Chapter One
Blue Moon of Kentucky Rising
(The Beginnings to 1929)
The soul is a newly skinned hide, bloody and gross.
Work on it with manual discipline,
and the bitter tanning acid of grief,
and you'll become lovely, and very strong.
— Jelaluddin Rumi
A wagon road led south from the railroad depot in Rosine, Kentucky. It ranthrough a hollow, then turned west through the woods of Ohio County. It climbedand topped an elongated geological feature known locally as Jerusalem Ridge,proceeding parallel to the railway tracks below. Then it descended by curvesinto the little community of Horton and continued on to the larger town ofBeaver Dam.
The road bore traffic and commerce. Along it were carried corn and tobacco fromthe region's gently sloping fields, coal from its rolling hills, and — inparticular — hardwood timber from its old-growth forests. And this roadcarried pain to a little boy living on a large farm on the ridge, midwaybetween Rosine and Horton.
The child, the youngest of the eight children of James Buchanan Monroe andMalissa Vandiver Monroe, was born with a left eye that turned inward. Themedical term for the condition is esotropia. In this time and place, the brutalslang expression was "hug-eyed."
His overall vision was very poor. In compensation, his auditory sense developedkeenly. He learned to recognize from miles away the hoofbeats of horses andmules and the roll of wooden wheels. Experience taught that passersby werecoming who would laugh and joke about this cross-eyed boy if they saw him. So hewould run and hide in the barn until they passed.
As the youngest of a large family, he was often left alone by his busy parentsand impatient siblings. He grew thoughtful, his feelings sensitive, his emotionspowerful but unexpressed, yearning for human contact but too proud to admitpain.
He once looked back on his childhood and said:
For many years, I had nobody to play with or nobody to work under. You just hadto kindly grow up. Just like a little dog outside, tryin' to make his own way,trying to make out the best way he can.
Thus began the life of William Smith Monroe.
By the time Bill Monroe had become a living legend and his style of Americancountry-folk music was termed "bluegrass," in honor of his band the Blue GrassBoys, all this was known. And other stories became well established.
Bill, it was said, was a direct descendant of President James Monroe; he grew upin the mountains; he rose from hardscrabble poverty in a backward, backwoodsculture; bluegrass music sprang from ancient Scots-Irish culture transplantedto the Appalachians, where it blossomed as a traditional folk art.
Compelling as these other tales were, none were true. Bill Monroe was aplainspoken and typically honest man. These misconceptions did not arise fromhim, yet he did little to correct them. As it turns out, the truth is even morecompelling than the myths now interwoven through the history of thislarger-than-life character.
**
Some sources on Scottish clan names state that "Monroe" means "Man of Roe," ariver in Northern Ireland near which many Scots settled; hence the claims ofScots-Irish ancestry for Bill. But Clan Monroe has its roots firmly in theScottish Highlands, specifically in Easter Ross, north of Moray Firth and theGreat Glen. The name, first recorded around the twelfth century, may be fromthe Norman-influenced "Mon Rosse" ("hillmen of Ross"). It is almost alwaysspelled "Munro" in Scotland, and it was pronounced exactly that way by Bill'sfamily, right into the twentieth century — MUN-ro, with emphasis on thefirst syllable.
The Monroes had a warrior heritage. President Monroe's first ancestor in Americais believed to have been a Royalist Highlander who fought Cromwell's Puritans in1648; Sir Robert Munro was the first colonel of the famed Black Watch, leadingthem in 1745 against Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion. John Monroe, patriarchof the Ohio County Monroes, was a soldier of the Virginia Line during theRevolutionary War and one of many veterans rewarded for his service with landgrants in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
John Monroe was born November 10, 1749, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, whereJames Monroe also resided. (It is quite possible that they were distant cousins,making Bill Monroe at least a collateral descendant of the fifth Americanpresident.) John moved to Kentucky in January 1801, bringing his family withhim. By April 1832, he had made a permanent home in Ohio County, where he diedin 1837.
His descendants settled down to prosperous lives as landowners. John had threechildren, including a son, Andrew B. Monroe. The 1850 Ohio County census foundAndrew to be a fifty-five-year-old, Virginia-born farmer with property valued at$2,700. Andrew and his wife Alysie had eight children. Their eldest son, JohnJ., had eight children by his first wife, Lydia Charlotte Stevens. John andLydia's eldest, James Buchanan, born October 28, 1857, was known as "J.B." or"Buck."
