The Death of Swing

By Nate Hunt

With a swingin' soundtrack to their youth, a group of young people struggle to cast off the trappings of the Great Depression. Meanwhile, Germany increasingly crashes through the radio into their sleepy little world with designs on world domination. This is the story of a group of kids who are forced to grow up in a world marked by unimaginable hardship and sacrifice. Follow along as their childhood days are put to rest and witness The Death of Swing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359429011

Book preview

The Death of Swing

The Death of Swing

Nate Hunt

Copyright © 2019 Griffin River Publishing

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-359-42901-1

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With a swingin' soundtrack to their youth, a group of young people struggle to cast off the trappings of the Great Depression.  Meanwhile, Germany increasingly crashes through the radio into their sleepy little world with designs on world domination.  This is the story of a group of kids who are forced to grow up in a world marked by unimaginable hardship and sacrifice.  Follow along as their childhood days are put to rest and witness The Death of Swing.

1

1935…

Bell, Florida

Population: 164

A farm town with no distinguishing features for a hundred miles in any direction.  Not really a town.  A collection of a few stores on a skinny road that passed north to south.  No one ever used the dirt road for anything.  A network of footpaths led from here to there through dusty fields.  Whatever existed beyond the horizon was of little consequence.  Thirty years earlier, a train line came to town, but it really only changed the way the crops left town, a one-way exit for farm goods that kept the farms in business.

The last decade had seen a boom in farm prices and in the years of plenty many of the families in Bell had built new homes – sturdy but cheap wooden frame houses with steel roofs.  Electricity had also swept in with the boom and nearly every house gotten a wire, strong enough for a light in every room.

The good years didn’t last long, though.  A pair of hurricanes demolished the big cities down south and a bizarre and unsettling pestilence of Mediterranean fruit flies crippled the produce economy of the entire state.  Prices began to fall.  Grocers up north stopped importing anything from the state at all, fearing customer boycotts of all their produce.

The Summers family, a family of beet farmers, had enjoyed the fresh new timbers and plaster walls of their new home for most of those good years before the economy crashed.  They had a light in every room and a radio in their small parlor.  The kitchen had a shiny new hand pump and the outhouse was crisp and clean with a sanded seat.

The shiplap exterior walls had faded, though, and the plaster interior walls had already started to crack.  As light bulbs burned out they hadn’t replaced them.  They had figured out areas where they could cut spending and had developed a rhythm to keep themselves afloat, but recently there was a more ominous economic crash that had swept the nation. 

This one had been inescapable.  Things in Bell did not look good.  The train line was beginning to act as a one-way exit for the people too.

Nate Summers stared at himself in the mirror fixed on his armour door, carefully inspecting his reflection with the careful pride and scrutiny of a professional fifteen-year old.  The nickel coating had started to flake off the back of the glass at the edges and corners from a decade of opening and closing the door and throwing damp and smelly pants and shirts over them to dry for the next day’s use.  He could see himself well enough.  His crisp red-checkered shirt and faded bib overalls were not the focus.  Neither was his black wavy hair that hung down across his forehead in a swoosh – all the girls loved that.  Nate’s attention was drawn to a single swelling blemish in between his eyes on the bridge of his nose.  The exact center of his face. 

Not wanting anything to detract from Dorothy’s attraction to him, he popped the zit and dipped his hands in a cracked white wash basin on his chest of drawers and washed his face, blotting the spot with his flannel sleeve until the beads of blood stopped flowing.  He looked at the spots of blood on his sleeve as they faded into the red fabric.  No one would notice them.  He turned and dipped a greying wash cloth in the wash basin and wiped his face, sweeping his curls back and forth across his forehead, wondering which way was perfect… wondering if Dorothy would even notice. 

Deciding that he was ready, he draped the wet rag over a chair which sat in his room and straightened up his buttons and overalls and walked out into the parlor leaving the brown water in the basin for later. 

The house was a modest twelve hundred square feet.  It was not glamourous by any means, but the best that farmers like John and Mollie Summers could manage in the best of times.  Now, though, it was all they could do to cling to it.

The Summers’ house was a triumph of ingenuity over affluence.  As their family had grown, the back porch had been carefully enclosed and converted into a room for their five boys, of which Nate was the youngest.  The smaller of two interior bedrooms was home to the three Summers girls.  The larger was a master bedroom, though, not very spacious at all.  It was sufficient.  All the rooms had large windows with single pane hand-floated glass which were left open all year round.  Wooden shutters were in place on each window, held open with cheap hooks and eyes that jiggled in the breeze.

