A Word on Words; 3006; Lee Smith

on john so you know once again welcome to word on words i guess lee smith welcome back ok nice so nice to have you back to talk about sitting on the courthouse bench a totally different weeks riding experience for leigh schmidt that's right now edited insurance annuity that is right now i have done thirteen books of fiction at this point but you know like so many people i have always wanted to do an oral history of the town i'm from grand the virginia because it's full of so many wonderful storytellers in there things i've heard growing up and i knew if if they were recorded they would be lost and then suddenly montana skin of the flooded basically and move to higher ground so i was down and asked is this just talk about money a little bit goes out there was done that new world has turned that newer great prosperity i am as a nice comfortable lovely place to live and love and having come up there

bottom half and feeling as you do wedded to it and we all feel waited to where we came from sunday realize that let's try well this this despite of grand a high end of many small towns in the appalachian range and as animal a male map of course with coal mining and grand it was one of those towns that really never had any other industry except coal mining and one of the corollaries of other manning which people now israel as is flooding they can serve wet coal mining can do to the ecology particularly stirred manning and also in this case because of the topography of failed that says write of the day in sao the town has flooded repeatedly and the car business says dan and the town the downtown was just becoming a ghost town and suddenly they had an offer they could not refuse from the us army corps of

engineers in combination with the virginia department of how wise to know the town like it says in the gospel song and so the net and will be reached back races across this kind of they were like that was the old town and there bold us and thirty nine acres ten of them yeah fat wait you have to capture the stories of the dan plan we really have to get how well do you got up and how you got a puppy is almost those affairs and that's a story in itself it's the second story i talk about you've got your friend abby richter yeah what about that phrase who teach it out when i get free and secure la la your id idea what gagging out if i one day an oral history of the downtown where my grandfather was the treasurer for fifty two years and my father had

advanced or for fifty years you know semis gloomy flooded the stores are going to be gone i can't do an hour and so on called it ranks not good for hand whereas the thing i'm going to have go unsaid you got to get that one i know an oral history project and sees a bubbling fountain and says she talked with her students and we got a group of thirty m daley structured it into the curriculum so that in fact they could i get a high school credit and alan up there with a whole bunch of that tape recorders and us data and we practiced a wave of alcohol our way of going about it and we remain well you know the everybody should do what you do take your toe and dolly madison it's so oftentimes well as things that they don't do it later when you have a lot you know and then

you know bank a dancer who ever wise i'm in the town to daylight as daylight you've lost that piece of history and this was an original lumber town and then an indigo blue hour and i guess it was a blue village more early on in the cold is this crank dat and then again in the say nineteen seventy four for instance in when i was growing up there there were three four thousand people are now there are twelve hundred and with a steady out migration so there you go back and you say it every let's do this but you know we have to prepare these kids to do and so you you come up with question is economic crises we practice we had and our great success we had them practice on their own families are with their parents you never really ask people questions in normal cut just daily interchanges about the things that have mattered most of

them and their lives and have you know inform their consciousness and the kids came back after interview and their fathers or their grandfather's just found an assistant who believe that debt you now had to say about vietnam are you and the way you know that my grand get you know what he and how he had a way of growing up and a stuff like that and if it well for one thing and that's teenagers really have to come you can't not just with each other not just with peer world you know what was the matter back into a whole different slang and it was really it was quite for them is great for lambs one of them well you know your piece it introduces the oral history is wonderful prose at your own vision your own view of a past you live then these little piece is interesting because it's all of that induces you the idea that

the students are there are up to i have an ally that i think it's a handsome again unbound and then they so they go calling on these people and hitting him with these questions some of which we're expected but soul which quite off the wall like animals to get when you're growing some flexibility to really goes one way you go with it so why everybody telling the same story but but throughout these oral histories there are themes that emerge for example there were two great floods war fifty seven and says that is the end and everybody of that gen of magnitude three generations of for those people those two events were a landmark moments a year as elliot

from a bigger that was like sharing that you know joe the fish flopping only a rhyme that's right and in lieu of money in the basement of the theater that i had i was at a wine apparent and that was the seventies that was not what they're there so everybody had never come in saris and everybody has a flood story aren't everybody has a story about growing up by restore his characters people and pants but you know when i was working with a key is one thing we found was that it generally worked as sy tell me about your child the more specific questions good day no more armed people were able to remember like the times i now like about a particular dying it out and when you woke up you know where were you what can a room reviewing what she say out the window there was fire new again a breakfast without a ticket to monetize that francis drew