No wonder J.B.'s son Bill Monroe would grow up feeling deeply connected to thepast, revering things that, as he put it, "go a way on back in time." Bill'sfather would have remembered the Civil War, and his great-great-grandfatheractually fought in the American Revolution.
Ohio County lies in western Kentucky, far from the Appalachian Mountains withwhich bluegrass music is now associated. It is even quite distinct from thefamed "bluegrass" region of central Kentucky, which helped give the music itsname. Nevertheless, the Monroes could hardly have found a better place to callhome. The region was lovely, fertile and rich in the natural resources neededby a vigorously expanding America. As far back as 1840, the first edition ofLewis Collins's History of Kentucky noted that Ohio County produced "excellentcrops of corn, tobacco, potatoes, clover and other grasses," adding that "timberis heavy and of a superior quality . . . and the coal is inexhaustible."
And soon a town conceived as a major metropolis was founded just down the wagonroad from the Monroe farms.
Shrewdly calculating the region's potential, Henry D. McHenry, a banker,businessman, and Kentucky state legislator, used his influence in 1870 to getthe Elizabethtown & Paducah Railroad (later the Illinois Central) toestablish an east-west main line through a settlement known as Pigeon Roost.McHenry and some business partners then bought up land in the area and formallyincorporated a town there in 1873. McHenry named it "Rosine" after the pen nameof his wife, poet Jenny Taylor McHenry.
Rosine was laid out on a grid pattern, with streets sixty feet in width to allowfor the heavy commercial traffic the investors expected. Front Street, thetown's main commercial district, ran along the north side of the railroadtracks facing the passenger depot and freight yard. From here, the train carriedpassengers and goods east to Louisville, where connections were made to therest of America, or west to Beaver Dam. With the railway to bring in people andtransport out timber, coal, and crops, McHenry believed, Rosine would be thenext Pittsburgh or Chicago.
Although Rosine never became a city, for nearly half a century it was a boomtown. There were nine stores along Front Street, plus a barbershop and doctors'offices. There was a flour and gristmill, a creamery, and warehouses for dryingtobacco and sumac, a shingle mill and a barrel stave mill. Rosine's downtowneven had paved streets, made with local sandstone and maintained by inmatesfrom the jail. It had hotels, bars, and poolrooms. (McHenry knew full well thata wet town in an otherwise dry region would have considerable advantages.) TheEarp family of western lore had roots in Ohio County, and just as Wyatt, Virgil,and Morgan worked as both lawmen and purveyors of base pleasures, so did theirRosine cousins: Walter C. Earp was sworn in as a town judge in 1907 and RussellEarp owned a local pool hall.
And like most American communities of the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies, Rosine loved its baseball. Just west of town was a baseball park,home to the Rosine Red Legs.
In fact, Rosine played a vital role in the national pastime: Until well into the1970s, the hardwoods used by the Hillerich & Bradsby Company for theirworld-famous "Louisville Slugger" bats came from here. Many a major league homerun has been hit off Rosine wood.
Such was bustling Rosine in the days when the Monroes would come to town onSaturday afternoons to trade or on Sunday mornings to attend the Methodistchurch (later celebrated by Bill in song as "The Little Community Church"). Itwas hardly the backwoods community of folk and old-time music mythology.
And the Monroes were anything but backward hillbillies. They were proud,hardworking, honest, and law-abiding. They were a bit aloof, shy actually.(Neighbors recall that they would often stand off by themselves after church.)They were considered quite wealthy by local standards, and they were highlyeducated for the times.
A profile of J.B.'s brother John H. Monroe in an 1885 history of Kentuckyrecorded that at age twenty-one, Jack had "traveled for pleasure for one year,visiting many important and interesting points in the South and West. . . . Mr.Monroe has had fair advantages in education, and his mind is well stored withthe learning of books, as well as with that of practical life." Where afifth-grade education was considered quite sufficient, Bill's father J.B. hadfinished the eighth grade. He read The Shorthorn in America, the publication ofthe American Shorthorn Breeders' Association. He was skilled in basicarithmetic. He recorded every penny of income and expenditure in a series ofnotebooks and ledgers.
Ambitious young men, J.B. and Jack soon made a career move from the timber andstave-cutting business they had been running: In 1883, with brother Andrew andtwo backers, they formed the firm of J. B. Monroe & Co. and opened a generalstore in Horton, selling clothing, shoes, canned goods, and household items.
