COME GO WITH ME
Old-Timer Stories from the Southern Mountains
edited by Roy Edwin Thomas
Personal anecdotes and brief folktales, most collected in the 1970s, from more than 70 of the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains' oldest citizens. Although Thomas gathers the vignettes into thematic groups—``Mama'd do the best she could''; ``We had good neighbors''; etc.—they give not so much a specific picture of turn-of-the-century mountain life as a sense of its flavor. Mrs. Liza Ann Carter Smith (b. 1872) recalls a flirtatious exchange with a man she'd known since the 1880s, another centenarian remembers her mother's biannual trip to town to buy fabric, and old Fred McCoy tells of a surprise party thrown for his uncle. Several tales and hunting stories testify to the storytellers' skill; even the Civil War era seems less remote after Frank Whitley's memories of reading to his parents, former slaves, or Mrs. Guthrey's description of her mother's family boiling the dirt on their smokehouse floor to reclaim salt. Kubinyi's small, cross-hatched still-lifes add scattered grace notes to the nostalgic recollections. A natural gateway to the Foxfire books. Biographical notes. (Autobiography/Folklore. 12+)