[Music]
[Narrator] Buffalo Ridge, Bull Mountain, No Business Mountain, Pinnacles of Dan, Hog Pen Mountain.
You can hear the toughness of the land and the names of the mountains.
The Hollow, Five Forks, Metal Ridge, Kibler Valley, Patrick Springs, Ararat.
You can hear the shape of the land and the names of the towns.
Traveling up and down these roads, you see the signs of earlier generations: old mills, covered bridges,
log cabins, the restored homestead of R. J. Reynolds.
The county's name, Patrick, recalls the Revolutionary War hero, Patrick Henry.
The county seat, Stuart, recalls the Confederate General, J. E. B. Stuart.
A name such as Busted Rock brings back memories of earlier times when
moonshining was a popular form of moonlighting.
[Pause]
You see, too, up and down these roads, the imprint of modern life.
The rocky dirt roads give way to the paved roads.
A textile factory, a Masonite plant, and a modern hospital reflect a
life far different than that of earlier days.
If you stop to talk to people up and down these roads,
you'll find that they, like the land, bear signs of the past and signs of change.
In their speech, their songs and their actions,
they remember what they have been and envision what they can become.
In that undercurrent of tension between the past and the future, the character of
every American community is shaped. To look carefully at such places helps us
to understand our development as individuals, as a community and as a nation.
To know the land of Patrick County is to begin to know its people.
How its mountains, valleys and flatlands both define the county boundaries and
shape the 17,000 people who live here.
The county lies in the southwestern portion of Virginia.
Up the roads, along its western border, runs the Blue Ridge Parkway, through the Blue Ridge Mountains
and their dense forests, interspersed with small family farms and orchards.
[Music]
Down the roads to the south, lie the flatter fertile lands cultivated with tobacco.
Over two-thirds of the 468 square miles of Patrick is farmed or forested.
[Music]
The county is known as the free state of Patrick. Its people have a reputation
for independent thinking. You can hear it in the way they define themselves and
their relationship to the land.
[Interviewer] Who are you?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] I'm Ruth Jean Bolt. I'm a teacher. I'm a Virginian. I'm a Patrick Countian and I'm a mountaineer.
[Interviewer] What would you most like to be remembered for?
[Pause]
[Ruth Jean Bolt] For being a human being. A real honest-to-goodness person.
[Interviewer] What is a real honest-to-goodness person?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Person who, uh, who knows himself. Who, uh, knows his neighbor and
who has made touch with both of them. With each.
Patrick County's, uh, just a way of life. It's a way of thinking. It's, uh, it's being independent,
ugly and mean if necessary, proud, arrogant if necessary, but tender, responsive to other people's needs,
defending your space and letting them defend their's. We don't violate each
other's space unless we have to. And if we do violate somebody's, another person's space,
we can get our nose clipped hard. [laughing]
[Ruth Jean Bolt] The land is the heart and soul of Patrick County. It's etched into the
consciousness of every native of Patrick County. It's a part of their waking up
and their day and their going back to bed.
Their, uh, their feeling for it, their love of it, motivates them. Whether for greed,
whether for a generous thought, it all goes back to the land and the shape of the county.
The woods, the rivers, streams, the uh, it's almost mystical communication with it.
[Music]
[Singing] I don’t need nobody, tell my troubles to. I don’t need nobody, tell my troubles to. I don’t need nobody, nobody but me and you.
[Music]
[Singing] Since I met you baby, my whole life has changed.
[Narrator] While the land demanded toughness and fostered independence, it also brought isolation.
Before the coming of paved roads and the automobile, it might take a day
to travel from Woolwine, in the mountains, to Stuart, the county seat.
Because of the difficulty traveling, each small community developed its own schools and activities.
This isolation from neighboring communities led to rivalry and competition.
Or as some call it, sectionalism.
Jim Shelor, born in Meadows of Dan, works as a banker in Stuart.
[Jim Shelor] There's a lot of sectionalism in the county.
Rivalry going back, especially for the people who grew up, uh, while there were,
there was all the different high schools. There's a lot of rivalry that grew up around sports.
Well, like we used to run the boys from Stuart off when they would come see our girls.
I had that reversed on me when I came to Trout Valley to see a girl and the local boys
blocked the road on us, put bandanas on their face, and threatened us.
There was about 15 of them and two of us. So we, uh, we told them that we'd fight any four of them
if the rest of them would leave and they, uh, they threatened us and told us not to come back,
but we went back the next Saturday night.
[Interviewer] How could you tell that people were from different sections?
