***The Hills And Hollas Of Home-
In Honor Of The Late Hazel Dickens
From
The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin
Kenny Jackman heard the late Hazel
Dickens (d. 2011) for the very first time on her CD album It’s Hard To Tell
The Singer From The Song some years back, about 2005, when he was in thrall
to mountain music after being hit hard by Reese Witherspoon’s role as June
Carter in the film Walk The Line. At that time he was into all things
Carter Family unto the nth generation. A friend, a Vermont mountain boy, hipped
him to Hazel during his frenzy and he picked up the CD second-hand in Harvard
Square. Hazel’s You’ll Get No More Of Me, A Few Old Memories and the
classic Hills of Home knocked him out. The latter, moreover, seemed kind
of familiar and later, a couple of months later, he finally figured out why. He
had really first heard Hazel back in 1970 when he was down in the those very
hills and hollows, those Appalachia badlands and back roads, that are a
constant theme in her work, and that of the mountain mist winds music coming
down the crevices. What was going on though? Was it 2005 when he first heard
Hazel or that 1970 time? Let me go back and tell that 1970 story.
Kenny Jackman like many of his
generation of ’68 was feeling foot loose and fancy free, especially after he
had been mercifully declared 4-F by his friendly neighbors local draft board in
old hometown of North Adamsville, south of Boston, on the ocean south of Boston.
So Kenny, every now and again, took to the hitchhike road, not like his mad man
friend Peter Paul Markin with some heavy message purpose a la Jack Kerouac and
his beat brothers (and a few sisters) but just to see the country while he, and
it, were still in one piece. On one of these trips he found himself kind of
stranded just outside Norfolk, Virginia at a road-side campsite. Feeling kind
of hungry one afternoon, and tired, tired unto death of camp-side gruel and
stews he stopped at a diner, Billy Bob McGee’s, an old-time truck stop diner a
few hundred yards up the road from his camp for some real food, maybe meatloaf
or some pot roast like grandma used to make or that was how it was advertised.
When he entered the mid-afternoon
half-empty diner he sat down at one of the single stool counter seats that
always accompany the vinyl-covered side booths in such places. But all of this
was so much descriptive noise that could describe a million, maybe more, such
eateries. What really caught his attention though was a waitress serving them
“off the arm” that he knew immediately he had to “hit” on (although that is not
the word used in those days but “hit on” conveys what he was up to in the
universal boy meets girl world). As it turned out she, sweetly named Fiona Fay,
and, well let’s just call her fetching, Kenny weary-eyed fetching, was young,
footloose and fancy free herself and had drawn a bead on him as he entered the
place, and, …well this story is about Hazel, so let us just leave it as one
thing led to another and let it go at that.
Well, not quite let’s let it go at
that because when Kenny left Norfolk a few days later one Billy Bob McGee’s ex -waitress
Fiona Fay no longer serving the famous meatloaf like grandma used to make off
the arm (although Fiona hipped Kenny to
the fact that the steamer-frayed specialty was just so-so and thus not grandmother
worthy) was standing by his side on the road south. And the road south was
leading nowhere, nowhere at all except to Podunk, really Prestonsburg,
Kentucky, and really, really an even smaller dink town named Pottsville, just
down the road from big town Prestonsburg, down in the hills and hollows of
Appalachia, wind- swept green, green, mountain mist, time forgotten . And the
reason two footloose and fancy free young people were heading to Podunk was
that a close cousin of Fiona’s lived there with her husband and child and
wanted Fiona to come visit (visit “for a spell” is how she, the cousin, put it
but I will spare the reader the localisms). So they were on that hell-bend road
but Kenny, Kenny was dreading this part of the trip and only doing it because,
well because Fiona was the kind of young woman, footloose and fancy free or
not, that you followed, at least you followed if you were Kenny Jackman and
hoped things would work out okay.
What Kenny dreaded that day was that
he was afraid to confront his past. And that past just then entailed having to
go to his father’s home territory just up the road in Hazard. See Kenny saw
himself as strictly a yankee, a hard “we fought to free the slaves and
incidentally save the union” yankee for one and all to see back in old North
Adamsville. And denied, denied to the high heavens, that he had any connection
with the south, especially the hillbilly south that everybody was making a fuse
about trying to bring into the 20th century around that time. And here he was
with a father with Hazard, Kentucky, the poorest of the poor hillbillies, right
on his birth certificate although Kenny had never been there before. Yah, Fiona
had better be worth it, worth the sorrow.
Kenny had to admit, as they picked
up one lonely truck driver ride after another (it did not hurt in those days to
have a comely lass standing on the road with you in the back road South, or
anywhere else, especially a young man with longish hair and a wisp of a beard),
that the country was beautiful. As they entered coal country though and the
shacks got crummier and crummier he got caught up in that 1960s Michael
Harrington Other America no running water, outhouse, open door, one
window and a million kids and dogs running around half-naked, the kids that is,
vision. But they got to Pottsville okay and Fiona’s cousin and husband (Laura
and Stu) turned out to be good hosts. So good that they made sure that Kenny
and Fiona stayed in town long enough to attend the weekly dance at the old town
barn (red of course, run down of course) that had seen such dances going back
to the 1920s when the Carter Family had actually come through Pottsville on
their way back to Clinch Mountain.
Kenny buckled at the thought, the
mere thought, of going to some Podunk Saturday night “hoe-down” and tried to
convince Fiona that they should leave before Saturday. Fiona would have none of
it and so Kenny was stuck. Actually the dance started out pretty well, helped
tremendously by some local “white lightning” that Stu provided and which he
failed to mention should be sipped, sipped sparingly. Not only that but the
several fiddles, mandolins, guitars, washboards and whatnot made pretty good
music. Music like Anchored in Love and Come All You Fair And Tender
Ladies, stuff that he had heard in the folk clubs in Harvard Square when he
used to hang out there in the early 1960s. And music that even Kenny, old two
left-feet Kenny, could dance to with Fiona.
So Kenny was sipping, well more than sipping, and dancing
and all until maybe about midnight when this woman, this local woman came out
of nowhere and begins to sing, sing like some quick, rushing wind sound coming
down from the hills and hollas (hollows for yankees, okay). Kenny begins to
toss and turn a little, not from the liquor but from some strange feeling, some
strange womb-like feeling that this woman’s voice was a call from up on top of
these deep green hills, now mist-filled awaiting day. And then she started into
a long, mournful version of Hills of Home, and he sensed, sensed
strongly if not anything he could articulate that he was home. Yes, Kenny
Jackson, yankee, city boy, corner boy-bred was “home,” hillbilly home. So Kenny
did really hear Hazel Dickens for first time in 1970, see.
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