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Occupational Folklife by Erika Brady, Western Kentucky University
Occupational folklore includes skills and practices common among workers in a trade, often passed informally or in an "apprentice" relationship. Although occupational folklore can be as essential as the tricks that guide a pilot navigating a two-hundred-foot tow through the narrow piers of a bridge, it can also mark the lighthearted, purely expressive, side of the workplace; jokes, stories, poetry, even pranks played on newcomers and outsiders, all serve to define the special flavor and spirit of an occupational pursuit, whether it is the horse industry, river life, fishing, or boatmaking.
The livelihood of Kentuckians has always been closely tied to the character of the land-and its waters. Kentucky is river country: the commonwealth is bordered by over 700 miles of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, and their tributaries stretch the length and width of the state. Prehistoric settlements clustered along the riverways, where inhabitants lived by fishing the waters and hunting the rich bottom lands. Although the state is famous for recreational fishing and hunting, the authentic spiritual descendants of these early Kentuckians who lived off the rivers are the commercial fishermen who draw income from the waters. Commercial fishing is a pursuit full of uncertainty, affected by weather, water conditions, and the unpredictability of the fish themselves. To profit from the undertaking, a commercial fisherman must learn to "read" the water-a skill learned by observing and applying the expertise of older masters of the trade.
Boatmaking is a highly specialized trade along inland streams and waterways. The craftsman must take into account the depth of draught required to clear bottom in shallow waters, while maximizing the capacity of the boat and accommodating particular requirements for stability and maneuverability. Often boat types are highly regional, embodying the special needs and preferences of a very specific clientele, and employing local materials to achieve these ends. The product is a highly distinctive vessel, perfectly adapted for its local use.
The rivers have not only provided abundant food, they have also been a major avenue for transportation since earliest settlement. "Working the river" has been a source of employment for Kentuckians since keelboats and flatboats plied their waters carrying fur, lumber, coal, stone, and whiskey downstream at the turn of the nineteenth century. In those days, the term "Kentucky boatman" was used up and down the inland waterways to describe any riverman who was especially rowdy, violent, or uncouth. With the coming of the steamboat in 1811 and substantial increase in both cargo and passenger trade, a new breed of waterman emerged, competent to take responsibility for a valuable craft as well as the valuable goods and lives aboard. To young Sam Clemens, a river city lad in the 1840s, even the humble cabin boy on one of the great steamboats was invested with a kind of glory, and as to the pilot, "Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings."
Aside from a few craft remaining as floating museums of the nineteenth-century river trade, the steamboating era is over. But the pride of rivermen in their work remainsÑand the importance of that work is not well understood outside the transportation industry. A single standard barge contains 1,500 tons, or 52,000 bushels, or 453,000 gallons, depending on the commodity-equivalent in capacity to fifteen jumbo rail hopper cars or fifty-eight semi-trailer trucks. A fleet of fifteen barges-a fifteen-barge "tow"-pushed forward by a single blunt, flatbottomed towboat may carry as much cargo as 870 semi-trailers on the highway. The men and women working the commercial inland waterways live for extended periods aboard their boats, and their folklore reflects the demands of their occupation, the close quarters in which they must co-exist, and the almost magnetic attraction of river life-it is proverbial that "the river gets in your blood."
The water that now borders much of the state once covered most of it, part of a vast inland sea. Particularly in the Bluegrass region, shell-bearing sea creatures of the Ordovician era laid down a layer of limestone and phosphorus that permeates the water and vegetation of the region, and which results in the light, strong bones and powerful muscles and tendons of the world-famous horses bred there. But the fame of the Kentucky horse is as much indebted to a human heritage of care and expertise as it is to the qualities of soil and water. The earliest settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas hailed from regions where the traditional British passion for fine horses-and the twin pleasures of racing and gambling-were already well established by the late eighteenth century. As a delegate to the Boonesborough convention establishing a preliminary regional government in 1775, Daniel Boone proposed legislation encouraging horse breeding. The earliest editions of the Kentucky Gazette in late 1788 include advertisements detailing the fine points of stallions available to stand at stud.
Although Kentucky stables have produced fine horses of many breeds, the acknowledged aristocrat who has brought international renown to the state is the thoroughbred, first developed from Arabian ancestry in England in the eighteenth century. Fast and beautiful, with a temperament exuberant and sensitive, these horses inspire legendary loyalty and devotion among those who work with them, and a substantial body of folklore concerns every aspect of their history, breeding, training, and care.
A relatively recent development in the occupational folklore of horses in Kentucky is the presence of Old Order Mennonites and Amish. In various regions of the state, their dependence on working horses for farming creates special demands on horse breeding, training, and care. Accomplished farriers and experts in other horse-related occupations can often be found in these secluded communities.
Kentucky's occupational folklore is as varied as the terrain and history of the commonwealth itself. Reflect on your own part in this heritage-you may not be a deckhand, a farrier, or a commercial fisherman, but if you work with others, whether in a Louisville office, a Trigg County tobacco farm, or a Burkesville Minute-Mart, you share some aspect of folk culture with those who work with you. If labor is the engine that drives Kentucky forward, the shared vocabulary, practices, and pastimes that make up occupational folk culture represents the oil that keeps those pistons turning.
