folk toys are back again - popular science magazine ... - Arvind Gupta

You'll love the old flipperdingers, whimmydiddles, and theircountry cousins now being made in the Southern mountainsBy Henry B. ComstockTODAY, a group of North Carolinamountain boys are busy carving aniche with their jackknives in thehighly competitive toy industry. They allwork in their homes around Beech Creek,a region just a whoop and a holler westof Boone, N. C. Their products are faithfulcopies of folk toys that have delightedchildren of the Southern Appalachiansfor two centuries or more. Wonderfulgadgets are these, made of bits of laureland rhododendron, seasoned hickory, redcedar, river cane, and acorn cups.The idea of reviving interest in, and amarket for, these folk toys came fromRichard Chase, authority on the folk traditionsof the Appalachian South. One dayChase wondered if there wasn't still aplace for such old-time favorites as thegee-haw whimmydiddle, flipperdinger,fly killer, whizzer, and cornstalk fiddle.With encouragement from the SouthernHighland Handicraft Guild, he talkedover the idea with his nearest neighbors—Jack Guy, 31; Sam Ward, 70; ClintHarmon, 16; Dexter Stines, 16; Bill Stines,14; Jerry Greene, 13; and the Guy andHicks families. Could they turn out thesetoys in quantity, he asked, if he helpedwith patterns and found the outlets?Small initial orders, placed by giftshops throughout the Asheville-GreatSmoky Mountains National Park areawere followed quickly by big ones. Visitingyoungsters from 50 states were goingfor the toys like corn pone. So were theirfathers. Swinging a whizzer vigorously,one red-faced tourist puffed: "They'vegot the wrong name on this one. Backwhere I come from, we used to call it abullroarer."Chase knows better than to argue. ACONTINUED 145

thorough researcher, he's found that noneof these playthings are peculiar to theAppalachian South. The whimmydiddle,for example, has been reported fromSweden and China. And a Czechoslovakianbook on early Central European toysdescribes many such items.The important thing is not who inventedthese toys, or what they're called.It's the fact that they are bringing employmentto one small Southern mountainsettlement. The profits of Folk Toys Industry,Beech Creek, N. C, go into thelocal work of the Council of the SouthernMountains, an organization dedicatedto helping rural families.And now, just in case you don't knowwhat a whimmydiddle is—or a flipperdinger,fly killer, bullroarer, or cornstalkfiddle—here's a rundown:Gee-haw whimmydiddle, also called aziggerboo (Tenn.), geehaw (Ga.),hoodoostick (Cherokee Indians), and lie detector(Ohio). In the Folk Toys' version,it's made of rhododendron twigs, strippedto the smooth inner bark. Its two partsare a notched stick with a spinner—orwhirligig—pivoted on one end, and asmaller rubbing stick.In operating the whimmydiddle, the146 POPULAR SCIENCE MARCH 1960object is to make the whirligig spinsmoothly to the right (gee), or to theleft (haw), seemingly at your spokencommand. To do this, you must holdboth parts lightly to produce maximumvibration. This vibration is set up whenyou stroke the rubbing stick rapidly backand forth across the notches. If, at thesame time, you let the tip of your indexfinger slide along the far side of thenotches, the whirligig will twirl unfailinglyto the right. To reverse its direction,you simply bring your thumb tobear on the near side of the notches. Witha little practice, you can switch contactsso inconspicuously that anyone whodoesn't know the trick will have a hardtime guessing why the whirligig responds.Flipperdinger. This is a hollow-reedblower with a plug in one end, and anozzle, made of a smaller reed, projectingfrom it just behind the plug. In onemodel, an acorn cup with its center boredout is cemented over the nozzle. In another,a little "basketball ring" bent fromcopper wire is aligned with the nozzleabout three inches above the tip. Bothmodels come with a featherweight ballformed from cornstalk pith.To work the first flipperdinger, you

place the pith ball in the acorn cup andblow lightly but steadily into the openend of the larger reed. When done right,the ball rises slowly in a jet stream ofair, hovers a few inches above the nozzle,and then as you ease off, settles back.The other flipperdinger is harder tomaster. Here the pith ball has a wirethrust through it—one with a crook inone end. You hang the crook over thebasketball ring. Then, with plenty ofwell-controlled lung power, you can unhookthe ball, lower it through the ring,and, finally, blow it back up again andreplace the crook on the wire.Fly killer. This potent and fairly accuratelittle weapon could almost becalled a one-armed crossbow. It has abarrel made of a short elderberry stickwith its forward end hollowed out, and along slot cut through its side wall andinto this cavity. Near the back of thebarrel a strip of seasoned hickory is fastenedin an angled notch with a woodscrew. The other end of the hickory stripis slimmed down and bent in a permanentbow by soaking. In cocked position,the pointed tip of the bow is placed inthe slot and drawn back until it enters ahole in the opposite side of the barrel.This depresses a trigger made from asliver of springy wood.To load the fly killer, you slip a flatheadedwood shaft into it. Pressing thetrigger pops the bow tip out of the holeand sends it flying forward in the slot,snapping the missile out with enoughforce to shatter a window at 10 paces.Bullroarer. Simplest of the toys, thebullroarer (whizzer) is a thin cedar paddleattached to a rhododendron handlewith a doubled length of stout cord. Whenit's swung in circles through the air, itmakes an awesome, buzzing sound. Acopper-wire swivel on the handle preventsthe cord from winding around thewood.Cornstalk fiddle. Not even a tone-deafCherokee could confuse this with a Stradivarius.But for caterwauls that wouldmake a mountain lion lift his eyebrows,you can't beat a two-string cornstalkfiddle. Instrument and bow have strips oftheir bark slit in such a way that, with"bridges" formed of twigs inserted beneaththem, they become tensioned bowand fiddle strings. Properly rosined beforeit leaves the Folk Toys Industryworkshop, a cornstalk fiddle is good formonths of ear-piercing screeches.147