Clogging Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

The Math Of Coffee And Clogging

Dancing is hard, especially if you have trouble with counting past four. Bill Lynch continues to explore clogging in this next installment of “Lore.”

I’ve never been good at math.

I’m not good at counting. This is a real and regular problem.

For example, every morning, I get up at five. I walk the dogs, pack for the gym and make half a pot of coffee to share with my son who gets up around 6:30.

I pour six cups of water into the reservoir for the coffeemaker.

According to the directions (as well as my particular tastes), to make six cups of coffee, I need to scoop six level spoons of ground coffee into the basket, but I’m easily distracted. The smallest of my two dogs, Penny, often wants attention – or a bite of whatever I’m putting together for my lunch.

I add to the chaos around me by trying to read the news while I’m making coffee, checking email or looking at my bank balance to decide whether today would be a good day to skip bringing my lunch and maybe invest in a hotdog.

If I have the radio on at 5:30 in the morning, six coffee spoons can sometimes be seven or maybe eight. Occasionally, it’s only five or maybe four. It can depend on the song.

Also, I can totally lose track if I suddenly remember that it’s Wednesday and I forgot to put the trash bin to the curb the night before. If I want the crows and the raccoons to stay out of my trash, I have to race out to my driveway before the garbage truck has cleared the mailbox down the road in front of the sheriff deputy’s place.

Once it gets past there, they’re not stopping for another quarter mile.

This was why counting to four was hard for me. At any given time, my mind is racing and I’m only halfway paying attention.

Tosha Smith, the dance instructor for the Lincoln County Cloggers, assured me this wasn’t that hard.

“The basic step is just kick-two-three-four-kick,” she said.

You started on your left foot with a kick and then stabilizing the foot was two. The three-four was a rock step with your right foot. Rock steps was a fancy dance term for sort of rolling up on the ball of your foot and back. Then you kicked with your right and repeated the process from right to left.

At least, that’s what I think she said.

This was foundational sort of stuff and surrounded by the Lincoln County Cloggers, I could sort of do it – by kind of counting, but also by watching everyone’s feet.

However, the more elaborate the dance became (or the louder the music, maybe), the harder it was for me to keep up. I’d kick with my left foot, skip two, move to three and then stumble over four before kicking with my left foot again, when I should’ve been kicking with my right.

It was messy and very ugly.

But the cloggers were very patient with me, if a little amused. By now, it was second nature to all of them. They made it look effortless, like breathing or just walking across a room.

I wanted to do the same thing.

But I’m not a natural dancer, but I’ve managed to muscle through a few dances here and there. I took several swing dance lessons a few years ago (I have forgotten everything), and I annually participate in Charleston Ballet’s “Nutcracker” as one of the party guests in the opening scene.

Not every hobby I have lets you dress up like a budget
Doctor Who, but I’ll take what I can get.

I get to do two very short pieces with a group of around a dozen other adults – and every year, I have to relearn the steps (slowly).

Dancing has always been very aspirational for me. It’s something I feel like I’m missing out on.

When I started up with clogging, I kept thinking about the story Mason Adams did on the Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store for Inside Appalachia (an unabashed plug for the show). I remembered the man who said he’d been dragged onto the floor to dance as a younger man and he’d fallen in love with it. When others came to the Country Store to listen to the music, he encouraged them to dance. He told them the music was good, but that dancing was a whole new world.

I wanted to understand that.

Rehearsal with the Lincoln County Cloggers nudged me forward in that direction, maybe, but I was having a heck of time on my own. On a good night, I could muddle through the steps – as long as no music played, and nobody watched.

Including my dog, Penny.

Hanging Out With The Lincoln County Cloggers

Over the phone, Tosha Smith explained that the Lincoln County Cloggers had suspended classes for new cloggers for the first half of 2023. They were preparing for the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade in April and didn’t have time to devote to newbies. “We’ll offer that class for beginners in the fall,” she said. “But you could still come out for a lesson.”

“We’ll offer that class for beginners in the fall,” she said. “But you could still come out for a lesson.”

