Doll-A-Day 2023 #353: Red Haired Hillbilly

   Okay. I have a weakness for these vintage hillbilly dolls. I have a couple from when I was a kid. My parents were from Kentucky, and every summer we spent two weeks in Kentucky, visiting relatives. Dolls like this guy were sold at souvenir shops there. I used some of my vacation money to buy my hillbillies. You can see them, and another I bought s a grown up, HERE.

  Today's guy is about 11 or 12 inches tall. 

  He's pretty typical of this type of doll. He has a scraggly beard, cliche' hillbilly overalls, and bare feet.

And of course, a floppy hat. This one is a faux straw. Another thing that was common is the nylon string in his hat. I don't know if these guys have the string to hang them by once you've bought them, or because they were hung on a rack in the store.

  

He has crossed straps on the back of his overalls..

He has a very serene look on his face.

He appears to have originally been holding something. I'm guessing, from seeing so many of these dolls, that it was a 'moonshine' jug. That might account for his serene look.

 

He has stitched in toes on his bare feet.

  You can see another pair of my hillbilly dolls that are different from this guy, HERE.

That's the doll for, well, not the day. Let's say, for number 353. There will be three other posts today, at least. We're steamrollering through posts to catch up with the days for the end of the year.

Doll-A-Day 2019 #218: Hatfield and McCoy

  Today's dolls are sort of a sequel to yesterday's. These guys are hillbillies too.

They're about 7 inches tall.

These guys incorporate some of the biggest cliche's about 'hillbillies'. They have 'dirty' bare feet.

And rope belts,like Jethro on "The Beverly Hillbillies".

I think some of those cliche's came from the depression era. The depression hit the hills of Kentucky pretty hard. My mom and dad were born in the 1920's. They often talked about the things they had to do when they were kids because they were so poor.

My mom,age 10,in 1937. By the way, that says 'Mae',not 'Moe'. My mom was named Lelia, (after her mother), Mae (after her Aunt Mae.) She was often called Mae, although as an adult she was more often called Lelia. The family called her Lelia Mae. She was a tiny lady, and when my cousins,(Read about the dolls they gave me HERE.), were little they thought everyone was calling her 'little Mae'.

Dad also age 10,in 1934. He turned 11 in June that year. Right down to the red hair, I have always looked like my dad, and these days when I look in the mirror I see Dad's lower face. My brunette sister looks like my mom.

Shoes were worn only in the winter, because they had to be worn in the winter, so nobody could afford to wear shoes in the summer when they didn't need them. My mom told a story about how she and her brothers and sister cut pictures of shoes out of catalogs and tied them on their feet to play in.  I don't think any of my family ever wore rope belts, but who knows?

My grandpa driving the plow in the mid 1940's. That's my mom in the big hat, with some of her brothers, and her sister.

The difference from yesterday's dolls is that these guys aren't knee huggers. They're plastic.

Their legs aren't jointed. Their body and legs are one just solid piece.

The guy on the right has a string to be hung by too, like the doll yesterday.

But their arms can move. They seem to have some wire in them.

I call these guys Hatfield and McCoy. Those of you who are too young, or not from the United States may not be familiar with the story of the two feuding families from the 1880's, who lived either side of the Big Sandy River, in Kentucky and West Virginia. You can read the whole story of their feud HERE.

 

The families feuded for over 10 years, resulting in over a dozen deaths. The story became part of popular culture, and 'Fighting like the Hatfields and the McCoys'  became a phrase.

Both the Hatfields and the McCoys were 'moonshiners' at some point. Moonshine was illegal alcohol made from corn. One of these guys has the cliche' moonshine jug.

I think the number of X's had to do with the strength of the moonshine.

He looks a bit like the old mascot for Mountain Dew,(which was named after another name for moonshine).

  There were bootleggers in my family. There was a story about one of my relatives, a miner, who had  'died in the mines'. He was mentioned at one point when my dad and I were visiting my maternal grampa's brother. At the mention of the guy 'dying in the mines'  Great Uncle Reggie snorted, "Yeah, he died in the mines...when his still blew up." Apparently he was hiding his still from the law, in the mine where he worked. It exploded and killed him.
  These dolls also remind me of the hillbillies in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon "Hillbilly Hare". 

