Judge Felix E. Alley: A Pillar of Mountain Life

The better part of a century has passed since the individual who was arguably the finest lawyer and legal mind ever to call Haywood County home was in active practice, and next year will mark a half century since his death. That man was Felix Eugene Alley, and his life’s story includes an enduring love for his highland homeland, impassioned defense of the region’s people and their folkways, staunch Christian beliefs, exemplifying the legal profession at its finest, and sufficiently wide-ranging interests to qualify him as a sort of 20th-century mountain Renaissance figure.

Born in the shadow of Jackson County’s Whiteside Mountain in 1873 near an area sometimes known as the “Dark Corner,” Alley was the last child in a family of 10. His mother was the first white child born in Whiteside Cove, and over time she and her husband acquired a huge tract of land—some 1,700 acres—in the place of her birth. They lost it all during the depressed times of the early 1890s, and the family’s economic devastation had a profound impact on young Alley.

He did manage to complete a high school degree at Cullowhee High School (the forerunner of Western Carolina Teachers’ College, today’s Western Carolina University). Alley achieved this strictly on his own with periodic interruptions to earn tuition. During most of his attendance, young Felix lived alone in a one-room cabin, and along with the wolf of poverty howling at his door he suffered mightily from severe asthma and what he called “sick headaches” (probably migraines). 

Although he desperately wanted to attend college, family economic circumstances, his mother’s illness, and personal debt combined to block all further formal education save a semester’s study at Chapel Hill. Still, well before reaching his majority Alley had determined on a career in law, and virtually all of Alley’s legal training came in the practical training ground offered by serving as Clerk of Superior Court in Jackson County, an office to which he was elected when still short of his 25th year. He studied assiduously at night and by the end of his elected term he had passed the state bar exam.

Over the course of the ensuing decades, Alley served a term in the state legislature, enjoyed a thriving legal practice while operating out of an office in the small town of Webster, and was elected district solicitor. In 1913 he moved to Waynesville in neighboring Haywood County, and that would be his home for the final 44 years of his life.

Time has a way of eroding memories and achievements, and while there are likely a few folks still alive in Waynesville and Haywood County who recall Judge Alley from his later years, today he is arguably best remembered for musical endeavors when he was a banjo-picking teenage prodigy whose first instrument was a homemade one fashioned from a cheese hoop, a tanned groundhog skin, carefully whittled wood, and cotton thread worked with beeswax. Lovesick as only a young boy can be, he turned a budding romance bedeviled by a rival into a treasured mountain ballad, “Kidder Cole.”

Regional music legend Bascom Lamar Lunsford recorded it, and the song is still sung today whenever folks in the region gather for a session of traditional pickin’ and grinnin’.  Although the ballad has banjo-picking Alley winning a bride, in truth that was nothing more than adolescent fantasy.

Youthful folderol and a timeless ballad aside, for a half century Felix Alley would be a towering presence in the mountain legal community, and his achievements in the legal profession certainly merit recognition. As a North Carolina Superior Court judge he oversaw trials in far western counties for decades. Throughout his long tenure he earned plaudits from both the general public and legal community for his even-handed manner and instinctive understanding of the nuances of mountain ways.

Earlier, as a lawyer, he was noted for his closeness to the African-American community at a time when many in his profession refused to handle cases involving blacks. One man of that race who had known him for many years concluded a spirited debate about the comparative merits of mountain lawyers with a declaration which, though it would not pass political-correctness muster today, drew knowing nods of agreement from everyone within earshot. “I’se done been waiting on all de Judges and lawyers date come to Leatherwood’s Hotel at Webster for nigh on to fifty years,” the elderly black man stated, “and I tells you now dat dis here Mr. Felix Alley sho’ is de bes’ nigger lawyer dat attends dese Co’ts!”

For today’s student of the area’s past, however, what is of the greatest importance and most enduring value connected with Alley’s career revolves around his insights on regional history and the staunch manner in which he defended mountain people and their folkways. His 1941 book, Random Thoughts and the Musings of a Mountaineer, is a treasure trove of high country folklore, humor, and insight on those he called, in simple terms, “my mountaineers.”

Those portions of the book dealing with legal pursuits and personalities have little general interest, and a quartet of chapters devoted to Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln are, while interesting in a quaint sort of way, outdated and on many points provably incorrect. Most notable in this regard is his delving into the evergreen topic of Lincoln’s paternity and reaching the astounding conclusion that John C. Calhoun was the Great Emancipator’s father. Similarly, the chapters devoted to rather arcane religious matters merit the “Random Thoughts” portion of the book’s titles.

On the other hand, the word pictures Alley paints of the Smokies and Blue Ridge, the Nantahalas and the Unakas, along with the hardy souls who first settled their deep coves and steep ridges, are moving in a manner only a native could provide. Similarly, side excursions into subjects as varied as the culinary merits of chitterlings and Indian legends, along with biographical snippets on long-forgotten personalities and numerous examples of mountain humor, give the book a welcome hint of literary spice.

But where Alley really shines is in his concerted attack on pervasive stereotyping of his fellow mountaineers. No part of his legacy is more important than the steadfast manner in which he refutes, passionately and persuasively, the material found in Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and Margaret Morley’s The Carolina Mountains. He praises their coverage of the physical features of the area, noting that if the authors “had closed their books when they finished what they had to say about the mountains and the mountain region, and had said nothing about the people who dwell therein, their books would have been acclaimed masterpieces.”

