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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
by Gratis D. Williams
David Gratis Williams, Editor
Patricia D. Beaver, Editor
Published by:
Appalachian Consortium Press
©1999
�The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization
composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From
1973 to 2004^ its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies
documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian
Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of
the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day.
With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National
Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program^
Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access
digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press.
www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a
copy of the license^ visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses.
Original copyright © 1999 by the Appalachian Consortium Press.
ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-4195-9
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-4197-3
Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press
www.uncpress.org
�c
Acknowledgements
Introduction
i
1.
A Call from Boone
1
2.
Arriving in Boone: A New Beginning
3.
Settling into Boone
4.
Visit to Sylvia
5.
Glad to be Living and Working in Boone ....57
6.
Winters Nightmare
75
7.
Christmas
97
8.
Longing to Call Boone Home..
113
Index of Names
129
Gratis Williams Chronology
137
Cratis Williams Bibliography
139
List of Photographs...
11
....29
47
.....143
�This page intentionally left blank
�A
Appalachian State University's Centennial celebration in 1999 seemed a fitting occasion for preparation by the Center for Appalachian Studies of a volume of Gratis Williams's memoirs for publication. In
1997 I approached David Williams for family approval
and guidance through his father's papers. David directed my attention to / Come to Boone, which represents a
pivotal year (1942-43) in Cratis's adult life, beginning
his long-term association with what was then
Appalachian State Teachers College, with Boone, and
with the North Carolina mountains. Gratis Williams's
memoir is a most appropriate contribution to the university's Centennial, as his experiences intersect with
the lives of many educators who shaped the college
from its inception in 1899 into the university of the
late 20th century. David Williams and I have worked
together to bring Cratis's text to the community which
grew with Gratis, which nurtured his professionalism,
and which loved and admired him.
David Williams and I are responsible for alterations from the original manuscript, which include
minor editorial changes and the addition of chapter
breaks, chapter titles, and footnotes which do not
appear in the original text. While I worked from
locales in North Carolina, David traversed the eastern
seaboard from Canada to Puerto Rico, enduring the
fury of Hurricane Georges as he proofed the final
manuscript copy.
We are grateful for the careful reading and the
editorial suggestions provided by John Keener of LeesMcRae College. Graduate students in the Appalachian
Studies master's program were critical to this production, including Stephanie Roark Keener and Kathryn
Staley, who scanned, formatted, and edited Cratis's
original manuscript. In preparation of the final text,
we are grateful for the good work of Jessica Blackburn,
Melanie Rice, Brett Melchior, Robert Barham, and
David Cozzo. Art Rex and Andrew Paul of ASU's
�Department of Geography and Planning generated the maps. Kinney Baughman provided
technical support and wisdom at every critical juncture in the production of this manuscript.
Elizabeth Bordeaux kept all of us organized and all the versions of the text in order,
and proofread the entire manuscript. Fred Hay and Jerry Williamson provided editorial
commentary on the introduction in a timely fashion at a critical time in the production,
and Fred Hay fine-tuned the bibliography. Cratis's brother O.C.Williams and his niece
Bobbi Lynn provided immeasurable assistance with family photographs, as did Cratis's sister
Ruth Lester and her sons Jim and Jack Lester. Elizabeth Williams and Cratis's and Libby's
daughter Sophie Williams provided valuable assistance, advice, and support for this project,
for which we are deeply appreciative. Ruby Daniel's generosity with information about
Gratis from the day of their meeting at the beginning of the school term in 1942, and with
her personal correspondence with Gratis and that of her husband, Hugh, is tribute to their
affection for Gratis. It is affection shared by all of us who had the very great pleasure of
knowing him, of laughing with him, of learning from him, of following in his path.
This manuscript is presented to honor Gratis, his pivotal role in our university, particularly the Graduate School, and his role in directing the humanistic embrace of regional
culture in creating Appalachian Studies as a serious program of meaningful scholarship. No
one has stepped into the large space which Gratis left, and we laugh a little less often.
Patricia D. Beaver, 1999
Boone, North Carolina
�I
Following his retirement in 1976 from a distinguished career as a teacher and administrator at
Appalachian State University in Boone, North
Carolina, Gratis Williams began to write memoirs of
his life odyssey from a log cabin in eastern Kentucky
to the upper echelons of American education.
Destined to become a nationally recognized spokesperson for Appalachian culture-a preserver of its ballads,
a teller of its tales, and a sympathetic interpreter of its
customs and traditions-Cratis struggled during his
formative years to find his direction in life. Most of
Gratis s memoirs concern these years of personal and
professional growth, focusing either on his recollections from childhood or on his educational and early
professional experiences.
Two previously published memoirs, / Become A
Teacher (Williams 1995) and William H. Vaughan: A
Better Man Than I Ever Wanted To Be (Williams 1983),
describe, respectively, his entry into the teaching profession in a one-room school in his native Lawrence
County, Kentucky, and his high school principal and
mentor. / Come to Boone describes his move in 1942
from Huntington, West Virginia, where he taught
night classes at the Apprentice School of International
Nickel Company, to Boone, North Carolina.
Watching helplessly as his wife Sylvia slowly succumbed to tuberculosis, he took a temporary position
as "critic teacher" at Appalachian Demonstration High
School. Among his many assignments that year,
Gratis taught methods of teaching English in high
school to aspiring educators at Appalachian State
Teachers College, the institution with which he was to
be associated for the remainder of his life.
Early Years
Gratis Dearl Williams was born at 7:23 a.m. on
April 5, 1911, in the telephone room of his grandfa-
�The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
ther's log house on Caines Creek, in Lawrence County, Kentucky.
He was the first child of Curtis and Mona (Whitt) Williams, and the first grandson
for both David O. Williams, in whose house he was born, and Jefferson Davis Whitt. A
small, presumably premature baby, Cratis was not expected to survive his infancy. u[I]n the
language of the community" he later recalled, "/ was.,, a 'puny and pindlin child, plagued
with tonsillitis, colds and infections, and hives" A short time after his birth, his young parents, each but twenty years old at the time of his birth, moved a short distance "up the
creek" to the "Blythe cabin" a small log house dating from the 1880s, which David
Williams had purchased. "/« this house" Cratis Williams later wrote, "which was altered
later and added to, I grew to maturity "^ The alterations and additions were required, in
part, by the growth of the family: Cratis was eventually joined by four siblings, Mabel,
Ralph, Ruth, and Ottie Curtis.
Figure 1. A new generation of Williams: (l-r) Mabel, age 5;
Cratis, age 6; Ralph, age 4; and Elva, their youngest aunt, age
3, July 1917.
Cratis's interest in mountain speech was practically stamped on him from the very
beginning. Although, as he was to note wryly in later years, the name "Cratis" resonates
nicely with those of the Greek gods, it was in fact an invention of his mother, who had not
been trained in Greek mythology during her years in the local one-room country school.
She liked the sound of the name. Names-and perhaps words generally-were differentiated
and endowed with meaning, magic, and pleasure by sound; spelling was at best a secondary
concern. Her own name, spelled "Mona," was pronounced "Mony." His middle
name-"Dearl"-is a variant of "Darryl" (or "Darrell," as Wolfford [circa 1972,170] mistakenly lists it), but the spelling in this case is reflective of the pronunciation, which rhymes
with "Earl." Trying to capture that sound through spelling proved to be an inexact science.
In July, 1917, when he started school in the one-room school "on the hillside across the
'All quotations from Cratis Williams are in quotes and italicized. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations are
from unpublished memoirs, essays, speeches, and short notes by Cratis Williams, which are in the possession of his
family.
�Introduction
valley" from the house in which he grew up, his mother prepared him with a "primer" in
which she had written, "Gratis Dearl Williams, His Book." The teacher enrolled him in the
official record book accordingly. "I did not know for 20 years" he later recalled, "that she had
misspelled my middle name, which was written 'Darl' on my birth certificate" Afterwards he
remained, by choice as well as habit, Gratis Dearl.
"Mostly of Scotch Irish origin" Gratis was a descendent on both sides of the early settlers along the Appalachian frontier during the period of the founding of this country.
Among his "forebears were Indian fighters, long hunters, veterans of the American Revolution,
Tories escaped to the backwoods, refugees from the Whiskey Rebellion, Kentucky mountain feudi$ts> and religious dissenters" (Big Sandy News March 6, 1969, n.p.). As the "oldest grandson
of each of my grandfathers" Gratis "enjoyed a special place in my early years in the favor of
each" Each grandfather, albeit in widely different ways, was enormously influential on
him. Gratis later recalled, "My Grandfather Williams led me by the hand through the mysterious arrangements of his distillery, said to have been the last legal distillery in Eastern Kentucky.
He gave me my own little bottle of whiskey so I could drink along with the workers" His other
grandfather, "Pa Jeff," offered education of a different sort, "Grandfather Whitt, a keen
'hardshell' scholar of the Bible, began talking Calvinistic theology with me before I was nine
years old. By the time I was twelve we could 'argy the 'scriptors' together with quiet skill" Of
course, as Gratis concluded his recollection, "more warmth was generated in our discussions
when I shared with him my little bottle of whiskey"
As a young child, Gratis would go with his mother to the United Baptist Church
"which is located just across the valley from where we grew up. That was the only church in the
valley at the time" There he would listen for hours to the preachers (for generally four or
five preachers would go in succession on Sundays), and church would last from nine o'clock
in the morning until perhaps two or three o'clock in the afternoon. What most impressed
young Gratis, however, was not the theological content of the sermons but rather the oratorical style of the raw mountain preachers; he "was intrigued with the style and the drama of
it all" When an animal on the farm died, Gratis and his siblings would have a funeral, and
Gratis "would preach the funeral sermon. I would use this mans style and then that mans style"
Curt Williams, concerned that his son's imitations would offend the preachers, "'bursted' the
seat" of Cratis's pants "several times for mocking the preachers" But "when my father was completely out of hearing, Fd go on and do it anyway" (Ross n.d.). It was in this manner that
Gratis acquired both a deep appreciation of and skill in the oratorical styles of mountain
preachers: "/ learned to preach like the hard-shell preachers. I liked the rhetoric. I wasn't religious" (Big Sandy News July 3, 1979, 10).
At the age of six, Gratis was sent to the one-room Hillside School, also known as
Middle Caines Creek School, near his home. The school "was held in the United Baptist
Church Building, which was constructed about 1885" His first teacher was Eugene Moore.
Although Middle Caines Creek School was located conveniently for young Gratis and his
siblings, its very remoteness no doubt contributed to an instability in its staffing. Eugene
Moore moved after the term ended. Cratis's second teacher, Annie Young, eloped to
California after only about three months. Harry Burton, later a prominent merchant and
�The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
banker in Elaine, finished Annie's term and was followed briefly by Randolph N. Boggs,
who also moved away. But "Ran" was an important influence on Cratis: "Ran encouraged
me to read orally" Cratis recollected about the 1919 school year, "/ recall that he once invited
the whole school to hear me read aloud the story about the dog and the cock that spent the night
in the forest. The response of my 'audience' to my cock-crowing was so gratifying to me that I
began to aspire for skill in interpretation. I have considered this experience one of the most significant in my life. It sharpened my interest in school generally" Ran taught the school again
in 1920, before leaving Blaine.
Beginning with the 1921-1922 term, Cratis's teacher "was Ulysses S. Williams, my
father's cousin. Lyss began the 1922-1923 term, but was shot and killed in November" He
was twenty-two years old. "Lyss had been one of the 'big scholars' in the school during my first
two years" Cratis recalled, "but he had taken the teachers examination and been awarded a
certificate. He had also attended a short winter 'institute' before he began teaching on Catt
Creek in 1920. After being away from the school on Caines Creek for only one yean he
returned, at the age of21, as the teacher, and he was a good one" Lyss had developed an
interest in a young woman who lived nearby on Abb Creek. On Sunday, November 12,
Lyss went to Abb Creek to meet Roberta Stafford, "to whom he was engaged" But at the
church on Abb Creek, he was shot and killed by Elbert Caldwell. "CaldweWs motive... was
never made quite clear. He was quite drunk, however, and had engaged in a quarrel with young
men from Caines Creek before Lyss arrived at the church. Lyss was shot at such close range that
his clothing caught fire. He died instantly, without speaking a word" When they learned of
this, the Williams men (headed by Lyss s brother Jesse and his father, Cratis's uncle Jake)
attempted to hunt down the murderer, but their search parties returned empty handed.
Cratis recalled lying awake in the bedroom, with its window opening onto the porch,
listening quietly to a conversation between his parents the "morning following my father's allnight search, along with dozens of Williams relatives, for the man who had killed Lyss. He told
my mother that Lyss had been the only one of our family who was determined to 'get an education but that his murder 'just looked like it wasn't meant that a Williams would ever be allowed
to have one.' With a mighty oath he swore that if one of his children wanted an education he
would 'work on my hands and knees for a dime a day, if need be, to see that he had a chance to
get it"' Although only eleven years old at the time, Cratis " vowed secretly that I would challenge my father to the sacrifice that he declared he was prepared to make. During the remainder
of that school year I advanced from third grade to the fifth grade and began in the sixth grade
the following year'" That term Cratis took the County Examination "/» determine whether I
was eligible to go to high school The examination lasted for two days. I passed it at the age of
twelve"' In February, 1924, Cratis rode the farm wagon with his father from Caines Creek
to Louisa, where he planned to enter Louisa High School (which was completed in 1889)
and board with his father's cousins, Simpson (Simps) and Nola Boggs. After meeting with
the principal, however, he was assigned to the seventh grade.
Cratis immediately experienced culture shock; he was ""painfully ashamed of the quaint
background" he " brought directly into the glitter of the Jazz Age" which had already arrived in
Louisa. Even as he struggled to adjust to his "newsurroundings" he excelled in his studies
�Introduction
and impressed both his classmates and his teacher who "awarded" him with a metal pencil
as a special prize for the top student. She had to purchase the pencil herself; Gratis, having
enrolled late in the year, was ineligible for the official prize. His "'grades for the semester were
27 As and 3 Bs" When he showed his gradecard to his father that summer, Curt Williams
asked his son "to explain what the grades meant, I told him that A was the best grade a student
could receive. He looked at the card intently, running his fingers up and down the columns, and
handed it back to me as he asked, 'Well, what in the hell are these Bs doing on here, then?"
Gratis concluded that this expectation was not unreasonable. "He had given me 50 cents a
week for spending money, paid $4.00 a week for my board and room, and paid 75 cents a week
for my tuition. Money was hard to come by. He had sacrificed, and he expected perfect performance in return"
The following September Gratis began high school in Louisa. He would be the first
person from Caines Creek to graduate Louisa High School. His high school principal and
history teacher was William H. Vaughan, an influential educator who was later to become
President of Morehead State University (1940-1946).2 Vaughans influence on Gratis
Williams would be difficult to overstate: he was a teacher, a mentor, a trusted advisor, and,
eventually, a friend and a father figure. It was Dr. Vaughan who not only encouraged Gratis
to think about education beyond high school—something inconceivable to Gratis while
growing up on Caines Creek—but also facilitated the possibility. Vaughan, a native of
Lawrence County, helped Gratis to take pride in himself, and perhaps from that basis to
look upon his heritage with pride. Even so, Cratis's initial experiences in high school filled
him not with appreciation of his heritage and its traditions but rather with shame.
The mountain dialect which Gratis spoke when he arrived in Lousia was the source of
one of his greatest humiliations. During his first year of high school, Gratis became acutely
aware of the differences between the town children and the country children, including the
different attitudes that many of the teachers adopted toward the respective groups. Gratis
felt that his own English teacher, Miss Roberts, was "what we called in the country 'proud,'
one who thinks herself better than others. I found it difficult to like her, but I was determined to
do all I could to meet her requirements and to please her" One day, during "oral assignments
in which we were to deal with the 'spoken word,"" Gratis volunteered to tell "An Anecdote"
He went to the front of the room, where he ''assumed the recommended posture for facing an
audience, my feet planted side by side firmly on the floor, my body erect, my chest out, my chin
up, my arms stiff by my sides, and my fingers pointed rigidly at my shoe tops. I was prepared to
tell about Dave Prince's stuffing the overalls in the smokepipe of Granny Blyth's kitchen stove"
But as he began his story, Miss Roberts interrupted and requested that he repeat the sentence he had just spoken:
"Hit was a-gittin 'way up in the day," I responded.
The town girls restrained giggles.
"Say it again, " Miss Roberts commanded.
-For a full discussion of their relationship, see Gratis D. Williams's (1983) biography of William H. Vaughan.
�The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
"Hit was getting 'way up in the day," I repeated with more precision. The town girls, now
unrestrained, laughed outright. I could feel my face flaming as Miss Roberts asked me to say it
again.
"Hit was getting away up in the day!" I almost shouted.
The town girls, now joined by some of the country children, laughed louder and longer.
"It, not hit," Miss Roberts corrected.
At that, "the country children laughed uproariously while the town girls merely smiled at
Miss Roberts as she looked in their direction" For Cratis, the "humiliation was so deep and
painful that I resolved to learn spoken English so well that no one would be likely to laugh at me
again. Many years and a Ph.D. in English were required to salve my wound completely" As a
result of such experiences, Cratis felt himself confronted with the need for radical selfchange. In his later reflections upon these experiences, he concluded, "I soon saw that my
job was to make myself over. It was a shame to be Appalachian"
As deep and lasting as this humiliation was, Cratis received a counter-balancing impetus to begin serious examination of his own experience and culture from other teachers,
none of whom, ironically, were from the region of the southern Appalachians. For instance,
it was a high school teacher who first awakened Cratis's academic interest in ballads. " When
I was a junior" Cratis later recounted, "we studied a unit in ballads. Suddenly I realized these
were the songs I knew, the ones my people sang. My teacher made a big fuss over this and
advised I start collecting them. Tve been at it ever since" (Alexander 1966). As a high school
student he began to collect ballads from his relatives and neighbors. Learning the tunes and
writing the lyrics, his interest began to broaden and he soon began "to study the speech, tales,
and oral rhetoric of the mountain folk"
Recognizing the uniqueness and value of aspects of his "home" culture in the county,
yet suffering as well its stigma and social humiliations, Cratis found himself in a cultural
quandary. Even as he acculturated to mainstream middle-class norms, he retained his country identity. "/ was living in two cultures" he later told the Big Sandy News (July 3, 1979,
10). "/ couldn't let the people back on the creek know or they'd think I was puttin on the dog"
Meanwhile, he entered the jazz age, slicked back his hair, shined his shoes to a two-toned
gleam, and learned the popular songs of the day.3 As he put it years later, KI was as middle
class in my behavior and appearance as it was possible for me to be and so careful with my personal grooming that a fly could not have rested on my slicked back hair without sliding off I
even shined the insides of my shoe heels. That was the Jazz Age. I wore bell-bottom trousers,
loud socks, and bow ties, sang 'Yes, Sir, She's My Baby and 'Blue Skies,' and danced the
Charleston and the fox-trot, though not very well" Yet, despite his appearance of being in the
middle class, the middle class was not in him. He was still, in a very fundamental sense, an
Appalachian mountaineer-albeit now one clad in bell-bottoms, loud socks, and bow ties.
"I felt dreadfully unreal I was a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That Appalachian boy who
3
This theme of cultural division is the unifying metaphor of the documentary film, Cratis Williams: Living the
Divided Life (1998).
�Introduction
stood to one side and watched, reproved, chastised, and corrected the Jazz Age character I was playing in the charade,
was the real me. It was he who would ask from time to time,
'How am I doing?"
Despite, or perhaps because of, his early embarrassments at Louisa High School, Gratis endeavored to
become both a successful and, by all evidence, popular stu-1
dent. He was president of his freshman class, secretary of
the Athenian Literary Society during his sophomore year,
and became centrally involved in school activities during
his junior and senior years, serving at various times as pres- j
ident of both the Science and English Clubs, member of
the out-of-state debating team, and school representative
in the district declamation contest. During his senior year
he was editor of the Louisian^ ""the five-column four-page
school newspaper published twice a month and printed by the Figure 2, As a high school graduate, 1928.
Big Sandy News." The editorial direction of the paper
soon reflected a strong Appalachian bent, although Gratis later did not recall having emphasized Appalachian themes in the paper. "/ had forgotten " he wrote in 1979, " until last year,
fifty years later, when someone sent me a copy of one issue of the school paper I had edited, that
on the back page of that paper I had written an essay on what it meant to be an Appalachian
person. I was amazed that I hadnt changed my mind much. Also, I had included in the paper
several mountain ballads, but I had forgotten that I had done that, too"
At his high school commencement in 1928, Gratis was recipient of the Honor
Student Trophy, "an 18-inch silver loving cup given by the faculty to the graduate who best
exemplified scholarship and leadership" As salutatorian of his graduating class of forty, Gratis
delivered the salutatorian address on May 25, 1928. According to the Big Sandy News, he
painted "with beautiful diction a picture of happy, restful high school life," but recognized
that graduates "have to give up these pleasures" and pursue their chosen courses in life.
One day during Gratis s senior year of high school, Dr. Vaughan showed him a letter
from James L. Creech, President of Cumberland College, a small junior college in
Williamsburg, Kentucky. "The letter promised a tuition scholarship, a workship with a value
equivalent to the cost of room and board" (Williams 1983,22). With the help of Dr.
Vaughan, Gratis received both the scholarship and workship. On September 1, 1928, he left
Lawrence County to attend Cumberland College. He always credited Cumberland College
with providing him an opportunity to continue his education, an opportunity which would
not have been available to him otherwise.4 After one year at Cumberland, Gratis became a
one-room school teacher on Caines Creek.5 The year was 1929; he was eighteen years old.
4
Aiways a supporter of Cumberland College, one of Cratis's last requests was that certain investments from his
estate, investments which had originated in an inheritance from his father a quarter of a century earlier, be used to
endow a scholarship fund for mountain youth to attend Cumberland College, now a four-year institution. The
"Curt and Mona Williams Scholarship" is awarded annually.
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Although he had begun a career as a teacher, a career which would not span seamless-
Figure 3, Cratis stands tall behind his one-room school class
on Caines Creek about 1929. He was probably standing on a
wash tub,
ly through the next fifty years of his life, he would continue on as a student. Cumberland
College had whetted his appetite and he now had a dream: to work his way from oneroom school teacher to high school teacher to college teacher. He thought that to be a college teacher was to have climbed the mountaintop. He could work as a one-room school
teacher based on his certificate and his year at Cumberland, but to pursue his dream he
needed a college degree, or perhaps two or three of them. After teaching in the one-room
school through the fall and winter, Cratis then attended the second semester and one summer term at the University of Kentucky. He did this each year (with the exception of a
summer term spent at Morehead in 1932) until he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in
June, 1933.
High School Teacher and Principal (1933-1941)
As his graduation from the University of Kentucky approached in the spring of 1933,
Cratis began to face significant career choices. Already determined to extend his formal
education beyond the B.A. degree in English which he was earning from Kentucky that
June, Cratis had assumed that he would continue to teach in the Upper Caines Creek
school during the year and pursue his masters degree during the summers. But as the
Depression deepened, teachers' salaries fell faster than Cratis's pay scale; indeed, his salary
had declined each of the preceding four years he taught in the one-room school.
At that time, County Board of Education members in Lawrence County were elected
by geographic districts and Curt Williams was well acquainted with Proctor Fyffe, Blaine's
representative on the Lawrence County Board. With his father's assistance, through Proctor
Fyffe, Cratis arranged to move to Blaine's high school beginning in the fall of 1933. Even
5
Cratis wrote extensively about his experiences during his first year as a one-room school teacher. See Williams
(1995).
�Introduction
Figure 4. Ralph J. Williams with his grade school students, Caines Creek, 1938.
Figure 5. Gratis with his two brothers: Ralph J.
Williams (on the right) and Ottie Curtis, standing
on the table, Caines Creek, circa 1930. Photo
courtesy ofO. C. Williams.
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
so, his salary would again be lower than it had been the previous year. He would be not the
English teacher but the science teacher and club sponsor. He was to teach five classes: general science, biology, geography, physics, and agriculture. During the summer of 1933,
Gratis remained in Lexington and took classes toward his master s degree in English, but he
also audited lectures in beginning physics. He returned to Elaine just before the fall school
term opened and had dinner the night before classes started at the home of David Morris,
the principal of the high school, where he met the rest of the faculty. The next day he began
his new career as a high school teacher. Elaine High School was a relatively new institution
opened in 1929, one year after Gratis had completed his own high school degree in Louisa.
In 1934 Dock Jordan, county superintendent since 1922, retired. David Morris was
Figure 6. Curt Williams arriving at an understanding with
his oldest son Gratis, late 1920s,
selected as the new superintendent, and with only one year of high school teaching experience, twenty-three year old Gratis (who was a college graduate and had taken coursework at
Morehead during the summer of 1932 in preparation for certification for principalship)
became the principal at Elaine. As a young principal, Gratis was energetic, innovative, and
brimming with confidence. His enthusiasm may have been less infectious than alarming,
however, for his predecessor and boss, David Morris, rebuked him sharply following completion of his first year: "In your work this year, you put too much stress on intelligence
tests. I believe I mentioned this to you several times before. There are several other things
I want to discuss with you before school begins." As a consequence of such innovations as
the testing program, Morris emphasized that Gratis was in a precarious situation, lacking
both his own confidence and, he felt, that of his teachers. Gratis s second year as principal—and his first as English teacher—saw improved relations among the faculty, and Gratis
became recognized as a capable administrator and teacher by both his own faculty and,
through county-wide teachers' meetings, faculty at other schools as well. At these meetings
he furthered a friendship with Sylvia Graham, a young English teacher at Louisa High
School and recent graduate of Morehead, whom he had first met at similar meetings while
teaching at the Upper Caines Creek School. At the time Gratis was principal, Elaine High
�Introduction
School was a school of about 85 students
(Williams 1983, 30).
Working as English teacher and principal,
Gratis had to curtail his course of study at the
University of Kentucky. However, he continued
to attend at least one summer term each year.
During this period, Gratis studied primarily with
L.L. Dantzler, from whom he had taken an undergraduate survey of English literature. That class
had included "a unit on the ballad, and when
Professor Dantzler interpreted 'The Twa Corbies, *
'Edward,' and 'The Wife of Usher's Well,' I saw for
the first time that the ballad is really great literature,
that it lends itself to all sorts of humanistic approaches and interpretations" Throughout his undergraduate and graduate coursework, Gratis studied
under Professor Dantzler's supervision, and when
the time came for Gratis to think seriously about
'7. While principal of Elaine
his thesis, he turned naturally and easily to Professor
High School.
Dantzler: "/ said that I would like to get a master's
degree in English and that I wanted to prepare a thesis on ballads.... He was so excited that he
began puffing rapidly on his pipe and almost danced around the desk with it"
Thus began the several year project in which Gratis interspersed teaching and administrating during the academic terms, studying and taking coursework during the summers,
and riding his mule out into the countryside tracking down ballads at every opportunity
which arose. "In the summertime when I would hear of some old man or old woman living far
down in the head of a hollow, down the ridge ten to fifteen miles from where I grew up, I would
get on the mule, ride over there, hear that person sing, and write down what I could. Sometimes
that was difficult because the old person who started a song would sing faster than I could
write" As Gratis collected more seriously, both his attitude toward and his appreciation of
the ballad began to evolve. He reported in 1978, "Igathered songs from all of my relatives,
including my father and mother, my grandmothers, my aunts, and my father's cousins, the
Boggses, for my people were in the musical tradition. Please understand now that while all of
this was going on I was deeply ashamed of mountain music. The only thing respectable about
studying the ballad had to do with the textual matter of the ballad itself. But my parents were
musical. In fact, my relatives were all musical" Over time, and with deepening resonance,
the music slowly swayed Cratis's orientation, but his thesis remained focused on text. After
being as thorough as possible in his collection of ballads and his comparison of them with
other published sources, he hunt-and-pecked his way through a submissable copy of the
450-page manuscript, for he was too poor to afford a typist. He submitted two copies—the
original and a carbon—but, not being able to afford paper for a second carbon, he wasn't
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
able to keep a copy for himself.6 He was awarded his master's degree in June 1937, but
stayed in Lexington that summer to begin earning credits toward a Ph.D.
On August 7, 1937, shortly after returning to Lawrence County from the second
summer session at the University of Kentucky, Gratis Williams married Sylvia Graham, "an
English teacher, poet, and amateur actress. A native of Cherokee in Lawrence County, Kentucky,
Sylvia was a graduate of the academy at Berea College and ofMorehead State Teachers College
(University)" (Williams 1975a, 67-68). She was one of three children born to Lemual
Wakeman Graham and Berta Francis Cooper
Graham, both of Lawrence County (Gratis
Williams's letter to Theodore B. Walker, Feb. 11,
1980). Sylvia was well known locally for her literary accomplishments, having published stories and
poems in the literary magazines of both Morehead
I State and the University of Kentucky, as well as in
local papers. She had suffered health problems
earlier, contracting tuberculosis of the lung and
spending a period of time taking "the cure" in
Southern Pines, North Carolina. Her sister
Georgia died of the disease, but it was believed
that Sylvia had recovered fully. As late as 1938, she
received a clean bill of health from her physician
in his report to the Lawrence County Board of
Education.
Gratis first "called on" Sylvia at her parents'
home in Cherokee in 1931, and they probably
Figure 8, Christmas 1933. Horsing around were at Morehead at the same time during the
with Ethel Gambill and two dolls, Elaine,
summer of 1932. Six years and many teachers'
Kentucky. During this period, Gratis would meetings after first courting) they were married
often ride his mule far into the hollows of
, r
,
.
^ ,
,
,
T^
, .
, rj it t
i - i before the magistrate in Catlettsbure, Kentucky.
T,
eastern Kentucky in search of ballads, which
\
\\
\
\
he collected tn his master's thai,.
Following the wedding, Gratis remained at Blaine
High School while Sylvia continued to teach at
Louisa, setting the tone for a marriage that simultaneously suffered and was strengthened
from frequent and extended periods of separation, including most summers when Gratis
continued to return to Lexington to work on his Ph.D.
In 1936, William A. Cheek, a graduate of Louisa High School (where he and Gratis
had been in the same class, although Cheek was exactly six years older having been born
April 5, 1905) had become principal of Louisa High School (Wolfford ©1972, 161). In
1938 Cheek challenged and supplanted David Morris as superintendent, and the three men
rotated positions; Morris returned as principal at Blaine, and Gratis replaced Cheek as prin"Twenty years afer he completed his master's thesis (and twenty years since he had last seen a copy), he agreed to a
request to put the thesis on microcard because there was scholarly value in the texts of the ballads. Malcolm Laws
subsequently "used it extensively in revising his handbook, Native American Balladry."
�Introduction
cipal of Louisa High School which was now consolidated with the county system and had
twice the enrollment of when he had been a student there some ten years earlier. It had
become "one of the larger high schools in eastern Kentucky" with roughly 500 students and a
faculty of twenty-two, three of whom had been there when Gratis was a student. Gratis was
twenty-seven years old and he was now the only one there with a masters degree. Those
teachers who had most impressed him as a student-'people with a master's degree and from
outside the region"-had been victims of the Depression: "Local pressures to replace them with
home grown talent with only a bachelor's degree had driven them away"
In his first year as principal Gratis directed the development of both a "school-wide
counseling program and a testing program" (Williams 1983, 32-33). Sylvia Graham Williams
remained on the faculty as an English teacher and, at times, school librarian. As a high
school principal in Louisa, Gratis was increasingly active in professional associations. In the
fall of 1938, he attended the annual meeting of the Eastern Kentucky Education
Association and served on its board of directors until 1941 (Big Sandy News Nov. 4, 1938,
1; Nov. 18, 1938, 1).
Louisa High School made great strides in those years. In addition to the innovative
testing and counseling programs, Gratis worked to enlarge and improve the library (Big
Sandy News Feb. 24, 1939, 1) and encouraged the "organization of a student government to
aid the faculty in promoting school morale" (Big Sandy News Mar. 24, 1939, 1). He also
initiated a vocational training program, and on September 1, 1939, the Big Sandy News (1)
reported, "The new vocational-agriculture department, inaugurated this year, is already
proving popular and a number of rural students as well as a few Louisa students are
enrolled for the course." He also laid the groundwork for a complementary college-prep
track. To combine vocational education and college preparation in the same school was
innovative at the time, and it marked an important ambition in Cratiss agenda for the high
school. In addition to its innovative programs, the high school was simply booming as
never before. The graduating class of 1940, numbering 61 students, was "the largest in the
history of the school" (Big Sandy News May 10, 1940, 1). The following fall the Big Sandy
News proudly reported that 23 Louisa High School graduates were set to enter college
(Sept. 13, 1940, 1).
Yet all was not well in Cratis's professional life. His agenda for Louisa High School
was not shared by the county's central administration, and without any control over pivotal
matters such as personnel decisions, Gratis feared that his innovations could not be fully
implemented. Faculty morale was low and Gratis became concerned about his own viability as principal. He began to entertain seriously the idea of looking for a new position, perhaps at a college or a junior college. When Gratis left for Lexington in the summer of
1940, he took these worries with him. He wrote Sylvia, "It would not surprise me to find
open rebellion in the school this year. I really dread the year" (July 30, 1940). He turned for
advice to his friend, Richard M. Weaver,7 who urged him to leave Lawrence County.
'Gratis became friends with Weaver during their summer sessions together at the University of Kentucky; their
friendship lasted until Weaver's death in 1963. Weaver authored Ideas Have Consequences (1948) and The Ethics of
Rhetoric (1953).
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Weaver himself was in the process of leaving Texas A&M for doctoral work at Louisiana
State, "where he plans to do a dissertation in American lit." Weaver "tells me that he hopes I'm
on my way out of Lawrence County, that Til never do any good until I cut loose. 'Sudden
Salvation is what I need, I think there's a whole lot to what he says' (to Sylvia, June 30,
1940). Gratis began to look more seriously for other jobs, and he applied for several positions. Playfully echoing Weaver's comment from earlier in the summer, he wrote Sylvia on
July 30, "If there could be some 'call' to another place where I might persevere more favorably in
the cause of the Lord!'
As the summer of 1940 edged toward fall, it became clear that Gratis would return to
Louisa, and he began to plan accordingly. However, Sylvias position remained unsettled;
she and several other teachers simply did not know whether or not they were to be retained.
The uncertainty of Sylvias employment added to an already precarious financial situation
for the couple. Financial stresses had remained a constant throughout Cratis's life, and he
and Sylvia had gotten into the habit of "selling" their checks in advance for less than facevalue, easing pressures momentarily (particularly during the summer months when Gratis
was at school in Lexington) but accentuating them down the road. Financial pressure made
Sylvias employment of paramount importance, and the situation became increasingly acute
as Sylvia began to experience medical difficulties, including dental problems, chronic sore
throats, coughs, and fatigue. Both she and Gratis attributed her fatigue to tonsillitis aggravated by persistent worry about jobs, money, and increasingly, politics. In the end, Sylvia
was not retained for the 1940-1941 school year.
Board of Education elections were scheduled for the fall. Three of the five seats were
up for election and the possibility of another route to "salvation" began to open in front of
Gratis. If the majority on the Board could be reconstituted, the appointment of a new
superintendent and changes in the county's agenda might be possible. Gratis was encouraged by other opponents of Superintendent William Cheek, including David Morris, to run
his own slate of candidates for the Board. In mid-August, Gratis agreed to "stand-for"
superintendent, at least after a fashion: "If Bill is not to be superintendent next time, I shall
accept the office. But Im making no fight of any kind to get it. If I fought for it, I'd be compromising myself to become an ass just as Bill has done. If Board members are elected to vote for
me, very well and good' (to Sylvia, August 13, 1940). It promised to be an up-hill non-fight
as the two members of the Board of Education not standing for election that fall were
already committed to Cheek. To be successful, the challenger would have to win all three
of the remaining seats.
The campaign was less about educational policy than personalities and, ultimately,
power. The advertisements of Cheeks candidates attacked both Gratis and David Morris.
Gratis would later tell the story that his opposition in that election campaigned by declaring
Gratis to be the favored grandson of David O. Williams, a man of considerable (ill-reputed)
reputation in Lawrence County, and then challenging the voters: "Do you want David
Williams's grandson to educate your children?" Evidently they did not. The effort to wrest
control of the Board of Education from those pledged to Cheek fell short, and Gratis, who
in his own terms "led a rebellion against my superintendent in Lawrence County" (Williams
�Introduction
Figure 9. "The Louisa High School Building, distinguished by its bell tower, was the
home for about twenty years of the Kentucky Normal College, which closed its doors in
1922 and sold its plant to the Louisa Public Schools. I attended high school in this
building, 1924-1928. While I was a student there, the school had a maximum enrollment (9-12) of 225 and a teaching staff of 11, Ten years after graduation from the school
I returned as principal. By then, this building was being used for junior high classes
(grades 7-9). Senior high school students used a newer building, occupied first about
1933 and still standing, next door to this one. My office (1938-1941) was in the newer
building," Gratis Williams, May 3, 1983.
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Figure 10. Cratis Williams, center, principal of Louisa High School, surrounded by
photos of his faculty in this arrangement from the 1940 annual of Louisa High
School, The Scarlack.
�Introduction
1983, 35), now found it necessary to seek employment outside of Lawrence County. His
career as a high school principal ended unceremoniously following the 1940-1941 academic
year. Cheeks successful defense of his position as superintendent in the fall of 1940, following his first two year term, cemented his hold on the position. He remained as superintendent until his retirement in the 1970s (Big Sandy News Sept. 20, 1978, 3).
The Search for a Suitable Position
Unwelcome in the Lawrence County school system, Gratis began what was to become
an arduous, year-and-a-half quest for a suitable position in public education. Initially dismayed upon discovering that his reputation as a malcontent did not end at the county line,
he was "shocked to learn that superintendents of other systems who were looking for principals
viewed me as a troublemaker and one who might not be depended upon for loyalty" (Williams
1983, 35). He came to feel that as "one who had rebelled against his school administration
and lost" he could expect no quarter from school administrators in the area, perhaps in all
of eastern Kentucky. He found it necessary to cast his net widely, and in the spring of 1941
he made applications for graduate fellowships, teaching positions in colleges and junior colleges, and principalships and superintendencies (see Gratis Williams to E.F. Farquhar, Jan.
2, 1941). As the spring term at Louisa High School neared its conclusion, he had received
no offers of any sort; following the graduation of the class of 1941, Gratis joined Sylvia
among the ranks of the unemployed.
Although still beleaguered by debt, worried about Sylvia's continued frail health, and
increasingly frustrated by his inability to find employment, in June, Gratis took time out to
participate in Jean Thomas's American Folk Song Festival, earning her praise. "The Traipsin'
Woman" wrote to Gratis on June 15, 1941, "Your voice and your selections were genuine
and most charming. I have not only received telegrams and letters about your fine appearance but many persons have come personally to me to express their appreciation of your
part in making our Festival one of the greatest successes ever witnessed." She invited him
to appear at the next festival, scheduled for June, 1942, as well as to attend a private reception at her "Wee House in the Wood" (Thomas to Williams, May 26, 1942), although it is
not clear whether he accepted these invitations.
Desperately in need of income, Gratis did not return to the University of Kentucky
that summer but instead traveled to Ohio in search of work of any sort. Sylvia remained at
their rented home in Louisa, although she increasingly stayed with her parents in Cherokee.
In mid-June, Gratis began work on the night-shift at a farm implement company, New
Idea, Inc., in Coldwater, Ohio, a job he had gotten by telephone. Gratis continued to
search for a teaching job, including registering with the Kentucky branch of the U.S.
Employment Office's Teacher Placement Program; soon he discovered that he could obtain
teaching certification in Ohio, and he began seeking positions teaching school there as well
(Sylvia to Gratis, Aug. 19, 1941). But his efforts remained futile, and in August he joined
the College Placement Bureau in Nashville and a public school placement agency in
Columbus. He had no immediate inquiries, failed in applications made as far away as
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Mississippi and as close to home as his "desperate effort to get an instructor's position at the
new junior college in Ashland" and continued to work at New Idea, Inc. As he later
recalled, New Idea offered him a small wage increase that did little to dampen his feeling of
being "caught in a job that I detested and that could have been performed better by an ambitious high school graduate, like my immediate supervisor, but I had to continue in it" After his
raise, he earned $47.15 every ten days, and on occasional weekends he was able to supplement that by working for as many hours as he was physically capable at a local canning factory for $0.35 an hour. With another raise possible if he stayed through Christmas, he
wrote Sylvia, they might soon be able to "really begin paying debts, if nothing serious happens
to either of us. But I'd much rather be in a teaching job that I could afford to accept" (Sept. 8,
1941).
These were dark days indeed for Gratis. He counted implicitly on Sylvia to help him
through his anguish. His letter of August 26, 1941, is poignant, "When I worry about the
future, when there is naked terror in my soul, and blind fear in my eyes, it's you who can give
jull solacement to my soul, and quiet soothing to my fears" But worry there was. Sylvias
health was not improving (they had already decided that she was too weak to follow him to
Ohio); he was not yet able to earn enough to make much debt-reduction; his efforts at
finding a teaching position were proving futile; and now there were rumblings at the farm
implements company, which, despite a spate of layoffs, had kept Gratis and another
Lawrence County man, to the evident dismay of the majority of local employees. Gratis
tried to approach the situation philosophically, telling Sylvia, "Its the same old thing we contend with in teaching. It's like I've always said: People are the same wherever you find them.
There is the same gossip, the same jealousy, the same lack of understanding everywhere you go.
We shall never escape it. We can only learn how to abide it best. We must do that if we are to
be successful" (Sept. 8, 1941). Gratis tried to stave off his own despondency and depression,
oddly seeking the rhetorical salve of Depression-laden Republican-ism: "But 'prosperity is
just around the corner. * That helped to keep a whole country sustained, even after there wasn't
any corner, after it had become stretched-out into a concave, downward-trending plane of misery
and want and pain and anguish, but the slogan still did them good. It gave them a hope that
didn't exist and a faith that never was. Perhaps I can suck a few bitter drops of surcease from its
withered udders too" (Aug. 26, 1941). Nonetheless, his anxieties were building to a fevered
pitch as he wrote to Sylvia on Aug. 27, 1941, " Nothing about jobs. Nothing whatever. Fm so
filled with waiting for the letter that will change my future! I can hardly sleep. I want it to
come so bad"
The only teaching offer he received was from Paintsville, Kentucky, which was able to
offer him only about $100 a month, or about a third less than he was making in Ohio.
Still hoping to "find a principalship or a college instructorship available somewhere" and fearful that he simply could not afford to accept the position, Gratis "advised one of my supporters, an English teacher who left the Lawrence County school system when I did to apply for the
position" (Williams 1983, 37). Her name, ironically, was Miss Roberts. After she was
hired, he must have taken some heart from a December 1, 1941 letter from R. G. Huey,
Superintendent of Paintsville Public Schools: "It was with real regret that I was unable to
�Introduction
offer you the salary sufficient to interest you at the time we hired. We did appreciate greatly your recommendation of Miss Roberts.... With regard to your own work in Lawrence
County, every school man in the valley recognizes the excellent piece of work you did in
developing the Louisa High School and we have all known the political circumstances
which were connected with your giving up the work. You will find that the school teachers
in this section are in accord in feeling that the matter is to your credit." Nonetheless, as his
rejection letters piled up and his hopes for a teaching position for the fall faded, Gratis
began to fear that his career in education was finished: " There is really small possibility of my
getting a school job now. Next year my chances wont be as good as they have been this year. So
I suppose I am through with teaching. It looks as if there is no possibility of my returning. I
mean returning with credit to myself Idont want to return any other way" (to Sylvia, Sept.
13, 1941).
Later in the month, however, a glimmer of hope dawned when Gratis "received a telephone call from Professor Chapell Wilson at Appalachian State Teachers College in Boone, North
Carolina. He had received a set of my credentials from the College Placement Bureau and
would like to meet me at Muncie, Indiana, near the end of the following week. I agreed to meet
him" Chapell Wilson was to call the next Monday to make the final arrangements. Gratis
went to the Coldwater Public Library in search of information on the College and the
town, "[hjaving never heard of Appalachian State Teachers College ... I found that Boone, population 1,200, is located in the remote mountain region of northwestern North Carolina and
was then the southern terminus of the Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad,
but I could find nothing about the college" Wilson never called. Even so, Gratis took time
off from his job to attend the same professional meeting in Indiana which Wilson was
scheduled to attend. They still did not meet. However, taking time off from New Idea,
Inc. to attend the meeting may have contributed to Gratiss losing the job in Coldwater on
December 5, 1941.
Earlier in the fall, Sylvia had released the house they were renting in Louisa, put their
belongings into storage, and gone to Cherokee to live with her parents "while we waited for
better times' (Williams 1983, 39). After losing his job in Ohio, Gratis joined her there for
Christmas, one so dominated by their ominous sense of debt (Gratis ''owed nearly $2,000,
much of it to restless, uneasy creditors") and despair at the job situation that they did not even
exchange Christmas gifts in 1941—a Christmas which would prove to be their last one
together. Borrowing $20 from his mother-in-law, Gratis left shortly after New Years to
plumb for work in the Ashland, Ironton, Huntington, Charleston area. February found
him back in Cherokee, waiting anxiously for responses to the job applications which he had
left "everywhere I could in the four cities" (Williams 1983, 40).
Finally, he received a letter from International Nickel Company in Huntington inviting him to interview for the position of "assistant to the director of the Apprentice School
there" Both Sylvia and he "were so excited that we wept. We were both amazed that the invitation to come for an interview was in response to an application I had filed in early June of
1941" He was offered the position, beginning at $160 a month, the highest salary he had
ever received. He began immediately as an instructor of shop mathematics. Sylvia joined
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
him on April 1, and they moved into a second floor apartment at 408 Fifth Avenue
(Williams 1983, 40, 42).
Buoyed both financially and emotionally, but recognizing that Gratis s new position
was at best a temporary salve, or perhaps a stepping stone, they decided that Gratis should
explore the prospects of a doctoral program in English which might offer an assistantship
sufficient for them to live on while he worked on the degree. He sent out applications and
within a few weeks "received a letter from Dr. Noyes at the University of Illinois. I had been
accepted for doctoral work and was offered an $1,800 assistantship beginning in September. I
accepted the offer of the assistantship immediately" (Williams 1983, 46).
Their elation, however, was short-lived. After joining him in Huntington, Sylvia
again developed a recurring and painful sore throat. In May she was examined and told she
had "secondary tuberculosis" of the throat. Her physician, Dr. Proctor Sparks, who had
grown up in Elaine, advised Gratis to relocate to a more therapeutically hospitable climate,
suggesting that he "apply for a position with the college at Boone, North Carolina, a quaint little town located in the high mountains where the air was pure. There was an outside chance
that Sylvia might recover if she lived there or in a place like Arizona" Failing that, he advised
immediate application to the Pinecrest Sanitarium at Beckley, West Virginia. Having never
heard again from Chapell Wilson, Gratis and Sylvia worked to secure her admission at
Pinecrest. There were no immediate openings available; she was finally admitted on July 7,
1942, by which time she had worsened considerably. Even so, following her examination
upon admission to Pinecrest, the doctors felt that "with a good diet, rest, an optimistic outlook, and a new medication for reducing soreness in her throat she might recover, since the disease
had not advanced very far, but she would be a patient for a long time, perhaps a year or two or
longer' (Williams 1983, 47-48).
Gratis informed Dr. Noyes at the University of Illinois that he would be unable to
accept the offered assistantship. He also released their apartment in Huntington and located
less expensive quarters in a rooming house. And he tried to focus his attention on performing his job at International Nickel.
"Sudden Salvation": Coming to Boone
"About9 oclock Friday morning" late August of 1942, Gratis finally received the longawaited telephone call from Professor Chapell Wilson in Boone, North Carolina, who
offered him a one-year teaching position at the Appalachian Demonstration High School.
With this telephone call Gratis begins the memoir to follow, and thus begins a saga which
shaped both the rest of his life and the small college which grew into Appalachian State
University.
Through their daily correspondence that fall, Sylvia was both sounding board and
intimate advisor for Gratis, as she had been for the five years of their marriage. In part it
was through that correspondence that Gratis was able to recapture, between 1978 and
1983, many of the intimate details of his daily activities during that critical, pivotal period
�Introduction
in his life. With a new, long-awaited job and a country going to war, Cratis's immediate
concern was Sylvia's declining health. He wrote H. Mayo Williams (Sept. 12, 1942),
"Confidentially, Mayo, Sylvia is having a hard time of it. Im very much worried about her,..
Blast it all, we just didn't get in position to do anything for her in time, I believe. Sometimes Im
afraid it's too late now. Im really afraid Til lose her... And something will go out of me when
she's gone. You know I love that woman an awful lot. She is about the most courageous person in
the face of adversity I've ever seen"
Sylvia's death on December 11,1942 left Gratis devastated. Yet the new colleagues
who surrounded him helped him through the remainder of the year and helped him to
reestablish his life. As he reflected in a letter (July 19, 1973) to Hugh and Ruby (Donald)
Daniel, fellow teachers at the high school, "What good friends the three of you [including
Herbert Wey] have been to me! And how fortunate I was to have such supportive intimates as
you three in my first and hardest year in Bo one when I was filled with bitterness, regret, grief,
and self-doubt. (Hugh and I had dinner together at Dr. Whitener's the night Sylvia died.) Your
support and durable friendship restored me and have helped me through the years"
The day after his arrival in Boone, Gratis found himself in the classroom, teaching
drama ranging from Aristophanes to Shakespeare, while establishing his reputation as a
scholar of regional verbal arts, and for many young people, firmly establishing the legitimacy of regional culture. As Mrs. Essie Hayes, a former student, recalls, "In those days at
Appalachian High School we didn't hear terms like 'economically deprived,' yet we were
vaguely aware that people outside the mountains had material things beyond our dreams.
We never talked of being 'culturally deprived,' but we had acquired just enough sophistication to feel apologetic about our lack of prosperity, to be a little chagrined at the quaint
dialect of some of our neighbors and kin, and to be downright embarrassed at their twangy,
nasal rendition of mountain music. Then, Gratis Williams, in assembly one day and after
being introduced by the high school principal, Herbert Wey, talked about his own mountain heritage with a pride that was contagious. Later, he delighted us by actually singing,
unaccompanied, those songs we had thought backwoodsy. We knew that they were all right
because by this time we knew that this inspiring scholar wouldn't be up there singing them
in assembly if they weren't" (Hayes 1976, 9-10). On Cratis's part, he was adjusting well to
Boone, writing to H. Mayo Williams (Sept. 12, 1942) regarding his class, Methods of
Teaching English in High School, "it has twenty-eight of the prettiest southern belles in it you
mi' nigh ever saw—and one boy, a Yankee from New York City, They are all seniors and English
majors. I am having a good time. I am not lonely like I was in Huntington. There is plenty to
do"
In the summer of 1943 Gratis offered his first course focused on Appalachian subject
matter, a course in traditional ballads and songs, using recordings from the Abrams collections. Herb Wey recalls that "Williams and his class regularly arranged songfests at the
homes of native singers in Watauga County and recorded for the collection the singing that
took place there" (Wey 1976, 1). Gratis also gave programs and lectures for students, faculty, and townspeople, while his reputation as a public speaker and entertainer well versed in
the narrative and musical traditions of the Appalachians spread.
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
For four years, from 1942 until the fall of 1946, when he moved over to Appalachian
State Teachers College, Gratis was a "critic teacher" at the Demonstration High School, as
well as director of dramatics and eventually assistant principal. In 1946 Gratis planned to
finally continue his doctoral study. Clearly inspired by the innovative, experimental leadership of his principal, Herb Wey, and by his own success both in the classroom and as director of the first school-wide counseling program established in North Carolina, he chose the
program in counseling and guidance at Indiana University, and was awarded a teaching
assistantship in English at the Indiana University High School. Having been feted the previous evening by his friends, he was packing his bags in anticipation of departing the next day
when Chapell Wilson called upon him at the behest of President Dougherty. Mr. Wilson
literally sat on his trunk in order to get Cratis's undivided attention for the persuasion that
he needed to exercise. Mr. Wilson and President Dougherty were faced with a "spate of faculty resignations on the eve of the beginning of the fall quarter' (Williams n.d., 1), that left the
College short-handed and in desperate need of experienced faculty. Among the faculty leaving the College was Dr. Amos Abrarns, Cratis's friend and collaborator in the collection of
mountain ballads and stories, who had resigned to become the editor of North Carolina
Education. Gratis was persuaded to come into the English department to replace Dr.
Abrams in teaching speech and as adviser to the cheerleaders. Within the English department, "Only the new chairman, young Gray don P. Eggers, was there from the year before'
(Williams n.d., 3).
Gratis moved from Newland Hall, where he had lived as resident counselor for the
1945-1946 year, back into Faculty Apartments. He shared an apartment with Walter
Hawkinson, new to the mathematics department, and embarked upon the next phase of his
professional life. Recalling the demanding schedule of his work load as a full-time college
teacher, Gratis lists the following courses: "two sections throughout the year of freshman
English, each meeting five hours a week for three hours of credit a quarter, the year-long survey of
American literature, a three-quarter sequence of Southern poets, modern drama, and the short
story, a three-quarter sequence of contemporary literature, the American novel, and play production, and speech as a sixth course one quarter.'" He had other responsibilities as well: "I directed Play crafters, which produced three full-length plays during the year, served as the faculty
adviser for the cheerleaders and went with them to out-of-town games, and supervised the remedial English laboratory in the afternoon ten hours a week. I also had one section of freshmen for
orientation that met once a week, and I was responsible for assisting these freshmen with their
schedules at registration time" A few other tasks were added to a schedule that left little time
for reflection, including "administering the freshman English placement tests at the beginning
of each quarter and helping to score the papers, assisting with registration each quarter, and
being present to call off grades to be entered on student records after the close of each quarter. We
attended faculty meetings at least one hour each Monday afternoon and chapel exercises in the
auditorium each morning. Except for the lunch hour we were expected to be in our offices for
student conferences, when not scheduled for class or other commitments, from 8 to 5 o'clock
Monday through Friday and from 8 to 12 Saturday morning" (n.d., 4-5).
