Page 6
University Daily Kansan, April 15, 1981
Ozark folklore and culture explored in PBS film
By LINDA LANG Staff Reporter
"... I'd work until I'd get five or ten dollars in my pocket. Well, then, I was ready to go. And the freight train would give a highbill whistle, and I'd reach up and pull my hat down on the side of my carriage. I went to another store and I'd go somewhere else. And if we couldn't get an empty boxcar, we'd ride on the side of an oil tanker.
rose gaunt, elderly gentleman often
gaund, and the time he spent hobbing
to dinner.
Whenever he hears anyone tell an old story, he has a desire to doout the original teller. "It's part of my personality from God," Wikee says.
Hubert Wilkes's friends and acquaintances in the small community of Cave City, Ark., know him as a man with a proclivity for telling stories and telling them well.
shown Ms Km
He and other storytellers in the Ozarks were "discovered" by Kathy Nicol, a folklorist working on a documentary about Ozark folklore and culture.
The documentary, featuring Wilkes, will be televised tonight through the Public Broadcasting Service. Directed and produced by John Altman, a Kansas City filmmaker, the 57-minute film is titled "They Tell It for the Truth: Ozark Storytelling."
As the film's folklorist, Nicol spent eight months living in the Ozarks, tracking down people known as good storytellers and listening to their stories.
Nicol said her involvement with the film began when she and Altman accidently crossed paths as he was turning his car around in her parents' driveway.
As the film's folkist, she received "the munificent sum of $500 a month."
Nicol said, "We tried to make it so anybody who knows nothing about folklore could see it and learn a little about the Ozarks and about them, still enjoy the film about storytellers."
Nicol chose Mountain View, Ark., as her
home base for her fieldwork in the Ozarks. Her first strategy was to meet people in the community—at places like the post office, quilting bees and church suppers—and let them know she wanted to contact people in the community and in outlying communities
"They weren't really hostile, but nobody really offered any information," she said.
Not all of the leads she followed ended in footage for the film.
1. spent an awful lot of time listening to 'grandchildren' and 'my latest operation' stories, she said. "People who were good people had just assumed to be people who told stories."
At one point in her research, there was a man she tried very hard to see. He lived in the basement.
It was a big deal, and everyday on my way home I'd try the road to Fox to see if I could get up or down. It was really major task to go out. But the police had told me he told really good stories."
"I spent all this time trying to get up to Fox.
When Nicoel finally made her way up the hill to Fox, she found that the man indeed was a monster.
She thought she had finally found what she had been looking for. "Where did you learn that?"
"Oh. It was on the Carol Burnett show the other night." he reilled.
Nicol she said she also got sidetracked by a lot of traditional stories about buried silver and ghosts, but she was looking for "something a little more revealing of the culture."
The stories in the documentary tell a lot about folk culture in the Oarkes. They vary from stories told about the escapes of Jim Renfroce, a colorful character who actually lived in the Oarkes, to outrageous tales with events that have no basis in reality.
Nicol said she wanted the audience to feel the various stages of her research when they met.
One storyteller was especially memorable because he reputedly had a great repertoire of "dirty" jokes, but would not tell her one of them.
"It was really frustrating. I went home and looked through all my books and tried to think of all the dirty jokes I could remember," Nicol said.
The next time she saw him, she told him every "dirty" joke she could think of to get him to tell her some of the ones he knew, but not all. He didn't care, as though she were a really tasteless person.
"Here I am telling these horrible jokes, and there's no response." she said laughing.
He told his jokes to the all-male film crew for the documentary, but only under the condition they would not tell her. She said she had not heard one yet, although members of the crew assured her they were nothing she would blush over.
"You have a stereotype of them as hillbiles, but look at all the wisdom and the morals they have within these tales. How is this different from the stories we tell children? Do we stop to think when we tell children 'Sleeping Beauty' stories that children are going to put a high value on beauty'" she asked.
Nicol emphasized that folklore in the Ozarks is not that different from folklore in more urbanized parts of the United States—or anywhere else, for that matter.
Nicol said folktales are part of everybody's life and cited drug stories that college students tell as an example of every day folklore.
She remembered circulating a few years back about a series of cowl mutilations.
"I got out of college in '73, and there were all these drug stories that everybody swore really happened to them, and you heard them 500 times!" she said.
"Those sorts of stories are really nice. Nicel said, "because they combine not only the outer space stuff but the ghost story inside," he wrote for you, and you don't know where they are!"
Nicol did not meet Wilkes until nearly the end of her research.
"Hubert was wonderful. He spent the 18 minutes telling me he didn't know any stories and really didn't know just what I was looking for. But his wife had just made a pie, so why didn't I stay and eat a pie? And then he started, and not stop him," she said.
Although Wilkes always referred to her as the girl who got him "into all this" when they were out in public together, Nicol believes he was more excited about the film than he will admit.
After Nicol invited him to a story-telling event, Louis, he almost convinced her he could not go.