The enterprise failed quickly. The Monroes became overextended and were sued bysuppliers because of overdue accounts. They tried valiantly to keep up paymentsbut were forced to liquidate their holdings and sell other assets to satisfytheir debts. It would not be the last time that a Monroe would venture into amajor business commitment and, despite bright expectations, watch it inexorablybecome a money hole. This sad aspect of family history was destined to repeatitself.
J.B. returned to the soil. At first he was a tenant farmer, but soon heprospered enough to purchase land on a long wooded hill almost halfway betweenRosine and Horton. In a time when most hills and hollows were given placenames, Buck's farm was situated on Pigeon Ridge. But adjacent to Pigeon Ridgewas a larger geological feature, and the Monroes preferred to identify theirhome with that more nobly named comb — Jerusalem Ridge.
J.B. began assembling property there as early as September 30, 1903, when hepurchased 320 acres from brother Jack and his wife, who remained neighboringlandholders. Over the next decade, he acquired adjoining land until his centralholdings were about 655 acres.
Buck's farm was not especially cash-generating, but it was busy, successful, andabove all diversified. Timber, coal, tobacco, corn, and molasses were sold, haywas grown, livestock pastured.
Buck's land contained large coal reserves, and he had a little mine completewith tracks and handcar. His surviving ledgers record brisk sales to companies,individuals, the Rosine school, and the nearby Horse Branch church (rendered as"kirk," the old Scottish term, in J.B.'s account books).
But for Buck Monroe and many other landowners, the important cash crop wastimber, much of it valuable old-growth hardwood from their heavily forestedlands. J.B. sold trees for "telefon" poles and "tall timber," long, straightwood commanding high prices. He sold tons of cross ties to the railroad. TheKentucky Wagon Manufacturing Company of Louisville was also a customer.
Even if the twentieth century had begun, the Monroes were living in anineteenth-century world.
**
J.B. soon took a bride. And it was through her that music came into the Monroefamily.
The object of his affections was Malissa A. Vandiver of neighboring ButlerCounty. Born July 12, 1870, she was the youngest of ten children of Joseph M.Vandiver, a farmer born in Tennessee, and his wife, Manerva J. Farris, born inKentucky.
Malissa's parents had foreign roots, and these roots were close to the surface.Vandivers from the Netherlands had settled in New York, New Jersey, and Delawarein the 1600s, then migrated west. Joseph's nickname, in fact, was "Dutch."Malissa's maternal grandmother was of recent Irish descent and spoke in abrogue.
Malissa's family initially settled in Banock near the Ohio County border(although by the time of her marriage they had moved to Horton). Manerva passedaway in 1897. Joseph died in 1905, nine days after being hit by a train nearWhite Run, five miles east of Rosine. His estate sued the Illinois CentralRailroad for $2,000. It settled out of court for $100.
Most of the Vandivers were musically gifted, playing instruments and singing.Malissa's next oldest sibling was her brother Pendleton M. Vandiver, a.k.a.Pen. Born in 1869, Pen was a sometime farmworker, sometime trader, and oft-timefiddler whose infectious rhythm shuffle with the bow caused him to be in greatdemand at local square dances. And "Uncle Pen" was destined to become the greatearly musical influence on one of his nephews.
How J.B. and Malissa met is now forgotten, but it was probably at a dance, themajor social nexus for young people in those days. Malissa loved to do theKentucky backstep, J.B. could buck-and-wing dance, and both certainly danced"quadrilles" (square dances).
The Monroes were by now an old family in that part of Kentucky, relativelyprosperous and well educated. The Vandivers were recent arrivals, farmworkers,not landowners. Some, including Malissa and Pen, were illiterate. The elderMonroes disapproved at first of Buck's marriage, feeling that a Vandiver wassocially beneath him.
Buck was undeterred. He was entranced. Malissa was tall and attractive, withblue eyes, red hair, and freckles. She grew white roses and wore them in herhair from the first buds of spring to the last flowers of fall. She washigh-spirited. She loved to dance and loved to horserace against friends.
And she sang old ballads in a high, clear voice, and played fiddle, accordion,and harmonica, and probably other instruments as well during her free moments.Like all farm women, these free moments were precious few: Malissa raisedchickens and turkeys for the home table and sold the eggs and meat in town. Shecanned the summer's produce. She cooked for the household and for hired hands,who, in keeping with the custom of the day, were given their midday meals wherethey worked. She did unending chores.
When Buck and Malissa were courting, the journey between Ohio and Butlercounties took so long by bridge or ferry across the Green River that Buckcouldn't wait. He would simply swim straight across the flow to visit hisbeloved.
