Stinking Creek

by John Fetterman

Stinking Creek was published in 1967 just as the War on Poverty was kicking into high gear. The author, John Fetterman, travels to Stinking Creel in Knox County Kentucky to learn about these mountain men that the government is so eager to help after decades of exploitation. He comes away with a better understanding of the “hillbillies” and at the end he is hopeful, but only for the direct contact plan created by the young volunteers of VISTA and similar programs. He shows contempt for the large programs that provide welfare checks and loads of commodities to the public. They are just another form of dependence imposed on the families.Below are some excerpts from the book. It is no longer in print. However, is in many libraries and can be bough used from the links below:

• For the mountaineer has become still another paradox. He is white, Protestant, and Anglo Saxon. Yet his speech, food preferences, music, religion, attitudes toward education and sanitation, and resentment of authority make him a bewildered member of a minority in the country he pioneered.
• He learned to distrust the plantation masters to the east. He learned that the Indian, the beasts, and the forest were enemies. He learned that coal was not a blessing, but a curse to entomb him beneath the earth, to shatter his bones and maim his body. He learned that the absentee owners of his natural wealth would lie, use him, and desert him. He learned that the unions he bled for would turn away in his hour of need. He learned that his political leaders would never honor their promises of roads, jobs, and decent schools. He learned that the railroads brought, not prosperity for him, but only plunderers.
• The Recent History of the land the hillbilly lives upon is paradox piled upon paradox. The greatest and most central paradox is East Kentucky itself. Here lies a region of poverty, ignorance, and rebellion sheltered by mountains bursting with untold riches in coal, gas, oil, and other resources. East Kentucky is a land where men sit on the sagging porches of their shabby homes, feel the gnawing of hunger in their bellies, and watch the black wealth of coal pour from the mountains around them.
• No area such as Appalachia could long escape gleeful discovery by dogooders, those fervent, tireless Americans among us who are driven, as though by demons, to do unto others. So for decades, Appalachia has been done unto. The desolate hollows have swallowed up legions of pious, prim, pathetic little men and women who have braved the wilderness to spread the light. The aching mountains have felt the purposeful tread of zealous social reformers. Missions representing almost every denomination and sect have unfurled their banners of brotherhood in hollow after hollow. Appalachia is Mecca for those driven?both by demons and by self?guilt?to do unto somebody, somehow.
• The best thing for this part of the country would be something to give people a sense of dignity and a meaning to life.” A tall order, but Irma said it could be done. She sees three steps to take toward this goal:
  • “First, a job, an income that they can be proud to earn.
  • “Second, a sense of sensitivity in the home . . . pride in the home and the environment around them.
  • “Third, a real reason to live . . . security in what they are living for . . . a rediscovering of why they are living.”
• The strange type of selfishness, practiced with something approaching dignity, puzzles all careful observers. Children are often left to raise themselves; then, as the parents grow old, there is an effort to bring the children back to care for them. A man will fight for a friend, then charge him fifty cents to run an errand.

Overall the book is a fair representation of the mountains in the mid-sixities. The author doesn’t openly judge his subjects but you do get the feeling that he likes the people and their way of life. He is definitely doubtful of the welfare system helping the mountaineer out of his situation. Time has proven him right on that subject.

 Note: The book is no longer in print. However, you may be able to find used copies at Amazon by following this link: Stinking Creek: The Portrait of a Small Mountain Community in Appalachia

Berea College maintains a Guide to the John Fetterman Papers and a short biography of the author.

Tags: Knox County