Ottis Kermit Cole's Stories
Part Two of Two
TITLE: Ottis Kermit Cole’s Stories – Part 2 of 2
AUTHOR AND RECORDER: James R. Stokely III
PERMISSION to publish granted by the author.
Wilma Dykeman grew up listening to her kin tell stories. Even after she got married to James R. Stokely, Jr. at the age of 20, she continued to sit with her mother and grandmother and aunts and uncles. With great intentionality, she drew them out and wrote down their stories. These would be the raw material that formed the foundation of her work, the rich soil out of which grew her own stories and books and talks.
I never saw Wilma more in her comfort zone – her happy place– than on Sunday afternoons in her mother Bonnie Cole Dykeman’s home at the head of Beaverdam Creek just north of Asheville. That home, which was Wilma’s childhood home and which Wilma wrote about in her memoir Family of Earth, is now owned by the University of North Carolina Asheville and is managed as part of their Wilma Dykeman Writer-in-Residence Program.
On May 14, 1978 - Mother's Day of that year - Wilma's son used a cassette tape recorder to record some of Wilma's uncle telling stories. The storyteller's name was Ottis Kermit Cole, a true son of the Southern mountains and a master stonemason.
You can click on the recording below and hear O.K. Cole as well as his sister Bonnie, his niece Wilma, and his great-nephew Rory (Jim). Some highlights are as follows:
- 0:00 - "Y'all come in here and hear this." Rory shouts for his mother Wilma and his grandmother Bonnie to come in from the kitchen to the living room and listen to Ott.
- 0:08 - "Back when that street car used to run..." Ott begins story # 1.
- 1:19 - "This little girl one time, she come home after school with Ruth, my oldest daughter. She lived in Beaver Lake and not used to our rough way of living out here." Ott begins story # 2.
- 2:31 - "Oh, mercy alive." Wilma's closing words.