J.B. and Malissa were married on August 2, 1892. He was thirty-four, she wastwenty-two. It would be the first and last marriage for both.
A large family followed: Harry C. (born in 1893); Speed V., his surname from theVandiver family (1894); John J., named after his grandfather (1896); Maude Bell(1898); Birch, named after one of Buck's brothers (1901); Charles Pendleton, hismiddle name of course honoring Malissa's brother (1903); and Bertha, who latermarried a German railroad engineer named Bernard Kurth (1908).
The Vandivers were as gregarious as the Monroes were reserved, and a mix ofthese contrasting personality traits were inherited by the children. Althoughthe daughters were somewhat diminutive, the sons were robust young men, sometall or wiry like the Dutch Vandivers, some big and solid like the ScottishMonroes. The youngsters were taught to stand up straight and not slouch. "Getthem shoulders back" was a frequent parental admonition in the Monroehousehold. The boys were remarkable for their strong, balanced postures, evenwhen standing in casual conversation.
J.B. became a significant local employer, paying good wages, as much as a dollara day, with as many as ten people working for him full or part time. Onelongtime employee was Hubert Stringfield. Hubert had a hobby that was later ofspecial interest to one of Buck's children — he played the mandolin.
By the autumn of 1911, J.B. Monroe had a home farm of more than 360 acres plusfour additional lots in the town of Rosine. He owned three horses, five mules,various head of cattle, a breeding bull, hogs, and two prize foxhounds, plusvarious plows, wagons and mowers. He estimated the value of his land andmovables at $2661.00.
Soon Buck Monroe would have another addition to his homestead. Earlier thatyear, Malissa had again found herself pregnant.
This last child was surely an accident, unplanned at a time when there was notmuch in the way of family planning. Malissa was forty-one years old, J.B. nearlyfifty-four; their previous child, Bertha, had been born three years earlier, andCharlie five years before her. Who would have expected Malissa to conceive aneighth time?
Perhaps the family's attitude to this final arrival was unintentionallyexpressed by Buck, who quipped after its birth, "Malissa, I wouldn't take athousand dollars for all of the children, but I wouldn't give a dime foranother one!"
A neighbor came to visit Malissa late in her pregnancy on a miserably hot andhumid day. Her ankles were swollen and she was sitting outside her house,vigorously picking away on an instrument, trying to distract herself. The childwithin her, very soon to be born, must have felt the vibrations.
September 13, 1911, was an uncharacteristically quiet day at the Monroe farm.J.B. sold 31 pounds of coal for $1.44, and he paid brothers Riley and Mose Hunt$1 each for a full day's work hauling railroad cross ties. ("Haled ties," Buckwrote in one of his ever-present ledger books.)
Perhaps little had gotten done because J.B. was otherwise occupied. On this day,his and Malissa's eighth child was born, a boy. He was named in honor of two ofJ.B.'s brothers: William Smith Monroe.
Bill had been born on a Friday the 13th. In later years, he would turn thisinauspicious date into a good omen, jauntily declaring that he was "lucky fromKentucky." In fact, Bill was unlucky at the very start, thanks to his poorvision and the inwardly crossed eye that soon made him a target for teasing.
His eyes were more than a cosmetic problem. If not corrected by age six or sevenby operating on the eye and straightening it, esotropia inevitably leads toamblyopia, in which the central neural connections of the eye to the brain failto develop. After age eight, although the eye can still be physicallystraightened, the atrophied nerve pathways will cause lifelong vision dimness,blurring, even pattern confusion. A child's ability to see and interact withpeople, succeed at school, play and enjoy sports are all disrupted. As best ascan be determined, Bill Monroe's eye was not straightened until he was wellinto his teens.
Strangers were not the only ones to tease him about his eyes. At times, hissiblings did too. His mother would shush the others if she caught them at it.But Willie, as he was called in the family, came in for some maternaldisciplining as well. He adored his father and became frustrated when his dadwouldn't take him along during a busy day's work. If he complained, Malissaquickly put an end to it. Bill tried to understand.
The Monroe children attended school in Horton, slightly closer to their homethan Rosine. They walked to school, of course. Their mother knew right to thesecond when they should be walking back in the afternoon.
Sometimes the children played on the handcar in J.B.'s coal mine. Once theyoverloaded it with playmates, sending it off its tracks and rolling down intothe woods. Charlie was nominated to confess to J.B. Buck was a toughdisciplinarian but he also knew when a whupping was not necessary. ("He couldlook at you harder than any man you ever seen in your life," Charlie recalledyears later.) On this occasion, Buck simply hauled the cart back into the mine,reset it on the tracks, and made the kids promise never to pull that stuntagain.
