Satterwhite, Caroly" Between the Cracks of History: E - Eric - U.S.

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DOCUMENT RESUME
SO 029
ED 428 986
Abernethy, Francis Edward, Ed.; Satterwhite, Caroly"
AUTHOR
Fiedler, Ed.
Between the Cracks of History: Essays on Teaching and
TITLE
Illustrating Folklore. Publications of the Texas Folklo-
Society: 55.
Texas Folklore Society, Nacogdoches.
INSTITUTION
ISBN-1-57441-036-9
ISBN
1997-00-00
PUB DATE
290p.; "Illustrations by Cynthia Fisher."
NOTE
University of North Texas Press, P.O. Box 311336, Denton, TX
AVAILABLE FROM
76203-1336; Tel: [phone] ($27).
Classroom
-- Guides
General (020)
Collected Works
PUB TYPE
Teacher (052)
MF01/PC12 Plus Postage.
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Cultural Education; *Definitions; *Folk Culture; Heritage
DESCRIPTORS
Education; Higher Education; Internet; Local History; Oral
History; Oral Tradition; State History
Folklorists; *Folktales; *Texas
IDENTIFIERS
ABSTRACT
This book is composed of 21 essays that define and
illustrate the folklore of Texas. Following the introduction, the six essays
(F. E.
concerned with defining are: "Classroom Definitions of Folklore"
Abernethy); "Defining Folklol'e for My Etudents" (Joyce Roach); "Folklore and
Cinema" (Jim Harris); "Toward a Definition of Folk Culture" (Joe S. Graham);
"Folklore Fieldwork on the Internet: Some Ethical and Practical
Considerations" (Jan Roush); and "Beginning Within: Teaching Folklore the
The 15 essays ccncerned with illustrating the
Easy Way" (Rhett Rushing) .
definitions are: "The Honored Dead: The Ritual of Police Burial" (Phyllis
Bridges); "Meaner than Hell!" (Kenneth W. Davis); "Gang Graffiti" (Ken
Untiedt); "Gideon Lincecum, 'Killie Krankie,' and Fiddling in Early Texas"
(Chris Goertzen); "The Bluebird Mare from Sterling City" (Patrick Dearen);
"The Night the Stars Fell" (Robert J. Duncan); "Rail Tales: Some Are True"
(Charlie Oden); "Dance Halls of East Texas: From Oral History" (Dennis Read,
Bobby Nieman); "The Oil Field Camp" (James Winfrey); "Noises in the Attic:
Adventures of Some Texas Ghosts" (Allan Turner, Richard Stewart); "Repo Man"
(John Lightfoot); "Tex-Mex Dialect or Gidget Goes to Acuna" (Rebecca
Cornell); "Punching Sticks, Flannel Wrapped Bricks, and Pink Powder
Purgatives: Spring Rituals" (Ernestine Sewell Linck); "When Harley Sadler's
Othe-
Tent Show Came to Town" (J.G. Pinkerton); and "Eating over the Sink and
Marital Strategies" (James Ward Lee).
(13T)
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Between the
LRACKS OF HISTORY
Essays
on
and
Teaching
Illustrating Folklore
Publications of the Texas
Folklore Society LV
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND
Office of Educational Research and Improvement
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION
DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS
CENTER (ERIC)
BEEN GRANTED BY
EV This document has been reproduced as
received from the person or organization
F. E. Abernetk."
originating it.
0 Minor changes have been made to
improve reproduction quality.
TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Points of view or opinions stated in this
INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)
document do not necessarily represent
official OERI position or policy.
EST CiPY AVM
LE
Between the
CRACKS
OF
HISTORY
Essays
on
and
Teaching
Illustrating Folklore
Publications of the
Texas Folklore Society
LV
Francis Edward
Abernethy, Editor
Carolyn Fiedler
Satterwhite, Assistant
Editor
Illustrations by Cynthia
Fisher
University of North Texas
Press
Denton, Texas
3
© 1997 Texas Folklore.Society
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition 1997
5 4 3 2 1
Requests for permission to reproduce materials
from this book should be directed to
Permissions
University of North Texas Press
PO Box 311336
Denton, TX 76203-1336
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, z39.48.1984. Binding materials have
been chosen for durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Between the cracks of history : essays on teaching and illustrating
folklore / edited by Francis Edward Abernethy.
