Holler Back Girl
Do you remember the Beverly Hillbillies television show? Have you seen either COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER or DELIVERANCE? If you said yes to any of these, you've seen my peeps. My homies. My crew. Not the background you'd expect a hippie liberal chick to have? Well, if you try to stick me in a pre-made mold, you'll be looking for it for a long time. I prefer to consider myself "an original".
My parents were born and raised in the hollers of eastern Kentucky. Yes. That's right. I said "hollers". Tight little valleys where it's difficult for sunlight to get in, let alone books or liberal politics or...hell...shoes. Inbreeding used to be rampant, but I haven't been in a holler in several years (and I tend not to stay any longer than I have to when I do), so I'm not sure of the current status of things. Lucky for me, when Mom and Dad (who were not, by the way, previously related) fell in love, they married and moved the hell out of there. Before I was ever born. Many's the day I've considered how different my life would be had they not made that particular choice. It frightens the bejesus out of me, too. Well, probably moreso if I had any brothers.
Many interesting stories from my childhood. As a kid, growing up in the very urban city of Rochester, New York, going to visit family in very rural Kentucky was some pretty serious culture shock. We usually visited family a couple times a year. Somewhere around Christmas and once (sometimes twice) in the summer. As for family vacations, Kentucky was about it. No camping trips. No Disneyland. No nothin'. In fact, I find it particularly odd that I despite being born and raised (at least partially) in New York state, I've never once been to NYC. Going "up home" was really all my parents ever wanted to do when they had free time. And it wasn't exactly a democracy at our house in those days.
Now, we (my sister and I) grew up in the city. Attending public schools. Riding bikes, playing kickball in the middle of the street, and going to the movies. Curfew was when the street lights came on. Saturday mornings in front of the tv. Sunday mornings at church down the block. Our neighbors were Italian and Cuban and a very interesting ethnic mix.
Every time we went "up home" was a very strange trip. We'd always stay with my great-grandmother. [At 26, I held...and still retain...the title of oldest first time mother in my family. My mother had me when she was 18. Her mother had her at 17. And my great-grandmother gave birth to my grandmother when she was 16. Each of us the oldest child.] My family was always kind of "young". In the hills, people married and started their families much younger. It was always a little freakish to my friends, but it never bothered me. I had alot of my great grandparents for a good part of my life. I lost the last one (this same great-grandmother) when I was about a month from my 21st birthday. But, as usual, I'm rambling again.
Anyway, my great-grandmother (Mamaw Minnie) had this lovely old house. My MOST favorite thing about it was the giant front porch. It wrapped around two sides of the house and it was bedecked with rockers and gliders and all kinds of wicker chairs and loveseats. We, kids, used to love to play on that porch. The adults loved to sit out there and talk. Now, the fact that the house was perched, rather precariously, on the side of a hill added a certain charm...and danger...to playing out there. But some of my fondest childhood memories are playing games with my cousins on that porch. Or the whole family sitting out there eating watermelon and spitting seeds down the hill.
On the first floor of the house, there was a big bedroom (hers), a big living room, a big dining room and a...you guessed it...big kitchen. The furniture was old and lived in. Some of it ornately carved wood. And all of it stuff I'd never seen anywhere else. Upstairs were three more bedrooms, each one successively smaller, the farther into the upstairs you went. The smallest one had become her sewing room, where I used to help her make quilts sometimes.
You may have noted that I didn't mention the house having any bathroom facilities. Oh, it did. But, that was years later. When I was a kid, there was a separate "wing" for that.
We used the outhouse. It was up the hill and it was just like the pictures would lead you to believe. Stinky, uncomfortable and cold as hell in the winter. There was a big metal washtub on the front porch for bathing. And I, myself, had many baths in that old washtub. There was a big wooden barrel at the far end of the porch for collecting rainwater. We'd usually heat that up for baths. I can still remember how soft it would make my hair.
There weren't a lot of kids around. The houses were pretty far apart. Besides, the closest neighbors were...well...dead. A short walk up the dirt road would take you to the family cemetary, where we kids used to like to roll down the hill from the farthest point of the graves to the road. Stopping only long enough to pick and eat some of the strawberries that grew at the fence line. Most of the other close neighbors were unemployed, drawing "black lung checks" from working in the coal mines. Bustling, it wasn't.
Mamaw had a tv set. Not sure who bought it for her. But down in that holler the reception was always terrible. So, it was useless to even try to get anything on it. It left us to creating games and talking to each other. Which garnered me a very rich repertoire of family stories.
My parents weren't wealthy. Not by anyone's standards. But I always left those mountains feeling that I was...in so many ways. Feeling as if I should never complain about not having things, because it was always so evident that people got by every day without them.