And where was Bill during these fine youthful misadventures? He was left out. Inlarge farming families, older siblings were expected to raise the youngest. Butthe older Monroe children often couldn't be bothered with little Willie. Theydidn't hate him, but he was a social liability, a cross-eyed embarrassment. Theytreated him more like a stepchild than a full family member, often ignoring him,even when he followed them devotedly.
Left to himself, Bill wandered the woods and fields of the sprawling property,thinking: Lonesome is walking around by yourself, wondering where your brothersare.
Because of his eyes and his lowly status, Bill's social development was stunted.He became guarded and thoughtful. He grew desperately to need love andaffirmation. And his auditory senses grew keen: Many of his childhood memoriesremained not in the form of visual images but the recollections of sounds. Thechild would truly become the father to the man.
The circumstances of Bill's birth had other implications. Current research intofamily birth order strongly suggests that the youngest children of largefamilies, in an effort to find a niche for themselves, tend to becomeinnovators, even rebels. As adults, they not only free themselves from oldrules and stereotypes, they create entirely new paradigms. If so, the youngestchild of J.B. and Malissa Monroe was going to be a textbook example.
One night when Bill was about four, a neighbor woman came to the Monroe home.Bill had no way of knowing she was a midwife, the same one who had deliveredhim. There was a 30-by-12-foot corn crib near the house, and the children stillliving there — Birch, Charlie, Bertha, and Bill — were sent out tosleep in it. The adults didn't want them around for what was about to happen:the wife of one of Bill's oldest brothers had come home to have a baby.
The birth of this niece was one of the most painful milestones in Bill'schildhood, as he admitted years later to some close friends:
The next morning, my father came and told us kids a new baby had been born. Thatwas the first I ever heard of a new baby coming around, me being the youngest.So they bought us into the house so we could see the new baby.
Back in those days, a kid was babied and petted more than they are today. Sowhen she came into the picture, you know, that kind of shoved me out. My motherwould hold her, and I'd have to stand down beside her and wish I was in herlap. So from that time on, [Mother] acted like that. It made it a sad life, alonesome life.
Not surprisingly, the little boy who lost his mother's lap would exhibit alifelong pattern of competitiveness and jealousies.
Malissa and J.B. were not neglectful parents. They were simply middle-agedpeople in a labor-intensive world who were nearly overwhelmed with work. Billidolized his father. In the mornings he would stand next to him at the table(the family was so large there was no room for him to sit), eating hisbreakfast out of a little blue and white bowl. He followed his dad around,watching what Buck did. Bill learned silently, just by watching.
Little Willie was so acutely shy that during visits to town he would hide behindhis dad like a little squirrel scurrying around a tree trunk. When Buck receivedchange from a purchase, he sometimes gave Bill a nickel or a dime. For the restof his days, Bill cherished the memory of receiving those shiny coins and thepaternal affection they represented.
As a child, Bill literally had few conversations with anyone. (Bertha, closestto him in age, was the only sibling who really spent time playing with him.)Much later he began to wonder if — because he had been so withdrawn andlooked so odd with his crossed eye — people around Rosine thought he wasretarded.
Bill's father never gave him a whupping. But as an adult, Bill confided to a fewpeople that he had suffered some physical abuse. One of his oldest brothers(whose name is now lost to history) would drink, get surly, and hit him. Thereis no indication that alcoholism was a problem in the family (indeed, UncleJack Monroe was a temperance man and most of Buck's children grew up to beteetotalers). But there was some drinking among the Monroes. Buck's ledgerbooks record occasional purchases of whiskey, and he would occasionally have apick-me-up dram of bourbon at the start of a hard day. When Bill became oldenough to work, Buck shared this daily ritual with him. Bill realized that heliked the taste of bourbon too much, and he remembered the whiskey-fueled abusehe had suffered; so he stopped drinking hard liquor and never touched it again.For the rest of his life, he only imbibed a small glass of wine with dinner andthis only on rare occasions.
For all the hardworking Monroes, including shy, lonely Willie, music was adiversion and a comfort. Malissa often placed her fiddle and bow carefully on abed, and when she had a moment's rest would play a number like "Old Joe Clark."(Malissa once played fiddle for an entire evening's square dance when theregular fiddler took sick and couldn't attend.) Or she would pick up her littleaccordion and play "Heel and Toe Polka." Or sing an old ballad from the EnglishIsles, like "The Butcher Boy." Malissa's music permeated the very atmosphere ofthe Monroe home. To Bill, the small boy with terribly limited vision, thesesounds were among the most beautiful sensations to penetrate his consciousness.
