From VOICES: Upstate by Varick Chittenden

Volume 28
Fall-Winter
2002

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For me, the language of the people we work with is not only informative but inspiring. I get great joy from listening to them speak...

Photo: Martha Cooper

Varick A. Chittenden is professor emeritus of English, SUNY Canton College of Technology, and executive director of Traditional Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY). Photo: Martha Cooper

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Headline -The Power and Eloquence of Everyday Speech

My father used to tell [my wife] Vera (I’d be makin’ a decoy for huntin’) and he’d say, "Vera," he’d say, "If you take a two by eight plank eighteen inches long and put a nail in it and stick a potato on it, you got a pretty good decoy." And you have, really. By the time they see eyes in ’em and them fancy shape, it’s good night ladies, that’s it!

—Bill Massey, St. Lawrence River decoy carver, Waddington, St. Lawrence County

I love words. I always have. From the days when I’d hide under my bedcovers and read stories by flashlight after my mother’s curfew or listen to some of my Dad’s very unusual old expressions, I have been fascinated with language. That’s probably why I studied literature in college and taught it all those years. While my friends in math or physics have sometimes seemed amused by this, I really do believe that there is an exactness in words that is almost scientific in nature. Just try to find the right thing to say when the loved one of a friend dies or when you are so angry that you only see red! If you’re like me, the words come eventually . . . an hour later . . . or on the ride home. And then there is the occasional turn of phrase—the perfect combination of words for the moment—that a good poet or novelist creates, which makes you think long after you’ve closed the book.

We have one lady . . . she brings in an apple pie and on the top of the pie after she gets it made, there is an apple drawn on the top of the pie, and she does it with a cutter of some kind. Puts it right on the top of the pie. It’s very attractive. So it’s almost appliquéd, as in a quilt. You’d appliqué a piece of pastry right on top. It’s just the way she does it. It looks lovely.

—Eunice Southworth, Bangor, Franklin County Fair official

My favorite American authors have most often been closely associated with place. When I was a student, their work was described as "local color." They included Bret Harte, Hamlin Garland, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and Sherwood Anderson. I’ve especially liked Southern writers, like Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor. They, like our own North Country’s Irving Bacheller or Russell Banks, have captured a sense of place and the idiosyncrasies of characters, especially in their dialogue. It is that folk speech, those special idioms and grammatical interpretations by local people, that give real life to these stories for me.

Years ago I used to make such an effort to—to do anything, like playin’ the guitar or the fiddle or rifle shooting. I did all of this after I lost my hand. . .’course it’s actually a lesson to anybody. If you want to do something bad enough and try hard enough and—and pray a little, the Guy Upstairs will help you to do whatever you want done.

—Dick Richards, fiddler and country music performer, Lake Luzerne, Warren County

I’ve been reminded of all of this in recent months, as I have pored through dozens of interview transcripts and listened to the original tapes as I was writing a small book about various traditional artists in the North Country. And it always comes back abundantly clear when we develop scripts for radio documentaries. For me, the language of the people we work with is not only informative but inspiring. I get great joy from listening to them speak—with humor, passion, enthusiasm, sometimes with sadness or remorse. But in any case, they speak from the heart, and they speak in the rhythms and the intonations we find in families and communities here in the North Country.

The most important thing to me [about the annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel] is everything being centered around the procession . . . It used to be a longer route and it was very impressive . . . Years ago we used to have the band leading . . . We used to have the Blessed Mother, she had a long ribbon and the older people who could never come out to the feast would wait in the corners or in front of their homes and come out and pin the traditional money on the statue . . . Sometimes it would bring tears to your eyes, because they could hardly walk, but this was a big thing for them. It meant so much.

—Ida Jane Alteri, St. Anthony’s parishioner, Watertown, Jefferson County

In the process of listening and reading, I am frequently moved by the power and eloquence of simple, everyday speech. I don’t have to go to great writers to find it. I can hear it in the oral traditions of my neighbors and local shopkeepers and friends.

Varick Chittenden’s UPSTATE column was published in Voices Vol. 28, Fall-Winter, 2002. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society now.