[Jim Shelor] You could tell the different sections of the county that the
people were from by their voices, by their, the accents more
when I was growing up than you can now. They all talk a lot alike now.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Patrick County has a variety of
accents, of ways of saying words. If a person has lived in the community for a
long time, older people, you can tell which community they live in by the way they say certain words.
One of them is 'horse'. On the mountain, you ride a <hORse>. With a definite 'r' in it, a horse.
In Claudville, you ride a <hawrs>.
Down around Five Forks, you ride a <hohrs> and then down toward Henry County it used to be a <harse>.
[Narrator] Although the mountainous land and poor roads kept small communities
fairly isolated in the early days, that isolation contributed to strong community ties.
Neighbors helped each other through crises.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] This is where I want to be buried. It's part of the land, it's part of me,
and I want my own body to go back to this land.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] All the people that are buried here, the neighbors dug the grave, oh yes.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] The neighbors brought food. They came and sat with the family.
They never left the family alone, not one time.
They are sat up with the body and this was called 'sitting up with the corpse.'
And they sat up and told stories. They let the people talk.
They cried with them, they talked to them, they, uh, they were there when they needed.
[Music]
[Narrator] Despite the geographical barriers, world events began to break the isolation of the county.
With World War One, many local boys made contact with peoples from other countries for the first time.
With the Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal,
outsiders came to work alongside county residents in the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps,
building new roads, schools, and a dam.
Many of these newcomers married local girls and settled in the county,
bringing with them new skills and ideas.
[Music]
During World War Two, almost every family had someone
either serving in the Armed Forces or working in a war-related industry.
The wartime economy brought an explosion of job opportunities as people were recruited
to work in munitions plants and new industries in large numbers.
[Narrator] In the 30s and 40s, electricity came into the county, changing the whole pattern of living.
A high percentage of people started working in the county's new industry, United Elastic, now J.P. Stevens.
[Music]
[Narartor] With electricity, too, came refrigeration, labor-saving devices in the home.
Better telephone service, radios, and television.
[Jim Shelor] I don't know what the biggest change I've seen in my lifetime.
Probably television brought more change to the county than anything else.
I feel like it's changed the social habits of the people and it's changed their recreation.
It's, uh, I think people are better informed today than they
were before television. I think it's changing their complete lifestyle.
Well when I was a kid, you visited your neighbor, everybody got together and
they had parties and made string music together and when your work was done in
the evening you'd sit out on the porch and a neighbor would walk by and they'd
come in you'd sit down chat for an hour or two and that social contact is not there
because everybody's inside watching their favorite program.
I've heard one of the teachers say that all the kids now speak like Walter Cronkite.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Some of them are soaked, saturated, ruined by network.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] I've made [Interviewer] Is that television?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Television.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] They think network,
dress network, eat network, wear network.
Some of them, when we have discussions in history,
wind up telling me what happened on Gilligan's Island.
[Music]
[Narrator] Other events, such as school consolidation and integration, began to
break down the sectionalism in the county.
Improved roads made it more economical to bus students to a central system.
Dorn Spangler was superintendent of the Patrick County Schools
during the era of high school consolidation and integration.
[Dorn Spangler] We're presently at Free Union which, one time, was a four-room school.
It lies two or three miles south of Vesta and as the families became smaller
and people moved out of the community, Free Union became a one-room school and
was one of the last of the one-rooms that existed on the top of the mountain.
[Narrator] More elementary schools were consolidated in 1939 than in any other year.
The second big consolidation took place in 1970, when the county's five
white high schools and one black high school were consolidated.
[Interviewer] Did people object to consolidation?
[Dorn Spangler] Yes some did. Some felt that if you had any kind of
contagious disease, that if you got into the big school, that everyone in the
community would have it. Others thought that the poor children would be laughed
at by the other people and there were certain ones that didn't like the idea
of the children riding a bus and that they would learn all the mean things that all
the other children knew and there was opposition. I'm sure that a lot of
communities lost their last real identity of a community by the school being gone.
[Narrator] Integration began several years before the second consolidation, but it
was closely related to the consolidation effort.
[Interviewer] Did you have any problems with integration in the county?
[Dorn Spangler] Not really. To say that there were no problems would be
to overlook a lot of things but there was never anything of major importance that
we didn't take care of. I think the reason that this happened was because
reasonable people from both the black and white community got control of the
situation and they became the leaders in bringing it about.
[Interviewer] Do you think the county has changed?
[Marvin Foddrell] Oh yes it's changed considerably.
[Interviewer] How has it changed?