The décor in John and Mollie Summers’ house displayed careful, conservative taste and a frugal repurposing of calendar pages from years past that they’d picked up at the feed store or at the train depot.  They had a good routine of this in the winter months after new calendars arrived.  It was one guilty pleasure they could still pull off, even in the depression years.  Mollie picked the pictures she liked, and John made little wooden frames. 

Furniture was a hodge-podge of hand-crafted trinkets and hand-me-downs, all of which had been patched and repaired over the years with wood glue and coat bailing wire.  Nothing looked new anymore, but it felt like home.

I’m going to the Dance Hall, Pop, Nate shouted as he bounded out of his room, through the parlor, and out across the front porch.  The spring on the wooden front screen door made its sproingy stretching noise as it opened.  The door slammed against the outside.

John Summers, a mild-tempered man who rarely spoke unless it was something worth saying, smiled at his son.  Enjoy yourself, Nate, he said, kicking his feet up onto the patched and re-patched footstool in front of his arm chair as the screen door slammed shut behind Nate, bouncing open again.

Mollie Summers slunk into the room, her perpetual scowl a constant reminder to everyone how difficult she perceived her life to be.  Unlike John, who had always taken the poverty and hardship of the Great Depression with good humor and faith, Mollie chose to wear even the mildest burden like a crown of thorns.  What John and Mollie had seen in each other romantically was an unsolved mystery to Nate. 

Take your sister, Mollie grunted.  Nate stopped in his dusty tracks out front and pivoted back toward the house.

Aw, Mom, Nate said, feeling deflated.  I’m fifteen.  I don’t want my ten-year-old sister following me around, he shouted back at the screen door.

The Swanson girls are over there, Mollie barked.  It’ll give your sister something to do.  Take her.

Come on, Gladys, Nate huffed to his sister, not daring to talk back to his mother any further.  Gladys bound out of the screen door on queue.

Four of Nate’s older brothers and two of his older sisters were already out of the house and on their own – if one could call it that.  One brother was married and two of his brothers roomed with them, splitting the rent three ways.  His two older sisters lived together in the spare bedroom of a friend and her husband.  Only Ralph, the oldest, had successfully escaped the sleepy cow town of Bell, Florida by joining the navy.  Though no one talked about it, everyone knew why Nate’s older siblings had moved away as quickly as they had been able – his mother was a miserable ogre.  She was hot-tempered, and her ever-present scowl was reflective of her negative outlook on life. 

This left only Nate and Gladys at home to catch the brunt of their mother’s wrath.  Nate’s other siblings had tried to find other meaningful work outside of Bell, Florida, but the nation had been through some hard, economic times in the past decade.  Each time one sibling moved away, with the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Works Project Administration, another moved back: project complete.  They always came back to work on the family farm, which had proven tried and true regardless of the nation’s ailing economy.  It was steady money and steady work.

Nate found it noteworthy and enviable that his siblings had always stopped short of actually moving back in with his mother.  No matter how bad their finances had gotten, nothing had been worth that. 

He walked across his front yard and across the dirt road without looking both ways.  There was no point, honestly.  The main drag in Bell, Florida was a dirt track boasting five or six stores, a single room brick school building, a church, the small building that passed for City Hall, the feed store, the depot, and the dance and bingo hall.  It was maybe a quarter mile long, a mere wide spot in a road that otherwise went nowhere.  Everyone knew who was coming by the sound of their voice as they walked along.  Cars driving through were a newsworthy event as few could drive anything other than farm trucks.  Work would cease, and all heads would turn. 

Nate looked back only once to make sure Gladys was still in tow.  She was keeping up, an eager smile beaming on her face, her black hair swishing back and forth like some sort of silent metronome.  Nate strolled eagerly onto the Clark family farm, bound for the Dance Hall. 

By the standards of the wealthy class, the Dance Hall would have been a terrible misnomer and the ultimate disappointment.  On the outskirts of the downtown area, however, it was just another example of the ingenuity born out of Depression poverty. 

Decades ago, a merchant had bought a plot of ground amid the local farmers, determined to build a big farm and feed store.  The locals rebelled, complaining in community forums that they did not want their peaceful country existence overrun with big city traffic.  The farmers won, and the businessman was forced to abandon his pet project, having already poured the foundation – a slab of concrete approximately fifty feet by fifty feet.  The land traded hands a number of times but no one ever did anything with it.  The stock market crash in ‘29 virtually guaranteed that nobody would ever build on the land, nor would they pay good money to pull up the concrete. 

