20 Years Ago
Week of August 15, 2013
SUGAR GROVE
English Language
Used In
Appalachian Culture
The language of the Appalachian mountains is not a degraded form of English, but a survival of the Middle English period. It shows the influence of Milton and Shakespeare and cannot be considered a low form if the literature of a few centuries ago is deemed to be respected. As a mountaineer, the expressions and customs of the people are a source of information and history. Often the people have been maligned, vilified and misrepresented.
The pronounciation of many words has changed considerably. Deef (deaf), afeared (afraid), yaller (yellow), cheer (chair), heered (heard), arn (iron) and pizen (poison) are distinct characteristics of the Elizabethean language. Scottish pronounciations are characteristic of these forms: whar (where), thar (there), poosh (push), boosh (bush), eetch (itch), deesh (dish) and feesh (fish). The Anglo-Saxon times has these: “I’m going to red up the kitchen.” “There was a sight of folks,” and “He caught a slue of fish.”
When the dogwood is so beautiful and white, many people speak of it as “bride of the woods.” The dainty little ladyslipper is known as “whipper-will-shoes,” and “fallin’ weather” means rain.
Scores of Shakespearean words are still used—aim for intend, “I aim to go,” comes from Othello, and “mixtry” is from Shakespeare. Grower wrote “A sight of flowers,” and Philip Sydney and Lord Bacon wrote about beasties and ghostes.
“Drug” for dragged, “clum” for climbed, “wropt” for wrapped and “fotch” for fetch are Old English words. “Peart” is used in the sense of being lively, and when they say “he is the illest man in the family,” it is meant that he is cross or bad tempered. “Hurtin” is used for pain: “She has a hurtin’ in her head.” Misery is used the same way: “He has a misery in his side.”
Country dialect allows for swimmin’, runnin’, fallin’, throwin’, — words used by “hill born” persons. Then there is an Appalachain custom where double names are used and not just when mom was mad.
50 Years Ago
Week of August 23, 1973
Walking
Is Good Medicine
Hike Your Way To Health
This is the time of year when thousands of Americans are engaged in vacations, traveling, and outdoor living. For those who are not so lucky, or so inclined, you may wish to enjoy the summer close to home. Let me suggest that you try walking and hiking in the outdoors, says George Breeding, WVU outdoor recreation extension specialist.
Long walks are a good, pleasant tonic for a healthy life, especially in this age of automobiles, tractors, and other machines. Man has harnessed the steel to do a multitude of tasks that use to require the use of the legs and other parts of the body.
Many well-known men of ancient times down to our physicians today have recognized the values of walking. Even in the days of early Greek history, Pliny the Elder described walking as one of the “medicines of the will,” but one must have sufficient willpower to take the walks. Dr. Dudley White, the heart specialist who treated the late President Eisenhower, stated that one of man’s best medicines is walking.
And Hippocrates, the father and human symbol of medicine, in one chapter on digestive diseases, mentions walking 40 times. He recommended brisk hikes in the early morning, after dinner, and at night. In other words, a good brisk walk is a good substitute for sleeping pills or as an aid to digestion or nervousness. Also, it is cheaper.
Walking is also a mental exercise and an excellent form of relaxation, particularly when you combine your powers of observation to watch and study the creatures of nature in the fields, forests, and streams. Combine nature and you have a remedy or a preventative for some cases that could not be cured with a whole sack of pills or gallons of potions.
If you take a stroll at early morning where there are trees and grass, flowers and birds, how can you continue to think about a pet ulcer when a bright red cardinal pops into view and saucily reels off his repertoire of calls.
It’s interesting to note that 300 years ago, writer John Dryden gave this advice, “Better to stroll in field, for health unbought, than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.”
Week of August 30, 1973
Kindergarten Program
To Begin
In Pendleton County
A kindergarten program will be incorporated in the Pendleton County school program for the first time next term. A total of 110 children are expected to participate in the new program which will begin during the week of September 10.
Kindergarten classes will be held in four different areas of the county—Franklin, Brandywine, Upper Tract and Circleville. The classes in some schools will last two full days a week, while in others will be in session four half-days.
Rare Bird from Florida Swamps Visits Franklin
For two weeks Franklin has had an unusual visitor of the bird world, the wood ibis, the flint-headed wader from southern Florida swamps.
Known also as the wood stork, it is one of the largest wading birds, standing 3-1/2 feet tall on stilt-like legs. In flight it is a magnificent sight—neck and legs fully outstretched, black tipped wings spread 5-1/2 feet. Its black tail feathers contrast with its white body plumage.
60 Years Ago
Week of September 5, 1963
100 YEARS AGO
By LON K. SAVAGE
Editor’s Note—The following is one of a series of articles on the Civil War. Each weekly installment covers events which occurred exactly 100 years ago.
Federal Troops
Seize Two
Tennessee Cities
Two of Tennessee’s most important cities fell into Federal hands within the first 10 days of September 100 years ago.
They were Knoxville and Chattanooga, the last two large cities in the state to succumb to Federal troops. With their subjugation, almost the whole state of Tennessee was under Federal control.