You can watch one of the best parts of that cartoon HERE.

The other guy has an ax!

He's either chopping wood, or very involved in the feuding!

  I never realized until doing this research, that the Hatfields and the McCoys came from the same area as my mom and dad's families.

My dad's family still lives in Louisa and the surrounding area. My maternal Grama and Grampa lived on top of a hill outside of town. When mom was a kid they lived just over the line into West Virginia for a while. The Hatfields and the McCoys were from the Tug Fork area.

 I told Ken I'm probably related to the Hatfields or the McCoys, and that accounts for the temper in the family!

  Those are the dolls of the day. See you tomorrow for another one.

Doll-A-Day 2019 #217: Hillbillies

  Today's doll is a couple...well,several. The first two are a couple of my childhood dolls.

I bought these dolls when I was a kid. We went to Kentucky every summer to visit my grandparents. Before we left every year my dad would give us vacation money to spend while we were there. I was a kid,so I spent my money on candy and toys.

 

These hillbilly dolls were always sold as souvenirs there.
 

The smaller one has a string in his head so he can be hung. For display at the store,or for dangling somewhere else?

I guess Kentuckians didn't mind embracing the stereotype of them in those days. My dad was always proud to call himself a hillbilly. I don't think that would be quite the case these days. Korglady,can you shed any light on this? (Not that you're a 'hillbilly',but you live in Kentucky!)

This guy is what is referred to as a 'knee hugger' doll.

For obvious reasons.

Knee hugger dolls were usually Christmas elves,like The Elf on the Shelf.  You can see a load of knee hugger dolls in my post HERE,you can see some Easter elf knee huggers HERE,and also check out 'knee hugger doll' the side bar. Although they are called 'knee huggers' , they can actually let go of their legs.

But as you can see, their arms are usually sewn together, or,as in this case,are all one piece. So they can't have free moving arms unless the kind that are sewn together have their stitches cut. This guy has the 'all one piece' kind.

So he's stuck in this position.

His little skinny legs are pretty free moving though.

But a little too free moving. They are so dangly they don't hold a pose.
 

He's about 9 inches tall.

The other guy has wired legs and arms.

He has a net in his hand,so he's apparently...fishing?

I had him first, and he was played with a lot more than the smaller one.

When I bought him my grama thought he needed a log to sit on. So she had Grampa cut a piece of tree limb for him that looked like a curved log. I still have it, but he's not using it today.

This guy is about 12 inches tall.

When I made the kids a movie,"Emma and Fuzzy Take a Road Trip",starring their dolls of themselves,this guy made an appearance as a guy selling handmade quilts by the roadside. (His quilts turned out to just be 'pictures of quilts',which angered Emma the Doll.) In the end Emma the Doll decided 'they don't have anything',and wanted to leave. Fuzzy the Doll insisted,  'No, wait. I saw something I like'. In the next shot they are in their car and Emma says,"I don't know what you wanted that thing for.' As they drive out of the shot,Fuzzy insists,"I like it.",and the hillbilly,obviously Fuzzy's purchase, is laying on the trunk lid and complaining that he has to 'go to the tall-et', (as my dad used to pronounce it.) I think this accounts for my kids quite a bit...

When Emma  made a sequel to my movie,"Emma and Fuzzy Take a Time Trip",both of these guys appeared.
 

 The other guy probably came from a  yard sale.
 

He reminded me so much of my original guys, and my childhood,that I had to buy him.

I'm sure he's from the same era as my guys.

He's also about 12 inches tall.
 

Like the smaller of my childhood dolls,he's a Knee Hugger.

 I took the pictures today in the evening, just before sunset. It rained really hard today,and the pile of limbs where we trimmed a tree weeks ago were black from being so wet. The late evening sun through the green and black foliage looked misty in the photos. It looked great, like these guys were posing in the middle of the woods.

I wished I had a fairy or wood sprite doll handy to photograph before the light changed.

I tried to find something as quick as I could,and still get the dolls I needed for tomorrow photographed too.So you'll see that doll at some point.
 

  So that's the crowd for today. I'm sure you learned some things you didn't want to know. Come back tomorrow and see if I force unwanted knowledge on you again.