the image re read i discuss why back and the kids were worried because i think what one of these out emma gannon a santa hat and then the question was so evocative though of different sorts of different eye naturally governor losing lodge compton soda job at a plant near the end of it that you could tell they felt that they were turning the tables on him there's a journalist who's interviewing people here they are interviewing a journalist live it and it is only get a little history of the newspaper along the history of the town and his career that's right in that business that's right and the large sum upfront each one a basic intervenes i really than a you have a favorite interview

i mean it's hard to say be careful of course molly ran off as one of the greatest characters that ever came out of that time now that candy but for me i think one of the day interesting page was just the fact that we need these are people i've known all my life and yet i did there were teach crucial things about each one that i didn't know and i made it was like suddenly you know of seeing into people's cells announce it was just read what we're for it says there's a time as evangelist there nine years where it's really pretty great when you're on the keywords expected that me and he started many many miss him in our churches and so i and i expected that's what he'd want talk about when ali what to talk about with him if he want to swine flu eighth and i can thank the best art in this church or that urge to get that let's start with a little a ha ha ha ha ha you aren't anything and her yellow arises every thursday

for fifty sixty years because the matter on the thurston and then went on to start a gravity starts nobody ever noticed side there was constant have allies to an end remaining for the person doing the oral history work i think it made me remember it brought back my childhood some it worked in their dates danced or was telling about tom the time they met were matinees to ban skits and you're used to assemble made intentional assemble nfl sleep in the bottom of the barrios for they'll sleep in the bottom of the big box itself find strawberry ready was looking for me in my day was in a panic and satellite that brought back that haul memory which is very precious to me and i had lost that i had completely lost there's a there is a saint so his beloved known liberal not alive and there is they know fallen the students

alone leila view to me i want to sound like a better absolutely wonderful wonderful in today's and awe i think i had so much to say people don't want to just tell you now yeah but now someone and tell them what i've learned about why are you now work at years on this planet has has given them but yet they're they had so much society i think that's one thing the kids line and i think one thing arm oral history is a wonderful tale not only for people who are armed groups who were trying to capture the highest as we were but it is going to be destroyed immediately scams can be in a can a week forever different and it may be wonderful but this town is going to be gone and we were capturing it but also i think oral history is a great tool yes with this horse that france is a good friend of bill ann has two of her classes wine and

doing an oral history of the civil rights movement a chapel hill north carolina what was it like in chapel hill you know and this is really important and now there are teachers teaching and doing a segment you know of of her class on vietnam is having people when he i have another friend who works with at risk kids in an after school program and she is heaven right now the girls interview women that they admire in their communities in a course ties or form here between the women and the girls you know and the boys are actually all interview and local musicians and dewan i can think that doesn't have to be a star call but i can hack see now it connects the interviewers secure with a communique flows and warn that if you pay for that for those oblivious way that somebody who didn't let alone telling a leaflet about her new book the signal the courthouse were now signal the court as binge in sitting on the court as mentors that come from it's just

out there was a kid that in the case of the la and by eight by nine the book i decided that the size of the book i say we know i have a book that summarizes got put on abortion lawyer but then some i've been put on a coffee table and because they like and they named this book path they said these are the voices thats ewell hard at this than on the court has bands in the middle of grand in virginia for the us fifty years of great anti you know i'd rather than an hour wind up and i never heard of grundy except i have heard of religion and then when the green tennessee loyal public servant lawyer lisa wrote was a cowboy lullaby laws are a man and then there's europe but it goes into the bank and there are many many people were listening as a lark how has the way a lot of rivers were very important and eighties

today man they had allies taliban when they're laid eyes of the lumber industry they would rather rest of lumber down to yemen to kentucky to sell the lumber and then the river of time everybody enemy of course later with all this flooding and so bam women aren't as well people who are semi that i was very surprised that interview because you know you grow up in a little isolated can like stand in a ring of maleness the thing that represented the hall outside world us was the movies i went to them our way to the theater as we can but if we can delay the tags and raymond i was the guy that ran the project he ran the theater and thought he had the best job and well and as it turns out that you have his job and he hounded in his idea of fun was world wartime

you know ending it and his navy ship was sunk and he was in the water for devising he still thought that was the highlight of his life and he hated his job which i'd coveted from the niagara first go to the movies and this you know what movie bibi voting now went away although when i love a thing that it ended talks about the anecdotes about something that's distinctly generational oppose it all over people and he lived through three generations of moviegoers that's right and that that's why there's also an element of sadness you when you think about the department store and when you read about people shop there and people who worked there and and people

gathered there you are when you talk about the movie house a result of a local landmark foreign laws and so many people and the new laws little a little better i will i say now that was like a departure story was a dance torture and that's how a pianist or allies you know with a team to canada that day the end of an era and that purpose that it's art for the community and bank i and the millions to everybody talk about those two you know there's two places the other storage so it jumps up is john hart towing that was the last hour less big hanging right in town it was in nineteen ninety and and down he killed a man far that's going to mean