I balked and tried to explain that I thought I needed a lot more than just one lesson, that I wanted to spend a few weeks with them.

“Maybe I ought to come back and do the class in the fall — the eight-week class,” I said.

She told me I should just come out now, that they could focus more attention on me.

I went along with it and met Tosha in the parking lot of the Lincoln County McDonalds, an easy-to-find, central location. I could follow from there.

It was a bit of a haul from West Hamlin and just far enough for me to be glad that I had someone to follow. I tried to pay attention. So, I could find my way back at least to the McDonalds.

The house we pulled up to wasn’t what I expected to find in Lincoln County or really anywhere in West Virginia, really. It was a large, but unassuming house next to what looked like a garage or guest house separated by a wall and a gate.

Beyond the house, was the river. On the other side, a train shrieked by, probably carrying coal.

“I wish I’d got my recorder out to catch the sound of the train,” I said to Tosha.

Tosha smiled and said, “Just wait around. There’ll be another one.”

The place belonged to Liza Hofmann, one of the members of the Lincoln County Cloggers.

Beyond the gate, just past the statue of David, was a credible beach bar with submerged bar stools in a salt pool, a hot tub and an elaborate looking outdoor fireplace/barbecue feature.

Winter had choked the space with debris. The water had gone dark and murky. The entire patio would need a good cleaning come summer, but what she’d built was remarkable. It was a real oasis.

Liza said there wasn’t an awful lot to do in Lincoln County. She’d built the patio and the clubhouse because she wanted a place for her friends and family to gather.

I wanted to be her neighbor — at least from late May until about the first of September.

I was shown inside the sea shanty-themed clubhouse, where Tosha introduced me to her three daughters. They talked to me a little about the Lincoln County Cloggers, which performed at festivals, fairs and events all over the area, but didn’t compete.

Liza and Tosha led the dance troupe with Tosha organizing the group’s dance routines and handling much of their bookings.

After a dance demonstration, Tosha had me join their line and walked me through the basic steps.

“It’s just kick, one, two, three, kick, one, two, three, kick,” she said — or that’s pretty close to what she said, though I had a little trouble with the counting and remembering where my feet were supposed to be.

“Start with your left foot,” Tosha told me.

And I did. Often, I went back to my left foot, even when I was supposed to be kicking with my right.

But… Tosha and Liza said I did pretty good — good enough that they squeezed a second lesson in with the second. We did a little dance to “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and then a more elaborate set of steps to Bob Seger’s “Old-Time Rock n’ Roll.”

From where I was standing, the dance was cool, but I’m not sure how Bob would feel about it.

Before I left, I recorded the dance steps to take with me and study.

“Homework,” Tosha said.

I promised to do my best and come back next week.

Clogging in Lincoln County: Meeting Tosha

Tosha Smith met me in the parking lot of the McDonalds in Hamlin, which was, as far as I was able to determine, the only McDonalds in Lincoln County.I was glad it was the only one.

Tosha Smith met me in the parking lot of the McDonalds in Hamlin, which was, as far as I was able to determine, the only McDonalds in Lincoln County.

I was glad it was the only one.

Meeting at the hamburger restaurant had been Tosha’s idea. Lincoln County has spotty cell phone service, which might make it hard for a stranger to navigate and we both wanted me to get to my first clogging lesson on time.

I was relieved she wanted to meet at an easily recognizable business along a relatively uncomplicated route. I wouldn’t even need to use my phone to find my way.

Without GPS, I can get lost in a gas station parking lot. With GPS, the chances of me finding my way improved slightly.

The last time I went to Lincoln County was more than a year ago. I’d gone, mostly, just to say I’d been. At the time, I was trying to visit all 55 of West Virginia’s counties.

The point of the whole trip was to explore a little, find something to do and maybe have lunch.

Exploration led me to the Big Ugly Wildlife Management Area, as remote a place as I thought I’d ever been. I’d wandered around for a couple of hours just after a hard rain. I’d tried to jump over, but then waded through mud puddles a foot deep, fearing for leeches.