In recent years, the local farmers erected a sturdy roof, supported by thick wooden beams.  They ran electricity to light up the open-air pavilion at night.  They purchased a radio and dubbed the new construction The Dance Hall.  All of the farm kids along this particular stretch of dirt road hung out at the Dance Hall every night, listening to music, dancing, and enjoying conversation that only made sense to other young people.  The best feature of the Dance Hall, according to the parents, was that its nightly activities were fully visible from the houses of all the parents concerned, preserving a puritanical innocence of an entire generation of children as far as moms and dads knew.

The outer edge of the Dance Hall was lined with a variety of discarded picnic tables, benches, and chairs.  It was to one of these picnic tables that Nate made a beeline.  Perched atop the picnic table was Nate’s best friend, Walt Clark, whom he’d grown up with since they were five. 

Walt was dressed in a similar fashion to Nate, his overalls far too worn, but as clean and presentable as his parents could afford.  Walt’s straight, auburn hair was neatly combed across his head.  It wouldn’t be for long. 

Hey, Nate, Walt said, as Nate plopped himself next to his best buddy.  He watched as his kid sister found her friends and immediately fell into girlish giggling and talking. 

Hey, Walt, Nate said. 

Nearby, the radio dial was turned up and jazz music was playing.  A couple of teens were dancing the Charleston. 

What’s going on tonight? Nate asked. 

A lot of bumping gums and booshwash.  Nothing else, Walt said, bored.  Although, your sweet patootie’s been asking for you.

He punched Nate in the arm. 

Nate blushed and looked at the other end of the Dance Hall.  Sitting pristinely in chairs talking with her friends sat the loveliest girl in the world, Dorothy Stanford.  She wore a modest light blue pastel dress adorned with a flowered print.  Her straight blonde hair was as captivating as her blue eyes and full, red lips.  With a smile that could stop a clock, she was as honest and chaste as she was outgoing and fun.  And she only had flirtatious eyes for Nathan Summers. 

Go talk with her, Walt said.  And then ask her to be your girl.

Naw, said Nate, bashfully.  I couldn’t do that.

You’ve known each other forever, Walt said.  Besides, you dance with her all the time.

That’s different.

How?

Dancing moves your legs, Nate said.  Talking moves your mouth.  I’m not good with the mouth.

You two are the best dancers here, Walt said.  She likes you.  Dance with her and then ask her to be your girlfriend before I box your ears.

She may not be interested in me, Nate said.

Dorothy Stanford isn’t the type of girl to throw herself at just any ol’ guy, Nate, Walt said.  "She dances only with you.  She has for years, but you’re too stupid to read the writing on the wall.  She’s waiting for you, pal."

You think so?

How many times are we gonna have this conversation? Walt asked.  Were you dropped on your head as a baby?  She asks about you when you aren’t here, she dances only with you, and right now, she’s drilling holes in the back of your head with her eyes.

Really?  She’s looking at me? Nate said, turning around part of the way before getting slugged in the arm by Walt. 

Well, don’t look at her, dummy, Walt said.

But you said…

"Gentlemen go speak to ladies, Walt instructed.  Only perverts gawk."

Oh.

Dancing is your open door, buddy, Walt said.  Dance first, then talk to her.

That’s where I always choke up, Nate said.  I stutter when I’m nervous.

I’m gonna clobber you if you don’t, Walt said. 

Alright, alright.  But it’s gotta be the right song, Nate said.  These songs are all too slow.  I don’t want to give her the wrong impression.  I want something fast and fun to break the tension.  Hopefully, it’ll ease my nerves.

Walt’s face lit up with delight.

I heard the perfect song tonight, he said.  They’ve been playing it over and over again.

What is it? Nate asked.

Have you ever heard of Benny Goodman? Walt asked. 

Benny Goodman? Nate asked, surprised.  Yeah.  Isn’t he with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra?

Naw, that’s ancient history, Walt said, screwing his face up.  Benny Goodman went out on his own.

Really? Nate asked.  I didn’t know that.

Yeah, there’s a neat story behind it, Walt said.  "Goodman was in concert floundering somewhere between classical music and traditional jazz numbers.  No one was interested and even the band was bored.  So, Goodman’s drummer, Gene Krupa, said ‘If we’re gonna go broke and die, Benny, let’s die doing our own thing.’  Goodman agreed and they started playing this real foot-stomper called King Porter Stomp.  The whole theater went crazy and it turned into one big rave.  Everyone was dancing.  That song’s got the whole country buzzing."

Sounds perfect for me and Dorothy, Nate said.

You won’t be able to sit still, Walt said.  I was up dancing to it earlier.

"You were dancing? Nate asked surprised.  It must be a good song."

We were all dancing, Walt said.  Just wait.

The friends talked on and on for a while until a radio announcer began talking.