something right now thank the composer solemn eyes wide of the caliphate that i had great grandfather was the trailer and i'd write grandma and facing his land's man and that a guy with that tobacco he had that year in the back for a ride before you with religion that's right that relate to and that part of it back and back of the book you did a wonderful thing of smaller journalist byline for each of these students you provide a picture and a little biographical sketch for a brief but there's a

byline after each interview but beyond that even beyond that you then give them a sort of prestige and status they'll never have again unless they write books well you now when they're applying for college is this real life it sure did and they are not in my are not in their first stories i usually but we had a book signing we have a party and we had it god the first saturday after thanksgiving last year we had been so that several behalf of their kids had gone off to college is that they would become for the first time from college for thanksgiving so we headed the saturday after the race ever still and it's still there we had thirty as i'm signing books and i had assigned works for or hours because so many people came to the books that we had to bluegrass bands we had in the half built in that area along we and we sell it and they're only twelve hundred people

racist white ball and of course they're at their parents' in various people were just letting out then and are they yeah the profits go to the recanting county public library and today lending fund which we have created at the high school for an aspect of prague ems an arts particularly literature and for them to bring speakers and do other kinds of kinds of politics you have been sighing literacy and reading and lives the other thing that strikes me as possibly valuable to other people who might like to do an oral history about a town a village a community and neighborhood yunus argues that you have the question here is where they did the hands as a very specific ideas on how to

incorporate these ideas into an actual you know school curriculum but we learn by trial and error and so we do have a section in the bank here for teachers are for just anybody who wants to date this can of endeavor and also have a website with his daddy daddy that the earliest at that time and we have again and thus corners and ideas for halladay world history because it is just so fahey of all for the people who do it as well as the noun for the people you're interviewing and larger kind of song o b you edited and i would have expected that there would've been a memory is fading and failing and and and miss growing as a i would've expected that there would have been more contradictions are more conflicts in some of the accounts but everything to me just seemed to duct tape the memories of

that place of them is and it's obviously it is obvious to me but the people who have live there and who lives there and obama continued after the nutella supposed to live there probably are among themselves sometimes to relate stories of oppressed annex anecdotes of the press and there is not the conflict in contradiction a little bit here and there and lightly on in one place it as you say there were periods when coal dust kisses that you couldn't swim will be certain about an outlet iran why our turin black at about that but again somebody said well there was a there was a time when summer when us where lives of women but but the bestseller contradiction it's just a different season bad sign when when one period to go bust was fickle orderly of the year and i guess it was clear but that we're surprised by a

neo day the cogency of the story it's i think a lot depends upon is doing the interview weighing and sort of everybody was going to be interviewed in a very low as the tamils complain so much everybody was in a sort of the aisle made today you maintain their best memories i think you're a week we did this like a family album for the tiny home that was our tank but now if you'll rise journalists had gone in and just simply did oral histories we might've a it's a more from aiming by being trans questions like a bat bat bat bat say particularly the coal industry or our band bad the failure of various government agencies and while things got to this area's before something was done and just you know we might add and i know there were people selling in the community who are against this particular draft think the lesson to the flooding problem

solution yeah yeah there are there are people i'm sure in the community who were against that but it's a very lovely and civic small town and so everybody was just kind of rallying together i think an odd and in talking to these young people presenting maybe a little bit more i felt maybe perhaps a little bit more about the good memories and some of the hard name it deserves people have come up pretty hard and it had a pretty hard time but looking at their last of raw all you now in their lives in this hand they're love for the tan it and they presented a very positive picture here part of the day and that's what happened that collaborative and again the main character the photo op there were collection what happens now to the collection of material and the photographs from your little book blood is until there is today a place would be stored

where people can go to and so i like there are being are tied them in the hall the tapes in their entirety the interviews in their entirety as well as that edited you know carson alberta grants are all at the beginning county public library and it's a very valuable collection because a lot of the work on apple and so on has concentrated on really on the more rural as beck's you know early life and so wine me like a fox fur collection year that was and this is really the life of a tiny home and it's the life of the other cult and may not make it sat in a synthesis on the small chance and you know it was formed it was like this like bear and so on that it's a really very valuable are kept and that gets a prisoner well you are one of the south wall nation's most distinguished writers and this is achievement separate and apart way back to fiction it

our very large number of the next book and in skin and they published an arm details minted by algonquin and i remember i ran the comments i look if we'd be sitting right in that you think of a coming we've been talking to lisa miss about her new book sitting on the courthouse bench it's great to have you now act are really am a little apostle of oral history and sound of some of your readers will just donated a typo every night meaning that i think all of you and john should vote for warlords keep marching keep reading