The Life and Times of Ray Hicks

by Salsi, Lynn

• ISBN13: 9781572336216
• ISBN10: 1572336218
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-10
• Publisher: Univ of Tennessee Pr

Summary

"Renowned storyteller Ray Hicks was a certified national treasure. He received many prestigious honors in his lifetime, including the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Best known for his traditional storytelling and also for saving the original Beech Mountain Jack tales brought to the Appalachian Mountains by his ancestors as early as 1776, Hicks was conscious of the role he played in the preservation of oral storytelling. Many of those stories are included in The Life and Times of Ray Hicks." "Born in 1922, Ray lived his whole life in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. (Although it finally got a refrigerator and electric lights, Ray's place never did get a telephone, indoor plumbing, or a radio or television.) It seems he knew everything there was to know about living off the land and about his family's history. A lot of what he knew is in this new book." "Hicks made his public storytelling debut in 1951, when a local schoolteacher invited him to her class. In 1973, Ray performed at the very first International Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. He appeared at every one until he became too weak to attend. He died on Easter Sunday in 2003." "Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and visits, painstakingly pieced together by Lynn Salsi, The Life and Times of Ray Hicks comes as close as possible to capturing the way Ray talked. Part memoir and part biography, The Life and Times of Ray Hicks presents, sometimes in Ray Hicks's own words, the most important part of his long, colorful life-a life scarcely less interesting than the Jack Tales he told so well."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

A Note on Dialect
Hicks Genealogy
Once upon a Mountain	p. 1
Livin' Like Jack	p. 9
Up Agin It	p. 21
Work - Not Play	p. 29
The Gift of Medicine	p. 37
Jack of All Trades	p. 43
Pick Britches	p. 51
Big Footprint	p. 65
The Two-Room School	p. 69
What It Was to Be Baptist	p. 81
Stone Mountain	p. 107
The Goin' Was Rough	p. 113
A Taste of Shine	p. 123
Gettin' a Ride	p. 129
Takin' the Lead	p. 135
Depression Days	p. 141
Left Behind	p. 147
Never Pass This Way Again	p. 153
Courtin'	p. 161
Married Life	p. 171
The Worst of It	p. 181
Storytellin' for a-Little Pay	p. 191
Row Yore Own Boat	p. 201
Index	p. 205
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.