Okay, music lovers, prepare yourself for the song that keeps getting requested all evening.  It’s the song that has been banned around the world…

This is it, Walt said, punching Nate.

It was banned? Nate asked.  Walt nodded.

England called it ‘an awful series of jungle noises,’ Italy called it a threat to their race, and Germany called it a conspiracy against culture…

This made all the kids laugh. 

What do the Germans know about music anyway? Nate laughed. 

Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Brahms… Walt recited.

"I mean good music, Nate amended.  You can’t dance to Beethoven’s Fifth."

"Goodman defended his new sound, saying, ‘If we’re going to flop, we’re going to do it playing jazz.’  Whatever you call it, Goodman’s music really swings.  Here’s the song that’s sweeping the nation…the King Porter Stomp."

With a muted trumpet leading the charge, the song was underway.  Underpinned by the throbbing rhythm of the double bass and the contagious beat of Gene Krupa’s drums, the rest of the brass and woodwinds filled out the sound, alternating with the trumpet for lead lines.

Nate smiled at Walt, who smiled back. 

That guy is right, Nate said.  This song really swings.

"Lindy Hop.  Dorothy.  Now, amigo, Walt prodded.  Show her the stuff and then ask her to be your steady before I write you out of my will.  I’m going to go dance with Ruth."

Walt darted off and offered his hand to a young girl named Ruth, who readily accepted.  They went to the middle of the Dance Hall where they began to flail their arms and legs in what Nate could only assume was intended to be a Lindy Hop – a terrible one, but Walt and Ruth appeared to be having a good time trying.  Within seconds, everyone was on the dance floor, moving with the rhythm of Goodman’s song. 

It occurred to Nate that Walt’s bad dancing – whether intentional or otherwise – gave him a door of opportunity to dance with Dorothy. 

It’s now or never, he thought.  Am I a man or a mouse?

Nate leaped up, boldly crossed the floor and held a hand out to his regular dance partner, Dorothy.  They both knew that his boldness was driven by an infectious beat.

"Whadya say we show them what the Lindy Hop is supposed to look like, Dorothy?" Nate said with his usual charming smile.  Dorothy smiled widely at Nate and took his hand. 

The two jumped up nimbly, and Nate carefully counted out the eight-beat in his head.  With their feet moving to an agile step-step-triple-step rhythm, the two fluid dancers were underway, Nate’s lean body the perfect complement to Dorothy’s sleek frame.  They pivoted, kicked backward, and with a rocking step, Nate swung Dorothy out.  As Goodman’s song floated through the air, Nate and Dorothy turned up the heat.  Nate slung her under his legs before pulling her back into dancing position in front of him.  With a flourish and a twirl, he spun and rolled her over his back, pivoting back to face her.  The dance went on and on until the signature finale.

As the song ended, everyone applauded. 

Thanks for the dance, Dorothy, Nate said, huffing and puffing and wiping sweat as he escorted her to a table containing water jugs. Wasn’t that song great?

It’s wonderful, she said, allowing Nate to pour her a cup of water. 

Say, h-h-how long have we been d-dancing together? Nate asked, trying not to lose his soul in her lovely eyes.  Stop stuttering, he chastised himself.

Dunno, Nate, she said, in her reserved way, not breaking eye contact.  Seems like forever.

Y-y-yeah, it d-does, Nate agreed, nervously scraping the ground with his boot.  And stop poking the ground, he thought.  It makes you look weak.

Dorothy gazed lovingly at his wavy black hair.  So handsome, yet so awkward.  As skilled as he was on the dance floor – and there was no one better – he was as clumsy when it came to talking with girls that he liked. 

Nate’s interest in Dorothy was as hard to hide as a porcupine in a pig pen.  Everyone knew that the more he liked a girl, the more he stuttered.  And these days, he only stuttered around Dorothy Stanford.  Never on the dance floor, however.  Only in conversation.

You’re the best one out there, Dorothy said, hoping to keep him talking enough for him to relax and stop stuttering.

Y-you are, he said, suddenly distracted by cleaning something off his overalls.  Dorothy patiently waited, hoping Nate would be bold enough to pursue her.

S-sakes alive, I c-can’t remember d-dancing with anyone else but you in y-y-years, Nate said. 

I know, Dorothy said.  He’s even better at dancing around his feelings, she thought.  Bold and swift on the dance floor.  Bashful and self-conscious otherwise.

Silently, she crossed her fingers and pulled for Nate to overcome his shyness and open up. 

S-so, I was thinking, D-dorothy, Nate said, apparently trying to dig through the concrete with his boot. 

Yeah, Nate? Dorothy coaxed. 

