“The services of debt adjustment committeemen are available to all farmers, as well as to FSA borrowers. The committeemen will assist creditors and farm debtors to reach an amicable adjustment of debts based on the ability to pay.”
In this particular section of the Blue Ridge, while some are looking to the soil, others have an eye on the waters above the earth. There is being revived the plan of twenty years ago for the canalization of one of the best-known and most important rivers of the Blue Ridge Country—the Big Sandy. As a means to that end there is an organization called the Big Sandy Improvement Association and, with a mountain man, Congressman A. J. May, to espouse its cause, things look promising for the project.
The mountain men and their city co-workers get together and speak their minds and exchange views at dinner meetings down in the Big Sandy Valley. A survey is being conducted to show to what extent a navigable river would aid industry, especially the coal business. Mountain men are joining their practical knowledge with the scientific knowledge of men of the level land who are putting the plan of canalization of the Big Sandy River before Uncle Sam for consideration and backing.
The people of the Blue Ridge mountains are learning slowly and surely to mingle and to work with others. That again is due to good roads.
Once there was the simple manner of making sorghum, whereby the mountain man paid for the use of the mill in cash or cane; today there is the Sorghum Association which helps the mountaineer market his product. There is even a Blackberry Association whose trucks drive to the very door and load up every gallon a family can pick.
Conservation is evident on every side and mountain people are realizing the benefits in dollars.
Where once timbering was carried on in an appallingly wasteful manner, reforestation under the guidance of trained leaders is under way. Camps of the CCC dot the whole southern mountain region and fruits of their efforts can be seen in the growing forests on many a mountain side. In Mammoth Cave National Park alone 2,900,000 seedlings were planted to stay gulley erosion in an area of 3,000,000 square yards.
Mountain boys who have entered CCC camps are rated high in obedience, deportment, and adaptability to surroundings. Some of them have never been away from home before. Many have been no farther than the nearest county seat.
Frequently the mother back home can neither read nor write but she shows with pride a letter from her son. “My boy’s in the Three C’s. He’s writ me this letter. Read with your own eyes.” You see her glow with genuine pride of possession as you read aloud—perhaps the hundredth time she has heard it—the boy’s letter. The mother shows it to everyone who crosses her threshold there in the Dug Down Mountains of Georgia. There is another letter too. “Johnny’s captain writ this one.” She knows them apart even though she does not know A from B. “Johnny’s captain has writ moughty pretty about our boy.” So well does the old mother know the content of the letters she is ready to prompt if the visitor omits so much as a single word in the reading. And when Johnny came home, after his first months of service were ended, he was hailed as a conquering hero by family and neighbors alike. The mother was proudest of all. “Look at this-here contrapshun.” From the well-ordered case in the boy’s trunk she brought out a toothbrush. “He’s larnt to scrub his teeth with this-here bresh and”—she added with unconcealed satisfaction—“he don’t dip no more. ’Pon my honor he’s about wheedled me into the notion of givin’ up snuff. But when a body’s old and drinlin’ like I’m getting to be dipping is a powerful comforting pastime.”
The mountain boy’s older brothers and father too have come to understand co-operation. They can work with others. They know the meaning of WPA folklore. When the boss calls out jovially, “Come and grab it, boys!” they, who have never heretofore worked by the clock, know dinner time is up and they must start back to work. When the head of the work crew calls out “Hold! Hold! Hold!” they know a fuse of dynamite is about to be lighted to blast the rock from the mountain side and they hurry to safety. “Dynamite is powerful destructuous!” one tells the other, and they remain at safe distance until again the boss of the crew calls out “All right!” and they are back with pick and shovel.