Clifftop addendum; John Henry and Mike Jones:
As previously mentioned, I didn’t make it to where John Henry fell dead. I set out to go there one morning, but didn’t get past Thurmond. This was once a thriving community on the C&O line between Hinton and Huntington. It was the location of one of the C&O locomotive maintenance shops and thus was a center of a lot of railroad activity as well as a lot of other business, legitimate and otherwise. It is mentioned in the old song about Billy Richardson, whose locomotive passed through here before he leaned out the window and knocked most of his brains out when he struck a mail crane at Scarey. I asked several people where Scarey was located, but no one knew. It must have disappeared years ago.
Thurmond however is still there, barely. There are 3 or 4 occupied houses, the shells of 3 business buildings, and the old C&O depot which has been converted to a museum. I got there about 9:15 only to discover that the depot didn’t open until 10:00. The depot and the town were deserted except for a guy sitting in an old pickup truck. He was black, maybe 30 years old, had an impressive set of dreadlocks and a very cool West Virginia accent. Said he worked for the state, was a musician, name was Mike Jones, did a little rapping, maybe I had heard of him. I chuckled at what was obviously a joke but had to google Mike Jones before I understood it, I don’t get out much in the hip-hop world. He was waiting at the depot to talk to the guy who was going to open it up at 10.
I asked about some of the local stuff including where Scary was located which he of course didn’t know. He did tell me about Pietown which used to be near Thurmond. It was a community of black railroad workers noted for the pies that the women made and sold to C&O passengers and train crews. He also decided to unlock the depot and show me around. Eventually, the talk turned to the location of the Big Bend tunnel and the infamous John Henry incident. He asked me if I thought John Henry was a real person.
I began to reply with my best academic information about the inconclusive research done in the 1930’s, but it soon became apparent that he was baiting me. He gave me to know in no uncertain terms that the story was true and cited a substantial amount of documented evidence to that effect. Turns out that he was not only a musician, but also involved in a group of historical re-enactors that did a recreation of the whole steam drill race as part of their repertoire. As he stated it, he was just doing his part to keep the old history from being crowded out by the new.
I decided to throw caution to the winds and told him there was no option at this point except that I get my banjo out of the car and sing John Henry for him. Which I did, sitting on the bench in front of the Thurmond depot. Mike got into it in a big way, started doing a little flatfoot shuffle and swinging an imaginary hammer over his shoulder. Said he hadn’t heard anything like that in a long time. I was a bit amazed and told him so, as I had to assume that there were 100,000 hillbillies with banjoes in West Virginia and that they sang John Henry every day of their lives. Not true, he replied, it wouldn’t be hard to find 100,000 hillbillies, but they spend their time cooking meth, don’t play banjoes, and never heard of John Henry.
By now it was time to head out to Clifftop to avoid missing the days activities. A carload of tourists had arrived and it was time of open the museum officially anyway. I went away somewhat disillusioned about the state of West Virginia’s hillbillies, but much gratified to have met at least one kindred spirit.
Missouri Valley; Ancient Age and dancing with a washboard:
Several years ago, back when the Missouri Valley festival was held at Avoca, IA and the Wilders band was in a larval stage of development, they and I met a banjo player who shall forever be known as Ancient Age (henceforth to be designated as AA to distinguish him from the liquid death of the same name).
My recollection of the incident was that on a late night stroll, we encountered a jam session which included a quite competent 3 finger banjo player who had a large bottle of Ancient Age brand fire water close at hand. He offered the flask for public consumption, asking if anyone wanted a pull. One of us, who shall remain nameless, did. (Not me) After the party in question swallowed a reasonable quantity of fluid and lowered the bottle, AA’s comment was, and I quote “That ain’t no pull.” The unfortunate wanna-be-puller was then forced to save face by re-hoisting the offending container and gulping down a volume of whiskey which was damn sure by anybody’s standard “a pull”. We than continued the campground tour with one of the party walking a more random path than the others.
About 30 minutes later our pseudo-Brownian motion brought us back past the same jam. The formerly competent banjo player and intelligent conversationalist had in that brief span of time degenerated into a babbling incompetent who could not even hold the banjo for more than a few seconds. Playing was out of the question. We observed then and I think agree to this day that we had never seen a faster and more complete crash and burn due to demon rum.
The only reason that I recount this episode is the fact that I again ran across AA in a jam session this summer at Missouri Valley. At an appropriate break, I introduced myself again and asked if he remembered the night in question. He did in fact, and agreed with my assessment of his rapid fall from grace. There were some mitigating factors which I cannot immediately recall, but the outcome was exactly as I remembered it. It’s good to sometimes confirm some of the stories that have survived for a few years just to see if they actually happened.
I spent a good deal of time at MO Valley with the Recycled band from Red Oak, Iowa. With guitar, mandolin, bass, and washboard, they play a lot of old time jug band and country blues tunes, many of them at a pretty fast tempo. They are fun to watch and to jam with.
I had decided early on to enter the old time dance contest, but was a little undecided about music. The contest rules state that each contestant must provide a band, a rule which later turned out to be totally ignored. I of course had no way to know that in advance. The idea slowly incubated in my fevered mind that would be sort of cool to dance with just the washboard to provide rhythm. Chuck Kleuver is a great player, is in the Recycled band, and I’ve known him for many years. With some coercion, he agreed to do it.
There were only 5 dance contestants, 4 of whom were conventional cloggers. Now anybody who is in the know realizes that clogging is not in fact old time dancing. It was developed in the 1970’s from the old time mountain styles and features silly costumes with short skirts and multiple petticoats, high kicks, and all sorts of things that real deal hillbillies would have laughed and hooted at. I briefly considered protesting on that technicality, but that would have required a degree of seriousness that sane people to not assume at a Bob Everhart festival.
Anyway, I was the last dancer, shooed the band off the stage, and brought up the washboard player. We did our thing. The crowd loved it, but I sensed a mood of icy disapproval from the judges chairs. I assume that they were the grandparents of the cloggers. I got last place which I thought was pretty cool under the circumstances. I will do it again next year if I am foolish enough to go back, which I will probably be.
Winfield:
You know, I can’t think of anything to say about Winfield. It was about the same as last year except with a few different people, I did about the same stuff, I liked it a lot, I will do it again next year, that’s about it.
Nebraska Bluegrass Festival:
I’m going Friday only. Got new overalls for the occasion.