Y-you like being my steady d-dance partner? he asked, trying to calm his breathing.

Of course, Nate, she said. 

He shifted his weight and tried not to look nervous, failing miserably.

Th-then, how’d you like to be m-m-my s-steady girlfriend? he asked, finally making himself look at her.  Her smile said it all, and calmness washed over him. 

I’d love that, Nate, she said, gently reaching out and grasping his hand. 

D-do you wanna go for a w-walk before it gets too d-dark? he asked. 

Sure, she said. 

Walt Clark sat atop his usual perch, watching Nate and Dorothy walk down to the end of the dirt road and back.  They were silhouetted against the orange, cloudy sky, walking with no other purpose in life than to feel the soft touch of each other’s interlocking fingers. 

For once, Walt was quite happy to be ignored by his best friend. 

And though the two best friends never knew it, they shared the same thought at the same time:  Thank you, Benny Goodman!

2

1935…

Half Mountain, Kentucky

Population: uncounted

It never appeared on anybody’s map and probably never would.  It was a land that time had forgotten, forever frozen in the nineteenth century. 

The Magoffin family had come over from Scotland to early colonial Virginia.  Jamestown, in fact – they were among the earliest successful English colonists in North America.  That place they had helped put on the map.  There were whispers about being directly related to current English royalty somehow; rumors about being related to Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s second wife, whom he had beheaded.  The Magoffins were directly related to one of Virginia’s first royal governors, so there must have been a grain of truth to the gossip about family origins. 

But the Magoffins had not remained satisfied to settle down and develop commerce based on tobacco in the marshes of a royal colony.  Their eyes had drifted westward to the wilderness.  Their destiny lay in Cain-tuk-ee, the land of the bloody river.

When the family began their westward trek, it had been into a wilderness populated with wild animals and wild people – both being dangers to their undertaking.  Over time, they had learned to make peace with both. 

Settling in what became known as eastern Kentucky, by the work of their own calloused hands, they had created a life for themselves in the mountains of Appalachia.  They had seen slavery introduced in the colonies around them and had shunned it within their mountain community.  Coal had been discovered beneath their precious hills and the promise of riches beckoned to the industrious who would come and dig it out.  Many a hill had been laid bare and hacked to the base to reap the profits in a growing colonial economy hungry for a more efficient fuel then wood.  The community of Half Mountain had gotten its name that way.  To locals, it had seemed like only half the mountains were left.

Through their mountain community pioneers like Daniel Boone had pushed colonials into Kentucky, coal mining had come and gone, leaving many empty promises in its wake, and explorers like Lewis and Clark had pushed the nation off the map and into the wilds beyond.  As the nation had moved onward, farther west, the dust had settled in Half Mountain and had never kicked up again.

A rebellion had come and gone.  A new nation had been born.  A second war with the British had passed them by.  They had even endured a war to split the new nation apart.  But all the while, Half Mountain had slept in the hills and valleys, relatively untouched.  Prosperity had come to America and her people had started to build bigger and better houses along longer and wider roads.  Meanwhile, folks in Half Mountain had languished in their log cabins uninterested in all that.  The homes that their ancestors had built had seemed just fine for them.  Trains, then cars, then airplanes had all come onto the stage of American technology.  Meanwhile, the horse and mule had remained good enough for Half Mountain.

And so, in 1910 when Elliot Magoffin had married Nora Caudill in a tiny wooden church in Half Mountain, his main concern had been providing his young bride with the finest log cabin that his hands could fashion.  The couple contentedly tilled the soil, raised livestock, and lived as simply as their ancestors before them had. 

Their children had been born on the floor near the fireplace with a community of mothers and grandmothers gathered around to attend to Nora’s every need.  Farming, forestry, and construction were all accomplished in a community of men who helped each other whenever needed.  Food was raised or gathered from their own land and traded within the community.  Clothing was hand-made from whatever fabrics could be had, often sack cloth or canvas.  Game was hunted in the surrounding forest. 

Life in Half Mountain was lived in older, simpler ways.

As Elliot and Nora Magoffin welcomed their eighth child, Margaret, in 1923, they knew nothing about electric refrigerators or movies.  Their life didn’t include electricity, running water, or even indoor plumbing.  While Maggie was still learning to roll over, the people of Half Mountain, Kentucky continued to measure their population roughly in the dozens.

