"Growing Up Outside the Cash Economy
in Rural North Carolina"
Book review of Dobie
'n' Me in Hoot Owl Holler by Doris Smith Bliss. Kearney, NE:
Morris Publishing, 1998. A copy may be ordered by calling 828-898-9800.
Note: for our foreign readers who might want some more
information on the area of Boone, NC, please
click here.
Had this book been published by an academic, no doubt it might have been entitled, An Exegetical and Critical Analysis of Poverty, Strong Families and Strong Women in a Rural Appalachian Community: A Post-Feminist Examination and Reinterpretation.
Instead it was written by a lifelong resident of the area near Boone known as Matney. Her goal is to describe the way which she grew up in a mountain family which grew their own food, buried their own dead, and existed largely outside the cash economy.
Medical care in the mountains was primitive. Doris Smith was the seventh of eight children. Her brother, Dobie, was born last. Following his birth Doris' mother came down with childbirth fever and was not expected to live, the same fate of her father's first wife.
Mountain culture helped out, and each child was cared for by another family for over a month of hospitalization. Her father tried to get welfare, but returned home only with two pieces of cloth. Eventually the cloth was sewn into clothes, but the mother was so weak the children had to peddle the sewing machine.
Today in sociology we are so used to hearing about the Culture of Poverty we have practically forgotten that it was the strong cultures of farming communities and mountain folk which guaranteed survival. In story after story, author Bliss shows how customs aided survival. Fortitude, good humor, faith and cooperation enabled people to survive while living in an economy based on hunting, gathering, farming and small jobs for cash.
Doris' father obtained his small farm in Matney, not far from the well-known Mast General Store, by working on logging Grandfather Mountain, now itself another tourist attraction. Wood was loaded onto the Tweetsie Railroad, which was then a working railroad serving Boone.
Tourists will recognize all three names quickly since they now exist not to support the farming folks of the area, but as destination sites for bored time-share condominium tenants. The natural beauty of the area is a magnet for worldwide tourism.
Unlike today, the Mast General Store used to trade goods for eggs, possum skins and farming produce. Bliss writes, "Sometimes we'd hit it lucky and catch several possums in one night. The hides or fur brought a pretty good price. We usually sold ours to Mast Store. The hides had to be stretched on a board and dried. A good possum hide would bring from ten to twenty-five cents. Possum huntin' provided a mountain family with many variations, food for some, fur for money, but mostly the fun of bein' out in the hills with a bunch of younuns explorin' the woods and telln' tall tales." (p. 100).
The stories provide more than raw information; they are also entertaining. Good humor helped make the necessity of hunting seem like fun for all. In her essays, Bliss covers many social customs, including birth and bathing rituals, religious practices and the functionality of social customs in dealing with hardship, including issues of modesty when everyone lived in close quarters. Extended nursing of children was also practiced by at least a few mothers in the area.
Families raised most of what they ate and putting food by was required. Even feed bags were recycled for use in clothing, a custom my wife's family followed. Four feed bags sewed together made a bed sheet. Feed companies, knowing farm girls wore the bags as clothing, sometimes printed fancy patterns on the sacks.
Towards the end of Bliss' childhood (after 1940), the monetary economy began to appear in the mountain, along with different customs. One was a mown lawn. Previously farm families let household yards grow up into grass for the hay. But trying to look modern, the Bliss family decided to buy a lawn mower, but did not have the money. So the children set out to clear a field of blackberry roots which could be sold to Wilcox Drug for homeopathic medicine. They worked really hard at this. A lawn mower was purchased and their yard then became as dysfunctional as any suburban yard.
But then more roots were dug and Doris seriously cut her hand. They let it go, but finally she had to go to the hospital. Bliss recounts her mother said, "'Doris, I think you better go to the hospital. I'll help you get cleaned up and you can wear your new dress.' Mama had made me a new dress out of a feed sack. It was a beautiful print of sweet peas and I was eager to wear it." They hitched a ride to the hospital. To engage in conversation with the nurse, Doris asked how she liked the dress. "Proudly I told her, 'Dad bought chop feed in sacks and Momma made me this dress from them sacks.' She just looked at me and I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn't from around Matney or Banner Elk or she'd a'knowed what a chop feed sack was." (p. 136). My wife tells a similar story about not knowing that a sheet did not have four seams until after she was in college.