(Publications of the Texas Folklore Society ; 55)
cm.
p.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57441-036-9 (alk. paper)
1. FolkloreTexas. 2. Folklore. 3. FolkloreStudy and teaching.
I. Abernethy, Francis Edward. II. Series.
GR110.T5B47 1997
398'.09764dc21
97-17598
CIP
Cover and interior design by Accent Design and Communications
Contents
Between the Cracks of
History
vii
Essays on Teaching
Folklore
Classroom Definitions of
Folklore
F. E. Abernethy
3
Defining Folklore for
My Students
Joyce Roach
10
Folklore and Cinema
Jim Harris
16
Toward a Definition of
Folk Culture
Joe S. Graham
27
Folklore Fieldwork
on the Internet:
Some Ethical and Practical
Considerations
Jan Roush
42
Beginning Within: Teaching
Folklore the Easy Way
Rhett Rushing
54
Essays Illustrating
Folklore
The Honored Dead:
The Ritual of Police
Burial
Phyllis Bridges
79
Meaner Than Hell!
Kenneth W. Davis
94
Gang Graffiti
Ken Untiedt
102
Gideon Lincecum, "Ki
llie Krankie,"
and Fiddling in Early
Texas
Chris Goertzen
111
The Bluebird Mare from Sterling City
134
Patrick Dearen
The Night the Stars Fell
149
Robert J. Duncan
Rail Tales: Some are True
164
Charlie Oden
Dance Halls of East Texas: From Oral History
182
Dennis Read and Bobby Nieman
The Oil Field Camp
193
James Winfrey
Noises in the Attic: Adventures of Some Texas Ghosts
205
Allan Turner and Richard Stewart
Repo Man
215
John Lightfoot
Tex-Mex Dialect or Gidget Goes to Acuna
226
Rebecca Cornell
Punching Sticks, Flannel Wrapped Bricks,
and Pink Powder Purgatives: Spring Rituals
235
Ernestine Sewell Linck
When Harley Sadler's Tent Show Came to Town
246
J. G. Pinkerton
Eating Over the Sink and Other Marital Strategies
261
James Ward Lee
271
Contributors
279
Index
Between the Cracks of
History
I wonder if folklorists follow
historians like gleanersor
cot-
ton strippers in west Texasand
collect the leavings from
aca-
demic historians, all the tales
and songs and traditions that the
historians allow to fall between
the cracks? Or that historians
sweep under the rug? Or drop? Or choose
to ignore?
Historians research, document,
and file the facts of
a hap-
pening. They are supposed to
get the details right, but
some-
times in following the letter of
the investigation, they lose the
spiritwhich falls between the
cracks of history where it
is
pounced on by the ever-lurking
folklorist, who scarfs it
up like a
hog on a mushmelon.
Maybe its not just historians
who let pouncable things fall
between the cracks. Maybe folklorists
follow doctors around for
their droppin's and leavin's,
and find out that urine relieves
bull
nettle burn and that tobacco
eases the pain of a yellow-jacket
sting and that chicken
soup is as good for the flu as anything
doctors prescribe. And maybe
folklorists follow wildlife biologists
and conclude that if they hear
an owl hoot in the daytime, that
owl is watching
a buck walking. I hold firmly to that latter
belief,
by the way, and when the
owl hoots I can see vividly
in my mind's
eye a big, old mossy-horned buck easing his
way through a pine
thicket.
On the other hand
On the other hand, maybe
historians followed folklorists at
some dimly remembered past time to
see what fell between the
7
Preface
cracks as the folk passed along myths, legends, and folktales.
Tell me, what history did not begin with the leavin's of folklore,
the oral traditions that went back to the myths of the creation of
the world and Eden, the legends of the great kings and warriors
of Camelot, and the folktales that grew out of all these hand-me-
downs and became the Iliad?