Their one window into the modern world was in going to town.  In the Magoffin family, going to town was as special an occasion as Christmas day.  They’d all put on their Sunday best, which was really a misnomer since the church had been abandoned a decade ago.  The Magoffins would load up the horse and wagon with all of their goods to sell – canned vegetables, fruit preserves, handcrafted furniture and tools, handmade quilts and clothes – and head to Salyersville, a fifteen-mile trek from Half Mountain that could just barely be made in a single summer day with the longest hours of daylight.  In winter, the trip was two days and a night spent in the frigid forest.

As far as the Magoffins were concerned, Salyersville may as well have been New York City.  With a population less than five hundred, a flea market, a general store, a post office, a news stand, and a lunch counter it was a burgeoning metropolis compared to Half Mountain.  The Magoffins would go into town once a month to sell their wares and to stock up on the hard-to-find items not available in the mountains: coffee, flour, and sugar.  The utmost luxury came once a year when the children all got bananas in Salyersville – an annual tradition.

Occasionally, The Salyersville Independent featured news from Lexington, commonly referred to by locals as The City, whose population was in the low 40,000’s, but usually included mainly local news featuring marriages, births, deaths, and what really happened to Farmer Brown’s rustled cattle last Friday night. 

On the rarest occasions, the Magoffins made the hundred-mile journey to The City.  Such a trip usually involved purchasing a musical instrument, the ultimate in luxury spending.  The trip included a train journey of a hundred miles and had become the stuff of family lore.  The children loved to sit around and talk about those journeys to The City.

Ma… Pa… tell us again about your trips to The City! the kids would beg, as if their parents had travelled around the world to exotic lands. 

Also, part of story time always included the epic journeys that Ma and Pa had taken to The Big City, meaning Cincinnati or Louisville, whose populations were measured in the hundreds of thousands.  The size and scale of these two cities seemed unfathomable to hill folk like Elliot and Nora who could spend endless hours debating the virtues (but mainly the vices) of living in The Big City.  Places like New York City, with its population of over a million people by the time Maggie was learning to help Nora in the kitchen, were practically as mythological as Mount Olympus.  That there were larger cities around the world with different languages, cultures, religions, histories, and social experiences was as remote a concept to Half Mountain as traveling to another planet. 

Outsiders mocked and ridiculed communities like Half Mountain as backward and hickish.  But in 1929, when the rest of the nation had fallen into almost a decade of economic hardship known as the Great Depression, Half Mountain had the last laugh.  Or at least they could have if they had gotten the news, which they rarely did.  While more than a third of all Americans were without jobs, homes, decent clothes, or food, life in Half Mountain went on as it always had, unaffected.

In fact, since Elliot and Nora’s wedding, the Magoffin family farm had continued to be successful enough to indulge in the one thing that they all equally enjoyed – their musical instruments.  The years of trips to The Big City had seen their collection grow.  Most evenings, after washing up and having a good dinner, it was the one way that the Magoffins relaxed together other than storytelling.

The Magoffin cabin was small, but cozy, considering that two adults and twelve children lived in it.  The main room was twenty-five by fifteen feet.  At one end was a cast iron wood burning stove with a flat top.  There was a wash basin and prep table that served as a kitchen.  A worn old hand pump supplied water.  Pots, pans, and utensils hung on hooks on the wall.  In spite of the number of people in the family, the kitchen end of the main room was usually spic and span. 

In the middle of the main room sat a long, handcrafted table with long benches on each side and a handmade chair at each end.  Wood was one thing the forest never failed to provide.  Here they ate three meals a day together, and it was as well-kept as the kitchen. 

At the opposite end from the kitchen was a large fireplace, made entirely of stones pulled from local streams.  Along the base of the wall was a low-sitting stone hearth, about a foot-and-a-half high, that was perfect for sitting on. 

Two doors in the main room led to two modest bedrooms – one for Elliot and Nora, and one for the girls.  The boys slept in a loft above the other two bedrooms that overlooked the main room.  Every room had its own fireplace, and everyone slept comfortably year-round on feather mattresses and pillows underneath homemade quilts and blankets. 

That the Magoffin cabin was small and totally void of any art, pictures, any other furniture, or any decorative brick-a-brack was of concern to no one.  For generations, the Magoffins had lived a pragmatic, spartan, wilderness lifestyle.  Each bedroom had a single trunk which was filled with clean, neatly folded clothes.  Tables were for holding practical things like plates, eating utensils, glasses and pitchers of water.  Walls were for hanging practical items such as pots and pans in the kitchen, and Elliot’s guns above the fireplace. 

The only thing occupying space on the mantle was a leather-bound copy of the Holy Bible – the only book that mattered to the hill folk of Half Mountain.  Since the church had shut down a decade ago, education had become a forgotten luxury.  Reading and writing were taught nightly after dinner in each Half Mountain household by parents and older siblings, and the Holy Bible was the sole textbook.  Though nobody in Half Mountain could name any classic works of fiction or best-selling authors, they all knew how to read and discuss the Bible.  Elliot, in particular, could quote large portions of it. 

