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  My Appalachia

  My Appalachia

  A Memoir

  Sidney Saylor Farr

  THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

  Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

  Copyright © 2007 by The University Press of Kentucky

  Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

  All rights reserved.

  Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

  663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

  www.kentuckypress.com

  11 10 09 08 075 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Farr, Sidney Saylor, 1932–

  My Appalachia : a memoir / Sidney Saylor Farr.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8131-2450-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Farr, Sidney Saylor, 1932– 2. Farr, Sidney Saylor, 1932– Childhood and youth. 3. Farr, Sidney Saylor, 1932– Family. 4. Farr, Sidney Saylor, 1932– Philosophy. 5. Appalachian Region, Southern—Social life and customs. 6. Mountain life—Appalachian Region, Southern. 7. Stoney Fork (Ky.)—Social life and customs. 8. Stoney Fork (Ky.)—Biography. 9. Librarians—Kentucky—Berea—Biography. 10. Women authors, American—Biography. I. Title.

  F217.A65F37 2007

  976.9'53—dc22

  [B] 2007013815

  This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Member of the Association of

  American University Presses

  To my brother and sisters still living:

  Della, Clara, Lee Roy, Minnie, Lola, and Sharon Rose—

  and to those gone on before us:

  Hazel, James, and Fred

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1 Beginning

  2 A Way of Life

  3 Oral History

  4 Satisfy Hunger, Tickle the Funny Bone

  5 Decoration Day

  6 Growing Years

  7 It Was So Ordered

  8 Honeybees and Birch Trees

  9 Transition to Harvest

  10 Sweet and Meat

  11 Winter’s Hunger and Cold

  12 Family and Friends

  13 Foods We Loved

  14 Moonshine and Celebrations

  15 Snake-Handling Saints

  16 Marriage and Life after That

  17 Missionaries and Books

  18 Love for a Child and a Man

  19 Endings and Beginnings

  20 There Was Grant

  21 Going to London Town

  22 Tom Sawyer

  23 The Art of Writing

  24 As the Sun Goes Down

  Acknowledgments

  For every book written there are people who help in so many different ways.

  I want to acknowledge first those but for whom there would have been no book. Susan Kaney spent countless hours transcribing cassette tapes and sending the documents to my computer. Bruce Lawson edited the whole manuscript at least three times and certain chapters several times. Grant Farr read and offered valuable suggestions and corrections. Tom Sawyer advised on the whole concept of this book, and approved chapter 22. Special thanks to Trish Ayers, who gave advice and edited the final manuscript.

  Others I wish to thank are my sisters, Della Whitehead, Minnie Brown, and Sharon Rose Clark; and Sally Thompson, a family friend. Dr. Gerald F. Roberts, mentor and friend, urged me to write this book. Thanks to all of you for your love and faith in me.

  1

  Beginning

  There is no place in the world where I would

  rather spend a year than in the mountains of

  southeast Kentucky.

  I believe that each of us is a link between the past and the future, and that it is our duty to pass along family history; otherwise, legends, stories, songs, and traditions will be lost. I want my story to reveal past events that affected the lives of my people and me.

  By the time my father was a young man most of the cleared fields on Stoney Fork, Kentucky, where he and his family lived, were worn out, and new ground constantly had to be cleared for corn. Dad courted and married Mama in 1930. She was from Laurel Fork in Leslie County, Kentucky. He built a log cabin on Coon Branch at the head of Stoney Fork, just over the hill from Grandpa. Two years later, on October 30, 1932, I was born in that cabin.

  I have since learned that 1930 was known as the year of the drought. People were starving because of the scarcity of crops and wild game. The first charity my family ever took was when the Red Cross came in with food to help during the drought. Wild game—groundhog, possum, and coon—was very scarce, but Dad loved to hunt and managed to keep meat on the table. Mama baked possum when there was no other fresh meat, though I never learned to like it.

  The men of Stoney Fork loved to go hunting in the autumn—especially for coon. Right about the time the leaves started falling the men hit the hills after dark with a pack of dogs two or three nights a week on school days and stay out till maybe 11:00 P.M. On Friday and Saturday nights they might not get home before daybreak. They scoured the hills for good places to hunt. They went out in small groups of four or five hunters at most and usually came home with just an unlucky opossum or two.

  They carried carbide lights to light their way through the woods. But they also had at least one serious flashlight, which never got turned on unless they needed to see if a coon was up the tree. That flashlight, with two batteries, would usually last all season. On the rare occasions when they did take a coon, the owner of the treeing dog got to keep the hide. He would display it on the side of a smokehouse or anyplace else it could be seen, much the way you see deer heads mounted in sporting goods stores.

