Come Go With Me: Old-Timer Stories from the Southern Mountains [Hardcover]

Roy Edwin Thomas (Author, Compiler), Laszlo Kubinyi (Illustrator)

Book Description

Ninety-four tall tales, reminiscences, and family stories offer a colorful folk history of the people, places, day-to-day activities, and culture of the Appalachian, Ozark, and Ouachita Mountains.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Oral historian Thomas, having transcribed hundreds of interviews conducted mostly in the 1970s, presents 94 reminiscences as a well-organized sampling of a vanished way of life. Subjects include the purely factual (e.g., how to make headcheese), family stories reaching back to the Civil War and tall tales about hunting incidents and such. Small, seemingly engraved drawings by Kubinyi ( Who'd Believe John Colter? ), chiefly of objects mentioned in a story, like meat hanging in a smokehouse, or a pot for making lye soap, appear throughout. Though this is a fascinating collection to dip into, Thomas is no Studs Terkel, and his brief introduction and very occasional notes fail to provide much historical background. As over 70 interviewees appear, it is also difficult to get a sense of them as individuals, but older children will still find their reports a useful and often amusing resource for learning about the history and folk heritage of the Appalachian, Ozark and Ouachita mountains. All ages.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up-Thomas has collected reminiscences from 75 elderly people (mostly Arkansans) about their childhood and youth in the rural South. Many of the selections date from around the turn of the century while some relate youthful experiences of their parents from around the time of the Civil War. The material is divided into 11 chapters with such titles as "They Preached the Bible," "The War Was Just Pitiful," or "We Had Good Neighbors." The stories are taken down verbatim with no embellishments or explanations of terms or social behavior that might be unfamiliar to today's readers. For example, one story involves a "shivaree," a noisy wedding night serenade for a newly married couple by friends or family. It's something many modern Southerners would not know about, much less people from other areas. This happens frequently throughout the book. The writing style is bare bones and suffers from the many voices heard. A poor imitation of the popular "Foxfire" books (Doubleday).
Kay McPherson, Central Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, GA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 187 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (J); 1st edition (April 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374370893
• ISBN-13: 978-0374370893
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,612,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful treasury of old-time memories, stories, and wisdom, August 21, 2006

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Come Go With Me: Old-Timer Stories from the Southern Mountains (Hardcover)

I'm really not sure why this book is targeted at young children because it's a wonderful book that virtually anyone can enjoy - and only adult readers are likely to truly appreciate the treasury of old-time memories collected here. This book really is living history, reflecting the memories and traditions of a generation no longer with us, taking us back to olden days when life was simpler and the world seemingly a much better place. Southerners in particular will identify with these stories and gain much clearer insight into the lives of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

Arkansas folklorist Roy Edwin Thomas interviewed countless elderly men and women over the course of a quarter century, recording precious stories and memories that would otherwise be lost to us. These subjects were just regular folks who grew up in isolated communities around the Appalachian, Ozark, and Ouachita mountains, many of them past their 80th, 90th, and even 100th birthdays at the time. Most of the interviews that went into this particular book were conducted in the early 1970s, thereby preserving the words and wisdom of a generation now passed from this earth.

The 94 tales you'll find in this book vary a great deal in terms of their subject matter, but they all help paint a vivid picture of rural life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with some of the stories taking us all the way back to the time of the War Between the States. Don't expect to be entertained each and every time, though, as some of these stories are factual, in the sense that they describe how meat was stored, how lye soap was made, how education was oftentimes a luxury, etc. A strong sense of community, with neighbors helping neighbors, comes through particularly clearly - but even more obvious is the depth of feeling these individuals felt for those days gone by.

Many of the stories will make you laugh - there's no doubt of that. As poor and rural as these bygone families were a century or more ago, folks still knew how to have a good time. Basically, these are the kinds of stories you wish you could go back and ask your departed grandparents to tell you. Thank goodness that someone like Roy Edwin Thomas came along and preserved so many of these memories before they were forever lost to us.