Doris Bliss has provided us with a gold mine of now nearly forgotten social customs and practices. Strong women held the families together. She includes a good many terms which would be unfamiliar to those who do not reside the American south, including the word "Holler" in the title. (A holler is a hollow which is really a mountain valley). A haint is a ghost in the mountains. A boggin is translated as a toboggin, but the reader is left to guess that a toboggin in local usage means a close-fitting hat, often knitted, not a sled.
The social customs described by Bliss are not well remembered today. Current students have no idea what life was like in Appalachia before good roads and a cash-based economy. But we are fortunate. Doris Bliss plans a follow-up volume with more information. With any luck, an academic press should then take both books and combine them into an annotated version for college-level students studying economic development and culture change.
I would strongly recommend the current volume for inclusion in university libraries and for use in classroom discussion in colleges, universities and high schools.
Reviewed by George H. Conklin
Reprinted from Sociation, Vol. 26, No. 1, January 2000.
Updated Fall 2004
A book reivew of Echoes from Hoot Owl Holler by Doris Smith Bliss. 2002. Published by Morris Publishing, 3212 East Highway 30, Kearney, NE, 68847. Phone: 800-650-7888.
Echoes from Hoot Owl Holler continues the author's experiences of growing up as a child on a farm near Boone, North Carolina. The book is organized around her experiences of what her childhood was like, and are arranged in no particular order. But within the short stories is considerable information of what it was like to live in the summer without shoes, wear dresses made of feed sacks, and how to survive with a minimal amount of goods purchased from stores.
America is fast forgetting what it was like to be self-sufficient on a small farm. Bliss documents the skills necessary to survive by using nature to supply wants and needs. Knowledge of how to hunt was one survial tool, where possum skins could be sold for 10 cents (or maybe a little more) to Mast General Store.
Today the Mast General Store is a tourist trap in the same old building, selling goods on credit cards. But at one time it provided a necessary service to those who still lived on the land. I found the chapter "Goin' Christmas Shoppin' at Mast Store 'n Gettin' Ready" to be especially illustrative of how simple things like the Sears Christmas catalog could be turned into decorations not be purchasing something from the catalog, but by tearing it apart to make decorations. The informal social customs of how to survive with little are interesting anthropology.
Also of interest to anthropologists would be the chapter on folk medicines. Bliss comments, "It didn't pay to get sick in those days. The cure was nearly always worse than the sickness (p. 99)." Hen Manure Tea must have been a real treat, even when the children had trouble with the formula because they could not tell hen manure from rooster manure. Boiled or not, the cure really must have been worse than the disease.
Here are some of the other suggested (but not always followed) remedies:
- To cure the mumps, take an old dirty sock and run it through the hog trough six times and put it around your neck.
- For many ailments in order to draw out poisons, thicken buttermilk and plaster it on the affected area.
- Place fat meat on thorns or splinters in order to draw the splinter out.
- Castor oil prevented disease.
- Drink turpentine to cure worms.
- Fire Coal Tea made from charcoal from the fire settled the stomach.
The book ends on a sad note telling us her brother Dobie was killed in Vietnam. (See the review of the author's first book Dobie 'n' Me in Hoot Owl Holler above). As times move on, the relatively isolated farm family has become history which is rapidly being forgotten, along with the traditions that went with it. Doris Smith Bliss is a link to the past. Her book deserves to be read.
Read more about life in North Carolina
"The Effects of Plant Closing on Older Workers: They Fare Poorly in North Carolina."
Worker displacement is often considered a symptom of poor economic times. Further, while large job losses are expected during recessionary periods, far fewer are expected during expansionary ones (see D. Hertz, "Worker Displacement is Still Common the Late 1980's." Monthly Labor Review 1990, #5, pp. 1-7). Data for 1980 show that although workers lost more jobs during the recessionary years early in the decade than during the subsequent expansion, displacement was not uncommon even during years of rapid economic growth. By the middle of the decade, nearly 11 million workers were dislocated nationally. About 5 million workers had had three or more years tenure with their employers. Although most dislocated workers were white males between the ages of 25 and 54, there was considerable diversity in the dislocated population. There were sizable proportions of men and women, workers of all ages, and workers from all racial and ethnic groups.
