Jane
Jean Boone Benfield decided in her early seventies to do something she had never done before: to write a book. Jean was born in Buncombe County, NC, and the book, Mountain Born, tells about her life growing up on a farm. Her first inspiration for writing the book was noticing that a lot of the “mountain” expressions she’d heard during her growing-up years were disappearing before her eyes. So, she decided to write them down. She started taking notes on little pieces of paper and then in notebooks. And then one day, her sister-in-law suggested that she put them in a book: phrases like “soft as a pocket full of mice” or “pee out the fire and call the dogs”.
Jean’s first plan was to just make a permanent record of all that wonderful language, but one thing led to another, and the next thing you know, she was writing about her childhood and her parents and growing up poor in Western North Carolina and Asheville during World War II, and on and on.
Jean Boone Benfield
Jean’s book, which is self-published, is worth a read, not only if you have an interest in what it was like to grow up in the southern Appalachians of the forties and fifties but also if you like etymology or are interested in the history of Western North Carolina—or if you just like to add interesting phrases to your vocabulary, especially ones with homespun wisdom, such as “Flit like a butterfly from flower to flower and land on a pile of cow crap.”
I had lunch recently with Jean, and she told me about how she’s descended from Daniel Boone’s brother, Israel. She also told me that another of her motivations for writing the book was being fed up with all the “silliness” that is in books about mountain ways or mountain language, such as the “hillbilly books” that you can buy at tourist stops on the highway. She wanted to, whenever she could, show the history and derivation of the words or phrases she was quoting. This adds another interesting layer to the book for students of language. As Jean said, she had to do “a lot of old-fashioned research” for parts of the book.
The book is written in a homey style, as if someone is sitting in a rocking chair and talking to you. And that’s just how Jean intended it. She said she just “listened to a voice in (her) head” and wrote it down. She finished the book when she got “good and tired of fiddin’ with it” and was “ready to let it go.” Good advice for any writer!
One of the questions I asked Jean was to name one thing that her parents gave her that ended up being important to her. She said they encouraged her to think for herself and not go with the herd. As she said, they didn’t worry about giving her a “sense of self-worth” the way that parents focus on nowadays. They just gave her the “sure knowledge that they were behind her,” no matter what.
I’d say they succeeded. Jean is definitely an independent thinker. When she finished her book and realized she was going to have to do some work publicizing it, she joined Toastmasters, to get herself ready for the ordeal of public speaking. Before she went to Toastmasters, she called up a speech professor at AB-Tech and asked for help in getting ready. Jean takes life by the horns!
I encourage our readers to check out her book! You can purchase her book by writing to the author at mountainborn@bellsouth.net.
If you are in the Western North Carolina area, you can also meet her in person: at Accent on Books in Asheville, on June 18th, at 6 p.m. or at the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in Burnsville on September 10 and 11, with info at www.cmlitfest.org.
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Tags: Beautiful Women >50, Books, writers, writers over 50
Hi Jean,
I really enjoyed hearing about you and your book.
I can’t wait to read it.
I love history and I especially love to read about the history of language.