal of York in Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (1955). Davy (Fess Parker) competed with frontier riflemen at a shooting match much like the one staged in Sergeant York. Just like Gary Cooper, who licked his thumb and wiped the sights of his rifle to reduce the glare and win the turkey shoot, Disney’s Davy Crockett wet his sights before firing the winning shot. Audiences watching the Disney version of the American frontier in the 1950s made direct connections between Alvin York and Davy Crockett. Even though York devoted himself to public education after World War I, and with the significant exception of World War II remained a pacifist his entire life, people continue to define York by what he did in the Argonne Forest on October 8, 1918. Ironically the warrior image continues to be the prevailing portrait of York in American popular culture. References to York appear in everything from literature and movies to comic strips and board games. Since the advent of cable television —with such networks as the History Channel and Turner Classic Movies—York should remain in the nation’s memory for years to come. Nonetheless, the question remains: Why doesYork’s image endure when other heroes fade? 160 MICHAEL E. BIRDWELL Perhaps the only way to fully understand the York phenomenon is to examine his background and the impact that World War I had on his native region. When the United States declared war on April 6, 1917, it seemed of little concern to the denizens of Pall Mall, Tennessee. The Wolf River Valley was an isolated, rugged area virtually cut off from the world. It had no macadamized roads before 1927; the Wolf River was not navigable and no railway lines penetrated the valley connecting it to the outside world.2 Lack of modern transportation and the valley’s remoteness hampered industrialization. Most people living there were direct descendants of the original settlers of the area, all of whom were of English, Scots-Irish, and German descent. Records show that residents took as few as one trip a year to Jamestown thirteen miles south, and that was to pay taxes, register deeds, or participate in elections .3 The Civil War, which had temporarily opened the region to outsiders , created lasting ill will, for the war had taken place only a generation before. For a person to go off to war in France was virtually incomprehensible.4 Life in the valley was primitive by the standards of the day. Thirteen people shared cramped space in the two-room dogtrot log cabin where York grew up. York’s family and his neighbors eked out a living through subsistence farming, blacksmithing, and cooperative carpentry , which were supplemented by hunting wild game, fishing, and the Gary Cooper as Alvin C. York in the 1941 Warner Bros. film, Sergeant York. Courtesy of the Sergeant York Patriotic Foundation. Gobble Like a Turkey 161 production of moonshine. Poverty, isolation, and bitter memories of the Civil War bred a quasi-independent and somewhat suspicious temperament . Denizens of the Wolf River Valley felt little kinship to people within their own county, much less the rest of America.5 Coupled with the poverty, isolation, and suspicion was an almost superstitious Christianity based on the infallibility of the scriptures and a literal interpretation of the Bible.York’s formal education consisted of only nine months, spread over three years, in a subscription school after the crops had been laid by. When York received his draft notice in June 1917, he was twenty-nine years old and had never been more than fifty miles from home. Yet the very primitive nature of York’s prewar life experience appeals to the romantic in people. Corporal Alvin C. York fought with the Eighty-second Division, G Company, 328th Infantry of the American Expeditionary...