In a state such as North Carolina, with historic low unemployment, it might be assumed that workers who lose their jobs would have an easy time replacing the lost income. This article examines data from the Economic Dislocated Worker Adjustment and Assistance Act (EDWAAA) Program which was begin the middle of the 1980s to help those with low skills find new jobs after layoffs.
The EDWAAA Program can be described as an upward mobility program in the service sector for low-skilled dislocated workers. The program provides training to entry-level and low- echelon workers to in order to enhance the knowledge and skills needed to find new jobs. Layoffs ranged from 1,635 at RJ Reynolds to 10 at Dayco Products and 1 at Duke Power.
The program usually targets entry-level workers, regardless of whether they are economically disadvantaged, as long as the workers is classified as a dislocated workers. A dislocated worker in North Carolina is a person who meets one or more of the following criteria: 1. has been terminated or laid off or has received a notice of termination or layoff from employment; is eligible for or has exhausted his/her entitlement to unemployment compensation, and is unlikely to return to his/here previous industry, or occupation, 2. has been terminated or has received a notice of termination of employment as a result of any permanent closure of or any substantial layoff at a plant, facility or enterprise, 3. is long-term unemployed and has limited opportunities in the same or similar occupation in the area in which the individual resides, including older individuals who may have substantial barriers to employment by reason of age, 4. was self-employed (including farmers and ranchers) and is unemployed as a result of general economic conditions in the community in which he/she resides or because of natural disasters, or 5. is a displaced homemaker.
A participant enrolled in the EDWAAA Program can take advantage of retraining, on-the-job training or classroom training. The EDWAAA Program is unique in that Employment Security Commission staff can work with local leaders and employers to design programs that specifically address the individual needs of dislocated workers. On-the-job training must be in occupations that will use the worker's abilities and provide permanent, substantial employment. Classroom training is available through the community college system.
The data reported are from records which have been recorded and kept on each worker in the State of North Carolina who was enrolled in the EDWAAA program from July 1989 to July 1992. Data would not include older workers who felt it best to try to retire rather than to accept new training. Other workers may have exhausted their unemployment benefits and were never heard from again, having left the labor force. Workers who have not received unemployment benefits cannot be tracked by the system. 4,872 workers who lost their job due to a plant (or company) closing participated in the EDWAAA program.
Table 1 presents the raw means showing the new wage of those who finished the EDWAAA program. The most important finding is how age adversely affects the next pay for the next job. Younger workers obtained a small raise, but for all other age groups pay was less in the new job compared to the old job. The gap was highest at the group over 50, where the loss was 29.3 per cent. Loss of pay for blacks was slightly higher than that for whites.
It is necessary to control for education, sex and race in looking at wages. The last column of Table 1 gives the full impact of unemployment on the various age groups through least squares means. The 51+ age group is significantly different from other age groups 21-30, 31-40 and 41- 50. In sum, after controlling for the wages of the older workers by race, sex, and schooling, the salaries for the older workers is equal to the salaries of those workers under 20. After controlling for the effects of age, race, schooling, and old wages, females' wages are higher than males'. Controls reveal no surprises in the new wages by level of schooling. Wage and schooling vary directly. The final wages for whites are higher than the final wages of blacks. Discrimination by race is reestablished by the analysis.
We conclude that older workers experience the greatest loss of wages between a plant's closing and reemployment. When race, schooling, sex and old wages are controlled, older workers wages only equal those of workers under 20. The drop in wages for the oldest workers was 29 percent, about twice what would normally be expected. This drop in wage occurs despite the economic resources that older workers possess. Black workers earn 11 percent less than whites, when all factors are adjusted.
The data also show that females had a higher mean wage than males. This may be an artifact of the sample. Perhaps this reflects local conditions found in South. It is also possible that EDWAAA programs attract high-income females who, after a plant closing, feel that they need assistance in finding a new position. Given limits of the data, this point remains unsolved. In any case, older workers do poorly in the job market in North Carolina, and the gap is far greater than is usually expected, with wages reduced to those who are just starting out.
