STF Opening Address, March 5, 1999
Written and Presented by Linda Goodman
©Linda Goodman 1999
The theme for this year’s Sharing the Fire is “Passing the
Torch.” Of course, for one to pass the
torch there must be a potential torch-bearer to accept it. I suspect that a number of you are newcomers
to Sharing
the Fire. Even some
you old-times here may be sitting on the fence, not yet convinced that the
storytelling torch is one that you can bear.
Perhaps this conference will make up your mind for you. At the very least, it will give you a lot to
think about.
Personally, I believe that “Passing the Torch” is a
misnomer. The word “the” implies that
there is only one torch to pass. Every
true storyteller has countless torches in his or her cache. As soon as one is passed along, another is
taken and held aloft as the storyteller waits for the next torch bearer to
come. The torches are lit from an
eternal flame that burns deep in our hearts, a flame that cannot be ignored
once it has made its presence known. We
have no choice but to share the fire, to “pass torches.”
I could give you many reasons as to why the storytelling
torch is a worthy one to pass. There are
the rote reasons that we use all the time – the ones we use to convince schools
and other institutions to engage
storytellers. I will
not enumerate those reasons because you know them already and can probably
recite them by heart. As a storyteller,
I have learned that my stories do not work unless they live in my heart. For
that reason I would like to share with you why the flame of
storytelling burns in my heart, why I could not ignore it even if I tried –
and, believe me, I have tried.
I was born in the town St. Paul in Wise County, Virginia – a
coal mining area nestled in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. We lived in primitive conditions when I was
born there in 1952. In fact, my family,
along with most of the other families we knew, had no electricity: ergo, no
television. That was okay, though. We managed to find other ways to amuse
ourselves. There were church socials and
county fairs. My favorite activity was
to go into the center of town on a Saturday afternoon and listen to the
storytellers who gathered there.
One of the most popular storytellers in the area just
happened to be my father. Daddy had had a touch of the wanderlust in his youth
and had hopped freight trains all over North America before coming back to Wise
County to settle down at the ripe old age of forty-one. He could hold folks spellbound for hours with
his tales of far-off places. Most of his
audience had never been outside Wise County.
Storytelling, I learned early in life, could make me feel like I had
actually visited places I had never even seen; could even make me feel like I
knew people I had never even met. My
family could not afford movies in those days, but storytelling allowed me to
paint pictures in my own imagination – pictures that were just as detailed and
real as those on the big screen.
My parents used storytelling to teach their children and
found it to be quite a successful learning tool. I was never told to not do something. Rather, I was told a story about someone who
suffered the consequences of the actions I was contemplating. When my mother found me playing near the
road, she did not tell me not to play near the road. Instead, she said, “You know, my cousin,
Marthie Jean, played
near the road one day.
Wagon come by. Wheel broke
loose. Rolled over her leg and broke it
in three places. She still limps to this
very day!”
It never occurred to me to ask how one wheel could break a
leg in three places. I never played near
the road again.
When the first European settlers migrated to the mountains
of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee, they found
a people already living there in villages with English-style houses and
Christian churches. These people had the
appearance of being white, spoke Elizabethan English, claimed to be
“Portyghee”, and called themselves Melungeons.
These are the people from whom I am descended.
The Melungeons were living on the fertile land of the
valleys, the best land: the land that these new settlers wanted, and, indeed,
had even been promised, for themselves.
They seized this land by the only legal
means possible at the time.
They convinced the state of Tennessee to declare the Melungeons to be free
people of color. Virginia, West Virginia,
Kentucky , and North Carolina followed suit.
Free people of color were not allowed to own land. They could not even petition the courts to
right this injustice.
The result was that the Melungeons were forced to leave
their own land. They were banished into the mountains, pushed further and
further back until finally they settled on the rocky soil where no sane person
would choose to live. Folks started
calling them by a new name:
ridge-runners.
The origin of the Melungeons is a mystery to this day, but
many stories have circulated about where they came from and what kind of people
they are. So many theories have been put
forth that the Melungeons are often referred to as “Sons and Daughters of the
Legend.” Legend, in this instance, is
not a complimentary term. I heard those
legends often when I was a child. One of
them claimed that the Melungeons were tri-racial isolates, an ominous mixture
of renegade Indian, escaped slave, and poor
white trash. Always
the stories about Melungeons contained adjectives like inbred, immoral, filthy,
and ignorant. Some of the stories even
used us as a substitute for the boogey-man.
