Appalachian State University - Rhododendron Yearbook (Boone, NC)

Page 19 text:

by R.T. Smith Movement. Motion and the rapid-fire tattoo of steel-shod feet give the impression of a glow, a metallic clatter, the slate-hard voices of the doggers. Spit-shines slapping the boards, cleaving the air - the Daniel Boone doggers maneuver, flow, circle within the steady river-run tone of a banjo, high strident mock of the bowed fiddle. Kerchiefs fly like a musical semaphore; skirts billow like wind-shifted kites. The doggers break into a full throttle stomp. The whip of practice shines in the patterns as the children of the mountain serenade rocks and thunderstorms with the married rhythm of Watauga Indians and Scotch-Irish settlers. A huge ring of spectators churns to the rhythm, The Clogging Spirit Remains Strong in Appalachia working muscles into sweat, slamming palms together until they ache. The spell is woven in chants of Southern Dionysus. The crowd shouts and joins in, a circle within a circle; the mandala explodes in the energy of fire and earth, through forms. The blood rules the rhythm as the doggers conjure a vision of early ancestors with their Georgia Rang-tang and Grand Right and Left, their smiles like flashing quartz beneath the spotlights, their slick glistening through the heat of motion. The circle opens to allow doggers to escape. The great buck dance stomp is ended, and exhausted dancers fall through the film of their joy and into each other ' s shining arms while the crowd chants within the burnished circle: More, more, more. The polish of heritage is slow to die; the still point defines the dance; the afterglow defines the magic. Clogging l 5

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Tourists. Why, if it wasn ' t for tourists, Boone just wouldn ' t be the same. Just think about it. Where we now have a Pizza Hut and a Hardee ' s and a Holly Farm ' s, we ' d have vacant lots. If it wasn ' t for tourists, we ' d probably still be watching all the first-run movies for 75 cents at the Appalachian Theatre. And the four-lane past the shopping center would probably be two and the shopping center wouldn ' t be at all. Where we have dirty scars that used to be mountainsides, we ' d have trees and flowers. Just think about it. No more roadside stands filled with cheap pottery and crummy quilts. No more traffic jams when the leaves turn. No more. And wouldn ' t it be nice. Or would it? Come to think of it, if it wasn ' t for the tourists, there might not be much of a town at all. And ASU might still be Appalachian State Normal School. And you and I might not even be here. So, like it or not, we do have a Pizza Hut and a Hardee ' s and a Holly Farm ' s and three high-priced movie theatres and a four-lane and a shopping center and all the rest. JF!Sf«£f? fe: yfcSfS