Judith Whitcomb

Singin' in the Hills Judith Whitcomb

The old days in West Virginia's Roane and Jackson Counties were challenging. Farming was a hard life, but a good one. On weekdays, children walked-often through rain or snow-to one-room schools; on Sundays, they went barefoot 'til the last puddle before they put on their church shoes. And of a night, midwives crossed the hills, accompanied by anxious husbands with lanterns. Doctors were far away, and, without antibiotics, were helpless if typhoid or even appendicitis should strike. If anything went amiss, dinner bells pealed signals to the neighbors to gather in. Weddings and funerals were often in living rooms. There was excitement, too. There was moon shining in the hills, foxhounds that barked all night long at their quarry, skeletons in caves, and ghost wagons that ran the roads at dusk. Bill and Hazel Westfall lived in those hills, and the music they sing is as simple as the hills themselves-the old hymns that were sung by the graves, right before the casket was covered with earth; or the old Carter Family songs that Hazel listened to on the old Victrola; or the music of the Coon Crick girls that they listened to on the old Silvertone radios.