Lest one think that Gratis took this burden lightly, he comments that "/ had never
�Introduction
worked so hard in my life before that quarter" His teaching, service, and meeting demands
were complicated by the additional personal responsibility for his own technical support: "/
bought my own stencils and mimeograph paper, duplicator carbons and paper, duplicator spirits,
and mimeograph ink and pads. I typed my own tests and handouts, cut my own stencils, and
operated the mimeograph machine and the duplicator myself, carrying with me the supplies I
would need when I made trips to the office of the registrar, where the machines were kept. No
funds for instructional supplies and equipment were available" (n.d., 6).
Working from a "shabby" little office under the men's restroom in the basement of the
Administration Building, Gratis sought relief from his insurmountable work load in a strategy which also served his students well. Recruiting advanced students to help him with the
remedial laboratory, Playcrafters, and the cheerleaders, he found more time to spend with
his students and with their work. He was rewarded with enthusiasm, skillful attention to
their tasks, and loyalty by his advanced students for the responsibility bestowed upon them.
His pedagogical innovations led to heightened relations with his students: "/ was relating to
my students, especially the English majors and the Playcrafters, in both a personal and a masterapprentice relationship. The relationship was informal, playful, mutually respectful. I enjoyed
them as competent students and interesting persons and felt that they enjoyed me as a qualified
teacher and a person of integrity with a dash of teasing mischief in my personality" (n.d., 8-9).
Following World War II, the large number of GFs entering college found support in
the remedial laboratory which Gratis supervised. Equally important was Cratis's sensitivity
to first generation college students and to older students. As H.G. Jones recalled, "From the
moment I entered his public speaking class that fall of 1946, I felt at ease with 'Mr.
Williams,' as we deferentially called him. He was older than I, but my fellow veterans and I
were older than many of our classmates. The teacher seemed to be a little awed by our experiences in the war, and he encouraged us to discuss them. He never drenched us with his
knowledge—indeed, his technique was to make us think that he was only a step or so ahead
of us. Undoubtedly remembering his mortification when a citified high school teacher at
Louisa, Kentucky, ridiculed his backwoods pronunciation, Williams was careful not to
embarrass a student." As example of this sensitivity Jones recalls, "A native of Wilkes
County clearly sought to camouflage his natural speech when he made his first appearance
before the class. Williams listened intently, but his analysis contained not a word of criticism. Indeed, he picked out the remnants of Wilkesiana that had slipped through, and he
praised them as genuine Appalachian speech that carried generations of meaning and beauty. The lesson was not lost on the student, who soon lapsed back into his natural speech"
(Jones 1985, 2).
From 1946 to 1958 Gratis was a teacher of English, speech, and dramatics at
Appalachian. During those years he directed the productions of Playcrafters, was the faculty
adviser for the student newspaper, the first faculty director of the artists and lecture series,
and a member of several faculty committees. "After two or three years as a college teacher in a
small institution in which the faculty members are assigned extra tasks done by personnel
employed specifically for doing them in larger and more affluent colleges, I accepted what seemed
a foregone conclusion to me. I would always be spending much time and energy doing jobs unre-
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
iated to my teaching assignments' (n.d., 21).
Gratis contemplated his acceptance of the role of overworked educator: "At no time
during my 12 years of experience as a fall-time college teacher did I ever reach the place that I
would be the reflective professor meandering about, while puffing leisurely a meerschaum packed
with rare imported tobaccos, among books and publications in a book-lined study or office...As
late as 19571found, after logging my time for a few weeks, that I was working over 60 hours a
week. By then, though, I had accepted what seemed inevitable to me: In successful college teaching there is no exit from long hours and hard work, which are tolerable only because the joy of
teaching is great" (n.d., 22).
Subject to the English department tradition of unloading the least desirable courses—American Literature—on the junior staff members, Gratis discovered a new "worth,"
which his students shared, in a field that had also been disdained at the University of
Kentucky during his M.A. study. Developing a reading plan for his doctoral research to
catch up on "great American fiction and criticism and some of the more important twentieth
century poets and playwrights, "he spent the summers of 1948 and 1949 in New York City
"and lived in a cheap hotel where I read in the New York Public Library. The reading kept firing
me up" (Big Sandy News July 3, 1979, 10). Beginning coursework in pursuit of the Ph.D.
in English from New York University, he took a leave of absence during the 1949-1950 year
to complete his coursework while supporting himself with a teaching assistantship at
Washington Square College of New York University.
Returning to Boone, Gratis began to weigh various topics for his Ph.D. dissertation,
writing to friends (Dec. 18, 1951), "I have toyed with three possible subjects: the folklore of
western North Carolina, the use of folklore in southern fiction since 1930, and the southern
mountaineer in fiction" He concluded that "At the moment the third appeals to me most,"
and he pursued that topic. Gratis optimistically informed his friends that having passed his
oral exam he would use his spare time to improve his German to fulfill his foreign language
requirement, after which "I judge that I shall be getting my degree in August of 1955."
Having failed his oral exam in English once, he considered it fortunate that "there will be no
more exams in English and American literature for me."
Writing a congratulatory letter upon H.G.Joness appointment as State Archivist in
1956, Gratis confided: "*/ recall having a dancing stomach, hives, and paining muscles during
the two years from the time I completed my graduate courses to the time I passed the oral examinations. ' Now, he said, 7am devoting full-time work to writing the dissertation... . So far I
have written about 150 pages this summer and am hoping to do about 100 more this month. I
already had about 200 pages written. The dss will perhaps run to 700 pages" Qones 1985, 9).
Gratis finished his dissertation, The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction, in 1959 and
it ran to 1600 pages. After two years, which his committee required for reading it, he
received his Ph.D. in 1961. In 1962 he was awarded the Founders Day Certificate for
Excellence from NYU for his dissertation. Cratiss dissertation is a comprehensive study of
the cultural and literary history of Appalachian people and the enormous body of literature,
both fiction and non-fiction, written about mountain people to 1959. It remains the most
�Introduction
Figure 11. Gratis Williams and friend, circa 1949.
II CAIiuLlNA.
OF
Figure 12,
. ( C T O B E K 1 5 Im
^
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
important and comprehensive work on the subject, and "established Gratis as the foremost
spokesman for the region on its cultural history and fiction." Dr. W.D.Weatherford,
President of Berea College and a significant force behind publication of The Southern
Appalachian Region: A Survey (Ford 1967) "encouraged Gratis to edit his dissertation for
publication. For whatever reason, probably because he was busy with other tasks, he never
complied" (Jones 1986, 292). However, The Appalachian Journal published an abridged version completed by Martha H. Pipes in four installments in 1975-1976 (Williams 1975,
1976a, 1976b, 1976c).
While in New York City in 1949, Gratis kindled a new relationship with Elizabeth
Lingerfelt, whom he had met briefly in 1947 in Boone. Born on August 22, 1927, Libby
was the daughter of the city manager in Elizabethton, Tennessee. The family's fortunes
turned with the Depression, and they retreated to Libby's father's family home in the small
community of Clearwater, near Athens, Tennessee. Like her father before her, Libby grew
up on the family farm, leaving to attend East Tennessee State College from which she graduated in 1947. Her college roommate, Beverly Townsend (Southerland), transferred to
Appalachian State Teachers College, where she became active in Playcrafters and, like many
others, a devoted fan of Gratis Williams (Elizabeth Williams 1998).
After graduation from college, Libby responded to her sisters invitation to come to
New York City. Fresh from small-town college life, Libby was eager to embrace and experience the wonders of New York, and moved in with her sister's family on Long Island. She
soon began working as a receptionist for Brooke Cadwallader, an exclusive Fifth Avenue
designer. At this time, according to Libby, "you could buy a bus ticket and pick your
route" so she decided to route a trip home to Tennessee through Boone and visit her old
roommate Beverly. Active in Playcrafters, Beverly "admired Gratis and wanted me to meet
him. He was working on a set in the old Administration Building. She introduced us, and
that was the end of that" (Elizabeth Williams 1998).
Libby returned to New York, moving into a furnished room on Long Island. During
the summer of 1949 her friend Beverly came to New York and organized a gathering of
friends which included Libby and Gratis. However, after Beverly returned home, Libby continued her life in New York, and Gratis returned to Boone, having completed his first summer's course work. The next summer, Gratis returned to New York and the social events of
the previous summer were repeated, "Beverly came, Gratis said he'd tried to call me but
hadn't connected, we parti ed, and then when they all left, we got married... the end of July,
1949" (Elizabeth Williams 1998). H.G. Jones, former student and fellow Ph.D. student at
NYU, reported that Gratis and Libby were "the first couple to be married in Levittown,
Long Island, and the developers of the brand-new model city treated them to a ceremony of
almost royal proportions. The news media gave the affair wide coverage and my former
English teacher and his bride were instant celebrities in Gotham" (1985, 4).
Gratis and Libby returned to Boone just after the school year began in 1950, and
moved into a three room apartment in Faculty Apartments. Libby's careful attention to
Cratis's continuing health needs are clear in his correspondence. The following year Gratis
�Introduction
wrote to friends (Dec. 18, 1951) that "Libby and I are very happy that we now have an
opportunity to relax. I have been a hard-working student and teacher ever since she has known
me, and now she's going to see another side of me. She has been very helpful in conducting with
me reviews over stacks of notes, piles of reviews, and loads of handbooks. Also, since she has gone
in strongly for the new scientific diets and cooking, I have thrived beneath her care. I've been
dutiful and faithful in taking my vegetable juice cocktails, vitamins, raw salads, fruits, liver,
heart, brains and eggs, her own enriched home-baked breads, yogurt, etc. No doubt I am the
most prophalactic (sic) man in Boone and certainly the most virile in our faculty."
Gratis s health needs had been of concern throughout the forties. His Registration
Certificate with the Selective Service dated October, 1940 lists him as five feet, four-andone-half inches tall, 146 pounds, with "brown" hair, and a "ruddy" complexion. Even as his
first wife, Sylvia, lay dying of tuberculosis, Gratis fought to overcome a small spot which
was discovered in his own lungs. One theme of the memoir which follows is his own struggle to maintain and improve his health against the specter of tuberculosis. Although classified 4-F by the Selective Service in May, 1943, Gratis never bore the full brunt of the disease and was able to regain his health.
Libby was soon busy as a homemaker and began to know the many friends that
Gratis had cultivated as an eligible bachelor. Walter Hawkinson had married Martha Grey,
who taught at the Demonstration High School from 1944 until 1951, and they too lived in
Faculty Apartments. Over the years the Williamses and Hawkinsons spent Christmas eves
together, and alternated in the birth of their children; Murray and John Hawkinson were
born in 1952 and 1954, while Sophie Williams was born February 18, 1953 and David
Gratis Williams was born April 25, 1955.
The summer of 1954 saw the Williams family settling into their new, yet unfinished
home, where Gratis spent "long hours each day on staining, steel-wooling, and finishing... "
while remaining was 'much to be done in decorating the grounds" (Jones 1985, 4). That summer Gratis was an Angier Duke Research Scholar and spent six weeks in the Duke
University Library studying the history, social customs, and literary treatment of the southern mountain people as part of his dissertation research.
Gratis shared his pleasure in his young children, writing to H.G.Jones in August,
1955 that "Sophie is growing along beautifully. She is a sweet little girl and has the most impeccable taste when it comes to choosing boy-friends. Papa is her sweetheart, you know" Of baby
David, "(named for the infamous grandpa, not for Crockett)" he writes in October "The boy
growls and gurgles most of his waking hours. He is especially fond of the man he regards as his
papa. And the fondness is mutual. He is just now able to sit up safely. Soon he will be crawling.
And the little monkey has already cut six teeth, an achievement that normally belongs to the
year-old child' (Jones 1985, 8-9).
Having enjoyed the "excitement and freedom to get on a subway and travel anywhere
without fear" (Elizabeth Williams 1998) in New York City in the middle of the century,
Libby experienced profound culture shock upon moving to tiny, provincial, teetotaling
Boone and Appalachian State Teachers College. Libby later pursued teacher certification in
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Figure 13. Elizabeth Lingerfelt, New York City,
1949, about the time she and Gratis began dating.
0YDear Doe.
1 wa.-> mamcd Saturday, J u l y
31, to Eli/a belli Linger left. Athens, Te 11 {lessee, m a home inarnage \\\ Li-vUtown, Long Island.
New York. The wedding was
u u i l e an a f f a i r . You will approve
ul EhzabellL I met her tirsl iti
Bnone l w i « yeai-> agt) I fee!
I a rti the hiekit'ht rascal aiive,
! have been enjoying my class
in medeni poetry since the professor is a lint- c:n::aUve thinker,
i am i i i t t i n g in a class in
spcareun irageiiy 1 1 is t'un.
< K A T I h IV WI1J.IAMS
Figure 14. Gratis Williams married
Elizabeth Lingerfelt
Figure 15.
�Introduction
English and practice taught at the elementary school, then formally entered the labor force
on December 1, 1971 at Belk Library on the Appalachian State University campus. She
worked there until her retirement October 31, 1988.
Gratis saw progress in the changes unfolding since his arrival in 1942: "Boone is a
booming little city now. The population has doubled since I came here in the fall of 1942, The
community seethes with civic enterprise and activity. Recently the Southern Appalachian
Historical Association was chartered here. Over $30,000.00 has been contributed to the organization and Samuel Seldon and Kermit Hunter are planning an outdoor drama based on the
Daniel Boone legend for the enjoyment of our summer visitors... Appalachian has three new
buildings nearing completion. The college is growing too. We have 187 in our graduate school
this year" (letter to friends Dec. 18, 1951).
Following the launching of the outdoor drama, "Horn in the West," the Southern
Appalachian Historical Association hosted a program of Saturday afternoon folk festivals on
the grounds of the Daniel Boone Theater during the summer. Conducted for several years
by Gratis and Richard Chase, "known nationally for his work with Appalachian folk tales
and traditional dances," the festivals represented "authentic Appalachian traditions" through
presentations by "mountain singers, musicians, dancers, and craftsmen" (Wey 1976, 2).
The year 1951 was a time of family transitions, as Gratis recounts in his Christmas
letter (Dec. 18): "My fabulous grandfather died last month. I was not able to get away for his
burial. He was 85 and didnt die drunk after all. Fortunately he had joined the Free Will
Baptist Church three years ago
and the pious members of the
family rejoiced that his chances in
eternity look bright. He is now
sealed in his tomb, a rough structure which he prepared for himself
five years ago. (I have a picture of
him sitting stewed as a boiled owl
on the stone in front of the yawning tomb just after it was completed. He is enjoying the drama of
his situation immensely.) For all
of his rough ways he was one of
the most admirable men I have
ever known. His sober tongueclucking cousins scattered up and
down the valley preceded him in
death from ten to twenty-five
Figure 16. Walking the plank in front of his new house,
years, but he dared to live just
1954. Lee Reynolds contracted and built the new home
about as he wanted to, enjoyed a
according to Cratiss and Libbys design. The house was the first
long life of epicurean delight in
one on what for many years was called Reynolds Road,
which he drank enough whiskey to
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
swim a horse five miles, and now awaits the promise of his faith."
As an English faculty member in 1951 Gratis noted that his work was "even more
pleasant than usual this year" despite another heavy teaching load, comprised of "six classes:
the survey of American literature, contemporary literature, the development of the short story,
play production, oral expression, and one graduate course called the American Romantic Period.
My largest class has only thirty-two students in it and my smallest seven" Still struggling with
the Ph.D., he contemplates the difficulty of finding the time to finish the degree while
"entering middle age" While questioning the wisdom of the quest, he concludes that there
are certain financial advantages to the Ph.D.: "since my salary has increased $700 a year since
I started it in the summer of 1948, I've decided that it perhaps does pay for itself after all. And
there is the added pleasure of knowing a great deal more than the anthology selections of the great
writers" (Dec. 18, 1951). Gratis was promoted to Professor in 1952.
In December of 1956, Gratis wrote a prophetic note to H.G. Jones that "North
Carolina almost lost one of its great English teachers last week. I had an offer of a chairmanship
in Michigan at a salary of $8,000 but after a Gethsemane succeeded in letting the cup pass"
(Jones 1985, 9-10).
Gratis was developing new curricular materials on Appalachia and encouraging others
to collaborate on Appalachian courses. In 1956 he worked with Beulah Campbell, whose
specialty was children's literature, in offering a six semester hour workshop on the Living
Folk Arts of the Southern Mountain People. In what may have been the first such interdisciplinary curriculum in Appalachian Studies, the program offered students the opportunity
to participate in the Saturday folk festivals and home visits through which students documented local "speech, songs, tales, folk remedies, and lore, and... traditional crafts.
Accomplished craftsmen, musicians, singers, dancers, and tellers of tales came to the campus to demonstrate their skills to students registered in the workshop. Students studied the
literature of Appalachia, history and sociological writing about the region, dances and
games, and ballads and songs still living in the oral tradition and developed curricular materials for use in their own classrooms the following year." In addition to the summer program, Gratis continued to offer his course on Ballads and Songs, and "to record hundreds of
folk songs from singers in Appalachia, the great bulk of which recordings was lost in the fire
that destroyed Appalachian's Administration Building in December 1966" (Wey 1976, 2).
Graduate School Dean
Chapell Wilson was in charge of graduate courses until his death in 1957, and was
succeeded by Herbert Wey who held the position until returning to the University of
Miami in 1958. Appalachian was then organized as a single unit without separate colleges
and offered a single graduate degree, for teachers. President William Plemmons recalls that
he looked into the faculty and picked the one person whose breadth of experience, energy,
and creativity he considered assets for the leadership position, and named Gratis Williams
Dean of the Graduate School in 1958, a position which he held for sixteen and a half years,
until 1975. Taking the lead in the innovation of a small program, Cratis's "midnight
�Introduction
thoughts brought forth suggestions for expansion of offerings in the graduate program and new as well as different
graduate degrees. Established offerings were strengthened,
selection of faculty was made with the graduate program in
mind. His proposal that those who taught graduate programs be organized into a graduate faculty was approved
and it was that act that actually established the graduate
school as such" (Plemmons 1976, 32).
Three years after Gratis assumed the deanship, the
graduate school became a member of the Council of
Graduate Schools in the United States and with the establishment of the university in 1967, it could boast "one
organized internal school, the Graduate School." After ten
years of Cratis's leadership, "Appalachian was offering more
master's degrees in education and was delivering more
graduate degrees in education than any other institution in
North Carolina except the university in Chapel Hill."
Plemmons recounted that "time proved that a wise and
good selection had been made." As the College enrollment
increased, the graduate enrollment increased faster; by
1974 ASU had awarded over 6,000 master's degrees. By
1974, the graduate faculty of 273 was "more than two and
one-half times as many as the entire faculty totaled in
1958," while the graduate enrollment of 2,000 per year
accounted for 25 percent of the total institutional enrollment. President Plemmons attributed the growth of the
graduate school to Gratis Williams s leadership (Plemmons
1976, 33).
Figure 17. As dean of the graduate school, Gratis facilitated study
for many international and minority students. In 1963, shortly after
housing temporarily a dark skinned
international student in his home
while trying to secure more permanent housing for him in Boone,
Gratis discovered this sign, placed
in the yard during the night by
parties unknown. "Preacher
Gratis" couldn't resist the opportunity to seize the moment..,
Gratis Williams's administrative leadership
was felt far beyond Boone, foremost through
the teachers who earned graduate degrees. In
addition, with the development of the region's
community colleges, he anticipated "a shortage
in qualified teachers in higher education and
authored the first proposal for preparing teachers for these new institutions. He was a nationally recognized authority on graduate programs
in education" (Jones 1986, 295). Gratis was
later chosen to chair a new committee on graduate programs and degrees of the Association of
Figure 18. Gratis poses in his dean of the grad- State Colleges and Universities. In addition to
uate school office in the new administration
his responsibilities at Appalachian State
building, spring 1968.
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
University, he served on the Planning and Policies Committee of the Council of Graduate
Schools in the United States, was for ten years "a member of a three person consulting team
which evaluated graduate study for the American Association of State Colleges and
Universities," (Jones 1986, 295) and was a member of the Executive Committee of the
Council of Southern Graduate Schools. He was a member of the committee that developed
the nationally accepted guidelines for the Education Specialist (6th-year) degree and for the
Doctor of Arts degree. He was also a member of the Academic Policies Committee for the
North Carolina Board of Higher Education (replaced in 1971 by the Board of Governors of
the University of North Carolina which includes the sixteen state institutions), as well as a
member of the Teacher Certification Committee of the North Carolina Board of Public
Instruction.
After his retirement the Board of Trustees named the Graduate School for Gratis
Williams. His restrained exuberance in response to this honor is captured in a letter (March
4, 1980) to Ruby Daniel: "/ hear tell that I am being 'framed' and will be 'hung some time
between 1:30 and3:00p.m. in the Graduate School office here March 20 and that among those
engaged in the plot are the members of our Board of Trustees. I shall be especially pleased to see
you and Hugh among those present. In a way, your presence will symbolize continuity at
Appalachian for me. I began here with you, and it will be a kind of 'Our Town experience for
me to have you present at what is likely to be the last public notice of my having been here. " In
response to a playful letter from H,G. Jones he confesses, "Your comments about the frightening aspects of having the Graduate School here bear my name lead me to wonder whether it
might have been more comfortable for me had the Board named the Duck Pond for me,.., They
could have called it the Gratis D, Williams Drake Pond. There is also an old horse barn on the
university farm that has never been named" (Jones 1985, 12-13).
The Complete Mountaineer
Fires on the campus had a major impact on the College and on the professional
career of Gratis Williams. In late fall of 1946, campus buildings neglected during the war
were overcrowded by increased enrollment following the war. Gratis recalls, " To add to our
woes, Watauga Academy Building, which then housed the Department of Music, and the old science building, then occupied by the Department of Art, burned down one cold night... I walked
out of Faculty Apartments in pajamas and robe to watch firemen from the town of Boone fight
the flames... Dr. Dougherty stood and wept as he watched the buildings burn" (n.d. 18). In
December of 1966, the nighttime scene of destruction was repeated, but with more ominous consequences for Gratis. The old Administration Building burned, and with it, all of
his field notes, collections, and records. David Williams recalls, "we watched pages catch
fire and drift out the window, one by one; nothing was saved." Perhaps this provided a
tragic turning point in his professional career as he now relied on his excellent memory and
keen sense of analysis. Gratis knew and remembered things no one else would or could
recall with such delight and such detail, and he shared his knowledge willingly.
Cratis's abiding interest in mountain speech led to publication of a series of articles
�Introduction
between 1961 and 1967 in Mountain Life and Work (1961 b, 1961c, 196Id, 1961e, 1962a,
1962b, 1962c, 1963a, 1963b, 1964, 1967). His attention to rhythm and melody, the use
of the "r," vowels and diphthongs, verbs, vocabulary and folk expression, manners,
metaphors, prepositions and subtlety were elaborated with lively examples from everyday
speech. His approach to linguistics was based in his lived experience, native ear, and keen
memory. His skill in describing, for example, the angry mother's eloquent "clustering of
prepositions" forged an indelible lesson on mountain rhetoric and on those who recall his
telling: "You git up out from down in under that thar table, er I'll whup ever' bit a hide offen...
yer back" (1964, 54). Gratis was generous with his knowledge, "a sharer, a presenter of gems
from his collection" (Jones 1986, 294).
Cratis's devotion to the nuances and rich subtlety of mountain speech was matched
by his meticulous knowledge of ballads and his artful capacity for telling tales learned in
childhood. He joined the ranks of those who became "hooked on ballads and who treasured
them as literature and as a key to the aesthetic of a people who have been accused of being
without a literature." While Gratis didn't play the handmade banjo which adorned the wall
of his study, he was often photographed with this treasured family heirloom, "leading Ray
Lawless to list him as a banjo picker in his Folksingers and Folksongs in America" (Jones
1986, 294).
Dr. W.D. Weatherford read Cratis's doctoral dissertation and soon cultivated a relationship with him, both through private weekends at the Weatherford's Black Mountain,
North Carolina retreat and in public forums. Herb Wey recalls that President Plemmons,
Gratis Williams, and Dr. Weatherford were participants "in the planning meeting at the
Nu-Wray Inn in Burnsville which resulted in the formation of the Appalachian Regional
Commission" (Wey 1976, 2).
In 1968 Gratis played a role in the decision to create the Appalachian Collection of
Belk Library, named the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection in 1971, which was composed
initially of materials the library had purchased to support his dissertation research. The
1970s saw many of Cratis's interests bear fruit in the formation of new curricula, outreach,
and collaboration. In 1970-1971 the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare
(HEW) funded a $130,000 grant "to support a project for the preparation of teachers and
supervisors for supervision of experimentation in individualized instruction in the schools
of rural Appalachia and the ghetto...." While still serving as graduate school Dean, Gratis
was project director and taught in the program, focused in part on the Appalachian child
(Wey 1976, 3). Growing interest in the region brought attention to the limited library
holdings, and representatives of Appalachian colleges and universities developed the idea of
a consortium that would share resources and mount programs related closely to their
respective strengths. "Williams was one of the first to conceive the idea of an Appalachian
Consortium and among the first to help bring it to reality" ("ASU Dean..." 1973). Drs.
Plemmons and Williams worked with representatives of East Tennessee State University,
Mars Hill College, Lees-McRae College, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the National Forest
Service in creating the Appalachian Consortium, and one of its first activities was "a workshop for faculty members from constituent institutions interested in developing Appalachia-
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
related learning experiences for their students" (Wey 1976, 4). Gratis was consultant for
this workshop at Mars Hill College, which resulted in the integration of regional themes
into existing courses and the creation of new courses. In 1972 The Appalachian Journal was
launched on the ASU campus, with Jerry Williamson as editor and Gratis Williams as
advising editor, and the Appalachian Consortium Press was also established that year with
Gratis Williams as a member of the editorial board (Wey 1976).
In 1972 Gratis was the recipient of the annual award of the Western North Carolina
Historical Association in recognition of his contributions to scholarship on the history and
folk traditions of Appalachia. In 1973 he was awarded the prestigious O. Max Gardner
Award given annually by the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina for
"distinguished contributions to the welfare of the human race." The UNC Board of
Governors recognized Gratis as a "master teacher, imaginative and confidence-inspiring
administrator, creative and stimulating writer and conversationalist, singer of ballads,
reteller of folktales, provocative speaker and lecturer... [who, by] precept and example [has]
cajoled and dared" his fellow mountaineers to increased pride in their homeland (Daniel
1986). This award was probably the most cherished of his many accolades in affirming the
value of his overall work in attempting "to impress upon mountain people the value of self
esteem and pride in what lies behind them and the value of feeling that they are rooted to
something that is permanent" ("ASU Dean..." 1973). Writing to Hugh and Ruby Daniel,
he commented " The award has come to me at a good time in my life, and I believe it also has
special significance for Appalachian, the Consortium, and Appalachia itself... I am pleased and
happy, although I am not a naturally enthusiastic person (perhaps a part of my 'heritage'), and I
find it difficult to simulate enthusiasm and rarely attempt to do so" (July 19, 1973).
In 1975 Gratis received the Outstanding Alumnus Award of Cumberland College.
He was also recipient of the Brown-Hudson Award of the North Carolina Folklore Society
which recognized him as "Master Folklorist of Appalachia," who has "poured out his own
noble spirit, in teaching and writing and lecturing and singing the songs and ballads of his
close neighbors in the hills and mountains. His great respect and love for the highlanders
come through with splendor" (Clark 1975). He was the Raleigh News and Observers Tar
Heel of the Week in June, 1976, and commented to H.G. Jones, "'Having been immortalized' in the columns of the eternal News and Observer, / might never aspire to die and go to
Chapel Hill, but perhaps Boone is at least the sixth heaven and I can content myself with an
immortality here' (Jones 1985, 10-11). He received the Appalachian Consortium's Laurel
Leaves Award for Distinguished Service in July, 1976. In May, 1980, he received Berea
College's special WD. Weatherford Award for published work that furthers understanding
of Appalachian people in a significant way.
Gratis was Acting Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Appalachian State
University in 1974 and Acting Chancellor in 1975. On the eve of his retirement
Appalachian State University held in his honor a three-day symposium, during which scholars from across the nation gathered to share knowledge on Appalachia. Selected papers were
published in An Appalachian Symposium: Essays Written in Honor of Gratis D. Williams
(Williamson 1977). Inspired by the great potential for interdisciplinary exchange among
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Figure 19. Gratis Williams and Loyal Jones, 1984,
Figure 20. After Gratis received the O. Max
Gardner Award from the Board of Governors
ofUNC in 1973, he and Herb Wey clowned
for the camera in Greenville, N, C.
�The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
scholars, activists, and practitioners in the region revealed in the Boone gathering, leaders in
the field met in Berea the next year to create from the energy of the Cratis Williams
Symposium an annual gathering, now, in its twenty-third year, known as the Appalachian
Studies Association. In 1992 the highest award of the Association, given annually to the
outstanding regional scholar, was designated the Cratis Williams Award.
Cratis retired on July 1, 1976, after 46 years as teacher and administrator, but continued at Appalachian on a part-time basis as Special Assistant to the Chancellor. Cratis s public speaking engagements and writing likewise kept him fully engaged, burning the midnight oil just as he had always done. Writing to Ruby Daniel (March 4, 1980), he advises
" You would enjoy the Elderhostel program. I taught one of those groups here for a week last summer. It was a marvelous experience and the only class I ever had that stood and gave me a
resounding round of applause at the end of the course. They were bright, eager, studious, searching, challenging. Since I did not have to assign papers, read examinations, award grades, I concluded it was the most nearly ideal teaching experience I had ever had!" Other bits of news
attest to his busy schedule; "/ have been quite busy this winter with out-of-town things. In
January I went to Washington, where I was one of the three 'plenary session speakers at an ARC
conference for personnel of local district development groups.... Later in January I spent a week
at Alice Lloyd College in Kentucky, where I delivered fifteen lectures, many of them in high
schools in Knott, Letcher, and Floyd counties there in Central Appalachian
"Last week I passed by Waynesville in a hurry to get to Cohutta Lodge on the top of Fort
Mountain in Murry County, Georgia, where I gave a banquet speech and was entertained royally (cocktails before dinner and nightcaps afterwards). Then I hurried back to Boone and on to
Salem, Virginia, where I gave two lectures at the symposium on 'Beyond the Blue Ridge' held by
the Roanoke Valley Historical Society and Roanoke College. (I became snowbound and had to
stay an extra day.) Friday I shall give a lecture at the annual meeting of the East Tennessee
Historical Association in Knoxville.... I stay tolerably busy for a retired man, but I am enjoying
myself and still finding time to write a great deal too"
Cratis took pleasure in the scholarly mission which he was able to pursue full time in
his retirement, both in the text and in the circumstances of the telling, as the following
commentary to Hugh Daniel reveals: "Interesting things came together for my presentation.
The banquet was in the Integon Room [of ASUs Broyhill Inn]. / was positioned with my back
to the window. Just as I was announcing my topic lightning began to flash, thunder crashed and
rumbled, and rain streamed down the glass. All of these marvelous effects continued while I presented my paper. When I sat down, the storm ceased. I am not a good enough Presbyterian to
feel confident with my interpretation of these phenomena' (April 17, 1984).
In 1982, diagnosed with lymphoma, Cratis set about to inform friends of his condition on a regular basis (Aug. 2, 1982). Writing to Ruby, he is optimistic, yet notes, "But
even if things have gone too far and there is to be no recovery, I think I shall not feel that I have
been cheated. I have lived a rich, full life and enjoyed more than most are privileged to enjoy,
and I do not have many regrets" (Aug. 4-6, 1982). In remission by January 1983 (letters to
friends, Jan. 17; July 28, 1983), he continued to write his memoirs, to engage in as many
�Introduction
public appearances as his health would permit, and to enjoy his family.
Writing to Ruby Daniel he continued to take pleasure in the mission which drove his
professional life, the education of young people to the strengths of their culture: "Thank
you, Ruby, for coming out to hear me do my presentation at the high school. Upon reflection, I
concluded that I had never enjoyed a more attentive, interested, and responsive high school audience. I hope the young people found in what I had to say reason to be proud of who they are and
an increased understanding of the rich history of mountain folk. The young people were beautiful, like my Kentucky cousins. I enjoyed them." He also chose a moment to reflect on the
shared past with his old friends and fellow high school teachers: "Ruby, I had not known that
you are now the vice chairman of our Board of Trustees. Isn't it fantastic that Dr. Wey, Hugh,
you, and I should have found our separate ways to Boone at a time when our own lives should
have become intertwined and tied to the history and development of the quaint little college hidden in the mountains that brought us together. It was not only significant but as it should have
been that Hugh and you both served on our Board of Trustees" (Dec. 7, 1983).
In 1984, Gratis mourned the death of his mother, Mona Williams, who "died quietly
last month. She would have been 93 on St. Patrick's Day. We buried her beside my father in the
Williams Graveyard near Blame, Kentucky. She took much ofAppalachia with her" (letter,
March 19, 1984).
In his final years Gratis received five honorary degrees: Doctor of Pedagogy from
Cumberland College in Kentucky, Doctor of Humane Letters from Morehead State
University in Kentucky, Doctor of Humanities from the College of Idaho, Doctor of
Literature from Marshall University in West Virginia, of which he wrote Al Perrin,
"Saturday I attended the graduation exercises at Marshall University and received a literarum
doctoris degree. At that very time Morehead State University was conferring upon me in absentia a doctor of humane letters degree, which will be presented to me at a special ceremony during
the Appalachian Celebration Week there in June. I am becoming a much doctored Appalachian,
the kind who might be qualified to represent us to His Holiness Pope John Paul, should we ever
think he would be more interested in a reality than in an illusion" (May 14, 1984). Cratis's last
honorary degree, from Appalachian State University, was to be awarded on May 12, 1985.
Gratis died on Saturday, May 11, 1985.
Gratis always had the impression that if Mr. Wey—or perhaps even Dean Rankin or
Dr. Dougherty—had interviewed him personally before he was offered the position at
Appalachian Demonstration High School, with its openings into Appalachian State, he
would never have been offered the job. He may well have been right, as he frequently was.
And how that would have changed history.
Gratis endowed three separate scholarship funds at Appalachian which bear his name,
which he supported through earnings from his numerous speeches, lectures, and workshops.
A fourth scholarship fund, in Appalachian Studies, was created to honor him after his
death. His commitment to the education of young people in the finest humanistic tradition and with pride in locale was constant through his years in education. In a speech in
1984 at the College of Idaho, where he received an honorary Doctor of Humanities, he
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
captured the essence of much of what he worked for and believed:
" The regional liberal arts college, which I perceive as one which draws most of its students
from a defined O O f
geographical region and returns them to that region Jfor lives of service to the comJ
J
Q
O
J
mon good, has a responsibility for making available to its students learning experiences in understanding the ethnic composition of the people who live in the region, their social and cultural traditions, and their history, both as to their origins and the adaptations they have made, and are
making to the requirements of life within the region,
A liberal education must supply us with that vision that comes from learning about ourselves and our kith and kin as participants in a regional or ethnic society, for being born into
and living in that region or ethnic group influences the course of our lives, whether we reject it or
embrace it. Those who do not value what they have do not keep it for long. Those who reject
their own culture, and in so doing, much of themselves, run the serious risk of losing their own
identities, of becoming flone and lost souls,' to paraphrase our great Appalachian writer, Thomas
Wolfe, of becoming wailing isolates who have stepped aside and lost their place. Central to what
it means for each of us to be a good citizen in a free society, to be a self-accepting Appalachian,
Creole, or Indian, without being less of an American at the same time, is our ability to reflect
critically upon the meaning of our culture and history....
I began my professional career as a one-room school teacher in Appalachia and completed
it as an English professor and administrator in an Appalachian university. I found it possible to
remain an Appalachian person as I attempted to measure out to myself and increasing numbers
of other Appalachians and scholars doing research and writing about Appalachia the humanistic
dimensions of what must be one of Americas most significant subcultures. I am convinced that
my rich fulfillment and my enormous pride in who I found myself to be and in the culture from
whence I came and which shaped me is owing to my decision early in life to keep my
Appalachian self in spite of the efforts of my early teachers to destroy it. By remaining
Appalachian, I was best able to integrate my experiences as I grew in understanding and developed those values that informed my actions as a teacher and administrator working for the common good in what purports to be a just society. "
As has been often written, Gratis Williams was the complete mountaineer.
�References
References
Abrams, Amos. 1976. "A Salute to Gratis Williams." Gratis Williams Symposium. Boone,
NC, April 7.
Alexander, Nancy. 1966. "Dean of Folk Songs Likes 'Small Sinful Ditties.'" The Charlotte
Observer, 2 June: 19B.
"ASU Dean Recipient O. Max Gardner Award." 1973. Watauga Democrat. Boone, NC, July
16.
Clark, Joseph D. 1975. "Gratis Williams: Master Folklorist of Appalachia." Brown-Hudson
Award Speech, November 7.
Daniel, Ruby. 1986. "Comments." Ceremony in Honor and Memory of Gratis D.
Williams, Appalachian State University Board of Trustees Meeting. Boone, NC, March
21.
Ford, Thomas. 1967. The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press.
Hayes, Mrs. Essie. 1976. "A Salute to Gratis Williams." Gratis Williams Symposium.
Boone, NC, April 7.
Jones, H.G. 1985. "Gratis D. Williams: A Personal Reminiscence." Delivered for the
North Carolina Folklore Society. Raleigh, NC, November 9.
Jones, Loyal. 1986. "A Complete Mountaineer." Appalachian Journal 13(3): 288-296.
Laws, George Malcolm. 1964. Native American Balladry. Philadelphia: American Folklore
Society.
Plemmons, William. 1976. "A Salute to Gratis Williams." Gratis Williams Symposium.
Boone, NC, April 7.
Ross, Tyler, n.d. "Interview with Gratis Williams." Unpublished manuscript, Gratis
Williams papers, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection Archives, Belk Library, ASU,
Boone, NC.
Weaver, Richard M. 1948. Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 1953. The Ethics of Rhetoric. H. Regenery Co.
Wey, Herbert. 1976. "Gratis Williams and Appalachian Studies at ASU." Gratis Williams
Symposium. Boone, NC, April 7.
Williams, Gratis D. 196la. "The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction." Ph.D. dissertation, New York University.
f
196lb. "The 'R' in Mountain Speech." Mountain Life and Work 37(1): 5-8.
. 196lc. "A.E.I.O.U." Mountain Life and Work 37(2): 8-11.
. 196ld. "Rhythm and Melody in Mountain Speech." Mountain Life and Work
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
37(3): 7-10.
. 1961e. "The Content of Mountain Speech (Part IV)." Mountain Life and Work
37(4): 13-17.
. 1962a. "Verbs in Mountaineer Speech (Part V)." Mountain Life and Work 38(1):
15-19.
. 1962b. "Mountaineers Mind their Manners (Part VI)." Mountain Life and Work
38(2): 19-25.
. 1962c. "Metaphor in Mountain Speech (Part VII)." Mountain Life and Work
38(4): 9-12.
. 1963a. "Metaphor in Mountain Speech (Part VIII)." Mountain Life and Work
39(1): 50-53.
. 1963b. "Metaphor in Mountain Speech (Part IX)." Mountain Life and Work 39(2):
50-53.
. 1964. "Prepositions in Mountain Speech (Part X)." Mountain Life and Work 40(1):
53-54.
. 1967. "Subtlety in Mountain Speech (Part XI)." Mountain Life and Work 43(1):
14. 1975. "The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part 1)." Martha Pipes,
ed. Appalachian Journal 3(1): 8-61.
. 1976a. "The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part II)." Martha Pipes,
ed. Appalachian Journal'3(2): 100-162.
. 1976b. "The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part III)." Martha Pipes,
ed. Appalachian Journal 3(3): 186-261.
. 1976c. "The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part IV)." Martha Pipes,
ed. Appalachian Journal'3(4): 334-392.
. 1983. William H. Vaughan: A Better Man Than I Ever Wanted to Be. Morehead,
KY: Morehead State University.
. 1984. "Eulogy to David R. Hodgin." April 21, Boone, NC Gratis Williams
papers, W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection Archives, Belk Library, ASU, Boone, NC.
. 1995.1 Become a Teacher. A Memoir of One-Room School Life in Eastern Kentucky.
James M. Gifford, ed. Ashland, KY: The Jesse Stuart Foundation.
. 1998. "Gratis Williams: Living the Divided Life." Produced by Fred Johnson and
Jean Donohue. Covington, KY: Media Working Group.
. n.d. "I Become a College Teacher." Gratis Williams papers, W.L.Eury Appalachian
Collection Archives, Belk Library, ASU, Boone, NC.
�References
Williams, Elizabeth. 1998. Personal Communication.
Wolfford, George. ©1972. Lawrence County: A Pictorial History. Ashland, KY: WWW Co.
Williamson, J. W, ed. 1977. An Appalachian Symposium. Boone, NC: Appalachian State
University Press.
�This page intentionally left blank
�c
A Call From Boone
About nine o'clock Friday morning before
school was to open at the Appalachian Demonstration
High School in 1942 my landlady called me to
respond to a long distance telephone call from Boone,
North Carolina. For me, that call was in the middle
of the night, for my working hours at International
Nickel Company in Huntington, West Virginia, were
from 8:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., and I spent a half hour
commuting by taxicab from the plant to the rooming
house. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I threw on a
bathrobe and slipped into house shoes and hurried to
the telephone.
Professor Chapell Wilson8 was calling. Mrs.
Rivers, a critic teacher at Appalachian High School,
had resigned that week, and he, in his role as Director
of the Demonstration Schools, was trying at that late
date to find a replacement for her. He had found in
his file my credentials folder sent to him by a teacher
placement service in Tennessee. He believed I was
essentially qualified for the job, but that one of my
duties would be directing high school dramatic activities. I would also teach a college class in methods of
teaching English in high school and supervise practice
teachers in English. My own teaching load at the high
school would include two sections of eighth grade
English, a class in speech, and a combined class of first
and second year high school dramatics. Watauga
County would pay me $150 a month and Appalachian
State Teachers College would supplement that by providing me with a furnished apartment with utilities
free valued at $40 a month. The appointment would
be for one year but might be continued if I were not
8
Chapell Wilson (1891-1957), professor of education and psychology at Appalachian State Teachers College, developed the two demonstration schools, Appalachian High School and Appalachian
Elementary School. He later served as dean of the graduate school
from 1948 to 1957.
1
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
drafted into military service. It was customary to interview applicants for positions, but
because my credentials looked good and a teacher was needed immediately the interview
would be waived if I were interested in the position.
The salary was exactly what I was receiving at International Nickel and more than I
had received per month my last year as the principal of the high school at Louisa. I would
be both a college instructor and a high school teacher. I would be living on a college campus and in the very town Dr. Sparks had recommended as a good place to take Sylvia.9 I
would be going to the mountains of North Carolina, made so appealing by Thomas Wolfe,
especially in Look Homeward Angel, which I had read with deep yearning for glorious
mountains fading away, range after range, into the blue horizon.
Sylvia was in Pinecrest Sanitarium at Beckley, West Virginia. There was no long distance telephone service available to her parents or mine in Kentucky. The decision I made
would have to be wholly my own without benefit of counseling, or considering the offer
with others. I agreed to accept the position but pointed out the difficulties I might
encounter in trying to arrange to be in Boone the following Monday. Mr. Wilson obligingly agreed to let me skip the teachers meetings on Monday if I thought I could be ready to
go to work Tuesday when the students were to begin classes. I told him I would arrive in
Boone Monday evening.
Fortunately, I had stored our furniture at Louisa and returned to Sylvias parents those
things we had brought with us to Huntington for use in the apartment in which we had
lived before Sylvia went to Pinecrest in July. I had only my personal belongings to be concerned with, but I would need at least one additional traveling bag.
I did not go back to bed following the telephone conversation. I dressed hurriedly
and called the personnel office at International Nickel to discuss the termination of my
work there. There were regrets expressed, but both my supervisors, Mr. Scott and Mr.
Kaiser, were willing to release me. I could pick up my check the following morning.
Charged with excitement and anxiety, and working against time, I went to the bus
station to work out a travel schedule. I could leave Huntington in the early morning and be
in Boone late in the afternoon the same day. I then went to the railroad station to work out
a travel schedule. I could go by train to Roanoke, then to Johnson City, Tennessee, then to
Boone by the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad, a narrow gauge. Upon
checking the schedules, though, the agent discovered that ET&WNC railroad passenger
service to Boone had been discontinued, but I might like to consider riding a bus from
Johnson City or Abington, Virginia, to Boone. Two days would be required for the trip. I
then hurried to the bank and cashed my two shares of International Nickel common stock
and went by the loan office and paid four weekly payments in advance, for one of the stipulations of the loan agreement had been that I would not be leaving Huntington during the
life of the loan. I feared that if the sharks there learned that I was planning to leave town
y
Sylvia Graham Williams married Gratis Williams on August 2, 1937. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1941, she
entered Pinecrest Sanitarium in Beckley, West Virginia in July 1942. Dr. Proctor Sparks, Blaine native, was Sylvias
physician in Huntington.
�A Call From Boom
they would garnishee my check at International Nickel and I would not have the money
needed to get to Boone and to buy food for my- first month there. After making the payment to the loan office I went down to Huntington Dry Goods Company and bought a
heavy canvas bag into which I could stuff clothing.
Back at Mosely's I began to sort out and arrange and discovered that I had some
books from the Huntington Public Library which I needed to return, some laundry I needed to pick up at the home of the pleasant black woman who lived in an alley five or six
blocks away, and some dry cleaning at the shop on the way.
When I returned to work at International Nickel Friday night, I said nothing to my
classes about my plan to leave. Yet I was filled with a special kind of excitement and in the
12:01 to 3:00 a.m. class encouraged more buffoonery than usual from one of those naturally comic characters who always keeps a class lively but who serves best under restraint, Jack
Legg, whose very name invited comment. At the change of classes at midnight, one of the
new arrivals offered me a White Owl cigar, which I accepted and lit up. After the class was
under way, the telephone rang. It was unusual for the telephone to ring at any time after
midnight. I stopped in the middle of a sentence, laid my cigar in the ashtray, and rushed to
my desk to answer it.
The man calling was the operator of the plant cafeteria. He wanted to know whether
my students were permitted to smoke in the classroom. I told him we all smoked, I
believed. Were any of the students smoking cigars? Yes, perhaps a third of the class was
smoking cigars at that time. Well, his box of White Owls, which he kept by the cash register, had been raided. Would I be willing to determine whether any of the students were
smoking White Owls? I told him I would ask. With the mouthpiece of the telephone
below my chin, I asked whether anybody were smoking a White Owl. Only Jack Legg
admitted that he was. I responded only one, Jack Legg, admitted that he was. Well, he
remembered that the only cigars he had sold during the break had been to Jack Legg, but
he wanted me to announce that he would be reporting the raid to Mr. Kaiser on Monday.
I gladly agreed to make the announcement. A moment of intense quiet ensued, and I proceeded with my presentation. On the bus to Boone Monday I wondered whether the student who had given me the White Owl felt as relieved on Monday when he learned that I
was no longer working there as I did to know that my job future was not likely to be
threatened by a possible charge that I had received stolen goods.
Saturday morning I returned to the plant, tidied my desk, said good-bye to John
Kaiser, went by Mr. Scott's office to tell him that he might continue to send questions
about grammar and syntax to me at Boone if he cared to do so, picked up my check, and
caught a bus back to Huntington, regretting that the bus driver could not give me cash in
exchange for fifteen cents worth of bus tokens that I would no longer need.
Back in the city I went by the bank, cashed my check, and closed out my account. I
then went to the bus station and bought a ticket to Boone. That afternoon I wrote brief
letters to friends and relatives reporting my decision to return to teaching and carried them
to the post office. Captain Mosely, back from his horseback riding, was impressed by the
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
report that I was to become a college teacher. He invited me to his cocktail hour, attended
also by Miss Westail, and was more expansive than he had ever been, and Miss Westall, who
had normally passed me in the hall and on the stairs without so much as recognizing that I
existed, exhibited a charm that I had not realized she possessed.
Sunday morning I got up before daylight, finished packing my bags, ordered a taxicab, and was at the bus station in time to have breakfast there before the bus departed for
Charleston. I was surprised to see so many people up and around before daylight. About
7:30 we were on a crowded bus, with people standing in the aisles, for Charleston.
It was a foggy morning. (We did not know the word smog then.) All the way to
Charleston only buildings and trees close by the roadside were visible. Streets we crossed in
little towns and in Charleston disappeared into the fog only a few yards from the crossing.
There was a long wait in Charleston before the departure of the bus to Beckley. While
waiting I had my shoes shined by a black man who sang or whistled as he popped his shining cloth in rhythm with his tune. He volunteered that he had been to a party the night
before and that the drinks he had there had not worn off yet. He exuded good will, and
when I commented upon his cheerful disposition he observed that white folks don't seem to
be able to have a good time because they take life too seriously. Almost as if he knew that I
was going to a new job, he said, "You'll be a much happier man and get a lot more fun out
of life when you are just simply yourself and don't take things too seriously."
As the bus to Beckley was climbing the mountain out of Gauley Bridge, we came into
bright sunshine. From the road we could see plainly the New River Gorge, and mountains
were bright and seemed close at hand. The cough I had developed while living in
Huntington and the heavy odor of chemicals in the morning air led me to feel that the
clean air I would be breathing at Appalachian on the Blue Ridge would be good for me.
In Beckley I deposited in a bus station locker all of my baggage except one suitcase
and hurried with it down to Mrs. Mann's rooming house, where I had stayed before. Mrs.
Mann had one room left, a small room over a porch, with a sloping ceiling and next door
to a bathroom. I accepted the room for one night and hurried down to have Sunday dinner at the second seating of her guests, among whom were older residents of the town who
had come directly from church services.
After lunch I walked up to the corner to take a bus out to Pinecrest. The first bus
had already gone and the next one would not leave for nearly two hours. I started on foot,
for I thought I could probably walk the three or four miles out to the sanitarium in thirty
or forty minutes. An older couple, also on their way to Pinecrest, picked me up at the city
limits.
Sylvia, bright-eyed and feeling that her condition was improving, was pleased that I
had accepted the position in Boone. She hoped she might be sufficiently improved to join
me later in the year. X-rays continued to show no activity in her lungs, the frost-like crystals that she fed into her throat through a glass tube brought relief from pain, and the
throat pain that developed prior to the menstrual period and receded afterwards had not
�A Call From Boone
become extended. Her voice was clean and clear, but the doctors advised that she continue
to speak in whispers in order not to irritate her larynx. She remained strictly a bed patient,
but many ambulatory patients came to see her during visiting hours, including the sister-inlaw of a person we had known in Lawrence County, Kentucky.
She had taken a lively interest in a love affair that had developed between one of the
doctors, himself formerly a patient there, and an ambulatory patient who hoped to be
released in a few weeks. Both the doctor and the pretty young woman discussed their affair
with Sylvia, who wrote about it in poems,
many of them clever pieces of doggerel.
While I was there the doctor came by. His
warmth, congeniality, informality, and spirit of trusting friendship suggested that he
considered Sylvia to be a special person,
and she responded with smiles and clever
remarks, teasing and pleasant. Soon after
he left, the young woman came by, too. I
was pleased that she and her secret lover,
who was violating regulations of the hospital, found in Sylvia a trustworthy and stimulating counselor and friend.
Prior to my leaving at 4:30 we talked
about what living and working in Boone
might be like. She liked North Carolina
and had also been thrilled by Thomas
Wolfe's presentation of mountain scenery.
She, too, longed to live there. Somewhat
uneasy about the hiring by telephone and
remembering that Professor Wilson's failure
the preceding year to meet me as scheduled
in Ohio and that the day away from work I Figure A: Sylvia Graham Williams circa 1937.
had requested for the meeting had contributed to my release on December 5» 10 she feared that I might not be paid the salary I was
promised, or that the apartment might be a rat-and-roach den in which I was to live, or
that the principal would be some egomaniac who would feel intimidated by an older and
more experienced teacher in his staff and set about to discredit me before I could get myself
adjusted to classroom teaching again.
Concerned about our financial status, she wanted to know whether I had money
10
In the fall of 1941, Gratis had received a telephone call from Chapell Wilson asking that Gratis interview with
him at a professional meeting to be held at Ball State in Indiana. Gratis was working in Coldwater, Ohio, at the
time, and made arrangements to attend the meeting. But he never heard from Chapell Wilson to arrange the
time, and the meeting never occurred. Gratis subsequently lost his job at New idea, Inc., and moved from
Coldwater to Huntington, W.Va.
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
enough to buy food for my first month in the new job, what arrangements I had made
about the loan from the company in Huntington, and whether I was prepared to pay her
bills at the sanitarium. Distressed that I would have only twenty dollars between myself
and starvation after I arrived in Boone, she offered suggestions for buying groceries that
would be inexpensive but nutritious and urged that I be sure to eat eggs and drink milk and
take my iron supplement and cod liver oil. I reassured her by telling her that I would
attempt to draw an advance on my salary or sell my first month's check at a discount if I
found it necessary.
I then told her that I had two resolutions for the new job. As a high school principal,
I had responded to overtures for friendship from desperate people who needed friends and
often found them incompetent dullards and insufferable bores. My first resolve was not to
be lured too quickly into time-consuming friendships with over-eager people who seem to
want to capture newcomers. Having worked in public education only in my home county,
I had found it necessary to be political and to support publicly causes and efforts to which I
did not subscribe privately. In the new job, I would follow the advice of the cheerful black
man who had shined my shoes in Charleston and dare to be as nearly myself as possible and
to abstain whenever possible from giving public support to causes to which I could not subscribe privately. Thus, I would not be manipulated by political persons and could refrain
from being one myself. If I should find that this new philosophy would not work at
Appalachian, I would leave teaching at the end of the year and find something else to do.