Elliot was a Proverbs man.  He loved the practicality of the ancient sayings.  And he loved the Book of James.  He always thought James must have been a down-to-earth fellow.

There was one wall of the Magoffin household, however, that was seen as almost as sacred as the Bible, and that was the stone wall surrounding the fireplace.  From its hooks lovingly hung and rested the most expensive, cherished items that the Magoffin family owned – their musical instruments. 

Several nights a week, depending upon how tired or lively Elliot and Nora felt, the family would sit around and play music together.  None were trained, but all had a natural gift for hearing music and interpreting it through one or more of the instruments. 

Usually following Pa’s nightly reading and discussion of scripture, everyone watched to see what would happen.  Some nights Ma and Pa would sit in the rocking chairs on the porch.  On these occasions, the kids would go to their rooms and either engage in talking, practicing a musical instrument by themselves, or playing games such as jacks or marbles.  If it was still light enough outside, the older children were permitted to relax with children from neighboring families before bed. 

On this night, Elliot walked over to the stone wall and pulled down his battered six-string guitar.  This was the cue that always sent everyone into an eager frenzy.  Benches and chairs were dragged over around the fireplace and everyone grabbed their instrument of choice and began tuning it on Elliot’s low E string. 

Nora sat next to her husband with her hammered dulcimer tuning a million strings.  Now in their twenties, the three oldest boys – Ellis, Arlie, and Kendrick – had moved to The City in an attempt to carve out a life for themselves outside of Half Mountain.  Their dobro, recorder, and lap steel guitar hung lovingly dusted, tuned, but unplayed – visual reminders of family members absent from home, though not from the heart.  Nellie, age nineteen, had recently married and her violin also hung quiet and still. 

The other instruments, however were snapped up in an instant.  The three older boys who still lived at home carefully prepared.  Carew, a brooding, restless seventeen-year old who was couldn’t wait to join his brothers in The City, retrieved his standing double bass from the corner and carefully tuned it.  Corbitt, a quiet, agreeable sixteen-year old, pulled down his banjo and inspected it carefully.  Carew and Corbitt couldn’t have been more different than night and day, yet the two were each other’s best friend and their father’s most trusted farm hands.

Granis, age fourteen, practiced a riff on his mandolin.  Of all their children, Granis had proven to be Elliot and Nora’s most challenging.  If anyone said anything embarrassing or out of place in public, it was likely to be Granis.  If anyone played a tasteless practical joke, all eyes turned to Granis.  More than anyone else in the family, Granis was intimately familiar with the business end of Elliot’s belt.  The family had a tree line across from the front of the house which they called the Granis Line.  It’s where he’d been sent to pick his own switch a thousand times as a kid.  Sharp as a whip, he was a slow learner when it came to bad behavior.

Maggie, age twelve, took her place at the foot pump organ.  Her red curly hair shone like the setting sun, flowing over her light green dress and down her back.  Her blue eyes were piercing, and her smile was engaging and fun-loving. 

Though all the children were loved for their own unique qualities, there was no doubt that Maggie was the apple of her father’s eye.  As a child, she had been both lovely and exhuberant.  Now that she was blossoming into womanhood, her beauty turned heads everywhere she went.  Even in her more mischievous moments – and there were plenty – she exuded an angelic quality that made Elliot glow with pride and her brothers highly protective of her.  It seemed that Maggie could do no wrong.  She was doted on not only by her father, but by her brothers as well.  Most of them, anyway.

Maggie sat at the foot pump organ practicing a run with her right hand that caught Granis’ attention and made him laugh.  Maggie shot her brother an annoyed glance and put a finger over her lips, hoping her parents hadn’t been alerted to what she was playing.  Though normally Granis and Maggie were constant hot-tempered rivals, on this occasion, Maggie understood and nodded. 

Nancy, age eleven, grabbed her lap dulcimer.  The only thing that distinguished Nancy from Maggie was that Nancy’s hair was blonde and curly whereas Maggie’s curls were flaming red.  Otherwise, the two looked and acted as twins, going so far as being able to complete one another’s sentences.  Nancy was of a quieter temperament, content to fade into the background, whereas, Maggie was fond of being the center of attention.

Dahlia, age nine, grabbed the autoharp.  Separated from Maggie and Nancy by a couple of years that seemed to her more like centuries, Dahlia worshipped Maggie and Nancy and lived in their shadow.  Unfortunately, she was interminably categorized as one of the youngsters and therefore frequently ignored, which she resented. 

