Hillbilly: The Real Story (The History Channel)
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DVD details
Actor: Billy Ray CyrusDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, NTSC
Running Time: 100 minutes
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&E Home Video
Product features:
- Hillbillies gave America its most popular spectator sport: NASCAR.
- The label "hillbilly" may date to 17th Century Ireland.
- This feature-length documentary celebrates a unique facet of America's melting pot.
DVD Reviews of Hillbilly: The Real Story (The History Channel)
DVD Review: All about my ancestors
Summary: 5 Stars
I watched it on the History Channel and it was mesmerizing to me. I was absolutely familiar with a lot of what was covered. When I was a wee (3 to 5 yr old) child, my daddy worked on the Fontana Dam up there while we lived not far from the Cherokee Indian Reservation. Of course I was too young at the time to remember much first hand, so this movie, while I watched it on the History Channel, gave me some background. Such as, I did not know that the Fontana Dam was put into action by FDR to aid in making the first atomic bombs. I remember hearing some things about the bombs, but never realized it was so near to us. Even if I knew, it wouldn't have meant a thing to me. The power that those bombs would take with them never entered my young mind. I remember my parents talking about a huge devastating train wreck that happened somewhere around the Oak Ridge, Tennessee plant where other components were being manufactured. Oak Ridge was not very far from the Fontana. I just wonder how close we came to being annihilated by that.
Another thing I didn't know was how the Fontana River was flooded and all of the homes destroyed and displaced so many people with something like a $35 payoff by the government. What a shame! Although, I know that $35 back then was probably like $3500 which still wouldn't compensate me for uprooting my family and watching all I had ever worked for be destroyed by my government. A lot of my family came from that area, Murphy NC and a few miles either way, and I know how they had such a struggle to make a living, because I've heard it many times. They grew and raised all of their food. There was no driving or even walking to the grocery store. If they didn't raise it, they didn't eat. They learned how to preserve and use every bit of food stuffs they could. My grandmothers all could make the best saurkraut I've ever eaten. It's totally different from any you'll ever find in a store. They canned green beans, tomatoes, corn, and everything else they could raise. They even figured out pickling vegetables and I'm still addicted to it. I learned how to do it from my grandmothers and my mother-in-law, but it's such a long, dramatic thing that it's hard to get excited about it any more when we have so much other stuff in the stores. BUT, I still make it up to the mountains, around the reservation and can still buy the saurkraut and pickled beans and corn, okra, etc from someone who has kept it going.
Most of them didn't have radios and naturally no one had any TVs, and so the war effort meant little or squat to them. All they knew was their government took their homes. And now, my other side of the family, some being full blooded Cherokee Indians, I can't even talk about it. They were treated worse than people treat their dogs today. Although, none of my ancestors as far as I know, were made to go down that Trail of Tears, I still feel heartbreak for them. Thank God, some of these wrongs are being made right today for them now. I do remember this scene: The Indians were allowed to come into the little town where we lived, Robbinsville, on Saturdays (and not Sunday through Friday) to buy (or barter) for the supplies that they could get and I would sit on this rock wall (that kept our house from sliding down the mountain), with them waiting for their busses to come after them to take them back to the reservation. We got along really well. I must've spoken some kind of "childspeak" to them, because I certainly didn't know their language, but maybe they knew some of mine. I remember many times by the time their bus got there, they would have given me nickels. I thought I was queen of something. I just loved them. At the time I didn't know I was partly one of them. I'm proud of that heritage. That was their land in the very beginning, and look what we did to them. My little great grandmother who was full blooded Cherokee never mentioned how they were treated. She was just the sweetest, tiny little thing and was always friendly and happy and I know she had to remember those undignified injustices her people suffered.
Well, I know I'm supposed to be reviewing the movie, but if you've ever read my reviews, you must know I can't ever close my mouth without railing about something.
I thought the movie was very enlightening, to me at least. I learned so much from watching it. I don't ever remember reading about anything like that when I was coming up the chains of schools back in those days. They must have been still keeping it quiet. We sure read a lot about old Shakespeare and the French Revolution and other stuff I didn't care one whit about. I would've been interested in what my people and the other early settlers went through to make this country what it is. I had no idea that Jewish people and Irish people and others had settled right up there where I lived in those Appalachians. I took it for granted all of these long years that they all came from Boston and New York. And settled there. Most of them never left it. If I had ever thought about it I would have had to wonder how on earth did I get to be having all of these races within me. Irish, German, English, Scottish, you name it there was some of it in my family. So you can see that we didn't really have any "real" born USA'ns or Native Americans. The Indians were the Native Americans.
Back to the movie. Billy Ray did a bang up job of hosting it. He seemed so well informed. I'm sure he was too, seeing as how he's one of us Appalatians. He held my interest, because he just talked like it was something he had just gone through. Good for him. I remember how he was so jeered over his song, achey brachy heart. (I cannot remember how to spell it.) I expected any minute for him to start singing and dancing the "achey brakey heart". Which by the way, I'm learning how to do in my dancercize class as I speak. Can you imagine 71 years old and out on the town doing the achey brachey dance? I can barely walk in a straight line due to old age infirmaries, but I can do those line dances. I haven't fallen down yet. Thanks to Miley, it's back in fashion, at least in the saloons where we do line dancing. I love it.
I am purchasing this movie right now so that I can watch it some more uninterrupted. I happened upon it while looking for something to watch one night when I couldn't go to sleep. I had missed probably almost an hour of it. So now I can buy it, and by the way, I came upon it by accident here. Maybe I can get some of my kids and grandkids to watch what their ancestors tolerated many years ago, yet not all that long ago that it should ever be forgotten. (One more thing, my 2 year old granddaughter who is now 28 would come to my house about every day wearing her danskins and she would primp all up and climb on the coffee table and say to me "Mamaw, achey achey heart, Mamaw, achey, achey, heart". And so I would have to keep rewinding that cassette tape so she could do her version.' I finally made her a tape of her own, and it was just "achy breaky heart" about a dozen times, so that I didn't have to keep running to rewind it for her. I wonder if she remembers that. We're going out to dinner tomorrow evening, and I will now have something new to talk about with them.
More Hillbilly: The Real Story (The History Channel) reviews:
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Description of Hillbilly: The Real Story (The History Channel)
Join host Billy Ray Cyrus on a journey into the hollers and runs of Appalachia to discover the proud legacy of the region's mountain folk. Learn how hillbillies, long misunderstood and maligned as isolated and backward, actually have a 300-year history of achievement and success that has contributed significantly to our national identity. In this two-hour special you'll meet outcast immigrants, war heroes, isolated backwoodsmen, hard working miners, fast moving moon shiners, religious warriors, musicians and statesmen. You'll learn of their contributions, which include establishing the first labor unions, battling the British, and spawning some of the most popular aspects of American culture today, like NASCAR and country music. And you'll see them in a whole new light.Bestsellers in DVD
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