Tools, Toys and History Weave a Tapestry : Americana: With the help of a MacArthur grant, John Rice Irwin has finally opened the doors of his Hall of Fame at the Museum of Appalachia.

John Rice Irwin knows all about life deep in the hollows of Appalachia. Others can learn about it, he reckons, by getting a look at Uncle Henry Moss’s peg leg or the hog trough of Old Jim Smith, who lived his whole life in a cave.

It’s the stuff of these hardy folk that Irwin has collected, aided by a $345,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” a few years ago. Now, his Hall of Fame--located at the Museum of Appalachia, a 60-acre collection of pioneer barns, log cabins, churches, stores and school houses--has swung open its doors.

It’s been a long time coming. A little wooden sign promising “to be open soon” lingered such a spell it wore out. But Irwin wasn’t in any hurry to finish the hall.

In fact, Irwin, the museum’s founder, owner and operator, says it wasn’t until visitors began inquiring as long as five years after first seeing the little sign that he decided it was time to cut the ceremonial rope this summer. Irwin, 61, has collected thousands upon thousands of relics--from Indian pipes and tools to dulcimers, wooden toys, quilts and a country doctor’s office the size of a tool shed.

It all was in the works long before Irwin became a MacArthur fellow. But the former teacher and real estate salesman said the 1989 award, which he received unsolicited, freed him to do the things he really wanted to do.

The hall, about 20 miles north of Knoxville, isn’t what one might expect, said Irwin, his red suspenders and cowboy boots peeking out from under a business suit.

“There is a rhyme and a reason for it, but you might not be able to figure it out,” he said, eyes twinkling.

Consider Uncle Henry’s peg leg. It hangs, logically or not, only a few feet from a grandfather clock once owned by Sam Houston, former governor of Tennessee and Texas.

“The people we put in here are not primarily for their own memory, but as part of a total picture. They represent a whole host of other people,” Irwin said.

Tennessee native Cordell Hull, who was author of the federal income tax and later secretary of state to Franklin D. Roosevelt, is represented by his 1953 personal income tax records. He took a $16 deduction for his wife’s dentures.

“That tells the story of America doesn’t it?” Irwin said.

The exhibit for another Tennessean, Sgt. Alvin C. York, includes an autographed picture he received from actor Gary Cooper, who played York in the now-classic movie of the World War I hero’s life.

York is said to have been infuriated when he saw Cooper smoking on the movie set and was ready to have him fired, until the photo arrived with an apology from Cooper.

Between the Hull and York exhibits are the tattered coat and wooden hog trough of Old Jim Smith.

Irwin grouped Hull, York and Smith together because they lived so near each other he figures they could have run into one another.

Memorabilia from Hull and York and a handful of celebrated country musicians, such as the Carter Family and Roy Acuff, are the exception in the hall.

Most are “people perhaps never known outside their holler,” said Irwin, who has hand-printed notes beside each item.

Ras Lindamood’s coffee mill, for instance, is an unusual piece of Americana made more so because of his story. When Lindamood’s homestead was flooded by Norris Dam, he literally took with him the fire that had burned on his family’s hearth for generations.

“Every item tells a story,” Irwin said.

Objects are important just as much because of who owned them as who made them or what they say about the pioneers of Appalachia, the highland region of the eastern United States.

“I think the most beautiful thing made on the frontier was the Kentucky rifle and the fiddle,” Irwin said, pointing to examples of both made by “the fabulous Hacker Martin.”

Will the collection in the 15,000-square-foot, antebellum-style Hall of Fame building ever be complete?

“It’s just a never-ending kind of thing,” Irwin said. “I expect that I won’t live to get everything done that I want.”