Of parched corn and rank strangers: Ahead of new book, Gary Carden reflects on a lifetime of storytelling
Legendary Western North Carolina storyteller Gary Carden has a new book coming Aug. 20. Cory Vaillancourt photo
So I walk into Gary Carden’s room in the ICU and the first thing he says to me in his sonorous growl is, “OK newspaperman, take this down. I want you to turn this into a story.”
It wasn’t a surprise coming from the 89-year-old Carden, a recipient of North Carolina’s highest award for literature who’d suffered a heart attack the night before. I hadn’t intended to interview him that day; I’d only stopped in to see how he was doing and drop off a poster we’d printed for his upcoming Aug. 20 book signing in Sylva because I thought it might lift his spirits. He loves that kind of thing. He has one at home framed above his bed near his books. I didn’t know if he’d be awake or even in the mood to talk as I opened the door, but by God, the man was singing songs to his nurses when he wasn’t giving them a hard time or dramatically conveying the mountain lore of a vanishing culture that had constituted the meat of his decades-long career as an award-winning author, distinguished playwright, accomplished painter, first-rate storyteller and average singer.
One of his favorite songs, he’s told me approximately 14 times, is “Rank stranger,” a mournful gospel tune composed in 1942 but most closely associated with a 1960 release by American music legends The Stanley Brothers. The lyrics lay bare feelings of both worldly and spiritual alienation — recurring themes in Carden’s work born of his unusual biography.
“I wandered again, to my home in the mountains, where in youth’s early dawn, I was happy and free,” Carden sang to the bemused annoyance of the woman checking his blood sugar. “I looked for my friends, but I never could find them. I found they were all rank strangers to me.”
The soliloquy he wanted me to take down and turn into a story was, in its own way, a personal redoubt of those themes. As with any good Carden yarn, it reveals a strongly rooted sense of place — a sense of this place — whether that be a darkened Main Street movie theater is his native Sylva or some dusty fairgrounds smoldering on a humid Southern Appalachian summer day.
When I was about 23 or 24, I went with my grandmother to a family reunion in Macon County, and there were the Shepards and the Gibsons and the Hearsts and a tremendous number of people and at one point in the thing, they brought out the family tree and set it up on my great granny’s porch. It’s grotesque. It’s incredible. Every limb is some family, and the little buds are their children. Of course, I went over to look at me, and I was just a little stub. Since I didn’t have any children, there was nothing there. There was an old mountain woman standing there next to me, and she looked at my grandmother — and they’ll do this, they’ll ask you anything — and she says, “How come Gary Neil ain’t got no youngins?”
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My granny said, “Well, I guess it’s because somebody parched his corn.”
I’ve always had my corn parched, you know. I’m an orphan. I’ve never had children. I never had a family of any kind. I had lost both my father and mother when I was young, and I was plainly aware that everywhere I went, I felt that somebody had parched my corn.
It means that I’m sterile. If you parch corn, you can’t plant it, it won’t grow anything and so that’s pretty much what I was. The big thing in mountain culture is to have a son, or several sons, and you’re graded or respected in relation to whether you have a big family and you have a lot of children. I had none of those and it always worked to my disadvantage.
The odd kid from Rhodes Cove who buried himself in comic books, nickel matinees, radio serials and Shakespeare has spent his life surrounded by the rank strangers he’s enthralled with his artisanal craft as the world around him grows less and less recognizable. But to paraphrase a Nirvana song from late last century, Gary found his friends — they’re in his head. Abner, the wild monkey of the Smokies. Lash LaRue. Sergeant Preston of the Royal Mounties and his Wonder Dog, King. The Puke Buzzard. King William and Queen Luella, rulers of the Kingdom of the Happy Land.
I take “sterile” in his instance as a metaphor; his whole life, Gary indeed seemed strange (“queer” or “quare” in the local dialect) compared to those around him, including the grandfather who raised him and didn’t understand how a man made money by reading books, writing stories and acting in plays. A man made money with his hands, in the tannery or driving an Esso truck or sometimes with little more than a shovel and some gumption — not by borrowing money from a bank to go to a school. The absence of a large brood must’ve been the final inkling for some that Gary, being born of bad blood and all, may just be a metaphorically sterile Jasper, possessed only of parched corn and rank strangers.
Carden, however, isn’t through with his story.
From his hospital bed, he talked of his desire to podcast, to write biographies of nursing home residents, to write a monthly column, to attend his upcoming book signing, to keep telling stories. But he being no little stub after all also talked of his substantial issue.
In a way, I did have children, because my writing is my children. It may not account to much. I brag a bit and I can talk loud and people listen, but I’m satisfied. I know I’m coming to the end of what it is I’m going to do. I don’t have children — but I have friends, and I have stories.
Want to go?
Celebrate the long-awaited release of a collection of biographical mountain tales, “Stories I lived to Tell: an Appalachian Memoir” (UNC Press, 152 pages) from legendary storyteller and Jackson County native Gary Carden, featuring an introduction from Emmy award-winning filmmaker and author Neal Hutcheson. Copies will be available for purchase at the event. Hutcheson will be on hand to sign them. Due to recent health issues, Carden’s attendance remains tentative. Light refreshments. No reservations. Free. Sponsored by City Lights Bookstore and The Smoky Mountain News. Learn more about the book at uncpress.org.
Time: 6 p.m.
Date: Tuesday, Aug. 20
Location: Community room, Jackson County Library, 310 Keener St., Sylva
