Sheila Kay Adams

North Carolina · connectedBorn 1953

American storyteller, author, musician

Studied at Mars Hill University

Quotations with a citation

Well, mountain people don't like change for one thing and the other thing is that they stay in the same place. It's just like the woman that I refer to as Granny. Granny lived, was married, raised her children, buried all of them but one, buried her husband, and then died and was buried herself within a five-mile radius

Do you know the funny thing is that when I sing "Young Emily" it's like I am transported back in time to that little girl that held on to the tail of that cow and I can smell warm milk in my mind, in my mind's nose I guess is what you'd say, because it takes me back to especially in the early spring and the late fall when Granny was milking the steam would rise up out of that bucket and I can still smell that smell whenever I sing that song.

They felt like that old music, those old songs, that old fiddle-, banjo-playing music was directly linked somehow to that extreme poverty that they suffered as children and young adults. Mama told me one time that they threw their culture away with both hands because they associated it with that poverty

I wonder how many more things I missed because I just didn't know the right question to ask

It's not a tree; it's a wreath. It just goes right around and around; it's all the same people.

Well, mountain people don't like change for one thing and the other thing is that they stay in the same place.

[W]hen I sing "Young Emily" it's like I am transported back in time to that little girl that held on to the tail of that cow and I can smell warm milk in my mind, in my mind's nose I guess is what you'd say, because it takes me back to especially in the early spring and the late fall when Granny was milking the steam would rise up out of that bucket and I can still smell that smell whenever I sing that song.

Mama told me one time that they threw their culture away with both hands because they associated it with that poverty

[S]o I wonder how many more things I missed because I just didn't know the right question to ask

[S]torytelling was not something that was taught and learned over home; it was called having a conversation; my father called it holding forth.