I had come up from Huntington to see Sylvia twice a month. It would be a month
before I could return from Boone. I had checked bus schedules and found that I could take
a bus late Friday afternoon from Boone to Sparta, make connections there with a bus from
Winston-Salem to Bluefield and then from Bluefield to Beckley, and arrive in Beckley late
Friday night. I would be able to visit with her on Saturdays and Sunday mornings and get
back to Boone Sunday night. I felt that perhaps once a month would be as often as I could
visit, but I assured her that I would write to her every night.
Concerned about my loss of weight, my morning cough, and my generally peaked
appearance, Sylvia would make arrangements for me to have a chest X-ray when I came
again. The question of whether she was eligible to remain in a West Virginia state health
facility at the same rate I had been paying had not been resolved, for I had not notified the
sanitarium that I was leaving the state. She would ask her doctor to check that out and felt
sure that if policy permitted he would see that the rates would remain the same. We held
hands in warmth and hope, and I kissed her forehead and departed, feeling that she would
get well and that a new life was beginning for us.
At Mrs. Mann's rooming house I sat on the porch with guests and enjoyed the late
August afternoon before the evening meal, a simple affair built around the delicious green
beans that had been left from lunch and topped with apple cobbler and cream dip.
Following the dinner, I tried to read by the light from the bulb screwed into a socket in the
ceiling, but soon became tired and sleepy.
On the morning of September 1 there was heavy dew on the grass and weeds, already
�A Call From Boone
rigid for autumn. The bus to Bluefield descended the mountain south of Beckley and went
along a road beside a river for a time. The sycamores were heavy with dew, and meadows
and fields were fresh and cleansed. Only wisps of mist floated lazily above them where the
bright sun flooded through gaps in the ridges and mountains. Later, as we gained elevation
again on Flat Top Mountain, the world was flooded with golden sunlight. Oak Hill and
Princeton gleamed. Homes, neatly kept yards, gardens displaying tomatoes ripening on the
vine, sunflowers sentineling the sun, and wine red dogticks marshaled along the fences all
promised a plenty in neat comfort against the coming winter in a war-time economy.
There was only a short time for changing buses in Bluefield, not enough time for me
to see whether my luggage, which I had checked to Boone, was transferred. Soon we were
moving swiftly along a highway down a long Virginia valley between rolling mountains covered with pasture to their tops. Pigs, sheep, and cattle grazed in the pastures, and the corn
growing in lowland fields was tall and tawny and heavy with ears. From behind groves of
locusts, elms, and spreading oaks substantial and beautiful houses, many of them with green
lattices by the windows and white pillars flashing in the sun, commanded from their sites
on smooth-sided hillocks or alluvial plateaus at the mouths of little valleys vast holdings of
fertile land. I wondered whether the owners of these lands considered themselves farmers
or Virginia planters. Signs along the highway reminded us that we were traveling on the
Trail of the Lonesome Pine.
Tazewell, Lebanon, Abingdon were old dignified towns strung along the highway;
towns that were quiet, clean, and charming with their wide streets, substantial public buildings—grey in the sunshine—and ancient homes with dark roofs, peeling woodwork, rusting
iron fences or crumbling stone walls. Yet manicured yards, noble trees, and profusions of
shrubbery and ivy suggested that even though the owners had not been financially able during the Depression years to lay out money to repair and paint their proud houses and mend
their forbidding fences and walls, they had been able to preserve their self-respect in the
care they had lavished on their trees, shrubs, vines, and brick and stone walks, a care that
required little money, only some of the leisure time and energy which people had in abundance during those hard years.
We arrived in Bristol about 1 p.m., I believe, and circled a spacious new bus station
fitted out with the most modern equipment and designed to accommodate traffic expeditiously. The station was crowded with people and all seats in the shining restaurant on a
level above the waiting room were filled. The bus to Elizabethton would not leave for two
or three hours. I took a stroll down the street by the station, taking note of its diagonal
approach to Stateline Street, down the middle of which runs the Virginia-Tennessee dividing line. On the corner was a wedge-shaped building in which a restaurant was located. I
went in, sat at a stool, and ordered a sandwich and milk, for which I paid twenty cents. I
then walked as far east as Virginia Intermont College, of which I had never heard, stopped
in at the railroad station, walked north down a street lined with ancient buildings, and
turned west toward a modern hotel, a tall structure with a spacious lawn and a comfortable
patio equipped with rocking chairs. Aged men with white hair, straw hats, clean shirts,
subdued ties, carefully brushed suits, and well worn but good shoes, brightly polished and
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
with soles edged in black, were lounging in the rocking chairs swapping yarns and exchanging views on the times and the progress of the United States in World War II. I sat nearby
for a time, interested in the speech and idiom of the old men and wondering whether they
were widowed Virginia gentlemen managing with frugality and care to live in the hotel or
whether they were retired men of the town who came together for lunch in the hotel dining
room and lounged the afternoon away in conversation on the comfortable patio.
As I walked back to the bus station I began to perspire, for the afternoon was warm.
I was sensitive, too, about my shabby suit, an old summer suit, baggy and rumpled, that I
had chosen because I wanted my better clothes to be fresh for wear in Boone. The bus to
Elizabethton was loading. A long line had already formed. I was fortunate to get a seat.
Again, people were standing in the aisle.
The character of the landscape changed as we moved into Tennessee. The mountains
became bolder, steeper, more rugged, and forested. Valleys were rich and pasture fields covered low-lying hills, but forests began at the bottoms of sharp rises from which jagged and
massive rock formations jutted out of the trees.
The trip from Bristol to Elizabethton was a short one. Even though the driver
stopped the bus at farmhouses and crossroads to let people off or pick up new riders, we
were in Elizabethton in less than an hour. The station was at the edge of town near a river
lined with huge trees. The bus to Boone would not be leaving for another hour. The little
waiting room of the station was filled with people, many of them women and children. It
was warm. The sunshine was clear and bright and one perspired when he walked in it. My
seatmate on the bus from Bristol was waiting for a bus in another direction. He was a salesman but in Elizabethton for the first time. We toured together a part of the little town and
then ate standing up at a hamburger stall close to the station.
It seemed that most of the people getting on the bus to Boone knew one another.
Conversations were lively and the speech and idiom of the people were essentially what I
had heard while I was growing up near Blaine. Country women with weathered faces carried packages in their arms, and small children with bright and eager faces, scrubbed clean
and tanned in the sunshine, swarmed around grandmothers and tired looking mothers with
infants in their arms and shopping bags hanging from their wrists. I found a seat, but
when all seats were taken and an old lady leaning on a cane took a position in the aisle
beside me and propped herself against the side of my seat, I offered it to her. "W'y, no," she
protested. She would be getting off "just a little ways up the road thair a piece." But I
insisted and she sank into the seat. I moved toward the back of the bus to give her room to
hold her cane propped upright so it would not slide onto the floor. When she got off a few
miles up the road, a young woman with an infant in one arm and a child clinging to her
skirt sank into the seat. Unlucky about being near seats as people vacated them and new
riders got on the bus, I stood up all the way to Boone.
The road was narrow and the asphalt surface was uneven. Spread-eagled and planted
firmly in the aisle, I clung to the baggage racks and looked out at the increasingly rugged
scenery. Much of the time the highway ran parallel to or within sight of the narrow-gauge
�A Call From Boone
tracks of the ET&WNC railroad. People got off and others got on at the little towns of
weathered and old-fashioned wooden buildings along the way-Valley Forge, Hampton,
Roan Mountain, Heaton, Elk Park, Banner Elk-but the bus continued to be crowded with
passengers standing in the aisle.
What I saw along the highway fascinated me. By the time we had reached Hampton,
I was seeing dense clumps of rhododendron and laurel. Tall spruce and hemlock trees grew
from among the rocks on the steep mountainsides. High mountain ridges, purple in the
late afternoon, rose above and far beyond closer mountains. Sparkling water churned along
rock-strewn stream beds and dashed forcefully through gorges, the bottoms of which I
could see almost straight down from the side of the bus. This rugged scenery had more
daring, more energy, more resistance and wild beauty than any I had seen in Kentucky or
West Virginia.
Once, the bus stopped in front of a store and filling station built against the mountainside. Beside it was a cage in which a huge bear was being teased by children. At Elk
Park the little train on the narrow tracks had stopped at the quaint station, its smokestack
puffing lazily as if it were resting after the steep climb up the mountain. Beside a weathered
house of upright boards and with a roof of dark and curling shakes an old mountain man
was making a drag sled like those my father made. At Banner Elk a beautiful little college
campus11 with buildings of native stone strung along a ridge behind the bus station was
dressed in carefully arranged banks of rhododendron and evergreen trees.
From the top of the mountain before descending to Valle Crucis a sweep of blue and
purple mountains, some outlined like cutouts against the sky, came almost suddenly into
view, and I had the feeling that it was the glory of these mountains that I had longed for,
that the beauty of this landscape was surely unsurpassed. The valley, resting peacefully in
the late afternoon sun and crossed by purple shadows of mountains, seemed to be a mile
down below, almost straight down from my standing position in the bus.
As the bus driver started down the steep incline, he lowered the gear, and applying
the brake frequently, continued to lower the gear. I clung desperately to the baggage racks
and leaned heavily against the side of the seat to keep from being plunged headlong into
the aisle. Although I was frightened by the roughness of the descent and the depth into the
valleys below the road, I consoled myself with the thought that the bus made this trip every
day and that I might reasonably expect it to make it that day, too. Near the foot of the
mountain the road had been built in a double hairpin curve so sharp that one could look
straight up and see where he had been and straight down and see where he was going at the
same time. A year or two after I had been in Boone, one bus driver coming down the
mountain following an ice storm slid off the road but managed so skillfully to land below
that he was headed in the right direction, and nobody was injured.
One of the tall tales about that curve repeated by yarn spinners gathered around the
stove in Mast s Store at the foot of the mountain is about the farmer who covered his basket
of eggs when he rode horseback down the mountain after Mr. Mast accused him of trying
"Lees-McRae College
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
to sell horse biscuits as eggs. The bus stopped at Mast's Store, but again, seats left vacant by
those who got off were taken by people who stood closer than I.
The Watauga River Valley was in shadows. One could not see the sun from that
depth. I saw young people and children playing on the porches and in the yards of the
sturdy farmhouses along the river. Blue wood smoke rose from chimneys and spread out
above, a sign in Kentucky of approaching rain. Fat cattle stood in the yards of huge barns.
Corn in the bottom lands was still green. Grass on the hillsides looked fresh and tender
and green as if it were springtime instead of late summer.
As we came up a long gently sloping hill toward a gap in the mountains, I saw on the
side of a barn an advertisement for Stalling s Jewelry Store in Boone. Soon we had passed
through the gap and there fanned out below us was Boone, quiet and mystical in that half
hour of deepening shadow that precedes the turning on of street lights.
10
�Arriving in Boone: A New Beginning
The bus came down into the town, turned to
the right at the first paved street we came to, and at
the end of the second block pulled along-side a quaint
little building that looked more like a country-stop
railroad depot than a bus station. We got out and
waited for the luggage to be unloaded. Only one piece
of my luggage had arrived. After waiting for the station master to take care of details relating to packages
and parcels that had been delivered by bus, I reported
that only one of my bags had arrived. He filled out a
form and said a tracer would be sent and that the
missing pieces would probably arrive within a day or
two. I should check at the station each afternoon.
With my one bag, into which I had put a box of
stationery, shoes, a bathrobe, dirty sox, underwear, and
shirts, I walked across the street to a taxicab stand and
engaged a cab driver to deliver me to Faculty
Apartments. He was there in about five minutes. He
charged me a quarter.
With my bag of dirty laundry in my hand,
unshaven, and in my shabbiest suit, wrinkled, threadbare, and smelling of perspiration, I entered Faculty
Apartments. No one was in sight, but a little sign over
a door announced "Office." I knocked on the door.
An older woman with a kind smile opened the door. I
told her who I was and that Professor Chapell Wilson
had instructed me to report there, where I was to have
an apartment.
She was Mrs. Coffey, the hostess for the building. Professor Wilson had told her that I would be
arriving. Unfortunately, though, the apartment I was
to have was not yet available and would not be for
another two weeks. Professor and Mrs. Antonakos12
were still in it and would not be leaving for Chapel
Hill for several days. The principal of the high school,
Mr. Wey13, had requested that she call him as soon as I
11
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
arrived and he would come and meet me there and take
me to a men's dormitory where I would stay until the
apartment was available. She turned to the telephone
on the wall opposite her door and called. She then
invited me to have a seat in the parlor and make myself
comfortable. Mr. Wey had said he would be there in a
few minutes. She went back into the little office and
closed the door.
I sat down in an easy chair facing the door
through which I had entered the building. As I waited,
I remembered Sylvia's fears that I might not receive all
Mr. Wilson had promised. I began to check off rapidly
the things I needed that were in the bags that had not
arrived: razor, toothbrush, clean underwear and sox,
clean shirts and ties, suits, hats, raincoat, overcoat.
Soon the door at the end of the hall opened and an
extremely tall, thin man with a slender face and a high
nose came striding toward me, his long feet clicking
heel and toe on the waxed floor. I had expected Mr.
Wey to enter through the front door, so I did not rise as
lor.
Figure B. Herbert W Wey, principal of
Appalachian Demonstration School,
early 1940s. Photo courtesy of Ruby
Daniel
the tall man came on into the par-
"Is your name Williams?" he asked.
I then stood up and told him that I was Gratis Williams, in order to sound for him
my first name, which, I had learned, people want to pronounce "Crattis."
"Fm Herb Wey, the principal of the high school. Come with me and I'll show you
the school building, take you to your classroom and office, give you your keys, and go over
the schedule with you. Then I will take you to Newland Hall, where you will have a room
vacated by a young English teacher who married one of his students and is on his honeymoon."
I picked up my light bag, and Mr. Wey relieved me of it.
"Is this all the baggage you have?"
I told him that most of my baggage had not arrived with me but that the station
!2
Antonios Antonakos taught physics and chemistry at ASTC, organized the first drama club at Appalachian, and
formalized Playcrafters in 1933. He took a year's leave of absence to study for his doctorate in physics at UNCChapel Hill during 1942-43, and returned to teach both physics and play production and to be an active force in
the success of Playcrafters.
!3
Herb Wey was math and physics teacher and coach at Appalachian Demonstration High School from 1938 to
1942 before becoming principal in 1942, a position which he held until 1953. He earned his doctorate in education in 1950 from Indiana State University. He became dean of Appalachian's graduate school in 1957, and president of the college (1969) and later chancellor, leading the transition into Appalachian State University, before his
retirement in 1979.
12
�A Call From Bo one
master was sending a tracer and thought it would be here in a day or two.
"You'll be lucky to get it in a week," he said.
Mr. Wey had parked his car at the high school building and walked over to the apartments. As we walked back, he a foot taller than I and taking one long step to my two, I
could tell from the questions he asked that he had not seen my application materials.
Although he was courteous, genuine, sincere, I felt that he disapproved of me in some way,
perhaps because I was a small man, I was so pleased to be in such a delightful place and
teaching on a college campus that I was glad I had been hired "sight unseen," for I would
not have got past an interview with this man. Perhaps, if I were careful, followed his
instructions, and kept silent about my own experiences as a high school principal for seven
years, he would accept me while I
was testing my skills anew as a
high school teacher. It would be
very important that I refrain from
prefacing any suggestion I might
have to offer with "When I was a .....................................................................
high school principal...," but I
111
felt that in time he would accept
"
The high school building, 14
a WPA structure with native stone
veneer, was not up in quality to
the building in which I had
worked in Kentucky. Wooden
floors creaked. Rooms were rough
plastered and many had not yet
been painted. Instead of standard
teachers' desks and chairs for the
classrooms, there were roughly
made little tables with canebottom
chairs. The offices were little
more than large closets equipped
with more of the canebottom
chairs and little tables, which had Figure C. Main entrance of Appalachian Demonstration High
School, early 1940s. Photo courtesy of Ruby Daniel.
been made in the carpentry shop
on campus originally for study
tables in dormitory rooms. There were no filing cabinets, nor were there typewriters, but
each office and each classroom had a small portable bookshelf. The bookshelves, without
backs, had also been made locally for dormitory rooms. On one of the tables in my office
was an orange crate with a divider in it that my predecessor had used for filing. It conI4
Now Chapell Wilson Hall.
13
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
tained materials she had left, among which were things labeled English 310, the number, I
understood, of the course in methods that I would begin teaching after the college students
arrived about two weeks later.
In the course of our conversation Mr. Wey told me that the high school, though
located on the campus and serving as a college demonstration school, was also a county
school that served the town children and those brought in by bus from back in the mountains. The mountain children, he said, were rough and difficult to handle. They had run
off some teachers in the past. Such a school, he said, was a better one for practice teachers
to work in than the model schools found on most campuses, which only children of the
professors and well-to-do parents in the community attended. Our school, he said, comes
closer to being like the mountain high schools in which most of our college graduates will
find jobs. Our practice teachers, then, are better prepared to deal with the teaching situations they will enter after they graduate than most college graduates are. In the keen competition for teaching jobs in public schools Appalachian graduates did well and very few
failed to find appointments, and that had been true all through the Depression. We try to
teach them both what they need to know and what they need to do to be good teachers.
He then took me to the library, which was located in a large cage at the side of the
study hall. The librarian in past years had been responsible for the study hall but beginning
this year a teacher would be responsible for the study hall every hour except one. The
librarian needed to have time to build up the library, and Dr. Dougherty,15 the president of
the College, had promised some money for the purchase of new books. I would be called
on to help select books for use in English classes. We looked at the pitiful collection of
ratty books, all arranged and waiting for the students to descend upon them Wednesday,
when they could begin checking them out. The library in the high school at Louisa was
much larger and the collection much better, but I thought it inappropriate to refer to it.
The school had vocational agriculture and vocational home economics. A full fouryear program in business was being developed, too. Mountain kids who did not plan or
were not able to go to college needed the vocational programs. Girls who did not want to
go to college could prepare to become secretaries.
I asked whether the school was required to qualify for accreditation by the Southern
Association separately from the College. The College, he said, was not accredited and was
not seeking accreditation at that time, but he had already discussed with Mr. Wilson the
possibility of seeking accreditation for the high school and had been encouraged to begin
working toward that goal. That was one reason why the librarian was being relieved of her
responsibility for keeping the study hall. I observed that the last school in which I had
worked was a member of the Southern Association and that I thought membership was
important for the principal because the guidelines could support his request for budget
increases for improving and keeping up to date the library, science laboratories, and busi15
Blanford Barnard Dougherty (1872-1957) served as superintendent of Watauga County schools from 1899 to
1916. In 1899 he was co-founder and co-president, with his brother Dauphin Disco Dougherty, of Watauga
Academy, which eventually became Appalachian State Teachers College. He served as president until 1955.
14
�Arriving in Boone: A New Beginning
ness department. He said if Mr. Wilson should come through with what he had promised,
maybe I could be a member of the planning committee.
We left the building and got into Mr. Weys car, an older model that he considered
himself fortunate to own in those days of gasoline rationing and moratoria on the manufacture of new cars. He delivered me to Newland Hall, directly across the valley from the high
school building, and reminded me that there would be a faculty meeting in the Teachers
Lounge at eight o'clock the following morning.
With my bag in hand, I went to the keeper's room. He was an older college student
who had the responsibility of acting as a host. I told him who I was. Yes, he was expecting
me. He turned to a key board, found a key to a front room on the second floor, and handed it to me. He did not know in what shape I might find the room. Mr. Dukes, then on
his honeymoon, had left some things in it and the man who had shared the room with him
would not be coming back to live there, for he had been given a room in Faculty
Apartments. He gave me a roll of toilet paper to carry with me, just in case it was needed.
With my bag in one hand, my key in the other, and the roll of toilet paper clamped
under my arm, I made my way up to the second floor of Newland Hall. The key would
not unlock the door. Since there seemed to be no one else living on that floor at that time,
I left my bag and the roll of toilet paper beside the door and went back to see whether I
had been given the right key. The keeper took the key and examined it carefully. Then he
turned to the key board and selected another, which he examined carefully.
"Try this one," he said. "Mr. Dukes had the lock changed and we forgot to throw
the old key away."
I went back, unlocked the door, and flipped the light switch. Two beds with bare
cotton mattresses and no pillows were pulled together against the back wall. Two study
tables similar to those I had seen in the high school building and each with a canebottom
chair in front of it were placed on either side of the window, which had no blind or drape.
A double dresser with a mirror stood against the wall between two doors, one to a bathroom shared by occupants of the next room and the other to a clothes closet. One of the
tables had on it a dilapidated lamp, a paperweight, a ruler, some pencils, a bottle of ink,
some notebook paper, and a ball of string. Scattered about was refuse, old newspapers and
magazines, an abandoned pair of disreputable looking sneakers without strings, sox eaten
out at the toes, and empty cartons of one kind or another. In the closet was a stack of boxes
tied with stout cord from the roll on the table. Mr. Dukes's "things," no doubt. The bathroom light had no bulb in it.
I went to the window and looked out. It was a clear night. The sky was deep and
dark, almost indigo, and the stars floated in sharp brilliance as if each had its own space
both behind and around itself. This was different night sky from any I had seen either in
the hills along the Ohio River or in the flatlands of the Mid-West, where even clear night
skies looked as if they had been sprayed with skim milk and the stars looked flat as if they
had been spattered on the canopy of heaven and could twinkle only in linear fashion along
15
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
a flat surface. I opened the window a few inches for ventilation and noted that the night air
had a chill in it that was unusual for September 1.
I then opened my bag, took the dirty clothes out and laid them on one of the beds,
and brought out the box of stationery to write Sylvia a letter. It was a long one in which I
went into detail about the bus trip, the people traveling in such throngs and on a Monday,
too, the lovely scenery along the way, Boone at twilight, my lost baggage, Mr. Wey, the
poverty-stricken aspect of the high school, and my winding up in a dormitory room with
no pillow, no bed linens, no towels and soap, and no light in the bathroom, instead of the
apartment I had expected. But I liked the town, Mr. Wey's openness and candor, the
mountains, and was sure I was going to like living and working on the campus. But, I
could see, by the time I had purchased bed linens, a pillow, blankets, and sundries, I would
have little money left for paying for meals at restaurants for two weeks before I would be
able to move into the apartment. When my money ran low, I would seek Mr. Wey's advice
about getting some kind of a loan to help me through the first month.
It was ten o'clock. My routine had been upset. I was much more tired than I had
realized. I had spent myself completely in writing the letter.
The chill that was in the air reminded me that the pajamas that would come in
handy that night, but that I had not needed in Huntington and Beckley, were in one of my
lost bags. I spread the bathrobe over the mattress for a sheet, pulled on a soiled undershirt
over the one I had on, put on two of the soiled shirts, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of sox,
placed my watch on a chair by my bed, turned out the light, lay down, and spread my thin
summer coat over my bare legs. I might have slept for two hours when I woke up shivering. I got up, turned on the light, and closed the window completely. It then occurred to
me that, with the soiled clothing I was wearing, it was not so important that I have the
mattress covered with my bathrobe. I spread one of the shirts across the head of the mattress, spread out newspapers beside me, and turned the light off. Then I spread my coat
across my legs, pulled newspapers across myself and spread the bathrobe across the newspapers. I felt warm in a few minutes, but when I moved the newspapers slid off, carrying the
robe with them. I then slipped newspapers between my shirts and my shorts, put my pants
on, wrapped my robe around my legs, pulled the thin summer coat up under my chin and
went back to sleep. When I woke up at six o'clock I was lying in the same position in
which I had gone to sleep.
I got up stiffly and went into the bathroom where I washed my face in cold water, for
the hot water heater was not operating during the break between the close of summer
school and the beginning of the fall quarter. I dried my face with one of the soiled undershirts, used the undershirt as a washcloth for a sponge bath and for washing my feet, and
dried myself with another undershirt, shivering from the chill as I did so. I then hung the
wet undershirts across the backs of the canebottom chairs to dry during the day. I used the
corner of a soiled handkerchief to clean my teeth. Dressed in the clothing I had worn the
day before and feeling despondent, I locked my door and made my way along a narrow
gravel road across the valley toward town, the backside of which was visible from the win16
�Arriving in Boone: A New Beginning
dow of the dormitory room.
The Gateway Restaurant was open and many people were having breakfast. I ate an
egg with toast, butter and jelly, and coffee, for which, as I recall, I paid twenty-five cents.
Next door to the restaurant was the Sanitary Barber Shop. It was open for business
by the time I had finished breakfast, and I went in for a shave. Only two barbers were on
duty, though, and there were four or five ahead of me. About 7:45 I was called. By the
time the barber had finished with me, I knew that I could not arrive at the school on time
for the faculty meeting.
On my way uptown I had crossed an alley beyond the movie theatre which I had
remembered as a street but did not notice at all on the way back to the school. So, instead
of turning right down the street I had come, I crossed that street and came along the block
to the corner at the church. Confused by this, I hurried back to the street I had crossed,
but it did not seem familiar, so I returned to the corner at the church and turned right.
Soon I could see the stone building in which the high school was housed, so I hurried diagonally across the playground on which children of all ages were chasing one another and
entered the high school building from the east end.
Mr. Wey met me at the door.
"For crying out loud! Late the first day!"
I explained that I felt I had to have a shave before coming to school, for I had not
shaved the preceding morning, my razor was in one of the bags that had not arrived with
me, and I had felt it necessary to go to the barber shop, at which several customers had
arrived ahead of me.
"Well, why didn't you tell me last night? You could have used my razor! The faculty
meeting is over. The kids are already gathering in the auditorium. Here is the list of the
boys who will be in your homeroom. When I introduce you, read off these names and go
to your classroom. You remember where your room is, don't you?"
"Yes, 210."
"Well, here are the schedules for your boys. Give each his schedule. At the end of
the homeroom period we will go through the class schedule for the day. Yours is in your
office, you remember. Have you got your key?"
I reached in my pocket and flashed my key.
"Well, let's go!"
We hurried along down the hall, Mr. Wey in dactylic rhythm and I in double-time
trochaic, our heels striking the floor together at about every third step for me. When we
reached the door, he said, "Find you a seat down there somewhere," swinging his long arm
in the general direction of the left front side of the auditorium. He hurried on down the
center aisle to the front of the room and I along the outer wall about two-thirds of the way
down, where I sank into the last seat in a row that had only three or four students seated in
17
�The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
it. By then, Mr. Wey had taken his position before the student body. His "greetings" were
brief. Students were to be introduced to their homeroom teachers, who would read off the
room number and call the roll of the students assigned to them. After that was finished, we
would all go to our homerooms and teachers would hand out schedules and answer questions. When the buzzer sounded, we would then go through the schedule for the day. He
began with eighth grade. Mine was eleventh grade. I would apparently be among the last
to be introduced.
Several of the teachers were new. Mr. Wey made brief comments about them.
Students applauded. Occasionally, a few groans were sounded when students heard their
names read by teachers returning from the previous year. At last, the senior homeroom
teachers were presented. The girls were pleased with their assignments. Then the teacher
for one of the homerooms for senior boys was presented, a new math teacher, especially
charming, whom Mr. Wey was sure the boys would like, Miss Poole. Miss Poole stood up,
a pretty young woman just out of college. Her hair was arranged beautifully and her
clothes were bright and stylish. All of the senior boys, it seemed, whistled in chorus, some
stomped their feet, others beat their chair arms with flat hands. Mr. Wey said he knew how
they felt. He felt that way, too, but he had a wife at home. The boys became quiet. Miss
Poole read with a soft voice, perhaps Georgia but possibly South Carolina, the names of the
boys in her homeroom. When she had finished, there was a resounding round of applause
from the boys whose names she had called. Mr. Wey waited patiently for a few moments
and then flung out his long arm for quiet.
"The other homeroom teacher for senior boys is our new English teacher, who is taking Mrs. Rivers s place. He will have charge of dramatics this year. Girls, he is married.
Mr. Williams, stand up!"
I stood up at the end of the row of seats and turned to face the student body. The
boys left for my homeroom sent up a chorus of groans. As the student body looked me
over, others joined in the chorus. Then a chant to a rhythmical stamping of feet began,
"No!" Stamp, stamp. "No!" Stamp, stamp. "No!" Stamp, stamp. It was like a cheering
squad attempting to frustrate the player on the visiting team who was about to make a basket in a basketball game. I stood quietly, waiting for the protest to subside. Mr. Wey flung
out his arm again and chided the students for the bad manners they were using in responding to a stranger in their midst. I smiled, bowed slightly, announced that I was pleased to
be there and regretted intensely that I did not have Miss Poole's beauty and charm, but that
I was sure the senior girls who liked cute short men would have loved to have me for their
homeroom teacher. I paused, and some of the girls began to applaud. I bowed toward
them and smiled. Then the applause increased. After a moment or two, I held out my
hand for quiet, announced my room number, and read off the names of the boys in a chant
similar to that used by the old time railroad porters in announcing the cities at which the
train now on the tracks would stop. When I sat down, the students gave me a round of
"good sport" applause. I felt that perhaps I had saved myself.
We were dismissed. I followed the students out of the auditorium and made my way
18
�Arriving in Boom: A New Beginning
to Room 210. Most of the boys were there ahead of me and seated. I laid my materials on
the little table and stood behind it. The boys were talking among themselves and teasing
one another. Little attention was paid to me, and no one said anything to me. After the
buzzer sounded, the boys stopped talking and became attentive. I began by telling them
that I wanted to learn as quickly as possible the name of each young man present so well
that I could address him by name if I should meet him in the school building or up the
street and that I wanted to learn how to pronounce correctly any names with which I was
not familiar. I would therefore begin by calling the roll slowly. Would each person please
hold up his hand long enough for me to get a good look at him and correct me if I mispronounced his name?
With that ritual completed, I then gave out the schedules. There was considerable
exchange among them in their effort to determine whether their buddies and cronies would
be in the same sections with them. Teachers' names had not been listed on the schedules,
only the period and the class in which each section would meet. Then there was speculation as to who of the teachers might be teaching this or that section. I did not know.
Would I be teaching anything that the seniors might be taking? Yes, drama and speech
were available to seniors. Three or four indicated that they would be in one or the other
and one would be in both.
We were finished with what we had been scheduled to do, but the buzzer for the first
period to begin did not sound. I asked whether they were planning to go on to college next
year. Many planned to do so. I commented that they were fortunate to have in their town
a college to attend. My comment stimulated the expression of many points of view. Only
people who planned to teach attended Appalachian. Many planned to go to professional
schools and would be going to colleges that had degree programs that would prepare them.
Some would go to Davidson College, some to Wake Forest, one or two to Lenoir Rhyne,
some to North Carolina State College at Raleigh. One, who did not plan to go to college,
said, "They couldn't hire me to go down here to this college." Others added, "Me, either."
I refrained from asking why, but while I was struggling with the temptation to do so, the
one who could not be hired to attend Appalachian said, "I wouldn't teach school if it was
the last thing on earth to do." This was followed by a chorus: "Boy, me neither!"
Then one of them asked me to tell them something about myself. I responded that I
had grown up on a farm in Kentucky, attended a high school in town, been graduated from
the University of Kentucky with both an A.B. and an M.A. in English, that I had done
some additional graduate work toward a Ph.D. degree at Kentucky, and that I had taught
for twelve years in Kentucky and had just come from a teaching assignment in the
Apprentice School of International Nickel Company in Huntington, West Virginia, where I
had taught shop mathematics. The one who could not be hired to go to Appalachian said,
"You must be old." Everybody laughed. I responded that I was 31. A young man with a
sensitive face who had indicated that he would be taking speech said, "You don't look that
old." Others shouted, "Apple-polisher! Apple-polisher!" at him, and he smiled shyly. I said
to the group, "Then, most of you think I do look that old?" There was some self-conscious
squirming during a long moment of silence, broken by the one who wouldn't teach school
19
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
if it was the last thing on earth to do, obviously the joker in the group: "After teaching
school twelve years, I'm surprised that you look as young as you do." The buzzer sounded,
but the boys waited for me to dismiss them. I followed them to the classroom door with a
warm feeling toward them and was pleased both with myself that I had not told them that I
had been a high school principal for seven years and with them because they had made no
reference to Miss Poole, to whom the other half of the senior boys had reported.
By the time I had taken my position in the hallway, little girls began to arrive, then
four or five little boys, all smiling tentatively as they passed me. I followed them into the
room. There were 28 eighth grade English students, most of them thirteen and fourteen
years old. I announced the section number and room number, wrote on the blackboard my
name and pronounced it for them, and asked them to sign a roll that I passed around. I
then asked each to hold up a hand as I called the roll and to correct me if I mispronounced
a name. There were Cooks, Greens, Greers, Hodges, Millers, Moretzes, Norrises, and
Winebargers among them. They were mostly "bus" students, quiet country children many
of whom were coming to town to school for the first time. I remembered what Mr. Wey
had said about the rough children from back in the mountains who had in the past driven
off teachers they did not like. These children, so young and small, it seemed to me, to be
in high school, did not appear to be ferocious. After taking and calling the roll, I asked if
there were any questions. Nobody had a question so I began to tell them about myself, that
I had taught seventh and eighth grade English classes eight of the twelve years I had been a
public school teacher. The buzzer sounded for the second period after we had been in the
room only fifteen or twenty minutes, it seemed. They got up from their seats and rushed
out of the room, except one wide-eyed little boy who had smiled broadly every time my
eyes had rested on him. He hung back long enough to ask me whether I had any children
of my own. Later, I learned that he was retarded. Little children, dogs, lackwits, and old
people had always liked me. Probably there were some things about me that were all right.
The next group was the drama class of 25, which included students from the ninth,
tenth, and eleventh grades, among them three or four from my homeroom group. After
required routines were completed, they wanted to know what plays we would be presenting.
I did not know yet, but invited them to tell me about the plays that had been presented the
preceding year. Four or five starry-eyed girls who were taking the class for the second year
talked about plays in which they had had parts, how excited they had been, mistakes they
had made, and what a fine director Mrs. Rivers had been. I smiled vacuously when one
enthusiastic supporter declared that "she couldn't be beat." When the buzzer sounded for
the third period, they waited to be dismissed. One boy remained in the room, a boy also in
my homeroom.
Then came twelve students for the speech class, most of them boys from the tenth
and eleventh grades. Many of them were planning to go to law school. One thought he
might want to become a minister. Some hoped to hold public offices. Girls were interested
in declamation, oratory, interpretative reading.
The fourth period was my "free hour." In the normal schedule, it would come
20
�Arriving in Boom: A New Beginning
immediately after lunch. I sat in my little office and looked at names on the four rolls to
see with how many of them I could associate faces. I had not learned many faces the first
day, certainly, but perhaps more from the homeroom group than from the classes. I had
become interested in what I was finding in the files Mrs. Rivers had left in the orange crate
when the buzzer sounded for the fifth period.
This was another section of eighth grade English. Nineteen girls and a thin little boy
with frightened eyes took their seats. These were "town" children, those who had gone
through the campus elementary school and actually lived in town or had ridden buses from
less than three or four miles outside the town. They were not as shy as the first-period section. Different family names were represented, too: Austin, Carroll, Clawson, Smith,
Wilson; but there were Greens, Greers, Hodges, and Moretzes among them, too, polished a
little brighter, a bit better dressed, somewhat more sophisticated, and with less uneasiness in
their eyes than those with the same family names who had been in the morning class.
There was a group spirit among them. No doubt most of them had been in the same
classes together since first grade. They buzzed and hummed among themselves as they followed the routines and procedures others had followed silently. There were two sets of
identical twins among them, twins dressed alike and looking so much alike that I was never
able to distinguish Mary from Martha or Mary Sue from Betty Lou, and the twins sat next
to each other. (I decided later in the year that they either swapped seats occasionally or the
one who was better prepared responded to my question without regard for the name that I
had called. Other members of the class always laughed when I called on Martha while
looking at Mary, or responded to Betty Lou when Mary Sue had asked the question.) Of
my four classes, I was most apprehensive about this one, which had not as a group opened
up to make room for me during this first meeting.
The sixth period was for the English methods class, which I would meet in the same
classroom after the college students had completed registration in about two weeks. I went
back into the little office and amused myself with Mrs. Rivers's files and a stack of one-act
plays suitable for high school students.
When the buzzer sounded, there was a roaring rumble as students rushed along the
hollow-sounding wooden floors in the hallways. I went downstairs and to the office.
Everybody was gone except the secretary, who gave me copies of the texts and teachers'
guides I would use, a roll book, copies of attendance forms, excuse permits, and other forms
that would have been given to me that morning, had I made it to the faculty meeting.
There would be another faculty meeting at eight o'clock the following morning. In fact,
Mr. Wey means to have the faculty meet every morning at eight o'clock this year. No, it
would not be necessary that I come back that afternoon.
The door to the inner office opened and Mr. Wey appeared. He wanted to know
how I had gotten along with my homeroom boys. I reported. He apologized for their
behavior in the assembly. I reported that no reference had been made to it at all and that it
did not bother me. I was sure we were off to a good start. Remembering my fifth-period
eighth grade class, I added that I hoped I was not too far away from my experience as a
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles; I Come to Boone
teacher of eighth graders to have forgotten how to work with youngsters of that age. If I
ran into difficulty, would he be willing to sit in my class for a period or two and offer suggestions for improvement? He was for a moment stunned by my question. Had I taught
children of that age before? Yes, I had taught all grades in one-room schools for four years
and seventh, eighth, and ninth grade English in a six-year high school for four years. He
did not think I would have any difficulty, but if I should want him to visit my classes he
would be pleased to do so and would help in any way he could.
He then asked how I had liked my room in Newland Hall. I reported my problems,
told him that I had almost frozen, and explained what I had done to keep warm. He
laughed, snorted, and shook his head. I added that I would buy myself a blanket that afternoon. He thought I might find a bargain at Belk's.
I took my textbooks and forms back to my office and walked up the street to the
Gateway Restaurant, where I had eaten breakfast, and took a seat at the counter, for the
booths and tables were occupied. Before I had had time to give my order, a young woman
whom I recognized as one of the teachers at the high school but whose name I did not
remember, got up from a booth, came over to me, and said, "I am Ruby Donald, the new
teacher of physical education for girls at the high school. Would you join us?" I looked at
her for a moment, and then glanced hurriedly at the booth from which she had come, at
which three young women, one of whom I recognized as Miss Poole, were sitting. The
young women, in rigid postures, were looking at us and smiling welcomes. I looked at
Miss Donald, whose warm and friendly smile was reassuring and whose reddish auburn hair
flowed to her shoulders, and felt that the invitation was a genuine gesture of welcome.
I climbed down from the counter stool and followed her to the booth. She introduced me to Miss Poole, a new teacher of mathematics, to Miss Penix, a new teacher of science, and to Miss Tucker, the new home economics teacher. Miss Donald slid into the seat
and I sat beside her. We were all new teachers at the high school. Their orders had not yet
been taken.
The four young women were first-year teachers. Miss Tucker and Miss Donald had
graduated in the spring from Georgia State College for Women. I do not remember Miss
Poole's college, but believe it might have been Newberry in South Carolina. Miss Penix was
a graduate of Morehead State Teachers College in Kentucky. They were all living in the
Faculty Apartments. Miss Tucker, who spoke a Georgia dialect, was talkative. Miss Poole
had little to say but said it beautifully. Miss Penix, from Rowan County, Kentucky, affecting the "r" of the Deep South, spoke in carefully measured and deliberately chosen phrases.
Miss Donald, who appeared to be most natural and thoroughly at ease, spoke rapidly and
made a diphthong of "oo" in school, obviously coastal Middle Atlantic. I spoke somewhat
refined hillbilly but made no effort to appear "Southern."
The waitress came and we gave our orders. As we did so, the young women asked
many questions about what was on the menu and then settled for sandwiches and iced tea.
Without asking any questions, I ordered a hamburger without the onion and a glass of
milk, which totaled only 20 cents, I was pleased to note.
22
�Arriving in Boone: A New Beginning
Someone ventured to ask where I was living. I explained that I was temporarily
housed in Newland Hall but would be living in an apartment after the present occupants
had vacated it about two weeks from then. Did I have hot water at Newland? I answered
there was none and that I had had to come to the barber shop for my shave that morning,
and had missed the faculty meeting because there were several persons ahead of me. Would
my wife be coming down later? Was she also a teacher? Yes, she hoped to join me later in
the year. She was a teacher, but was not currently teaching. A quizzical look followed this,
and there was an exchange of glances accompanied by an almost imperceptible nodding of
heads as if all had arrived at "Uh-hunh!" simultaneously. Did I have children? "Well, no.
Not any to speak of, that is." Only Miss Donald laughed, but the others, faces slightly
downcast, peeped upward at me in a kind of "Ah! You naughty man!" attitude.
Conversation then turned to what had taken place at the school that morning. There
was resentment against having a faculty meeting at eight o'clock every morning. Wouldn't a
faculty meeting once a week, and in the afternoon, for Heaven's sake!, be enough? Someone
then asked me how I pronounced "sophomore." I responded. "Mr. Wey says 'sowphomore,'" Miss Tucker said. I had never heard that pronunciation. Perhaps it reflected a
German influence on his speech, as in "sauerkraut." Miss Donald laughed. Miss Penix
smiled. The other two were puzzled, not certain whether I had said something downright
stupid or too brilliant for them to comprehend.
What do you think of the students at the high school? Miss Poole was, for the first
time in our conversation, effusive. Her homeroom boys were the cutest things! Miss
Tucker had been disappointed in the students she had met. They seemed to be so dumb!
Miss Penix thought they were nice kids, especially those from town, and the country kids
were shy, but they would come along in time. I thought she spoke from a wealth of experience. Miss Donald made no comment. Miss Tucker asked me what I thought. I responded
that I was a mountaineer myself and that the students were in general not any different, so
far as I had been able to tell, from students I had taught for twelve years in Eastern
Kentucky. The town students might be a little more serious than town students I had
known in Kentucky, but it is difficult to distinguish stupidity from self consciousness and
shyness in students "from back in the mountains" until you have had a chance to see them
perform. Sometimes some of them turn out to be your best students.
Except for Miss Penix, there was a feeling of disappointment in what these eager firstyear teachers in a demonstration high school had found here. The town seemed so dull,
too, and it was so far from everything! Perhaps it would be more interesting when the college faculty members returned from vacation and the college students arrived. What did I
think of Boone and the school? The town was quaint and charming. The high mountains
were beautiful. Even the sky at night had an awesome depth, a mystery, a something that
made a difference. I liked it. The school had not yet come out of the Depression, and
there were makeshifts, but the new principal was a fair, sincere, and capable man.
Following lunch, I took leave of the young women and walked up the street as far as
the courthouse, a square structure with almost white mortar framing each dull red brick
23
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
and a round window in the top that looked like the eye of a Cyclops staring boldly across
the little valley. People I met along the street spoke to me as if they knew me, including
older women.
I then crossed the street at the courthouse and came back to the post office, a beautiful little building on a hillock near the corner of Depot Street and King Street. It was built
of native stone, slabs of which varied in color from one stone to another. Across an inside
wall was a mural depicting Daniel Boone on his way to Kentucky. Daniel was wearing a
hat rather than the usual coonskin cap. As I slipped my letter to Sylvia into the out-oftown slot, I noticed on a placard on one of the bulletin boards a determined Uncle Sam
proclaiming that he "needs you." I presented myself at the window and requested that any
mail I might receive be held for me for the next two weeks until I would know where on
campus I would be living. The lady who talked with me asked how I spelled "Gratis" as she
wrote my name on a pad, offering no comment about the unusualness of my name. She
was a small woman with a faint smile playing around very blue but sad eyes and a pleasant,
soft voice. Behind her at work at a table stood a large man with hair that stood up across
the top of his Prussian head. He paused, a bundle of letters in "hold" position in his hand,
and looked at me for a moment.
I then crossed the street on the corner by the bank and made my way to Belk's to
purchase a blanket. A friendly man came toward me as I entered and asked whether he
could help me. I explained that I was interested in a fullsize cotton blanket, a double one if
he had it. He advised that I might find something in the bargain basement and led me to
the broad stairway beside the entrance. In the long basement room there were only two or
three women standing at tables and turning items of merchandise over as they squinted at
price tags in the dim light. A small woman came toward me and asked whether she could
help me. I told her what I wanted. She led me to the far back of the room, pulled on a
light over a table, and invited me to study the bargains. Soon I found a lightweight blanket
of flannel-like material, white with large pale blue checks on it, and made of 100 percent
cotton. It was full size and was washable. The bargain price was only $2.50. I took it to
the clerk, who slipped it into a bag made of thin slick paper. When I peeped into my pocketbook and drew out a five dollar bill, I noticed that I had only a ten dollar bill left in it.
That, the change I would receive from the clerk, and the loose change in my pocket would
have to be spent carefully if it were to meet my needs for the remaining twenty-eight days
of September, I thought rapidly as I handed the clerk the five dollar bill. She smiled with
curiosity in her eyes as she handed me the change, but she did not ask who I was.
From Belks I went to the ten-cent store on the corner and bought a water glass and a
cake of soap, which I slipped into the paper bag. Then I went by the bus station to see
whether my bags might have arrived. They had not, but the station master, who was not
the same small older man I had talked with the preceding evening but a middle-aged man
with a large and completely bald head, said they might be on the bus from Elizabethton
that would arrive about the "edge of dark." He was an extremely friendly, helpful man,
whose voice, when he turned and answered the telephone once or twice while we were talking, slid upward as if he were asking a question even when he made simple statements. He
24
�Arriving in Boone: A New Beginning
pronounced "Elizabethton" as if it were a question even though he placed heavy stress on
"beth." He told me that my bags might have gone from Bluefield to Winston-Salem. If so,
they would be sent up directly from Winston-Salem but they might not arrive for two or
three days. He would be glad to call me when they arrived if I cared to leave my telephone
number. I explained that I was housed temporarily in Newland Hall and could be reached
at the high school during school hours, but that I did not know the telephone number for
either. He would look that up. He then looked at my name on the copy of the slip the
older man had filled out, held it rather far in front of him, moved his glasses forward on his
nose, and said "C-R-A-T-I-S? Crattis Williams?" I pronounced the name for him. He
made no comment about the unusual first name, but asked, "Where are you from, Dr.
Williams?" Noting the complimentary title, never before uttered, but unwilling at the
moment to go into my credentialing, I responded that I had come to Boone from
Huntington, West Virginia, but that I had grown up in Kentucky.
"Oh, old Kaintuck? What town in Kaintuck?"
When I answered that I was from a little place called Elaine about twenty miles west
of Louisa in Lawrence County, he asked, "Is that anywhere near Pikeville?" Louisa, I
explained, is located at the forks of the Big Sandy River and is about 90 miles down the
river from Pikeville. He had relatives who had been in the drug business at Pikeville along
with some of the Greers, who had gone up there to Kaintuck from " Wattogga" County.
Had I ever heard of the Greer Drug Company? It dealt in roots and herbs. I had not. He
then welcomed me to Boone and offered to help me any way he could. If I wanted to, I
could call a little past six o'clock, since the bus from Elizabethton "ordinarily" made it on
time, and ask whether my bags had come, unless I just wanted to walk back then. "My
name is Herman Wilcox,"16 he said, as he reached to shake hands with me while I shifted
my paper bag from my right hand to my left.
I could see the top of Newland Hall peeping over the profile of a long green hill to
the right front of the bus station. A narrow gravel road that did not seem to be used very
much led in that direction, but I preferred to walk back across the bridge over the little
creek and down a street with broken pavement and many potholes in it that was located
behind the buildings that faced Main Street. There were no sidewalks along this street.
Near the lower end of it was a complex of shabby structures that I took at first to be a
sawmill and lumber company. I was finally able to see a sign painted on a long white board
above one of the buildings: "Levites Pipe Company." It occurred to me that the sign
painter had left out the apostrophe between "Levite" and "s," and then I wondered what
people used wooden pipes for.
Back in the dormitory room I removed the tags from the blanket and dressed one of
the beds with it, arranging it so I would be sleeping between the double. Then I removed
'"Herman Wilcox served as Linville River Railroad agent and manager of Western Union before acquiring franchises for the Greyhound, Queen City, and Trailway buses through Boone. He also served two motor truck lines and
Railway Express. Tweetsie railroad made its last trip from Boone to Johnson City, Tenn. in 1940 (see note 18).
Wilcox later acquired the depot property on 211 Depot St. and built the rock business building which served for
many years as the transportation center for Boone, where he also established Wilcox Travel Agency.
25
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
the undershirts from the backs of the canebottom chairs and sat down and wrote Sylvia's
mother a letter telling her about my experiences in getting off to a new start in Boone and
asked her to go through the things we had brought to her home, select four good sheets,
two pillow cases, a quilt, and a small pillow and send them to me "general delivery."
Possibly she could use one of the boxes in which we had packed things. I was pleased that,
since she was the postmistress at Cherokee, Kentucky, she would not have to carry the
package to a post office. I wrote Sylvia a letter, too, and told her about my first night in
Boone, missing the faculty meeting, running through the schedule, lunch with the new
young teachers, one a graduate of Morehead State Teachers College, also Sylvia's alma mater,
but Sylvia had graduated in 1937.
I picked up trash from the room, stacked in the closet things that I thought might be
useful to Mr. Dukes, including magazines, piled the newspapers on the other bed, and went
down to the keeper's room to borrow a broom and a dustpan. He was not in, but I found
what appeared to be a janitor's room unlocked. I borrowed a broom but could find no
dustpan. There were light bulbs on a shelf. I took one for the bathroom light. There were
boxes of toilet paper, too, but I had been given a roll of toilet paper. I went back and swept
the room, using a sheet from a newspaper for a dustpan, returned the broom, put in the
light bulb, cleaned the wash basin and the commode, cleaned the mirrors with some of the
toilet paper, and dusted the tables and the dresser top.
About three o'clock I decided to walk back to the school and work out lesson plans
for the following day. I spent two or three hours looking through the texts and the teacher's
guides and wrote down on a pad my plans for each class. I could hear occasionally sounds
from other offices and people walking up and down the hall. High school boys were practicing football in a field below a splendid oak tree that stood on the lower side of the street
across from the high school building. I could hear the voice of the coach rising and falling,
but could not understand what he was saying.
Having finished my lesson plans, I stood at the window of the office and looked up
and down the valley and at the high tree-covered ridge that rose behind Newland Hall.
The sun was swimming along above an evergreen forest that grew on the crest of the long
green hill along which I had looked when I had seen the top of Newland Hall from the bus
station. From a ravine behind the little restaurant that stood across from the bus station a
cloud of smoke was rising from the town dump and drifting along the top of the pine trees.
Long fingers of dark shadow were feeling their way softly across the little valley.
To the southeast was a dark looking brick building among pine trees on the hill
across the ravine to the left of Newland. Peeping over the line of young maple trees growing along the driveway up to Newland was the top of a white frame building, much in need
of a new coat of paint. It was in the Victorian style and had fire escapes from its upper
windows. A flat, green building that looked much like a country store stood behind a little
structure of round logs chinked with mud that I thought might have been a grist mill. A
wooden stadium was backed against the creek that flowed by the college football field, at
the lower end of which was an ugly brick gymnasium with small windows. The gymnasi26
�Arriving in Boone: A New Beginning
um and the football field looked as if they had been built with no thought given to the fact
that they were on a flood plain. Although it was only September 2nd, some of the trees
among the hardwood forest on the high ridge were beginning to show touches of red and
yellow. The air was clear and quiet. Details in the sunlight were sharp. Shadows were black
patches on the landscape. The sky was blue and deep and far away.
I closed my door, walked back to the post office and posted my letters, and then
made my way to the little restaurant across from the bus station. People were there, some
at tables and some at the counter. Music from the jukebox was loud, "Rosie O'Day" and
"Blues in the Night" still being chosen from time to time. As I sat at a small table alone and
listened to the music, I thought of Huntington, the plant, and the apprentices, who came
charging across the courtyard echoing "Rosie O'Day" and strolling into the classroom
singing "Blues in the Night." I remembered with a sense of release the incident of the
White Owl cigars, the stench in the early morning air in Huntington, the heat in the
upstairs room in which I tried to sleep from four a.m. to noon each day, the noise from the
traffic on Fifth Avenue, the exhausting six hours each night of teaching ten sections of
apprentices, each section coming once a week, the dull monotony of repeating the same
thing in three-hour stretches ten times a week, from nine p.m. to three a.m. each night. I
was glad to be in Boone, and breathed deeply in appreciation.
The hostess came and left a menu. Soon the waitress came, dressed in a green and
blue uniform that picked up the color motif of the little restaurant, both inside and out. I
ordered a breaded pork chop, green beans, and mashed potatoes with a glass of milk,
painfully noting that, although the dessert that came with the dinner was Ma Angell's
famous apple cobbler, the price was 35 cents. I would have spent 80 cents that day for
food! If my $ 13 plus a little change were to support me for the rest of the month, I would
have to eat for about 50 cents a day. Perhaps I could buy some bread and cheese, a bottle
of buttermilk, and a few apples at a grocery store, things that would not have to be refrigerated, and bring costs down by eating a sandwich and an apple in my room occasionally. I
could handle the food budget better when I got into the little apartment, which had a
refrigerator and an electric stove in it, but I would have to buy pots and pans, cutlery, plates
and glasses, and a dish or two.
The food was good. That was the first full "dinner" I had eaten since Sunday
evening. I was hungry and found Ma Angell's delicious cobbler justly famous. I did not
leave a tip, one rarely did in Boone in those days. I paid my bill and walked over to the bus
station.
The bus arrived "about the edge of dark," as Mr. Wilcox had predicted. It was
packed. Many of those who got off grabbed their bags as soon as they were set on the sidewalk and raced for Ma Angell's Restaurant. Others embraced people who had come to
meet them, some in cars and some on foot, and went away with them. Others picked up
luggage and walked toward town as if they might have been going to the Daniel Boone
Hotel and were eager to get there in time for dinner. My bags did not come. Perhaps they
would come up from Winston-Salem tomorrow.
