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| Rudy Thomas and Faye Piercey Dalton (Photo by Al Cross) |
Rudy Thomas has been a teacher and a Clinton County school superintendent, and remains a poet who has published more than 1,000 poems, many of them tied to the concept of place. His presentation during the Spirit of 76 Celebration was titled "The Importance of Place."
Rudy learned the importance of place by growing up on the hill above 76 Falls, where he had hoped to begin a walking lecture, but the weather was too hot, so he spoke in the air-conditioned Mount Union Christian Church.
"I had good luck getting poetry published about my father; he was a character," Rudy said of his father, the late Morris Thomas, who was the inspiration for the title one of Rudy's 35 books, The Song Leader.
Though Morris was the song leader at the church, he was not baptized until he was old and had 19 strokes, Rudy said. His uncle Maxie Thomas asked why he had waited so long, and Morris replied, "When you go to the show you have to have a ticket to get in."
Rudy said his father went fishing under 76 Falls and came home drunk, explaining that "mermaids" from recreational boats on Lake Cumberland brought him beer. Morris came through the Battle of the Bulge and wouldn't stay in New York for a medical evaluation, so the doctor said he would rate him 10 percent disabled. "It was a small check," Rudy said, "but it was something that meant something to him." Morris was a well-known auto-body repairman.
When the lake was impounded, Rudy said, Lyman Cook was the last person to leave Indian Creek as the waters rose. When they reached his fromt porch, he hutched up his mules and said, "Let's go."
The next big event at Seventy Six was the April 3, 1974, tornado that destroyed the church and devastated the park on Indian Creek above the falls. He said the tornado gave him the idea for the poem "Threatening Conditions" in the book Old Wounds, New Words, published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation, and for "A Local Legend," a poem about Effie Wells, who lived on a hill overlooking the falls and was killed by the tornado at age 64. He read it, adding some explanations:
"She was a good woman, folks say; loved the Bible and a church she could not attend. Hard feelings stood in the way, her husband's and another's. . . .
A green light came to the opposite bank when the creek was raging wild. No one could cross from bank to bank, not man, not woman, not child.
To the folk that was a warning they should not take it light. She had cause for warning. death came in a fortnight. ("Took her husband," Rudy added.)
She lived in fear alone; her children realized they must care for her, and brought home a dog to guard a woman to dust, both capable.
The [next] woman saw a sign; she too became afraid, coming from east to west in a line, coming from west to east, she said, and moved out.
The [next] woman saw a sign; she too became afraid, coming from east to west in a line, coming from west to east, she said, and moved out.
("So that was two women who moved out of the house because they saw this strange light across the creek when it was roaring.")
The storm came from the west that day, spiraling like a swarm of bees, cleaning the land in a warlike way, of her houses, her barns and her trees.
Howling down to the river the animal would go until the rescuers followed his run; across the river he had them go, to find her body, her Bibles, her guns, twisted and torn.
The folk now fear the woman dwells within in the storms' calm eye; when they hear the wind, they hear her yell, so shrill, so real, the children cry."
Rudy also spoke from his book Life on the River Hill, which he said was based on the manuscript of a half-Indian woman whose father reportedly rode with the Jesse James Gang. He said he was mentored by the late Jim Wayne Miller, the Appalachian poet at Western Kentucky University.
After Rudy spoke at noon Saturday, July 4, he asked Faye Piercey Dalton to share some stories of the community. She said after Wednesday night prayer meetings, she and other children would enjoy watermelon "and we all thought we had to go to the spring . . . a little bitty narrow path into the woods. And to tell you the truth, there might have been some hand-holding, and maybe a few stolen kisses, but you have to remember most of us were kissin' cousins, so that's about all it amounted to. . . . I look back at all those days and I see what a big impact Mount Union made on me. I still have a special place in my heart for this church."
Faye's brother, Terry Piercey, recalled an energetic preacher at a revival who "ran up and down the aisles and everything, and he caught my eye. He ran over and he grabbed me by the arm . . . he thought I was of age and that I looked like I was under conviction, but I was really just scared to death." He read "a poem Rudy wrote about our nights in church:"
"I remember. Terry laughs. Going to Old Seventy Church once one night when I was about 8. It was hot, no screens on the windows, and the bugs would come in. I was whippign a snapping bug, a brown bug hinged in the middle; they coudl flip straight up when you touched them. I was doing that. And the preacher came back, hobvering over me, and told me I was under conviction. I'd already read all of Edgar Allan Poe and most of Shakespeare by then, but I didn't have a clue what 'being under conviction' was. He asked me, 'What do you think your parents were about when you were conceived, young man? They weren't wanting a sweet baby, they were lusting,' I remember him saying, and I had no idea what lust was. I kept looking at my mother for help, but she didn't give me any."
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