What science did not begin as folklore? Modern scientific me-
teorology was preceded by Zeuses and Thors and Jehovahs who
rumbled their presence with bolts of lightning and volcanic erup-
tions and with floods that drowned the world. The folk were us-
ing levers, screws, and inclined planes as part of their inherited
artifacts before physics became an acknowledged science. A stu-
dent could easily learn his valence tables when chemistry was in
one of its folkloric stages, when all matter was made of various
combinations of earth, air, fire, and water. In geology, that sci-
ence and the whole universe was simpler when folks thought
that the earth was flat and was twice as long as it was wide and
that it was surrounded by the great river Ocean and that it was
created in 4004 B.C. and that it was created for man who was
unique and it sole inheritor. And the manipulation of holy num-
bers by the Mayans and Aztecs to understand the peregrina-
tions of the sun and the moon and the seasons made mathematics
a religious exercise long before it was an academic discipline.
Singing and dancing, making music on drums and with flutes,
painting on walls and sculpting gods and gargoyles: all these
things began with the folk before the academic fine arts were
ever envisioned.
So, folklore might be that which falls between the cracks of
history (or biology or sociology, ad infinitum) but students and
teachers must not forget that long before these leavin's fell
through the cracks from the anointed hands of academia, folk-
lore was the beginning, the Alpha, and most probably will be the
Omega.
viii
Between the Cracks of History
All of which is a garrulous prelude to
an introduction for this
volume's contents. Between the Cracks of History
is partially peda-
gogical. The introductory essays, which
were spawned at the
Fort Worth meeting in 1995,
are concerned with defining, ex-
plaining, and teaching folklore. Some of
us have been immersed
in folklore for so long that we
assume that everybody defines
and understands folklore the
same way as we do. That is not
necessarily the case, however, and it behooves
the Society to
pause periodically to examine basic premises.
The essays which follow illustrate the definitions
and, with
luck and latitude, illustrate the title of the
book, Between the
Cracks of History. Gideon Lincecum did
not completely fall
through the cracks of history, but when
one encounters his name
in Texas history books, he will not find much about
Gideon as a
fiddler. Chapters on west Texas history will
discuss rodeos as
one part of that area's social fabric but will probably neglect the
machinations of the Bluebird Mare. East Texas
histories will
spend a long chapter
on the East Texas oil boom of the 1930s
but will leave out Mattie's Palm Isle and
the other oilfield
honkytonks of that exciting time. Burial rituals,
oil camp cus-
toms, and railroad yarns all
are parts of the history of their
times; but when historians tell
us about handgun violence or an
oilfield opening up or a train wreck,
some of the personal re-
membrances, the folklore, falls between the cracks.
Some of these
leavin's lie around for
years before a wandering folklorist picks
them up, scratches through the grime
on the surface and real-
izes he has found gold.
I tell my students, and anybody who will listen,
that if they
wish to study the world and mankind
in all of their dimensions
of time and space, then folklore
is the teacher to whom they
must turn.
For the sixteenth time, I thank this
volume's contributors for
the time and energy they spent writing
and correcting and doing
ix
Preface
all the things one has to do to get
a manuscript ready for publi-
cation. The Society has a strong and loyal and involved
mem-
bership, if you haven't noticed.
The Texas Folklore Society thanks English Department
head
Patricia Russell and Liberal Arts Dean James Speer of Stephen
F. Austin State University for their support. The Texas
Folklore
Society would not be here on the
campus without the generous
assistance provided by President Dan Angel and his administra-
tion. The Society has been on the SFA
campus for twenty-six
years, and several presidents have come and gone during that
time. But all of this university's presidents have supported the
Society generously and personally, and
we hope that we have
responded in kind. The Society cannot exist without the full
com-
mitment of its university host, which provides
space, time, office
expenses, and intangibles too numerous to mention. We
appre-
ciate the hospitality of our host.
And this editor and this Society thank Assistant Editor
Carolyn Satterwhite for her work
on this fifty-fifth volume of the
Publications of the Texas Folklore Society and for all her work
as the Society's Secretary and Treasurer.
Francis Edward Abernethy
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas
February 17, 1997