A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Memories, Musings, and More. The University of Tennessee Press, 2020, 309 pages.
In A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Memories, Musings, and More Jim Casada takes his readers back in time to the land and the people of Western North Carolina of the mid-twentieth century. Blessed with a sharp eye for detail, a fine memory, a boyhood lived largely outdoors, and a talent for description and narrative, Casada has vividly recreated life in the Smokies as it was 70 years ago.
Rather than tell his story chronologically, Casada (a frequent Smoky Mountain Living contributor) divides A Smoky Mountain Boyhood into four sections: High Country Holiday Tales and Traditions; Seasons of the Smokies; Tools, Toys, and Boyhood Treasures; and Precious Memories. This wise arrangement allows Casada greater freedom of movement in his story-telling, so that as we read we feel as if we were sitting beside him on a front porch, sipping a glass of ice tea and listening to him recount his tales.
Many of these stories have to do with hunting and fishing, twin passions for Casada as a boy and as a man. Reading him, I kept thinking of another North Carolina writer who once shared Casada’s ardor—Robert Ruark, who wrote The Old Man and the Boy—and so was pleased to discover Casada was also an admirer of Ruark and had even edited a collection of his essays. I was also delighted to find his tribute to John Parris, who used to write for the Asheville Citizen-Times and who, Casada tells us, “ranks at the top of my list of those who have chronicled high country days and ways.”
In addition to his stories, Casada also shares with us a host of observations on Appalachian customs and folkways. He describes, for example, Decoration Day, that time of the year when folks would gather at their local cemetery, tidy up and put flowers on the graves of their dead, sing the old church hymns, and then have “dinner on the grounds.” He explains how these same people read the weather to know when to plant their tomatoes, how his grandfather would use a long pole to “fish” for the chickens intended for a Sunday dinner, and how for supper the family often ate cornbread and cracklings — “the crisp tidbits left from rendering pork fat into lard.” Of this dish, Casada said, “They carry enough cholesterol to be a cardiologist’s nightmare and provide enough flavor to bring tears to a glass eye.”
Those last words reveal another great pleasure gleaned from A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Casada’s gift for language. Here, for instance, is a beautiful line from the Preface: “Memory makes a fine mistress, for she is warm, winsome, rendered malleable by the passage of time, and at least for me, of surpassing beauty.”
Casada, a retired professor of history at Winthrop University, also brings a broad knowledge of the past and of literature to Smoky Mountain Boyhood. Of Decoration Day, for instance, he quotes Thornton Wilder, “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning,” and then writes: “Those cemeteries, and their care, are our lasting link of love between these two lands. It is a lynchpin of surpassing importance.”
In the chapter “School Days,” Casada praises some of the teachers who taught him these subjects while also relating some hilarious pranks from his college days at King College in Bristol: students carrying a professor’s Volkswagen beetle into the gym, others pushing and prodding a calf up three flights of stairs and leaving it on the top floor of a men’s dormitory, and several wild incidents involving disruptions in the college chapel.
Another aspect of the memoir that will appeal to many readers is Casada’s inventory of games played and favorite possessions when he was growing up. Like many boys, he did his first target practice with a BB gun before graduating to a 20-gauge shotgun. His descriptions of some of the forts he and his friends built brought me pleasant memories of Boonville, North Carolina, where in our adolescence my brother, two friends, and myself spent many a summer day building fortresses from logs and branches.
Finally, anyone who enjoys the fields, woods, and creeks of our mountains will find a treasure trove of delights in A Smoky Mountain Boyhood. From a lifetime of exploring both our highlands and other places around the United States and in some foreign countries, Casada became a naturalist with a massive knowledge of flora and fauna, particularly of the Smokies. Reading his autobiography is like taking a hike with a wonderful guide explaining the ways of copperheads, rabbits and squirrels, and pointing out the variety of plants beside the pathway.
In his closing to these reminiscences, Casada writes, “Our duty and our destiny is to honor, protect, and perpetuate all that makes us distinctive and endows us with our unique identity. If this book has succeeded, in some small way, in accomplishing that then I’ll consider it a success.”
Mission accomplished, Mr. Casada.
Readers will find A Smoky Mountain Boyhood in their local bookstores or on Amazon. In a note accompanying the book he sent to me, Casada mentioned that “Signed, inscribed copies are available from the author for $29.95 plus $5 shipping at jimcasadaoutdoors.com or by contacting him c/o 1250 Yorkdale Drive, Rock Hill, SC 29730.”