Appalachia Project: Spencer's Mountain, 1961

Spencer's Mountain, by Earl Hamner, Jr.

Goodnight, John-Boy. Goodnight, mama. Goodnight, Mary-Ellen. Goodnight Pa. Yes, Earl Hamner's family really did goodnight themselves to sleep in the autobiographical novel Spencer's Mountain. The family was named Spencer instead of Walton; and John and John-Boy were Clay and Clay-Boy. But mama was still Olivia and Grandpa was still Zeb. I can see how the TV show The Waltons developed from this book--the pathos, the sweetness, the love--but also the poverty, the deprivation, the loneliness.

Spencer's Mountain, set in the foothills of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, is a darn good read. It is a straight-forward portrayal of an Appalachian family--ups and downs, victories and defeats. It's a story of having the courage to both accept and overcome your circumstances. The writing itself reflects the theme of the beauty in everyday, plain things. It's not fancy. But it is honest. It is Appalachian in the sense that it is grounded in the land and in the strong kinship bonds and in the sad fact that to achieve more, Appalachians often have to leave the places they love. Earl Hamner certainly never looked back. He still has family in Virginia, but settled in with alacrity to living in southern California, according to the various biographic articles on the Internet. He seems a little embarrassed by his own success, perhaps an artful dodge.

The main feature of being Appalachian reflected in Spencer's Mountain is the importance and primacy of family. Most of the family's socializing was with kin. Most problems were solved within the family. The Spencers were somewhat embarrassed that outsiders (non-family who they had known for a long time) had to help with the scheme to get Clay-Boy to college.

Another key theme is the division of labor between men and women. When a Clay isn't available for man's work, Olivia doesn't step in to do it--a male relative or neighbor steps in. Likewise, men did not stand in for women. A relative or neighbor maintained the sex roles. Clay-Boy was a bit of an oddball in this regard. As the oldest child he was pressed (sort of press-ganged) into childcare, cooking, and even laundry. Mama needed the help.

The men of Spencer's Mountain worked, drank, swore, and hunted. They avoided church. Every Thanksgiving, the extended family would gather and the men would hunt. It was a rite of passage for the boys to be included with the men. There is a certain mysticism about hunting, linked to story-telling. Grandpa and Pa told versions of hunting story involving a white stag. Clay-Boy's fantasies of the deer keep him awake the night before his first Thanksgiving hunt. "After a while he drifted into a sleep like some gently rocking unguided craft that flowing with the current will drift from shallow into deeper and deeper water, his final coherent thought: Tomorrow it will happen. Finally he drifted so deep into oceans of sleep that not even the dream of the great white deer could reach him, and he rested." (page 13)

The book glosses over winter, but, "One day the icicles which had grown on the eaves of the barn began to glisten in the sunlight and melt...Olivia's crocuses along the front walk seemed to burst into blossom overnight...Soon, along every path through the hills the redbud and dogwood were in blossom, and the edge of every wood was filigreed with redbud pink and dogwood white." (page 21) The world comes alive in the spring and Clay-Boy begins an important year of his life. He is graduating from high school and a scheme is hatched to try to get him to college. He finds love and adventure. And he discovers books.

This book is a story of the sacrifices that love entails and the love that makes such sacrifices not only bearable, but essential. I've experienced this on a small scale. Pa makes an amazing sacrifice of a dream that has sustained him his whole life. Ma's whole life is a sacrifice to birthing and rearing children. (She has numbers 10 and 11 in this book.) The characters are clearly drawn and it's amazing how the actors on the television show stayed true to the book. Cranky at times, sad often, but strong and forthright.

