A Country Rag--Rivers Side

A Country Rag

"Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing here. In the middle of the day, especially, I can't figure out where I am, how I got here or what I am doing in this place at this time.... Most people claim to have a strong 'sense of place.' They were born here, in this town, in the hospital at a time unique to them.... But I was not born anywhere. I just came to be by the stroke of a pen.... So that now when I am struck by this uncertain sense of displacement, like oil and water, I remind myself that I am, most likely, in between two places." -- Chimera, Katherine E. Walker

Rivers Side

A resident of middle Tennessee, karol cooper is a technology and gardening enthusiast and a published entrepreneurial writer of articles and to-date six books, including two co-authored with her husband, a professional musician and sports writer, published by Walnut Grove Press. Family genealogical research recently revealed that her paternal blood heritage is Melungeon (believed to be a mixture of Chippewa, African-American, Scottish and English). Research has been one of her lifetime loves and she is involved now in scholarly explorations, including a non-fiction book project, of possible relationships between incest, cellular biology and linguistics.

La Voix des Femmes:

The Saga of Violette Wakeland

by karol cooper

Part One: Life in the Southern Highlands

Armed with a hard-earned teaching degree, an unquenchable spirit and an overloaded truck that foretold of latter-day Beverly Hillbillies, Violette Wakeland and her potter/husband Ray came to Sunset Rock (Tennessee mountains) in 1952. With her daughter Virginia happily married and busily producing five children, the timing was right for Violette to pursue the dreams that she and Ray had clung to in the darkest nights. Now, as a mature woman of 45, Violette was ready to begin her great adventure.

When they announced their imminent move to the people back home in Chicago, they received a negative response: "You will find the people on the mountain are different." In her Memoirs, Violette wrote, "It was hard for us to assume the truth of that statement until we experienced it ourselves." Little did she know how portentous those forebodings were — that she was embarking on an epic journey into Life that would bring her the greatest of joy and the deepest of sorrow, the fulfillment of her wildest dreams and the realization of true loss.

Sunset Rock juts out over the bluff — a huge slab of west-facing sandstone at whose feet spreads beautiful Pelham Valley, a patchwork of farms complete with distant sounds of lowing cattle and webbed with tiny roads traveled by tiny cars. Throughout her 40 years on the bluff Violette would come to rely on Sunset Rock, "The Rock," as a place of refuge, a haven to collect her thoughts, to pray, to drink in Mother Nature’s bounty. It was from The Rock that she gathered the courage she needed for the battles set before her.

As the days lengthened all of nature was awakening. Buds on the trees showed color; swelling balls of flower were appearing on the dogwood; birds were exuberant with mating song and nesting activity. I could hardly contain myself in this exhilaration of resurrection. I ran through the wood with arms outspread and even leaped with the rhythm of life. I breathed deeply of fresh, fragrant air; I opened my face to the warming sun. When rain showers came I let myself be drenched in its ablution. "Dear God!" I cried, "How can it be that I am so blessed!"

With gusto Violette and Ray tackled their new life in Monteagle, Tennessee, on the 103 acres of prime bluff land they had purchased. On this ground was a magical stone edifice, "The Ruins," a roofless structure built at the turn of the century, full of nooks and crannies, built-in stone benches, a cistern — the perfect place for Ray to build his pottery shop. Thus began the arduous task of taming the forest and preparing for construction: first a pottery shop for Ray, then later a home for the two of them. In the meantime they rented a small house in Monteagle, about three miles away.

The first project would be to clear a 40-foot right-of-way for the electric line through the woods, up the mountainside from the highway to our bluff site. I think back on the foolishness of that activity, as we did the job without the convenience of a chain saw; we were naïve enough to think we could emulate the frontiersmen, and we did accomplish it with hand axe and crosscut saw. It really was not an unpleasant venture.

Not an unpleasant venture? This is a daunting task when you actually look at the site — a rocky, brush- and tree-covered 45-degree incline full of vines and snakes, a hand-over-hand climb at some points. Yet Violette’s writing expresses only her enthusiasm for their new home and the work it entailed.

My main responsibility was to watch the fires lest they get out of control. One day my explorative inclinations took me too far away from a big brush fire…suddenly I saw flames accelerating up the incline and licking into grass and dry leaves at the top. Ray quickly drove into town to call the forest-fire fighters. I learned respect for fire in the wood, which I have ever remembered.

This respect would save her life in the years to come at Sunset Rock.

I was mainly concerned with removing brush and saplings that had almost obscured the structure. I became immensely stimulated with the project as I uncovered new plants, trees and creatures of the soil. It was an experience of coming alive to all those submerged sensations of being in alliance with things of the natural.