Knoxville’s fall came first, on September 2, and Chattanooga’s came a week later. The fall of Chattanooga, vital rail center and gateway to Georgia, the Carolinas and Alabama, was by far the more important. The Confederates abandoned both cities without a fight, but within three months, the two east Tennessee cities would be the center of some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
The fall of Knoxville came with relatively little fanfare. General Ambrose Burnside, the man whose fame rests on his fighting, engineered the feat.
Since mid-summer, Burnside had been moving down through the mountains of east Kentucky and east Tennessee with a force of troops he had organized under orders from Washington.
A Confederate force of 6,000 under General Simon Buckner occupied Knoxville and could have given Burnside a good fight, but that was not to be. For down in Chattanooga, General Braxton Bragg was being threatened by the Federal Army of the Cumberland, 60,000 strong, and felt he needed all the help he could get. So he ordered Buckner to abandon Knoxville and come to his aid in Chattanooga.
When Burnside arrived at Knoxville on September 2, there was nothing for him to do but occupy it—a job he accomplished with ease.
At Chattanooga, meanwhile, Bragg was unhappy with his situation. For the past weeks, he had watched while Federal General William S. Rosecrans brought his huge Army of the Cumberland down through the Cumberland mountains from Murfreesboro and Tullahoma to get him.
Rosecrans had done an admirable job of moving; his army had come across the mountains in several columns; slowly and quietly it had circled to the west of Chattanooga, crossed the Tennessee River southwest of the city, and now it was beginning to fan out into the mountains south of the city along the Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama lines.
Bragg was fearful. “A mountain is like the wall of a house, full of rat holes,” he petulantly told one of his officers. “The rat lies hidden at his hole ready to pop out when no one is watching. Who can tell what lies hidden behind that wall?” and he gestured to the mountains nearby.
Rosecrans was the rat, he figured, and he, Bragg, couldn’t seem to set a proper trap. Instead, Bragg feared Rosecrans would cut him off from Atlanta. Therefore, he pulled out of Chattanooga and marched 30 miles southward to Lafayette, Ga. to wait some more. Next day, September 9, Rosecrans’ army began moving into the city.
Rosecrans’ secondary objective—the capture of Chattanooga—had been achieved. His primary objective—the destruction of Bragg’s army—would prove far more difficult.
Next week: Little Rock Captured.
70 Years Ago
Week of Septembr 3, 1953
Twelve Leave
For Induction
September 15
Twelve Pendleton County men will report for induction into the Armed Forces on Tuesday, September 15, 1953. Orders have been issued to the following:
Byrl Shaver, Ft. Seybert; Richard William Murphy, Ruddle; Bruce Simmons Hammer, Franklin; Hugh Allen Greenawalt, Kline; Carl McRoy Bowers, Brushy Run; Elwood Paul Mallow, Kline; Paul Delano Kimble, Baltimore, formerly of Ruddle; Maxel Dow Alt, Rough Run; Lester Arbogast of Onego; Eldon Arnold Smith, Upper Tract; and James Lee Mallow of Clearville, Pa.
EDITORIAL
What’s Yours, Suh? – – –
Four states, including our own, are in quite a hassle over who invented the mint julep—official drink of the Old South. The chamber of commerce at Vicksburg, Miss., started the dispute by claiming the drink was first put together there and introduced to Kentucky by Mississippi River boatmen.
Gov. Lawrence W. Wetherby of Kentucky, had other ideas. No siree, he said, the julip’s ours—Mississippi is going to have to be content with planters punch. Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, declared that both states are wrong and that the drink was born in Virginia.
At this point, Andy Ruckman, executive director of the West Virginia Publicity Commission, stood up and spoke for the old Mountain State. He said that people in these hills were whippin’ up the concoction almost 50 years before the other states had ever heard of it.
Well, of course there are several states in the South that haven’t been heard from at this time. And there’s Russia, too. The Russians have claimed the invention of almost every modern discovery. Who knows—before the dispute is settled, maybe some province in Russia—southern Russia, of course, will assert they invented the drink.
HOMEMAKER NEWS
By Mary Mann Zinn
Home Demonstration Agent
Peppy, happy, better nourished older folks—that’s what nutritionists the country over would like to see. And they say it’s pretty much up to each older person whether he or she still has a zest for living and capacity for work and recreation.
The difference often can be traced to what granddad or grandmother eats every day. One hundred per cent living, the nutritionists say, hinges on good health, and good health depends on the right kind of food, no matter what your age.
The nutritionists have many studies to support their view, too. They have found that it’s often the older folk who miss out on the foods their bodies need most for good health—milk, fruits and vegetables, whole grained and enriched white breads. They know, too, that a chronic feeling, loss of sleep, and putting on too much weight may be signs of borderline nutrition rather than just “old age.”
All through life, nutritionists say a person needs foods which supply plenty of protein and minerals for the upkeep of the body tissues and bone. Milk, meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables help to do this. Tea and toast won’t. Plenty of milk is a “must” for calcium deposits in the bones must be continual or there’s danger of brittle bones. The incidence of bone breakage in elderly people who have cut down on milk is quite high.
And then elderly people need foods which supply many different vitamins, as well as fuel foods that lend energy and warmth. Sometimes, appetites aren’t up to taking on good-sized meals, but light exercise can help stimulate the appetite and an attractively served meal can go a long way to making eating more fun.