Women's lives revolved around children, cooking, housework, and church. The women Spencers were Baptists--strict, strait-laced Baptists. No swearing, dancing, kissing, gambling, etc. The Baptist parsonage "contained six square rooms and faced squarely on the highway in much the same manner the Baptists face their god. The grass of the front lawn was quite green, clipped and proper and kept healthy, if not from God's good rain, at least from frequent baptisms by hose. There were no frivolous zinnias or nasturtiums to mar its green expanse, although some white snowball bushes bloomed on the lawn in early August. In the back were some hollyhocks along the path that went to the henhouse, but that was all the frivolity there was about the house. All told, it was a very Baptist establishment." (page 51)

Women's lives were hard. Olivia, in labor, says about the possibility of giving birth to girls: "...the other night I was washen Pattie-Cake and I looked down at her little body and I started thinken about one day she'd be grown up and a woman and some man would take her and she'd be haven babies of her own...just all of a sudden I felt so sorry for her I started cryen." (page 163) And her mother, attending the birth, responds, "...It's harder on a woman than a man...he don't know what it's like to have a baby, or sit up all night with a sick one, or to be home with them all day long with them runnen wild and then expect you to be just layen there in the bed waiten for him at the end of the day." (page 163)

Clay-Boy is in love with his world--the mountains, the people, his family. It is only when he realizes that he might be trapped there that he sees it in a flash of clarity as an outsiders would. It was: "a ridiculous little village in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a monotonous isolated grouping of dust-covered houses hemmed in by hills. There were no roads out of town, no escape; he was imprisoned forever." (page 169) Somehow the family has to balance maintaining their traditions with moving out into the world.

I struggled while reading this book not to slip into dialect in my own speech. The "en" ending, the antique phrasing...it comes natural to me...it was the language I heard from my relatives, language my mom trained out of me.

I enjoyed this book. I laughed and cried. It doesn't push any edges, but as a story of a loving family struggling to get by, it is excellent.

Excerpts

Here is a sampling of especially vivid writing from the book. Enjoy.

Grandma Spencer at the death of her husband: "Something she could not name rose from forgotten wells and the old woman remembered her husband in the vigor of his youth. He had been a man to be proud of and the tears that fell from her old eyes were the tears of a young girl. Her grief spent itself when a t last she took her warm hand from the cold dead one and prepared herself to tell those who waited beyond the door. She opened the door and they knew." (page 199)

Clay-Boy, stripping naked on a dare from his girlfriend: "...he proceeded to unbutton his shirt, fighting all along with his strait-laced Baptist conscience. Standing there in his underwear and his shoes and socks, he felt uncomfortable...discarding his undershirts and short he felt even more uncomfortable, and it was only when he shed his shoes and socks that he began to enjoy the sensation of being absolutely naked in the noonday sun." (page 209)

Olivia, after a terrible disappointment: "She...saw that all the children had gathered there and that they too were near tears. She knelt down and held out her arms, and she was immediately covered with small children and as she held them in her arms and felt their small warm bodies pressing against her she regained her strength and led her children back into the kitchen where their meal was waiting." (page 228)

Clay (-man) on giving up his dream of building a house: "...I'd get up from the supper table and think maybe I'll go and work on the house for thirty or forty minutes before it got dark, but I'd walk out of the door and find it was dark already. The sun goes down too soon for a poor man...there just ain't enough hours in a day to do all a poor man's got to do." (page 233)

Clay (-man) on his sacrifice: "The way I look at it, there's fine stuff in my babies. But it's like a river that's dammed up. All we'll ever get to see is what little bit pours over the top of the dam unless something comes along that breaks the walls down and lets the river flow. Well somethen has come along. Clay-Boy is goen to college...[my children] might turn out to be doctors and nurses and lawyers...I used to vision the most we could do for all of 'em was to get 'em through high school. I can see more than that now." (page 236)

Clay-Boy's last morning at home: "The routine sounds of the house coming to life seemed more beautiful than he had ever imagined. He heard the clamor of his father's alarm clock, his father's long deep yawn and then Clay's muttered weather forecast for the day: 'Goen to be a nice one.' And then he heard the clank of the iron lid as his father filled the cooking range with wood, the whoosh of the fire up the chimney as Clay lighted the kerosene-soaked sticks, the squeak of the loose board in the hall as Clay came to the foot of the stairs to call Olivia--'Sweetheart.' 'All right, I'm awake,' her answer came." (page 245)

The book's conclusion, with Clay-Boy on the Trailways bus: "For a few minutes after he reached his seat his eyes were clouded with tears, but when they were clear again he saw that the bus was nearing the top of a steep mountain road. 'Goen far, son?' asked an old farmer sitting next to him. 'Right far,' the boy said, and watched as the bus arrived at the top of the mountain and went on into the beckoning world." (page 247)