[Marvin Foddrell] Oh well, like when Turner and I came up and we didn't have restaurants and things, you know facilities
that the blacks could use. You know, like it is now. You can eat anywhere you want to cause
that never did worry us anyway. We didn't pay any attention to it.
But a lot of people, you know, gets concerned about things like that. It didn't make any difference in us anyway.
But I mean for the younger generations, it's much better.
[Narrator] If there is one thing that all these changes have accomplished,
it's that they bound the people together in a new way.
In Stuart, John Dillard Hooker, former circuit court judge,
reflects on the impact of these changes.
[John D. Hooker] Aside from the high school,
we have the roads are good, we have an excellent telephone system,
we have the fine hospital to bring people to Stuart.
We have innumerable governmental services.
We have a Department of Social Services.
All of our farm programs and so many of our things that people come to town now.
And that helps a great deal to break down these little barriers that
used to exist between our people.
[Narrator] In the midst of change, rich cultural traditions
have endured in Patrick County. Through these traditions, County people continue
to preserve their family, church and neighborhood ties.
[Indistinct Chatter]
[Ruth Jean Bolt] We enjoyed having Feld, did he tell you he came out to visit us?
[Indistinct Chatter]
[Woman] Do you remember Connie and Bonnie? [Ruth Jean Bolt] Yeah!
[Woman] This is Connie's husband, Mark. [Ruth Jean Bolt] How are you?
[Woman] And her two children.
[Jim Shelor] Father we thank you for this opportunity of fellowship and renewing of acquaintances.
Father we pray that, as we meet together, that we be aware of your presence
in our midst, in Jesus name we pray, amen.
[Choir Singing] There’s a message true and glad for the sinful and the sad, ring it out, ring it out, ring it out, ring it out.
[Choir Singing] It will give them courage new, it will help them to be true, ring it out, ring it out, ring it out, ring it out.
[Choir Singing] I, I know Jesus will fix it, Jesus will fix it, afterwhile, afterwhile, Trouble in my way, trouble in my way.
[Singing] I have to cry some time, cry sometime I know there is so much trouble, trouble in my way
[Singing] I have to cry sometime, cry sometime I lay awake at night, I lay awake at night
[Music]
[Narrator] Music makers celebrate the liveliest of the county's traditions.
Old-time and bluegrass musicians, cloggers and flat footers, church choirs.
The mountains string musicians who gather where the community gathers in Patrick County.
[Champion fiddler Buddy Pendleton playing “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey”]
[Narrator] Marvin and Turner Foddrell are from a family of old-time country and blues musicians.
The Foddrell brothers are well known for their music, both in and out of the county.
They played at the National Folklife Festival, in Europe, and at the World's Fair.
[Music]
[Marvin, Lynn, and Turner Foddrell singing] I don’t need nobody, tell my troubles to, I don’t need nobody, tell my troubles to,
[Singing] I don’t need nobody, nobody but me and you.
[Turner Foddrell] But as we was coming up as boys, we had to play it on Sunday, you know.
Mama didn't allow no blues on Sunday.
The only time we could do that when she was gone.
[Interviewer] Why didn't she allow the blues?
[Turner Foddrell] Well she was Christian hearted, and she just didn't believe in no blues on Sunday.
[Turner Foddrell] Any other time of the week we played, it didn't bother her at all.
But on Sunday, we had to play gospel.
That would get your jaw slapped, one or the other.
But one thing about the blues and gospel,
blues says 'Oh baby' and the gospel says 'Oh Lord'.
You really got the same chords sometimes. [Laughs]
[Music & Singing]
[Interviewer] Who are you?
[Posey Foddrell] Well, Posey Foddrell what they always call me.
And I'm 82 years old, going on 83.
And I've been making music a long, trying to, for a long time. I just quit.
I used to fill up a hall right smart, travel around, me and a bunch of fellows, in the country and play.
We played for white folks all my life, up and down the road here.
[Marvin Foddrell] We picked up the music and tried to keep it as updated as possible.
I guess that's about the closest thing we followed him with.
[Interviewer] When you say updating the music, what do you mean?
[Marvin Foddrell] Well, we tried to bring up the old songs,
and in this new generation we tried to keep the old sound of the first music that we learned
as near as possible.
[Posey Foddrell] I'll tell you, if you a music maker you can be tired and broke down,
and just go up to the house and sit down and eat your supper, and mess around little bit,
and pick up your music and make a little music, it'll rest you.
You get to feeling a whole lot better. It worked for me. I don't know how it is
with other people but that sure worked for me.
