Ralph Fickel's journal as he crosses portions of the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina and South Carolina, including detailed stories, illustrations, and maps.

Dewey Helms, born in 1903, talks about working in McDowell County, North Carolina, in the early twentieth century. He came from a family of farmers and carpenters, and when he was old enough he began working in the furniture factory for eleven cents an hour between school terms. In 1923 he began working at the mill because the pay was better. He said the only other job you could get besides furniture and mill was the railroad, which didn't pay very well either. He eventually began weaving and repairing looms as a career.

This diary was recorded by Andrew Jackson Greene on July 7th through July 29th of 1938. Greene was a professor at Appalachian State Teachers College. He centered many of his writings around the school, including specific details about his classes, the assemblies, the chapel meetings, special programs, and faculty meetings. He frequently wrote about the people in his life, both people from the college such as President Dougherty and Dean Rankin, and about others in the community such as Bill Whittington, Reverend R.C. Pointer, G.P. Eggers, and Carrie Smith.

In beginning this diary, Greene wriote that he would like to concentrate more on the philosophy of events and people that he came into contact with. He also wanted to make mention the customs of the people that he wrote about. This diary was recorded from April 1 through May 5, 1942. In this diary he wrote about his friends and neighbors, the community events, political issues, and religion.

This item is part of the I. G. Greer Folksong Collection which consists of more than 300 individual song titles and their variants as collected by Isaac Garfield Greer (1881-1967) from informants, primarily in Ashe, Wilkes and Watauga counties. The collection includes manuscripts, typescript transcriptions produced by Dr. Greer’s clerical staff, and handwritten musical notations. Songs range from traditional Child Ballads, traditional English and Scottish ballads as well as their American variants, to 19th century popular music to musical compositions of local origin.