Mamaw's house is now gone. A fire took it years ago. And, as they do, people have moved away and things have changed there. Any ties I had have long since dissolved. I've been back once in the last five years. It was to see my grandmother buried in that family cemetary, about three years ago. While Rochester was always my home, that place still holds a feel of home even now.
Sometime soon I need to take Highlander there. There's been a great deal of development in the last 30 years. They've even paved the roads. But I need to get a soundtrack of dueling banjos before I do. I think it would really help set the tone for a roadtrip to Eastern Kentucky.
My parents were born and raised in the hollers of eastern Kentucky. Yes. That's right. I said "hollers". Tight little valleys where it's difficult for sunlight to get in, let alone books or liberal politics or...hell...shoes. Inbreeding used to be rampant, but I haven't been in a holler in several years (and I tend not to stay any longer than I have to when I do), so I'm not sure of the current status of things. Lucky for me, when Mom and Dad (who were not, by the way, previously related) fell in love, they married and moved the hell out of there. Before I was ever born. Many's the day I've considered how different my life would be had they not made that particular choice. It frightens the bejesus out of me, too. Well, probably moreso if I had any brothers.
Many interesting stories from my childhood. As a kid, growing up in the very urban city of Rochester, New York, going to visit family in very rural Kentucky was some pretty serious culture shock. We usually visited family a couple times a year. Somewhere around Christmas and once (sometimes twice) in the summer. As for family vacations, Kentucky was about it. No camping trips. No Disneyland. No nothin'. In fact, I find it particularly odd that I despite being born and raised (at least partially) in New York state, I've never once been to NYC. Going "up home" was really all my parents ever wanted to do when they had free time. And it wasn't exactly a democracy at our house in those days.
Now, we (my sister and I) grew up in the city. Attending public schools. Riding bikes, playing kickball in the middle of the street, and going to the movies. Curfew was when the street lights came on. Saturday mornings in front of the tv. Sunday mornings at church down the block. Our neighbors were Italian and Cuban and a very interesting ethnic mix.
Every time we went "up home" was a very strange trip. We'd always stay with my great-grandmother. [At 26, I held...and still retain...the title of oldest first time mother in my family. My mother had me when she was 18. Her mother had her at 17. And my great-grandmother gave birth to my grandmother when she was 16. Each of us the oldest child.] My family was always kind of "young". In the hills, people married and started their families much younger. It was always a little freakish to my friends, but it never bothered me. I had alot of my great grandparents for a good part of my life. I lost the last one (this same great-grandmother) when I was about a month from my 21st birthday. But, as usual, I'm rambling again.
Anyway, my great-grandmother (Mamaw Minnie) had this lovely old house. My MOST favorite thing about it was the giant front porch. It wrapped around two sides of the house and it was bedecked with rockers and gliders and all kinds of wicker chairs and loveseats. We, kids, used to love to play on that porch. The adults loved to sit out there and talk. Now, the fact that the house was perched, rather precariously, on the side of a hill added a certain charm...and danger...to playing out there. But some of my fondest childhood memories are playing games with my cousins on that porch. Or the whole family sitting out there eating watermelon and spitting seeds down the hill.
On the first floor of the house, there was a big bedroom (hers), a big living room, a big dining room and a...you guessed it...big kitchen. The furniture was old and lived in. Some of it ornately carved wood. And all of it stuff I'd never seen anywhere else. Upstairs were three more bedrooms, each one successively smaller, the farther into the upstairs you went. The smallest one had become her sewing room, where I used to help her make quilts sometimes.
You may have noted that I didn't mention the house having any bathroom facilities. Oh, it did. But, that was years later. When I was a kid, there was a separate "wing" for that.
We used the outhouse. It was up the hill and it was just like the pictures would lead you to believe. Stinky, uncomfortable and cold as hell in the winter. There was a big metal washtub on the front porch for bathing. And I, myself, had many baths in that old washtub. There was a big wooden barrel at the far end of the porch for collecting rainwater. We'd usually heat that up for baths. I can still remember how soft it would make my hair.There weren't a lot of kids around. The houses were pretty far apart. Besides, the closest neighbors were...well...dead. A short walk up the dirt road would take you to the family cemetary, where we kids used to like to roll down the hill from the farthest point of the graves to the road. Stopping only long enough to pick and eat some of the strawberries that grew at the fence line. Most of the other close neighbors were unemployed, drawing "black lung checks" from working in the coal mines. Bustling, it wasn't.
Mamaw had a tv set. Not sure who bought it for her. But down in that holler the reception was always terrible. So, it was useless to even try to get anything on it. It left us to creating games and talking to each other. Which garnered me a very rich repertoire of family stories.
My parents weren't wealthy. Not by anyone's standards. But I always left those mountains feeling that I was...in so many ways. Feeling as if I should never complain about not having things, because it was always so evident that people got by every day without them.
