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John Henry Legend
Radio Documentary
The Process
Over the next two weeks I visited Talcott nearly every day. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without help from Nancy Wilder, who introduced me to dozens of people I'd never have found otherwise.
I spent hours just leaning up against the check-out counter Dillon's Superette. Sometimes I'd get an impromptu interview with a customer, or I'd meet someone who'd introduce me to her husband who would introduce me to his father who would take me on a walking tour of John Henry's tunnel. Little by little people got used to me. One of the two Baptist preachers invited me to the church picnic on the bank of the Greenbrier, where I ate pork chops and Jell-O. Like Tolstoy's drops of rain on a window, one person led me to another, who led me to more. Without the cooperation, generosity and trust of the community, I couldn't have proceeded.
A remarkable thing about interviewing "everyday" people is that few of them ever think they have anything worthwhile to say, yet if you happen to look in the right places, you'll find amazing stories. 85-year-old Katherine Bennett welcomed me into her house with an apology: "I'm sorry, but I really don't have anything useful to tell you." I put my tape recorder away and we chatted for a while until she was ready for the interview. She was right; she had little to say about John Henry, so I asked instead about her childhood in Talcott, though I didn't expect to use those stories in my program. "My grandparents used to live 'way down there on the river. I remember when they put the state highway through, they blasted that place all up."
The story had nothing to do with the John Henry legend, as far as I could tell. She continued, "It broke all our hearts to see that place go, but there was nothing we could do." She hesitated, a memory triggered. "Come to think of it, I wrote a poem about that, a long time ago . . . I'd forgotten all about it." She found the poem in a stack of yellowed papers. As she read it, I realized it was a vivid account of one family's powerlessness in the face of technological progress: a living example of the John Henry legend. I never would have heard the poem if I'd been more exclusive in my approach to tape gathering.
"My grandparents
both are dead now.
They died with a broken heart.
The old homeplace they loved so well,
I'm sure they never forgot.
"I go there
every summer
Just to fish and swim.
There's no one there to greet me,
No home to enter in.
"I often sit
and wonder
Just why it had to be.
The old homeplace we loved so well
Was more than a heaven to me."
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Copyright © 1999–2005, Ginna Allison. All Rights Reserved.
Contact: ginna @ wormlips [dot] com.