The Two Women's Bet

This week’s poem is a reworking of an Appalachian folktale which I first heard as a youth from my pastor, a Methodist minister named Joe Ervin.

Preacher Joe introduced me and dozens of others to Richard Chase’s collection of mountain tales titled, Grandfather Tales, as he read them to us as campers siting around a campfire during summer trips to a US Forest Campground called Carolina Hemlock on North Carolina Hwy 80 which runs alongside the South Toe River near Busick, NC.

Preacher Joe grew up in the area near Mt Cielo, NC which is just between Busick and Burnsville. Busick has been in the news lately because the largest rainfall totals in NC were recorded there over the course of days between September 24-28. Those storms and Hurricane Helene dropped 30 and 78hundredths inches of rain on the area.

Back in the 80’s my first real job was working as a middle school creative theater resource teacher. As a resource teacher, I worked with 8th Grace English and NC History teachers and classes in teaching a series of lessons based on Appalachian folktales. It was teaching those stories to students in two schools over several years that, I came to love these stories even more.

In response to the recent destruction caused in the Appalachian mountains, writer Rebecca Reynolds and Sky Turtle Press have begun a project to collect mountain stories and folktales into a book in order to raise funds on behalf of relief efforts to support those living in areas impacted by Hurricane Helene.

In today’s episode, I’ve taken a story I memorized and taught as a teacher and worked it into verse. I offer it today in love for the mountain communities and culture that are so special to me.

Here is my version of The Two Women’s Bet.

You may view the promotional video regarding the efforts of Sky Turtle Press here:

Music: “Cabin of Love”  by THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY TRIO; Burch Columbia (20794). Publication date 1950-08

after “The Two Old Women’s Bet’, Richard Chase, Grandfather Tales: American-English Folk Tales (1948) (Richard Chase, February 15, 1904 – February 1988)