Folk Groups

Like many of my classmates have said, after reading Chapter 3, I realized I belong to many more folk groups than I had thought. Some of the most interesting folk groups I belong to are the family folk group, the regional folk group.

My dad's side of the family is very large. My father was the youngest of 10 children, so I have a multitude of cousins, second cousins, aunts and uncles. My dad and his siblings are half Irish, half Hungarian, but they've always emphasized the Irish half. A family reunion is never complete without one of my uncles instigating a rendition of "Galway Bay" or "Danny Boy." Apparently, all that got passed down from the Hungarian side were some curse words and the recipe for halushka. It's fun to have such a large family because it spans so many generations, and each one of those generations has different family stories to tell. For example, my father will tell me about his uncle who died in the coal mines or his cousins from Mahanoy City (allegedly named Timmy, Tommy, and "Tuffy." When I asked what "Tuffy" stood for, no one knew.). In turn, my older cousins will tell me stories about my grandparents, both of whom died before I was born. My mother's family is smaller, and my grandmother is from a German background. One thing that strikes me from that folk group is the vocabulary. My favorite word that she uses is "snickelfritz," which is a word that she uses where most people would say "what's-his-name."

Regionally, I am from the Pocono Mountains in Northeastern Pennsylvania. It's kind of a crossroads of regional folk groups - coal country to the north in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, steel working to the south in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Dutch to the southwest, and New York making its way across the Delaware. In high school I was exposed to all of these folk groups, while relating specifically to my own rural(ish) folk group of the Poconos, which is a touristy area, but the people that live there never see it that way! We have our own traditions involving fairs, demolition derbies, having off from school the first day of hunting season, and games like manhunt. There were legends about Hipsy Gap Road, some of the old hotels, and race weekend (the weekend of the NASCAR races at the Pocono Raceway). I hadn't thought too much about it before this course, but I grew up in a region rich with folklore and was exposed to the folk groups in the regions around it.