“If you don’t behave,” children were told, “the Melungeons will get
you!”
Thank God that I had the stories of my father, a man whom I
knew to speak true, to counter-balance the stories that I heard when I went
into town. My father’s stories were
about a people so intelligent that they could grow vegetables from rock; a
people of integrity, who would rather die than go against their principles; a
people who communed with nature to the point that they could predict the
weather as well as any modern weatherman, who knew the habits of any animal
native to their mountain home; a people dedicated to family and fiercely loyal
to friends. My father’s stories are
responsible for the pride that I have in my heritage today. I shudder to think what my life would have
been like, had I not had him to expose the lies that were told by those who did
not know or understand us.
Today the Melungeon story has been preserved in a book
entitled Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People. In this book, author N. Brent Kennedy
reclaims the dignity that had been lost to so many
Melungeons. As a
result of his story, many who have spent their lives hiding their pasts have
come forward to claim their heritage at last. Our story is being told and told
often, and the story’s power is making those who once derided our way of life
not only hear, but listen.
When my family moved from the Appalachian Mountains to
Portsmouth, Virginia, we found that Portsmouth folks (City Slickers, we called
them) did not care much for hillbillies in their midst. We were outsiders. The grown-ups, I believe, did not mind being
outsiders. In fact, I believe they
preferred it that way. But we children
wanted nothing more than to fit into our new environment. My brother Allen hit upon the idea that the
Great Dismal Swamp, which was just a few miles from our apartment, was the way
to do it.
All of us kids knew someone, who knew someone, who knew
someone else, who had gone into that swamp and never returned – just
disappeared. Dozens of stories
circulated about what might have happened to them. My brother Allen managed to convince my
brother Lee that if the two of them could go into that swamp, spend the day,
and live to tell the tale, they would be heroes. Everyone would want to be their friend.
That is how I came to be among a group of children standing
on the edge of the swamp one Saturday morning, waving to my brothers as they
walked inside. Tears streaked my face –
I was sure that I would never see either of them again. But in the late afternoon, back out they
came, bringing with them a tale of having found a grown man sunk up to his neck
in quicksand. They claimed they had each
grabbed an arm and popped him up to safety.
It never occurred to the rest of us kids to ask my brothers
where that man was. All we knew was that
they had spent the day in the swamp and had not only managed to survive, but
had saved a life in the bargain. My
brothers’ plan had worked. They did
become heroes. Everyone wanted to be
their friend. And I was an eye-witness to a real-life example of how
storytelling can break down barriers. My
brothers became leaders among the kids in our neighborhood. They became a valued part of the community
that had scorned them. That was a lesson
I have never forgotten, and as I have moved around the country for the past sixteen
years, I have learned that storytellers do not remain friendless for long.
On August 8, 1987, my brother Lee called and gave me the sad
news that my father was in the hospital.
He was dying of bone cancer, and the doctors expected him to live for just
a few days longer. I left my home in
Connecticut and flew down to Virginia to be with him. There was a crowd of people in his hospital
room when I arrived, and so I hung back until the crowd had thinned out and
only my sister and I were left in the room with him. The morphine was wearing off and he was in a
great deal of pain when he finally saw me.
I took his hand, and he whispered, “Please, Linda, take me home.”
I looked at his swollen body, the tubes, and the needles –
and I knew that I could not do what he was asking. I brushed his forehead with my lips, looked
deep into his eyes, and said, “Daddy, I can’t take you home. But maybe I can make this place feel more like
home. Would you like that?”
He nodded and closed his eyes, and I began to tell him the
stories that he had told me when I was a little girl. I told his favorites: Taily Bone, Sody Salyrytus, and Lazy
Jack. Somewhere near the end of the
telling, a nurse came in and gave him a shot of
morphine. A short while later he was
snoring. He slept in peace and I was
relieved that his pain had been temporarily relieved. But I also felt helpless and useless. He had made such a simple request, for the
first time asking me to do something for him, and I had been unable to fulfill
it. At just that moment, my sister, as
though reading my thoughts, touched my shoulder and said, “You gave him what he
wanted, Linda. Your stories took him
home.”