Table 1
Table 1 Dependent New Wage Old Wage %Diff. N Adjusted for Variable in $ per All Categories hour Shown ___________________________________________________________ Age Below 20 6.04 5.89 +2.5 50 6.13 21-30 7.09 8.23 -13.5 929 6.90 31-40 7.27 9.01 -19.3 1252 6.99 41-50 7.18 9.06 -20.8 824 6.97 51+ 6.55 9.26 -29.3 414 6.25 _________________________________________________________ Sex Male 6.54 8.11 -19.3 2194 6.28 Female 8.05 10.00 -19.5 1275 7.02 _________________________________________________________ Schooling Not Hs Grad 6.00 7.32 -18.0 455 6.12 Hs Grad 6.64 8.32 -20.2 1779 6.51 Some Col 8.18 10.04 -18.5 1235 7.32 _________________________________________________________ Race White 7.44 9.10 -18.2 2258 7.03 Black 6.48 8.24 -21.4 1211 6.27 ________________________________________________________ Reviewed by George H. Conklin. Miles Simpson, NCCU, was the thesis advisor. Source: Reprinted from Sociation, Vol 24, No. 2, April/May 1998.
Explore the Sociology of North Carolina Menu
Return to Sociation Today, Fall 2004
Church membership rates in the United States as a
whole increased dramatically from colonial times to the present day (Fink
and Stark 1992). In 1776 the church membership rate was only 17%, but by
1800 it had increased to 37%. In 1906 more than half the population of
the United States was a member of a church. By 1980 membership rates rose
even more to 62 percent. In 1990 church membership rates in North Carolina
held at about 62 percent of the population.
Bainbridge (1990) has summarized four theories to explain variations
in church membership.
- Anomie theory holds that migration associated with modern life will reduce church membership rates.
- Secularization theory suggests that growing education and income levels will serve to reduce church membership.
- Pluralism theory predicts that with 1,200 different religious organizations operating in the United States, the competition will reduce the authority of any one group and thus overall membership rates. Urbanization, the home of size, density and heterogenity, would be especially hard on religious organizations.
- Finally, life cycle theory suggests that young people are much more likely to be church members than adults, at least until their children are thought to 'need' to go to church.
- Anomie theory was tested by the percentage of each county with NC natives, the percentage of the population which moved in the past five years, and the annual growth rate of the county.
- Secularization theory was tested by examination of the income and educational levels of a county.
- Pluralism theory was represented by urbanization, religious diversity, racial diversity, the sex ratio, the absolute size of the population and the region of the state.
- Life cycle theory was tested by examination of the proportion of the population under 18, over 65, persons per family and the percentage of the population single.
Taken together, high income correlates with higher church membership, as do the proportion of the population under five and over 65. Region also predicts church membership, but controlling for the demographic differences above, it is the mountains of the state which have higher church membership rates, the opposite of what was expected. The multiple r of the variables was quite high at .58. The other variables, including race, did not achieve the .05 level of significance.
In conclusion we note that testing theories with
empirical data is not always easy. But the results of the empirical analysis
support most closely the life cycle theory of religions membership for
North Carolina. Race does not change observed rates when the demographic
variables are controlled, nor does urbanization. Income increases church
membership, despite secularization theory which would predict the opposite.
Mountain regions of the state, all things considered, show higher rates
of religious membership than other parts of the state.
It is always possible to think up a theory to justify
any particular result, but why region of the state would influence religious
membership rates would be hard to predict. It would seem that many theories
of religious life are irrelevant to predicting actual results in North
Carolina. But it is quite clear that controlling for the age structure
of the various counties is essential before any theory of religious membership
can be properly tested, since demographic differences can explain high
levels of observed differences among the counties.
Fink, Roger and Rodney Stark (1992). The Churching of America, 1776-1992: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Powell, William S. (1989). North Carolina Through Four Centuries. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press.