Mamaw's house is now gone. A fire took it years ago. And, as they do, people have moved away and things have changed there. Any ties I had have long since dissolved. I've been back once in the last five years. It was to see my grandmother buried in that family cemetary, about three years ago. While Rochester was always my home, that place still holds a feel of home even now.
Sometime soon I need to take Highlander there. There's been a great deal of development in the last 30 years. They've even paved the roads. But I need to get a soundtrack of dueling banjos before I do. I think it would really help set the tone for a roadtrip to Eastern Kentucky.
posted by SuperWife | 9:56 AM
5 Comments:
Wow. I guess maybe, sometimes, you can go home again, even when it's long gone. To do it, you have to keep it in your heart.
The longest stretches I've had to live under those conditions have been... just over two weeks. My aunt and uncle used to own a 111 acre stretch of land up past the Poconos. The cabin had no electricity, plumbing or running water. We had to burn wood in a big cast iron stove to warm the place, use the outhouse positioned a respectable 50 feet from the back porch, and haul water up from a spring that ran out of the hillside. The spring had been set up to feed into a sort of stone box created from heavy slate, so that sediment flowing through the stream would have a place to settle. A pipe fitted high on the outward side of the box would be where the water would drain from, and where we'd fill jugs with water.
Washing up down in Schroeder Creek (the sound of it rushing around the boulders was a constant background noise), a short walk down a path, was a sane option roughly a third of the year. The rest of the time heating water up in a basin and retreating to a private corner of the place remained the best way to clean up.
For me it will always live in memory as an escape, because while up there the rest of the world -- as you say, trying to pick up signals back there was nearly impossible -- could fall apart and one wouldn't know until it came time to pack up and head home. Some of my best days were spent there, at least in terms of feelings of general well-being.
I don't know how well I'd adapt to it for long stretches now -- our world's grown so tremendously interactive, that it would mean unplugging myself from so much more -- but I miss the sense of being outside of time and events.
Oh, where do I begin...?
C.S. Lewis said friendship begins the moment one says "you too? I thought I was the only one". I say "too late".
My parents are from Middlesboro KY (from the tri-state area of KY, VA, and TN; for those of you playing at home) I was first born of a 17 year old mother, who was first born. Our trips were "back home" to my great-grandmother whom we called "Mammy" until her passing in 1971. Her house had an outhouse, too.
When I saw Coal Miner's Daughter, one of the things that jarred my memory was the houses that had the big porches that you talked about, but the door underneath that led to where the preserved vegetables in mason jars (at least, that's what my mammy's was used for)
Yes, TV reception was poor. So Middlesboro was the first time I heard about this thing called cable TV.
And her home was taken by fire all these years ago, too.
As a child, one of her neighbors had a faucet in the middle of their kitchen, sticking out of the floor. As a kid, I thought that was so neat.
It seems that most of the area always had paved roads, as I remember.
Interesting story about Middlesboro: there's a suburb, or ajoining community if you will, called Noetown where most of my family is from. Years ago, in the 1930's, someone heard this young girl singing the song "House of the Rising Sun". She didn't know what a whorehouse was, and while people knew this song was around before then, she was the nexus, the focal point of the song, if you will.
I'm sorry to hear that you don't have close ties to the area. I still have family there. In fact, Kathy has also adopted it as a second hometown, as I have, and looks forward to going down there to see the sights and family as well.
I spent an entire summer with my great grandmother once. That was excrutiating. I love camping. I love retreating to nature and hiding out from the world as much as the next guy (and considerably more than some...like Highlander...;), but after a time, I yearn to get back to my "real" life.
We had a crick (which is really hick for creek) that ran right across the road from the house. And a root cellar where Mamaw put her canned veggies and fruits, preserves and molasses. I hated when she'd send me down there to get something though. It was always uber-creepy!!
And for the record, we're talking about Pike County, here. Pretty close to the West Virginia border. Mamaw's house was in Robinson Creek. Demographics for the area show the current population at 207. And that's not thousands.
S.G.-
I lived for a time in central Kentucky and although I never got completely comfortable with doublewide trailers and beat-up pickup trucks, I will say that people who appeared to have nothing going for them by the world's standards had the world's biggest hearts...they would go the distance for any friend, relative, or neighbor who was sick, hurt, or in any kind of trouble...and man, could those old country women cook! I have never had before, or since, a chocolate pie to top the one I ate in a run-down neighbor's trailer at her dinette! Although it was strange for someone with an education to live among people who really didn't value books or learning, unless it was something practical, it was also very relaxing...no "keeping up with the Joneses" pressure down there...very simple. I like my fast-food, my theater, my conveniences, but nights in the country were quiet, peaceful, and filled with stars. I guess we're all rednecks, or redneck-wannabe's, at heart.
Peanuts
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