Peter Pappalardo
Bluegrass examines the startling possibility of faith and hope in a world defined by the impermanent and punctuated by pain and death. The story follows Cold Spring, a semiprofessional bluegrass band, from their obscure origins In Pigeon Forge, Pennsylvania, to the national stage. While
the band tries for the golden ring of stardom, their home county is
suffering from the growing pains caused by the opening of a new
Interstate highway and the culture shock caused by a huge influx of
people fleeing the city.
From
the moment real estate mogul Hugh McAdam’s helicopter sets down in the
parking lot of Chat Dalton’s Garage, a struggle for control of the
county ensues that eventually involves the Governor, scrapple, the Drug
Enforcement Agency, ice tongs, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, cops, history books, drug dealers, auctioneers, bluegrass
seed, construction workers, bibles, and assorted eccentric locals. Along the way, Dalton discovers that his past, like his beliefs about the future, are not all they appear to be.
Spanning
one festival season, the sights, sounds, heart and soul of bluegrass
music and the rural bluegrass community that loves it are the backdrop
for a story of lost innocence, rapacious development, endangered love,
and the daunting task the locals of Pigeon Forge have in dealing with a
paradise lost.
Peter
Pappalardo has taught writing, English and Science for 25 years at the
High School and college levels, and has written articles and stories
about local music and the arts for the last ten. An
inveterate musician with informal training, he was abducted by
bluegrass aliens in 1977 at the height of the great folk scare, and has
since become a rabid fan of the genre, which is the only music form
ever to be invented by one man named Bill Monroe.
Since
then, he has played stand-up bass, guitar, mandolin and nose flute with
several different bluegrass, old-timey, gospel and Irish bands, many of
which were called the Lost Ramblers. Pappalardo
has played with the late Mr. Greenjeans of Captain Kangaroo fame, Bob
Dorough, who penned the popular songs for ABC’s “School House Rock” and
many other fine and famous musicians who make their home in and around
the Poconos.
He
is an outdoorsman, erstwhile dartshooter, tile mason and woodworker,
and the father of four fine sons, all of whom fortunately favor their
sainted mother.
From the time he was two, Sterling Schiffler loved to read aloud. It
came as naturally to him as birdsong, as smooth as a cool, mysterious,
foggy fall morning, as definite as cedars burdened by shawls of snow,
reeling ahead like ranks of defeated soldiers in the winter sun.
By the time he was five, he was a rapacious reader, big news in his hometown of Crisfield, Maryland,
where most everybody either ran, repaired, built, stored, crewed,
painted or stored boats or hauled oyster shells for fill or number one
jimmies up to Baltimore for the pittance they gave you for risking your life.
Naturally the town was proud when he graduated at sixteen, the youngest ever in the history of the high school. They
were equally proud when he was accepted at the same age to Yale, and
pleased as pie when he graduated in three years with a soc degree and
married a rich girl from Towsend.
His grandmother was mostly Lenape, and she was not so sanguine. She called his wife, not so secretly, “the trickster,” and said that there was something about her heart that was not right. Sterling tried his best to ignore his grandmother’s advice, but eventually there were two truths even he could not overlook.
First,
he was unable to support her in the style to which she was accustomed.
Even though she worked a bit organizing parties and functions¾at which she was particularly apt—she was always broke, even when Sterling started commuting to Baltimore to earn more money.
Equally unfortunate was her discovery that she preferred her own sex over the opposite. They divorced, but she refused to leave Crisfield, leaving Sterling with nothing to do but move. He could not bear it to see them everywhere, and at all the best functions, too. So he answered the first ad he found, for a job as a program specialist serving mentally retarded adults. The job was in a place called Pigeon Forge, Pennsylvania, just on the fringe of the coal region, from what he could make of the map.
He was scared and upset, but determined to make the best of it. He was determined that she would not see him hang his head.