Reviewed by George H. Conklin
Thesis advisor: Robert Wortham
Reprinted from Sociation24:3, Fall 1998
Go Back to the Sociology of North Carolina
Menu
The State of North Carolina is establishing a Global TransPark. This is an airport devoted to manufacturing. It would be located in Kinston, in the midst of a region with limited employment opportunities.
A survey was conducted from January 9-22, 1998 in order to see that if and when the Global TransPark were a success, would there be enough workers in the region interested in working at the airport? Work would be mostly at night, when large air transports from distant locations would land at the park, and employees would assemble parts from different locations. The same planes would then fly the assembled goods directly to cities in the USA where the products could be sold. Total time on the ground would be short, perhaps 8 hours.
For the park to succeed, a stable and highly motivated workforce would be required. Following in the distant footsteps of Weber, can we assume that a rural workforce in Eastern NC would have interest in working nights at an airport? Is location a problem due to a lack of workforce which might be found in a large city? Or, on the contrary, would a rural workforce with few job opportunities jump at the chance for factory type jobs?
The survey found that over one-third of the respondents living in six neighboring counties were interested in the proposed new jobs. A quarter of those now employed full-time expressed an interest even from more distant counties. Projecting to the population as a whole, 113,717 persons would be interested in working at the Global TransPark. In addition, 11,548 unemployed and 25,768 students would be interested.
Level of education showed a strong association with interest with work at the Global TransPark (see Table 1). The highest rates of interest were among high school graduates.
The report concludes that were a company to locate at the Global TransPark, they would have a very large number of applicants who were qualified for factory-type work, and thus the company could be very selective. Further, it is essentially a non-union workforce. Over half (58.9%) of the respondents with family income under $25,000 would be interested in employment, even considering that night work would intrude upon family life.
It is clear that for residents of North
Carolina in the eastern part of the state that employment
opportunities
are highly valued. Even the employed would consider the newly created jobs
in great numbers. What the residents of North Carolina lack is not the
desire for factory jobs, but the opportunity to be employed. Any new employment
in the eastern part of the state would be highly welcome
according to the report.
Not Gone to School -- .3% .1%
HS Not Completed 5.0% 14.3% 8.2%
High School Grad 21.9% 35.7% 26.6%
Post HS, no degree 28.7% 28.9% 28.8%
2-year Community 12.9% 12.6% 12.8%
4-year College 18.3% 6.5% 14.2%
Some Graduate School 4.1% .7% 2.9%
Graduate Degree 9.1% 1.0% 6.3 %
Column Totals 65.5% 34.5%
Chi Square Likelihood Ratio = 92.04, DF=7,
Sig .00000, Missing observations = 3.
Source: "Global Transpark Labor Survey Analysis," by Al Delia, Kenneth Wilson, Richard Brockett, Claudia Williams, Melanie Meekins and Wandy Nieves. Greenville: Regional Development Services, East Carolina University, 1998.
Reviewed by George H. Conklin
Reprinted from Sociation, April/May 1999, Volume 25,
Number 2, page 5.
Go Back to the Sociology of North Carolina Menu
The South is a region with a special history. After the Civil War, the rural South was characterized by farm tenancy. This century tenancy was followed by agricultural mechanization and technology that displaced many from rural areas and led them to migrate to other places, become dependent, or both.
The focus is not simply the Old South states that rank poorly in socioeconomic and life conditions. Rather, the focus is on the status of the people regardless of where they live today.
The Southern Black Belt features numerous color maps which demonstrate
the human ecology of the nation as a whole. For example Map 1 shows
the percentage of population which is black. This map demonstrates
what the authors call "The Black Belt."
Education can be mapped in a similar manner. The book
compares black educational attainment in the counties of the the United
States to that of whites.
Now please compare the above map to a similar map for white educational
attainment.
The history of the rural past shows quite well in both maps.
The book would be useful to courses demography, human ecology, socio-economic status, stratification, migration or in any course where social inequality is considered as a variable.
The Southern Black Belt is published by TVA Rural Studies, The University of Kentucky, 400 Agricultural Engineering Building, Lexington, KY 40546. For more information you may email tvars@rural.org or view www.rural.org by clicking here.
(Reviewed by the Webmaster).
Return to the Sociology of North Carolina Menu