Faith, Folklore, and Friends

We have been privileged to attend the Museum of Appalachia's Homecoming many times, and it never gets old. It is a peaceful place, a reminder of simpler times, of good times that our parents weaved into stories for summer's front porches. Everything about it feels like home to me, and I'm always happy when I'm there. The Gibson Brothers pickin' and singin'; one of the best parts of this year's festival. We really appreciate the work of Mr. John Rice Irwin, who founded the Museum of Appalachia in 1968. Mr. Irwin loved the stories of his grandparents, and listened when his grandfather said, "You ought to keep these old-timey things that belonged to our people and start you a little museum sometime."    The Museum of Appalachia is located in Norris, Tennessee, just a little northwest of Knoxville.  http://museumofappalachia.org/

Mama told us that one especially hard year during the Depression,  her family ran out of canned food and all they had to eat was molasses over cornbread.  My Grandpa had worked for someone with a molasses mill and was paid in molasses. There was usually just one molasses mill in the community.  People brought their sorghum to them to have their molasses made, and the owners kept a little bit of the molasses as payment. The thing Mama remembered most about helping make the molasses was the yellow jackets that were drawn to the pans of syrup, and the challenge of keeping them away. This fellow at the Museum of Appalachia's Homecoming was apparently very experienced, because he always remembered to duck when the mule brought the pole came around.   The best use of molasses, in my humble opinion, was in making popcorn balls.  Mama poured just enough hot molasses over popped corn for the kernels to stick together, then formed them ...

The Museum of Appalachia's Homecoming is a three-day event.  We were only there for one day, so we missed a lot of music.  There are five stages there, so it is a matter of picking and choosing who you will see and who you will miss.   One of the bands we saw was the award-winning Grascals. They are a bluegrass band that sometimes takes music from other genres and makes it their own.  One of my favorites is Take the Last Train to Clarksville.  If you are near my age, you will remember this as a British tune from the sixties.   They preformed four times on Sunday.  We saw the last performance, and we were all tired.   After we left the Festival, we saw them again, on I 75 heading south.     It was a good day.

  On October 13, we were privileged to attend the 34th annual Tennessee Homecoming at the Museum of Appalachia near Knoxville.  We have been several  times before, but it had been about a decade since we had enjoyed the homecoming.  We were ready. The sounds of Appalachian music filled the autumn air.  There were five stages on the grounds with different musicians about every thirty minutes.   Everywhere we went, there was music. Children loved this--for a dollar, they could shell an ear of corn and take it with them. It would take way too long to name all the musicians there.  We enjoyed them all. This quilt was perfect for the old cabin porch.   These Revolutionary fellows fired off their muskets occasionally, just to keep things lively. We loved watching all the children there.  This little girl danced and played in the dirt at Stage 2 during a performance.  I'm ...