Throughout her memoirs, Violette expresses an irrepressible delight in her surroundings, a growing love of nature and an appreciation for Mother Earth, but:

My education into nature was not all joy. The rock walls were covered with vines and since there was no foliage to identify the plant we assumed the species was poison ivy. I courageously removed all the vines and piled them for burning after they were thoroughly dry. When they were dried, I set fire to the pile with no caution as to release of remaining oils. The next day I was itching with little blisters erupting over my whole body. Poison ivy sap had been released as a spray and I was infected over my whole body. I was in excruciating misery until recovery, but gained an everlasting respect for poison ivy.

For Violette, life on the mountain wasn’t all about loving nature and living the life of frontiersmen. The townspeople were suspicious of the Yankee newcomers ("furriners"), often ascribing to them deeds that were not their own. A case in point is the Highlander Folk School.

Quite soon after our coming, people began asking us about Highlander Folk School. We had never heard of it and we were confused about it, but not particularly interested. Its significance and purpose could not be determined. Why we were questioned pertaining to it would be determined later when pieces of the puzzle took shape in events related to people’s suspicions and resentment regarding our advent into the community.

From Myles Horton, the director of the school, they learned what Highlander Folk School was all about. In the ’20s, a wealthy Mrs. Johnson became interested in setting up a Folkschule to educate people in improved means of subsistence, such as home handcrafts, home economics, agriculture and horticulture. When Mrs. Johnson retired she engaged as director Myles Horton, who had become well known for his leadership in uniting mine workers for improved conditions. At that time anything associated with union organization was linked to communism. In the ’50s, when communism became a national scare during the McCarthy era, to be labeled "communist" was the worst thing that could be said about a person. Agitation grew against Myles and the school with subsequent investigation by the FBI. No substantiation was found to support non-patriotic duties, but local suspicions grew. After the Supreme Court ruling in 1954 gave equal privileges to minorities, the desegregation movement took on momentum. Highlander Folk School responded to this impetus by conducting training workshops for the effort. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt were two of its most celebrated supporters.

At that time Grundy County, where Violette and Ray had settled, prided itself in being totally white, so prejudice against desegregation was pronounced. Although there was no organized Ku Klux Klan, resistance was on the level of Klan intensity. Efforts to close the Highlander School were ongoing, and Violette suffered the attitudes of locals for her erroneously imagined relationship with the school. Feelings of racial conflict ran rampant.

One day when she arrived at her classroom in the local high school in Grundy County, her students were in a clamor. An effigy of a black person was hanging on the gym door. When questioned, the students expressed their anger and horror that four African-American pupils had been enrolled in Grundy primary school. The students and their parents were up in arms. When asked what her response would be if she were called upon to teach a black person, Violette’s passionate reply was that it wouldn’t make any difference. Immediately she was labeled a communist "n-lover."

I accepted my role with dignity; I performed my services with sincerity and conscientiousness; people could believe what they wished; my self-respect was not diminished. I believed in the integrity of the human spirit and I intended to fight for its preservation.

This incident proved to be the beginning of the end of her teaching days.

In addition to their growing unsavory — but unwarranted — reputation, Violette and Ray began to encounter some serious opposition from the Methodist Sunday School Assembly in Monteagle. The Assembly is an enclave of the South’s wealthy, who before the advent of air-conditioning came to the mountain to escape the heat and build summer homes together in a cluster. This "assembly" is governed by a board of directors who demonstrated over the years their lust to own Violette’s property and the lengths to which they would go in order to acquire it.

Situated as we were on the edge of the bluff meant that access to our property had to cross Assembly acreage. We were not aware that certain individuals of the Assembly community had jealously eyed our property through the years. Mrs. Walker, from whom we bought the land, had refused to sell to them, perhaps for some personal reasons. As those individuals witnessed our continuing development speculations and envy intensified: How could it be that ‘damned Yankees’ had been able to acquire that enviable property? How could our efforts be thwarted? Close the access road.

And close it they did by constructing a barrier across the entrance. Considering that from Sunset Rock to the barrier the hike is over a mile, carrying building supplies and hauling loads of fill dirt for that distance would force their construction to grind to a halt. Ray and Violette were compelled to take legal action, hiring a lawyer and battling for their rights in court. The road was grudgingly reopened but the harassment continued.

Violette was to encounter intense conflict with the Assembly that would affect her relationships with the townspeople, with her church fellowship, her teaching career and ultimately her survival. This is the story of a woman who refused to be beaten by Life’s vicissitudes, a warrior with Athena-like qualities who battled back with courage, imagination, tenacity and an indomitable spirit. Join us over the next three months as her incredible story unfolds.

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