And there was Malissa's brother Pen.
Pendleton Vandiver was tall and slender like his sister. In his older years, hewas nearly bald but had a striking white handlebar mustache. With his biboveralls and a broadbrimmed black hat set back on his head, if anyone everlooked like a real country old-timer, it was Uncle Pen.
In 1901, at age thirty-two, Pen had married Anna Belle Johnson, age fifteen.Both were living in Sulphur Springs, Kentucky, at the time. Pen was farming,but may also have worked as an entertainer at the health spas in that town. Thecouple had two children but soon separated. The daughter, Leona, went with AnnaBelle, who remarried. The son, Cecil Clarence (named in part for Pen's longtimefriend Clarence Remus Wilson), went with Pen, who moved back to Rosine where hewas an occasional employee of his brother-in-law Buck Monroe.
The sight of Pen riding up on his mule at sundown sent excitement through hisnieces and nephews. He often brought them sticks of hard candy. And he broughtan even greater treat — his music. He would stay to supper and fiddle suchwonderful tunes: "Soldier's Joy," "Boston Boy," "Going Across the Ocean,""Methodist Preacher," "Pretty Betty Martin," "Going Up Caney" (which might havebeen inspired by the Caney River east of Rosine). Bill adored "Jenny Lynn" andthought it was the best one Pen played, the one he would rather hear thananything else. The youngsters begged for tune after tune until J.B. firmlypacked them off to bed.
**
The fiddle — no different from a violin — was the instrument of choicethroughout much of the South for listening and to accompany dancing. Uncle Penkept a rattlesnake tail in his violin, a common practice among old-timefiddlers, said variously to improve the tone, prevent mice from attacking theinstrument, or collect the dust that settled inside. Pen was a solid musician.Like many old-time style rural fiddlers, his noting and intonation were onlyadequate, but he possessed a superb sense of timing and bowing that made him apopular dance fiddler around Rosine.
As Bill became involved in music, he would not specifically ask Uncle Pen how toplay numbers. He learned the way he learned farm chores from his father, byclose attention and private practice. Pen showed him other things, how to makerabbit snares and how to dance the Kentucky backstep. He gave Bill quiet butfirm advice if he did something wrong. If Pen didn't say anything, Bill knew hewas doing pretty well right. Bill's future style of instructing his musicalsidemen was being formed.
There was other music around, other sounds to enthrall and delight the boy.Uncle Pen's friend Clarence Wilson played five-string banjo in a basictwo-finger picking style. Uncle Birch Monroe played a cello with a bow, provinga bass line for the fiddler and banjo during parlor music sessions. The veryfirst live music Bill heard was the three men playing the old frolic tune"Soldier's Joy."
There were local ensembles like the Foster String Band and Faught's Entertainersthat played "breakdowns" (fast square dance tunes), waltzes, even a littleHawaiian music. Mechanical music was moving into the hills by now. The Monroes'nineteenth-century-style world had admitted no electricity, not even, it seems,a battery-powered radio. But J.B. purchased a windup Victrola.
Most of the children learned to play instruments. Speed became a fine ifreticent fiddler. Bertha could play the guitar a little and loved to sing theold hymns. But it was Birch and Charlie who started practicing in earnest.
Birch was the oldest of the children still living at home. At age thirteen, helaid claim to the use of his mother's fiddle. Charlie purchased his first guitara few years later, when he was about eleven. It was an old thing and had onlyone string on it, but he bought it on credit, promising to pay three dollars.
"Well, Charlie, how in the world are you going to pay for it?" Malissa asked.
If that weren't bad enough, Charlie had a further problem: "Mama, I've got tohave five more strings."
Another parent might have sent Charlie straight back to return the instrument.Instead Malissa said, "Well, if you're going to have five more strings, we'regoing to have to pick up a few chickens and take them to town." Malissa selectedsome frying chickens, sold them, and with the proceeds bought Charlie hisstrings. Charlie strung up the guitar and then sat up all night, beating on it,unable to make chords, unable even to tune it, but too excited to leave italone.
When Bill was older, he helped the sons of a family that worked on the Monroeland to take horses to water at a creek on the property. He loved racing thehorses — like mother, like son in this case — and on one occasionBill was thrown, partially dislocating his hip. He tried to hide his limp, buthis parents sum