I could work all day, any kind of hard work,
but when I got through, I could just make a little music, I go to dancing and cutting up, man I felt good.
Just got all over me, just like anything else.
And it was in my system, I couldn't help it, it was in there.
[“Patrick County Rag” by the Foddrells]
[Narrator] While his brother, Marvin, works in a factory outside of the county,
Turner Foddrell operates a country store and gas station near Stuart.
[Interviewer] What about times right now that we're living through?
[Turner Foddrell] Well, right now,
I think they're sort of rough, according to what it was five years ago.
Because half the people are laid off, you know,
and then we got a lot on welfare and food stamps, which we didn't have when the industry was good.
But that makes a big difference, it really makes it tough
to make it here, especially from the wages that they're paid in Patrick County.
[Music]
[Narrator] In recent years, County people have become increasingly dependent upon jobs
in the local textile and lumber industries. Large numbers must commute daily
to work in factories outside the county. At the same time, people here
remain close to the land. They recognize that knowing how to care for and live
off the land is vital for survival especially in hard times.
[Interviewer] What's been the biggest change you've seen in your lifetime?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Uh, the shift from the agrarian society, almost completely agrarian society, I knew as a child,
to the Patrick County now that must have industry to survive.
[Interviewer] Has this been a hard change?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Uh, no it's it's been too easy. It has happened before anybody was aware of it
and the conditions that caused it to happened, we couldn't control.
[Interviewer] Is this change at all dangerous to the county?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] It can destroy it. [Interviewer] It can?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Yes.
[Ruth Jean Bolt] It can destroy what we are talking about as Patrick County.
[Interviewer] How can it do that?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] It can make these proud people
dependent on something other than themselves to make a living.
It's already accomplished to a large extent, but we've had very benevolent
industries in the County that haven't walked on that.
They have not walked on that independence and that proud spirit, but they could.
[Interviewer] What values have helped people adjust to the shift from the agrarian to the industrial society?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] Most people have kept a little bit of the agrarian society for themselves.
They have, they've kept the family farm and they grow, they have a garden.
They have an orchard, they have cattle, they have dogs and cats.
They live in a single-family house with a large, relatively large, expansive land to do as they please on.
[Turner Foddrell] We can survive here better than a lot,
because we can fall back on the farm, you know. And most of them raise gardens
and things like that, but in a city you can't do that.
So that's one of the advantages we have got.
And we can also go out and burn wood and not have to buy so much fuel.
[Jim Shelor] I started cutting wood in 1976 when I got my first light bill.
It was an excess of $120 for one month's heating and I decided it was time to start cutting wood.
[Turner Foddrell] It wouldn't be easy, but we, you know, we could do it.
Go back to the spring and bring your own water and use kerosene lamps. Burn firewood, which
we are doing now. It's not really that hard.
[Narrator] At the same time that County residents value skills from the past, they are concerned about the future.
[Jim Shelor] There's just not enough job opportunities here for
the number of young people we have graduating from the high school.
It just stands to reason that all of them won't be able to come back.
[Student] if I had a choice, if I had a good job here and, you know stuff like that,
I'd probably stay, but I'd like to have a summer home
up here because I think it's prettier than any place that I could think of.
They always have an open space in the center
[Narrator] Deciding future directions is never easy.
[Narrator] Choosing what to preserve and what to change is often hard and full of paradox.
[Student] If I had one hundred thousand dollars,
I'd try to help the community out a little bit and help people get jobs,
like build a factory or something. Where I'd keep the shortage of people not working. I'd like to
know that this community had everybody working and doing what they'd like to do.
[Student] If I had one hundred thousand dollars, I'd buy my pa,
I'd buy him a great big old farm cause that's what he's always wanted.
[Interviewer] What makes this county special?
[Turner Foddrell] Well I guess because it's home. And one thing, the people are nice here, you know.
Everybody gets along and everybody knows each other.
If you need a favor, you can go ask your next-door neighbor and he'll help you.
[Marvin Foddrell] As we grew up, we we're all friends all our lives and it just grew that way.
And it gets wider spread all the time, you know.
[Jim Shelor] I'm proud of it, yeah.
[Interviewer] Why?
[Jim Shelor] I don't know, it's just home, I guess.
[Interviewer] What would you say to the future, if you could leave a message for future generations?
[Ruth Jean Bolt] I guess I would say don't tear it up.
Don't tear, don't tear the environment up. Don't tear the world up. Don't tear Patrick County up.
[“Patrick County Rag” by the Foddrells]