At ten o’clock that evening, the hospital called me at my
parents’ apartment to let me know that my father had passed away. I called my brothers and my sister. We all gathered together with my mother,
trying
to imagine our family without its anchor. Tears flowed freely at first. All we could see was darkness. But then something amazing happened. My brother Lee told the story about how my
father had once gotten his foot stuck in my mother’s favorite coffee pot. Then I told the story of the time that Daddy
thought the preacher was the Fuller Brush man.
My sister Evelyn told about the day he had waited in the wrong house for
my brother Lee to come home. My brother
Allen told about the time Daddy had made delicious biscuits, but had not
checked the measuring cup first. Our
biscuits were filled with screws, nuts, and bolts. Suddenly the tears were replaced
by laughter, and the image of our father suffering in that hospital bed was
vanquished. The stories enabled us to
celebrate the strong and vital man that he had been, the man whom we were
blessed to call father.
A year-and-a-half later, on February 28, 1989, I received a
phone call from my mother, who wanted to talk.
I was busy studying for an economics exam and told her that I would call
her back. “I’ll only keep you a few
minutes,” she countered.
Anyone who knew my mother knew that she was not capable of a
conversation that lasted only a few minutes.
“I’ll call you back tomorrow, Momma,” I insisted, and as I was hanging
up the phone, I could hear her say, in the background, “Nobody wants to talk to
me.”
I felt guilty, but not guilty enough to stop studying and
call her back that evening. “Tomorrow,”
I reasoned, “I will have more time.”
The next day, after I had taken my exam, I returned to my
office to call Momma. But before I could
pick up the phone to dial, it rang. It
was my brother Allen, calling to tell me that my mother had passed away during
the night. She had not even been
sick. Her death was a total surprise.
After the funeral in Virginia, I returned home to
Connecticut carrying the burden of knowing that I had refused to talk with my mother on the last day of her
life. I dealt with this burden by
burying it. I kept myself too busy to
think about it. I ignored my husband and
my daughter most of the time, and when I was not ignoring them, I was making
them miserable. A year passed before my
husband reached the limit his patience could endure. “You need help,” he insisted.
I found that help from a wonderful grief counselor in
Coventry, Connecticut, who advised me to deal with my grief and guilt through
my storytelling. I took her advice and
starting writing and telling stories about my mother.
The first story I wrote was The Radio, which was
about a Christmas present that my mother had bought me. As I shared this story, I remembered the
warmth and strength of my mother’s love.
Then I wrote The Punishment, the story of a fake whipping from my father
that had moved my mother to show me compassion at a time when I did not think
she was capable of compassion. This
story, too, made me remember my mother’s love.
Neither of these stories helped me, however, because my
mother’s love had never been in question.
I needed a story that would convince me that she knew that I loved
her. I was at the lowest and darkest
point in my life when I remembered the first birthday present I had ever bought
my mother. The memory was so vivid that
I ran to my word processor immediately, unable to wait to get the story in
written form. It flowed so quickly and
so easily that I feel strange when I take credit as its author. I prefer to think of this story as a special
gift from a guardian angel, my mother. The
Bobby Pins was my salvation.
Telling The Bobby Pins helps me to remember
that the brief conversation that my mother and I had on the evening before she
died was just one moment in time. There
were other moments as well, and they were beautiful. I know that my mother was aware of the deep
love I had for her..
Whenever I share stories about either of my parents, people
come up to me afterwards and tell me how lucky I am to have been raised by two
such wonderful people. What better
tribute can be paid to a loved one?
On August 15, 1996, my granddaughter Morgan was born. She seemed perfect, but one week after her
birth, a routine exam revealed a problem with her right eye. She was immediately rushed to a pediatric
ophthalmologist, who discovered a cataract.
The pediatrician had prepared us for the possibility of a
tumor, so to me the diagnosis of a cataract seemed like good news. My daughter Melanie, however, was devastated. The weekend after the surgery, Melanie and
Morgan stayed at my home. Morgan was in
a lot of pain and needed constant care and comfort. That Saturday evening, I came downstairs to
find Melanie, tears running down her face, rocking Morgan back and forth as she
held her close. When I asked her what
was wrong, she was indignant. “I did
everything right!” she protested. “I didn’t drink or smoke. I know people who did drugs when they were
pregnant, and their babies are fine! Why
did this have to happen to my baby?”
I had no answers for her, but that evening as I said my
prayers I asked that somehow Melanie would find some peace so that she could
enjoy her child and get on with the business of living.
