Snowbird Gravy and Dishpan Pie: Mountain People Recall

By Patsy Moore Ginns

Book Overview

In their own picturesque speech, an older generation of men and women in North Carolina paint a vivid image of home and family life in the southern Appalachian mountains around the turn of the century. Dozens of contributors share their wisdom and memories in stories of country hospitality, blackgum toothbrushes, foxhunting, candy stews, jerk coffee, hangings, feuds, and mountain philosophy. A final chapter is devoted to mountain tales and ghost stories. Illustrated by J. L. Osborne, Jr. and originally published in 1982.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807878537
• ISBN13: 9780807878538
• Release Date: November 2011
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Down home talk

SNOWBIRD GRAVY AND DISHPAN PIE: Mountain People Recall, by Patsy Moore Ginns, 209 pages, illustrated by J.L. Osborne Jr., North Carolina Unlike the model dour New Englander, Southern mountain folk love to tell stories, and the ones born around the end of the 19th century were very much aware that they had started out in one era and lived into another one, very different. This was my grandparents' generation, and they liked to tell about the old days. In the 1970s and early '80s, Patsy Ginns, a teacher, collected stories from around 20 men and women who had grown up in western North Carolina. The oldest was born in 1979, the youngest in the 1920s. For me, reading "Snowbird Gravy and Dishpan Pie" was like being a little kid at family reunions again. Ginns' old folks were way more country than my family was, but their world view was about the same as I remember: church, long walks, few money, haints and spirits, play parties, neighborliness, occasional hard feelings and violence. As Stanley Hicks, one of the more talkative sources, says, "It was hard to get a nickel." Ginns breaks up the recollections by category: school, community, work etc. So the longest entry is about three pages. Some entries, when the people fell into the easy, loping mountain style of talking, she has typeset as if it were free verse, which it almost is. To me the most interesting personality is Ray Hicks, apparently Stanley's younger brother. The Hicks boys were a handful, when young, but Ray got religion -- which he explains at confusing length -- and became a preacher. Not, as slowly becomes apparent, a very uptight one. "Snowbird Gravy and Dishpan Pie" is also full of bits of lore about living in the Southern mountains, many of them mostly forgotten in daily life, only preserved here and in books like Foxfire. Some of the lore here is more obscure than even the obscurest of the Foxfire collections, which came from a generation later. The volume is liberally illustrated with evocative pen-and-ink drawings of rustic scenes by J.L. Osborne Jr. Charming to look at but not so charming to live in, these vistas were everywhere when I was growing up. It's hard to find them nowadays, and if you do, like as not there's a big highway down the middle, or a warehouse on the horizon.