  The man whose dog treed a coon would be locally famous for a while, and he would be offered a higher price for his coon dog. A raccoon tasted better than no meat at all, but it was stringy and tough. Coons were so scarce that eating one was a novelty.

  A lean groundhog, on the other hand, taken early in spring, before it started fattening up on weeds and tasting like whatever it was eating, could weigh up to twenty or twenty-five pounds and cooked up sweet and tender. I loved groundhog the way my mother fixed it. She first parboiled the pieces of meat with the broken limbs of a spice bush, then placed the meat in a baking pan. Around the meat she wedged quartered sweet potatoes, then spooned bacon fat over the meat and potatoes, poured in a cup of water, and baked it in the oven. Served with cornbread, it made a delicious meal.

  Groundhogs were good for more than just their meat. If you scraped and tanned the hide properly, you could sell it to be used as a resonator head for a five-string banjo. It would stretch tighter than anything made of synthetic material.

  My family lived as far back in the “hollers” as it was possible to go in Bell County, Kentucky. Dad worked in the timber woods and at a sawmill when there was employment to be found. We ate what we grew on our land or could glean from the hillsides. Just about everything was made by hand. We had little contact with people outside our region; there were no newspapers and no radio in our house.

  Every two years a new baby was born in our family. I helped with the cooking, washing, cleaning, and milking, and I too
k care of the younger children when Mama went to dig roots in the hills or hoe corn in the fields with Dad. I remember a time when I was three years old and Mama went to the field to help Dad hoe corn. She spread a quilt in a shady place and left me to care for Della, who was not yet a year old. My little sister was crawling by this time, and I had a hard time keeping her on the quilt.

  By the time Della, Hazel, and Clara had followed me, Dad had just about given up hope that he would ever have a son, but then three boys came along, one every two years. The firstborn became Dad’s pride and joy. Mama wanted to name him after her only living brother, Dewey. Dad wanted to name this first son for his favorite uncle, James. I never understood why they didn’t compromise by giving him both names. However, the birth certificate recorded his legal name as Dewey Saylor. But from day one, Dad called him Jeems, and soon the rest of us, except Mama, took up the name. For mountain people, who softened their words, “James” was pronounced “Jeems,” and “Clara” became “Clary”—it was easier to say “Clary” than it was to say “Clara” and “Jeems” than “James.”

  Dad took Jeems with him everywhere he went—even to his moon-shine still. This worried Mama, but she didn’t try to stop him. Two years after Jeems was born another boy came along; he was named Fred. Two years after that the third and last son, Lee Roy, was born.

  Then Mama gave birth to three other girls, Minnie, Lola, and Sharon Rose.

  The day brother Fred was born, Dad took the midwife, whom we called Aunt Mary, home just after dinner. He was not back by suppertime, and Mama began to worry. “Surely to goodness he won’t get drunk today,” she said. “Surely to goodness he won’t stop at Kale Brock’s store and start drinking.”

  I washed the supper dishes, milked the cow, and fed the chickens and hogs before dark. I put the children to bed in the next room and then lay down on a pallet near Mama’s bed. Sometime in the night she called me. “I hear your dad, Sidney. It sounds like he’s down near the barn. You’ll have to take a lantern and go get him.”

  “I don’t want to go down that road by myself, Mama.”

  “If you don’t go than I’ll have to get up from this bed and go myself,” she said. “We can’t leave him down there all night.”

  I got up, fixed the lantern, and went down the road. Dad had fallen off his horse, which was standing patiently by. I looped the reins over the horse’s head, slapped his rump, and told him to go home.

  “Dad, let me help you up,” I said. He staggered up and walked a few feet, then stopped. “Why did you let her go away?” he demanded. “I’ll never see her again. And she had the prettiest yellow hair.” He began to cry. Eventually, with Dad staggering, falling, and crying, we got to the front porch, where he puked, splattering his shoes. Then he fell down and passed out. I brought out a quilt to spread over him, then went to unsaddle and feed the horse. Early the next morning Dad awoke and went to bed. I scrubbed the porch before the children got up.

  EVERYONE IN OUR COMMUNITY was poor. If it had not been for the small farms and gardens, domestic animals, and wild game brought in from the hills, our people would have starved. But they planted corn and raised gardens, chicken, and livestock. They picked fruit and berries, canned and preserved as much food as they could for winter, and made do with what they had.

  Dad and Mama dug ginseng and other roots, which they dried and sold by the pound in the late fall. For a number of years Dad made and sold moonshine whiskey. He was skilled at castrating domestic animals, and the neighbors hired him to perform this service for their hogs, horses, bull calves, and so forth. With money coming in small payments for the castrations, the roots and herbs, the dozen or so eggs sold each week, the occasional gallon of milk or blackberries sold or exchanged for groceries, we managed.

