Celebrations of Creativity and Craftsmanship

“Folks are Talking,” oral histories of the 1970s from the Appalachian region in rural Virginia and West Virginia, recorded by Garret Mathews while he was a young newspaper writer.   Accounts include a snake handler, a horse trader, survivors of coal mine explosions, a bootlegger, a woman furrier who skinned muskrats while eating peanut butter sandwiches, a man who trained fighting roosters, and a coal miner who once hand-loaded 50 tons of coal in a single shift.