27
�The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
I had not really expected the bags to arrive. I went back to the dormitory to see what
I might do to improve my appearance for the following day. I had worn my shirt, underwear, and sox for two days. I could hardly afford to risk a third day, considering that the
trip down from Beckley had been a rumpling one and that I had perspired a great deal.
After examining my soiled clothes carefully, I decided that the shirt I was wearing was the
best candidate for the next day, so I pulled it off, wet the underarm areas, rubbed Bouquet
soap on the wet spots, and washed the areas in the cold water in the basin, the wet circles
getting bigger as I washed. I then rinsed them in cold water twice, discovering that the
odor of the soap would not come out. But I wrung the wet places as dry as I could, pulled
the wrinkles out, and hung the shirt over a chair. I washed two undershirts and two pairs
of shorts, applying Bouquet soap generously, and spread them on newspapers on the floor
to dry. Sox were more difficult. It seemed that the toes became stiffer as I tried to rinse the
soap out of them. I had no way to iron them, but if I should wash two handkerchiefs,
spread them between newspapers, and put the newspapers under my new cotton blanket,
they might dry smooth from the weight and warmth of my body.
I then put on one of the soiled shirts, pulled on my thin summer coat, and went
through the pile of newspapers, pausing to read feature articles and human interest stories
that appealed to me. Not yet adjusted completely to the change of my daily work routine,
I soon became sleepy and began to nod over the newspaper stories.
I prepared for bed by slipping on an extra pair of sox, an extra undershirt and pair of
shorts, and two soiled shirts. I had taken two or three toothpicks at Angell's Restaurant in
order to try to keep my teeth clean until my baggage arrived, for I did not want to spend
money for a new toothbrush and paste. Standing before the mirror in the now well-lighted
bathroom, I picked my teeth carefully and then cleaned their surfaces with the corner of a
handkerchief, following which I washed my mouth out several times with the cold water
from the tap.
Remembering the deep sky the preceding night, I turned off the light and stood by
the window again. The sky did not look as deep and the stars shimmered behind a thin
mist. Lights along the streets of the town shimmered in the mist in the breeze that was
moving in the little maple trees on the hill below the dormitory. Perhaps the weather was
changing. I cracked the window a half inch, turned the light on again, unfolded newspapers and laid them across the blanket, put the bathrobe over the papers, spread my coat
above the bathrobe, wound my watch and placed it on a chair beside the bed, turned out
the light, and crawled between the new clean smelling cotton blanket. I had freedom to
move with this improved sleeping arrangement. Newspapers did not slip as easily over a
flannel surface as they did over the hard cloth in shirts and shorts. I slept comfortably, but
was dimly aware from time to time of the wind and the sweeping of the windowpanes by
light showers.
28
�c
Settling into Boone
When I woke up at 6:30 instead of 6:00, I
sprang out of bed and began to prepare hastily for the
day. I took another sponge bath, but felt cleaner
because I had used soap. I would not try to go by the
barber shop for a shave this time. My beard was light.
Perhaps I could get through a second day without a
shave. My clean sox and underwear were still damp,
and the circles under the arms of my shirt had not yet
dried, but I put them on anyway. I went hurriedly
over the surface of my teeth again and rinsed my
mouth with cold water. The handkerchiefs under my
blanket were dry but needed to be touched up with an
iron. I smoothed one out with the palm of my hand,
folded it carefully, and slipped it into my pocket. I
was ready to go, and it was only seven o'clock. I had
enough time for breakfast, I thought.
The morning was dark. Clouds rolled along the
valley rapidly. I could not see the mountain behind
town at all, and the top of the knob that stretched
toward the east was hidden in a cloud. A light rain
was falling and I had no raincoat or umbrella. Perhaps
Mr. Cornett, the host for the dormitory, had one. I
went by his room to see. He was up and the odor of
the bacon he was cooking on a hotplate filled his
room. No, he did not have an extra umbrella or raincoat either. There might be an umbrella in the storeroom. We looked, but there was none there. I said I
would have to spread newspapers over my head and
shoulders. "Wait," he said. "I believe I still have the
laundry cover for the last suit I sent to the cleaners."
He did. I tore a hole in it big enough for it to slip
over my head, ripped it down at the corners far
enough to get my arms out, put my hat on, and started at a fast clip, the paper slapping my knees.
The laundry cover had come unglued by the
time I had reached the street by the high school build29
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
ing, but I held it together as best I could and rushed on to the Gateway Restaurant. At the
door, I took off the laundry cover, folded it carefully, tucked it under my arm, and entered.
I was not very wet. The cuffs of my trousers were dark looking, I felt damp across the
shoulders, and one of my shoes leaked, but otherwise I had come through pretty well protected, I concluded.
I took a stool at the counter, slipped my bundle behind the foot-rail, and ordered an
egg sandwich with coffee, noting with satisfaction that the price was only fifteen cents,
what I had paid at the White Tower in Huntington for the same thing. The sandwich was
ready in four or five minutes. A better bargain than a White Tower sandwich, it had in it
thin slices of dill pickle, and one of the slabs of bread had been brushed with mayonnaise.
It was served open, steaming hot and inviting a dash or two of black pepper. I normally
took my coffee straight, but since cream and sugar did not cost extra, even though sugar
was being rationed at the time, I took both when I remembered that I needed to get as
much food for my money as possible. I ate the sandwich rapidly, gulped down the coffee,
laid fifteen cents on the check by the cash register, and rushed out.
The rain had stopped, but it might begin again soon. I hurried on. Just before I
reached the school building another brisk shower came, but I decided to dash to the building rather than fool with trying to get the laundry cover unfolded and around me again.
My toes were squishing inside the shoe that had a hole in the sole, my coat, wet across the
shoulders, had dark splotches down the front, my pants, quite wet below the knees, no
longer had creases. My shirt collar was turned up at the tips, and my tie was splashed.
Inside the door, I looked at my watch. It was 7:40.
I slipped up the end stairway to my office, took off my right shoe and sock, wrung
the water from my sock and forced wadded up construction paper into my shoe to absorb
as much moisture as it could while I cut out an insole from the cardboard back of a paper
pad. I pulled the construction paper out and trimmed the insole to size. Then I made a second insole from a sheet of doubled construction paper and slipped them all into the shoe,
put it on, and laced it up. My foot felt warm and dry. I took off my coat and slipped two
sheets of construction paper under my shirt and across my shoulders and an undoubled
manila folder between them and the shirt. After patting the paper into the shape of my
body as best I could, I put my coat on, buttoned it, picked up a pencil and pad, and went
downstairs. When I noticed that it was 7:55, I went into the washroom and combed my
hair, tugged at the corners of my shirt collar and tucked them under the lapels of my coat,
adjusted my wet tie, and hurried to the lounge. Mr. Wey was there, his watch in his hand,
waiting. Perhaps half the faculty had assembled. Others were rushing in, some without
having gone by their offices to leave their raincoats and umbrellas. I took a seat by the door
and leaned back against the wall, enjoying the warmth that was glowing between the paper
inside my shirt and my chilled shoulders. When I crossed my right leg over my left knee, I
remembered the white spot of cardboard that showed through the sole of my right shoe and
reversed the arrangement, aware of the odor of Bouquet soap that was fogging up from my
steaming clothes.
30
�Settling Into Boone
Mr. Wey began the meeting with the observation to newcomers that we were experiencing a sample of Boone weather and that we might find it convenient to keep an extra
umbrella and a raincoat in our offices, for the weather can change in a half hour here in
these mountains. He summarized briefly the registration procedures and the problems that
had surfaced in the trial run of the schedule and how they were being handled. He
reviewed the uses of certain forms we had been given the previous day, advised that we dismiss classes promptly but that we not permit students to get up from their seats until we
had formally dismissed the class, that we take a position in the hallway by our classroom
doors during the change of classes, that we prepare absence and tardy reports for our homerooms first thing and hand them to the hall monitor near our room. There had not been
enough textbooks to go around in some subjects, but others were expected soon and there
would be an announcement when they arrived. Sometimes announcements would be made
through the intercom system. Teachers and students were to stop in the middle of a sentence if necessary to hear announcements from the office. Later, we would have fire drills,
but he would go more into that at a subsequent meeting.
He then asked if there were questions. An older teacher asked whether he wanted to
say anything about the use of the library. Some teachers, he explained, managed their classes with a minimum of lecturing and discussion and provided for supervised study for a part
of this time. This was a good time to permit students to go to the library, but no more
than two or three should be sent at a time and a permit signed by the teacher and initialed
by the librarian or an authorized helper must be issued to each student excused for library
privileges. Students who required a great deal of help during the supervised study period
should not be permitted to go to the library from the classroom. They could check out
what they needed during their study hall period.
When another teacher, a new man in social studies, raised a question about the fairness of this arrangement, Mr. Wey explained that most of the good students took up to six
or seven subjects and had no study hall hour—some had a regular five-course load and then
added music, or art, or typewriting, or an elective. The newcomer found it strange that
students were permitted to undertake so much. Mr. Wey responded that it was these very
students who were the highest achievers and that many of them were graduated with 24
credits. The new teacher signed off with "Jeez!" in amazement as he looked around the
room to see how others were responding. I maintained a stony silence.
There were no more questions. Mr. Wey then explained that the cafeteria in the
basement would be open today for lunch. Not many students living in town used it.
Children who qualified on the basis of poverty could eat there free. The manager of the
cafeteria knew who they were. Others could eat there for a nickel a meal. The food was
simple, nutritious, and unusually well prepared, and was probably the only good meal some
of the children, who came to school without having had breakfast, got all day. Teachers
who wished to eat there could if they wanted to do so. A teacher paid a dime. With this
announcement I made some rapid calculations. Perhaps I could manage to make my
money last to the end of the month. We were dismissed. I was proud of myself for not
having raised any questions or offered any observations.
31
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
On his way out, Mr. Wey stopped to ask whether my luggage had come. He said, "I
knew it hadn't. You'll not get it until about Saturday, and you might never get all of it. I
brought one of my razors for you. I use an electric razor in my office after I get here every
morning. The razor I brought for you is on the shelf in my washroom. I don't have to use
shaving cream with my electric razor, but when I lived in a fraternity house at 'Turr Hut' 17 1
used to use just ordinary toilet soap when I shaved with a safety razor." I told him I had
not tried to make it to the barbershop this morning and might like to come by and use his
razor during my free period. "Come right on," he said. "If I'm not there the secretary will
let you go on in." He then wanted to know how I was liking my room. I explained that I
had bought a double blanket the day before and had been comfortable last night, but that I
missed not having warm water for bathing. I had taken sponge baths in cold water two
days in a row. He shook his head, laughed a light little laugh, and snorted in a manner I
had observed before, perhaps one of his idiosyncrasies, and hurried on.
He was taking an interest in my personal welfare and had actually taken the time to
bring me one of his own razors. Possibly he was not really as negatively disposed toward
me as I had thought.
I hurried up to my room, noting that the water splotches on my clothes were now
barely visible but that my pants were wrinkled and baggy and my coat sleeves were drawing
up. I slipped into my office and pulled the manila folder and construction paper from
under my shirt, which was still damp but not wet. My coat was almost dry. The uppers of
my right shoe, soaked from the inside, were still wet and the sole of the shoe was beginning
to curl up at the edges. I looked at my watch and decided I would have time, if I hurried,
to replace the construction paper insole with another, for it had begun to roll up from the
moisture it had drawn from my wet sock. I took the shoe off, drew out the construction
paper, laid it down as a pattern on another sheet of folded construction paper, outlined it
with a pencil, cut it out and slipped it into my shoe. The buzzer sounded while I was tying
the lace.
Classes that morning were routine first-time classes. I was unable to associate many
faces with names, even though I called rolls and looked students in the faces again as they
held up hands in response. Few questions were asked about assignments, which preceded
work periods followed by questions which I asked, all as an introduction to exercises and
activities assigned for completion before the next meeting. Much of the work for the eighth
grade section was review of essentials learned in the seventh grade.
My lunch hour began at twelve noon. Four or five of the older teachers were in line
for the ten-cent lunch at the cafeteria, where we filed by a window to the kitchen, deposited
our dimes on a counter, and waited for a helper to place before us a plate of food and a
glass of milk. The lunch consisted of a modest but delicious serving of meat loaf, mashed
potatoes with gravy, spinach, a hot biscuit, and two waffled oatmeal cookies, each about an
inch by an inch and a half in size. That for a dime, an egg sandwich and coffee for breakl7
Terra Haute, Indiana
32
�Settling Into Boone
fast for fifteen cents, suppers alternating between something inexpensive in my room and a
35 to 45 cent meal at a restaurant might enable me to make out to the end of the month
without having to ask for an advance or sell my first months check at a discount. There
was not a special table for members of the faculty, but we sat together, some on one side
and some on the other, at one of the ten or twelve long, narrow tables with folding wooden
chairs on either side. We were unanimous in our praise of the quality of the food and wondered whether, at prices like that, the cafeteria could keep it up. In our conversation we
judiciously refrained from discussing our classes and our students.
Following lunch, I walked off the school grounds and toward town a few yards to
smoke a cigarette. Many of the school boys, some of whom were in my classes, were standing in little clumps as they smoked. I did not offer to join them, but when I took my position, two or three of my students from the morning section of the eighth grade came and
stood with me. They rode the bus to school. We talked about what farm boys do before
leaving for school in the morning, after returning from school in the afternoon, and on
Saturday and Sunday. They were surprised that I knew about and understood living on a
mountain farm.
I teased about our being "sinners," since smoking was forbidden on school grounds
and we had to slip away from the righteous to enjoy our little taste of sin in shame. They
found this most delightful. As time went on that year, the number to assemble with me for
a smoke on and around a flat rock across the little branch that marked the boundary line of
the school grounds grew. Smoking in washrooms, under the stairs, and in the furnace room
stopped almost altogether. Mr. Wey noticed. Sometimes he would refer in announcements
to "Smokers' Rock," but we called it "Sinners' Rock."
During my office hour Mr. Wey came by to tell me that he had called to see whether
there might be a room at Faculty Apartments that I could use until the Antonakoses moved
out. Faculty Apartments had no hot water either between terms, but the rooms there were
nicer and I would have a better chance to become acquainted with other members of the
faculty, it would be closer to the high school than Newland Hall, and I might enjoy it
more, if I wished to move. Also, I could use guest towels and linens the hostess would provide, and there was maid service. I was delighted at the prospect for a change. Well, if I
would come by the office after my last class, his secretary would let me know whether anything had been worked out, if he himself should not happen to be available. His visit was
brief.
My hopes rose high. I would not be receiving the package from Mrs. Graham for
four or five days, perhaps longer. In the meantime, sleeping between sheets again and with
a pillow under my head, having a washcloth and a towel (even with only cold water for
washing), maid service, the comfort of hearing other people walking in the halls or talking
in rooms close by would be a luxury.
My afternoon class was less pleasant than the morning classes had been. The little
girls seemed tired and irritable. Their response to my assignment of review exercises was a
half-hearted one, and they buzzed like angry bees. When I proceeded to the question-and33
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
answer phase of my plan, though, they were more responsive, many speaking at once, but
all continuing to carry along the undertone of talking back and forth, and passing things
from one to the other, over which they giggled. When I led into the homework assignment
one protested. The teachers all day had been piling on assignments. Besides, they had
done all of this "old stuff" last year. Somewhat stunned, I responded that if I should discover next day they did not need the review, we would move right on to new things, but
that I doubted seriously whether it would be possible to dispense with homework. They
were in high school now, and high school students are expected to do more homework and
library work than grade school students. A question then rose as to how much time a high
school student should spend in preparing for each class she takes. Falling headlong into the
trap, I thought an hour of preparation each day for subjects like English, social studies,
mathematics, science might be about right. Classes like shop, typewriting, physical education might not require as much outside preparation. This appeared to precipitate general
antagonism. How was one to find four or five hours a day to do homework? Study!
Study! Study! Students need some time for fun. I recognized that I had a class of bright
youngsters with some ideas of their own and that I would have to exert special effort and
plan work and activities carefully to keep them motivated and achieving. It was too bad
that we met each other so late in the day! We might get along better if we met the first hour
in the morning.
Although the sun was not shining, the afternoon was warm. Even with the windows
open, odors of fatigue, anger, and clothing that had been drying all day on uncomfortable
and tiring little girls commingled in the room. I noted that I was smelling stale myself.
Long before the buzzer was to sound, they began to assemble their books and materials on
their chair arms in anticipation of a rush from the room. I reminded them that one of the
regulations of the school was that students were not to rise from their seats until the teacher
had formally dismissed the class. They waited, some with blazing eyes, others with smiles
of amusement. Perhaps they were not a solid wall of resentment after all, I thought, as I
said, "Class dismissed." Suddenly, I was very tired.
I walked to the classroom door and watched the students hurry down the hall. Then,
turning off the lights, I went over and closed the windows and adjusted the Venetian blinds.
Back in my office, I stood at the window and studied the landscape for a few minutes, noting that the sky was darkening again. The air was clean and details in the landscape were
sharp and clear, even in cloudy weather. The smoke from the town dump hovered close to
the ground. I sat down for a few minutes of meditation and self-searching questions.
While allowing my mind to flow freely and my memory to hopscotch the events of the day,
I remembered that I had not gone by Mr. Wey s office to use the razor he had brought. I
rubbed my hand against the bristles across my chin and decided that perhaps I had not
needed a shave after all, but that I would go down and get the razor and use it until my
luggage came. As I rose from the canebottom chair, I noted that a light shower was pattering against the window panes.
Mr. Wey was not in right then but he had left word that I would come by for the
razor he had brought. Miss Teems, the very young secretary, went on to say that Mr. Wey
34
�Settling Into Boone
had asked her to tell me that a room in the Faculty Apartments was available until the college faculty members returned. I would have Miss Helen Foster's room. Miss Foster had
called Mr. Wilson to say that she would not be arriving until after registration. If the
Antonakoses should happen to be a day or two late getting away to Chapel Hill, by being
in Miss Foster's room, I would still have a room until the apartment was available. The
maid had prepared the room for me and I could move into it when I was ready.
I went into the principals washroom and put his razor in my pocket, noting that I
had not had a private washroom, not even a basin in a closet, in either of the offices I had
occupied while I had been a high school principal.
On the way back to my office, I stopped at the top of the stairs and studied the
mountain behind the town. I had not yet heard it referred to, so did not know whether it
had a name. It rose high and green. I could see little weathered houses scattered about on
its lower slopes and a trail wound to a saddle gap between it and the knob that reached
toward the east. The sky was blue beyond the top of the mountain. Perhaps the clouds
hanging over Boone would be moving on and I would be able to walk over and get my
things in Newland Hall without getting wet again.
I prepared my lesson plans for the following day, giving special attention to the afternoon class, in case I should need to adapt my plans following the discussion of the review
exercises I had assigned. By 3:30 the clouds had moved on and the sun was shining again.
I walked to Newland Hall along the narrow gravel road, noting that the earth was
still wet and that the cardboard insole of my right shoe was soaking up moisture. The first
thing I did in the room was to change my shoes and sox. I did not like to wear brown
shoes with blue or grey suits, but the brown shoes had new half-soles and heels. I would
have to wear them without regard for my preference until the end of the month. My
brown belts were in one of the lost bags, so I would have to wear a black belt with brown
shoes and a blue-grey suit until I could do better. The hat of panama straw, for which I
had blue, maroon, and tan bands, but which then had a blue band on it, had become floppy and dented in the rain. I would try to shape it up and let it dry when I reached Faculty
Apartments.
Packing was not difficult. The bag was not very heavy, but there was not room in it
for the blanket. However, I had kept the bag in which the blanket came. My bag in one
hand and my bundle under my other arm, I went by the keeper's room to leave the key and
report that I was vacating the room. He was not there. I tore off a piece of the bag, held it
against the door, and wrote on it a note thanking him for courtesies, especially the laundry
cover that morning, and telling him that I was moving to Faculty Apartments. I wrapped
the paper around the key and slid it under his door. I was pleased to be leaving Newland
Hall.
Mrs. Coffey was expecting me. She had a key to Miss Foster s room ready for me and
repeated what Miss Teems had told me about the maid having prepared the room for me.
When I was ready to leave the room, I could return to her the linens, towels, and washrags.
35
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
I went up the three flights of
creaking stairs and found the
room, which was the middle
one above the second floor
reception room. A small but
cheerful room with a large curtained window that overlooked
the main part of the campus, it
was furnished with bright surfaced maple furniture, a bed, a
desk and chair, a bedside stand
with a lamp on it, a bedroom
chair, and a chest of drawers
with a framed mirror on the
wall above it. I could be comfortable here, I thought, as I
unpacked things and put my
cake of Bouquet soap, waterglass, and the borrowed razor in
the little chest with a mirror in
the door above the wash basin.
I spread my blue-checked blanket over the bed and folded it
back in readiness for a good
night's rest,
* ,.
z
ir =e
Figure D. Faculty Apartments at Appalachian State Teachers
College, circa 1942, Photo courtesy of Ruby Daniel.
I would have to have clean clothes, so I put shirts, underwear, and sox in the bag in
which the blanket had come and walked uptown to a laundry I had seen up the street above
the post office. My laundry would be ready for me the following afternoon, I was told. I
decided also that having my suit pressed while I waited was a necessity, although it really
needed cleaning, too. I went into a booth with a curtain before it and handed out my suit
to be pressed. It was ready in a few minutes, the cloth stiffer than usual and the odor of
perspiration rising warmly from it. Although creased and smoothed, the pressing had
emphasized its shabbiness, it seemed to me. I paid a quarter and left.
Walking back to the bus station along the street the bus had come two days before, I
looked in the windows of shops along the way. There was a theatre at which western
movies were shown. Near it was a little restaurant called Ruth's Place, in which beer was
served. Walker's Jewelry Store had displays of bargains in the window. Boone Tire and
Furniture was exhibiting new styles in house furnishings. Another restaurant near Farmer's
Hardware had a shelf of wine behind the counter where the cash register was. People were
already waiting for dinner in it.
I turned at the bank down Depot Street, passed the ancient town hall, and made my
way again toward Angell's Restaurant, thinking as I walked along that I might enjoy eating
36
�Settling Into Boone
next month in the restaurant in which wine was sold unless it was considered improper in
Boone for a teacher to dine in a place in which alcoholic beverages were available. I
stopped at the bus station and asked whether my bags had come. They had not, but they
might be on the bus that would arrive from Elizabethton.
It was barely five o'clock, too early to eat. Only two or three persons were in Angell's
Restaurant. Since I was wearing my brown shoes with new heels and soles, I could risk a
walk on an unpaved road that led toward the town dump. If I were careful, perhaps I
would not get my feet wet. I walked past a weathered log cabin of ancient vintage and with
a vine-covered porch on which stood canebottom chairs, the same kind of a cabin and
porch that I had seen many times over in the hollows and coves near Elaine. Old-fashioned
flowers grew in the yard and against the chimney of stone and mud. I was surprised to see
an authentic old cabin in town, and so close to the bus station. I thought it might well be
the oldest residence in Boone and was probably being preserved by some family that had
lived in it for generations, possibly since before the time the town was founded.
Beyond the cabin the road became little more than a muddy trail. Deciding not to
pursue it farther, I turned back and walked along the little-used gravel road toward
Newland Hall. The road ran parallel to the creek a part of the way. Behind a swampy area,
in which was an ancient spring with a tree growing beside it, was a dark green cottage made
of boards and battens and with a tarpaper-covered roof. A rich garden with green things
growing in it stretched along the lower side of the hillside behind it. Later, I learned that
the spring beside the tree had been the one from which Daniel Boone had carried water to
his hunting cabin at the foot of the hill on which Newland Hall stood.
I could see that the narrow road had been a railroad bed until recently. A few halfrotted ties were strung along beside it and there were indentations where ties had been half
buried along the edges of the road. At one point the creek bank had broken off almost to
the edge of the road. The creek bed was littered with refuse from the town, and pieces of
lumber, limbs of trees, parts of furniture, and evidences of the 1940 flood18 that had washed
the little railroad out, lay along the creek. Having walked as far as the row of black cherry
trees that stood beside an abandoned fence at the southern end of the green hill, I turned
back toward the restaurant.
A few people had arrived for dinner. A black-haired waitress, in her fresh green and
blue dress, was taking orders. The ground beef steak and French fried potatoes I ordered
were overcooked, prepared no doubt ahead of time in readiness for a rush when the bus
arrived from Elizabethton, but the pickle was good, the coleslaw fresh, the milk rich and
cold, and the price reasonable. It was pleasant also to hear again familiar tunes on the jukebox.
The bus, on time, was crowded, as it had been on Monday and Tuesday. Some of
those who got off were persons who had gotten off the preceding day also, possibly salesI8
ln 1940 flooding in the southern Appalachians devastated local residents, local communities, and local and
regional transportation, disrupting rail connections for the ET&WNC Railroad as well, incuding the famous
"Tweetsie" line into Boone.
37
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
men who worked the little towns between Elizabethton and Boone or teachers who commuted to their schools by bus because they could not get enough gasoline to drive their
cars. I stood against the wall of the little bus station and watched a friendly and efficient
black man unload the baggage, piece by piece, but my bags had not come.
Without bothering the station master for other opinions about when I might expect
my bags to arrive, I struck out for Faculty Apartments, taking Depot Street back to the corner of the main street, where the ten-cent store stood, and along the street toward the corner at the Baptist Church. People lounged against iron railings to basement steps, leaned
against the front ends of the few cars parked before the two drug stores and the restaurants,
and stood in little groups near fireplugs. High school teachers occupied tables and booths
near the windows of the restaurants. High school students sat on stools at the soda fountains in the drug stores. Teenage girls with shoulder-length hair and dressed in pastel-colored sweaters and skirts that came far below their knees, bobby sox, and dirty saddle
oxfords hurried along by twos and threes, animated and laughing as they tossed their heads
to keep their hair rippling toward their shoulders, perhaps on their way to the Pastime
Theatre, for the Appalachian Theatre was being renovated following a recent fire.
People sat on the porches of the funeral home and the boarding house near the intersection of College Street and King Street. Conversations stopped altogether or were lowered as I passed, aware that I was being studied and imagining that someone on each porch
was asking, "Who is that?" Children were playing on the grounds around the elementary
school, and the clumps of flowers were fresh and bright in the yard of a pretty little native
stone house set on a bank retained by a stone wall behind the college bookstore. Locust
Street was only a gravel road then, but there was a concrete sidewalk that led past Faculty
Apartments. Little girls were zipping up and down the walk on tricycles, some daring to
ride no-handed. Everybody was enjoying the quiet and fresh afternoon following the rain.
Boone was a lively little town.
I could smell pork chops and the onion in casseroles being prepared in apartments as
I climbed the two flights of stairs to my room. No one was visible and the only audible
sounds came indistinctly from radios in the apartments. Those who occupied rooms were
out to dinner. My room, put in good order by the maid, was neat and clean and smelled
fresh. There was, I thought, a faint odor of perfume hovering over the chest of drawers,
perhaps a droplet of Miss Foster's caught in the tidy white cover that lay across the top.
The wash basin shone white and clean, the light odor of my cake of Bouquet soap rising
from it.
From the window I could see the roofs of the dormitories and the administration
building with ventilators like those I had seen on barn roofs in Ohio. Rows of little chimneys stuck up along the lower edge of the black tarpaper roof of the oldest dormitory, a
rambling two-story building of light-colored locally baked brick. Trees growing along the
low ridge across the valley from the campus were sharply defined in the clear air and a dark
little house in an upland field was silhouetted against the pale green of a mountain that lay
across the valley on the other side of the ridge. A lazy column of blue smoke rose straight
38
�Settling Into Boone
from the chimney of the little house into a streak that lay parallel to the top of the ridge
and across the face of the mountain beyond. We would probably have more rain by tomorrow, I thought.
I sat down at the little desk and wrote Sylvia a long letter in which I related the
details of my second day on my new job, my impression of the town, and my new room
and its pleasant appointments. I was becoming more comfortable in my relationships with
the principal who was certainly a sincere, capable, and unusually well organized person and
beginning to look as if he planned his work more carefully than I had ever done while I was
a principal. His English needed improving, for young teachers made comments about it,
but he was a mathematics teacher, and sometimes mathematics teachers do not see a need
for improving their English.
The comfortable bed in Miss Fosters room, with sweet-smelling linens, a soft pillow,
and my new cotton blanket, invited me to sleep readily. I woke up once in response to the
wind whispering at the eaves just above my window and discovered that a soft rain was
falling. Next morning the rain was still falling and wisps of cloud trailed along the top of
the low ridge across the valley. While I was shaving with Mr. Wey's razor and using cold
lather from Bouquet soap, I could smell bacon frying and coffee making in the apartments.
I dressed in the same sox, underwear, and shirt I had worn the day before, but was pleased
to think that my brown shoes would keep my feet dry and that my suit looked better for
having been pressed. The rain continued in little soft gusts. I decided that since I could
not risk a trip up the street for breakfast I would pick my teeth, clean them with the corner
of a handkerchief, drink water for breakfast, and watch for a lull between showers to make a
dash to the high school building.
There was never a time when the rain stopped completely, but I was able to rush to
school through what was mostly a mist shaken down by low clouds without getting wet
enough for my trousers to lose their crease. At the school ahead of the other teachers, I
stopped by the principal's office to thank Mr. Wey for his razor and for making arrangements for me to move into Miss Foster's room. He did not invite me into his office, but
when I responded to his question about breakfast that I did not have a raincoat, for my
baggage had not yet arrived, and that without one I could not take a chance on getting wet
by going to the restaurant for breakfast, he let me borrow his umbrella and gave me a big
apple. I took them to my little office and ate the apple while watching from my window
waves of steaming rain pass down the valley.
At the faculty meeting that morning we were told that most of the schedule problems
had been worked out and that orders had been placed for needed textbooks. Teachers,
many of them wet and steaming from their rush through the rain, had few questions. Mr.
Wey explained again how absences and tardies were to be reported and emphasized the
importance of knowing at all times where students were. Then he expressed the hope that
new teachers would write out lesson plans for a while in order to avoid falling into the habit
of lecturing all hour. Classroom procedures, he said, ought to be varied within the hour,
perhaps four or five times, to hold the attention of the students and to challenge their inter39
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
ests. He called on a soft-voiced English teacher to tell how she varied her presentations in
order to hold the attention of her students. She emphasized the value of speaking in a pleasantly modulated tone of voice, making the assignment at a logical time, even if in the middle of a class period, and of giving students up to fifteen or twenty minutes for supervised
study in the classroom. Questions followed. Other teachers volunteered information about
how they worked for variety. Two of the men teachers defended the lecture approach.
Again, I listened attentively but offered no comments.
That was my third day to meet my students. By then I was able to call most of the
boys in my homeroom by name but was still confusing Greens and Morrises, Greers and
Moretzes in my classes. My sixth period class was bothering me. It seemed to have my
most intelligent students, but many of them were irritable and quarrelsome. That day I discovered that most of them certainly did not need the review exercise that I had planned and
was glad that I had prepared an alternate plan for them. But they were noisy, talked with
one another out of the sides of their mouths while looking at me, and were ruthless and
sometimes vicious in their comments to one another, which they blurted out without
regard for the direction of the discussion.
Eating lunch in the cafeteria was not only economical for me but convenient also.
The fall rainy season in Boone, more clearly defined than I had remembered it in Kentucky,
continued for nearly two weeks. I was pleased to have Mr. Wey's umbrella for protection
until my baggage finally arrived on Saturday, but my shoes became so sodden that mold
had grown on the edges of the soles by the end of my first week in Boone. Showers were
unpredictable. Weather could appear stable but a cloud moving along the side of Rich
Mountain could bring a deluge within ten or fifteen minutes. Between showers that afternoon I walked uptown for my laundry but having already learned the unpredictability of
the weather, I carried Mr. Wey's huge umbrella with me. On the way back I stopped at the
post office where I picked up a letter from Sylvia and instructed the gracious little clerk,
whose name I learned later was Nell Coffey Linney, to send my mail in the future to
Faculty Apartments.
For the first four or five evenings I walked alone to a restaurant for dinner, for which
I usually paid 35 to 45 cents. Then Miss Donald, the pleasant sandy-haired physical education teacher, asked me one day at lunch whether I would care to go along with her and two
or three others to dinner. I gladly accepted. Only two of the other teachers were male, Dr.
Orby Southard, who taught vocational agriculture, and John Nelson, who taught social
studies. Both of them were married and lived in apartments with cooking facilities. I was
the only male who was free to socialize at dinner time with the young ladies. We usually
went as a group about 5:30 to the Gateway Restaurant. The other young ladies were pleasant and I enjoyed them but Ruby Donald and Doris Penix, who knew people at Morehead,
including Dean William H. Vaughan,19 who had been my high school principal at Louisa
and my friend ever since, gradually became my friends, with whom I could discuss matters
that I did not care to discuss with cute Miss Poole, whose homeroom boys soon became
19
See Gratis Wiiliams's (1983) biography, William H. Vaughan: A Better Man Than I Ever Wanted to Be.
Morehead, KY.: Morehead State University.
40
�Settling Into Boone
troublesome for her, and vivacious and talkative Miss Tucker, the new home economics
teacher, who was disappointed in her job, critical of her students and Mr. Wey, and unhappy in a small town like Boone, where nothing exciting ever happened.
With my meals costing me only 60 to 75 cents a day I began to feel comfortable
about whether I had money enough in my pocket to meet my expenses to the end of the
month. But Sylvia took a turn for the worse. Her throat had become so sore again that she
was finding it difficult to eat. She had developed a low-level fever and was suffering from
nightmares, from which she awoke streaming with perspiration. Doctors were less confident about her situation than they had been at the time I stopped to see her at the end of
August. She wanted me to come to see her that weekend, my second in Boone, if I could
possibly do it. Also, while I was there, I could have my lungs X-rayed. She had spoken to
Dr. Edwards about it, and he had said he would make an appointment for me if I could
come to Pinecrest.
After my first four or five days in Boone, I had begun to suffer from insomnia and
often woke from fitful sleep and distressing nightmares, wringing wet with perspiration. I
was tired much of the time despite my good diet, including two glasses of milk a day and
adequate proteins, cod-liver oil, and iron supplements. In addition to walking, I also did
pushups and stretching and bending exercises each morning. But I had not gained any
weight. The cough I had developed in Huntington had cleared up, but I had an early
morning cough and continued to clear my throat a great deal all day long. I, too, thought I
ought to have my lungs X-rayed.
But I could not afford expenses for a trip to Beckley from the nine or ten dollars I
had in my pocket, all that stood between me and starvation. I wrote Sylvia that I would see
whether it was possible for me to sell my check for the first month at a discount, as we had
sometimes done in Kentucky, or borrow against it. I would write again the next night and
let her know what arrangements I had been able to make.
The following morning I asked Mr. Wey at the end of the faculty meeting whether I
might speak to him privately about a personal matter. He invited me into his office, where
I explained to him that my wife had become quite ill and wanted me to come to see her
that weekend. He made veiled references to whether a child might be arriving. I made no
attempt to clarify the situation, thinking it to my advantage that no one suspect she had
tuberculosis of the throat. I needed some money, I explained, for I did not have enough to
go see her and meet my own essential needs for the remainder of the month. He explained
that the selling of checks at a discount was not permitted and that there was no fund from
which one could borrow. I explained that I thought I could make out with ten dollars.
Mr. Wey told me to go see Mr. Chapell Wilson, who had plenty of money. He might be
able to help me. Mr. Wilson's office was in the Elementary School Building. Mr. Wey
would call him and make an appointment for me. I told him I would be glad to see Mr.
Wilson, either during the lunch hour or my free period. He called. Mr. Wilson would see
me as soon as I could get over there that morning. I had about ten minutes before my
homeroom met.
41
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
I rushed to Mr. Wilsons office, my first visit there. Mr. Wilson, who was seated at
his desk, invited me to sit down. I started to relate to him what I had told Mr. Wey, but
before I could get into my request, Mr. Wilson took his pocketbook from his hip pocket,
extracted a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to me. I was about to say that I had wanted to
borrow only ten dollars. "You may hand it back to me after you get your first check," he
said. I assured him of my gratitude and left.
Having thirty dollars in my pocket removed a nagging fear that had possessed me
from the time of my arrival in Boone. Suddenly, I enjoyed a freedom that I had not known
before. I could afford now to use toothpaste every time I washed my teeth, to take things
out to the laundry every week, and to have a juice with a full breakfast occasionally instead
of restricting myself to an egg sandwich and coffee every morning. I might have enough
money to buy a magazine or two to take to Sylvia, to give her a supply of envelopes and
writing paper, to leave two or three dollars with her so she could send out for notions she
might need. Financial independence gave me a new charge of energy. My classes seemed
more alert and responsive that day. That night I told Sylvia in my letter of the generous
help Mr. Wilson had provided and that she could expect me to be at Pinecrest Saturday
morning. I slept well that night.
The college students would arrive the following week. Registration would be
Monday and Tuesday. I would meet for the first time my college class in methods of teaching English in the high school on Wednesday. I had gone through the materials in the file
Mrs. Rivers had left and examined the textbook she had used in the course. Mr. Wey was
not prepared to tell me much about how I should teach the class, the number of students I
might expect to register for it, or the objectives I should expect to hold in mind for the
course. I asked whether he thought it out of order for me to seek a conference with the
chairman of the department to discuss the course with him.
Mr. Wey thought that would be a very good thing to do. I could probably find Dr.
Abrams, the chairman, in his office any afternoon, for the college faculty members had
returned from vacations and most of them were on campus and getting ready for registration.
That afternoon I walked to the post office to post letters I had written the evening
before. On my way back to campus I came to the corner at the Baptist Church and then
came along College Street by the funeral home, Agle Apartments, a boarding house on the
corner at Howard Street, and past the Episcopal Church. Sitting on the stone wall in front
of a beautiful little stone cottage with a profusion of flowers blooming in the front yard was
a well dressed old man with a wide, dark mustache, his glasses resting far down on his nose,
and his blocked grey felt hat pulled so low on his forehead that a ring of baldness showed
below it behind. A prominent black mole or wart was visible on the lower part of one
cheek. Immediately, I thought of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and a demented old
baldheaded man with a wide mustache and a wart on the lower part of his cheek in my
home community in Kentucky who thought he was the president of the United States.
Standing in front of the man seated on the wall was another old man, quite grey, tall, and
42
�Settling Into Boone
wearing a dark, carefully brushed suit. His mouth hung open much of the time and he
seemed slightly palsied. He was listening to what the man on the wall was saying.
Standing between the clump of flowers in the yard and the stoop of the cottage was an animated and fine looking older woman but considerably younger than the men, I thought.
She was listening intently to the old man sitting on the wall.
As I approached them, the standing man, apparently ignoring for a moment what the
other one was saying, turned toward me. I spoke as I started to leave the sidewalk in order
not to come between the two. Only the standing man responded to my greeting.
"Are you one of the new high school teachers?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied. "My name is Williams. I came down from West Virginia to teach
English in the high school."
"My name is Williams, too," he said, as he reached to shake hands with me. "I am
the geography teacher at the College. Are you related to Williams families in North
Carolina?"
I assured him that I was not to my knowledge related to Williams families south of
Virginia.
"I would like for you to meet Dr. B.B. Dougherty, the president of the College."
Dr. Dougherty and I shook hands. No effort was made to introduce me to the
charming lady behind the flowers. Dr. Dougherty asked a question or two about my educational background and my teaching experience, his voice low pitched and at a very slow
pace but with a reflective hum behind it. He welcomed me to Boone and the College.
Thinking it unusual that the president of the College and the professor of geography
should seem so aged in their appearance, I hurried on to the administration building, the
one with white pillars in front and with "girls" over one ground-level entrance and "boys"
the other as if they were doors to toilets. I climbed the steps and entered through the double front doors of the building. Most of the office doors were open. Unable at first to
determine which of the doors was to the office of the dean of the College, I made a tour of
the main floor, peeping into all of the offices that were open. A man with a shock of iron
grey hair and keen eyes came from an office at the end of the hall and asked, "May I help
you?" Unwilling to admit that I needed help, I replied, "No, thank you." Later I learned
that the helpful man was Mr. Herman R. Eggers,20 the registrar. Twenty-five years later, he
reminded me of our first meeting. He had decided, he said, that I was one of those who
wants to discover things for himself.
I found the dean's office and presented myself to the young secretary with piercing
eyes and dark shoulder-length hair and asked whether I might see the dean. She went into
his office, returned in a moment, and told me that Dean Rankin21 would see me. I went in.
20
Herman Eggers (1898-1990), was bom in Mabel, North Carolina, and received his M.A. from George Peabody
College in 1927. He served as teacher, registrar, and dean of student affairs between 1929 and his retirement in
1970.
43
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Dean Rankin rose to greet and shake hands with me. He invited me to sit down. I
explained that I was a new English teacher at the high school and was scheduled to teach
the course in methods of teaching English in the high school. I wanted to meet Dr.
Abrams,22 the chairman of the English department, and discuss with him the contents of
the course and to hear any advice he might have to give me about how I should conduct
the course. He stepped to the door of the reception room and asked the secretary to invite
Dr. Abrams to come to the office to meet me. He returned to his desk and engaged me in
conversation about my educational preparation and previous teaching experience. I was
impressed by his warmth, graciousness, and extremely fine and clean looking white hair, but
noted that he had a slightly crossed eye and seemed like a very old man.
Soon Dr. Abrams came bouncing into the office through the door to the hall rather
than from the reception room. Dean Rankin and I both rose, and Dean Rankin introduced us. Dr. Abrams shook my hand with vigor and we sat down, Dr. Abrams sliding far
down into his chair and resting one spidery leg upon the other at the ankle, his long slender
foot wriggling up and down stiffly. I was shocked by the homeliness of this little man who
appeared to be between forty and forty-five years old. He looked at me for a moment, his
tiny blue eyes resting alternately on me and then searching for something on the ceiling, his
glasses with large lenses hugging his face tightly, his nose bashed in and twisted slightly to
one side, his mouth curling up gleefully under the shabbiest excuse for a mustache I had
ever seen, and his chin trembling so fast that it appeared to be trying to escape from his
face. Then, his foot held rigidly in position, he said, "I want to tell you, sir, that I am
mighty glad to have you join us. With you here, people can no longer say I am the ugliest
man in Boone."
I was completely disarmed. Certainly, I had not done well at all in concealing my
shock. Caught off guard, I had not a shred of savior faire and he had dressed me down
with one rapier-like thrust. Dean Rankin laughed with good humor, Dr. Abrams laughed
with good will, and I laughed in my abashment. I told Dr. Abrams why I had come to see
him, but that if he were very busy I would be glad to come back any afternoon that week
except Friday, when I planned to leave town as soon after school as I could get away. He
was glad I had come to discuss my course with him. In fact, he could not remember that
any other high school teacher to whom the methods class was assigned had ever come to
discuss it with him before beginning the class and he regretted that some of them had not.
He sprang from his seat and invited me to go to his office with him.
Taking leave of Dean Rankin, who continued to smile in welcome, I hurried along
beside Dr. Abrams to his office at the east end of the hall on the ground floor. Dr. Abrams
2I
J.D, Rankin (1875-1966) earned his M.A. and Doctor of Theology degrees from Oskaloosa College and was professor of English before becoming dean of the college, a position which he held from 1925 until 1955. He was
also president of the college for three months following B.B. Dougherty's retirement until Dr. William Plemmons
assumed that position in 1955.
"Amos Abrams received his M.A. from Duke University and his Ph.D. from Cornell and taught English at
Appalachian from 1932 to 1946. He served as the first head of the English department, a position which he held
until leaving Appalachian to become editor of North Carolina Education.
44
�Settling Into Boone
took his seat in front of a desk crowded into a corner and invited me to have a seat near
him. He, too, asked about my academic preparation and my experience as a teacher of
English. I explained to him that I had taken an excellent course, team taught by two splendid teachers, in methods of teaching in the high school and had done my project work in
the teaching of English and history but that I had never had a course in the teaching of
English in high school. He thought that I had taught high school English long enough for
my experience to fully compensate for my not having had a specific course in the teaching
of English. He had not himself had such a course either, but he had taught English in high
school before coming to the College and had taught the English methods courses regularly
for several years at Appalachian.
We discussed at length what should be included in an English methods class. He rose
from his desk and found three texts for the course that he had found helpful when he
taught it and gave them to me. They would give alternate points of view on teaching
English that I might sometimes want to consider, he thought.
When I asked about the quality of students I might expect to register for the course,
Dr. Abrams discussed proudly the academic preparation of the students and went into
detail in describing the courses in English all were required to take. He thought I might
expect as many as 30 or 35 to show up for the course, about 25 young ladies, and he could
not with confidence say how many young men, for men were being drafted into the armed
services rapidly. I might have only a handful of men, though, those who had been classified
4F or were deferred for some reason, and it was possible there would be no young men in
the class at all.
Not wanting to impose on so affable and generous a man, I arose to go after we had
talked about the methods course. I paused in front of a curious manuscript in old-fashioned handwriting in a frame on the wall. It was a "ballet" of an old song one of his students had brought him, Dr. Abrams said. He collected folk ballads as a hobby, he
explained. I told him that I, too, had collected ballads and songs in the hills of eastern
Kentucky and had written my M.A. thesis on them. Standing in his office, we became animated in our discussion of the Appalachian variants of the English and Scottish popular
ballads. We exchanged accounts of our experience as collectors and soon Dr. Abrams had
me singing fragments of both traditional ballads and indigenous ballads and songs I had
collected. He took me to a closet in the corner of his classroom and showed me his
Wilcox-Gay disc recorder and a stack of field recordings he had made.
Dr. Abrams kept walking along beside me, all excited about ballads, as I moved
toward the ground level exit from that end of the building, the one that had "girls" above it.
But it had begun to rain. The shower was too brisk for me to venture out into it with the
books under my arm. We stood in the door and talked about ballads. The shower had
stopped and the sun was shining again when I finally made my departure at the end of a
visit that must have lasted an hour and a half.
That night I wrote Sylvia a long letter in which I told about having met the aged
president of the College, who sat, like Humpty-Dumpty, on a stone wall while I talked with
45
�The Crafts Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boons
him; the dean of the College, who seemed as old as the president; and homely but charming and friendly Dr. Abrams, the chairman of the English department and an avid collector
of ballads and folk songs. I had liked all three of them and was looking forward to meeting
the English methods class for the first time the following week.
46
�c
A Visit to Sylvia
Friday afternoon at four o'clock I boarded a bus
in Boone for Sparta, where I would catch a bus for
Bluefield, West Virginia, about seven o'clock. The bus
was not crowded. I had a seat alone by a window. It
was a cloudy afternoon, but we did not go through
any rainstorm, though a light shower greeted us just as
we arrived in Sparta. The rolling mountains, many of
them covered with lush pastures to the top, were
peaceful and lovely. The mountains one saw traveling
eastward from Boone were less rugged than those
between Boone and Elizabethton, Tennessee, but many
of them were high, perhaps as high as those along the
Tennessee border, I thought. West Jefferson, the terminus of a railroad that crossed the mountains from
Abingdon, Virginia, was about the size of Boone, but
seemed to be more of a business town than Boone did.
Jefferson, the county-seat town, was a small and quaint
little village dominated by a neglected courthouse with
two or three white "inns" or boarding houses close by.
Many of the somewhat pretentious farmhouses along
the road needed paint and some of the barns were
dilapidated, but the region had withstood the agonies
of the Great Depression more gracefully, it seemed to
me, than had the farming sections of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois. The people living in Ashe County and
Alleghany County, though they had little money with
which to keep their homes and barns in repair,
appeared to be living comfortably, for gardens were
producing, corn was vigorous and still green, even in
the middle of September, and livestock grazed contentedly in the mountainside pastures.
In Sparta I ate a hamburger at a little restaurant
near the bus stop and then stood with two or three
others against a building to wait for the bus from
Winston-Salem. It grew dark while we waited, and a
light patter of rain fell. One of those waiting was a
gregarious country man, dressed in his best and wear47
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
ing a felt hat of good quality, the one article of clothing that proclaimed the self-esteem of
the mountaineer who took a trip away from home. He let us know that he was Joe Clark
and engaged our attention while we waited for the bus, which arrived on time.
Only two or three got off the bus at Sparta. I carried my light bag aboard and placed
it on the luggage rack above the seats in which Joe Clark and I sat. The bus was crowded,
but no one had to stand up. Most of the passengers were black people who sat quietly
together from the rear forward. We moved on after only a brief stop and were crossing into
Virginia within just a few minutes, it seemed. It was too dark to see any of the Virginia
countryside. I remember only two things between Sparta and Bluefield that impressed me.
The bridge across the New River, on the headwaters of which Boone is located, was longer
than I had expected it to be and the river, which I could see only vaguely, seemed wide and
shallow. The road across the high mountain at the edge of Bluefield twisted along a course
of sharp curves to the top, from which we could see the lights of Bluefield far below us and
then darted along hairpin loops into the city, the gears of the bus grinding and growling as
the driver struggled with them.
Garrulous Mr. Clark kept me entertained. He was going to Beckley to visit a daughter who lived there. He was, he said, one of a line of many Joe Clarks, the best known of
whom had been the subject of a well known song called "Old Joe Clark" that nearly everybody must have heard some time. He recited for me some verses of the song that I had not
heard.
In Bluefield many of the black passengers left the bus. Others, mostly black, boarded
the bus there. I was impressed by the finery of the young black men who were waiting to
get on the bus. Attired in homburg hats, long dark jackets, loose gray trousers gathered in
narrow cuffs at the bottom, and with long silvery chains dangling from their waistbands,
they looked as if they were in a style parade. The zoot suit had arrived. Young people, by
then able to earn money in war industries, were responding to the spirit of the times by
becoming "sharp" dressers.
Mr. Clark ran down soon after we left Bluefield. He and I both dozed in our seats as
the bus hurried along through the darkness toward Beckley, where it arrived at eleven
o'clock.
Beckley was a rest stop for the bus. Nearly everybody got off. Some of those who
were leaving the bus at Beckley had relatives waiting for them, but many took off on foot to
their destinations. In days of gasoline rationing only a few cars were parked at the station,
which was crowded with people milling about. Zoot-suited blacks, gathered into groups of
three or four, talked quietly, some with homburgs pulled low on their foreheads. Most of
them, apparently going on to Charleston, were stretching their legs while the driver enjoyed
a sandwich and a cup of coffee, Joe Clark chose a seat and waited for someone to meet
him. I stood about to watch the bus load for the trip on to Charleston.
After the bus left, only a few people remained in the station. I sat on the end of a
bench and considered whether I should try to find a hotel room or sit in the station all
48
�A Visit to Sylvia
night and engage a room at Mrs. Mann's boarding house for Saturday night. It was too late
to go to her house that night, I thought. Although I had money to pay for a hotel room, it
would be expensive, perhaps as much as $3.50. A year earlier I was working eight hours a
day for little more than $3.50. I was reluctant to spend that much for a hotel room.
Sitting up all night to save $3.50 was certainly easier than working all day to make $3.50, I
concluded.
Becoming very tired after an hour or two, I crawled through the arms of two seats,
rested my feet on my bag, and went to sleep. But I did not sleep long. Someone pushed
against my feet suddenly and I woke up. A policeman was looking down at me. "People
are not permitted to lie down in the seats," he explained. "You will have to sit up or find
you a hotel room."
I pulled myself from under the arms of the seats and stood up, embarrassed to note
that the station attendant was smiling ambiguously at me as if he were not certain whether
he should consider me a bum or a client of the bus company. Joe Clark, still sitting there,
stared curiously but did not smile. Others sat rigidly and watched. It was as if the policeman and I were engaging in a dialogue before a fixed tableau. The intense quiet allowed
everybody to hear what we said. I was asked to show my identification card, what I did for
a living, whether I had a bus ticket, why I was in Beckley. The policeman smiled following
my response to each of his questions. I explained that I usually stayed at Mrs. Mann's
down the street there, pointing in the direction of her place, but that I thought it was too
late when the bus arrived to report there. He volunteered helpfully, "You might find a
room at the Hotel Milner up the street. If they have a room, they will probably charge you
only two dollars."
I picked up my bag and started out. The policeman walked with me to the curb and
pointed out the hotel sign to me. I half turned to thank him and observed that the people
sitting in the station were all laughing at something Joe Clark was telling them. I was glad
that I had not told Joe Clark that I worked at Appalachian and that I had found it necessary to say to the policeman only that I was a teacher from North Carolina. I hoped I
would never see Joe Clark again. As I walked toward the Hotel Milner I concluded that the
station attendant had called the policeman, who quite possibly received payoffs from the
Hotel Milner, and who had put on a show, at my expense, for the amusement of the attendant and as an advertising gimmick for the Hotel Milner.
A single room was available at the Milner for two dollars. There was a wash basin in
the room, the clerk said, but the bathroom was down the hall. I registered for the room
and paid in advance. I asked about a restaurant in which I could have breakfast. The hotel
had no dining room, the clerk said, but there were restaurants close by. He gave me a key
to the room and sent me up alone, for the Milner had no bellboys. I was surprised to find
a very clean but small room with a single bed in it. The sheets and pillow case, towels and
wash cloths were clean, too, but the sheets had been patched and the towels were frayed.
There was a small desk in a corner beside the bed and a lamp with a bulb in it that would
burn. There was a cheap cotton mattress on the bed, but it seemed to be almost new. I
49
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
was so pleased with the room that I decided I would engage it for Saturday night, too.
Saturday was a bright day. Visibility was clear and trees were beginning to show
touches of autumn. I ate a full breakfast at a restaurant only a few doors from the entrance
to the hotel. After enjoying a second cup of better coffee than I had been getting in Boone,
I went back to the hotel and engaged my room for Saturday night, too. I then returned to
my room and groomed myself for a visit with Sylvia. I stopped at a stationery shop and
bought paper and envelopes and two magazines to take with me to the sanitarium and
walked back to the bus station, where I knew I could catch a local bus to Pinecrest. When
I peeped into the waiting room of the bus station, I was relieved to see that a different
attendant was on duty, but Joe Clark, his head hanging to one side and his hat pulled down
over his eyes, was still sitting there, mostly on his shoulders, with his feet sticking far out in
the aisle. Perhaps his daughter had not known that he was coming to visit her.
