Higher Calling-Part Two

Walkin’ Shoes

Music was no exception. Fiddles had been brought over from the Old Country. Banjos came from the slaves and guitars were being manufactured in the north by the likes of Martin and Ashborn. Music in the hills was a community thing. Families gathered together to enjoy each other’s company and perhaps provide a respite from the day’s work. From one hill to the next, music was shared, licks, riffs and reels were passed around. Mountain music was carried on.

The walking shoes worn by these various kindred spirits left many footprints. Ways of living, talking, and singing all peculiar to their own experiences. Some hill towns or boroughs stayed true to their own particular lineage. Conversely, the blending of these cultures and backgrounds forged and created whole new ways of living.

In truth, mountain or hill music didn’t survive in isolation as some would think. Things were moving. For one, the Civil War moved songs from one battlefield to another throughout the conflict. Soldiers from the mountains traded licks with soldiers in the southern towns. The whole bloody spectacle brought about many new stories to tell and sing. Religious revivals coming in waves moved people’s hearts and shaped the morals needed to live together. Efficiently, the railroad, mining and logging operations moved people about.

There, in that fertile region in and around the mountains of southwestern Virginia, out of nothing came a lot. The melting pot gave birth to country and bluegrass music. The music was born of economic differences, poverty, individual and shared experiences, and of migration and segregation.  Each style, every lick complemented the other. The music gave voice to the collective stories of a whole new breed of Americans. Music helped to form the strong ties that hard times forever tries to break. For John and Mary Monk and many more, hard times never diminished the spirit. 

John Thermon and Mary Ethel Monk were my grandmother’s parents. Both parents had been born in 1890 and married young. Their first child, Frazer Lee, was born in 1905. A few more of their ten children were born in the south. They worked area farms, raised their children and did their best to make ends meet in southern Virginia.

The family worked hard, held fast to religion and maintained close ties with relatives in the area. As with many families in the South, both parents worked. Taking care of the younger ones became a common job for the older children. They got by. 

When Hettie Ann was six years old, she was at home with her older brothers. The boys decided it was time they would teach her how to smoke. As the story goes, she was learning to roll her own cigarette and went to light it in the fireplace. Fate stirred and Hettie’s dress caught fire. Her brothers took her outside, rolled her in the ground to put the fire out. So severe were the burns, she was confined to bed for a year. Determined as a Monk, she recovered. In a sad twist, the emphysema that eventually took her years later was attributed largely to that early, tragic accident. 

In her late teens, Hettie married Donald Thomas and began a new unbroken circle. Virginia in that triangle at the mouth of the Blue Ridge was home, where roots were put down. But work was hard to come by so they headed north for the promise of work.

Records don’t show, but some of Hettie’s relatives possibly even her parents had already moved north. The family could still be together. More footprints on whole new ways of living.

Did you enjoy the post above? How about a link to other relevant posts?

Higher Calling, Part Four ; Higher Calling, Part Three ; Higher Calling, Part One