Mountain Ways

00:10Copy video clip URL Onscreen text and logo for Alice Lloyd College, Pippa Passes, KY, 41844. No sound. 

00:39Copy video clip URL An elderly man sitting in a rocking chair on his porch, reads the last will and testament of his great grandfather, John Sellars, who died in 1838. 

02:58Copy video clip URL Over a bluegrass fiddle soundtrack, images of a Kentucky valley. 

03:30Copy video clip URL Title Card: “Mountain Ways.” Additional onscreen text: “Historical Artifacts: Southwest Virginia Museum and Natural Tunnel State Park.” 

03:48Copy video clip URL Images of a forest, with a creek and waterfall, and a walking trail, while in voiceover people tell stories about their lives in the region. 

05:57Copy video clip URL A cabin in the woods, with archival photographs of former inhabitants. 

06:39Copy video clip URL In voiceover, stories about how the region’s inhabitants used to make a living. “If you were an aggressive man, you could make it pretty well in these mountains back in those days. There wasn’t much work to be done except logging. I doubt that my father worked a day for somebody else.”

07:38Copy video clip URL In voiceover, talk of his father’s methods of raising sheep and cattle. 

10:00Copy video clip URL In voiceover, speaking about his mother’s technique with the spinning wheel, and her weaving of clothes. Images of antique spinning wheels and looms. 

11:26Copy video clip URL An elderly woman speaks in voiceover about her methods of preparing and cooking pigs. 

13:05Copy video clip URL Use of oxen in logging operations. Other logging techniques. Transporting timber by floating it down the creeks to the river, forming it into a raft, and riding the raft to town. 

15:11Copy video clip URL Discussion of corn and beans as crops grown in the mountains. Family, including children, plowing and working on the crops. Making their own plows. 

16:43Copy video clip URL Division of labor among the children in the family. Raising sugar cane to make molasses. 

18:20Copy video clip URL Sleeping arrangements for a large family in a small cabin. 

19:10Copy video clip URL “One of the early lessons I learned was that there was one time when you could tell a lie, and that was when your father was home and the other side – the opposing side – asked it he were home. We would like and say, no, he was not home. We were that close to it, the Civil War, in that this was still training in our family. At no other time could you – if you were asked, you would have to speak the truth. Mother was 13 when they were coming into the home and asking ‘Where is your father? Where is your brother?’ So that would have been deeply ingrained in my mother, at 13, so I imagine she carried it on.”

20:10Copy video clip URL Finding a rattlesnake in the woods as a young girl. 

21:40Copy video clip URL Recollections of the local school – a one-room schoolhouse. 

27:06Copy video clip URL The hiring of teachers by the trustees. A contentious election of the trustees that led to violence, with five people killed, which resulted in a change of the law so that board members would hire teachers themselves. 

29:31Copy video clip URL Family traditions of storytelling. Mostly hunting stories. 

30:30Copy video clip URL Traveling to nearby towns. 

31:57Copy video clip URL Giving birth. Gathering neighbors from 5 or 6 nearby houses to help with the birth. Stories of birth and babies. 

33:23Copy video clip URL Stories about doctors. 

34:14Copy video clip URL A church rendition of “Amazing Grace” over images of mountain churches. 

35:20Copy video clip URL The place of the church in mountain life. Singing hymns. 

37:53Copy video clip URL Dating and romance in the mountains. “When Daddy wanted me to quit a boy he didn’t have to do very much. All he’d have to do is just tell a little something about him. You know, I was bigger than he was or maybe he was too skinny.”  

38:55Copy video clip URL Neighbors helping each other when someone would get behind on work. Working together. Making quilts and patching cloth. 

41:00Copy video clip URL Meals, cooking, and pickling. 

42:45Copy video clip URL Legal proceedings. A story about perjury charges. 

44:38Copy video clip URL Con artists and selling land. 

46:05Copy video clip URL Images of coal mining and coal country in the present day over a version of “Nine Pound Hammer” on the soundtrack. 

47:52Copy video clip URL The tragic effects of industrialization, “the greed of man.” 

48:06Copy video clip URL End title card and credits. Bluegrass soundtrack.