As I rode the local bus out to Pinecrest, I saw few cars on the road. The air was clear,
crisp, and cool. The sanitarium was located in a healthy spot, I thought.
Sylvia was expecting me. She was bright eyed and excited, but talked only in a whisper. I gave her the paper and envelopes and the magazines. She looked at them briefly and
asked that I put them on a chest of drawers in the corner of the room. Her hands were
warm and perspiring and her brow felt fevered. She had not slept well. She had not been
able to eat all of her breakfast, she said, and had reached the place that she did not like the
food that was brought to her. She thought there was not enough good meat in her diet.
She wanted hamburgers and asked that I bring her one when I went out for my lunch.
She was disappointed that I had not gained any weight after going to Boone. I was
hollow eyed and pale. She inquired about my diet and asked whether I was taking my cod
liver oil and mineral supplements. She advised that I eat two eggs for breakfast and drink
at least a quart of whole milk each day. If I could have milk delivered every morning at my
apartment, when I got into it, I could keep it cool in the refrigerator and drink a glass of
milk before going to bed each night. She was worried about me. Dr. Edwards had made
arrangements for me to have a chest X-ray that morning. We needed to keep me well, for if
I should become sick and have to stop working, there would be no way out for us. We had
no financial reserves, little of value that we could sell, no insurance to protect us in illness,
and we were in debt. Her analysis of our situation was chilling. She shook with emotion
and tears glistened in her eyes, larger than I had remembered them, for she had lost much
weight since I had seen her only two weeks earlier. My persistent fatigue, insomnia, troubled dreams, night sweats, and low-level fever in the afternoon were certainly symptoms of
illness, I thought, but I could only say in my helplessness that I would work as long as I was
able and do the best I could to recover from illness while I worked.
She talked about how much she enjoyed the personnel at the sanitarium and of
friendships she had made with ambulatory patients who were permitted to visit her. On
warm days she had been taken in a wheelchair to sit with others in the sun and had made
friends. I could tell that nurses and attendants who came by the room while I was there
found Sylvia delightful and clever. They enjoyed being with her and were reluctant to leave her.
50
�A Visit to Sylvia
We then discussed in detail my work at Appalachian. She responded with glee when
I told her again about the helpful and efficient principal of the school; Mr. Wilson's generous help when I needed extra money to come to see her; the quaint and aged President
Dougherty, a bachelor who lived in a garage apartment because he did not think it appropriate that he live in the same house in which his brother s widow lived; courteous and gentle Dean Rankin, who appeared to be about as old as Dr. Dougherty; and bouncing Dr.
Abrams who shared with me an interest in Appalachian ballads and songs. She asked many
questions in her love for North Carolina and, with the hope that she might recover, longed
for the time when she could be with me in Boone.
After I had been there an hour or two, Dr. Edwards came by the room. Sylvia
responded to him with admiration and trust. He enjoyed being with her, I thought. We
engaged in playful conversation for a half hour or longer before he invited me to go with
him to the X-ray room where I had my chest X-rayed. Dr. Edwards stayed around until the
films were developed. He then went over them with me and pointed out an area of infection in the apex of my right lung. I had tuberculosis. Prepared for the bad news, I was not
shocked, but I saw immediately that hardships lay ahead for me.
Dr. Edwards said I should enter the sanitarium at once. In fact, he said, a space was
available then. I explained that I could not possibly enter the sanitarium, that I had no
financial reserves, insurance, or resources. It would be necessary for me to continue working as long as I was able. In that case, he said, the single most important thing for me to
do was to accept my situation without worrying. Worry saps one's energy and causes more
trouble than anything else. Neither should I worry about my work. I must learn how to
turn off my troubles and relax, how to stop my work when I'm tired and take it up again
after I have rested. I should eat two or three eggs a day, a plenty of good meat and a balanced vegetable diet, drink at least a quart of whole milk a day, take cod liver oil and mineral supplements before breakfast and dinner, rest for at least a half hour after lunch and
dinner, and sleep at least eight hours every night. I could try this for three months and
then return for another X-ray to check on my progress. It might be better, he said, if we
reported to Sylvia that I was under observation and should have my chest X-rayed every
three months until I had regained weight and felt more energetic.
Dr. Edwards did not return with me to Sylvia's room. I tried to look as nonchalant as
I could when I entered the room. Sylvia wanted to know all about what the X-ray had
revealed. I told of having had the heavily scarred areas in my lungs pointed out to me and
that they looked much as they had looked when I had been invited to see X-ray films of my
lungs at the health center at the University of Kentucky before our marriage. Dr. Edwards
had prescribed a diet for me, advised that I rest for a half hour after lunch and after dinner
both and sleep eight hours at night, continue taking cod liver oil and mineral supplements,
not worry about anything, and report for X-rays regularly every three months for a year or
two until our period of stress was over and I had begun to feel better.
Sylvia wanted to know whether my schedule would permit me to have a rest period
after lunch. My free period, fortunately, was just after lunch. I was required to be in my
51
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
office, but I could lie on my back on a table in the office and rest and doze. Anyone coming to see me would enter through the door to my classroom. Since the only door from the
hall to my classroom was at the rear of the room and since there were wooden floors in the
building, I could hear footsteps in time to get off the table and into a chair beside my work
table before the caller reached my office. I would not always be able to rest after lunch, but
I could most of the time, I thought.
We discussed the apartment I was to have and into which I was to move the following week. It was on the third floor and at the end of a hall. It would be a quiet and restful
place. Milk was delivered early each morning at the doors of teachers who wanted it. I
would have an electric stove and a small refrigerator. I could cook a good breakfast and
have both cereal and citrus fruit with it, and I could prepare my own dinner in time to eat
and take a short nap before reporting to the school for play rehearsals, with which I would
be spending much time all year long. It would be possible, I thought, for me to follow Dr.
Edwards's advice, at least most of the time, and to keep my condition a secret, for I was sure
everybody would be alarmed if it were known that I might have tuberculosis. I did not
want to run the risk of being asked to resign by arousing suspicions or raising questions.
We discussed diet and cooking. Sylvia thought I should have soft-boiled eggs and little or no bacon or sausage for breakfast, rich whole milk with my cereal, and an orange or a
grapefruit rather than the canned juice then available. I should also drink a glass of milk
along with breakfast, another when I got home in the afternoon, two glasses with my dinner, and another before going to bed. It was important that I have a generous serving of
beef, or fish, or chicken for dinner and that I have boiled or baked potatoes with butter
rather than fried potatoes. I must be sure to have a good fresh vegetable salad with dinner.
We discussed costs, too, and decided that I might be able to eat very well for as little as fifty
cents a day but that I ought to go out for dinner once or twice on weekends.
"Keeping house" would be a problem for me, she thought, but I would find it simple
if I followed the three basic rules we had used while she was able to keep house. Provide for
time, she reminded me, to make up my bed as soon as I got up, wash my dishes and clean
and restore to their places pots and pans used in cooking, put up left over food, and hang
up my clothing before I left my apartment for work. I was reminded that one is not ready
to leave a house or apartment until it has been cleaned up enough for him not to be embarrassed to bring a guest home. A little dusting and cleaning is needed every day and a thorough cleaning at least once a week. One saves time by washing dishes after each meal and
spares himself the dread of facing a stack of dirty dishes before he can prepare the next
meal.
During the morning several persons came by for brief visits, including a young
woman from Louisa who had moved to West Virginia after she married. When lunchtime
came, I left to find lunch for myself at a stand near the sanitarium. After lunch, I walked
for a while along the road beyond the sanitarium and thought about our situation. For the
first time I had to admit to myself that Sylvia would not recover. Her condition was worsening and new medications were not effective. She was taking medication to relieve the
52
�A Visit to Sylvia
pain in her throat, not to cure her illness. Dr. Edwards had thought it most unlikely that
she would get well but she might linger for a year or two before dying. I had not yet had
time to consider alone the implications of my actually having tuberculosis. Adjusting to
that would be a slow and agonizing process that I would have to work through alone. I
would not be able to share with anyone the heavy burden of my secret, but I believed that I
could come through if I found it possible to follow Dr. Edwards's advice. The trouble had
been discovered early. The spot, perhaps no bigger than a dime, had not been there long.
If by rest and adequate diet I were able to keep it from spreading during the following three
months, I could most likely recover within six months to a year. I had no choice. I had to
concentrate on getting well.
Not wanting to disturb Sylvia during nap time, I sat in a lounge in the sanitarium for
an hour. Others coming to see relatives and friends arrived and waited in the lounges for
visiting time, some carrying flowers and gift packages. Talk was low. Many sat in solemn
silence. I closed my eyes but was not able to nap. When it was nearly time for visiting
hours, I returned to the roadside stand and bought a hamburger for Sylvia.
Sylvia was awake and waiting when I arrived. An attendant had helped her brush
and arrange her hair. She wanted to eat at once the hamburger I had brought, but had first
to inhale into her throat a special powder she took ten or fifteen minutes before eating that
numbed her throat so she would not suffer pain when she swallowed. She asked that I
hand to her a pipette and a bottle of white crystals. When she breathed the crystals
through the pipette into her throat, her eyes bulged and she looked frightened. After allowing time for the medication to take effect, she began eating the hamburger as rapidly as she
could. She was hungry for it and wanted to eat it all before feeling returned to her throat.
She perspired as she ate. After she ate, she drank a glass of water, which she sipped slowly.
She was exhausted.
That afternoon we talked about things her mother had written. She had received letters also from friends in Louisa and Huntington. We did not refer to her illness or to my
work at Appalachian. She was interested in the progress of friends she had made in the sanitarium and we discussed war news. An attractive young woman who had made much
progress toward recovery from lung cancer and was expecting to be released from the sanitarium within a few weeks called. She was radiant and smiling. Sylvia laughed a great deal
in response to her witticisms and optimism. After she left, Sylvia told of her affair with
young Dr. Edwards and of their shock when a nurse had popped into her room and found
her and Dr. Edwards making love behind the door. Both she and the doctor had discussed
their affair with Sylvia. They had feared that the nurse might cause problems for them, but
so far the nurse had apparently said nothing about what she had seen. Sylvia had teased
them by writing doggerel about their affair, which she read when they came by to see her.
The afternoon passed rapidly. The light conversation, good humor, and laughter had
been good for us, but each was aware, too, of the depth of the agony of spirit that lay
beneath the laughter. As the time for the end of visiting hours approached Sylvia asked me
to go out and buy another hamburger for her. She would inhale crystals and get ready to
53
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
eat it while I was gone. I hurried out for the hamburger. Sylvia did not feel that her throat
was numbed enough for her to eat it by the time I got back. Visiting hours were just about
over. We held hands for a moment and looked deeply into each other s eyes. I told her I
would be back for an hour's visit the following morning and hurried away. When I looked
from a window in the hallway across a court outside her window, I saw Sylvia propped on
her pillows and eating ravenously the hamburger I had brought.
The bus back to Beckley was crowded. The bus station was filled with tired people
who were waiting. Crowds of young people, most of them black, stood along the sidewalk
in front of the station. When I got off the bus I hurried to my room in the Hotel Milner,
cracked my window two or three inches, lay on my back on the little bed, and stared at the
ceiling a long time as I thought about my situation. I was numbed with grief for Sylvia and
stunned by the knowledge that I had tuberculosis, too. Nothing was clear to me, but I
knew I could recover if I could learn how not to worry and to lay my work aside and forget
about it when I became tired. I had never been successful in doing either. I recalled the
advice the black shoeshine man, the odor of his night of partying still clinging to him, had
given me in Charleston while I was on my way to Boone. White folks take life too seriously and worry too much. I must learn to relax. Everybody suffers, mostly in secret probably.
My suffering, as painful as it was, was not really unique. My job was to learn how to deal
with it, how to keep it from becoming the main thing in my life.
After dinner at the restaurant in which I had eaten breakfast, I walked for a while,
came back by the bus station where I sat for a half hour and watched people come and go,
most of them dressed up for Saturday night and looking happy. When I began to doze, I
got up, selected a newspaper from the rack, and returned to the hotel. Reading in the little
room was not pleasant. The lamp on the bedside table had a 25-watt bulb in it, and the
ceiling light must have had a 60-watt bulb in it. Soon my eyes began to burn and I became
drowsy. Realizing that I was very tired, I prepared myself for bed, cracked the window,
turned off the lights, and lay down. The murmur of street noises and the far off chorus of
katydids singing a plaint to departing summer eased me into sleep.
About two o'clock I woke up with a start. I had not had a nightmare, but I was perspiring and felt clammy. I sat in darkness on the side of the bed and reflected. Sylvia had
been getting better until only a week or two before she asked that I come that weekend to
see her. We had thought she might be able to join me in the little apartment in Boone
before autumn was over. That would not be possible. I wanted to be with her in her illness, to come and sit beside her for a while every day, to give her support as her illness grew
worse. I could not do that. I felt uneasy and guilty. I could only come to see her occasionally, for it would be necessary for me to conserve my energy and to have some money at the
end of each month to pay my creditors. If at all possible, I wanted to pay off completely
the loan to the finance company in Huntington when I received my first check. I needed
some new clothing. My newest suit, which my sister had given me in the fall of 1940, was
beginning to look stale. My shirts were worn and frayed. But I would make them do until
I was in better financial circumstances.
54
�A Visit to Sylvia
After perhaps two hours, I realized that solutions to problems worked out during
sleepless hours in the middle of the night never seem right when one wakes up in the
morning. I must cultivate the habit of going back to sleep. Not yielding to the temptation
to get up and read or write or to sit and think dark thoughts would help. It would be better to remain in bed, turn off dark thoughts, refrain from reflectiveness and analysis, change
my position in bed, and lie quietly until sleep comes again.
Sunday morning I found the restaurants closed. I walked to the bus station, where I
was able to buy an egg sandwich and coffee at the stand that catered to travelers. After
checking again bus schedules to the south, I bought a Sunday paper and returned to the
hotel, where I read for perhaps an hour before packing my bag. I checked out of the hotel,
carried my bag to the bus station and placed it in a locker, and waited for a bus to
Pinecrest.
Visitors were arriving, most of them by car. They carried with them gifts for relatives
they had come to see; flowers, boxes of food, packages, books and magazines. Sylvia was
expecting me. She had been able to eat most of her breakfast and felt better than she had
felt the day before. She had slept well, but her throat was sore. Eating the hamburgers
might have irritated it, but she had needed the good meat. She had become tired of the
bologna, hot dogs, meat loaf, and fish cakes served in the sanitarium. She was in a teasing
mood. Our conversation was light and playful. It was good to be with her. I did not refer
to my insomnia or my uneasiness about financial matters. I felt that I must not say anything about problems of my own. A nurse whom I had not seen before came and visited
for a few minutes. After she left, Sylvia said she was the one who had found Dr. Edwards
and the attractive patient making love behind the door. Toward the end of our hour
together, I held Sylvias hand and stroked her hair as I stood in silence by her bed. I kissed
her on the forehead. Her eyes were moist and her hand trembled as I said good-bye and
promised to write at least a few lines that night.
The bus from Beckley to Bluefield was crowded, but I was able to get a seat next to a
window. A middle-aged woman wearing a hat with a broad brim sat beside me. We did
not speak. The woman left the bus a few miles out of Beckley. No one occupied the seat
she had vacated. Glad to be alone, I dozed in the warm bus all the way to Bluefield. I
found myself wanting to think about Sylvia and my own problems but tried to put both
out of my mind. The light dreams of my dozing were fleeting extensions of droning conversations near me, inarticulate and monotonous, into dream conversations of people I had
known, but they were pleasant little excursions into escape from my own concerns.
In Bluefield I hurried with my bag in my hand to the bus then loading for Abingdon.
Seats by the windows were all occupied, but I was able to get an aisle seat next to a young
woman whose permission I asked to sit beside her. We engaged in conversation. She was a
teacher. Not long before she got off the bus at Lebanon, she asked me what I did. When I
told her I was a teacher, too, she said she had decided I was a salesman. She then asked what
I taught. When I told her English, she said, "I might have known it." She had talked so easily and well that I was glad she had not known from the beginning that I was an English teacher.
55
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
My seat on the bus from Abingdon to Boone by way of Damascus and Mountain
City, Tennessee, was next to a window but over a wheel. The road was narrow and winding. While we were gaining elevation in the gorge near Trade, I became nauseated. I struggled with an urge to vomit, swallowing as rapidly as I could the flood of hot saliva that kept
boiling into my mouth. Just as I was deciding that I should let the driver know I was in
trouble, he pulled the bus over and stopped. He was looking at me in the mirror. I got up
and made my way to the front. He opened the door for me. I was vomiting by the time
my feet struck the earth. I retched and heaved but did not vomit on myself, not even on
my shoes. Shamefacedly, I returned to my seat. Conversations on the bus were suspended
for a minute or two, but nobody laughed at me. I had never had car sickness before. I
wondered whether my having a spot on my lung had anything to do with the nausea and
vomiting, which continued to bother me for two or three years, especially at higher elevations. We arrived in Boone in darkness.
56
�c
Glad to be Living and
Working in Boone
I walked to Faculty Apartments, for I did not
want to spend a quarter for a taxicab. I still had nearly
twenty dollars in my pocket, but I would need it, I
thought, for food, a few kitchen utensils, laundry, and
dry cleaning. At the apartments I learned that
Professor and Mrs. Antonakos would be leaving for
Chapel Hill in a day or two and wanted to talk with
me about what they would store in the apartment I
was to occupy. Miss Foster was to return later in the
week and would want her room. I refreshed myself
and called on the Antonakoses.
Professor and Mrs. Antonakos were affable and
courteous. Incisive in his speech but good natured, he
talked easily. Mrs. Antonakos, with a coil of hair
around her head, was somewhat severe in appearance,
but her voice had a lyrical quality and she was gentle,
though she spoke guardedly as if she had carefully
thought through in advance what she said. They
would be gone for a year, they said, for him to study at
Chapel Hill. They were leaving in the apartment personal items which they would be glad for me to use,
but they wanted me to know what belonged to them
personally. They had identified each. The beautiful
cherry chest in the living room was theirs. They had
stored in it clothing and personal items they thought
they would not need in Chapel Hill. The long chest,
shaped somewhat like a coffin, sat by a window and
was an attractive piece. Professor Antonakos had
made a storage closet of heavy paper and soft pine in
the narrow hall to the bathroom. They were leaving
some boxes of things in it, but I was welcome to use
unoccupied space. They were also leaving drapes in
the living room and curtains in the bedroom. Both
had been cleaned recently and might not need cleaning again for a year. They were pleased, they said, that
I would be occupying the apartment in their absence.
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
They felt comfortable about leaving their own things in my care. They would leave the key
to the apartment with Mrs. Coffey, the hostess.
There was no hot water in the apartment building yet. I stood in the bathtub and
sponged with cold water. Dressed for bed, I wrote Sylvia a longer letter than I had thought
I might, recounting to her the conversation with the teacher who had thought I might be a
traveling salesman, my nausea on the bus, and my visit with the Antonakoses. I was careful
not to reflect my own discouragement or loss of hope about her situation.
Two days later I moved my things into the apartment and went up town and bought
groceries and basic utensils for the kitchen. Pleased to be my own housekeeper, I cooked
dinner for myself, discovering in the process that I had much to learn about how to cook
on an electric stove. But I ought to be able, I thought, to eat very well for fifty or sixty
cents a day.
Some time before the first month had ended, Mr. Wey called me in to tell me that
there was a problem with my certification. I had not known before that as a teacher in a
college demonstration school I would be required to have a certificate. He explained that
my basic salary of $150 a month would be paid by the County Board of Education, which
required certification, and that the College would furnish me the apartment and utilities
valued at $40 a month but that I would receive no check from the College. It was then
that I learned North Carolina had eight-month high schools. My annual cash salary would
be $1200, but I could have my apartment for twelve months, which would bring the total
worth of my year's work to $1680 plus salary for any work in the summer school I might
do.
The Certification Division in Raleigh had determined that I needed three quarter
hours of credit in methods of teaching English in the high school in order to meet requirements for the graduate certificate. My first concern was whether my salary might be
reduced because I did not qualify for the graduate certificate. Mr. Wey explained that I
would continue to be paid $150 a month for a time but that my salary would be reduced
and deductions would be made for overpayment in earlier months later in the year if I were
unable to meet requirements for the higher certificate. I explained that the course in methods of teaching in high school, which I had taken with Dr. William H. Vaughan, then
President of Morehead State Teachers College in Kentucky, had met requirements in
Kentucky for a certificate to teach in high school and that my projects for the course had
been in English and history.
Mr. Wey advised that I write Dr. Vaughan a letter requesting that he describe in a letter to Dr. James Hillman in Raleigh the contents of the course I had taken and emphasize
the component for English teachers. Dr. Hillman might accept the course as satisfactory if
Dr. Vaughan were willing to state in his letter that it was equivalent to a methods course for
teaching English. If I thought Dr. Vaughan could not do that, then I should arrange to
take the course by individual study from Dr. Abrams. I disliked the idea of taking the
course from Dr. Abrams. To do so would, I thought, suggest that I was not already qualified to teach the course in methods of teaching English in the high school, which I had
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already begun and was enjoying. Mr. Wey advised that I determine whether a letter from
Dr. Vaughan would solve my problem. If not, I could then arrange to take the course from
Dr. Abrams.
That night I wrote to President Vaughan, recalling for him in my letter that I had
done project work in the teaching of English and emphasizing that it would be necessary
that he account the course equivalent to a methods course in English. I half feared that his
integrity and strict honesty might be such that he would not feel he could recommend his
course as equivalent to a methods course in English. I was burdened with anxiety and
dread until I heard from him a few days later. He included a copy of his letter to Dr.
Hillman, in which he not only stated that the course I had taken from him was equivalent
to a course in methods of teaching English in high school but that it met requirements in
Kentucky for certification in high school English. He went on to say that I had been a successful high school English teacher in Kentucky for a number of years. I showed the copy
of Dr. Vaughan's letter to Mr. Wey. That would be satisfactory, he said. Dr. Hillman, a former teacher at Appalachian, was a fair man and would issue a graduate certificate for me. I
felt as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders.
The class in English methods was exciting and challenging. All English majors, it
consisted of 25 bright and well-dressed young women ranging in age from 21 to 23 and a
slender-faced young man with a vision problem. I thought he was most likely classified as
4F because of his eyes. All of them seemed to be exceptionally well prepared in English. I
administered some standardized tests in English essentials to them, though, and found that
there was a considerable range in their scores and that the norm for the class was in the
eleventh grade. However, when I considered their scores in conjunction with their total
educational experience, I decided that they had done well on the tests, for they had gone to
eight-month public schools for eleven years for a total of 88 months and national norms for
the twelfth grade were for students who had attended nine-month schools for a total of 108
months.23 Discussions in class were lively. They spoke and wrote well and were charged
with ambition to become successful English teachers.
My sixth period class continued for a time to disturb me. Negativism pervaded the
class which seemed, as a group, to be set against me. Yet, the students were bright and
responsible, and competition among them was keen. I tried many innovations, most of
which engaged their attention for a day or two but soon became stale for them. I invited
Mr. Wey to come to my class, observe me for the entire hour, and make suggestions for
possible improvements both in my presentation of materials and my dealing with the students as individuals. Unannounced, he came one day and was in a seat in the back of the
room before the students arrived. To my amazement, the little girls came quietly into the
room, took their seats, and waited silently for the class to begin. All were eager to participate in discussion. Each responded when called upon. All set about with industry and
good will to work exercises connected with the assignment I had made carefully. It was as if
they thought Mr. Wey was checking on my effectiveness as a teacher and that they were
23
North Carolina public schools shifted from an eleven to a twelve year curriculum during that year.
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determined to show him that I was a good one. After the class left, Mr. Wey laughed his
slightly snorting little laugh and said, "You are doing all right. Wy, you have those kids
eating out of your hand. Thank you for inviting me to your classroom." Thereafter, I felt
at ease and comfortable with the class. It became easy for me to tease those who became
negative, to inject an undertone of light humor into discussion, to compliment those who
did exceptionally well, to show compassionate respect for and come to the defense of those
who made errors. It pleased me to see them grow together as an entity, to become a challenging, highly motivated, and most industrious class. Much later, members of that class
who enrolled in my undergraduate and then graduate courses at the College were often the
best students in the courses. I think it possible that I had never before had a class with
comparable high intelligence and achievement.
Living in my apartment enabled me to maintain the privacy I needed for relaxation
and rest. I was alone and remote from my fellow teachers there. Apartment 33 was at the
end of the hall on the third floor of the building. Catherine Smith,24 a new art teacher at
the College, and her aged mother were in Apartment 31. Julian Yoder and Helen lived
across the hall from me. Dr. Orby Southard and Irene lived in Apartment 30 next to the
Yoders. Annafreddie Carsteens, a new psychology teacher at the College, and her aged
mother, lived in the apartment under mine on the second floor. All were quiet people who
kept their radios tuned low and retired early. In addition, it was possible for me to lie
down on the table in my office for a half-hour after lunch. I worked in my office for at
least an hour after students left in the afternoon, took a walk after that, and began cooking
my dinner as soon as I got home. I prepared plain, simple food, but provided for variety in
my diet. For breakfast I ate a dry cereal, citrus fruit, two eggs, bacon or sausage, and toast
with margarine, with both coffee and milk to drink. For dinner I had a salad, a meat, a
legume, potatoes or corn, cornbread or rolls, and a dessert, with two glasses of milk. I
gained very little weight, continuing, despite the hefty meals, to weigh about 135 pounds
for the next three or four years. After taking care of the dishes and the pots and pans, I lay
down for an hour. Much of the time I returned to the school for play rehearsal for an hour
or two after dinner.
It became increasingly easy for me to put aside thoughts about my own situation but
more difficult for me to put Sylvias condition out of my mind. After play rehearsals I
wrote long stream-of-consciousness letters to Sylvia. The whining of the wind around the
apartments as we moved into autumn and the roar of the wind and the beating of storms in
the trees below the City Cemetery on the hill behind the building were orchestrations of
sadness, melancholy, and loneliness. It was difficult for me to sleep well. I suffered from
bad dreams and sprang up in bed in terror and streaming with perspiration from frightening nightmares. Then I would lie awake for interminably long periods, but I did not yield
to the temptation to get up and read or write, though I would sometimes get up and prepare a glass of warm milk. Then I wanted to sleep when I should be getting up. The crowing of Mrs. Watson's rooster and the mooing of her cow in the barn next to the graveyard
"Catherine Smith taught art at Appalachian from 1941 until her retirement in 1966, serving as chairperson of the
art department for twenty-five years. The art gallery on the Appalachian campus is named in her honor.
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invited me to sleep a little longer. Sometimes I was late for the faculty meeting and was
always embarrassed to arrive after the meeting had begun. Mr. Wey would reprove me for
my tardiness, sometimes in the presence of the faculty members, but I could only sit in
silence when he did so, for I did not feel free to tell him about my illness. Once or twice,
when I explained that I suffered from insomnia, he told me I was not getting enough exercise. The human body is made for work, he insisted. If I should take enough exercise, I
would rest well.
In the early morning faculty meetings I continued to restrain myself, marveling most
of the time at Mr. Wey's administrative abilities and his thoroughness in analyzing situations and solving problems. He was certainly the most fair-minded person with whom I
had ever worked. He shared with his faculty what he was thinking and tried his best to
build on what he found that was good and positive in those who needed help. His meetings were carefully planned. He always brought with him an agenda on a clipboard, from
which he worked. He prepared as carefully for each faculty meeting as he might have done
to meet a class. Fair, willing to consider all points of view, courteous, and considerate, he
was able to establish and maintain a spirit of team work in his faculty.
After I had been in Boone about a month, Mr. Wey called me into his office one
afternoon and told me that Mr. Wilson had sent over to him my papers from the
Placement Bureau, which he had been holding. Mr. Wey had not seen them before. He
noticed that I had been a high school principal for seven years in Kentucky. I had said
nothing about this. He invited me to talk about my experiences. I began by explaining
that I had thought it unwise to volunteer in discussions in faculty meetings accounts of how
I had handled administrative matters while I was a principal. I could think of nothing, I
said, that might antagonize my fellow teachers more than for me to preface contributions I
might want to make with, "When I was a principal..." or tell little anecdotes in which I
was the hero. But I told him that for three years I had been the principal of what in
Kentucky was considered a large high school, one with a faculty of 22 and an enrollment of
over 500. The school was a member of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
My experience as the principal of this school might be helpful when we got around to
preparing for membership in the organization. Mr. Wey was pleased. He invited me to his
home for dinner so we could talk about what we might need to do in organizing ourselves
for a visiting team.
After that, Mr. Wey told the faculty that I had been the principal of a large high
school that belonged to the Southern Association and that he intended to involve me in
plans for preparing Appalachian Demonstration High School for admission to the organization. He called on me thereafter for my opinion about matters discussed in our faculty
meetings, for I continued to feel that my volunteering opinions readily was unwise. One of
Mr. Wey's characteristics as a principal that I admired most was his willingness to change
his mind when he saw that decisions he had made were not working. He would say that he
had been wrong. It had been difficult for me to do that in the highly politicized school system in which I had worked in Kentucky. There, one always had to be right to survive.
Another of Mr. Wey's admirable traits, I thought, was his eagerness to give others credit
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publicly for contributions that he could accept. Other administrators I had worked with
felt compelled to lay claim personally to all good ideas that they accepted from others. I
had become artful in planting ideas so I could hear them expressed later as those of the
superintendent himself in a system in which all wisdom (and most blessings) flowed from
the superintendent. Working with Mr. Wey was comfortable. One could be as open and
nearly honest as he knew how to be without feeling that he was supplying items for a hidden agenda. I told Mr. Wey that I was enjoying academic freedom that I had not known
since I was a teacher of a one-room school and that I admired his administrative style, but I
did this privately, for to have done so in faculty meeting might have seemed to others at
least simpering if not like "apple polishing."
As I recall, the College had 45 faculty members, perhaps ten of whom were already in
military service. Soon I began to meet those still on campus. Dr. Wiley Smith and I met in
the road below the high school and enjoyed a conversation that might have lasted a half
hour. He had a keen and insightful mind, I thought, and intensely blue eyes that appeared
to come into sharp focus just a bit in front of themselves. As I enjoyed watching him wind
up his mouth before he said clever things, a shapely co-ed with hair to her shoulders and
wearing a form-fitting light blue sweater that glistened in the afternoon sun, an ample skirt
that came almost to her ankles, bobby sox, and quite dirty saddle oxfords, came by. She
stopped to greet Dr. Smith, who had been one of her teachers. After the exchange of greetings, he introduced me to her. As she hurried on, Dr. Smith watched her in silence for a
moment. Then, turning toward me, his eyes a bit misty, he said, "I never get close to one
dressed in one of those tight sweaters that I don't want to reach out and feel of her." He
chuckled lecherously, and we continued with our conversation. Afterwards, I was puzzled
by his comment about the pretty young woman. I could not decide whether it was offered
as an expression of disapproval of current styles in dress or as a confession. After becoming
better acquainted with him, I decided that he was only trying to shock me.
From the window of my office I could see walking along the road two or three times
every day a tall conservatively dressed man wearing a cap with a bill similar to caps that had
been stylish in the 1920s. He carried a briefcase and was deliberate in his movements.
One day I met him. He presented himself to me as George Sawyer, the teacher of sociology
at the College. His manner of speaking was as deliberate as his walking. He told me two
or three carefully crafted jokes with walloping punch lines. As he delivered a punch line,
his face would assume a straight, grave expression which he held for a moment. Then he
seemed to peep from behind his mask to determine whether I had caught the point of his
story. When I laughed, he joined me in merriment. I enjoyed his jokes and anecdotes,
which he continued to tell me for thirty years, sometimes coming by my office simply to
tell me a good one he had just heard.
The faculties of the campus elementary school and high school were expected to
attend general faculty meetings of the College on Monday afternoons. At the first of those
meetings Mr. Wilson introduced new faculty members of the campus schools. We responded by standing for a moment as our names were called. While each of us was standing, Mr.
Wilson recited briefly our backgrounds, including states from which we came, colleges and
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universities we had attended, and school systems in which we had worked. He did this
without reference to notes, appearing to be proud of himself for having in mind factual
information about each of us. Regular faculty members responded with animated faces as
they turned in their seats to get a good look at each of us.
Then Dean Rankin requested by name the chairman of each department to present
any new faculty members in that department. There were so few holders of doctoral
degrees in the faculty that the title of doctor was considered more distinguished than professor. All males who did not hold doctorates were addressed and referred to as professor.
Women were addressed and referred to as miss. As I recall, Appalachian had in its faculty
at that time only one woman with a doctor s degree, Dr. Maud Cathcart in the biology
department. In private life, Dr. Cathcart, who retained her maiden name professionally,
was Mrs. Stout, but no one ever called her that. We were able to learn the names of department chairmen early: Miss Glada B. Walker, Art; Dr. Robert Busteed, Biology; Dr. W.
Amos Abrams, English; Professor A.R. Smith, Chemistry; Dr. Harry B. Heflin, Education;
Professor Gene Garbee, Health and Physical Education; Miss Lucy Brock, Home
Economics; Dr. J.T.C. Wright, Mathematics; Miss Virginia Wary, Music; Dr. Wiley Smith,
Psychology; Dr. D.J. Whitener, Social Studies. Also introduced were Mrs. Emma Moore,
an aged woman of the vintage of President Dougherty, Dean Rankin, and Professor Joseph
Williams, the Librarian. Mr. H.R. Eggers, the Registrar, was presented to explain procedures for reporting mid-term grades. It was a point of pride for me to remember the names
when I met them on the campus or on the streets of the town. Mr. Wilson had emphasized
the spirit of friendliness that pervaded the campus and told us that everybody always spoke
to everybody else, including students.
Soon I was meeting and remembering thereafter others in the faculty: Professor Vance
Howell who taught Political Science; Miss Meta Liles, Dr. Graydon Eggers, and Miss Helen
Burch in the English Department; Miss Helen Foster and Professor O.M. Hartsell in the
Music Department; Miss Ida Belle Ledbetter in Biology; Miss Cleone Haynes and Miss
Thursa Steed in Health and Physical Education. Miss Myrtle Brandon, the Dean of
Women, was also a teacher in the Education Department. One of the more colorful personalities, Mr. Leonard Eury,25 was Mrs. Moore's assistant in the Library, but Mr. Eury and
others including Coach Red Watkins, Professor Starr Stacy, Professor Edwin Dougherty,
and Professor Gordon Nash, left in a few weeks to join some branch of the military service.
Occasionally, after the rainy season was over, faculty members who lived in the apartments would sit in the afternoon sun in front of the building and visit. Sometimes I would
sit with them for a few minutes.
My friendship with Dr. Abrams grew. He told me about the North Carolina English
Teachers Association, in which he was a member, and the North Carolina Folklore Society
in the activities of which he had participated for several years. He invited me to go with
him to the meetings of each group. I discussed with Mr. Wey the advisability of my
25
Leonard Eury served as College Librarian until his retirement in 1970. The W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection,
founded in 1968, was named after him in 1971.
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becoming a member of these groups and what arrangements I should make for my classes
when I attended meetings. Mr. Wey, who believed it most important that teachers identify
with professional organizations, encouraged me to join both if I wished to do so. My classes, however, would have to be covered by a qualified person whom I would pay at the substitute rate of five dollars a day from my own pocket. He knew of no substitute available in
English, but thought Dr. Abrams might be able to suggest someone. It was unfortunate, he
thought, that the College provided no funds for travel and subsistence for faculty members
interested in participating in professional meetings. I would also have to bear travel and
subsistence costs for attending meetings, but he considered participating important and
expenses for doing so worth bearing if I could afford to spend the money. Participating in
professional activities was encouraged by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Being able to report that I was an active member of these organizations would look good on
application materials.
Dr. Abrams and I discussed these matters. I decided to go with him to the fall meeting of the English Teachers Association at the North Carolina College for Women in
Greensboro. We could ride down to Greensboro with someone he knew who was planning
a trip to Raleigh at that time and come back on a bus. We could contribute perhaps a dollar each toward gasoline costs for the trip down, and the bus ticket back would not cost
much. By that time I had received my second salary check and had bought myself a new
suit for $13.00 at a sale up the street, a suit that I did not like very much and that did not
fit me very well, but it was a good suit, the sale price of which had been slashed when it was
moved to the bargain rack in the basement because of its small size. Although I could not
feel well dressed in the suit, I would not look shabby.
It had been possible at the end of the first month for me to repay Mr. Wilson the
twenty dollars I owed him. I insisted that he accept a dollar for interest, but he would not
have it. I had finished paying in one payment what I owed the finance company in
Huntington and had been able to pay for Sylvia's room at the sanitarium without undue
hardship. I had also gone to see Sylvia again the first weekend in October and would go
again the weekend before the meeting in Greensboro. Before deciding finally that I would
go with Dr. Abrams to the meeting, I wrote to Sylvia about it, for I did not want to spend
as much as $15.00 to attend a meeting without discussing it with her. She insisted that I
go and that I participate actively in the organization. The trip would be good for me, and
she felt that I deserved the right to spend some of my meager salary for professional
advancement. I told Dr. Abrams that I would go with him.
Dr. Abrams recommended Mrs. Daisy Eggers as a well-qualified substitute teacher. I
asked her whether she would be willing to take for the recommended five dollars a day my
classes on the Friday that I would be gone to attend the meeting. She was, and took the
assignment so seriously that she came in time on Thursday to sit in one of my classes before
I provided her with lesson plans for Friday.
The trip to Greensboro was my first one east of Boone and down that side of the
Blue Ridge. Highway 421 was narrow, crooked, and in places so steep that the driver low64
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ered the car into second gear. Below Deep Gap the countryside was much torn up by a
flash flood that had left death and destruction in its path two years earlier. As we descended the mountain, I could see a series of hazy blue ridges falling away in mystery in the far
distance. The highway was routed through the towns. I saw North Wilkesboro, dominated
by its impressive new hotel, for the first time. Then beyond the town we followed an alternate route through Ronda, with its chair factory, to Elkin, where we crossed the Yadkin
River into Jonesville, a town I had not heard of before. Having heard that some of my
ancestors had migrated from Wilkes County to Elaine, Kentucky, prior to 1820, I was personally interested in the countryside. Eroded farms, dilapidated houses, crooked barns,
scrub brush on hillsides, and other evidences of depression poverty convinced me that I was
traveling through a tired, worn-out land. I wondered whether it had been so poor and
down at the heels when my ancestors had left over a hundred years earlier on the six-weeks
trip over the mountains to what they considered a better land in the hills of Kentucky.
Coach Robert W. (Red) Watkins rode with us. It was on that trip that I became well
enough acquainted with him to remember who he was when I met him on campus or in
town, for he was occupied with coaching activities in the afternoons and had not attended
faculty meetings regularly. We let Coach Watkins out in Winston-Salem, where he was to
visit with friends and relatives.
Dr. Abrams and I got out at the O. Henry Hotel in Greensboro, where we engaged a
beautiful room in an upper story that overlooked the city. It was quite dark when we
arrived, but after getting ourselves settled in our room we went to dinner at a good little
restaurant in the hotel.
The following morning we checked out of the hotel and rode a bus out to Woman's
College where our meeting was held. Dr. George Wilson was our host, a jovial, spirited
man whose professional interest was in American dialects. He was also editor of PADS, the
publication of the American Dialect Society. He convinced me that I ought to join the
society and invited me to prepare for publication a word list from Appalachian speech,
which I did during the next year.
Dr. Abrams participated extensively in discussions and seemed to be one of the leaders in the North Carolina English Teachers Association. Most of the members were experienced and confident women who taught in city high schools. Dr. Abrams introduced me
personally to most of them, making me feel good with compliments and the half-teasing
attitude he maintained, both toward the lady teachers and me. It was obvious that the
members held Dr. Abrams in high esteem. I met people there that day with whom I was to
work actively in the Association for the next seventeen years, for I soon became a member
of the Central Committee and attended planning meetings twice a year and the English
teachers' divisional meetings at both regional and state conventions of what was then the
North Carolina Educational Association.
We ate together on campus. The meeting continued for a while in the afternoon.
Sometime during the day a new professor at Woman's College, a Dr. McNutt, I believe,
gave a challenging talk on teaching writing to high school students. He recommended
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especially that teachers try having high school juniors and seniors write "exegeses" of poems.
I could not recall ever having heard or seen the word "exegesis" before and did not know
what he was talking about. I wondered whether I might have been the only teacher present
who did not know the word, but I could not tell from observing them. Afterwards, I did
not feel sufficiently courageous to ask anyone for a definition, but I wrote the word on the
back of my checkbook so I could consult a dictionary when I got back to Boone.
About the middle of the afternoon Dr. Abrams and I caught a bus to Winston-Salem.
It was a cloudy day, but I could see the rolling, well kept farms and the prosperous countryside out of Greensboro. Many trees still had green leaves on them and others were flaunting the autumn colors that we had enjoyed in Boone before the frosts had come to the
mountains a few weeks earlier. We waited in Winston-Salem for a bus northward to
Bluefield, West Virginia. Since it was not possible for us to make connections for a bus to
Boone that night, we bought tickets to Boonville, where we spent the night in the home of
Dr. Abramss sister, Louise, and her husband, Ralph Coram. Louise and Ralph lived in a
new house, not yet completed, down a side street in Boonville. I had met neither of them
before, but we enjoyed a delightful visit with them. Their bright-eyed little daughter,
Winona, perhaps three years old, and I played games while Doc talked with Louise, a lively,
vivid person who taught English in the local school, and, later, with Ralph, quiet, relaxed,
and at ease with the two English teachers. Winona had a panda almost as big as she was.
When I held the panda on my knee and carried on a conversation with it, like Edgar
Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, she was so pleased that she required more of me than my
imagination could supply. I escaped into a songfest, in which the panda sang children's
songs and recited nursery rhymes that delighted Winona. Louise rescued me by suggesting
that Winona show me the pups, who lived in a lot over the bank behind the house. After
visiting with the pups, we went exploring together. Across the fence and in the edge of the
woods behind the house, we found an ancient graveyard, in which there was a stone for a
woman who was over a hundred years old, 108, as I recall, when she died.
Ralph was a farmer. The following morning he took me to meet his father and
mother and to see the farm, a prosperous one with modern machinery, full barns, and fat
cattle. After the tour of the farm Ralph took us up to the corner where we caught a bus to
Boone. In North Wilkesboro we saw mountain people standing around the bus station,
among them a pale young woman with a snuff stick in her mouth and breast feeding her
baby with the same unconcern that I had observed in mothers at church when I was a boy
in Kentucky. I thought that perhaps many of the blue-eyed, fair-skinned, and rangy mountain folk might have been my distant kinsmen, for they looked very much like the people
who came to Blaine to trade on Saturdays.
On the way from North Wilkesboro to Boone the motor of the bus ground with
agony as the driver geared down to manipulate steep, sharp curves. Below the crest of the
Blue Ridge I became nauseated again, but after opening the window for fresh air I was able
to make it to the top of the mountain without having to vomit.
The trip had been an enriching one for me. I had learned why the region west of the
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Blue Ridge had been designated the "Lost Provinces." I had seen the face of a new land, I
had gained a deeper respect for Dr. Abrams, and I was more proud than ever of
Appalachian Teachers College. I was glad to be living and working in Boone,
That night I wrote in my letter to Sylvia a full account of my trip and expressed again
my high regards for Dr. Abrams.
Working at the high school became more pleasant and enriching for me as I began to
make use of student observers from the methods class. Soon they were helping me with the
preparation of teaching materials for my two freshman sections and reading papers and
quizzes. One assisted me with directing one-act plays the dramatics class was preparing. By
the middle of October I was able to complete work for the day and make preparations for
the following day by five o'clock each afternoon. I came back in the evenings for play
rehearsals and was usually ready for bed by ten o'clock. The short nap on my work table
after lunch, the longer one in bed or on the couch after my dinner, and eight hours in bed
each night provided me with the rest time I needed.
I was finding it easier to push aside concerns for my own health, to rest when tired,
to leave a job without giving it further thought before taking it up again, but it was more
difficult to adjust to the seriousness of Sylvias illness. Anxiety and deep dread disturbed my
sleep. People invited me to dinner occasionally and my fellow teachers at the high school
sometimes included me in their social plans. After pleasant outings and evenings with others, I found myself looking tired and disturbed when I glanced at myself in the mirror while
brushing my teeth before retiring. I felt guilty when I thought of Sylvia suffering and slowly dying, for I wanted to be with her.
I wanted to be alone at times, to let my thoughts flow freely. One Saturday at the
peak of the autumn's color season I rode the bus to Elizabethton, Tennessee, wandered
around for an hour or two, and then came back by way of Newland and Blowing Rock,
drinking deeply all the while the bittersweet of October s poignancy, its prodigy of painful
beauty. I saw what Thomas Wolfe had described in Look Homeward Angel, a book that had
more than anything else invited me to the mountains of North Carolina, which have always
expressed October best. After my trip, Ruby Donald was interested in knowing why I
wanted just to ride a bus over those narrow roads to Elizabethton and back. I felt shy, as if
a secret had been pried out of me when I responded that I liked to feel the color season
flowing by.
One Saturday during the lingering autumn John Nelson, the social studies teacher at
the high school, invited me to ride with him and his wife, Mary, to Lenoir. Mary needed
to stop by the hospital there for an examination and he wanted to shop for clothing.
Perhaps I would like to shop, too, for he had learned that there were bargains available in
men's clothing. Although I knew I would not be buying any clothing, I gladly accepted his
invitation, for I wanted to ride down the mountain in autumn from Blowing Rock to
Lenoir, which I had not yet seen.
Johns car was dilapidated, but he was glad to have it at that time when any car that
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�The Crafts Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
would run at all was a prized possession. We left Boone at eight o'clock, early enough, John
thought, for him to get to the hospital in time for his wife's appointment at ten o'clock. It
was a bright day. The ride along the edge of the gorge in Blowing Rock was frightening.
Visibility was so clear and sharp that one could see the individual trees clinging to the steep
side of the mountain all the way to the bottom of the gorge perhaps 2000 feet below. The
most spectacular view I had yet seen, the mountains were piled, heap upon heap, as far as
one could see, the closer ones standing out in sharp detail in the sunlight and looking
almost close enough for one to throw a stone across the gorge to them, even though they
were miles away.
Highway 321 was narrow, on a steep grade, and as crooked as a snake crawling in the
dust. John crept along in second gear applying the brakes so often that he had to stop on
level stretches to let them cool. Once, beside a little clear stream below the church in the
bend of the road near the turn off to Blackberry, he had me dip up a gallon tomato can of
water for his radiator, which was so hot that steam was boiling out of it. We laughed
because a radiator would get so hot in a car going down hill that it would have to be
refilled. We must have spent the better part of an hour going down the mountain, at the
foot of which we began to see many trees on which leaves were still green.
The drive along the river below the mountain was through productive farming country. Happy Valley, a pleasant little hamlet with a textile mill beside a stream and a store by
the highway, was the only community we passed before reaching the outskirts of Lenoir, an
impressive little city with a proud hotel, the Carlheim, settled among splendid trees, a statue of a Confederate soldier in the center of its bustling business district, and along a low
ridge the lovely campus of Davenport College, already closed, a casualty of the Depression,
we had heard. We took Mary to the hospital and went shopping. I looked but did not buy
anything. John looked at some suits with bargain prices, but purchased only two shirts, a
tie, and some socks. While John was in the hospital with Mary, I walked on the Davenport
campus and peeped through windows of attractive old buildings surrounded by giant oak
trees. It was such a quiet, restful campus that I regretted it was then abandoned.
We ate sandwiches at a little shop near the bus station and started back to Boone,
having been in Lenoir not more than two hours. At the edge of town John stopped at a
filling station for oil and gasoline, producing the ticket book required then. The attendant
filled his radiator. The trip up the mountain was an ordeal. John would gear down to second and then low for steep places and stop on level spots to let the engine cool. I found
water for the steaming radiator three times, the last time in the little stream below the
church, but I filled the can two-thirds full and held it between my feet in case we would
need more water before we reached Blowing Rock. We arrived in Boone at two o'clock.
We had spent six hours making the 60-mile trip to Lenoir and back for a two-hour visit
there. Certainly, Boone was hard to get to from all directions.26
26
Cratis Williams note: By the mid 1950s Highway 321 up the Blowing Rock Mountain had been rebuilt. Since
then one could drive to Lenoir in forty-five minutes, but the new highway passes the same clear little stream from
which I dipped water for John Nelson's radiator. I never see it that I don't remember my first trip to Lenoir.
68
�Glad to be Living and Working in Boone
After I had received my check for my first month's salary and did not feel so tightly
pinched, I went along occasionally with other teachers from the high school to the college
cafeteria for the evening meal, where we could buy well prepared and wholesome but plain
food at quite reasonable prices. In fact, a college student at the time paid only $3.50 for a
meal book, which, it was said, one who selected food carefully could make last for a week.
Owing to the scarcity of meats in war time, our selection was limited mostly to stew, meatloaf, patties, fishcakes, bologna, wieners, breaded chops, and small country-style steaks, but
we had an abundance of both vegetables, many of which were grown on the college farm,
and fresh milk from the College Dairy. Students and teachers especially relished Mrs.
Ragan's spice cake and Mrs. Cullers's pastries, baked the same day on which they were
served and of consistent high quality.
In the cafeteria we had opportunities to become acquainted with college students,
especially those who were taking methods classes and doing practice teaching in physical
education under the supervision of Miss Donald. Bill Killian, Hughs friend on the editorial staff of the college newspaper, The Appalachian, for which Hugh was the business manager, was with us often. Before the fall quarter was over, I had become well enough acquainted with college students to recognize by name as many as fifty or sixty besides those
enrolled in my methods course. When I went alone to the cafeteria, I was usually able to
eat with someone I had already met. These opportunities for social exchange enabled me to
develop a feeling of involvement in the life of the campus.
I liked Appalachian students, more of whom, I learned, came from small towns or
farms in the piedmont than from the mountain region. Especially friendly and congenial,
they were generally serious young people, usually the first in their families to go to college,
eager for an education, and ambitious to become teachers. Most of them were poor, I was
told, and worked in mills or chopped cotton or hoed in the fields during the summer to
supplement the meager help sacrificing parents of usually large families could offer toward
their college education. Others were themselves sons and daughters of struggling school
teachers, many of whom were graduates of Appalachian. But their poverty did not show.
In those days students dressed for college. Young men did not wear overalls, jeans, hickory
shirts, denim blouses, or rawhide shoes, nor young women calico dresses, gingham aprons,
or cotton stockings to college. The College operated its own laundry and dry cleaning
establishment and charges were minimal. Residence halls were equipped with abundant
facilities for bathing. College students were well dressed, well groomed, and clean in those
days. They did not refer to their poverty in their conversations nor to humble, workingclass origins. Only the quality of their spoken English betrayed them. Slovenly speech,
careless diction, illiteracies, and folk idioms identified them as rural or working class young
people, but they were generally courteous, considerate, and well mannered and left the
impression that they were informed in etiquette and acquainted with the habits and customs of that middle-class society to which they aspired. Most important for their instructors, they respected and honored their teachers, even those whose idiosyncrasies they made
the subject of indulgent conversations or mimicked in moments of levity.
Those teachers who lived in rooms and suites in Faculty Apartments found them69
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
selves restricted for entertainment possibilities. As
we became better acquainted, we worked out
arrangements for socializing in the apartments of
those who were willing hosts. We occasionally
bought food and pooled our resources for dinner
with the Nelsons, After dinner, we sometimes
played simple card games such as hearts, or those
who could do so would play bridge. Mr. and Mrs.
Wey had all of us in groups of four or five to their
home for dinner and cards. Sometimes we would
dance, but most of us, though willing learners,
were not especially skilled at dancing.
My apartment was well suited for communal
dinners and talk sessions afterwards. Ruby Donald
and Hugh Daniel began a courtship after a few
weeks. We pooled our resources for simple dinners
in my apartment, usually including at least one
other person, but sometimes a couple like the
Nelsons. These dinners were the basis of a friendship with Ruby and Hugh, who married later, that
has continued since that time.27
Figure E. Ruby Donald and Hugh
Daniel on King Street, © 1942.
Photo courtesy of Ruby Daniel.
Sylvia had never trusted my culinary skills so
far as to let me fry a chicken. Even when she was too
ill to do so, she would fry the chicken when we had one. I liked fried chicken very much
but was not getting to eat it often in Boone. One day I bought a frying chicken from Mrs.
Amelia Greer at the Winn-Dixie Store, confessing as I bought it that I had never prepared
one. Mrs. Greer advised that I ask one of my neighbors for a recipe and follow it closely,
for frying chicken, she said, is really simple if one watches the heat closely and turns the
chicken at the right time. I asked Miss Catherine Smith, my next door neighbor, how I
should prepare my chicken. She had me write down the procedure, which I followed slavishly. She had me roll the chicken in cracker crumbs, which I did not know was ever done,
but it was especially good chicken, Pennsylvania fried, someone told me, for Miss Smith,
who had come from Pennsylvania, knew nothing about Kentucky fried chicken. I liked the
chicken so well that I fried chicken for my guests thereafter and was able to include chicken
more often in my own diet.
Sometime before homecoming the English Club, under the sponsorship of Miss Meta
27
Ruby Donald and Hugh Daniel were married the following summer at the end of the school term and Hugh
went to midshipmen school at Notre Dame before serving in the South Pacific. Ruby continued to teach at the
high school for the duration of the war. Upon Hugh's return, they left Boone for Memphis where Hugh attended
Southern College of Optometry, later opening a practice in Waynesville, North Carolina. Hugh and Ruby both
served on Appalachian State University's Board of Trustees, and Hugh served on the first Board of Governors of
the University of North Carolina System.