In her group of youngsters, the youngest two children always felt left out.  Asbury, age seven, would someday grow up to be the tallest and strongest boy, towering head and shoulders over all of his siblings.  However, at the moment, he was tiny and easily overlooked.  His squeaky voice made a request. 

Can I play Ellis’ dobro? he asked. 

Honey, I think your fingers are too small, Nora said, causing him to pout.  And I wouldn’t want you to damage it.

Can I try Arlie’s recorder? asked Mollie, age five. 

Can’t hurt anything, I suppose, said Elliot, handing her the instrument.  Mollie stuck out her tongue at Asbury, who folded his arms and scowled at her.  Nora shot Elliot a thanks-a-lot glance, and Elliot smiled.  Diplomatically, he handed the dobro to Asbury, who lit up with glee. 

Be very careful with it, he warned.  Remember what I’ve taught you and try to keep up.  Don’t get upset if you can’t, or I won’t let you play it again.

Okay, Asbury promised, clutching the dobro as if it were recently discovered pirate treasure. 

What’ll it be? Nora asked Elliot. 

"How ‘bout Pretty Polly?" he suggested, much to everyone’s approval. 

After Elliot counted the song in, everyone launched into it at once.  They played by ear skillfully, having never even seen sheet music.  They listened to one another carefully, occasionally self-correcting as they went.  Elliot sang the verses and paused, allowing everyone to alternate taking a shot at playing a few measures of the melody on their own instrument. 

Everyone played well, and Maggie in particular had a talent for embellishing and improvising.  Rather than simply playing the melody, she played something different this time.  Granis stifled a laugh, and again, Maggie shot him a dirty look. 

The song concluded with the usual dramatic flair, causing a round of laughter and applause.  Elliot put his guitar away.  In response, everyone began putting their instruments back in the usual places.

Pa, can Granis, Nancy and I go over to the Wolf’s barn? Maggie asked. 

Sure, he said, adding his usual caveat, You and Granis don’t argue or fight.

We won’t, Maggie promised. 

Elliot Magoffin shared a forty-acre plot of ground with his childhood friends – Raymond and Alice Floyd, full blooded Cherokee Indians, and Albert and Florence Wolf, a black couple.  These three families worked the ground together and split everything three ways with an ecumenical spirit that could have served as a model for world peace.  Ironically, The Magoffins, the Floyds, and the Wolfs were almost completely ignorant of the history of hostility that existed between these three social groups. 

If Raymond and Alice Floyd were offered enough shots of whiskey, one would be able to extract tales of their Cherokee heritage that had woven its way through the pages of history.  Raymond and Alice were both hard-working and modest, and neither were given to boasting.  However, occasionally one heard stories that connected Raymond and Alice’s ancestors with Daniel Boone, William Clark, Andrew Jackson, and the notorious Trail of Tears. 

They bore no grudges, though.  They had no need.  Their hair was clean cut and their clothes were purely American Appalachian.  They barely looked Native American at all, except for their slightly darker skin, which could have been mistaken for a lifetime spent out in the sun. 

After all, there were fewer in Half Mountain who could outwork Raymond Floyd.  The first one awake and working in the fields, he was often the last to retire for the evenings.  He was also skilled in blacksmith work and toolmaking and kept everyone in Half Mountain well supplied with tools.  He had a knack for working with his hands and – like many of the men – could fix anything.

Meanwhile, Albert Wolf was highly regarded as the most educated and talented man around, and as such was probably the most popular.  He had a master’s degree in education.  That he had used his money to buy and restore an old biplane for crop-dusting made him eligible for the Nobel Prize in the eyes of the locals.  Not that he used it much.  However, it was there for community benefit and he had taught everyone in the family how to fly the old cropduster. 

Though most days he could be found farming with Elliot Magoffin and Raymond Floyd, Albert Wolf usually spent a couple mornings a week travelling a circuit through Half Mountain and the nearby farming communities, teaching the school-aged children.  During growing season, he flew the same circuit overhead providing pesticide services for the nearby farms.  He was a busy man, indeed. And indispensable.  That Albert and his family were black seemed inconsequential to the people of Half Mountain. 

Though he never charged the Magoffins or the Floyds for his services, the other Half Mountain neighbors paid him handsomely, which kept the Wolfs a little better than just afloat. As a result, everyone in the Wolf family were afforded the luxury of snappy looking clothes, and no one begrudged them this.  This black man was not only regarded as the most talented and educated man in several counties, but arguably he was the richest and most beloved. 

As a way of bringing a bit of modernity to Half Mountain – or at