That night as I tried to get to sleep, I remembered a story
entitled The Visit of the Tomten, by Barry L. Johnson. I had ordered the story from Upper Room Books
a few years earlier, with the intention of adding it to my Christmas
repertoire. I had told the story only a
few times when I realized that there was no spark between it and me, no
chemistry. I had stopped telling the
story.
The Visit of the Tomten is set in Sweden on Christmas Eve. It is the story of four animals waiting for
the Tomten to bring their Christmas gifts.
The animals know exactly what they want, and feel confident that the
Tomten will oblige them. As it turns
out, however, the animals not only do not get what they want, they cannot make
any sense of the gifts they do get.
Ivan, the dog, the sage of the barnyard, gets a bird with a broken
wing. “I hate birds!” he rails, “and
this one isn’t even right!” Angry, the
animals devise a plan to trap the Tomten and make him explain their ridiculous
gifts.
Once caught, the Tomten is dumbfounded. “No gift is ridiculous!” he exclaims, before
proceeding to explain the gifts’ value.
To Ivan, he says, “To be asked to take care of the handicapped is no
insult. On the contrary, it is a great
honor. I chose you to care for the
disadvantaged bird because I trusted your wisdom and courage to give it the very best life it
could have.”
The next morning I could not wait to speak to Melanie. I shared Mr. Johnson’s story with her, and I
added a postscript. I told her that I
could see God in heaven looking at all these babies waiting to be born, and he knew
that Morgan had a special problem. With
this in mind, He surveyed all of the expectant mothers on earth, looking for
that special one with the wisdom and courage to give Morgan the very best life
she could have. “Melanie,” I assured
her, “He chose you.”
It was just what she needed to hear. After a moment’s reflection, her eyes lit up
and a smile spread across her face.
“That’s right, Momma,” she enthused.
“I wouldn’t trade Morgan for all the perfect babies in the world. I’m going to make sure that she has
everything she needs.”
After my husband and I relocated from Massachusetts to
Virginia in 1998, I spent some time reflecting on my career as a storyteller
thus far. This reflection caused me to
feel a certain pride tinged with sadness.
I had been successful in convincing others of the power and value of
storytelling, and I am proud to say that I have been instrumental in bringing a
number of remarkable storytellers into fold.
I had been a complete failure, however, in convincing family members to
take up the cause. Suddenly I understood my father’s sense of urgency to get
all his stories told, as well as the sense of peace he felt when I told him
that I wanted to share stories about our family. When I am gone, I told myself, the bulk of my
stories will go with me. I thought that
the only way to avoid this was to get published, and so I began writing
furiously.
In October, however, I reconnected with my niece Sandi. I
began to tell Sandi the story of our family’s Melungeon heritage. Sandi had not heard any of these stories
before. Indeed, she had not even known that we were of Melungeon descent. “These are amazing stories!”she declared.
While Sandi prefers listening to telling, her love of story has inspsired her
children to become storytellers.They have taken up the torch! *
I hope that by the end of this weekend, those of you who are
sitting on the fence will be convinced to take up the cause of storytelling, to
be torch bearers. But I would be remiss
if I did not warn you that with the torch comes responsibility. The torch must be held high, because its
flame is white-hot and can destroy everything in its path if it falls into the
wrong hands. Make those who would take
it from you reach for it. Remember that
story was one of the instruments that Hitler used to justify exterminating
anyone who do did fit his model for the master race. Bigots have used story to convince the
ignorant and naïve that certain races are inferior to others. For every person who heard my father’s
stories of Melungeon wisdom and integrity, there was another who heard the
stories of Melungeon ignorance in filth.
Unfortunately, the tellers of those false stories were just as powerful
and just as eloquent as my father.
When you leave this conference, take a torch with you. Use it to light the flame in your own
heart. Draw on the flame’s energy to
bring joy to others. Draw on the its
wisdom to teach the truth. Draw on its
power to heal and reconcile. Then wait
for the next torch bearer to come along and pass the torch to him. Share the fire.
*2015 Update: Sandi
now has six children. If you were at the NSN Conference in Richmond, VA in 2013,
you may have met four of them there. They are the Lowery children, and they belong
to a group called The Story Warriors, led by Les Schafer. They performed at the
pre-conference activities. The group is still going strong.