Wilkes said he was just a farmer and a carpenter, and that was his life. Besides, his son was getting married two months after the festival. But when Nicol talked to Wilkes' wife, she told her that Wilkes had been telling everybody he was going to St. Louis.
Before Nicel met Wilkes, and Altman planned to make a 30-minute film about the 1950s.
"The minute I found Hubert, I knew that you couldn't do just a 30-minute film," Nicola said.
On Campus
TODAY
THE CONTEMPTIPLAIVE SESSION
will discuss "Tradition and Revolution" at 7:45
a.m. in the Ecumenical Christian Ministries
Center.
A SOLAR ENERGY SPEECH by Jody James will be at 10:30 a.m. in 501 Summerfield.
LA MESA ESPANOAL (Spanish Table) will meet from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in 3059 Wescoe. All native speakers and students of Spanish are welcome.
THE KU SAILING CLUB will meet at 7 p.m. in the Parliors of the Union.
THE UNIVERSITY FORUM will host Charles Stanisander on "U.S. Relations in Central America: Emphasis on El Salvador and Nicaragua" at the Ecumenical Christian Ministry Centers.
THE MINORITY AFFAIRS PANEL will
be at 1:30 p.m. in the Palm town of the Kauai Island.
THE SOVIET AND EAST EUPEAN
STUDIES LECTURE SERIES will sponsor Lynn
Turgeon on "Lecturing on the American
Economy at the University of Moscow:
Experiences and Student Reactions" at 7:30 p.m. in
the Bier Fight Room of the Union.
THE AFRICAN ARTS EXHIBIT PANEL will host Karen Erb on "African Art Patronage and Production Today" at 8 p.m. in the Main Gallery of the Museum of Anthropology.
THE EAST ASIAN STUDIES FACULTY COLLOQUIUM will host Jonathan Unger on 'Attitudes and Interests of Chinese Students in Japan' at $ p.m. in the International Room of the Union.
A TROMBONE MASTER'S RECTAL by
JACOB J. NORMAN, p. 48 m. in
the Swordbuster Recital HALF.
LA MESA ESPANOLA (Spanish Table) will be from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 in 6059 Wescoe.
THE MINORITY AFFAIRS LECTURE SERIES will host F. Browning Pipestem on "Implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act" at 11:30 a.m. in the Pine Room of the Union.
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL TEA AND TALK LECTURE will feature Aletha Huston on "Television and the Lives of Children" at 3:30 p.m. in the Jawkbox Room of the Union
THE KU GERMAN CLUB will hold a Kafé
estendeur at 4:40 p.m. in 2005 Wesley. All in-
fore you can find the information below.
VALUABLE COUPON
$2.00 OFF per canoe
5 canoe minimum
TWIN BRIDGES CANOE RENTAL
Not valid Memorial Weekend
VOTE
Advance
for Board of Class Officers
Elections April 14th & 15th
to introduce our new needlepoint, stitchery and cross stitch items—plus lots more room!
730 Massachusetts
BIG SPRING SALE
April 6-18
(2 weeks)
Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
8 p.m. Thurs.
25% OFF All needlework items 25-50% OFF
25% OFF
25% OFF
Many selected yarns
40% OFF
Macrame cords
20% OFF
All spinning fibers
10% OFF
All weaving accessories
10% OFF
All books
YARNBARN
Class Officer Elections Vote Tues. & Wed., April 14th & 15th
8-4:30 4th floor Wescoe
Information Booth on Jayhawk Blvd.
Union Lobby
Satellite Union Mall
Robinson Lobby
7-9 pm ATO House GSP Hashinger Sellards Hall Evans Scholarship Hall
NOW SHOWING
CINEMA 2
1357 AND LOOK...
TELEPHONE 842 9420
JERRY LEMPS
HARDLY
WORKING
EVE 7:35 & 9:20
MAT SAT & SUN 2:00
VALID ID CARDS
Instantly - Laminated, Color
Sensitive
I - DENT SYSTEMS
Room 1144 Ramada Inn
841-5905
SUA FILMS
Shame
Wednesday, April 15
Ingmar Bergman's shattering film of two muslilians, fleeing civil war, who did not survive the Nazi Injition, in which the Swedish prince Otto Willebrand holds the hands of the Nazis, this is Bergman's supreme statement of the pain of life. "A man was not fighting, not battling, nor even war," the nature of existence itself. One of the greatest films of the decade." - Robin Wood (102 min.)
Thursday, April 16
Pather Panchali
Satyajit Ray's first film, and the first in his "Apu Trilogy," is the study of a bungalval village film of warmth. Apu yayali is a film of beauty and stunning imagery, this is a wonderful drama of a familiar yet disturbing film (12 min.) BBM. Bengalisubultes; 7-30.
Unless otherwise noted; all films will be shown at Woodstock Auditorium in the evening on Friday, Monday and Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Sunday films are $1.90. Midnight films are $2.00. Theater tickets are $3.50 plus Union 4th, level information 864-848 or no smoking or refreshments allowed.