Beech Mountain Man

Beech Mountain Man PDF Author: Ronda Lee Hicks
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 157233665X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Thomas Burton's edition of what amounts to an autobiography of Ronda Lee Hicks-fighter, drinker, womanizer, and storyteller-represents a wiff of late-night honky-tonk whiskey and tobacco in its realism. . . . Hicks is a talented raconteur, whose gifts are well displayed in Burton's careful editing." --Erika Brady, Western Kentucky University Ronda Lee Hicks, as the traditional song goes, is "a man you don't meet every day." Hailing from the Beech Mountain area of western North Carolina, Ronda is the offspring of the two families of great storytellers who are largely responsible for the area's strong storytelling tradition of the International Wonder Tales of Jack. And his late cousin Ray Hicks was the famed "keeper" of the International Wonder Tales of Jack that have proven so popular in the Appalachian region for more than two centuries. Like Ray, Ronda is a gifted storyteller, but not of Jack Tales. Even so, Ronda's stories about himself, his family, friends, and acquaintances are wonder tales no less. With great candor and sometimes jarring humor, Hicks recounts his life's highs and lows. These events, ranging from drunken debauchery to brutality, are often shocking. He has had many close encounters with "the law" and was twice sent to prison. His relationships with women, including his two wives, have been tumultuous at best. This is the story of a violent, sometimes dissolute life--one that sounds more like it was lived in the mountains a hundred years ago than in contemporary Appalachia. Embedded in all of Ronda's stories are numerous details of mountain life, work, entertainment, behavior, beliefs, values, and codes. Thus, through Ronda's memoirs and interviews with noted Appalachian scholar Thomas Burton, readers will not only meet a truly singular individual but will also learn of many obscure features of southern Appalachian mountain culture, including its darker aspects. At the very least, the reader will wonder how Ronda Hicks lived to tell his fascinating tales at all. Thomas Burton is professor emeritus of English at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of Serpent-Handling Believers and The Serpent and the Spirit: Glenn Summerford's Story. "Together, Hicks, the storyteller, and the author give the reader an authentic view of Appalachian life, one that often disputes the beauty of the Blue Ridge and the quaintness of old-fashioned ways that tourists find endearing." --H-Net Reviews

Beech Mountain Man

Beech Mountain Man PDF Author: Ronda Lee Hicks
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 157233665X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Thomas Burton's edition of what amounts to an autobiography of Ronda Lee Hicks-fighter, drinker, womanizer, and storyteller-represents a wiff of late-night honky-tonk whiskey and tobacco in its realism. . . . Hicks is a talented raconteur, whose gifts are well displayed in Burton's careful editing." --Erika Brady, Western Kentucky University Ronda Lee Hicks, as the traditional song goes, is "a man you don't meet every day." Hailing from the Beech Mountain area of western North Carolina, Ronda is the offspring of the two families of great storytellers who are largely responsible for the area's strong storytelling tradition of the International Wonder Tales of Jack. And his late cousin Ray Hicks was the famed "keeper" of the International Wonder Tales of Jack that have proven so popular in the Appalachian region for more than two centuries. Like Ray, Ronda is a gifted storyteller, but not of Jack Tales. Even so, Ronda's stories about himself, his family, friends, and acquaintances are wonder tales no less. With great candor and sometimes jarring humor, Hicks recounts his life's highs and lows. These events, ranging from drunken debauchery to brutality, are often shocking. He has had many close encounters with "the law" and was twice sent to prison. His relationships with women, including his two wives, have been tumultuous at best. This is the story of a violent, sometimes dissolute life--one that sounds more like it was lived in the mountains a hundred years ago than in contemporary Appalachia. Embedded in all of Ronda's stories are numerous details of mountain life, work, entertainment, behavior, beliefs, values, and codes. Thus, through Ronda's memoirs and interviews with noted Appalachian scholar Thomas Burton, readers will not only meet a truly singular individual but will also learn of many obscure features of southern Appalachian mountain culture, including its darker aspects. At the very least, the reader will wonder how Ronda Hicks lived to tell his fascinating tales at all. Thomas Burton is professor emeritus of English at East Tennessee State University. He is the author of Serpent-Handling Believers and The Serpent and the Spirit: Glenn Summerford's Story. "Together, Hicks, the storyteller, and the author give the reader an authentic view of Appalachian life, one that often disputes the beauty of the Blue Ridge and the quaintness of old-fashioned ways that tourists find endearing." --H-Net Reviews

Beech Mountain

Beech Mountain PDF Author: Beech Mountain Historical Society
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738567945
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Get Book Here

Book Description
Beech Mountain was once a rugged wilderness known only to the Cherokee Indians. Eventually hunters, loggers, moonshiners, and settlers made their marks upon the mountain. In the 1960s, Tom Brigham, a Birmingham dentist, envisioned a ski resort in the South and chose Beech Mountain as the perfect site. Grover Robbins, a timber man and developer from Blowing Rock, turned Brigham's vision into the Carolina Caribbean Corporation, which developed a four-season resort with the Land of Oz at the top. Initially lots sold faster than roads could be built to reach them, and the overextended company went bankrupt. Property owners rallied to preserve what had been created, and in 1981, the mountain reinvented itself as a charming town and popular resort destination. In addition to a core of permanent residents, it draws thousands of visitors annually for skiing, hiking, spectacular scenery, cool summers, and excellent golf, tennis, and other recreational facilities--and for the special feeling that is Beech Mountain.

Hugh Glass, Mountain Man

Hugh Glass, Mountain Man PDF Author: Robert M. McClung
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9780606058810
Category : Survival
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fictionalized biography of the legendary hero of the Old West, who as a fur trapper in 1823, survived an attack by a grizzly bear, and crawled 200 miles to the nearest fort to seek revenge on the two men who left him for dead.

