out & about by Martha Bassett
Traces of the Past A few years ago, while rambling around on a Sunday drive, I stumbled upon the town of Rockford. I felt like I’d been transported back a century. I grew up in a place sort of like that, although Mount Nebo, WV, never reached the grandeur of Rockford. But we had a bona fide general store owned by our neighbors, the Kings, where we bought groceries, fertilizer for the garden, and new shoes at the beginning of the school year. The postmaster, Nora, knew everyone and her corner of the store was a bustling hub of news and gossip. Mom would occasionally send me down to pick up a gallon of milk and put it on our tab. The population of Mount Nebo was under 200 back then. I rode miles on my bike to play with other kids. I always wished I were one of the town kids who ran in packs and had tight social circles. All I had was freedom and long stretches of time to climb rock cliffs, build forts, read books, and follow paths in the woods. I thought we were poor because we didn’t eat food from cans, and my mom didn’t buy junk food. Most of the socializing happened at church, and it was at Gilgal Methodist that I attended two singing schools led by Aaron Ryder, the last itinerant singing-school teacher in WV. He traveled the state teaching farmers and coalminers how to sing hymns in four-part harmony using shaped note hymnals. Years later in a college class called “The History of American Music Education,” I read that singing schools were a phenomenon of the nineteenth century. Aaron’s wife, Freda, was my piano teacher and she played the old stride style. Instead of teaching me to play the music as it was written, she taught ear training, chord inversions, and improvisation.
Song Convention, just down the road, was teeming with tour buses and campers, backing up traffic for miles on our one lane road. All came out to hear famous family bands and Southern Gospel quartets on an open-air stage with a sound system so loud you could hear it a couple of miles away. Otherwise, everyone knew everyone, and their business. We didn’t lock our cars and homes. My older cousins told me about a fiddler’s convention, in nearby Clifftop. But I wasn’t allowed to go, as it was a hangout for hippies and flatlanders (my dad’s word for non-West Virginians). Now there are around 1600 people living in Mount Nebo. Houses line the two-lane road that winds through some of the prettiest countryside you’ll ever see. The General Store is boarded up and folks shop at the Walmart in the next town over. The last time I attended the Song Convention there were a few quartets singing along with tracks to a small audience. No bands, no buses, no crowds. At churches, the notes in the hymnals are round, and I hear it’s hard to find a pianist. Seeing Rockford brought all this to mind. If you were born before 1975 you probably have the same sort of tale to tell. I raised my children in Greensboro, NC, where they did not run free or eat directly from a garden. My generation (Gen-X) is perhaps the last to experience that older analog world. Nostalgia is tricky, and some of the past I’m more than happy to leave behind. But through rose-colored glasses I share the good parts, some of which still exist. Clifftop, for example, has grown into a flourishing music festival, still attracting hippies and flatlanders from all over the world. In fact, music is one place where you can reliably find traces of the past, even in the new stuff which always builds on the old, just like a town.
Twice per summer, the WV State Gospel Painting of Martha's family's farm by Keith Buckner. Photo by Keith Buckner. 16 • SURRY LIVING March 2021 Issue