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�Glad to be Living and Working in Boone
Liles, a southern lady from Tarboro and much admired by young women majoring in
English, invited me to a tea one lovely afternoon in the social room of Lovill Hall.
Although I considered teas stiff and artificial, I felt it important that I accept the invitation,
for all of the students in my methods class, including the slender-faced young man, Terry
Mattern, were likely to be there. A few times while I was a student at the University of
Kentucky I had helped my friend, Sidney Shell, who lived in the attic of the president's
home, assist Mrs. McVeigh, the president's social-minded wife, with her teas at Maxwell
Place.28 I knew about teas, I thought, and the importance of standing about, looking ones
best, sipping tea noiselessly, and occasionally engaging in light talk, but never for more than
a few minutes at a time with other guests. Light talk, I thought, should never degenerate
into a conversation, or sink to the level of a discussion, at a tea.
As soon as my sixth period class was over, I rushed to my apartment to freshen up,
changed into my new $13.00 suit, touched myself with cologne, and hurried to the social
room of Lovill Hall. Almost all of the young ladies in my methods class were there, dressed
in pretty tea dresses and high heels, their hair hanging to their shoulders, and wearing white
gloves. They were without exception attractive, animated, and gracious. Mr. Mattern, the
slender-faced young man in the class, was all dressed up in a three-piece suit, a gleaming
white shirt, and a tie knotted so tightly and neatly that it stuck out like a race horse's tail.
It seemed that all of the members of the faculty, many of them with their spouses in attendance, and student office holders were there, some of them already saying good-bye to the
hostess, the president of the English Club, and Miss Liles, the sponsor, when I arrived. Dr.
Abrams, standing close by, was obviously pleased with what seemed to be a social triumph
for English majors.
Soon President Dougherty arrived, accompanied by Dean Rankin. A young lady
took them in hand immediately, relieving Dr. Dougherty of his spotless hat and hanging it
on a rack near the entrance. Another young lady arrived with a cup of hot water and a tea
bag, a cube of sugar, a spoon, and three tiny cookies on the saucer and thrust it into Dr.
Dougherty's hand. He did not move far from where he was standing. While engaging Dr.
Abrams in a discussion, he crumbled one of his cookies in the hot water, stirred it with the
spoon gently, and sipped it, his tea bag and cube of sugar lying in place on his saucer. After
he had drunk half of his concoction, he crumbled another cookie into the cup, stirred it a
long time, and continued to sip. When his cup was empty, a young lady came with a
teapot of hot water and asked whether he would like more. He looked at the empty cup
for a moment and held it out for a refill. Then he crumbled his last cookie into the water,
stirred it around and around, and continued to sip. People came, had tea, and left, but Dr.
Dougherty continued to talk with Dr. Abrams. When his cup was empty, the tea bag and
the sugar still lying on his saucer, a young lady came by and asked whether she might
relieve him of his cup. As he handed it to her, he observed, "Young lady, that was powerful
good tea." Her eyes twinkled but she managed to keep her composure as she looked at the
28
Frank L. McVey was president of the University of Kentucky from 1917 until his retirement in 1940. He and
Mrs. McVey were the first UK president's family to live in Maxwell Place, built in 1870 and sold to the University
in 1917. It remains the UK presidential home.
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
tea bag and sugar on the saucer. Someone handed Dr. Dougherty his hat and he left.
Sensing my amusement, Dr. Abrams explained in a low voice that Dr. Dougherty,
who did not like tea and did not want the sugar, was not absent minded. He knew exactly
what he was doing, but felt it improper to refuse to accept the cup that had been offered
him.
One bright Sunday afternoon I decided to go walking alone to the top of Howard s
Knob. I thought the exercise would be good for me, but feared that I might need to stop
and rest frequently because of my lungs, and if I became too tired to walk all the way to the
top I could rest a while and return to my apartment. I did not ask anyone to go with me
because I did not want to risk in the presence of a companion the possibility of having to
return to the town before making it all the way to the top of the Knob.
On my way up the street I met Dr. Abrams, Dr. Busteed, and Dr. Whitener near the
old Coffey residence on the corner of Appalachian Street and Main Street. Dr. Abrams
wanted to know where I was going. I told him that I was planning to walk through the
upper side of Boone, which I had not yet seen. He and the others were coming from a
meeting of a Lions Club committee, he said. He then said that I might enjoy being a
member of the Lions Club. I explained that I had enjoyed being a member of Rotary
International in my home town in Kentucky but did not at the time want to be a member
of another civic club. All three of them talked about the fun Lions have at their meetings
and the good work they do for children who need glasses. A Lions Club is not much like a
Rotary Club, they said, and they hoped I might decide later that I would like to become a
Lion.
I walked to the courthouse square and turned up Water Street toward Howard's
Knob. The road looped around the upper side of town, a section called Junaluska, in
which the black population of Boone lived. I could see that the road looped back above a
steep pasture field and that one might cut off perhaps a quarter of a mile by climbing a
hundred yards up the steep field.
Soon I saw a path across the field and followed it, panting heavily and resting frequently until I reached the road above. The dirt road was not very steep for a way but then
ascended on a steep grade toward the saddle gap between Howard's Knob and Rich
Mountain. I rested when my heart began to pound and made it to the gap in perhaps 45
minutes from the time I had left the apartments.
The rutted old abandoned trail from the gap to the top of the Knob looked as if it
had not been used for many years. I was finding my way to a spot where one could sit
alone, feel the fresh brisk breeze whipping across his face, look at the town far below him,
and think his deepest thoughts in strict privacy, I thought. I passed the foundation of a
house, much of the floor still in place, that had apparently blown down in a wind storm.
The ruins of the old house were the only signs of former human habitation there, although
I had already heard that Howard, a Tory, had hidden in a cliff on the Knob for a year or
two before he took the oath of allegiance to the new nation in 1777.
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�Glad to be Living and Working in Boone
Beyond the end of the trail I ran into surprises. Behind nearly every tree and rock was
a young couple. Some were standing, some sitting, and some reclining. They were college
students who had slipped away from campus. "Boys" over one entrance to the administration building and "girls" the other, segregated seating in the auditorium, an eight o'clock
curfew in the evening, and other precautions did not prevent courting couples from coming
together when they set their heads to do so. Feeling like an unwelcome intruder, I retreated
from the scene and returned to Faculty Apartments.
Dr. Abrams invited me to hear his collection of recordings of traditional ballads and
songs which NYA students had arranged and catalogued for him. He permitted me to listen in the late afternoon in his classroom while he worked in his office or attended meetings. Occasionally, we found time to discuss ballads he had collected. He thought it
important that I continue with my interest in collecting and that I become a member of the
North Carolina Folklore Society, to which he had belonged for several years. He would be
pleased to have me go with him to the annual meeting of the Society during North
Carolina Culture Week in early December. I wrote about it to Sylvia and discussed it with
her when I visited her. Membership dues were only a dollar a year, as I recall, and the trip
to Raleigh and back by bus, expenses for sharing a room with Doc in the Sir Walter Raleigh
Hotel, where the meeting would be held, and the cost of meals would not exceed fifteen
dollars, but it would be necessary that I hire a substitute teacher to meet my classes at the
high school on the one day that I would be away. Sylvia urged that I accept Doc's invitation
and that I join the Society. I told Doc he could include me in his plans to attend the meet-
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�c
Winter's Nightmare
When I went to see Sylvia in early November I
was distressed to find her emaciated, blanched, and
hollow eyed. She could not even swallow a sip of
water without first soughing through a pipette some of
the medicinal powder, Aureomycin, I believe it was
called, to numb her throat. She was so weak that she
required help just to sit up in bed. Her joy in living
was gone. Even smiling required effort as her paperthin lips peeled away from her teeth, leaving them
exposed to the gums and greatly exaggerated in size.
Her arms were as slender as tobacco sticks and her
beautiful hands were thin and bony. She thought she
probably weighed no more than seventy-five pounds.
She was slowly starving to death. I suggested that
intravenous feeding might give her strength, but she
did not want it and the doctors did not recommend it,
for there was no hope for her recovery. She would
probably not live more than a few weeks longer.
Sylvia had given up hope. She wanted very
much to die. Her pain was almost unbearable. She
dreaded having to deal with it to the end. If she were
physically able to do so, she said, she would get out of
bed, go to the chest, gather up her medicine, and then
get back in bed and take all of it. She would not wake
up and her suffering would be ended. She looked at
me imploringly. She could not ask me to hand the
medication to her, but if I could I would be helping
her. My heart pounded like a jackhammer as my sense
of being ballooned to encompass the entire room and
my vision became blurred. Sylvia had managed a
ghastly smile. I could make out distinctly only her
large eyes and those enormous teeth. I shuddered and
contracted into myself again. I could not bear the
pain of knowing that I had helped the one I loved better than all the world to die. I held her fragile little
hand while we looked into each other's eyes a long
time.
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
After a while, she said she wished that she was at her mother's home. She was not
going to get well and she preferred to die in the house in which she was born and had
grown up. We discussed problems involved. We had no notion of what it might cost to
hire an ambulance to take her to Cherokee, but I would write and ask her mother to get a
price from Mr. Curtright, the funeral director in Louisa, and she could request someone at
the sanitarium to get prices from funeral homes in Beckley. We could engage one and I
could come at Thanksgiving time and be with her on the trip.
When I got back to Boone, I wrote Mrs. Graham. She engaged Luther Hogston, a
neighbor, to take her to Louisa to talk with Mr. Curtright, who studied a road map and
offered to send an ambulance for Sylvia for forty-five dollars. Someone in the office at the
sanitarium called funeral homes in Beckley. The director of a new home there was willing
to send two young men with an ambulance over the mountains from below Charleston to
Louisa and on to Cherokee for thirty dollars. I called that director and made arrangements
for him to send the two young men on the trip on Thanksgiving Day and sent him ten dollars as a deposit.
One of the pleasant occasions at the College that fall was homecoming. The weekend chosen for homecoming, which might have been in late October, was a golden one
with bright weather throughout. Most of the students and faculty must have participated,
but activities were not largely attended, for gasoline rationing, the war, and the dwindling
student body reduced severely the number of persons who might have been present in normal times. Playcrafters, the drama club that had flourished under Professor Antonakos's
direction in other years, had prepared under student direction some dramatic sketches and
one-act plays for Friday night, carrying on, I learned, a tradition that had grown up five or
six years earlier under Antonakos's leadership. Most of the small student body and remaining faculty and spouses attended. Many of the students in my methods class and two or
three student actors from the high school were involved in the play production effort.
At a reception afterwards in the meeting room of Playcrafters under the auditorium
of the administration building, teachers and spouses, President Dougherty, and Dean and
Mrs. Rankin came by for punch and cookies and an opportunity to meet and compliment
the actors, still in stage costume and makeup, and the directors. Few visitors were there,
though. Alumni and friends of the College would arrive on Saturday.
No provisions had been made for a Saturday morning parade led by a lively band and
a panache of prancing majorettes. Both the band and the majorettes were greatly reduced in
numbers that year. Instead, we walked leisurely past a surprising number of colorful displays and tableaux strung across the lawns from Lovill Hall to the administration building,
and gleaming in the bright morning, each attended by one or two costumed students representing the organization or club that had prepared the exhibit. I do not recall an alumni
luncheon, or even a meeting, and believe that there might not have been a formally organized alumni association of the institution in existence at the time. After a stroll across the
campus I went by the book store, where a few alumni and faculty members were enjoying
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�Winter's Nightmare
conversation over coffee and soft drinks at the tables and in the four or five booths while
the juke box played loudly recordings of the music popular at the time. Feeling out of
place and ill at ease, and not wanting to intrude on any of the groups around the tables, I
stood by the counter and sipped a 7-Up.
After a simple lunch in my apartment and a long nap afterwards, I freshened myself
up, dressed in my new and ill-fitting tweed suit, and walked down to the stadium in the
bottom where Rankin Hall is now located. The little band was already playing and the
energetic cheerleaders, dressed in orange and black sweaters and skirts that seemed dull and
worn, were working hard to generate enthusiasm in the small and somewhat dispirited
crowd on the home side of the stadium. There might not have been more than fifteen or
twenty supporters of the visiting team in the stands along the north side of the field, which
was bounded by Appalachian Street, then opened through the campus and one of the main
roads into the town. The cheerleaders, under Dr. Amos Abrams's direction, were mistresses
of their routines and were superbly coordinated in their execution, but the cooperation of
the small crowd was sporadic and largely indifferent. I do not remember the name of the
team Appalachian was playing that day.
I entered the stadium from the north side and walked around the end zone to the
south side. As I was climbing the tier of wooden seats to the top row, where I wanted a seat
in the mid zone, I met Dr. Wiley Smith and was surprised to note that he was wearing a
tweed suit just like mine, but his suit looked good on him. As we exchanged greetings, I
thought I detected a bit of a surprise that he should see someone else wearing a suit like his.
He had most likely paid full price for his suit, unlike my bargain basement clearance sale
purchase, and was proud to be wearing it.
The football game was not a good one. Both teams seemed to be leftovers. As I
recall, two or three of Appalachian's players had been borrowed from the local high school
squad. Despite the verve of the spirited cheerleaders, the liveliness of the band, the prancing routines of the pretty majorettes, and the crowning at half time of a beautiful homecoming queen (for whom no dance was scheduled that evening) on a windy afternoon in
autumn, the football game was a disaster. I have forgotten who won the game but realized
that neither team deserved to win.
Nothing was scheduled for Saturday night. Instead, faculty members invited the few
alumni who had returned to campus to dinner in their homes. Dr. Abrams and Lillian
invited me to their house for dinner, attended also by three or four alumni who were then
teaching English in high schools.
Late that afternoon I had met Hugh Daniel on campus. Hugh and Ruby were entertaining a recent alumna, who was teaching in an elementary school in Allegheny County,
and her date for the evening, who was one of Hugh's friends. The teacher, a good party
girl, had brought with her a bottle of Four Roses. Entertaining them in Ruby's room in the
Faculty Apartments would be awkward and crowded. Hugh wondered whether I might like
to have all of them as my guests in my apartment. I had ice in my refrigerator. He and
Ruby would bring mixers, extra glasses, and snacks. I explained that I had accepted an invi77
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
tation to dinner, but that I would leave my door unlocked and they could make themselves
at home in my apartment until I returned, perhaps by 9:30.
Following Lillian Abrams s delicious dinner, built around a most successful chicken
casserole, and an evening of delightful conversation that sparkled with Dr. Abrams's wit, I
took my leave about nine o'clock and hurried to my apartment.
The party was in progress. Hearty laughter and the tinkling of ice in glasses let me
know that my guests were enjoying themselves. My door was locked. Fearing that letting
myself in with my key might startle them, I knocked. There was a hushed quiet as Hugh
came and let me in. Everybody laughed, but I saw no evidence of a party. The bottle of
bourbon and the mixers had been hidden behind the chest. Only the desk light was on.
In the semi-darkness I was presented to the teacher from Allegheny County, a plump
but attractive young woman with dark hair hanging to her shoulders. She was congenial
and laughed easily, showing beautiful teeth. Hugh asked what I wanted with my bourbon.
Not caring for either of the mixers, I asked for a double jigger cut with branchwater and
cooled by one cube of ice. There was a hearty response to my order. It seemed no one
present had ever heard of mixing whiskey with branchwater. Observing that the bottle of
bourbon was half empty, I consumed my drink quickly and announced that, being by then
"even Steven" with my guests, I would accept another lighter drink, with one jigger, two
cubes of ice, and the glass filled with branchwater. I sipped this one for the remainder of
the evening. We swapped stories, laughed a great deal, and enjoyed ourselves, the two couples sitting together on the long couch while I sat in the easy chair. The rest of the bourbon was consumed by about 11:30. Conversation continued for another half hour. The
young teacher expressed her appreciation for my hospitality and the guests departed.
It had been a successful party but I was soon very much alone in the quiet building.
As I prepared for bed, I noticed in my bathroom mirror that my face was mask-like and my
eyes were tired. Suddenly I was exhausted. I thought of Sylvia, suffering and dying, and
felt guilty because I had not thought of her while enjoying the party. But she and I had
enjoyed many similar parties with friends. I would tell her about this one, homecoming,
and the football game on a perfect autumn afternoon in my Sunday morning letter. I slept
better than usual.
Early on Thanksgiving Day I arrived at Pinecrest Sanitarium to ride with Sylvia in the
ambulance to her mother s home. She had become so emaciated that the contours of her
teeth were visible beneath the pallid skin of her face and her eyes were as large as eggs, her
thin lids meeting only halfway when she batted them. She whispered with difficulty that
she weighed only 65 pounds. She was unable to sit up by herself, but once propped into a
sitting position she could use her hands and had retained considerable strength in her frail
arms. Attendants had packed her bag and a cardboard box. The ambulance would arrive at
ten o'clock.
After visiting with her, I went by an office to sign her out of the sanitarium and then
to the X-ray room to have my chest X-rayed again. I was told that Dr. Edwards, off duty
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�Winter's Nightmare
that day, would read the film and send me a report the following week.
When attendants came to take Sylvia to the ambulance, I stood at the second story
window above the exit and watched them wheel her from the building. I had stood at this
same window and watched them bring her into the building four and a half months earlier.
Then she had seen me at the window and smiled with hope. Borne from the building head
first, she could have seen me at the window again, but if she did she was unable to smile a
recognition. Her face was rigid and white in the sunlight and her large eyes were fixed.
She looked like a corpse. I shuddered with grief as I stood alone by the window and fought
back an almost overwhelming urge to cry out my agony and weep.
I went downstairs and out of the building through the loading exit and presented
myself to the two young men, nineteen or twenty years old, who would be driving the
ambulance. They pointed out to me on a road map the route westward they planned to
take a few miles below Charleston. I sat beside Sylvias cot in the ambulance and talked to
her. She attempted to say very little herself. Struggling to whisper against the purring of
the motor exhausted her.
The morning was bright on the mountains around Beckley and along the New River
Gorge, but we came into hazy weather below Gauley Bridge. Sylvia rested comfortably on
the cot. The young men were careful, smooth drivers and managed the traffic lights in
Charleston without disturbing her. As we were leaving Charleston, she whispered that she
Figure F. Sylvia Graham Williams and Gratis Williams, shortly after they were married in
1937.
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
was thirsty and hungry. She wanted a dish of vanilla ice cream and a glass of ice water. I
helped her arrange her medication. She soughed the powder into her throat, gagging and
struggling as she did so. I told the young men in the cab to stop at the next restaurant they
saw and we would have lunch.
In a few minutes the driver pulled into the parking area of a short order restaurant.
The young men had brought lunch with them and ate in the cab. I went into the restaurant and ordered a hamburger for myself and a dish of vanilla ice cream and a glass of water
for Sylvia. The little restaurant did not prepare food and drinks to go. I took the dish of
ice cream with a stainless steel spoon in it and the glass of water with a straw in it to Sylvia.
She struggled with the water but drank very little of it. I fed her ice cream but she took
only a few bites of it. As I returned the dish, spoon, glass, and straw to the waitress I saw
that the spoon and straw had bright red lipstick on them. When I told the waitress that she
might want to scald with boiling water what I was returning, for the person in the ambulance had tuberculosis, she looked at the lipstick on the spoon and straw as if it were offal
and, snarling with malevolence, dropped gingerly each article into the garbage pail. When I
asked whether I might pay for the articles, she snapped "no" with begone-with-you venom
in her voice. The three or four people at the counter who heard our conversation leaned
away from me as if I might have been a leper who had dropped like a spider from the ceiling into their midst. They were all still staring at me with hateful disdain when I looked
back at them from the door of the restaurant. I was glad that the young ambulance drivers
had not witnessed my burning humiliation and I did not report to Sylvia what had happened.
The ambulance crept along the narrow road through the hills from the Kanawha
Valley to Fort Gay. The afternoon was overcast with light clouds. The landscape was generally grey but bedecked here and there with dark oaks that had not yet surrendered all of
their color. Wisps of smoke from black chimneys of weathered little houses signaled preparation of Thanksgiving dinner; men and boys waited on front porches or clustered around
battered cars or trucks with ragged fenders parked by the gates of little brown yards.
As we went through Louisa, I craned my neck to see whether I might recognize any
of the few people straggling along the sidewalks, but they were country people whom I did
not know. I saw only two people I had known. Buell Lyon was standing in front of his gas
station and Doug Lewis was cleaning the windshield of a dusty flivver beside his gas pump.
Neither recognized me. Sylvia was glad that we had been able to come through the town
without being seen by former friends and neighbors there, for she wanted as few people as
possible to know that she was coming home to die.
Sylvia slept lightly on the way from Louisa to the Wellman Bridge. I held her warm
thin hand and watched familiar countryside move by. As we crossed Adams Hill, I had a
deep, sinking sensation of gloom as I held Sylvia's hand tightly. I watched in silence the
passing of the familiar banks, rocks, and trees that I had seen many times with her, happy
and laughing, beside me in our car. This was our last trip together over an intimate and
friendly road, the last lap in our journey to the end.
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�Winter} Nightmare
Sylvia woke up when the driver
stopped and changed gears to cross the
Wellman Bridge. She was able to see
the familiar countryside as the ambulance moved slowly and smoothly over
the bumpy dirt road from the bridge to
the mouth of Cherokee Creek. People at
Paris Elswick's store recognized us and
threw up their hands at us. We met no
one on the road from the bridge to
Cherokee. Although it was
Thanksgiving Day, people were not
driving their beaten up cars, held
together with baling wire and the ingenuity of amateur mechanics, for gasoline
Figure G. Berta and Lemual Graham with Sylvia and
was rationed. We arrived at the Graham Gratis on the Graham farm. Cherokee, Ky., circa 1938.
home at three o'clock.
Mrs. Graham had moved a bed for Sylvia into the living room, which she had
cleaned thoroughly. The blinds on the long double windows were rolled completely up,
and a low wood fire was smoldering on the hearth. The young men carried the cot on
which Sylvia lay into the house. Mrs. Graham and I transferred her to the bed and
propped her up with pillows. She looked happy as light from the windows gathered in her
enormous eyes. I paid the young men twenty dollars and thanked them for the care they
had taken to make the long ride as comfortable as they could for Sylvia. While the driver
was writing a receipt, I looked at the picture hanging on the wall above Sylvia's head. A
dying American Indian with a long dipping spear in his hand slumped in his saddle as his
horse, standing on a hillock, lowered his head toward sunset. That picture had been hanging there the first time I came to see Sylvia in 1931.
Mrs. Graham, stoical and controlled, did not betray to Sylvia her shock at seeing her
so thin and weak, nor did she indicate that she noticed how large Sylvia's eyes were or how
pale her skin was. The young ambulance drivers, eager to be on the road, left about 3:30.
We made Sylvia as comfortable as possible and then retreated to the kitchen so she could
take a nap.
Mr. Graham, who had gone to his nephew's home for a shave and a hair trim,
returned soon. Sylvia awoke from her light nap when he came in. We hurried into the
room, for Mr. Graham, then 76 years old, was hard of hearing and Sylvia could only whisper. Like Mrs. Graham, he did not express shock at seeing Sylvia so pale and wasted away.
As I shook hands with him, I noticed that he had had most of his great shock of white hair
trimmed away and was red-faced and thin. He did not look quite natural to me, but I did
not know why. Sylvia struggled to laugh and whispered, "Dad has had his mustache shaved
off. This is the first time in my life I have ever seen him without it." Sylvia, who loved her
father deeply and looked like him, had often bantered with him to have his heavy, walrus
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mustache shaved off so she could see what he looked like without it. That night she whispered to me that he had done it for her so she could see before she died what he looked like
without it. She thought he looked better with it.
That night we kept a lighted kerosene lamp on a stand table inside the open dining
room. I slept on the couch so I could attend to Sylvia's needs and keep a low fire burning
on the hearth. She coughed a great deal and called for water often, though she struggled to
get even a few drops down and strangled easily. Neighbors came by to see her on Friday,
but their visits with her were brief. Some stayed to sit on the wide porch for a time, for the
day was warm and pleasant. All of the callers, neighborly and friendly, offered no comments about Sylvia's grave condition and behaved as if they expected her to be up and
around soon.
Fearing that I might not be able to get back to Boone in time for work Monday if I
waited until Sunday morning to leave, I left soon after daylight Saturday morning. While
Mrs. Graham prepared breakfast with Mr. Graham sitting silently in a chair by the wood
box, I sat by Sylvia's bed for what proved to be our last conversation. Sylvia had rallied a
bit at home. She had been able to take more liquids Friday than usual. She thought she
might live another month or six weeks. Our winter holidays at the school would begin a
week before Christmas, only three weeks away. I would be with her during a two-week holiday season. She teased and laughed.
After a hearty breakfast of country ham and eggs, big biscuits and honey, I packed my
light bag and kissed Sylvia on the forehead while holding her hand tightly. She smiled and
teased me. She seemed happy and accepting of what lay ahead when we said goodbye, but
I recognized that she was wanting to protect me from pain and heartbreak.
As I hurried on foot through the frosty morning to Elaine, three miles away, to catch
an eight o'clock bus to Louisa, I wept for Sylvia the tears I could not shed in her presence.
Her courage and beautiful acceptance of the inevitable tugged at me. I wanted her to live
long enough for me to be with her during the holidays.
It was not possible for me to get back to Boone that day. I rode a Norfolk and
Western train from Fort Gay, West Virginia, to Bluefield, took a bus to Abingdon, Virginia,
spent the night in an ancient hotel across the street from the bus station, and went on to
Boone on Sunday. Except for the little bus from Blaine to Louisa, which had only a handful of passengers on it, everything was crowded. Every seat in the railroad coach in which I
rode was taken. I remember that I was awakened from a deep slumber by a bright eyed
young man who took a position in the aisle and played and sang to an accordion. After his
first piece, he responded to requests, and many young people in the coach sang along with
him. Young men in uniforms, young women with dreams in their eyes, smartly dressed
young mothers with happy children on their laps were hurrying back from Thanksgiving
Day visits. Sunday morning in Abingdon was lightly overcast but a light rain was falling in
Boone when the bus arrived in the early afternoon. I took a taxicab to the Faculty
Apartments, a quiet place shrouded in Sunday silence. Four quart bottles of milk, only one
of which had spewed off the cap, were waiting at my door.
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During that week I received from Dr. Edwards at Pinecrest Sanitarium a report of my
chest X-ray the preceding Thursday. The spot on my lung had neither grown nor diminished. I was advised to continue with my diet and rest regimen and report for another Xray in three months.
At the end of that week I went with Dr. Abrams to Raleigh to attend the meeting of
the North Carolina Folklore Society. I engaged Mrs. Daisy Eggers to teach my classes for
me on Friday. Thursday afternoon Doc and I rode a bus to Boonville, where we spent the
night in his sister's home, and went on to Raleigh Friday morning, arriving in time to have
lunch with the officers of the North Carolina Folklore Society in the Sir Walter Raleigh
Hotel, where Doc had reserved a room for us for Friday night. It was at this lunch that I
met Arthur Palmer Hudson, long-time secretary of the Folklore Society, Richard Jente, a
professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Joe Clark from
North Carolina State College at Raleigh, Newman I. White of Duke University, and others,
including, I believe, Ralph Steele Boggs of Chapel Hill and Beatrice Cobb of Morganton.
Our bus had taken us through Guilford College, Elon College, Burlington, and
Durham. In Durham we had passed beside the low stone wall beyond which we could see
old Trinity College, which had become Duke University in the 1920s. Doc, a graduate of
Duke, told me much about old Trinity and Duke. I remembered as we passed Elon College
that I had ordered biological supplies from there while I was a science teacher at Blaine
High School in Kentucky in 1933-1934. The road from Winston-Salem to Raleigh, Doc
explained, crosses piedmont North Carolina, rich in the history of the state, and the sandy
coastal plain lies east of Raleigh. Down there, where he had come from, customs were different and people spoke a different dialect. At Pinetops, down in Edgecombe County
where he had grown up, housewives made thin, blue-looking cornbread of just meal and
water and a pinch of salt and people said "wan't" for "wasn't" and "own" for "on." His
father and mother still lived at Pinetops, near Tarboro. He would take me there to see
them sometime and we could sit under a cypress tree and fish in Tar River.
By the time we had arrived at the elegant Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel, headquarters of
North Carolina's annual Culture Week, I was feeling as if I had reached back a long way in
history. I liked the rolling piedmont farms and pretty towns, even though farmhouses and
outbuildings and the towns themselves needed repairs and paint as did houses and towns in
Ohio and Indiana. I fancied I could see something of the Old South remaining in Raleigh,
despite the neglected aspect that the Depression had left with it.
I was pleased to have Dr. Abrams as my sponsor. Still uneasy in the presence of older
and experienced college teachers, I soon found myself comfortable and relaxed with those at
the special table that had been reserved for the North Carolina Folklore Society.
Conversation was light and filled with quips, banter, and anecdotes. Doc Abrams, in introducing me, called attention to my work as a ballad collector, singer, entertainer, and student
of Appalachian proverbial lore and dialect. I felt self-conscious because I thought he was
crediting me with more than I deserved, but I soon found that he was mostly clearing the
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way for me to converse with those present. Dr. Jente, a collector of proverbs, and Dr.
Clark, who had grown up in east Tennessee, Dr. Hudson, who had published a book of ballads and songs he had collected in Mississippi, all found opportunities to encourage me to
participate in the conversation.
Later that afternoon I enjoyed the program of the Society, which included a report of
Newman I. White on the progress of efforts to publish the North Carolina folklore collection of Dr. Frank C. Brown, a professor at Duke. I was amazed that so many people were
attending the meeting, including splendidly attired dames and stylish looking young ladies,
that attendants had to keep carrying in chairs for late comers. After the program, cookies
and punch were served.
That afternoon we attended a tea in the governor's mansion and then that evening, a
lecture, the highlight of the Culture Week program, in Morrison Auditorium. Hundreds of
people, many of them in formal evening dress, attended the lecture.
Before I left Kentucky I had attended a meeting of the Kentucky Folklore Society in
Louisville, but it had not had the class or tone of the meeting in Raleigh. Apparently,
patrons of culture came from afar to participate in Culture Week activities. Old retired
gentlemen who had been historians, poets, writers, musicians, renowned professors in the
humanities and the arts, sat about the lobby or in groups on the mezzanine of the Sir
Walter Raleigh Hotel. Once I had heard Professor Edwin Mims, whose students at
Vanderbilt University had attracted national attention as the Southern Agrarians, speak
briefly at a meeting of English teachers at the University of Kentucky. I recognized him sitting alone in the lobby of the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel. He was sporting a white goatee
and wearing a winged collar and looked much as he had looked three or four years earlier at
Lexington. Dr. Abrams thought he had retired and returned to his native state and was living at the hotel, which seemed to me to be an appropriate home for so renowned a professor.
That night I found myself exhausted. The day had been a full and exciting one. I
had been lifted to a new level culturally, I thought. But there had been no opportunity for
rest, and I had not dozed at any of the meetings. I had thought of Sylvia a few times and
realized that a deep concern for her had been with me constantly. My fatigue and fear that
the spot on my lung might spread pulled at me, but I could not tell Dr. Abrams my troubles. We talked for a while after we were in bed, but I dropped into a deep sleep while Doc
was telling me something. When I woke up two or three hours later embarrassed that I
could not remember the end of our conversation, Doc was sleeping soundly. The following
morning Doc told me that he had suspected he might have been talking to himself and
asked me a question without changing the tone of his voice or the tempo. When I had not
responded, he knew I was asleep, but he did not know how long I had been asleep.
Buses were crowded on Saturday, but we were at the station in time to board a bus to
Winston-Salem early enough to get seats together. We spent Saturday night with the
Corums at Boonville and arrived in Boone Sunday afternoon. I had enjoyed the meeting of
the Folklore Society and other events at the end of Culture Week so well that I joined the
�Winter's Nightmare
Society and continued to return for annual meetings, except for the year I was on leave, for
eighteen years.
It might have been the following week that the local PTA sponsored a parents' visitation at the campus demonstration schools. Mr. Wey urged that the teachers dress their bulletin boards with exhibits of outstanding student writing or projects and make ourselves
available to those parents who might wish to come by to meet us or to talk with us about
how their children were getting along. Many of the teachers were less than enthusiastic
about the affair and dreaded having to meet parents of some of their students. We had
agreed in faculty meetings that we would offer positive evaluations whenever we could of
students but that we would not hesitate to tell parents how we thought their children might
improve their study habits and how parents might help. I enjoyed meeting parents of my
students, though, and was gratified by the reports of parents, sometimes of students who
were not doing very good work, that my students generally thought very well of me and
enjoyed my classes.
We had three or four exceptionally talented students in the campus schools. One
bright boy in the sixth grade was given permission to enroll in a high school class and a college class. I was not surprised to discover that teachers in the demonstration schools were
just as prejudiced against brilliant students as teachers I had known in the high school at
Louisa. I think they were afraid that bright students might ask questions they could not
answer or offer information that would suggest to other students in the class that the
teacher was not well prepared. Parents of these students took much interest in the PTA and
were present to discuss their children and their progress and their problems with their
teachers. Teachers generally dreaded meeting parents of these students, but they were also
fond of telling how they managed to keep "smart alecks" in their places in their classes.
Students in my high school dramatics class were working on a round of one-act plays.
I met for a while each evening a cast for rehearsal. One group, with a second-year student
of dramatics as director and another as stage manager, was trying to prepare One Dozen
Roses, a romantic little comedy dealing with late teen-age life, for production at the high
school assembly program on Friday, December 11th. Nights were getting colder and frost
was on the roofs in the morning, but days, though crisp, were bright and filled with sunshine. Going to rehearsals for an hour and a half each evening was pleasant, for the students were working hard and enjoying what they were doing.
Back in my apartment by 8:30 I spent an hour writing a free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness letter to Sylvia. I responded to her letters, in which she wrote about happenings
in the community, who had come by to see her, letters from friends, but not much about
herself, and told her about the play rehearsals.
Dr. and Mrs. D.J. Whitener, whose son Jack was in one of my freshman English sections, invited me to dinner in their home on Faculty Street at six o'clock Thursday evening,
along with Hugh Daniel and Bill Killian, who were the business manager and the editor of
the student newspaper, The Appalachian, for which Dr. Whitener was the faculty adviser.
After arranging with the cast of One Dozen Roses for a dress rehearsal at eight o'clock, I
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accepted the invitation to dinner.
It was a pleasant evening. Mrs. Whitener had prepared a delicious dinner.
Conversation, managed skillfully by Dr. Whitener, was lively and included Jack, who was
shy but articulate. Bill Killian, also shy, did not say much, but Hugh Daniel's good humor,
contagious hearty laugh, and easy talk set a tone of informality that helped to relieve Jack
and Bill of tension. We talked much of current events, the progress of the War, the still
depressed but recovering economy.
I hurried from the dinner through a balmy evening to dress rehearsal, which was
promising. Actors and actresses were exuberant, and Betsy Webster, the student director
who sat beside me, was apprehensive at first but so encouraged at the end by the rehearsal
that she hugged me as the curtain was pulled. Unaccustomed to being hugged by my students and surprised at the sudden display of enthusiasm, I was somewhat embarrassed when
one of the young men teased Betsy about trying to make up to the teacher. We were all
pleased that the play was ready for the stage.
That night I wrote a long letter to Sylvia, a letter which I did not send, but kept
sealed in its envelope for forty years before opening it. I did not sleep well that night.
Perhaps the excellent coffee I had drunk at the Whitener dinner made me wakeful. About
midnight I woke up from a troubled dream with night sweats. I got up, bathed my forehead with cold water, drank a glass of milk, and read for a while before going back to bed.
At two-thirty I woke up again from a terrifying nightmare which I have never been
able to forget. In the dream my brother and I had crossed the ridge from a neighbor's farm
to ours in the mid-afternoon of a day in late autumn when the hills were tawny and the
grass in the pasture was sere. While I was running ahead of my brother down the slope of
the highest point in the ridge, I came so suddenly upon a heap of fresh yellow earth that I
was on top of it before I could stop. There below me was an open grave with an open coffin in it. Sylvia lay in the coffin, her lids only partly covering her mud-colored eyes and the
contours of her teeth discernible under thin skin made yellow by the muddy water that had
sunk to a pool in which the coffin rested. I fell backward on the heap of earth as I tried to
cry out but found myself unable to utter a sound. I woke up chilled with horror, leapt out
of bed, and sat for a time in the kitchen. It was 2:30 when I turned on the light.
I thought about the nightmare, Sylvia's illness, and Dr. Rhyne's book on extrasensory
perception, and wondered whether the dream had meaning. I remembered going with my
mother when I was about five years old to a funeral in a graveyard near home, the first
funeral I ever attended. I was playing among the gravestones when the singing began. My
mother motioned for me to come to her. Between us was a heap of yellow earth. I had
mounted the heap before I realized that it had been dug from the open grave below it. On
the other side in an open homemade coffin lay the corpse of Lena Osborn, whose eyes were
half open and the prints of whose teeth showed through thin skin. The sight terrified me.
I fell backward, picked myself up, and raced around the grave to my mother's side. Lena
Osborn had wasted away with tuberculosis. Obviously, my subconscious had transferred the
images and the emotions of an early experience to my concern for Sylvia. But I had looked
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�Winter s Nightmare
down from a second story window of Pinecrest Sanitarium at Sylvia on the cot as she was
being taken to the ambulance that brought her to her home at Cherokee. She had looked
like a corpse. This must have been another image used in my dream. I went back to bed.
Just as I was sitting down to breakfast the next morning someone rapped on my door.
It was the hostess, Mrs. Coffey, who had come to tell me that there was a telephone call for
me. I threw on a robe and rushed downstairs. The call was from Herman Wilcox, agent for
Western Union at the Bus Station. He had received a telegram that said, "Sylvia died at
2:30 this morning."
I asked Mr. Wilcox to hold the telegram for me to pick up later in the day and discussed with him an itinerary that would put me in Louisa at the earliest possible moment.
He checked schedules for me. Two or three buses out of Boone in the forenoon would
make connections with buses going north toward Huntington, West Virginia, or to Louisa
by way of Jenkins, Kentucky, but if I should take any of them I would not get to Louisa
until the following day. The closest way in the shortest time would be to take a bus to
Bristol that would connect there almost immediately with one going to Bluefield. I could
then ride a Norfolk and Western train to Fort Gay, West Virginia, across the river from
Louisa and arrive about one o'clock in the morning. I would have a layover of an hour or
two in Bluefield. That seemed to be the best schedule to follow. The bus in Boone I would
need to take would leave about noon. I asked Mr. Wilcox to prepare a ticket for me to
Bluefield.
Getting from Louisa to Cherokee late at night was a problem. One could not call by
telephone from Boone to Cherokee, but with patience one in Louisa might be able to get
through two or three old-fashioned community switchboards. I called Nova Wellman in
Louisa. She would try to call Mrs. Graham and tell her that I would arrive on a train at
Fort Gay about one o'clock in the morning and walk across the bridge to Louisa, where she
should have Luther Hogston or Herbert Sturgill waiting for me in front of the Riverview
Hospital. Nova assured me that she would get my message to Mrs. Graham. If she should
not be able to reach her by way of the antiquated telephone system, she would drive her
husband's half-ton truck out to Cherokee and deliver my message personally.
As I returned to my apartment, I remembered my terrifying nightmare and was aware
that Mrs. Coffey's message delivered a few minutes past seven o'clock was a foreboding of
bad news. I was certain that Sylvia had died and the telephone call would confirm her
death. I wept as I tried to eat my breakfast, washed and put up my dishes, and dressed
myself for the day. I then went downstairs to the telephone in the hall and reported to Mr.
Wey that my wife had died and I would need to be leaving for Kentucky about noon. I
could assist with the presentation of our play at the student assembly but would be leaving
soon afterwards. I would return to Boone on Tuesday and be ready to meet my classes
again on Wednesday.
Mr. Wey, who might not have had to deal before with the problems created when a
teacher must leave suddenly for a few days because of a death in the family, extended sympathy before discussing the problems. I should not attempt to come to the morning faculty
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meeting, he said. The student directors could handle the presentation of the play. He
would tell them why I was not there. Although it was early in the quarter to turn classes
over to practice teachers, he could do that and ask critic teachers with free periods to sit in
the classes. Faculty members free at the time could meet my speech and dramatics classes.
It would not be necessary for me to employ a substitute teacher, for I would need all of my
salary to help pay bills. All I would need to do would be to come by and prepare lesson
plans and assignments for my classes and leave them with Frances Teems, his secretary.
Mr. Wey's kindness, consideration, and help in arranging for my absence were exemplary. I wept silently not only in grief but also in appreciation of Mr. Wey's greatness of
heart as I returned to my apartment, glad that I had not met anyone in the halls to see my
weeping.
After packing a light bag that would not be too heavy for me to carry while walking
from Cherokee to Elaine Monday morning, I went up town to the bank for money I would
need for the trip. The weather had changed during the night. Clouds were low over Boone
and a mixture of light rain and wet snow was falling. The change of humidity might, I
thought, have aggravated my bronchial problems and made it more difficult for me to sleep.
I returned to the school.
Before stopping by the principal's office, I peeped into the auditorium to see how the
cast was getting along with arrangements for the play. The student directors were giving
orders like professional producers and members of the cast were hurrying around, one of
them carrying one dozen red crepe paper roses arranged in a vase. I did not make my presence known, but hurried on to the office to tell Miss Teems I was there and would be leaving about eleven o'clock to pick up my traveling bag and report to the bus station to catch a
bus that would be leaving about noon. It did not take long for me to prepare the lesson
plans and assignments that Mr. Wey had requested. When I took them to the office, Miss
Teems told me to go to the lounge and rest. Mr. Wey had thought it might be good for me
to talk with somebody for a while before I left.
Ruby Donald and Doris Penix were waiting for me in the lounge. Ruby and Doris
had brought coffee from the school cafeteria and were sitting together near the window.
Solemn but not emotional, they encouraged me to tell them about Sylvias illness and death.
I had not discussed the nature or seriousness of her illness with anyone in Boone and found
it difficult to do so. For the first time I revealed that her trouble was "secondary tuberculosis" that had recurred in the throat seven or eight years after her "cure" of lung tuberculosis
in Dr. Dickey's sanitarium at Southern Pines, North Carolina. We knew from the time Dr.
Proctor Sparks had diagnosed her problem in the spring that there was little hope of her
recovery, for at that time tuberculosis of the throat was almost always fatal, but she had
shown signs of significant improvement at Pinecrest and we were encouraged to think for a
time that she might be able to join me in Boone by October. By the end of October,
though, we realized that there was no hope for her recovery.
Doris, who had entered Morehead State Teachers College as a freshman during
Sylvia's senior year there, thought she had seen Sylvia and knew who she was but had never
�Winter's Nightmare
met her. When she and Ruby expressed sympathy for me for the heavy burden I had been
bearing in secret during the time they had known me in Boone, I could not tell them that I
was continuing to deal secretly with my own attack of tuberculosis. I explained that Sylvia
was so sensitive about having tuberculosis that she required absolute secrecy about it and
that none of her neighbors at Cherokee had known for sure what her illness was. I felt as if
I were betraying her by telling, even after her death, that she had died of tuberculosis.
Ruby thought that most tuberculars are ashamed and seek to conceal their illness. I agreed
with her.
When the time came for me to return to the apartments for my bag and go to the
bus station, Ruby went along with me and stayed to wish me well when I got on the bus.
As we sat together at the station, we talked of other things.
The bus to Bristol was crowded but there was a seat for me near the front. I suffered
from nausea as we crossed the mountains but I had not eaten lunch and had taken only a
few sips of the coffee that Ruby and Doris had brought to the lounge for me. Able to step
outside for a few breaths of fresh air at brief stops, I did not get sick. Tired and deeply
alone, I did not enter into a conversation with the aged gentleman with a cane who sat
beside me, but I was afraid to nap because of nausea.
As I recall, the bus to Bluefield was loading when we arrived in Bristol and there was
not enough time to enter the bus station even for a cold sandwich at the counter. I took a
seat next to a window in the bus to Bluefield. A young woman wearing a dark blue dress
with a snow white collar sat beside me. As we left Bristol, I noticed that no rain was
falling. The clouds were high and white, but a sifting of light snow was scattered among
patches of dark winter trees near the tops of the low hills.
My seat mate, a teacher, was going home to see her mother, who had become ill during the week. I did not tell her the kind of work I did or why I was traveling, for I wanted
very much to be alone. A few miles out of Bristol I fell into a deep sleep, from which I
awoke only briefly when the bus stopped at the towns along the Trail of the Lonesome
Pine. My seat mate sat upright and looked straight ahead. Burdened with grief while
awake, I was aware of incoherent but pleasant dream sequences flowing like a river in my
naps, sequences that seemed to be completely unrelated to my going home to bury my wife,
whose death was a shocking finality beyond which I could not see or know. After I woke
up briefly at the bus stops along the way, I fell asleep again and plunged into my dream
where I had left it, enjoying it as I had enjoyed floating on my back in the summer swimming hole when I was a boy A few miles below Bluefield I woke up and pulled myself into
an upright position. My seat mate, observing that I had been sleeping soundly, asked what
kind of work I did. When I told her I was a teacher, she said she might have known it but
thought I was perhaps a salesman of some kind. I did not want to tell her that I was going
home to bury my wife.
I walked from the bus station in Bluefield to the passenger depot of the Norfolk and
Western, where I bought a ticket to Fort Gay and sat for a long time in the crowded station, suffused with the faint odors of coal smoke from locomotives and cigar smoke. Again
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I dozed, riding on a restful river of dream sequences that carried me away from the reality
of the present.
When dinner time came, I put my bag in a locker and found an inexpensive restaurant crowded with working-class people. I ate a hamburger steak with pale peas, mashed
potatoes and gravy, and a dry slice of tomato on a leaf of limp lettuce and topped with a
dab of cream colored mayonnaise and had a small glass of milk. Although we were nearly a
year into World War II, one could still find restaurants in which the price of a dinner was
only forty-five cents.
On the way back to the depot, I wrapped my scarf around my neck and pulled my
coat collar up, for it was cold and damp. Back at the station I sat with my overcoat on and
my hat pulled over my eyes. After I became warm, I dozed in my seat, escaping again into
a pleasant and regenerative sequence of impressionistic dreams. I had to wait a long time for
the train to Fort Gay. My catnaps and dreams were coming at the time of the nap I had
been in the habit of taking after dinner. I became wakeful in an hour or two and took a
stroll on a busy sidewalk across the street from the depot. Although the evening was young,
I was amazed at the number of dressed up young women whom I met along the way, floating perfume in the air and smiling as if they knew me. When I stopped for a traffic light to
change, I looked back. The two friendly ones I had just met had stopped at the edge of the
sidewalk and were looking back at me. One motioned for me. Having met no men as
young as myself, I realized that while the young men were "off to the seven seas" the girls
they had left behind were becoming lonely.
The cool air soon woke me up. I returned through the brisk night to the depot, got
my bag from the locker and waited for the train, which was on time. The coach was
crowded with dressed up, animated, talkative people. I found a seat at the back of the
coach among black people-older, well dressed, heavily perfumed, and less talkative than the
whites. As we left Bluefield, talking subsided and people began to settle back in their seats.
After checking tickets, the conductor turned the lights down low and people went to sleep,
the men covering their faces with their hats. I woke up briefly from my dozing when the
conductor announced from the back of the coach the stations along the way.
A few miles from Fort Gay, the conductor touched my shoulder and told me in a low
voice that I would be getting off at the next station, where the train would stop for two
minutes. I was ready. The conductor helped me down the steps. I was the only one to get
off at Fort Gay, and no one got on. The train moved on at once.
I walked from the station and across the bridge to Louisa, stopping at the toll house
to pay the sleepy attendant three cents. As I came off the bridge, I saw a farm truck parked
in front of the Riverview Hospital. Mrs. Graham, dressed warmly in the heavy brown
alpaca overcoat I had left at the Graham house, was watching for me through the rear window of the cab.
Mrs. Graham was alone in the truck. We embraced silently. She had been dozing.
She said Herbert Sturgill, who had brought her to town, was waiting in the hall of the
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Courthouse. I was to go for him if he did not hear the train whistle. I put my bag in the
bed of the truck and started, but we saw Herbert coming around the old jail. I sat between
him and Mrs. Graham.
The weather in Kentucky was cool and cloudy, but the road from the Wellman
Bridge to Cherokee was not muddy. We did not talk much. Nova Wellman, unable to get
a call through to Cherokee, had gone out in her husband's truck and delivered my message.
She had also offered to meet me at the bridge and bring me out, but Mrs. Graham had
wanted to meet me herself. Mr. Graham and a few of the neighbors were keeping a wake
for Sylvia, who had requested that no undertaker be employed and that she not be
embalmed, and who had suffered a great deal the last day of her life. She had not lost consciousness, though, at the time of her death. At two o'clock in the morning she had
announced that she would be dying soon, called for a pencil and paper, and had written the
telegram stating that she had died at 2:30. She asked Mr. Graham to take it to Luther
Hogston, give him the money to pay for sending it, and sent him on to town with it. She
died at 2:30 with only Mrs. Graham present before her father had had time to return from
the trip. After writing the telegram, she whispered that our marriage had brought fulfillment to her and that she regretted I must now go on without her. She had died easily a
short time afterwards.
Mrs. Graham and Aunt Jenny Cooper had dressed her and prepared her for burial.
Her corpse was in the lower room on the bed on which she had died. She had asked to be
moved to the lower room soon after she had arrived from Pinecrest. The fire had been
removed from the heater soon after her death, and the doors and windows were opened so
the room would be cold.
When we arrived at the Grahams, Mr. Sturgill got out and came in with us. His wife
was among those keeping a wake in the living room. I went alone into the lower room, cool
and smelling of carnations in a floral arrangement that Nova Wellman had brought. A
kerosene lamp on a stand near the bed burned with a white flame that trembled in the
breeze from the open window where white curtains rustled. Sylvias hair had been arranged
carefully, weights had been removed from her eyelids, and her beautiful hands, crossed at
the wrists and wax-like, were resting across her stomach. She had a fine profile. I remembered having noted early in our courtship the fineness of her profile as she was carrying a
lighted kerosene lamp down the stairs one night. More than ever before, I was struck by
how much she looked like her father. I remembered a folk saying that family resemblances
show most in corpses. I knelt beside her, touched her hands and her broad brow, and wept.
We had enjoyed an intense love, had known each other as nearly completely as it is possible
for lovers and mates to know each other, and had found the knowledge rich and fulfilling.
Her death left in me an empty place, and tore me apart with anguish.
Soon Mrs. Graham, who had known much grief and troubled sorrow, came and
stood by my side. Feeling that grief is private and intensely personal, I did not offer to discuss how I felt. Mrs. Graham, neither emotional nor sentimental, understood. She called
my attention to a dimple in the back of Sylvias left hand, which, she thought, might have
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come from the strain of writing the telegram but Sylvia could also have been frightened by
death and unwilling to betray her fright to her mother. Sylvia disdained the sensational and
the mawkish. Mrs. Graham also noted how much Sylvia looked like her father, who was
shaken with emotion by her death, for she had been his favorite child and she had loved
him dearly from her infancy.
We then discussed plans for a coffin. Sylvia had not wanted an undertaker's burial.
She had wanted a casket and stone similar to that of her sister, who had also died of tuberculosis in 1935. Mr. and Mrs. Graham, knowing my financial limitations and understanding that I was deeply in debt, had considered buying a casket from Curtright Funeral Home
but decided that I might not want them to do that. I did not have money then to pay for
a casket, but I was sure Henry Curtright would permit me to pay for one in installments.
If he required a note with security, then Mr. Graham could sign the note with me. Mrs.
Graham had engaged Herbert Sturgill to go to town with us Saturday morning to purchase
and bring back a casket and box.
Saturday was cloudy and dark. Herbert Sturgill came for Mrs. Graham and me about
9:30. He had put a tarpaulin in the truck to protect the casket in case of rain. We arrived
at the funeral home about 10:30. I explained to Mr. Curtright that I was not prepared to
pay for a casket then but should be able to complete payments within a year and expected
to pay interest. He and I had known each other since he had established his business in
Louisa while I was a high school student there. He had no qualms about my honesty and
would not expect interest on an unpaid balance if I could finish paying within a year. He
would extend credit for an undertaker's funeral if I wanted it. I explained that Sylvia had
requested that we not have one and that I wanted only to buy a casket, which we would
take back to Cherokee with us on Mr. Sturgill's truck. He then showed us caskets, beginning with expensive, ornate ones and ending with pine boxes covered with black cloth that
cost as little as $75. We selected a beautiful one covered with an ashes of roses fabric. The
price was $200. We decided not to buy a metal vault but to use the sturdy pine vault that
cost nothing extra. Mrs. Graham observed that the casket we chose was very much like the
one for Sylvia's sister, except that hers had been covered with a silver colored fabric. While
attendants were loading the casket and box on Mr. Sturgill's truck, we supplied Mr.
Curtright with information needed for vital statistics records. I signed a note for $200 and
Mrs. Graham signed as my security. On the way back to Cherokee, we stopped to ask
Arthur Morris, a United Baptist preacher who had been one of Sylvia's teachers at
Rockhouse School, to preach the funeral and conduct graveside services the next afternoon
at two o'clock. The dark sky was lower, the wind had begun to blow, and a light rain was
falling when we reached Cherokee.
Aunt Jenny Cooper had taken charge of the kitchen. Neighbors had brought food.
A big dinner around chicken and dumplings was waiting for us. Later in the afternoon
Sylvia's Aunt Izzie Moore and her cousins, Ruth and Watson, arrived from Winchester
bringing floral arrangements. Near dinnertime Nova Wellman and Sophie Roberts, our
friend and fellow teacher at Louisa, arrived in a truck. Nova had checked at the florist's and
the funeral home and brought flowers that had arrived, including a beautiful arrangement
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of carnations ordered by Appalachian State Teachers College.
Nova and Sophie were not weepers and wailers. They recalled incidents in their relationship with Sylvia that reflected her splendid sense of humor and the depth of her understanding of people and motives behind what they do. We laughed a great deal.
