DATE: Thursday, September 25, 1997          TAG: 9709250336

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   53 lines

MOUNTAIN FOLK WILL BRING THEIR CHARM TO NORFOLK

In a hollow in Southwest Virginia, they tell of a young seminary graduate on his first outing to deliver a sermon to a live congregation.

He got carried away with his message and went way over time, but he kept preaching until a mountaineer in the front row took out a pistol and placed it in his lap.

The new preacher skidded to a stop and closed his sermon. As he was shaking hands with the people filing out the church door, he met the mountaineer who had, so to speak, called time on him.

The old mountaineer was smiling, so the preacher, taking heart, said to him, ``You wouldn't have used that gun on me, would you?''

``No,'' said the mountaineer, ``but the fella who brought you here is in deep trouble.'' That is the sort of wry, dry tale you hear out there, and the sort that story-teller Doc McConnell will be spinning Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. in Norfolk's Wells Theatre during an Appalachian Celebration along Tazewell Street.

The varied festival, inside and out, will be free to the public. While Doc is telling stories inside, Dave McNew will be demonstrating outside how to shape a dulcimer. Folklorist Kathy Coleman will be talking about her mountain kin and showing their homemade toys.

Today's children will learn how to make corn-husk dolls. A group of women will be demonstrating quilting. Bluegrass musicians will be playing, and the Flatland Cloggers will be dancing.

Inside there will be tours of the Wells Theatre, including the set for the play ``Appalachian Strings,'' which will take place at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets Saturday night will be $27 and $32.

So why are mountain folk skilled at telling stories?

Well, mainly, Doc says, it is because they had to rely on themselves for entertainment.

In the mountains, when he was growing up more than 65 years ago, ``the industrial revolution passed us by and then the educational and economic revolutions skipped us.

``Stuck up in the hills, there were few radios and no movies. The only newspaper we saw was in the post office at the end of the week when everybody else had read it.

``All that was left to do was to tell stories. It became a way of life.''

The storytelling was spontaneous and began at any time when three or four gathered in a country store about a mile out of the hollow or before or after church or when they met in the middle of a road.

That country still is the best place to hear a good story. Every fall, former Gov. Colgate W. Darden Jr. would leave Norfolk and journey through Southwest Virginia and come home rested, restored by a half-dozen stories of the stuff of life out there. You can catch some of `em Saturday. Free, remember.

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