Mountain Storyteller Revived

Sometimes commendable works of literature go out of print or fade away with the death of their author, only to be rescued and given new life by champions who have loved and admired them.

After her older sister’s death in 1886, Lavinia Dickinson discovered hundreds of Emily’s poems and for 13 years made their publication the aim of her life. Today many critics and readers rank Emily Dickinson among the world’s finest poets. In 1917, the praise of writer Carl Van Doren was key in reviving Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In 1946, Malcolm Cowley published The Portable Faulkner, a book that saved the early novels of William Faulkner from falling into obscurity. The eccentric—some might say crazy—Thelma Toole badgered Walker Percy into reading A Confederacy Of Dunces, a novel by her deceased son that, thanks to Percy’s support, found a publisher and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Now Marty and Amy Cherrix, a mother and daughter team and founders of Two Hoots Press, have revived Roaming The Mountains With John Parris. 

Readers who remember John Parris, his columns for the Asheville Citizen-Times, and this collection of some of those columns will want to raise a glass to the reissue of this book. Those unfamiliar with Parris and his sketches of Western North Carolina mountain life are in for a special treat, for here in Roaming The Mountains they will find thumbnail sketches of such personalities as John Sevier, first governor of Tennessee; Old Bill Williams, King of the Mountain Men; and Frankie Silvers, the only woman ever legally hanged in North Carolina. They will read vivid descriptions of “laurel hells” and the beauty of Grandfather Mountain. They will hear the old ballads that still haunt these hills. They will listen, as if around a fireplace in a cabin on a February night when the mountain skies glitter with stars, to ghost stories and the ancient tales of the Cherokee. Here readers young and old can visit gristmills and corn shuckings, dip their biscuits into sorghum, eat some yellow-jacket soup, and wash it down with Cherry Bounce.

Born in 1914, John Parris grew up in Sylva, where at the age of 13 he began writing for the local paper. Later he worked as a journalist in Asheville, Raleigh, Manhattan, and Europe. During World War II, he served as a diplomatic correspondent, returned after the war to New York, and covered events at the United Nations. Yet always he dreamed of returning to Sylva and his beloved mountains. As Robert Bunnelle, the original publisher of the book, notes in the “Foreword”, Parris walked with diplomats and kings, yet “the grandeur of The Mall in London and the sparkle of the Seine…for him never quite came up to the grandeur of the Nantahala Gorge and the sparkle of the Tuckaseigee River.”

In 1947 Parris made this dream a reality, when he returned to Sylva, writing his columns for the Citizen-Times and serving as director of public relations for the Cherokee Historical Association. 

Despite his many years in journalism in New York and Europe, Parris never lost his ear for the speech and expressions of the mountain people he loved. The dialogue in these columns rings true, and his descriptions of people, places, and events are sharply drawn and enlightening. 

Here, for instance, is an old man speaking about his gristmill: “You say you’ve heard that millers don’t like to grind rye or buckwheat? Well, you heard right. And I’ll tell you why. You put a run of rye or buckwheat through your mill and it’ll ruin the taste of the next corn you grind. Rye or buckwheat is mean to clean out of the mill.”

Parris also had the touch of a poet about him. Listen to his words:

“Granville Calhoun is a mountain man with tales to tell.

“He is the last of the old time hunters and trappers and guides who ranged the Great Smokies when this was a wild and isolated country.

“He is an encyclopedia of memories….

“The years have made a mellow mask of his face. Wind and rain and sun, and the snows of eighty winters, have etched it into a study by Rockwell.

“There is a spring in his step and he carries himself tall and straight, a hint of muscles that once were as tough and stringy as the vines of the wild muscadine.

“His eyes are as bright as a dream of tomorrow.”

For 42 years John Parris wrote his columns for the Asheville Citizen-Times. He was the winner of numerous honors, including the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award and the Laurel Leaf Award of the Appalachian Consortium. He took a close interest in affairs at Western North Carolina University, which in 1998 awarded him an honorary doctorate and which now houses his collection of writings, notes, recordings, and other objects of interest to scholars.  

So kudos to Amy and Marty Keener Cherrix for breathing new life into the writings of John Parris. Roaming The Mountains should find a home on the shelf of any reader wishing to know the bygone history and culture of our region and the man who did the roaming to collect that history.

To obtain Roaming The Mountains With John Parris, please call your local bookstore or go online to twohootspress.com and click on the link indiebound.org.