A TRUE TALE FROM THE APPALACHIANS
whole Appalachian range would have been depopulated years ago. I would like to tell you a true story of the m oun ta in s which proves that truth is stranger than fiction. Up that Dry Branch Hollow that you may have whizzed by, lives Ezra Abraham Phipps, converted moonshiner. Revenue officers had been trying for months to catch Ezra and his men at his stills. A big, tall, heavy-set man, he was never seen on the trail, or along the Hollow, without his rifle in his hand, and a pistol in his belt. Nei ther was worn for mere show. One cool fall day, the missionary from Stoney Gap held a cabin serv ice in Ezra’s district. Out of curi osity, the big moonshiner went to the service. The people in his dis trict accepted him as a respectable man. Old Ike Falin used to say, "What’s a feller going to do? Here's a big crop of corn and no place to take it. No roads are fit for a don key, the missus needs clothes, and the kids need everything. What’s a feller to do? Just sit there and watch them go around in rags? If the fellers thar in Washington had spent the billions on bull-dozing roads back in these here hills that they spent in sending ‘ revenoorers’ all over the mountains to catch us, we’d not have to put our crop into jugs and carry it down the old washed-out creek beds called roads to make a few dollars!” In that Dry Branch cabin that afternoon the grace of God was manifest. A miracle of God’s mercy and power en te red th a t dark, smelly, stifling cabin. That day Ezra knelt down at the invitation to re ceive the Saviour and met the Lord. Right away, he got his men together and said, “ Fellows, I am through making whiskey. Tonight we go back to the still and smash it right out of business.” 27
O n a spring day when the Cum- berlands were covered with the beautiful redbuds, sprinkled with the whites of the laurels and rhodo dendrons, I saw tourists spinning along exquisite Powell Valley, as I entered the highway in my "m is sionary jeep.” Had they only taken time off to hike about a mile up the mountain “ road” from which I had just driven off, what they would have seen likely would haunt them on the rest of their journey. Of course, that would never do! Just beyond the beauty of the hills they were admiring, lived a people who know what suffering is. Up these sideroads lead ing to mountain hollows and ridges, are thousands of log houses sheltering (in a sort of way) a people who daily experience the battle of survival. Pathos, adven tu re , d is a p p o in t ments, sickness and p rem a tu re deaths form the lives o f these brave, enterprising, but frequently, misrepresented people. We lived and worked among them for several years, so we know that the cartoons one sees suppos edly depicting these people are, to say the least, very unkind carica tures. I have never once met a loosely-jointed, six-foot moun ta in man, held together by wire, hat flopping over his ears, trousers just below the knees, carrying a seven-foot muzzle-loading squirrel rifle, followed by a gaunt hound who was perpetually scratching. In the cartoon, he ’ s ba re foo t of course, and hang ing over one shoulder is a jug of moonshine, and over the other is seen his leather pouch with the protruding powder- horn. Neither have I seen a moun tain man and woman sitting eter nally on his porch, feet hanging over the railing, chewing on straws and wasting away the days. Had the mountain people been like that, the SEPTEMBER, 1970 W ‘
b y G eo rge H. C lem en t
Widower Abe Coffee and son, Mike, ’way up on top of Stone Mountain.
Not making moonshine, but sugar from the sorghum cane, lying in fore- ggmnfl^ S
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