Unfortunately, in conscious efforts to distort for the sake of greater sales, “writing to be interesting and not to tell the truth,” Morley and Kephart presented “false impressions” of mountain people.

Alley doesn’t mince words in this regard. He condemns their “half truths embellished by exaggeration” and flat-out “untruths,” then offers scores of specific, provable examples, using quotations and citing page numbers. He shames their misleading, malicious depiction of his people and does so in a fashion any fair assessment has to conclude was richly merited.  Although readily acknowledging he lacks the ability as a wordsmith to tell “the story of our mountain people as it deserves to be written,” he reckons that “I can, with pardonable assurance, assert the claim that I know infinitely more about our mountain section and the people who dwell therein than Mr. Kephart or Miss Morley.” In delightfully dismissive pride of regionalism, he describes the author of The Carolina Mountains as “Miss Morley of Boston,” but he reserves his most scathing, telling comments for Kephart. 

That possibly resulted from the fact that he knew Kephart personally, thanks to his habit of staying at the Cooper House in Bryson City, where Kephart resided, whenever court was in session in Swain County. “I knew Mr. Kephart intimately,” he writes, and warmly acknowledges their friendship. “As a friend I loved him; but I did not love him as well as I love my native mountaineers, whose constant and unfaltering friendship has meant so much to me.” He rightly condemns Kephart’s obsession with moonshining, and painstakingly points out the way the popular author resorts to shamefully misleading stereotypes. Kephart wrote of a culture trapped in the 18th century; “bent, stooped, and ugly” while totally lacking in moral or spiritual awareness. His caricatures demeaned a people and way of life Alley cherished.

Given the widespread contemporary acceptance of Kephart’s depiction of mountain culture as accurate, and the less widespread but still notable acceptance of Morley’s writing, at the very least Alley provides a useful, thought-provoking counterpoise. Reading his “musings” gives us ample reason to pause and ponder while considering whether the most accurate insight on mountain people comes from outlanders he describes as misguided “uplifters” or from one of their own. For my part, as someone whose roots run deep in the region, I take Alley’s defense of mountaineers to heart and find quiet comfort in his assertion that “a more healthy and vigorous race of men and women cannot be found anywhere than in the mountains of Western North Carolina.” He was an exemplar of that race.

Alley died in 1953 in his 80th year and well over a decade after the publication of his memoirs. The later years of his life were devoted to serious religious contemplation, which included the 1946 publication of a 491-page book entitled What Think Ye of Christ?, civic activity, and interaction with the common folks of the mountains whom he so dearly loved. He is buried, with other family members, in Waynesville’s Green Hill Cemetery.

Lyrics for “Kidder Cole”

As is often the case with traditional ballads, there are many versions and varied verses in this ballad. The version printed here comes directly from Alley’s memoirs, although in that book he notes that he is only presenting the song as it was written down by that grand chronicler of mountain days and mountain ways, John Parris, in an October 1936 article for The State magazine. He also confesses it was his “first, last and only attempt at poetry, and of course there is not a line of poetry in it.” Maybe, and maybe not, but his one effort in this regard became an enduring regional classic.

My name is Felix Eugene Alley,

My best girl lives in Cashiers Valley;

She’s the joy of my soul

And her name is Kidder Cole.

I don’t know—it may have been chance,

‘Way last fall when I went to a dance,

I planned to dance with Kidder the live-long night

But I got my time beat by Charlie Wright.

So, if I ever have to have a fight,

I hope it will be with Charlie Wright,

For he was the ruin of my soul,

When he beat my time with Kidder Cole.

When the dance was over I went away

To bide my time till another day,

When I could cause trouble and pain and blight

To sadden the soul of Charlie Wright.

I thought my race was almost run

When Kidder went off to Anderson;

She went to Anderson to go to school,

And left me at home to act the fool.

But she came back the following spring,

And oh, how I made my banjo ring;

It helped me get my spirit right,

To beat the time of Charlie Wright.

Kidder came home the first of June,

And I sang my song and played my tune;

I commenced trying with all my might

To “put one over” on Charlie Wright.

I did not feel the least bit shy,

On the Fourth of the next July,

When at the head of a big delegation

I went to attend the big Celebration.

When the speaking was over we had a dance,

And then and there I found my chance

To make my peace with Kidder Cole,

And beat Charlie Wright; confound his soul!

Charlie came in an hour or so,

But when he saw me with Kidder he turned to go

Back to his home with a saddened soul,

For I’d beat his time with Kidder Cole.

I’ve always heard the old folks say

That every dog will have his day;

And now all of Charlie’s joy has passed

For I’ve succeeded in beating him at last.

Oh, my sweet little Kidder girl!

You make my head to spin and whirl,

I am yours and you are mine,

As long as the sun and stars shall shine.

Oh, yes my Kidder Cole is sweet,

And it won’t be long until we shall meet,

At her home in Cashiers Valley

Where she’ll change her name to Alley.

I like her family as a whole,

But I’m especially fond of George M. Cole;

I belie I shall like to call him “paw”

When I get to be his son-in-law.

Some of her folks I don’t like so well,

But I may some time, for who can tell?

And after all between me and you

I’m not marrying the whole durned crew.