Meg,
I'm sorry I have not had time to write any lately, I will try to do some more now.
I like to just set out in the late spring evening and listen to the sounds of the
frogs calling, you can hear a screech owl now and then it reminds me of when I was
little, my grand Mother lived at the end of the county road and I would stay with her
a lot. We would set in the living room at night and listen to the grand ole opry
on her little table top radio and have the front door open to keep cool and listen
to the frogs that sang in the creek just down from the house. She had a big garden
He worked in the coal mines, he had been post master of a very small post office,
a dog catcher, in the army in Germany with 'hell on wheels' onder George Patton,
It was a big treat to get to go meet Jess and his son-in-law Hail, they had this big
truck. They had built a big box on the back, there was just enough room for them to
walk around to get what you wanted. They carried just about everything, and what they
didn't have they could get for the next week. I liked bananas so my grand Mother would
order them, and we would always get a candy bar (baby ruth). My grand Mother liked
pepperment candy and would buy it by the box, there were probably 25 sticks in a box.
If you were going to be gone you could just put your order in a bucket and hang it on
your porch, they would get it, fill the order and take it inside. Must things were
as cheep from them as going to the big stores and you didn't have to drive 35 to 40
miles.
There were moonshiners everywhere around here, Mom said one day a couple of men
pulled up out in front of the old store and got out and got some sacks out of the
truck and took up over the hill, in just a little while she said you could see smoke
coming up out of the woods. She said later the man that owned the truck came looking
for it, the men had been working for him and just desided to make something to drink.
There was one man that it is said his moonshine killed a couple of men, I knew him and
his family, he went to jail for making moonshine but they didn't keep him long.
My Uncle's name was Norris, he had a brother named Morris, no they were not twins,
Callie and Calvin Sr. were twins. Then there the one that lives in the coal fields
is Hallie, Helen lives just up the road from me and Gerldene is the youngest. Norse's
wife's name is Dorthy which I bet she has not been called over a dozed times in her
adult life, everyone calls her Dot, there two girls are Sue and Linda. you talk about
fighting, those two could not be in the same room five minutes without a fight breaking
out. Once Norris and Dot were going up on the hill to plow the corn, now you could see
the field from the house and you could hear Norris cursing the horses, he could do a good
job of that. He loved his horses but his temper was short.
A hollow is a valley where the mountains keep getting closer and finally you run
into a dead end or get out your climbing boots. My Uncle's place is so close to
Coal Knob that you can't see the top. He never lived anywhere else. He had a way
of talking that I can't describe but if you ever heard the song that was out back in
the 70's when C.B. was so popular called THE WHITE KNIGHT, the man who did the voice
could have been my Uncle, the laugh and all. He would light his pipe and set and tell
stories for hours, he loved to talk and if you went to visit you had better start to
leave two hours before you really had to go, he would fallow you out to your car and
stand there for as long as you would let him.
Watching them build a hay stack was what was interesting. Most of the fields were
on the sides of the hills, he would start the stack in the middle of the field. To
build a stack you put a pole in the field and pile the hay around it in a circle,
someone gets on the stack and tromps the hay down as someone else piles it on, you
just keep piling it on. When you are done it may be 15 to 20 feet tall.
I said he smoked a pipe, when I was just 4 or 5 years old him and my Dad were at my
grandmom's one day and I guess I might have been wanting his pipe, anyway they put me
up in a chair and gave it to me, now a five year old don't know to suck and not blow,
I can barely remember but I had smoke really rolling out of that pipe when Mom
walked in, I don't remember what happened next.
He had a field up on top of a small mountain, there was a building up there and when
he would go up there to work they would take food and cook up there, it was too much
trouble to go back to the house to fix dinner. His wife did as much or more work as
he did, she is a very small woman (5'3 maybe 98 pounds) and I don't know how she did
all that she did. When she would be going to the hay field she would put on the warmest
clothes she had, she said what would keep out cold would keep out heat. She kept a big
garden,chickens and a couple of milk cows. Hey had to haul water until 76 also, she
saved bleach jugs to carry it in, it was 1\4 mile to the spring and there was no road
to it, there would be 10 to 15 jugs on the back porch, she had a little joke she liked
to pull on the kids, I don't remember what she said you could see if you would look in
the jug, but when you would get your eye just about down to the jug she would squeeze
the sides of in, if you don't know what that does try it sometime.
Christian Home Place
in front of the house and kept cows and chickens, she made all kinds of jams and jellies
from the berries that grew on the unkept areas of the farm. I had two cousins that lived
on up the hollow, they walked almost two miles to catch the school bus, if it had been
two miles they would have had to bring the bus closer. They would stop in at my grand
Mothers every evening to get something to eat, they still had about 3\4 of a mile to
walk after they passed her place, and if there Dad and Mom were in the hay it might
be awile before supper. they liked to get into the pickeled corn, just grab an ear
and keep going.
but had gone into coal mining in a non union mine. He was killed in 1958 working
on a coal cutter, a big machine that cut the seems of coal from a wall, he was doing
a job that he was not trained for and fell into the running machine.
I really don't know much about the mines, I do know there are not many working deep
mines around this country, they are strip mining mostly around here, I would say there
are a few tunnels still around. I went back on the mountain to try to find the one that
my Dad was killed in but I think they had stripped the area and I could not find any
trace of it. I do have an Aunt that lives down in what they call the coal fields. She
lives on top of this mountain where there is just enough room for the road and part of
the house, the back part is sort of hanging out over the edge, the last time I was there
[1964] her basment was caving in because there were coal mines under her, on our way up
there the leaves ere black with coal dust where they hauled it out on trucks.
Your friend
Calvin
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