The following day was cold and cloudy with snow blowing occasionally in an icy
wind that cut to the bone. After sharing breakfast with those who had watched during the
wake, I walked up to the family graveyard to look at the grave that neighboring men had
dug in the yellow clay beside the grave of Georgia, Sylvias sister. It was neatly cut and
deep. The pine vault for the coffin was in place. The chestnut wood cross boards that
would cover the vault lid after the coffin had been lowered into the grave were arranged in
two stacks to serve as the bier for the graveside services. No one was there. Neighbors had
done their job well and retreated before the piercing wind.
Soon after a big mid-day dinner followed by a hot apple cobbler that Aunt Jenny had
made, people began to gather in the home. My father and mother arrived on mules, which
they hitched to posts in the yard fence. The day was so intensely cold that they had almost
frozen. Arthur Morris arrived in his Model A Ford about 1:30.
It was too cold to have the funeral on the broad front porch of the home, too cold,
even, to have the hall doors open. We decided to place the casket on two kitchen chairs in
the hallway, leave the doors open to the living room and the lower room, and let people sit
or stand near the doors, while Mr. Morris stood at the foot of the stairs to deliver his funeral sermon. Aunt Jenny, an excellent singer, led in the singing of a hymn from the Sweet
Songster, Mr. Morris's sermon, delivered in a conversational tone instead of a chant, was
not doctrinal but an evaluation of Sylvia's achievements and a statement in praise of the
positive influence her life had been on those who loved her and the many young people
who had been her students. Knowing that Grahams were not Baptists, he delivered an ecumenical sermon which Sylvia would have approved, I thought.
Sylvias father and mother and I sat near the open coffin during the sermon, each of
us weeping lightly by the time Mr. Morris had finished. I closed the coffin lid, and the six
pallbearers and two attendants bore it on poles up the steep hill to the graveyard. Not more
than twenty or twenty-five persons had been present for the funeral. Many of them did not
join the procession to the graveyard. When the coffin was in place on the improvised bier,
I opened it again and Mr. Morris, Aunt Jenny, and one or two others sang from memory
two or three verses from "The Poor Wayfaring Stranger." There was a commitment of ashes
to ashes and dust to dust and a brief prayer. I closed the coffin lid, and the pallbearers lowered the coffin into the grave, screwed down the lid of the vault, placed the cross boards
over it, and began filling up the grave. With the hollow thump of the first shovelful of
earth on the cross boards, we left the grave in charge of the pallbearers. The hollow thump
of the lumps of clay on the coffin brought tears gushing from my eyes. The frigid wind
stabbed me with a shudder that bore my grief as I turned away to go.
That evening Mr. and Mrs. Graham and I were alone. After a dinner of leftovers, we
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sat by a roaring log fire in the living room while a north wind shook the rafters of the hundred-year-old house, and related incidents in which Sylvia had been involved. Near bed
time, Mrs. Graham nudged Mr. Graham gently with her elbow. He cleared his throat and
told me that they had discussed my situation. Sylvia had loved me so much that she would
not hear even the slightest of criticisms of me. I had loved her. They both loved me and
were proud to have me for a son-in-law. Sylvia was dead. I was a young man with most of
my life ahead of me. I would find it hard to accept my loss, but in time I would. He and
Mrs. Graham were in agreement that I should, as soon as I was able to do so, search for
another lover, marry again, and become a father. They would not feel that I was betraying
Sylvia by loving another and marrying again, and they wanted me to write to them along
and come to see them whenever I returned to Kentucky for a visit. I was happy in Boone
and doing well there. If I could keep my health, I might find myself being promoted
because I deserved to be in a school in which it was not necessary to play politics for promotions.
Mr. and Mrs. Graham were intelligent, perceptive, and wise. They had suffered
many losses and known much sadness, and they were old enough to have learned that time
seems long for the impatient young but short for the patient old. I never loved them more
than I did that night.
I slept on the couch in the living room in which a low wood fire burned on the
hearth. Throughout the night a cold wind lashed at the eaves of the old house and the timbers creaked. Once in a troubled dream I heard so plainly Sylvia ringing her bedside bell in
the lower room that I rose upright on the couch.
Mr. Graham came into the room before daylight, built a bright fire, and sat before it.
Mrs. Graham arrived and sat with him for a while before going into the kitchen to prepare
breakfast. We ate a steaming breakfast of ham and eggs and hot biscuits with strawberry
preserves before daylight. As soon as it was light enough for me to see, I packed my light
bag and left on foot for Elaine.
The wind had died down. Frost covered fences and trees by the roadside and floated
in the air. I walked briskly, recalling as I hurried on incidents along the road involving
Sylvia. I stopped on the Narrows to determine precisely the tree below the road behind
which we had hidden a kerosene lamp Louella Miles had lent us one dark night when my
car became mired up in a mudhole in front of her house. The only light she had was the
lamp which she insisted that we borrow. The wind kept blowing out the flame. When I
had used my last match, I hid the lamp and we felt our way along the dark, muddy road to
Sylvias home. The only person I met on the familiar road to Elaine was Lewis Kazee's son,
who carried the mail on horseback from Elaine to Webbville, and usually stopped about
7:30 at the Cherokee post office where Mrs. Graham was the postmistress. I waited at
Cox's Garage and short-order restaurant for the bus to Louisa.
At Louisa I waited in the drug store and at the Courthouse for three hours before
crossing the bridge to Fort Gay to catch a Norfolk and Western train to Bluefield. Not
many people were stirring in Louisa. I saw only three or four courthouse loafers I had
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known. It was a dark and cold morning with air so still that a pall of coal smoke from
locomotives hung over the town. Of the oldtimers in the Courthouse with whom I had
brief conversations, no one referred to Sylvia's death. About 11:30 I walked down to Rip s
Restaurant for a hamburger, which I ate at the counter. Before I had finished eating, the
restaurant was crowded with high school students, many of whom I recognized. They
looked at me quizzically and nodded a recognition or spoke briefly as if they half feared to
be seen talking with me. None paused for an exchange with me. While I was paying my
bill at the cash register, four of the high school teachers came in, but none spoke to me. As
I was returning my billfold to my pocket, I looked briefly at them after they had settled
into a booth. One nodded a recognition in a startled fashion and turned his attention
immediately to his companions. I knew I was not welcome in Louisa. Outside the restaurant, I looked through the window in time to see all four of the teachers staring after me.
I crossed to the east side of the street to avoid meeting the noon hour crowd of teachers and students. I was happy at Boone, where, so far as I knew, I had no enemies or evilwishers, I was not in a mood to enjoy, as I might have enjoyed on other occasions, the
indignities of fearful teachers and students whose principal I had been for three years, but I
thought I was learning something about the political aspects of casual friendship.
The station master at Fort Gay told me the eastbound train was on time. I was the
only passenger boarding it at Fort Gay. The train would stop for no more than two minutes. I bought my ticket and waited beside the track for the train, which stopped with a
screech. The conductor helped a woman and a child down the coach steps and held my
elbow while I got on. The train had started again by the time I had chosen one of several
empty seats. I settled into my seat with my thoughts and memories.
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�Christmas
I decided that I must write to my draft board at
Louisa and explain that I no longer had a dependent.
Though I was now eligible for the draft, I desired very
much to complete the school term at Appalachian,
after which I would report in May to volunteer. Dr.
Joe Carter, who had been our doctor while Sylvia and
I lived in Louisa, had written a letter to the board stating that I was the sole support of a sick wife who was
in a sanitarium and that I myself had heavily scarred
lungs and would probably not be physically qualified
for military service. I had not heard from my board. I
was not yet prepared to state for my records that I was
then suffering from tuberculosis. Perhaps the spot on
my lung would disappear by May and I would pass the
physical examination at the induction center in
Huntington. I should, I thought, base my plans on
the assumption that I would be accepted for military
service.
The cost of Sylvia's casket had brought my debts
to $2200. When I thought of the possibility of my
being accepted for military service, my blood pressure
rose and hot water poured into my mouth. I would
receive only $750 in cash for the remainder of my year
at Appalachian. I was honor bound to pay Curtright.
Paying interest on my notes at banks and making
modest payments on the principal for a total of $250
might satisfy the bankers. I would then have $300, or
$60 a month, to meet my own expenses for five
months. I decided to follow this plan and put financial worries out of my mind as best I could.
No longer needing our household furnishings
stored in Curt Young's place, I could see whether I
might be able to sell them when I returned to
Lawrence County for the Christmas holidays. A part
of my debts was money I had borrowed to pay for
some of the furniture. If I should be able to sell it for
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half of what I paid for it, 1 could use the money to reduce my indebtedness another $300.
Refrigerators, kitchen ranges, and stoves were becoming scarce. Ours were in excellent condition. I might be able to get more than half of what I paid for them. But my creditors
would have to wait for the remainder of what I owed them until after I had completed my
military service.
As the train rushed through the mountains in a grey afternoon, I dozed very little.
Passengers, mostly older women who might have been returning from visits with sons or
daughters employed in war industries in Ohio, were subdued and quiet.
From the depot in Bluefield I rushed to the bus station in time to get a bus to Bristol,
where I could make connections to Elizabethton the following morning for a bus to Boone
that would arrive there about the middle of the day. Seats in the bus station were all occupied. I stood about on the ramp and watched buses unload and load until mine arrived.
The bus to Bristol was crowded, but I was fortunate to find a seat by an old man
returning to east Tennessee from a visit with his daughter, who was working in a plant in
Columbus, Ohio. He was excited about his trip and talked about Columbus, which he had
visited for the first time, and his daughter, who was doing classified work about which she
was not permitted to talk, even to her old daddy. He wanted me to guess his age. He was
immensely pleased when I guessed 65. He laughed with gusto, his face animated and his
bright blue eyes darting about. "Would you believe," he said, narrowing his eyes at me,
"that I am 75 years old?" He had been a widower for three years. One of his problems was
that his youthful appearance made him attractive to younger women, some of whom had
been "chasing after him." But he had decided not to marry again. He could not stand the
thought, he said, of having another woman come in and take over his wife's things. The
old man, an unsophisticated egotist, conversed easily. I found him interesting and encouraged him to talk. There was no opportunity for me to think about myself and my problems.
In Bristol I passed up the fine hotel near the bus station because I thought a room
there would cost more than I wanted to pay and went to the Virginian, an old hotel with
modest rates, but which was not at the time operating a dining room. Having settled into a
room with musty Victorian furnishings and soiled wallpaper, I took a bath, the first one I
had had since I left Boone. In a nondescript little restaurant around the corner I ate, for
thirty-five cents and a tip, a surprisingly good hamburger steak with french fries, three or
four chips of dill pickles, and a thin slice of a fresh tomato on crisp lettuce. Happy conversation in the next booth between two middle-aged, working-class men and a heavily made
up young woman with a soft voice reminded me that lonely young women were searching
for lovers.
My long day without a nap left me tired. I bought a newspaper in the hotel lobby
but found myself too tired and sleepy to read very much of it. I slept soundly that night
and was pleased to remember next morning fragments of dreams in which Sylvia and I were
together and there was no awareness of her death.
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Instead of going on to Elizabethton, as I had planned to do, I took an early bus
through Abingdon and Mountain City. It was not crowded. No one occupied the seat
beside me. I dozed until the bus started up the narrow winding road through the gorge
below Trade, Tennessee, where I became nauseated and struggled with a temptation to
vomit. The weather became brighter as we came out of the gorge at the North Carolina
state line. From Highway 421 down Cove Creek one glimpsed sweeping views of the upper
coves and timbered side of Snake Mountain, which terminated as Howard's Knob at Boone,
bathed in light, though the sun was not shining. It was an enchanted land, a satisfying
place. When I thought of the school, the excellent young principal, the friendly teachers,
and my likable students, I felt as if I were coming home.
The clouds were high over Boone. The weather was warm for the middle of
December. I walked from the bus station to the apartments and met no one along the way
whom I recognized. At the apartments I picked up from the table in front of Mrs. Coffey's
room a handful of mail that had arrived in my absence and went to my apartment, where I
took a long nap before preparing my dinner. I called Mr. Wey to report that I had returned
and would be on duty at eight o'clock the following morning, wrote Mr. and Mrs. Graham
a brief letter, and went to my office to prepare for classes.
The school would be closing for the winter holidays at the end of the following week.
I would be fully occupied with preparation for my classes. I made no reference to my
bereavement to the teachers or my students. People looked at me with sympathy in their
eyes but no one mentioned my bereavement. I talked about the burial with Mr. Wey and
discussed it one evening with Ruby Donald and Doris Penix.
It was traditional at the school for homeroom teachers to plan a Christmas party for
the last meeting of the homeroom students before the holidays. We drew names for inexpensive gifts and decorated the room in Christmas colors. I provided money for cookies
and red punch and the boys prepared everything. I was taken by complete surprise when
one of my homeroom boys, G.C. Greene, Jr., presented me with a gift, beautifully wrapped
and decorated. I opened it and found a new white shirt and a striped tie. The card
attached to the box had been signed by all of the boys. I found it difficult to refrain from
showing my emotions. I had never received a gift from my students before.
Everybody was busy with Christmas plans. I had no visitors to my apartment during
the time between my return from Kentucky and the beginning of the Christmas holidays.
Nobody invited me out. I did not go to the college cafeteria or the restaurants uptown for
evening meals but prepared in my own kitchen simple meals with a heavy concentration of
proteins and milk, which I ate at six o'clock. I slept an hour after dinner, prepared for my
classes, and read until eleven o'clock as regularly as I could.
There was an emptiness in my life with which I found it difficult to deal. My brisk
walk to the apartments for my mail each day at noon became disappointing, for I had developed the habit in order to pick up my letter from Sylvia. Expectancy had been a part of the
habit. After finding no mail at all for three or four days, I stopped going. At night I wanted to write letters to her, as I had done all year. Not having her to write to emphasized my loss.
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I was lonely and ached with a hurt I could not assuage. Sometimes I sat alone and
wept. It did not seem appropriate for me to talk about my grief, and fellow teachers were
not calling on me out of a sense of respect.
Even though I kept saying to myself that I must not worry about anything and eat
good food, take my cod liver oil and mineral supplements, exercise mildly, and sleep all I
could, I found myself so tortured at night by troubling dreams and insomnia that I welcomed the crowing of Mrs. Watson's rooster and the mooing of her cow at daylight.
I wrote to Mrs. Graham that I would return to her home for Christmas and then
spend a day or two with my father and mother before going to Columbus, Ohio, for a visit
with my sister. I had my bag packed and was ready to go after school was dismissed at
noon.
The bus from Boone to Sparta had only four or five passengers on it. I took a seat
somewhat removed from other passengers. It was a dark, cloudy day. A rain the night
before had left the earth wet and the streams swollen. The bus was warm. I dozed much of
the way between Boone and West Jefferson. At West Jefferson I noticed for the first time a
pink marble statue of Pocahontas in the display yard of a monument dealer. Not sleepy
from there on to Sparta, I was able to see much of the green rolling countryside, for I had
traveled from West Jefferson to Sparta in darkness on earlier trips.
At Sparta, I caught a crowded bus from Winston-Salem to Charleston, West Virginia.
I found a seat beside a heavy dressed up middle-age woman, who replied when I spoke to
her but looked straight ahead without saying another word between there and Bluefield,
where she left the bus. I moved over into the seat she had vacated. No one took the seat
next to me.
Nearly everybody got off the bus at a rest stop at Beckley. I ate a cold sandwich from
a dispenser and drank a soft drink, as people wandered about or gathered in groups on the
sidewalk.
In Charleston most of those who got off the bus rushed to a waiting bus to
Huntington, which already had several passengers in it. We reached Huntington sometime
in the late evening. The station was crowded with talkative, laughing people. I did not go
into the waiting room, but hurried on down to the corner and engaged a room for the
night at the Milner Hotel.
After settling myself in my room, I freshened up and walked up the street, looking
into the packed waiting room of the bus station and at crowds of happy and well dressed
people on the ramps. I remembered the threadbare, grim crowds I had seen there less than
a year before. Prosperity had come with the War, and those traveling in December, 1942,
were filled with the Christmas spirit as they hurried home for the holidays, money in their
pockets and gifts in their suitcases and shopping bags. I walked as far east as Walgreens,
where I went in and ate a dish of ice cream at the counter. On the sidewalk outside I saw
Myrtle Curry and her mother, friends Sylvia and I had known and with whom I had left a
dulcimer I could not carry with me when I went to Boone. They had their arms filled with
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bags and packages and were waiting for a bus. I walked over to the grand railroad station
with a statue of Huntington, the railroad builder, in the yard. The waiting room was
crowded with travelers, well dressed, laughing, and happy.
Returning to Fifth Avenue, along which only a few people were hurrying, I walked
past the Mosely residence where I was rooming when I had received the call to come to
Boone. The house was dark except for the window of the room which Miss Westall had
occupied.
After breakfast the next morning at the White Tower, where I had eaten egg sandwiches with coffee while I was in Huntington, I went by the Mosely home for a brief visit.
The Captain had gone to the country to ride one of his horses and Miss Westall was at
work, but I enjoyed a good conversation with Mrs. Mosely and the friendly black couple
who worked for her. Jim remembered with good humor and gratitude my prying his false
teeth from his throat when he went to sleep while sitting in the kitchen door, fell down the
steps, and swallowed his teeth the day before I left for Boone.
Huntington was swarming with Saturday shoppers. Moving among the happy
crowds was exhilarating to me. I shopped for a few Christmas greetings. Remembering
that I needed some new undershirts, I went to Huntington Dry Goods Store on Third
Avenue to see whether I might find some in my size in the bargain basement. Two attractive young women, perhaps high school girls with vacation jobs, were in charge of the corner in which underwear was sold. The smaller one, shapely, animated, smiling, and eager
to help, was free at the moment to talk with me. I told her what I wanted, but just then
the other one turned away from the customer, who had inquired about something but had
not bought it, and took charge of me. She had what I wanted. While she was putting two
undershirts in a bag for me and accepting pay for them, the other was flirting with smiling
eyes. As I turned away to go, I heard her say, "He was my customer. You took him away
from me. You just did that because he's cute." Hurriedly, I adjusted my tie and checked to
see whether my hat was raked at the right angle, turned, and walked past them. Their
smiles boosted my drooping ego. It had been a long time since I had engaged in such an
open flirtation and I could not remember how long it had been since an attractive young
woman had said I was cute.
I returned to the Milner, brushed my teeth, packed my bag, left my key at the desk,
and walked up to the square to catch a trolley car to Ashland. The ride was a nostalgic
experience for me. I enjoyed riding in trolley cars and had gone from Huntington to
Ashland and back on one many times. I was fortunate to get a seat. Many stood in the
aisle, steadying themselves by holding to seats. I rode to Thirteenth Street and hurried to
the bus station.
Clusters of laughing, talking people stood along the sidewalk. The station was
crowded. I bought a ticket to Louisa. My bus would leave soon after lunch. There was
not an empty seat in the waiting room. I stood against the wall with my light bag beside
me on the floor while considering whether to wait for a seat at the counter and have a sandwich and milk there or go around the corner for lunch in a little restaurant in the Ventura
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Hotel building. Thinking I might see someone in the crowd whom I had known, I was
searching faces when a tall man with a friendly and vaguely familiar looking face walked up
to me and asked, "Are you Gratis Williams? You might not remember me, but we went to
school together on Caines Creek." He waited a moment to see whether I might remember
him. I did not. "I am Curt Blankenship," he said. I remembered him then. It had been
twenty years since we were in school together. He was one of the shy twins, Curt and Bert,
whom I could never tell apart. They were very poor, sons of a widower who was a tenant
living in a battered little shack up a branch in the head of the creek. The boys came to
school each year only as long as they could go barefoot, for there was no money to buy
shoes. There was a sister, too, but she did not come to school. I had never seen her. It was
Curt who had delighted the school one Friday afternoon when he recited as his "piece," a
folk rhyme: "Chicken pie and pepper cake/ The bullfrog died with the bellyache." He had
not been able to finish grade school, but he had a good job and was doing all right then.
The bus to Louisa was crowded with young people on their way home from jobs in
war industries in Ohio. I did not recognize any of them. Mostly young women, they
seemed to be persons who had not gone to high school. They talked easily, many appearing
to be determined to illustrate how well they had mastered Buckeye diction. Most of them
got off the bus at Louisa for a rest stop, using facilities in the Courthouse. Afterwards,
many of them crowded into the drug store for sodas or ice cream. They must have been
returning to Johnson, Floyd, or Pike County. When I went in to inquire about the schedule to Blaine, the clerk said to me in a low voice, "Did you ever see so much Columbus
red?" I looked around at those sitting at tables, or standing in clusters near the front of the
store, sipping sodas or licking ice cream cones. Almost all of them wore dresses with bright
red waists and skirts of red and green plaid. Their hair styles were so much alike that one
might have thought all of them patronized the same beauty shop. "They come back from
Columbus dressed like this," the clerk continued. "We call them Columbus reds. People in
Columbus call them 'Louisies' because they say they are from 'Louisy.'"
The bus arrived at Blaine after dark. Most of the passengers who got off at Cox's
Restaurant were young women who had grown out of my knowledge, if I had ever known
them. They, too, wore "Columbus red." Each carried on one arm a coat with a collar of
artificial fur and in the other hand a black suitcase too big to carry four or five miles up a
muddy road. Fathers of some of them were waiting in the restaurant.
As I started, one of the young women called and asked whether she might walk with
me. I looked at her closely. Her keen black eyes looked familiar, but the clusters of black
curls I did not remember. She was tall and slender and with makeup applied with some
skill, I thought. In fact, she was a pretty girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old. I told
her that I would be pleased to have a walking partner and confessed that I did not remember who she was. She was the daughter of the tenants on the farm Mrs. Graham had inherited from her parents. I had seen her often when she used to come to the post office at
Cherokee, pick up any mail for her parents that might have arrived, and come in and sit on
the porch to rest a while before walking, barefoot and brown legged, the three miles back to
her home on Lick Fork. She was going to walk the five or six miles home that night.
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Her big black suitcase looked heavy. I offered, though, to carry hers and let her carry
mine. She would swap for a little while if she became tired, she said. I did not have a
flashlight. A rain the night before and warm weather had left the road an extended mudhole. Clouds were thick. The night was pitch black, but we could barely see water holes in
the road when we were careful.
She chattered and laughed mirthfully as we stumbled along through the mud. Her
mother had written her that Sylvia had died. She talked much of how well she had liked
Sylvia and admired her pretty clothes. After we had walked a half mile she was willing to
exchange loads with me. After we crossed the Cherokee bridge across Blaine, we found the
mud stiffer and the road more difficult for walking than the road along the Narrows had
been. We decided to leave the road and walk at the edge of the fields. When she became
tired and staggering, I invited her to hold my arm, for she apparently had poor night vision.
Soon she began telling of dates she had enjoyed with men who worked at the plant with
her, squeezing my arm from time to time. Once we sat on a fallen post to rest. She sat
close to me and clapped me on the shoulder and laughed to emphasize the cleverness with
which she had dealt with men she had dated.
At Cherokee I expressed concern for her traveling alone, loaded with that heavy black
suitcase another three miles in the darkness. Mrs. Graham would prepare a bed for her and
she could go on to Lick Fork next morning. But she had written her mother that she
would be home that night. She had thought her little brother would meet her at Blaine.
Something must have happened. She stumbled on into the darkness.
Mr. and Mrs. Graham were listening to a radio program. The only light in the room
was from the glow of wood coals in the fireplace. They were expecting me, but I was late.
Mrs. Graham offered to prepare a supper for me, but I declined. She turned the radio
down and we talked.
Herbert Sturgill had brought out from Louisa the living room and bedroom furniture
that Sylvia and I had stored in Curt Young's house. Mrs. Sturgill would buy at half price,
as I had proposed, the couch, end tables, and two chairs. Mrs. Graham would buy the
remainder of it. Mr. Graham had talked with his cousin, Lafe Wellman, who operated a
hardware and furniture store in Louisa, about selling for a commission our refrigerator,
stove, and dining room furniture. Mr. Wellman was not certain that he could sell it but he
would permit me to have it moved to his store and he would see what he could do with it.
Mr. Graham had told Lafe Wellman that I would talk with him while I was home for the
holidays.
We talked until eleven o'clock, mostly about neighborhood events and local persons,
those who were ill, or had gone away to work, or were in some branch of military service.
We referred frequently to Sylvia, but casually and unemotionally as if she might have gone
away on a visit. The bed in the living room had been moved out. After the eleven o'clock
news I retired to the unheated lower room in which Sylvia had died and slept on the bed
that had been ours when we had our own house in Louisa.
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While at the Graham home through Christmas Day, I visited with neighbors who
came to the post office, unpacked and placed in shelves in the lower room the books that
had been stored at Curt Young's, went through and discarded teaching materials from
Kentucky that I no longer cared to keep, and arranged and put in Sylvia's trunk letters she
had received from me during her illness along with her poems. Mrs. Graham helped me
sort Sylvia's clothing, and we decided to whom we would give articles of value. Except for
such articles as aprons and housecoats, Sylvia's clothing was too small for her mother.
Working with Sylvia's things in this fashion was good for me. I thought I was better able to
accept her death as a result but learned later that deep emotional attachments require a long
time for resolution.
One sunny afternoon the Sturgills came for a visit. Mrs. Sturgill liked the living
room furniture and the lamps that went with it, but since there was no electricity available
at Cherokee then, she did not take the lamps. I helped Mr. Sturgill put the couch and
chairs in his truck. He paid me $35 cash for the furniture.
Christmas night I discussed my financial situation with Mr. and Mrs. Graham. If
Lafe Wellman should be able to sell my refrigerator, stove, and dining room furniture for
what I wanted for them, I would have $300 to apply toward my debts. I planned to pay
Henry Curtright as quickly as I could. When I returned for a visit in the spring I would
have the cash needed to buy a stone for Sylvia's grave, one like her sister's. Mrs. Graham
offered to buy the stone, but I felt that it was my obligation to furnish it. Mrs. Graham
agreed to go with me to select it. I would return after the school in Boone closed in April
and we could order the stone before I would volunteer for military service in the quota for
May. It was my understanding that creditors were required to hold the debts of people in
military service until they were discharged. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Graham thought I would
qualify for military service.
The day following Christmas I walked the three miles over the hill to the home of my
father and mother for a two-day visit. They were lonely. None of their children away from
home had come back for Christmas. They had only my little brother, twelve years old at
the time, with them. Everybody on the creek, except old people and children, had either
joined the army or gone away to work. The local school, which I had taught for three
years, had only nine or ten children in it. There was talk that it might be closed in a year
or two. While I was there both sets of grandparents, all looking older than I remembered,
came for visits. My great uncle Jake came for dinner one day. He had become a widower
since I saw him last. Then 72, he was, as they say, "a-whettin' and a-honin' for him another
womern." A compulsive talker, Uncle Jake addressed himself mostly to me and most of his
stories were accounts of his recent encounters with widows, old maids, and teen-age girls,
all of whom were "a-drawin' up to him." He talked loudly and rapidly. My mother,
amused by his self-exaltation, would occasionally walk from the kitchen to ask him questions or offer comments. Uncle Jake, seeing me as a fellow widower, thought we must have
interests in common, but he left little room for me to say anything. When he was ready to
leave, he said, "When you come back this spring, come down and stay all night with me,
and I'll take you a-courtin'."
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My mother was distressed that my brother Ralph's marriage had broken up. He and
his wife had resigned as teachers and gone to Columbus to work in war industries. They
worked different shifts. She had fallen in love with a man with whom she worked, requested her half of investments and the bank account, the car, and the furniture and gone to live
with the other man, who had promised to marry her after divorces came through.
Following the separation, Ralph had given up the apartment and was living in a rooming
house. My mother, who could not accept divorce, was sure the other man, whose wife and
several children lived elsewhere, had no intention of getting a divorce to marry Ralph's
estranged wife, who after her lover tired of her, would come right back and want to live
with Ralph again, after she had "run through with" everything they had. Mama thought of
her as a "piece of trash." She feared Ralph would be "easy and mealy mouthed" and take
the "hussy" back. She wanted me to talk with him about that while I was in Columbus
and to tell him that if he should take her back "after the way she had entreated him," she
"shan't ever step foot in my house again what time I have breath."
I walked, mostly through the fields, to Elaine in time to get the morning bus to
Louisa, where I had my suit pressed while I waited and my shoes shined before having
lunch at Effie's, beside the railroad track, where I would not see former students or fellow
teachers. I took a Norfolk and Western train from Fort Gay to Columbus and a taxicab to
my sister Ruth's home.
While in Columbus I had four experiences which I have always remembered. My sister Ruth and her husband John invited me to go with them to a party in the home of
friends of theirs. Ralph had been invited, too. He was nattily dressed, charming, and a
favorite of the men present. He told good stories and laughed easily, but after his tongue
had begun to seem thick and he staggered against the newel post, I remained close to him
and discovered that he was making frequent trips to the liquor table and was drinking
heavy drinks of hard whiskey straight. It was his intention to get drunk. When he started
up the stairs to the bathroom, he collapsed on the stairs like a rag doll and came sliding
back. We carried him to a bedroom, took off his shoes, loosened his tie, and stretched him
out. He was unconscious. We were embarrassed that he had not limited himself to a few
social drinks, but I was convinced that he was suffering keen disappointment, shame, and
humiliation, though no one had referred to his former wife.
Ralph invited me to spend an evening with him. He had a date. He and his girl
were going to a night spot called the Setting Sun, where drinks were served, there was good
music, and people who wanted to could dance. His date had a friend, a recently divorced
Catholic woman about my age with four children who had not dated since her husband ran
off with another woman. She and her children lived with her father and mother, strict
Catholics who did not want her to date. The attractive woman had been with Ralph and
his date a time or two. Ralph's date had told her about me, that I was a teacher and recently widowed, and she thought she might enjoy going out with me. I agreed to go along on a
date with the friend.
I took a cab to Ralph's rooming house, hoping that he might want to talk about his
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problems while he was getting himself dressed for the evening. He evaded my questions.
He was not ready to talk about how he felt about his divorced wife. He dismissed the matter with "I was more than fair in dividing with her what we had, and I'll not take her back."
When he had dressed and was ready to go, he called the young woman who was to be my
date and told her we would come by soon to pick her up. He then ordered a taxicab.
My date for the evening lived in an older working-class district. Her parents' home,
about 1910 vintage, was a row house. When we arrived, Ralph decided to wait in the taxicab while I went in for the young woman, whose first name was Rose but whose last name
I have forgotten. Two older men dressed in work clothes were sitting on the lighted porch.
I presented myself and told them I had come for Rose. The men did not tell me their names.
One of them, apparently Rose's father, told me to knock on the screen door and she would
be there. I knocked. A little boy responded and reported that Rose was not quite ready but
would be there in just a few minutes. I wondered whether the boy was Rose's son.
The man invited me to have a seat and interrupted his conversation with his neighbor to ask where I was from. Neither had ever heard of Boone but the visitor had been to
Charleston once, which he apparently thought was in North Carolina, and wanted to know
how far Boone is from Charleston. When I replied that I did not know exactly but that it
is about the same distance from Boone as Columbus is, they looked at each other quizzically. Then the father asked, "And what do you do?" When I told him that I was a teacher,
he turned toward his companion and they resumed their conversation, neither paying any
more attention to me.
Rose appeared in about five minutes and I presented myself. She was a slender Irish
girl with fair skin, brilliant blue eyes, and dark hair. She told her father she would be home
about midnight. She did not offer to take my arm. I opened the door of the cab, she
climbed in beside Ralph and I sat beside her. Ralph gave the cab driver directions to his
girls house. Ralph and Rose talked. She had a pleasantly modulated voice but chose her
words carefully as if she feared she might make a grammatical error. I thought she probably
knew that I was an English teacher.
We had a booth at the Setting Sun. I sat beside Rose. Ralph's friend, whose name
was Audrey, was uninhibited and talkative. We drank beer. Audrey selected several records
for us to hear during the evening and sang along with some of them. Our conversation was
inconsequential. Rose said very little except in response to questions. She rarely looked at
me, so I saw her mostly in profile, her pretty nose tilted slightly at the end. Once during
the evening I pressed her hand, lying open and relaxed on the seat. Her hand was shapely
and warm but dry and hard like a working person's hand. She did not respond. Her hand
was as passive as if it had been made of rubber. Suddenly, it occurred to me that Rose was
uncomfortable, ill at ease, and feeling guilty about having a date. I gathered her unresponsive hand in mine and squeezed it. It flopped back like rubber into passivity. I patted it
gently and withdrew my hand. After we had consumed several beers, Rose became more
talkative and went into detail about the work she did but she would look at me only briefly.
Rose and I faced the entrance to the Setting Sun, which was a favorite spot of people
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from Kentucky. It was crowded with laughing, happy young folk, most of whom were
young women. Two well-dressed girls waiting at the front for seats kept looking at me as if
they knew me. In a few minutes I recognized them. They had been sparrow-legged students in the junior division of the high school at Louisa while I was principal there and had
grown up since then. When I nodded my recognition, they came to the booth to speak to
me. They had been Sylvia's students in English classes. I presented Rose and Audrey as my
brother's friends and then presented Ralph. I was embarrassed at first because they had
found me there but rebounded when I realized that they could have been embarrassed by
my seeing them there but were not. They were pretty young women who were working in a
plant. They asked about Sylvia, whom they referred to as the best English teacher they had
while they were in high school. They had not heard of her death.
Apparently, the incident established my credibility for Rose. She asked me two or
three questions about Appalachian and Boone, neither of which she had ever heard of. She
had gone to a parochial school and graduated from a Catholic high school before marrying
at the age of eighteen.
At the end of the evening I ordered a taxicab for Rose and me and Ralph ordered
another for him and Audrey. Rose was talkative on the way home. She wished she had
gone to college instead of marrying at age eighteen. She had been a good student in high
school and would have enjoyed going to college. When we arrived at her home, her father
and his friend were still sitting on the lighted porch. I asked the cab driver to wait while I
escorted Rose to the door, where I thanked her for going out with me. She said she had
enjoyed the evening. I bade her good night without offering to shake hands with her. And
so ended my first date as a widower.
Aunt Alma, my mother's sister, and her husband, Nelson Williams, my great uncle
Jake's son and a first cousin of my father, lived in Columbus. They had gone there soon
after their marriage as late teen-agers and before I could remember. Nelson, who had been
a railroad engineer for many years, had held his job throughout the Depression. I had
known them mostly as well dressed and apparently well-to-do aunt and uncle who returned
to Kentucky for short visits in late summer nearly every year and to attend funerals, homecomings, and family reunions. Their only child, a son about two years younger than I, had
died when he was only a few weeks old. My mother had told me that Aunt Alma, who had
become very religious in recent years, was in poor health and suffered intensely at times
from a disease of the liver. She urged that I be sure to go see her while I was in Columbus,
for she had been especially fond of me, her oldest nephew, and would not live much longer.
I promised my mother that I would go see her.
Two or three days before I planned to leave for Boone I called my aunt to ask
whether it was convenient for me to come for a visit. She and Nelson would be delighted
to have me come that very afternoon and I had to come prepared to spend the night. They
had always hoped I would come to see them. They had heard that I had been in Columbus
a time or two but I had not called them. She upbraided me for my neglect of them. I
agreed to come prepared to spend the night.
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Aunt Alma and Uncle Nelson owned a row house in an old fashioned but still proud
working-class neighborhood with trees along the sidewalks, well kept yards, and freshly
painted porch floors. Every room in the house shone as if it had just been cleaned and the
good but inexpensive furniture was waxed and polished. The guest bedroom looked like a
model in a furniture store. I complimented my aunt on her taste and skill as a housekeeper.
She had a roast in the oven. Nelson would be home about seven o'clock and we would eat
about eight.
Not yet fifty years old, Aunt Alma in some ways looked older. Her naturally curly
hair was as black as ever and her lively dark brown eyes as bright, but she was thin and her
fair skin was dappled with dark brown spots, even the skin on her hands and arms. In
response to my inquiry about her health, she went into detail, supplying a refrain of religious
expressions like "Bless God," "God be praised," " Bless His Holy Name," "Blessed Jesus" to
her account of a recent attack, brought on, she thought, by an imbalance in her medication.
She had been in the hospital for several days. While there, she had been delirious and had
tried to tear her skin off with her fingernails. It had been necessary to restrain her in a strait
jacket. "Blessed be His Holy Name," she concluded, "He lifted me up and restored me."
As she talked, she paused occasionally and stared with a faraway gaze as if she saw something
I did not see. At the end of her account she stared past me and with a smile of happy
recognition on her pretty lips for a long time. But she was getting along well then, she said,
and was able to do her housework and cook for Nelson.
My mother had sent Aunt Alma pictures of me through the years. She had them all
over the house. Standing on the dresser in the bedroom was a picture taken during my first
year as a teacher. She had pictures of other nephews and nieces, but they were in an album
she kept in the drawer of her library table.
While we were waiting in her living room for Uncle Nelson to arrive, she told me that
she prayed for me every day and had done so for years, that she asked God to bless me and
guide me in the ways of righteousness and that she knew He would, Praise Him. I was stunned
by the realization that I had meant so much to her without having known it. I felt guilty
because I had never been to see her, had never written her a letter, or sent her a Christmas
greeting, or given her a present. She asked about my soul's welfare, whether I was saved. I
felt like a hypocrite when I told her that I was at peace with God and felt confident in his
grace, for I knew that for her salvation came as a mystical experience, as being born again,
and exemplified itself in religious ecstasy and piety. I knew that as she understood and had
experienced salvation I was not in that number, but I knew also that I did not want to be.
She left me with the radio while she went into the kitchen to prepare for supper.
About seven o'clock Uncle Nelson arrived, all dressed in striped coveralls and an engineers
cap and carrying an overcoat across his left arm and swinging a black lunch kit in his right
hand. Startled when he found me sitting in his living room, he did not recognize me at
once, but he was voluble and warm in his welcome. Without taking the time to go by the
kitchen to greet my aunt, he rushed upstairs to take a shower, shave, and change clothes
before supper. Soon he came bounding down the stairs, booming questions at me as he
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came. Like his father (and most Williamses), he was a compulsive talker and one who
could not wait for a question to be answered before hurrying along with his own narratives.
We went into the dining room for my aunt's delicious supper and sat opposite each other at
the table. Aunt Alma, who was on a special diet, did not eat with us. She sat on a high
stool near the table and "supervised" us, bringing more hot biscuits as we needed them and
seeing that we had milk in our glasses.
Uncle Nelson kept a cascade of narrative charging and leaping over his own asides
and interruptions. He gave me a full account of railroading in those busy times when the
nation was gearing up for an all-out war effort, turning aside frequently to relate episodes of
special runs he had made and arguments with his bosses he had won. His epic, of which he
himself was the adventurous Ulysses, was expansive, but he had such a high regard for factual detail that he would frequently correct himself, sometimes two or three times, before
continuing. Since he did not seem to be greatly interested in the adventures of a school
teacher, I was a listener. My contributions to the conversation were short questions I managed to ask from time to time mostly to demonstrate that I was listening and interested in
his narratives.
Following the rneal, he took me out to show me his carefully tended back yard, which
he had converted to a victory garden the spring before. While we were gone, my aunt ate
her simple supper. She was washing dishes when we returned. We sat in the living room
while Uncle Nelson talked. After finishing the dishes, Aunt Alma came and sat quietly with
us for a time. She had begun to droop. Uncle Nelson was annoyed when she found it necessary to interrupt him to say that she would be getting up early to prepare Nelson's breakfast and pack his lunch in time for him to get to the railroad yards by six o'clock. I could
sleep as long as I wanted to. She would keep a breakfast warm for me in the oven. She went
off to bed.
After a time Uncle Nelson turned to asking me questions about people he had known
on Caines Creek while he was growing up. My reports reminded him of many stories
involving the old-timers which he told. I noted that he made judgments readily and was
generous with his moral strictures, traits I had observed in others from Caines Creek who
had gone away and enjoyed a measure of success in the world.
About 10:30 he announced that we would listen to the eleven o'clock news and then
go to bed, since he had to get up so early. He always tried to listen to the news before lying
down. He launched into his own analysis of the world situation, inserting, as appropriate,
accounts of conversations about the progress of the war he had had with men at work. He
was more up to date on the news than I was and was so charged with interest in the news
report that he would interrupt with his own opinions. Following the program, he speculated for a bit on the turn of events and what he was certain would happen next.
I slept well. I was dimly aware of stirring around in the house in the early morning
hours but did not wake up until about 7:30. Everything was quiet. Aunt Alma had lain
down again after Nelson had left the house. When she heard me in the bathroom, she got
up again and set out a warm breakfast for me. She sat with me while I ate.
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About nine o'clock I was ready to leave. Aunt Alma was sitting by her fireplace when
I set my light bag down to say goodbye to her. In the midst of the conversation she spoke
my name almost in a whisper as if she meant to tell me a secret. I was standing at the end
of the fireplace with my hand on the mantel. She said in a voice charged with emotion,
"Gratis, Jesus came day before yesterday and visited with me. I was sitting here and looked
up. He was standing right where you are standing now." Suddenly my spine felt like an icicle. I moved back a few inches so as not to fill the space Jesus had occupied. "He was a little man about your size," she continued. "He looked at me sweetly and smiled. The light
around his head became brighter. He did not speak, just looked at me and smiled. Then,
he faded away." She studied my face intently for a moment and then looked beyond me
with her faraway gaze. I could think of nothing appropriate to say. After a moment she
said in her natural voice, "His visit filled me with happiness and assurance, Bless His Sweet
Name." She got up, walked with me to the door, and embraced me before I left.
(A few weeks later Aunt Alma returned to the hospital, where she had to be restrained
again in a strait jacket. She died a painful death.)
Back at my sister's I prepared to go to town to window shop and feel the throb of
urban life at noon time on a work day. The weather had become mild. I did not need to
wear an overcoat. I rode a trolley car to High Street and wandered through the shopping
district, looking especially at clothing for men. Some of the shops were advertising their
post-Christmas sales and many suits and overcoats in my size had been marked down. I
needed a suit and an overcoat desperately. My $ 13 suit was for fall or spring and my older
suits were threadbare and out of style. My overcoat was six years old, but I felt that I could
not really afford to spend money for new clothes, even at bargain prices. My brother-in-law
had bought two days earlier for only $45 a rich brown suit with two pairs of pants and a
topcoat of the same material at J.C. Penney's. I liked his outfit very much. He thought the
same suit was available in my size. Although I was sure I could not afford to buy one, I did
have $35 that Herbert Sturgill had paid me in cash. That with only $10 from my salary
money would be enough if I should find myself overcome by an urge to buy. I went to
Penney's, just to look around. There was an outfit like John's in my size. The length of the
trousers would be adjusted while I waited if I wished to buy. I tried on everything and was
pleased with the color and the neat fit. But I needed time to consider.
I strolled among shops until I became tired, stopped for lunch in a little restaurant
near the Neil House, and then sat in the Neil House lobby a long time, associating it with
Theodore Dreiser's novel, Jennie Gerhardt, which, as I understood it, had been set partly
there. I dozed for a bit, got up and stretched myself, and went back and bought the suit
and topcoat. After I had paid for my purchase, the clerk told me that the women who
altered trousers were overworked just then and it would be at least an hour before they
could get to mine. I could sit and wait or take a walk and come back. I decided to return
to the Neil House.
A dry wind hurrying along down High Street was whisking bits of paper and chewing
gum wrappers along the sidewalk. As I stepped from the street up to the level of the side110
�Christmas
walk, I noticed the scraps scooting along toward me and remembered that Mark Twain had
once picked up a fifty-dollar bill along there, announced in the paper he had found it, and
left town before being overwhelmed by the number of claimants. While I was chuckling to
myself about Mark Twain's good luck, I saw what looked like a bill lifting, sliding, lifting,
and bouncing toward me. I picked it up. It was a twenty dollar bill.
Not disturbed, as Mark Twain had been, by a vestigial conscience concerning such
matters, I was pleased to think that good fortune had smiled on me and never once considered either advertising in the paper that a twenty dollar bill had blown into my hand or taking the bill to the police station. Instead, I remembered a men's shop two or three doors
beyond the Neil House in which I had seen in the window a good looking yellow shirt and
a beautiful tie that were just right for the suit I had bought. I put the bill in my wallet and
hurried to the shop, half afraid that someone had already bought the tie I wanted. The tie
was still there. I paid $3.50 for it, more than I had ever paid for a tie before, and bought a
yellow shirt, a light blue shirt with a matching tie, and a bright green sport shirt made of a
new synthetic material said to have been derived from cornstalks. I still had $2.00 of my
fortune money.
My package was waiting for me when I returned to Penney's. With my new clothing
under my arm I walked to the bus station to check bus schedules to Boone and learned that
I could leave Columbus at seven o'clock in the morning and get to Boone at nine o'clock
that night.
The following morning I was at the bus station on time. Snow was falling. By the
time the bus was loaded and moving the snow was perhaps an inch deep. It became deeper
for a few miles south of Columbus but by the time we had reached Chillicothe there was
no snow at all. I changed buses at Ashland, Kentucky, and came on U.S. 23 through
Louisa and Pikeville to Jenkins. The day was cloudy but there was no snow in the Big
Sandy Valley. From Jenkins to Bristol there was no snow, but a few miles south of Bristol
we came into snow again. It was six or eight inches deep in Boone, where a frigid wind was
blowing and the snow was drifting. I rode in a taxicab from the bus station to Faculty
Apartments, which seemed abandoned because so few had returned from their holidays.
My apartment was quiet and lonely, and I could hear no sounds in apartments near
mine. It was two or three weeks before I learned that Catherine Smith, my next door
neighbor, and Annafreddie Carsteens, who lived in the apartment under mine, had lost
their mothers, who had been living with them, about the time Sylvia had died.
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�Longing to Call Boone Home
As we moved into the second semester at
Appalachian High School, teachers began including
me in social activities they arranged. Mr. Wey and
Jeannie invited me to their home for dinner several
times, usually along with two or three other staff
members. Dr. Abrams and Lillian had me to dinner
occasionally. People living in the apartments, even
those I had not met, began calling on me for brief visits in the late afternoons. No one referred to my having lost my wife recently. It was as if one were expected, after a few weeks of bereavement, not to refer to
his loss any more. Holding my grief within intensified
the pain of it at times. I would return to my apartment from a dinner or a room party, where I had
enjoyed gaiety and laughter and not thought of Sylvia
at all, and sink suddenly into despair and feel guilty.
The state of my health disturbed me, too. I
took cod liver oil and my iron tonic faithfully, drank a
quart of milk each day, and ate eggs and meat, but I
had not yet regained all of the weight I had lost before
coming to Boone. I took colds easily and coughed at
night. I took a brief nap after lunch and a longer one
after dinner, walked two or three miles a day and did
bending and stretching exercises for about ten minutes
before going to bed, and tried to sleep seven or eight
hours at night, but I continued to be troubled with
night sweats, bad dreams, and insomnia. I awoke
often, wet with perspiration, from troubled dreams
and tossed about for an hour or two before going back
to sleep just before dawn, then sleeping through the
alarm and arriving late for faculty meetings.
One afternoon about the middle of January two
young women called on me. I had seen them in the
building and had met one of them in the hall and on
the stairs a few times, but I did not know their names.
They presented themselves, Jennie Sue Allen and
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Melba Lovill (later Tugman). Jennie Sue was a secretary in Dean J.D. Rankin's office and
Melba worked for Barnard Dougherty in the business office. They were my neighbors, had
seen me in the building, had heard of my wife's death, and had come for a brief neighborly
visit of welcome. I invited them in. They sat on the long couch and I in an easy chair.
After about ten minutes Melba excused herself to run some errands and Jennie Sue
remained, though she, too, must be hurrying along soon to meet another young woman in
the building to go together to the cafeteria for dinner.
Jennie Sue, a slight young woman in her early 20s, had well kept dark hair that rested
on her shoulders and intensely dark eyes that danced and sparkled when she smiled. In our
conversation I learned that she had graduated from college with a major in English but had
not taught school because she preferred to work as a secretary and receptionist. She was not
engaged, as most of the unmarried young women were, and did not have a "regular
boyfriend." I told her that I was not yet ready psychologically for a girl friend and might
not be for a long time, for I had loved my wife deeply and was missing her more than I
could say. But if she could accept a casual relationship with me I would like to invite her to
be my partner at parties and other social affairs if she were interested, knowing that I was
not a serious suitor. She said she understood. She was lonely herself at times and would
enjoy going with me. I could not tell her about my illness, but I did tell her that I was
head over heels in debt and so desperately poor that I rarely went to the movies because I
felt I could not afford to pay the price of a ticket. She said we could "dutch" if we should
decide to go to a movie together or out for a dinner at a restaurant.
Figure H, Gathering of teachers in front of Faculty Apartments prior to an outing in
the country, September 1943. (l-r) Sallie Pat Carson, Mary Madison, Dorothy
Snyder, Gratis Williams, Ellen Bell, Pete Felts, Ruby Donald. Photo courtesy of Hugh
Daniel.
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�Longing to Call Boone Home
Jennie Sue, who, I learned soon, was intelligent, wrote well, and spent much of her spare time
reading, was naturally a quiet, pleasant, and smiling person. She became my partner when Hugh
and Ruby brought food and drinks to my apartment for meals, or when we played cards, or went
to a movie. After a few weeks my friends began
including Jennie Sue when they invited me to parties. Quiet, smiling, warm, and sincere, she made
friends easily. She was tolerant and charitable in
her estimates of others and did not criticize others
readily, but because she was keenly perceptive, listened well, and observed closely she understood
better than most why people behave as they do.
slus
Before I left my office at five o'clock, I was
usually able to complete preparations for my classes the following day and to check tests and papers
I had accepted from my students. I only found it
necessary to return to the school in the evening
Figure I, A country outing, 1943, (l-r)
when I was to meet groups from my dramatics
Gratis Williams, Woody Mizell, Winnie
classes for play rehearsals or to sell tickets for bas- Stokes, Hugh Daniel, Ruby Donald, Photo
ketball games. I had time to read. Some of the
courtesy of Ruby Daniel.
books I read were appropriate for high school students. I took time to make objective tests on these books that students could take in ten or
fifteen minutes. Other books from the College Library I read for relaxation, but I did not
attempt to build for myself a reading program as I had done while I was working for New
Idea at Coldwater, Ohio, or International Nickel Corporation at Huntington.
Mr. Wey, who began planning that year for a self-study of the high school for the
Southern Association of Schools and Colleges the following year, had four or five of us in
his home several times for planning meetings. As I did not then think I would be returning
to Boone the following year, I felt for a long time more like a referee and consultant than a
participant at the meetings, but I especially enjoyed helping to develop a statement of the
philosophy of our school. We wrote a tentative statement at our first meeting, a carefully
worded paper about three-fourths of a page long. At subsequent meetings we criticized,
revised, and re-wrote until we finally had what Mr. Wey preferred to call a first draft. He
felt that as we discussed what we were actually doing at the school and changes we hoped to
implement, we would want to revise the statement of our philosophy again at the beginning
of the following year. We were not yet prepared to state goals and objectives or to identify
strategies for change but we engaged in lively discussions of these matters as we considered
our statement of philosophy. I became so interested in what we were doing that I began to
wish I could return the following year and help complete the self-study.
Sometime early in 1943, perhaps in February, Dr. Abrams invited me to give a twen-
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
ty-minute program of Appalachian songs for the Lions Club, of which he, Dr. Whitener,
and Dr. Robert Busteed from the College were members. I accepted his invitation and prepared and rehearsed several times in no more than a humming voice a program that I
thought I could do in twenty minutes. The Lions Club was meeting then in the dining
room of the Daniel Boone Hotel. The light-heartedness, good humor, and friendly fellowship of the Lions around the immense fireplace in the lobby of the hotel before their dinner
meeting in the dining room impressed me. Unlike my fellow Rotarians at Louisa,
Kentucky, who had been grave, reserved, a bit stiff, and inclined to nap and nod, even at
luncheon meetings, the Lions were lively, informal, and relaxed. I saw among them business
and professional people I had met up town, and they made me feel that I was a welcome
visitor. The Lions met at tables arranged in a U shape in a curtained off part of the dining
room. At that time the club had twenty-eight members.
The food was exceptionally good. The peas did not rattle like bullets on our plates,
the mashed potatoes were not watery, biscuits were not warmed over. Mrs. Price, the wife of
the proprietor of the hotel, supervised personally the preparation of the food, and enjoyed
an enviable reputation as a cook. She baked the pastries herself. The food was unlike any I
had ever eaten at a club meeting. The Lions engaged in lively conversation while two "tail
twisters," twins Howard and Raleigh Cottrell, kept a routine of pranks going.
After we had eaten, the president called on the program chairman. Dr. Abrams was
presented. He gave me a brief but somewhat exaggerated introduction, including an
account of our first meeting, and presented me not only as an accomplished singer and
interpreter of Appalachian ballads and songs but then, also, the ugliest man in Boone. The
Lions applauded his introduction so long that I had to wait to begin my program, which
everybody enjoyed so well that I was called back for two encores, even though the Club
tried to restrict its meetings to one hour. Recognizing that the response was more in the
spirit of fun and foolishness than of appreciation of my songs or my skill in singing them, I
was, for all of that, pleased with my reception. No one had seemed bored. I had never had
a better audience. Having given a similar program to the Louisa Rotary Club, I remembered long-suffering and patient looks on the faces of many of the Rotarians and the feeble
and mechanical round of applause "for manners' sake" they had given me when I sat down.
I thought I would enjoy being a member of the Boone Lions Club.
In a few weeks Dr. Abrams told me that the Club was beginning a membership drive
and he would like to sponsor me for membership. The Club wanted to expand and hoped
to take in six or eight new members. He discussed with me costs and worthwhile activities
of the Club, emphasizing its good work for children with poor vision. The men had
enjoyed my program and spirit of good fellowship. He was sure I would be accepted. I
asked for three or four days to consider whether I ought to join. Certainly, the men
enjoyed themselves and the dinners served at meetings were good and reasonably priced.
