A is for Appalachia! The Alphabet Book of Appalachian Heritage
Interview with Appalachians
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INTERVIEW WITH BOBBY LOVEDAY SEVIERVILLE, TN September 30, 2006 Bobby Loveday is an author, a historian, and a musician. He is a mountain man and descendant of the Cherokee who loves to talk about his place, his people, and what it was like to grow up in the mountains of Tennessee. He’s friendly, he’s engaging, but he is also very serious when he says that he wants the world to know and to understand the Trail of Tears and the poor way that President Andrew Jackson treated the Cherokee in 1838-39. I met Mr. Loveday at Old Timer’s Day in Cade’s Cove at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park on September 30, 2006. I attended Old Timer’s Day with the hope of interviewing an old timer (someone who had grown up in Cades Cove before it was preserved as the Great Smoky Mr. Loveday lives in Sevierville, TN and he is the author of Copeland Creek, which he spent many years researching and writing. He had his guitar with him on the day that we spoke and I enjoyed listening to him play. He played an especially lively jig while Bobby Ghorly from Canton, Georgia stopped and demonstrated some good old mountain buck dancin’ for me. Now that was a good time! He Wouldn’t Take Anything for His Childhood Bobby Loveday wouldn't’ take anything for his childhood. He likes to tell about being delivered by Dr. Broady in Sevier County, Tennessee. He grew up without electricity or running water but he knew a thing or two about freedom, about place, and about a grandmother’s love. He knew about three hot meals a day: breakfast, dinner, and supper. He knew about building dugouts in which to store food because there wasn’t refrigeration and he knew about killing hogs in the fall so the family would have ham, bacon and pork chops to store in the smoke house to eat throughout the year. He knew about canning fruit and drying vegetables in the attic. He knew about digging a hole in the floor of the barn to bed down cabbage, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins until they were needed during the winter. He knew about sawing wood to keep the house warm and using lime to keep an outhouse sanitary. He knew about the freedom to roam the hills, to visit with the cows, and the freedom to walk to town alone when he was only nine. School Bobby Loveday grew up in Sevier County, Tennessee where he had to walk three miles each way to the first school he attended. Alone. He carried his lunch in a brown bag and his favorite lunch was a yellow apple with peanut butter and crackers. Walnut Grove Elementary had two classrooms: one room for grades one through four and one room for grades five through eight. Students got their water from a hand pump outside. The pump had a long pipe with several holes in both sides for drinking. Students would line up along both sides of the pipe when they were thirsty and they would drink from the many holes while someone worked the hand pump. The water coming from the end of the pipe was used by a student to wash her hands. Mr. Loveday’s eyes twinkled as he remembered playing basketball on a dirt court right outside his school. It was a big deal to play basketball and Mr. Loveday recalled how someone would pull up to the school in a cattle truck, load up the entire student body, and haul them to another school to watch a basketball game. Pie suppers were always a way for a school to raise money and Mr. and Mrs. Loveday attended pie suppers even after they were married. Mr. Loveday recalled a time h Mr. Loveday remembers square dancing and lots of good music at those pie suppers. And Bobby Loveday is all about good music! He recalls that many of the musicians who played for the pie supers he attended are now Nashville stars. Rolling Stores Bobby Loveday talked about the excitement of a rolling store that would make its rounds in the mountains. A rolling store is exactly what it sounds like: a store on wheels. The storekeeper would purchase an old school bus and paint it green or some other agreeable color. He would then stock that rolling store with items that mountain people would need such as flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and coffee. He also kept items that one could have found in a country store such as washing powders, candy, gum, and ribbons. Under the bus he’d keep a chicken coop so he could sell and buy chickens. If he didn’t have something on the bus that a person in the mountains needed, he would take special orders for it such as shoes, pots, pans, and lanterns. Mr. Loveday remembers that the rolling store would stop by the school if every single child in the school had a penny to purchase a piece of gum. That had to have been a fun memory! The rolling store also made stops at the post office for the mountain folk who seldom left the mountains. The storekeeper dropped off mail for people and picked up mail for people. That was an especially appreciated service that he provided. Not only did the storekeeper of the rolling store sell items, he made trades, and he purchased items. Selling to the rolling store was often a means of income for the mountain people. The storekeeper would purchase fresh eggs, butter, baked goods, garden vegetables, canned items, and milk from mountain folk. When he’d arrive back in town about 5 or 6 that evening, people in town would be waiting in line to purchase the fresh produce he’d secured during his rounds. Home Remedies
The following are some home remedies that Mr. Loveday shared with me:
Shelter, Food, Health Bobby Loveday is a philosopher. He says that it all comes down to shelter, food and health. Life, that is. We just all go about it differently, that’s all. From his own research, he shared with me that the life expectancy of our ancestors was 42 years and a lot of people died from appendicitis what was called consumption. He believes this to be heart failure. He shared that poplar lumber was kept in barns to build caskets and that his Aunt Bet was one who always helped to prepare a body for burial. Sleds were used to haul caskets to burial sites instead of wagons because wagons were more likely to tear up roads. “People helped one another,” said Mr. Loveday. Let’s hope that our mountain philosopher, author, historian, musician, and storyteller still has it right. Let’s hope that the people who inhabited our Appalachian Mountains during his childhood, the people who made him believe in his heart that he wouldn’t trade his childhood for anything, the people who made him know that mountain people helped one another…let’s hope with the fierceness with which only mountain people can, that those good people still populate our mountains and that we do still care about each other and that we will still help each other… today, tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that until forever.
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Mountain National Park) or a descendant of one of the old timers. When Jim, my husband, and I arrived at Cable Mill in Cades Cove, we were directed to park our car in a field with hundreds of other cars before we could join the fiddle playin’ and celebrating just beyond the Cable Mill Visitor’s Center. Once I gathered up my camera, tape recorder, notebook and ink pen and exited our car, there was Mr. Loveday and his lovely wife… parked right beside us! It was just that easy. 
e had to pay a pretty big amount of money just to get to eat his own wife’s pie! It seems the mountain way was to bid against the boyfriend or the husband just to run up the price of the pie. Mr. Loveday didn’t mind, though, because he said it was for a good cause. Schools could always use the money.