American Experience

Walt Whitman:
The shapes arise! Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets, Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads, Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches, The main shapes arise! Shapes of Democracy total, result of centuries, Shapes ever projecting other shapes, Shapes of turbulent manly cities, Shapes bracing the earth and braced with the whole earth.

[first lines]

Narrator:
Their songs of love and lost, desperation and joy comforted a nation in the darkest days of the depression, and brought a rare dignity to rural Appalachia culture.

[last lines]

: I was coming home, and the Ernest Tubbs Record Shop was on and out of nowhere here comes a Carter Family record. It was like ghosts were in the car with me. That's how much power their records have. That's how much I think they're anointed, is the word. They're heaven sent.

Closing Crawl:
Sara and Maybelle reunited briefly during the folk revival movement of the 1960's. Maybelle Carter died in 1978. She is buried outside of Nashville Tennessee. Sara Carter Bays died in 1979. She is buried in Poor Valley, Virginia. Hundreds of people from all over the world visit the Carter Fold and A.P. Carter's grave every weekend. The songs that earned only a few hundred dollars a year in royalties at the time of A.P.'s death are now among the most valuable copyrights in all American music.

[first lines]

Narrator:
On the 31st day of May, 1889, more than two thousand lives were lost when the South Fork Dam collapsed. An entire lake, 20 million tons of water, crashed down the Conemaugh valley through a half dozen towns on its way to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It wiped out nearly everything in between, but by many accounts, Johnstown suffered the most gruesome and disturbing fate of all.

Narrator:
It was 4:00. At half past 3, there had been a Johnstown. Now, there was none.

Narrator:
June first, 1889. That morning opened dark and dreary. Great drops of rain fell occasionally and another storm seemed imminent. Everyone felt thankful that the weather remained cold to slow the decay of the bodies lying everywhere.