I’d been a snack for black flies, mosquitoes and my own overactive imagination.

The Big Ugly Wildlife Management Area is full of terrifying creatures, like this one.

Any second, I was pretty sure, a cloud of ticks would envelope me or I’d kick over a nest of snakes.

There are days when enjoying the great outdoors is a struggle for me.

Leaving Big Ugly had been an odyssey.

Cell service, which took me to the wildlife management area, was gone and the satellite GPS I kept in my car hadn’t been updated in years. It tried to get me back to the highway by taking a dried creek bed through a farmer’s yard.

But I found my way back to the highway and then to Hamlin, where I ate like a savage at Carnivore BBQ.

Bill doesn’t know much about clogging, but he knows a lot about nachos. Carnivore BBQ in Hamlin has good nachos.

I hadn’t been back since, though – even though I’ve talked about going back to the barbecue place routinely since I left.

I’d stumbled across the Lincoln County Cloggers randomly.

When I’d begun putting together my list of Appalachian topics for “Lore,” clogging had come up late, while I was thinking about Appalachian performing arts I could maybe learn. I didn’t think I could get very far trying to play a fiddle, but I could maybe pick up some dance steps.

I searched online and found the Lincoln County Cloggers, who at the start of 2023, were offering a class for would-be cloggers.

A class sounded perfect. I could maybe even hide a little bit in the crowd, if things didn’t go very well.

So, I reached out to the group and Tosha said they’d love to have me along. The only problem was they’d just postponed the classes, while the Lincoln County Cloggers prepared to go to the National Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington, DC.

(Continued Friday)

Welcome to Lore with Bill Lynch

Lore is defined by Merriam-Webster as “Something that is learned. Traditional Knowledge or Belief. Tribal Lore. Knowledge gained through Study or Experience.”That last part is important. Experience.Some things you can’t quite get a grasp on just from reading a book or listening to someone talk at you. You have to put your hands on what it is you want to know. You have to spend some time with it.

Lore is defined by Merriam-Webster as “Something that is learned. Traditional Knowledge or Belief. Tribal Lore. Knowledge gained through Study or Experience.”

That last part is important. Experience.

Some things you can’t quite get a grasp on just from reading a book or listening to someone talk at you. You have to put your hands on what it is you want to know. You have to spend some time with it.

I’ve lived in Appalachia nearly my entire life, but a lot of the culture that’s part of Appalachia is a mystery to me. I don’t hunt. I have never been whitewater rafting (on purpose) and have never stepped foot inside a coal mine or handled a snake in church (or anywhere else).

I don’t clog, flatfoot or contra dance. My mother didn’t make chocolate gravy for breakfast on special occasions (or any occasion) when I was a kid. I don’t make biscuits from scratch. I buy them. They come in a can (or from a bag at the drive-thru) and I’ve never tried chow-chow or apple stack cake. I have never even seen muscadine pie.

Honestly, up until a week ago, I thought chow-chow was a kind of dog and didn’t know you could eat muscadine grapes.

It’s more than a little awkward.

Appalachia is forever associated with the Appalachian mountains. I grew up in Giles County, Virginia, which has an access point onto the Appalachian Trail. All summer long when I was a kid, I used to see hikers from the trail wander through town on their way to the post office to pick up their mail and maybe to find a bath. In college, I served these hikers pizza and sandwiches at Papa’s Pizzeria. They’d eat like horses. In between mouthfuls, they’d tell me about their adventures.

Sometimes, I was the first person they’d spoken to in days.

As an adult, I’ve read books and magazine articles about the Appalachian Trail. I hate camping, but I’ve flirted with the idea of taking on a long trail hike more than once. I even have a hiker’s map of the trail hanging up in my office, but I’ve never visited — not even for just the day.

There are dozens of other things, really — boxes on an All Things Appalachia list itching to be ticked.

So, I’ve started this blog and I have some recording equipment to make some radio stories for Inside Appalachia. There are things I’m very interested in knowing, things I’m sort of interested in learning about and things I’m not entirely sure I want to know at all, but I’m curious to see where this all goes.