Tennessee 2 – Culture Clash

Standing around on the main drag of Pigeon Forge waiting for Dolly Parton’s homecoming parade, I chatted with the guy beside me on the sidewalk, thereby plummeting headlong into a dimension of the conflict currently tearing the country to shreds. His name is Terry Hall and he’s “saved,” a fundamentalist to the bone and perfectly happy to “witness” to any godless soldier-of-the-antichrist Californian who happens to be standing around in Pigeon Forge. That would be me, and I wondered which of us would qualify as the “melungeon,” the demonic different one. Both of us, I suppose.

Terry

I and everybody I know on the entire planet regard people like Terry as deluded, incomprehensible and dangerous. And unquestionably Terry and the entirety of his social cohort regard us in an even darker light. There is no interface.

And yet… Terry is intelligent and articulate, scarcely the traditional vicious wacko, and we had a good time bantering on a Tennessee sidewalk. I said, “I suppose this means you voted for Bush,” to which he answered, “Both times!” I said, “How could you? The man’s an idiot.” He said, “Yeah, but he gets it!” So there you have it. George W. Bush “gets” something or other about fundamentalist religion and nothing else matters. This is the impasse, the uncrossable chasm, and it’s scary. At least Terry’s indifferent to the rapture stuff, considering it mere “theology,” which doesn’t interest him. I, on the other hand, love to talk theology, in which the rapture doesn’t figure. Terry and I do not, cannot, understand each other or make sense of each other, but there’s something to be said for hanging out for a while.

After the parade Terry gave me two of his eighteen gospel CDs (here’s his website – http://terryghallmusicministry.com/) and I promised to send a couple of my books for his wife Janice, since Terry will read nothing but the Bible. Neither of us was willing to abandon hope, however. As we left I said, “If you would just read one book – Jeff Sharlet’s C STREET – you’ll at least understand why millions of people are so uncomfortable with fundamentalist religion in politics.” “Here’s a deal,” he said. “You send me that book and I’ll read it if you’ll read Romans 8.” Hey, deal.

So I read Romans 8, St. Paul pointing out that an exclusive focus on rationality is deadly, a position with which I do not argue, so I’m not sure what that was about. I’ve sent Terry C STREET. Maybe he’ll read it.

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Tennessee 1

Our steps down to the the Little Pigeon River

Eastern Tennessee, near a village called Townsend.  Special trip, friend’s 70th birthday.  The idea was to escape the city, any city, all cities.  Total success.

The dirt road to our spectacular two-story log “cabin” is barely wide enough for one car and you have to drive through a creek.  We were warned that the black bears are emerging from hibernation and that one, probably a two-year-old, has been seen in the woods surrounding the cabin.  “Just don’t walk around in the woods with a bucket of fried chicken,” we were told.  Well, okay.

(Two hours after writing the above we’re back from town, I sit down at my laptop on the table facing the deck and there he is!  On the deck, not fifteen feet away, a young black bear!  Friend is cooking something with a lot of onions and the scent was apparently irresistible.  I grabbed my camera, but he took off into the woods before I could snap a shot.  We’d been leaving the deck doors open, but they happened to be closed right then or he would have come on in.  Black bears (except moms with cubs) aren’t ferocious and this one’s just a hungry kid, but still… what does one do with a bear in the house?  Probably better keep those deck doors closed. 😉

We’re in the Smoky Mountains; the national park boundary is about 200 yards from the door, which means wi-fi access is almost nonexistent since no towers are permitted on national park grounds.  I’ll have to drive into Gatlinburg or someplace to post these blogs, but that’s the trade-off for limitless natural beauty, quiet and a bear.

Also for a cultural experience I’m still trying to figure out.  Scots, English, Welsh and Irish settlers made their way through

Melungeon boys

these mountains centuries ago, and their descendants are still here.  But another group, mysterious as the song that is their anthem, also struggled to survive in secret valleys and hollows, until they were driven out and moved to different valleys and hollows.  They were the Melungeons, mixed-race people of European, Native American and African genetic stock, whose name some linguists consider a bastardization of the French word melange (mixed).  However, my favorite among the theories is that the term reflects a now obsolete Elizabethan word, “malengin,” that meant guile, deceit or ill-intent.  Spenser, in The Faerie Queen, named an evil sprite character “Malengin,” and those early English settlers would have known and used the word.

In any event, the Melungeons were often shunned in primitive mountain settlements where survival might depend on mutual effort.  Dark-skinned and “different-looking,” they seemed demonic to the predominately white and culturally British mountain settlers.

I’d never heard of Melungeons until yesterday when I bought a CD of local bluegrass songs at Cade’s Cove, an old settlement the last descendant of which died in 1999.  One of the songs, “Wayfaring Stranger,”  I’ve heard many times but never thought about.  This version, with its haunting Dobro guitar, auto harp and mandolin, was so compelling that of course I had to research it to death and discovered that its origins are simply unknown.  Here’s a link with an orchestral version – http://www.manhattanbeachmusic.com/html/wayfaring_stranger.html.  There are countless lyrics to “Wayfaring Stranger,” which sounds as if it should be an old negro spiritual, except it isn’t.  Its origins are lost in the weary footsteps of long-dead Europeans who moved westward into the Appalachians, only later to become associated with the even more weary, outcast Melungeons.

Later I will conclude that the Melungeon thing has some current resonance.  Around here, I and literally everyone I know would qualify, at least insofar as seeming demonic!

To be continued….

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