Jack Tales and Mountain Yarns

Jack Tales and Mountain Yarns PDF Author: Orville Hicks
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781933251653
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Orville Hicks has enthralled audiences beyond the porches of Beech Mountain, North Carolina, for more than two decades. Jack Tales and Mountain Yarns captures the voice of the master storyteller in more than twenty transcribed stories, paired with lively pencil sketches. Having grown up in a hollow, he knows the mountain setting and his clever character Jack"--Provided by publisher.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz PDF Author: L. Frank Baum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Adventure and adventurers
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the first of L. Frank Baum's time-honored Oz novels, country girl Dorothy Gale gets whisked away by a cyclone to the fantastical Land of Oz. Dropped into the midst of trouble when her farmhouse crushes a tyrannical sorceress, Dorothy incurs the wrath of the Wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy is desperate to return to her native Kansas, and, aided by the Good Witch of the North, she sets out for the Emerald City to get help from the legendary Wizard. On her way, she meets three unlikely allies who embody key human virtues—the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion.

The Last Wild Road

The Last Wild Road PDF Author: T. Edward Nickens
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493059653
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Last Wild Road is a raucous, gripping, sometimes terrifying, often hilarious, and deeply meditative journey through the heart of the outdoors in the modern world. Collected from more than 20 years of hunting and fishing cover stories, columns, and adventure tales written by T. Edward Nickens for Field & Stream, this book is a road trip that takes in a huge sweep of the North American landscape—blackwater rivers in the wilds of eastern North Carolina, deserts and prairies of the American West, remote tundra of northern Canada, and the wildest rivers of Alaska. Along every rutted road and rough trail, with a rod, gun, and pen, Nickens meets unforgettable characters—old French-speaking Cajuns at Louisiana squirrel camps, a one-armed fly-tyer in the ancient Appalachians, Pennsylvania brothers who lost their father in a hunting accident decades ago and return to the scene for a powerful, poignant encounter with history. He explores remote wilderness waters to chase trout and ducks, but finds rich meaning, too, in the familiar and close-to-home: fishing with his children, plumbing the forests of local farms, and butchering deer in his basement as a thanksgiving for the gifts of the outdoors. When it comes to hunting and fishing, writing often falls into the categories of where-to-go, the how-do-it, and the-what-to-bring. This book embarks on the question of “why.” Why does the pursuit of game and fish, and the travel to the wild places where they thrive, bring meaning and clarity to living in the modern world? Why do we laugh more, and live more deeply, far from the sidewalk? If you’ve ever felt that way, you’ll find yourself in The Last Wild Road.

Casting Deep Shade

Casting Deep Shade PDF Author: C. D. Wright
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781556595486
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the face of loss--past, present, and future--C.D. Wright's final work demonstrates the power of words to conserve, preserve, and witness.

This Is My South

This Is My South PDF Author: Caroline Eubanks
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493034316
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
You may think you know the South for its food, its people, its past, and its stories, but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that the region tells far more than one tale. It is ever-evolving, open to interpretation, steeped in history and tradition, yet defined differently based on who you ask. This Is My South inspires the reader to explore the Southern States––Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia––like never before. No other guide pulls together these states into one book in quite this way with a fresh perspective on can’t-miss landmarks, off the beaten path gems, tours for every interest, unique places to sleep, and classic restaurants. So come see for yourself and create your own experiences along the way!

White Beech

White Beech PDF Author: Germaine Greer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408846713
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
For years I had wandered Australia with an aching heart. Everywhere I had ever travelled across the vast expanse of the fabulous country where I was born I had seen devastation, denuded hills, eroded slopes, weeds from all over the world, feral animals, open-cut mines as big as cities, salt rivers, salt earth, abandoned townships, whole beaches made of beer cans... One bright day in December 2001, sixty-two-year-old Germaine Greer found herself confronted by an irresistible challenge in the shape of sixty hectares of dairy farm, one of many in south-east Queensland that, after a century of logging, clearing and downright devastation, had been abandoned to their fate. She didn't think for a minute that by restoring the land she was saving the world. She was in search of heart's ease. Beyond the acres of exotic pasture grass and soft weed and the impenetrable curtains of tangled Lantana canes there were Macadamias dangling their strings of unripe nuts, and Black Beans with red and yellow pea flowers growing on their branches ... and the few remaining White Beeches, stupendous trees up to forty metres in height, logged out within forty years of the arrival of the first white settlers. To have turned down even a faint chance of bringing them back to their old haunts would have been to succumb to despair. Once the process of rehabilitation had begun, the chance proved to be a dead certainty. When the first replanting shot up to make a forest and rare caterpillars turned up to feed on the leaves of the new young trees, she knew beyond doubt that at least here biodepletion could be reversed. Greer describes herself as an old dog who succeeded in learning a load of new tricks, inspired and rejuvenated by her passionate love of Australia and of Earth, most exuberant of small planets.

W.R. Trivett, Appalachian Pictureman

W.R. Trivett, Appalachian Pictureman PDF Author: Ralph E. Lentz II
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786409273
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Get Book Here

Book Description
W.R. Trivett (1884-1966), a farmer born in Watauga County, North Carolina, was also a self-taught professional photographer who left behind an invaluable collection of more than 400 glass plate negatives taken between 1907 and the late 1940s in the Beech Mountain community of neighboring Avery County. Along with the photographs (105 are reproduced herein), a collection of Trivett's personal papers survive, revealing very enlightening information about his life in the mountains. This work--the fourth in McFarland's continuing series of Contributions to Southern Appalachian Studies--carefully examines Trivett's life and photographs, comparing his work to that of contemporary outside photographers who often produced stereotypical images of mountain people. Through Trivett's images we can, by contrast, see the everyday reality for most people in rural Appalachia.