There would be some work involved in being a member, but it would be so much fun that
I would enjoy it. I was concerned mostly with the cost of belonging and whether even a little extra work might tax my energies. I could not reveal that the state of my health was a
factor if I declined an invitation to join the Club. I discussed the matter with Mr. Wey,
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�Longing to Call Boone Home
who was not a member. He did not think he had time to be a member, he said, but he and
Mr. Chapell Wilson both liked for the members of the faculties of the campus schools to
participate in community activities. If I thought I had time to be a member and would
enjoy belonging to the Club, I should join. I also discussed the matter with Jennie Sue.
She thought the Club was one of the most active organizations in town and that I would
enjoy belonging to it. I told Dr. Abrams that I was willing for him to sponsor me for membership.
As I recall, seven new members were initiated, including Professor A.R. Smith from
the College faculty and Mr. Lee Reynolds, who taught seventh grade at the campus elementary school; Guy Hunt, who owned and operated Hunt's Clothing Store; Frank Payne, an
insurance agent; and Mr. Price, the proprietor of the Daniel Boone Hotel. I believe the seventh new member was Council Cook, who had an electrical appliance shop.
One of the rules of the Club was that members had to be addressed or referred to by
their first or full names. One who slipped up and addressed or referred to another as Mr.
or Dr. was promptly fined ten cents by one of the tail twisters. Collections, as I recall, went
into the blind fund. Soon I came to know many of the business and professional men of
Boone by their first names. I believe names of members who were in military service continued to be included on the membership roll. Members whose names I remember were
Amos Abrams, Wade Brown, Robert Busteed, Jake Caudill, Howard and Raleigh Cottrell,
Jim Councill, Joe Crawford, Bus Crowell, Clyde Greene, Watt Gragg, Milt Greer, Albert
King, Bill Matheson, G.K. Moose, B.W. Stallings, Lee Stout, DJ. Whitener, Herman
Wilcox, and Gordon Winkler.
Soon after I became a member of the Club, a decision was reached to put on a Lions
Club show to raise money for the blind fund. I was asked to develop a format for and
direct a one-hour show. I protested that I was totally inexperienced in such work, had a full
schedule at the high school, and did not want to assume such a task. I could not, of
course, let it be known that I was physically unable to assume the extra work involved in
such an undertaking. But the pressure, coupled with the argument that I was the only
member of the Club who was a play director, was so great that I seemed unable to decline.
In three weeks I prepared a kind of Lions Club Follies, selected the talent needed from
among the members and their wives, met groups for rehearsals, advised with the publicity
and the arrangements committees, and had the show ready for the stage.
The arrangements committee attempted to schedule the show in the college auditorium, but since we would be selling tickets for admission, President Dougherty would not
give us permission to use college facilities. The manager of the Appalachian Theatre gave us
permission to use the Theatre but required forty percent of the collections for ticket sales.
The show was scheduled for the evening of April 8th. The publicity committee did
an outstanding job with advertising and advance ticket sales. We expected a full house. The
night before the show was to be given we had a dress rehearsal in the theatre after the
movie. It was three o'clock when I got to bed.
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�The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
A soft snow was falling when I woke up in response to my alarm clock set on "loud."
I was dog tired and coughing when I dragged myself unwillingly from bed. While I was
shaving I was seized by a choking cough, with which I struggled. At the end of the attack I
began spitting up blood. Frightened and tense, I began considering what I should do. In a
few minutes there was only a trace of blood in my sputum. I wet a towel in cold water and
held it against my neck and chest while taking as short and shallow breaths as I could. The
coughing stopped. I decided to face the day as if nothing had happened while waiting to
see whether I had another hemorrhage. I knew that I would be able to rest that day only a
short time following lunch. I was careful not to over exert myself physically in order to
avoid if possible another attack of coughing. I did not have another hemorrhage.
Snow fell intermittently throughout the day but it melted when it struck the warm
spring earth. At 5:30 I began meeting with the "actors" for the show, helped them apply
makeup, including mustaches and beards for some of them, supplied them with white cardboard top hats I had ordered for the show, and had them ready for the stage by seven
o'clock. By then a heavy soft snow was falling so fast and remaining on the ground that we
began to wonder whether the audience would get there. Since few people believed there
could be a traffic-snarling snow at that time of year, the theatre was packed. Excited by
such a turnout, the actors were stimulated to do their best.
The show, following no theme, included a scene in Dr. Sawbones's office in which
two strapping fellows held a man with a broken leg on a table while Bill Matheson prepared
to amputate the broken limb. The bottle of whiskey that a relative had brought for the
patient to drink in order to withstand the ordeal was consumed with great gusto by the
doctor and his helpers instead. Fortified by the spirits, the helpers laid hold of the struggling patient. Bill Matheson suddenly drew an enormous handsaw from under the table and
was in the act of bringing it across the victim's leg when the curtain closed. Audience
response was thunderous. Milt Greer, made up with lamb chop sideburns and a goatee and
wearing a frock coat, delivered a marvelous folk sermon, which Dr. Abrams had recorded at
a rehearsal. One of the Cottrell twins and Aunt Jenny Critcher engaged in an almost
naughty dialogue in the park. A quartet did a few barber shop numbers. Council Cook
sang quite well two or three songs, including "Lonesome Road." The show was a hit with
the audience. By the time it was over, though, eight inches of snow had accumulated.
The "cast" met briefly for a reception in the home of Ray and Lib Manship, who
lived in a little brown house among the trees on the north side of King Street a block from
the theatre. The top hats, though glazed, had begun to come unglued by the time the
reception was over. Over 500 tickets had been sold. Everybody had enjoyed the show. The
Lions were elated. By 9:30 I had slogged my way through the deep snow to the apartments, my feet sloshing in my wet shoes. I was so tired that I considered wiping my feet
with a towel and dropping in bed, but decided to take a soaking hot bath to protect myself
from pneumonia. I was sure the fatigue, exposure to the weather, and the wet feet would
leave me with at least a bad cold, but I slept well and woke up in the morning without a
sign of a bad cold. I wore overshoes and an overcoat to school. But the day was bright and
warm and by mid afternoon the snow had melted away.
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�Longing to Call Boone Home
The memory of my hemorrhage haunted me and kept me fearful. With final examinations, rehearsals for War Correspondent, the senior play, and working with student speakers for commencement exercises ahead of me, I found it necessary to decline most of the
invitations I received for dinners and parties. I tried hard to maintain my routine of resting
after lunch, taking a nap after dinner, and going to bed as early as I could each evening.
A bonanza came to me before the school was out. The North Carolina legislature,
which met in early 1943, increased handsomely the salaries of teachers retroactive to
September, 1942. I received nearly $500.00 as my increase, which brought to a total of
$2140.00, including the worth of my apartment at $40.00 a month, my salary for my first
year at Boone. If I should be able to return to Boone the following year, Mr. Wey
explained, the increase would become a part of my salary. I was happy to think that the
increase I had received, together with what Mr. Lafe Wellman could get for my furniture,
would enable me to reduce my indebtedness by seven or eight hundred dollars.
Although I told Mr. Wey, Mr. Wilson, and Dr. Abrams that I would report to my
draft board at Louisa in May, they wanted to include my name in the class schedule for the
summer terms. No one had been selected as my successor and it was important that the
instructor's name be listed along with the classes to be offered, for students tended not to
register for courses listed without an instructor's name on the schedule. If I should learn
that I would not be drafted until September, I could teach both summer terms.
Dr. Abrams and I had discussed my interest in offering in summer school a course in
ballads and songs with emphasis upon those variants that had survived in the oral tradition
of Appalachian mountain folk. I had as a valuable resource his excellent collection of
recordings of native singers. I could use as a text Kittredge's one-volume edition of Child's
English and Scottish Popular Ballads. We could invite a native singer, such as Frank Proffitt29
or Mrs. Laura Timmons,30 to visit the class once or twice, possibly arrange to take the class
on a pleasant afternoon to the home of a native singer for a program on the porch or in the
yard, and might be able to interest Dean Rankin in scheduling a well known folk singer for
an evening program. The course, Dr. Abrams believed, would appeal especially to English
majors, music majors, and elementary education teachers, especially those from Florida,
South Carolina, and Georgia, who came to summer school to earn credits for the renewal
of certificates to teach. He and I went together to discuss the possibility of offering such a
class with Mr. Chapell Wilson, who was the director of summer schools. Mr. Wilson
approved at once what we proposed and wanted to include the course in the 1943 summer
class schedule, even though I might not be there to teach it. If I should be drafted in May,
then the course could be deleted at registration time without causing serious problems. The
course was scheduled, the first time, we believed, such a course had been offered below the
graduate level in the country.
2
"Frank Proffitt (1913-1964), Watauga County resident with a life-long interest in traditional music, collected and
performed traditional mountain ballads, and recorded on Folkways and Folk-legacy labels. His son, Frank Proffitt,
Jr. continues in his tradition of musicianship.
30
Laura Timmons (1894-1964) was a local folksinger.
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
War Correspondent, not really a very good three-act play, was a wartime mystery with
a cast of ten persons. Seniors selected for parts worked hard to achieve conversational delivery and convincing character. Not fully successful, they did learn their parts well and
achieved a stage presence that enabled them to relate to one another convincingly. A stage
crew built an imaginative portable set that could be assembled and taken down quickly in
order to clear the stage area of the gymnasium for physical education classes. Students from
the dramatics classes handled makeup and took care of stage props. We gave the play twice,
once in the morning to the student body and once in the evening to their parents and other
townspeople. It attracted nearly a full house for the evening performance.
One of the social affairs I attended near the end of the year was a picnic at the Fish
Hatchery at Rutherwood for the staff and maintenance personnel at the College, an annual
affair that Mr. Barnard Dougherty,31 the Business Manager, arranged with the expert help of
John Welborn32 and the cafeteria staff. Jenny Sue had invited me as her guest. So few of us
had cars and those who did were so restricted by gasoline rationing that Mr. Dougherty
made arrangements for us to be transported to and from the picnic. It was a beautiful
afternoon and the young grass was fresh and vivid, but buds on trees had not yet begun to
swell. Fires had already been built for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows and the smoke
from the burning hardwoods stimulated appetites. Pots of steaming coffee had been
brought from the cafeteria, but there was also an abundant supply of half-pint bottles of
cold milk from the dairy and soft drinks in tubs of ice. Stacks of buns and bowls of coleslaw
waited on an improvised table. Jenny Sue took me among the workers and introduced me
to those I did not already know. President Dougherty, Dean Rankin, Mr. Herman R.
Eggers, and Mrs. Emma Moore, persons to whom staff members were responsible were
there, but members of the faculty had not been invited.
Dr. Dougherty stood apart from the crowd and talked in a low voice with Mr. Eggers,
the registrar. He did not move from the position he had taken until the food was ready.
Someone prepared for him his hot dog and marshmallows. Mr. Barnard, as the business
manager was called, made a few remarks and called on Dean Rankin to ask a blessing. Dr.
Dougherty, interrupted by the asking of the blessing, proceeded with his account of something to Mr. Eggers as soon as the blessing was over. Others took positions around the fires
to roast their hot dogs, moving as the shifting smoke dislodged them.
Those at the picnic seemed to be well acquainted with one another. There was a
cohesiveness present, such as one might have found in a family reunion. A few of the
workers had been with the College almost from its beginning. I felt that the staff and work
force were the hidden empire, of whom the faculty was not fully aware, that made the
College possible.
^Barnard Dougherty (1909-1965) was business manager of the college from 1938 to 1955 when he was appointed vice president and comptroller.
^John Welborn, a graduate of Appalachian Training School and Appalachian State Teachers College, worked in
food services for 34 years, serving as director until his retirement in 1973. Welborn Cafeteria was named in his
honor.
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�Longing to Call Boone Home
We had also a senior hike to Flat Top Mountain near Blowing Rock. In late April, a
few days before the close of the school year, the seniors and their faculty sponsors were
given permission to take packed lunches and hike along one of the old roads from Boone to
Blowing Rock and return by another of the first roads between the two towns. Both roads
were unimproved and a part of one of them had been abandoned. It was said to be eleven
miles to Flat Top and back. Afraid to try to walk eleven miles in a day, I agreed to walk
until we had lunch and then return alone to the school where I would complete some work
in my office that I needed to do.
We left the school at ten o'clock and walked up Winkler s Creek, turning left at the
Austin farm, where two of my freshmen English students, Mary and Martha, lived. I had
been to the Rocks in Winkler's Creek but had not gone beyond them. From the Austin
farm the road was little more than a trail.
It was a fair day. Trees had not yet begun to leaf, but weeds were beginning to grow
and the grass in meadows and pastures was young and tender. The dirt road, little traveled
but rutted in places, frequently crossed the low and clear creek. There were no bridges, but
foot travelers up and down the valley had put stepping stones at shallow crossings and foot
logs over deeper ones.
Beyond Austins the countryside was largely abandoned. A few rustic homes had
freshly plowed gardens and barnyards within enclosures fenced with scrap wood.
Occasionally, we passed an abandoned house with a sagging lichen covered shake roof, a
deteriorating stack chimney, porch floors rotted away, doors standing open or ripped off the
hinges, and windows long since knocked out. Second growth trees had marched across
even the yards of many of the old houses. The few families living along the old road were
still in the Depression.
When we had climbed to a gap along a straight stretch of the trail, where deep ruts
worn into a clay base by farm wagons and ancient trucks were filled with leaves, I looked at
my watch. It was almost noon. I decided to eat my lunch there beside a spring. Two or
three of the hungry boys ate their lunches, too, expressed regrets that I could not go with
them on to Flat Top, where we could see the Cone Mansion, and hurried on. I ambled
back to Boone, stopping occasionally to rest. I thought I had walked about eight miles.
One Sunday morning near the end of the year G.C. Greene called and invited me to
ride that afternoon with him, Charles Boone, and Kenneth Clay to Camp Yonalossee. They
picked me up about two o'clock. We left Boone through Hodges Gap and drove along a
narrow road to Shulls Mills. My first trip out that way, I was able to see much of the road
bed of the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad, abandoned after the 1940
flood had washed away much of the road and broken the dam on Watauga River. We
stopped above the old dam and explored the rocks in the river there, a favorite site for picnics and outings. The Robbins Hotel, a rambling wooden structure located at the mouth
of a little hollow across the road from the railroad bed, was still receiving guests, but it was
weathered and needed painting.
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
The boys told me that Shulls Mills had been a flourishing place a few years before
when a big lumber company had been located there. It was said that it was then larger than
Boone. The railroad had been extended from Linville to haul lumber out to Elizabethton,
Tennessee, and on to Boone later.
We turned left across the valley at the hotel, crossed a low-water bridge over the river,
and followed a narrow, winding road up the mountain to Camp Yonalossee for Girls. I did
not go into the camp, stretched along the side of the mountain, but waited in the car while
the boys went down to ask about some young lady who was working there while the camp
was being prepared for the summer. They decided to go on to Flat Top.
The road to Flat Top had trees growing along both sides of it much of the way. It
was a hard packed, narrow dirt road and looked as if it had been there a long time. In earlier days, that had been the main road from Boone to Blowing Rock, the boys said. We
stopped on Flat Top and walked around but did not go to the Cone Mansion.
Just to show me around, the boys decided to return to Boone by a back way. They
drove to Linville and came back along the narrow road beside the railroad bed to Shulls
Mills. I saw Grandfather Mountain from the back side. We stopped for a few minutes near
an old railroad sign that told us we were at Linville Gap. At that point one could see how
vast and rugged Grandfather Mountain is. It seemed a long way down the mountain to
Foscoe, where the road became straight and level back to Shulls Mills. As we were turning
left at the old hotel, I looked up the valley at Grandfather, whose profile was well defined.
A small cloud rested on his brow as he reclined in mystery, a million years old. The trip was
one of the most impressive I had taken all year. Grandfather Mountain, bathed in a blue
mist, rugged, enormous, added to the enchantment of the land that I longed to call home.
Boys in my home room were exceptionally considerate. From time to time throughout the year I would remember their response to me when Mr. Wey introduced me at the
student assembly at the beginning of the term. Our relationship had been harmonious,
warm, and fully trusting all year, even from our first meeting in the classroom. I soon knew
that their booing me when I was introduced was more of a humorous response to Mr.
Wey's high praise for lovely Miss Poole than a rejection of me. I found that they had a
delightful sense of humor and an admirable capacity for enjoying one another. This esprit
the group had already. I could take no credit for it. It had developed over the years, for
most of those in the group had been together since they were in the primary grades.
My homeroom group included Charles Boone, Kenneth Clay, Cecil Greene, G.C.
Greene, Jr., Hal Greene, Ted Hagaman, Ronda Hardin, Fred Hodges, Roy Johnson, Roy
Marsh, Randall Page, Walter Ragan, Reece Roberts, Phil Vance, Harold Watson, James
Watson and William Wilson. I believe there might have been four or five others whose
names I have forgotten.
My involvement with plays and helping students selected to give talks at the commencement exercises enabled me to become acquainted with many students who were not
enrolled in my classes. I enjoyed them and felt that they enjoyed me. At commencement
122
�Longing to Call Boone Home
Figure], Members of Gratis Williamss homeroom, Appalachian Demonstration High School,
1942-1943.
123
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
many of the parents of students with whom I had worked took time to tell me that their
sons and daughters had thought well of me as a teacher and referred often to what they had
learned in my classes and quoted me in discussions. They hoped I would be able to return
the following year.
The campus schools, having only an eight-month term, closed about a month before
the College was scheduled to close. I was so deeply involved in activities at the school that
I did not attempt to prepare to leave Boone until I had turned in my reports, cleaned out
my files, and carried to my apartment teaching materials and personal effects that I did not
want to leave in my office. Even though I might not return to teach in the summer school,
my apartment would not be assigned to anyone, for the Antonakoses would return to occupy it at the end of the summer. I could leave there anything I wanted to leave if I could
return to get it before I would be drafted for military service.
The other teachers hurried away soon after commencement. Tired and very much
alone except for dinners with Jenny Sue, I rested for a long weekend before I began packing
my things in boxes, which I tied with stout string, addressed to myself at Cherokee,
Kentucky, and stacked in my living room. If I should be drafted so quickly that there
would not be time to return to Boone to have the boxes sent by parcel post back to
Cherokee, Jenny Sue would engage a taxicab driver to carry them to the post office and she
would send them for me.
Carrying only one bag with me, I left by bus for Beckley, West Virginia, on a beautiful day in late April. The sun was shining in Boone and the air was crisp and clear, but the
only visible sign of spring was lush grass in yards and pasture fields. I spent that night in
the Milner Hotel in Beckley and reported next morning to Pinecrest Sanitarium for an X-ray of my lungs and a talk with Dr. Edwards.
The spot on my lung had disappeared. I was not yet out of danger, though. Dr.
Edwards advised that I continue to eat eggs, drink at least a quart of milk a day, take my
cod liver oil, and rest after lunch and dinner and report for another X-ray six months later.
I told him I was on my way to Kentucky to volunteer for military service. He told me that
a skin test for tuberculosis was routine procedure in medical examinations for military service, that I would then be sent for an X-ray, and that a doctor would talk with me. It would
be most important that I report that a spot on my lung had disappeared only recently if the
X-ray did not show one. He was confident that I would not be accepted for military duty.
As my bus descended the mountain to Gauley Bridge, I could see signs of spring.
Trees were budding, willows were already flaunting tags of tender green, blooming sarvice
trees shimmered in the sunlight. In Huntington trees had leafed out. I had traveled
through spring as it was climbing the mountains. Arriving in Huntington too late to make
bus connections to Louisa that day, I engaged a room at the Milner Hotel near the bus station and took a walk. Huntington was bustling. Sidewalks were crowded with well dressed
people hurrying along, many with packages in their arms. Window displays of stores and
shops announced the advent of spring. I walked along Fourth Avenue to the Walgreen
Drug Store. Crowds stood on the corner and waited for city buses. I crossed Fourth
124
�Longing to Call Boone Home
Avenue and walked back toward the Milner, but stopped at a little restaurant where Sylvia
and I had eaten a few times and had a seafood dinner, pleased that I was no longer so poor
that I could not afford a good dinner occasionally.
After dinner I walked over to the railroad station, also crowded with people waiting
for trains. As the evening was still young, I decided to ride a trolley car to Ashland,
Kentucky, for I liked to ride trolley cars. It was so crowded when I got on that I stood in
the aisle to Westmoreland before a seat became available. Many of those on the car were
working people returning to their homes in Kenova, Catlettsburg, and Ashland. Passengers
knew one another. They talked, teased one another, and laughed, all happy to have jobs
again and free from fear as they responded to the coming of spring. I did not see any
familiar faces. I got off at the corner of Winchester Avenue and Thirteenth Street in
Ashland. Crowds were standing on the corner and people were clustered in front of stores
and shops. I walked up to the bus station. Every stool at the lunch counter was occupied,
as were all the seats in the waiting area, and people stood along the wall, their bags beside
them, talking and laughing. I saw no one I had known. Not wanting to wait for a cup of
coffee at the crowded counter, I walked back to the corner and took the next car back to
Huntington. It was not crowded.
The following morning I had breakfast at the White Tower, where I had eaten often
while I was working at International Nickel Corporation. The cost of an egg sandwich and
a cup of coffee was still only fifteen cents. After breakfast, I walked by the Mosely home
for a brief visit with Mrs. Mosely, the servants, and Miss Westall, her hair in curlers and
wearing a house robe while she enjoyed a cup of coffee. Captain Mosely had gone to his
farm to ride his horses. The bus from Huntington by way of Lavalette and Wayne to
Louisa was not crowded. I sat near the back of the bus and talked with Oscar Cottrell, a
black man with whom I had played cowboys and Indians in the pine woods behind Louisa
while I was in high school. I had not seen him for many years. A big man with the same
broad smile and happy face that I remembered, Oscar recalled many of our Saturday
escapades on Pine Hill.
At Louisa I left my bag at the drug store in which the bus station was located while I
attended to business matters. I volunteered for the next military draft quota and learned
that a bus load of draftees would report to the center in Huntington in about a week. I
went by the Riverview Hospital and talked with Dr. Joseph E. Carter, who had been our
physician while Sylvia and I were living in Louisa. I told him about my bout with tuberculosis and that Dr. Edwards had thought I would not be accepted for military service.
Thinking that I might not receive a careful examination at Huntington, Dr. Carter wrote a
letter to the draft board in which he reviewed my medical history and recommended that I
be given a thorough examination. I went to see Lafe Wellman. He had sold all of my furniture for me. My refrigerator, he said, was almost new. Thinking it was worth more than
half price, or $200, he had been able to sell it for $300. I did not tell him that I still owed
the bank $200 I had borrowed before leaving Louisa to finish paying for the refrigerator.
Mr. Wellman had not tried to make a profit on the sale of my furniture. I had been in his
Sunday school class when I was a boy. Our families were friends. Sylvia's father was his
125
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
cousin. I had suffered from misfortunes. He was glad to be of help to me. He wrote me a
check for what he had collected. I went to the Funeral Home and paid Henry Curtright
the remainder of what I owed for Sylvia's casket.
My business all attended to before noon, I decided not to have lunch at Rip's, crowded at lunch time with high school teachers and students, but stopped at Effie's Diner by the
railroad track. Only a few farmers, none of whom I recognized, were there. After lunch I
walked back to the drug store to wait for the bus to Elaine, On the way I met one of the
high school teachers, to whom I spoke. He paused to shake hands with me, but seemed
uncomfortable. He said he did not have time to talk as he hurried on. Since it did not
matter to me whether we talked, I was amused. Apparently he thought I had wanted to
detain him. While I was shaking hands with him, I noticed that the man who had been
my assistant principal was not far behind him. When I started on, though, I did not see
him. Looking around, I saw him on the other side of the street. He was hurrying along
toward the school. I thought he had crossed the street to avoid meeting me. They were
exceptionally fine teachers. I regretted that they were also frightened little men.
The bus to Elaine had only a few passengers. I got off at Low Gap and walked up
the old rocky trail to the bridge across Elaine at the mouth of Cherokee. I met no one on
the main road. Gasoline rationing was keeping people at home. Plowed gardens and wisps
of smoke from kitchen chimneys were the only signs of human habitation.
Pete, the snow white spitz that had belonged to Sylvia and me, was lying on the
porch of the Graham home. When I opened the gate of the yard fence, he began barking
joyfully, bounded off the porch, and leapt several times to my chin to kiss me, wetting my
front at each leap. Mr. and Mrs. Graham came from inside the house to greet me, both
amused by Pete's enthusiastic welcome. They were expecting me. Mrs. Graham had baked
pies and was preparing a special meal for my homecoming.
We talked far into the night. I reported on my visit with Dr. Edwards at Pinecrest,
the letter Dr. Carter would write to the draft board, my volunteering for the draft, Lafe
Wellman's sale of my furniture, my paying in full what I had owed Henry Curtright. The
check I had received for a salary increase retroactive to the first of the school year together
with the check Mr. Wellman had written for the furniture provided me with enough money
to purchase a stone for Sylvia's grave, get new eyeglasses, and pay off one of the notes I
owed. I would report in a week for the next draft quota for Lawrence County and would
know soon whether I would be inducted into military service or be rejected.
Mrs. Graham agreed to go with me the following Friday to the place in Ashland at
which she had bought a stone for the grave of Sylvia's sister. We thought Sylvia's stone
should be like it or similar to it.
A day or two later I walked over the hill to visit my father and mother, both lonely
because they had with them only my little brother, then twelve years old. While I was
there, my father asked me how much money I had made as a teacher at Boone that year.
When I reported proudly that I had made $2140, he responded, "And with all of your
126
�Longing to Call Boone Home
expensive education! Hell, son, I can make more than that swapping knives."
Mrs. Graham had a neighbor take us to Louisa on Friday in time to get a bus to Ashland
by mid morning. We selected a stone similar to the one at the grave of Sylvia's sister. The
monument dealer agreed to have the stone erected at the grave. I paid him $150. We got back
to Louisa in time for me to pay off a $200 note at the bank, but Mrs. Graham advised me to
wait until after I had responded to the draft call. If I should be accepted for military service, the bank would be obliged to carry my note until I returned. I might need my money.
The day before I was to report early in the morning at the courthouse to the draft
board I walked to Elaine and rode the afternoon bus to Louisa. I spent the night in the
home of Ernest and Nova Wellman, whom I invited to have dinner with me at a restaurant.
The following morning I went to the courthouse, where most of the young men who were
to report at the induction center, had gathered. Some of them had been high school students while I was the principal of the school in Louisa. The bus in which we were to ride to
Huntington was parked behind the courthouse.
Mr. Chesley Lycan, the chairman of the draft board, appeared at eight o'clock and
stood by the door of the bus. From a list he had in his hand he called the names of those
who had been selected for that month's quota. As each person's name was called he
responded and entered the bus. I believe there were twenty-eight of us. Mr. Lycan then
entered the bus and gave us brief instructions. He appointed me to check the roll when we
entered the bus that afternoon to return to Louisa. He thought we might be ready to leave
the center in Huntington as early as two o'clock. He asked that we not stray far from the
center. He wished us well, left the bus, and the driver started.
Most of the young men talked and laughed as if they were pleased to be joining the
army. Others were quiet, sober faced, and reflective. A few were grim, unresponsive, and
uncommunicative. I thought they were frightened. I was the oldest of the group. The
young men who had been students at the high school while I was the principal did not
appear to remember me.
We were in Huntington within an hour. At the center we were rushed through routines by efficient personnel. The tough sergeant who supervised our undressing for physical
examinations barked his instructions, throwing in sharp oaths and profanity with considerable skill. One of the grim faced young men, an awkward and fumbling fellow, became so
frightened that he was unable to urinate in his little bottle. At two o'clock he had not yet
been able to urinate, even though he had drunk a plenty of water. But he finally succeeded
and we were able to leave at four o'clock.
When I was administered the skin test for tuberculosis I was directed to a station for
chest X-rays. Later, I met with a doctor who had read Dr. Carter's letter and who asked
questions about my medical history. He studied my X-rays, but he did not tell me whether
they revealed a spot. He commented on the concentrations of scar tissue in my lungs. I
might break down in rigorous boot training. He could not approve my acceptance for military service at that time.
127
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
We were herded into an eating facility where we passed rapidly by counters to pick up
our plates of food for lunch. The unappetizing food, consisting of fried bologna, watery
mashed potatoes, pinto beans with no seasoning in them, limp slaw, and a square of white,
dry cornbread, had been slopped onto the plate. It must have been the worst food I have
ever eaten in my life.
At the station for checking out we were given our classification cards. Mine was 4-F.
The clerk stamped in red ink on the back of my hand REJECTED.
When the shame-faced boy who had taken so long to fill his little bottle finally joined
us, I called the roll. All were present. The bus driver hurried back to Louisa.
We arrived too late for me to get a bus to Blaine that evening.
I went to the telephone office and called Mr. Wey. He was still in his office at the
school. I reported that I had been classified as 4-F and would like to return to Boone if my
position at the school were still open. No effort had been made yet to find a replacement
for me. I was invited to come on back.
I had come to Boone on a one-year contract. I assured Mr. Wey that I would be
returning for life if they could put up with me that long.
Figure K,
128
�Index
INDEX OF NAMES
Abrams, Amos
42-46, 51, 58, 59, 63-67, 71-73, 77, 78, 83, 84, 113-119
Agle Apartments
.............42
Allen, Jennie Sue.....
113-117
Antonakos, Antonios.........
............11, 33, 35, 57, 58, 76, 124
....69, 85
Appalachian, The
Appalachian Theatre
38, 117, 118
Austin, Mary and Martha
...21, 121
Belk's Department Store
Blaine, Ky.
22, 24
........8, 25, 37, 65, 66, 82, 83, 88, 94, 102, 103, 105, 126, 127, 128
Blaine High School, Ky.
83
Blankenship, Curt and Bert
102
Blowing Rock, N.C.
67, 68, 121, 122
Boggs, Ralph Steele
....83
Boone, Charles
121, 122
Boone Lions Club.
72, 116-117
BooneTire and Furniture
36
Boone town dump...
26, 34, 37
Brandon, Myrtle
....63
Brock, Lucy
.....63
Brown, Frank C
84
Brown, Wade
117
Burch, Helen
.....63
Busteed, Robert....
63, 72, 116, 117
Caines Creek, Ky.
102, 109
Camp Yonalossee
121-122
Carsteens, Annafreddie...........
60, 111
Carter, Joseph
97, 125-127
Cathcart (Stout), Maud
63
Caudill, Jake.........
117
129
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boom
Chapell Wilson Hall
Cherokee, Ky.
13
.............26, 76, 81, 87-89, 91, 92, 94, 102-104, 124, 126
Clark, Joe
48-50,83
Clay, Kenneth
121-122
Cobb, Beatrice
83
Coffey, Mrs
11, 35, 58, 87, 99
Cone Mansion
.121, 122
Cook, Council
117, 118
Cooper, Aunt Jenny.....
91, 92, 93
Coram, Ralph, Louise, and Winona
66
Cottrell, Howard and Raleigh
116-118
Cottrell, Oscar
125
Councill, Jim
117
Cove Creek, N.C
99
Crawford, Joe........
117
Critcher, Aunt Jenny
.118
Crowell, Bus
117
Cullers, Mrs
..........................69
Curry, Myrtle
100
Curtright, Henry
76, 92, 97, 104, 126
Daniel, Hugh...
70, 77, 85, 86, 115
Daniel Boone Restaurant
....27, 116, 117
Davenport College
.....68
Davidson College
....19
Deep Gap.....
65
Donald, Ruby
22, 40, 67, 70, 77, 88, 99, 112
Dougherty, B.B.....
14, 43, 44
Dougherty, Barnard
114, 120
Dougherty, Edwin
....63
Duke University
.44, 83, 84
130
�Index
Dukes, Mr
...15,26
East Tennessee & Western North Carolina (ET&WNC) Railroad
Edwards, Dr
2, 121
.....41, 50-55, 78, 124-126
Eggers, Daisy
64,
Eggers, Graydon
..................63
Eggers, Herman (H.R.)
43, 120
Elon College
83
Eury, Leonard.
63
Faculty Apartments
11, 15, 22, 33-36, 40, 73, 77, 82, 111, 114
Farmers Hardware
36
Flat Top Mountain
7, 121
Flood of 1940
.........37, 121, 122
Foscoe, N.C
122
Foster, Helen
...35, 38, 39
Garbee, Gene
63
Gateway Restaurant
17, 40
Georgia State College for Women
22
Gragg,Watt
Graham, Berta
......117
33, 76, 81, 82, 87, 90-100, 102-104, 126, 127
Graham, Georgia
93
Graham, Lemual...........
81, 82, 91-94, 103
Grandfather Mountain
......122
Greene, Cecil
122, 123
Greene, Clyde
.........117
Greene, G.C., Jr....
.....99, 121-123
Greene, Hal
122, 123
Greer, Amelia
70
Greer, Milt.
117, 118
Greer Drug Company
25
Guilford College
83
131
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Hagaman,Ted
122, 123
Happy Valley, N.C
68
Hardin, Ronda....
122, 123
Hartsell, O.M.
63
Haynes, Cleone
.........63
Heflin, Harry B.......
63
Hillman, James
58, 59
Hodges, Fred
.122-123
Hodges Gap....
121
Hogston, Luther
.....76, 87, 91
Hotel Milner
................49, 54
Howard's Knob
72, 99
Howell, Vance
63
Hudson, Arthur Plamer
83, 84
Hunt, Guy.........
117
International Nickel Corp
1-3, 19, 115, 125
Jente, Richard
.83, 84
Johnson, Roy
122, 123
Junaluska
.....72
Kazee, Lewis
....94
Kentucky Folklore Society
84
Killian, Bill
69, 85, 86
King, Albert
.....117
Ledbetter, Ida Belle
63
Legg, Jack.........
3
Lenoir, N.C
67, 68
Lenoir Rhyne College
19
Lewis, Doug
....80
Liles, Meta
..............63, 71
Linney, Nell Coffey
40
132
�Index
Louisa, Ky.
2, 14, 25, 40, 52, 53, 82, 85, 87, 90-97, 101-107, 111,
116, 119, 124-127
LovillHall
71, 76
Lycan, Chesley
127
Lyon, Buell
80
Ma AngelFs Restaurant
27
Manship, Ray and Lib
........118
Marsh, Roy
122, 123
Mast General Store
9, 10
Matheson, Bill
117, 118
Mattern, Terry
71
Maxwell Place
71
McVeigh, Mrs
71
Miles, Louella
..94
Mims, Edwin.....
84
Moore, Aunt Izzie
92
Moore, Emma
63, 120
Moose, G.K
117
Morehead State Teachers College
22, 26, 58, 88
Morris, Arthur
.....92, 93
Mosely, Capt. and Mrs
3, 101, 125
Mountain City, Tenn
56, 99
Nash, Gordon
63
Nelson, John and Mary
..40, 67
New Idea, Inc. (Coldwater, Ohio)
115
New River Bridge
48
New River Gorge
4, 79
Newland Hall
12, 15, 22-26, 33-37
Norfolk & Western Railroad
82, 87-89, 94, 105
North Carolina College for Women........
64
North Carolina English Teachers Association
133
63-65
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
North Carolina Folklore Society
63, 73, 83
North Carolina State College at Raleigh
19, 83
O.Henry Hotel
65
Osborn, Lena
....86
Page, Randall
122, 123
Pastime Theater
38
Payne, Frank
..117
Penix, Doris
22, 23, 40, 88, 99
Pinecrest Sanitarium
........2, 4, 41, 42, 50, 55, 78, 83-88, 91, 124, 126
Playcrafters
12
Poole, Miss
18, 20-23, 40, 122
Price, Mr.
..117
Proffitt, Frank
119
Ragan, Mrs
69
Ragan, Walter
...122
Rankin, Dean J.D
......44, 51, 63, 71, 119, 120
Rankin Hall
77
Reynolds. Lee
.....117
Rich Mountain
........40, 72
Rivers, Mrs.
1, 18, 20, 21, 42
Robbins Hotel
121
Roberts, Reece
122, 123
Roberts, Sophie
92
Ruth's Place
36
Sanitary Barber Shop
17
Sawyer, George
..62
Shell, Sidney
71
Shulls Mills
121
Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel
73, 83, 84
Smith, A.R
63, 117
134
�Index
Smith, Catherine
.........60, 70, 111
Smith, Wiley
62, 63, 77
Snake Mountain....
99
Southard, Orby and Irene
40, 60
Southern Association of Schools and Colleges
115
Sparks, Proctor.
2, 88
Sparta, N.C....
6, 47, 48, 100
Stacy, Starr
63
Stallings, B.W.
117
Stallings Jewelry Store
10
Steed, Thursa
63
Stout, Lee
.117
Sturgill, Herbert..........
87, 90-92, 103, 104, 110
Teems, Francis
34, 35, 88
Timmons, Laura......................................................
Trade, Tenn...
119
56, 99
Trail of the Lonesome Pine
7, 89
Tucker, Miss...
22, 23, 41
Tugman, Melba Lovill
......114
Vance, Phil
.122, 123
Vanderbilt University
84
Vaughan, William H...
40, 58, 59
Virginia Interment College
7
Walker, Glada B
63
Walker's Jewelry Store
36
119, 120
War Correspondent
Wary, Virginia
..63
Watkins, Robert W. (Red)
63, 65
Watson, Harold
.............122, 123
Watson, James
122
135
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Webster, Betsy
86
Wellman, Ernest and Nova
.................127
Wellman, Lafe .........
103, 104, 119, 125, 126
Wellman, Nova....
87,91-93, 127
Wellman Bridge
............................80, 81, 91
West Jefferson, N.C
..47, 100
Westall, Miss
..4, 101, 125
Wey, Herbert
12- 23, 30-34, 39-42, 58, 59-64, 70, 85-88, 99,
113,-119, 122, 128
White, Newman I
83, 84
Whitener, DJ
..............63, 85, 117
Wilcox, Herman..
25-27, 87, 117
Williams, Alma and Nelson
107, 108, 109
Williams, Joseph
.63
Williams, Ralph
105-107
Williams, Sylvia Graham
2-6, 12, 16, 24-26, 39-45, 50-55, 60-64, 67, 70-85,
88-95, 97-107, 111-113, 125-127
Wilson, Chapell
1, 2, 5, 11-15, 35, 41, 42, 51, 61-64, 117-119
Wilson, George
65
Wilson, William
122
Winkler, Gordon
117
Winklers Creek
121
Wright, J.T.C
63
Yoder, Julian and Helen
........60
Young, Curt
97, 103, 104
136
�Chronology
GRATIS DEARL WILLIAMS CHRONOLOGY
April 5, 1911
Born to Curtis and Mona (Whitt) Williams in his grandfather
David O. Williams's log house, Caines Creek (Lawrence County),
Kentucky. The oldest of five siblings to survive infancy.
1922
Ulysses (Lyss) Williams shot and killed.
March 25, 1924
Graduated from elementary school (earning a Certificate of
Promotion to High School).
May 27, 1928
Graduated from Louisa High School (Kentucky); received the
"Honor Student Trophy."
1928-1929
Attended Cumberland College, Williamsburg, Kentucky, on a
tuition scholarship and workship.
1929-1933
Taught in one room schools on Caines Creek in Eastern Kentucky.
Summer 1932
Took summer classes at Morehead State Normal School and
Teachers College, where he studied principles of secondary teaching with William H. Vaughan and Earnest V. Hollis in preparation
for certification for principalship.
June 2, 1933
B.A. University of Kentucky.
1933-1934
Teacher of science, Elaine High School, Kentucky.
1934-1938
Principal and teacher of English, Elaine High School, Kentucky.
August?, 1937
Married Sylvia Graham.
August 20, 1937
M.A. University of Kentucky.
1938-1941
Principal, Louisa High School, Kentucky.
Summer-Fall 1941
Employed, New Idea, Inc. (maker of farm implements),
Coldwater, Ohio.
1942
Instructor, Apprentice School, International Nickel Company,
Huntington, West Virginia.
August 1942
Accepted a position as "critic teacher" at Appalachian
Demonstration High School, Boone, North Carolina.
December 1942
Sylvia (Graham) Williams died of tuberculosis, Cherokee,
Kentucky.
1942-1946
Critic teacher, assistant principal, director of drama, and director
of the first school-wide counseling program established in North
Carolina, Appalachian Demonstration High School, Boone.
1946-1949
Assistant professor, English and speech, Appalachian State Teachers
College, Boone.
Summer 1948
Student, New York University.
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�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Summer 1949Summer 1950
Leave of absence from ASTC to accept a teaching assistantship
at Washington Square College of New York University.
July 31, 1949
Married Elizabeth Lingerfelt, a native of Elizabethton, Tennessee,
in Levittown, Long Island, New York. Two children: Sophie (b.
February 18, 1953) and David Gratis (b. April 25, 1955).
1950-1958
Professor of English, Appalachian State Teachers College.
Summer 1954
Angier Duke Research Scholar, Duke University.
1958-1975
Dean of the graduate school, ASTC and Appalachian State
University.
1961
Ph.D. New York University. Dissertation: "The Southern
Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction."
1962
Awarded Founders Day Certificate for excellence from NYU.
December 29, 1966
Fire destroys ASTC administration building, burning Gratis
Williamss office, containing his ballads collection, research files,
correspondence files, and much of his personal library.
April 1972
Received Achievement Award Trophy, North Carolina Historical
Association.
1973
Received O. Max Gardner Award, University of North Carolina.
August 1973
Named Honorary Citizen of Harlan County, Kentucky.
1974
Acting vice chancellor for academic affairs, Appalachian State
University.
1975
Acting chancellor, Appalachian State University.
November 1975
Received Brown-Hudson Folklore Award, North Carolina Folklore
Society.
April 1976
Symposium in honor of retirement from Appalachian State
University (later evolved into the Appalachian Studies
Association).
July 1976
Received Laurel Leaves Award from Appalachian Consortium.
July 1976
Retired.
1979
Received the W.D. Weatherford Award from Berea College.
1984
Received honorary degrees from Cumberland College, Morehead
State University, College of Idaho.
1985
Received honorary degrees from Marshall University, Appalachian
State University.
May 11, 1985
Died, Boone, North Carolina.
138
�Bibliography
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GRATIS D. WILLIAMS
Books, Monographs and Chapters
1937
Ballads and Songs. M.A. thesis, University of Kentucky.
1961
"The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction." (3 vols.). Ph.D. dissertation, New York University.
1973
"Introduction." In Western North Carolina Since the Civil War. Ina W. Van
Noppen and John J. Van Noppen, vi-x. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium
Press,
1974
"Afterword." In "...a right good people." Harold E Warren, 126-127. Boone,
NC: Appalachian Consortium Press.
1974
"Appalachia and the Human Spirit." Position paper for Southern Appalachian
Regional Conference Toward 1984: The Future of Appalachia? Boone, NC,
H23- H24.
1975
"The Human Spirit." In Toward 1984: The Future of Appalachia? 97-98.
Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press.
1976
Programs for Preparing Community College Personnel at Appalachian State
University. Boone, NC: Appalachian State University.
1976
"The Role of Appalachias Colleges in Appalachias Future." Paper read at
Mars Hill Conference on Education in Appalachia, June 25. Gratis D.
Williams Papers, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Appalachian State
University.
1976
"The Appalachian Scotch-Irish Mountaineer Reader." In Reading and the
Adult New Reader, Helen H. Lyman, 97-103. Chicago: American Library
Association.
1976
Appalachian State University. Boone, NC: Appalachian State University.
1977
"Introduction." In Joy in the Mountains. Lou and Alice Winokur, 6-7. Boca
Raton, FL: Lou and Alice Winokur.
1977
"The Small Legal Distillery in Eastern Kentucky." In Our Appalachia: An
Oral History, eds. Laurel Shackelford and Bill Weinberg, 103-108. NY: Hill
and Wang.
1977
"Introduction." In Western North Carolina: Its Mountains and Its People to
1880, Ora Blackmun, xiii-xv. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press.
1983
William H. Vaughan: A Better Man Than I Ever Wanted to Be. With
"Introduction" by James M. Gifford. Morehead, KY.: Morehead State
University.
1992
Southern Mountain Speech. With "Introduction" and "Glossary" by Jim Wayne
139
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Miller and Loyal Jones. Berea, KY.: Berea College Press.
1995
/ Become a Teacher: A Memoir of One-Room School Life in Eastern Kentucky.
With "Introduction" by James M. Gifford. Ashland, KY.: Jesse Stuart
Foundation.
Journals and Periodicals
1956
"Lawrence County Superstitions: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and
Infancy." Kentucky Folklore Record 2(4): 137-140.
1958
"Fabulous Characters in the Southern Mountains." North
Carolina Folklore 6(2): 1-6.
1960
"The North Carolina Mountaineer's Appearance in Fiction."
Bulletin: Appalachian State Teachers College, Faculty Publications
1960-1961. December: 20-28.
1961
"The R in Mountain Speech." Mountain Life and Work 37(1): 5-8.
1961
"A.E.I.O.U. (Vowels and Dipthongs in Mountain Speech)."
Mountain Life and Work 37(2): 8-11.
1961
"Rhythm and Melody in Mountain Speech." Mountain Life and
Work 37(3): 7-10.
1961
"The Content of Mountain Speech (Part IV)." Mountain Life and
Work 37r(4): 13-17.
1962
"Kit Brandon, A Reprisal." Shenandoah 13(3): 55-61.
1962
"A How-To-Do Essay on the Motivation of College Teachers."
North Carolina Education 28(9): 23,72.
1962
"Verbs in Mountaineer Speech (Part V)." Mountain Life and Work
38(1): 15-19.
1962
"Mountaineers Mind Their Manners (Part VI)." Mountain Life
and'Work 38(2): 19-25.
1962
"Metaphor in Mountain Speech (Part VII)." Mountain Life and
Work 38(4): 9-12.
1963
"Metaphor in Mountain Speech (Part VIII)." Mountain Life and
Work 39(1): 50-53.
1963
"Metaphor in Mountain Speech (Part IX)." Mountain Life and
Work 39(2): 51-53.
1964
"Prepositions in Mountain Speech (Part X)." Mountain Life and
Work 40(1): 53-55.
1965
"To be Saved, the Mountaineer Must be an American First Not A
Mountaineer." Appalachian South 1(2): 38-39.
140
�Bibliography
1966
"Sut Luvingood as a Southern Mountaineer." Bulletin: Appalachian
State Teachers College, Faculty Publications 1966. 44(4): 1-4.
1966
"Frank Proffitt: 1913-1965." Mountain Life and Work 42(1): 6-7.
1967
"Subtlety in Mountain Speech (Part XI)." Mountain Life and Work
43(1): 14-16.
1967
"Preparing Teachers for the Expanding Junior College Program."
North Carolina Education 33(6): 16-17.
1967
"Moonshining in the Mountains." North Carolina Folklore 15(1):
11-17.
1967
"Traditional Ballads and Folksongs from the Southern
Appalachians." Proceedings of the Seventh Marshall University
English Institute: Folklore and Children's Literature•, 25-58.
Huntington, WV: Marshall University.
1968
"Mountain Customs, Social Life, and Folk Yarns in Taliaferro's
Fisher's River Scenes and Characters." North Carolina Folklore 16
(3): 143-152.
1971
"Kentucky's First Mountain Story." Kentucky Folklore Record 17(1):
1-4.
1971
"Linney's Heathen Valley." North Carolina Folklore 19(2): 55-58.
1971
"Heritage of Appalachia." News from the Appalachian State
University TTT Project. Winter: 1-3.
1972
"A Look at Boone's Music of 100 Years Ago." Watauga Democrat,
July 3:25.
1972
"Who Are the Southern Mountaineers?" Appalachian Journal 1(1):
48-55.
1973
"Response of Gratis Williams." The Oliver Max Gardner Award,
11-15. Meeting of the Board of Governors of the University of
North Carolina, Greenville, NC, July 13.
1975
"The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part 1)." ed.
Martha H. Pipes. Appalachian Journal 3(1): 8-61.
1976
"The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part II)." ed.
Martha H. Pipes. Appalachian Journal 3(2): 100-162
1976
"The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part III)." ed.
Martha H. Pipes. Appalachian Journal 3(3)\ 186-261
1976
"The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction (Part IV)." ed.
Martha H. Pipes. Appalachian Journal 3(4): 334-392.
1976
"Appalachia in Fiction." Appalachian Heritage 4 (4): 44-56.
141
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
1976
"Eastern Kentucky True Bicentennial Area, Most Direct Line of
Colonial Heritage: A Bicentennial Essay." Ashland Daily
Independent, July 4:3.
1977
"The Appalachian Experience." Historical Sketches of Southwest
Virginia 11: 1-9.
1977
"The Mountain Folk of Western North Carolina." Tar Heel Junior
Historian 17(1): 2-6.
1978
"The Liberal Spirit in Contemporary Education." News from the
Southern Cluster of TTT: 1-2.
1978
"Appalachian Speech." North Carolina Historical Review 55(2):
174-179.
1979/1980
"Ballad Collecting in the 1930s." Appalachian Journal 7(I-2}: 33-
36.
1980
"Ye Offspring of Vipers." Appalachian Heritage 8(2): 32-37.
1985
"The Appalachian Homestead." Watauga County Times.,.Past
17/18: 13-15.
Video (available in W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Belk Library, ASU)
1981
"The Ballad of Appalachia." Interview with Gratis D. Williams by
Rogers Whitener and Ron Rankins. Boone, NC: Center for
Instruction Development, Appalachian State University.
1986
The Story of English (Part IV): The Guid Scots Tongue. [Includes
interview with Gratis Williams.] Produced by William Gran. BBC
TV co-production with MacNeil-Lehrer Production in association
with WNET Chicago, IL: PMI/Films Inc.
1986b
American tongues. [Includes interview with Gratis Williams.]
Producers, Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez. New York, NY: The
Center for New American Media.
1998
Cratis Williams: Living the Divided Life. Produced by Fred Johnson
and Jean Donohue. Covington, KY: Media Working Group.
Gratis Dearl Williams Papers
The Cratis D. Williams Papers, a subset of the Cratis Dearl Williams Collection, contains mostly post-1967 papers, including Williams's research papers, speeches, conference
presentations, memoirs, correspondence, and genealogical research, as well as materials
related to the history of Appalachian State University and to Williams's service as graduate
school Dean and Acting Chancellor. The Cratis Dearl Williams Collection is housed in
ASU's W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection.
142
�ncal Sources/List of Photographs
Biographical Sources
1969
Who's Who in America. Chicago: A.N. Marquis Company.
1971
Leaders in Education. 4th ed. London and New York; Jaques
Cattell Press/R.R. Bowker Company.
1985
"Gratis Williams Memorial Issue." Watauga County Times...Past
17/18.
1996
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. H.G. Jones. Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press.
List of Photographs
Figure 1.
A new generation of Williams, 1917
ii
Figure 2.
As a high school graduate, 1928
Figure 3.
Gratis and his one-room school class, Caines Creek
Figure 4.
Ralph J. Williams with his grade school students,
Caines Creek, 1938
ix
Figure 5.
Gratis with brothers Ralph J. and Ottie Curtis, 1930
ix
Figure 6.
Curt Williams with Gratis, late 1920s
x
Figure 7.
While principal of Elaine High School
xi
Figure 8.
Gratis and Ethel Gambill, Blaine, Kentucky, 1933
xii
Figure 9.
Louisa High School Building
xv
Figure 10.
Faculty, Louisa High School, 1940
xvi
Figure 11.
Gratis and friend, 1949
xxv
Figure 12.
Gratis and "Miss Homecoming 1948"
xxv
Figure 13.
Elizabeth Lingerfelt, New York City, 1949
xxviii
Figure 14.
Gratis Williams married to Elizabeth Lingerfelt
xxviii
Figure 15.
Letter from Gratis Williams to Doc Abrams,
published in N.C. Education, Sept. 1949
xxviii
vii
viii
Figure 16.
Gratis at his new house, 1954
xxix
Figure 17.
"Preacher Gratis," 1963
xxxi
Figure 18.
Dean of the graduate school, 1968
xxxi
Figure 19.
Gratis Williams and Loyal Jones, 1984
xxxv
Figure 20.
Gratis and Herb Wey, 1973
xxxv
143
�The Gratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Figure A.
Sylvia Graham Williams, 1937
Figure B.
Herbert W. Wey, 1940's
12
Figure C.
Main entrance of Appalachian Demonstration
High School, 1940's
13
Figure D.
Faculty Apartments, 1942
36
Figure E.
Ruby Donald and Hugh Daniel, 1942
70
Figure F.
Sylvia Graham and Gratis Williams, 1937
79
Figure G.
Berta and Lemual Graham with Sylvia and
Gratis Williams, 1938
81
5
Figure H.
Gathering of teachers, 1943
114
Figure I.
A country outing, 1943
115
Figure J.
Gratis Williams's homeroom, Appalachian
Demonstration High School, 1942-1943
123
Gratis Williams
128
Figure K.
144
�The Gratis Williams Region, 1942
Hwttingtqp:
Source: Appalachian
University, G1S &
Processing Lab, Eric Schmidt, 1998.
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Appalachian Consortium Press Publications
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Appalachian Consortium Press
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June 1, 2017
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The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone
Description
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<span>Following his retirement in 1976 from a distinguished career as a teacher and administrator at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, Cratis Williams wrote these memoirs of his life odyssey from a log cabin in eastern Kentucky to the upper echelons of American education.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CusNMiTGNjI_1RRo7gaBtmihAv0PWQmd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469641959/the-cratis-williams-chronicles" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a>
Subject
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Williams, Cratis D.
Appalachian State Teachers College (N.C.)--History
Appalachian State University--History
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Boone (N.C.)--History
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Williams, Cratis D.
Williams, David Cratis
Beaver, Patricia D.
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1999
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English
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https://www.geonames.org/4456703/boone.html
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<a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a>
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Appalachian State University
autobiography
Cratis D. Williams