Eric Gettings did a great job recording the oral histories and music. I also don’t want to forget Wade Spees, a wonderful photographer now based in Charleston, S. C., who was on the road with me when we met some of these folks. We had a blast.
A former feature writer and columnist on the Bluefield, W. Va., Daily Telegraph has released a double CD of oral histories titled “Folks Are Talking” from men and women he interviewed for the newspaper in the 1970s.
Garret Mathews, who moved to Evansville, Ind., in 1987 to write the metro column for The Courier, retired in 2011 after penning more than 10,000 articles on a variety of subjects from a 91-year-old female bootlegger in Princeton, Ky., to the members of a snake-handling church in Jolo, W. Va.
Mathews selected 28 of his early Daily Telegraph stories – gathered primarily in southern West Virginia but also in southwest Virginia – for “Folks Are Talking.” They include an early UMW organizer, a horse trader, survivors of coal mine explosions, coal camp baseball players, a girl born during the deadly flood of 1977 and a female furrier who carves muskrats while eating peanut-butter sandwiches.
“These men and women are from a bygone era and most are long dead,” Mathews says. “I wanted to record our time together as a way of keeping their stories alive.”
Music evocative of the region is included on the double CD.
Copies of “Folks Are Talking” will be made available to public and school libraries in that two-state area as well as to historians and colleges and universities that offer Appalachian studies.
“It’s as I point out in the introduction: You just don’t find these folks any more,” Mathews says. “What they shared with me, I want to share with future generations.”
The double CD costs $17 plus $3 shipping. Checks should be sent to “Folks Are Talking,” c/o Garret Mathews, 7954 Elna Kay Drive, Evansville, Indiana 47715. For more information, see www.folksaretalking.com
In 1972, I left my hometown of Abingdon, Va., for the 80-mile drive to my first newspaper job in Bluefield, W. Va. I was greener than the keys on the manual typewriters.
When you find a woman who used to sleep with a pet bobcat and who eats her lunch while skinning a raccoon, there is no doubt you've met a certifiable fur trader. That's Mrs. Archie Caldwell.
"I can lob an old Pocahontas Fuel Company pop bottle over that hill just as pretty as you please. If I put enough gun powder behind it, I could fire a round over a mile, I reckon." - John Stout
Hear an original song about the route between Huntington, W. Va., and Bluefield, W. Va. written by MaryAnne Mathews.