  I often think of how close we lived to pioneer days in the 1940s and 1950s. We lagged behind the times in southern Appalachia, at least fifty to seventy-five years in some regions and a hundred years in others. Still, despite my growing up in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, I had several role models, some in my extended family, others among my neighbors. No one ever told us we were Appalachians, a poor, benighted people, so we did not have that in our consciousness.

  We shared with our neighbors and kin. When Dad planned to butcher a hog, he would send word to neighbors up and down the creek that they should come by the next day for a mess of meat. They did come, and Dad would take meat to the older people, and there would be feasting everywhere as families cooked the fresh pork. When our neighbors butchered, they did the same. Mountain people shared everything. They were my teachers, especially the women. I didn’t know it at the time, but what they gave me was exactly what I would need one day to write.

  Some were storytellers. We lived near Granny Brock, my dad’s grandmother, from the time I was five until I was twelve years old. It was said in the family that Granny Brock had seven husbands, some still living, others long gone. But no one knew any personal information about any of them. Her last husband, Andrew Brock, was the only one we knew. Her first child was Dad’s mother. It was said of both Granny Brock and Grandma Saylor (my paternal grandmother) that they were two of the most beautiful women in Bell County. I remember Grandma’s black hair and her classic cheekbones and sculptured face. Granny Brock was tiny, less than five feet tall, and her beauty was a dark radiance of hair and eyes.

  Granny Brock was an independent woman who knew her own mind. She didn’t seem to care what other people thought of her; she just did what had to be done to survive. Something about her influenced my love for words. Her language was descriptive, with vivid words and symbols. All of my people talked that way. I always thought it came from our Scots-Irish ancestry.

  Granny had weathered incredible storms during her lifetime, but she laughed a lot. She told me stories of pioneer days, how, when she was young, a bad blizzard hit. Another time, a bear tried to get into their log house. It circled the house again and again, snuffling and growling, trying to get in. She told how her mother sat up all night to protect the children.

  She spoke of husbands who came and went, and about her children, who stayed and had to be fed—”especially Little Mike,” she said. “I did the best that I could for all of them.”

  “Mike was my little crippled boy,” Granny said. She spoke of the night he was born, a night when it snowed so long and hard that even the fence posts were buried in the snow. The midwife had a hard time getting to her, and Mike had a hard time getting born. When he did come, his little feet and legs were all twisted. Granny Brock said she cried that whole night through, and many other times, too.

  Since Mike couldn’t run and play, he invented games and made up little songs to amuse himself. One that Granny shared with me was about planting corn in the springtime. “When the whip-poor-wills call, it’s corn planting time; when the whip-poor-wills call, it’s corn planting time.” I asked Granny many times to talk about Little Mike and other things in her life, as I sat next to her, loving the story and loving her.

  “Little Mike lived to be eight year old, then the Good Lord just took him home. It was a night almost as bad as the night he was born. It snowed and the wind kept blowing and the cold creeped in. I tried to keep him warm as I could. But I reckon an angel came down on that snowfall and carried him away.”

  When Granny would tell me sad stories like this, we would sit and not say another word for a long time. Then she would brighten up and tell me something funny or risqué, stories about some of the older folks who lived up and down the creeks, stories that horrified my mother and taught me to hold my tongue.

  Some of my happiest memories are when Dad and Granny Brock went fishing in the evenings and Mama allowed me to go with them. I loved to listen to the stories they told. Granny did most of the talking.

  “Now, Wilburn,” she would say to my father, “do you remember Old Willie Simpson? Now there was a slick, sharp man. They weren’t nothing he wouldn’t connive at doing.”

  “Yeah,” Dad would agr
ee. “Remember the time he stole corn from Old Man Asher’s corncrib?”

  “Willie Simpson spotted Old Man Asher stealing corn from a corncrib down the creek,” Granny said. “Willie followed the man back to his corncrib and watched him dump in the corn. Willie waited until Asher went back for a second load, then filled his own sack and took the corn home. I reckon Old Man Asher carried stolen corn and dumped it into his own corncrib all night long.”

  “But come daylight and he couldn’t see any of it in his crib!” Dad laughed.

  “No,” Granny joined his laughter, “because it was all in Willie Simpson’s corncrib.”

  Then Dad and Granny would fish awhile in silence until one of them remembered another story. I’d sit and listen to them until the moon was high in the sky.

  I had the good fortune to spend hours with Granny Brock, especially nights and weekends. Her house was on my way home from the one-room school I attended, and I usually stopped for a visit. Often she would tell me to look in the warming closet of her wood-burning stove and I would find something to eat. Usually it was baked sweet potatoes.

  How I wish I could have tape-recorded Granny’s stories. Here are some snippets, as close to being in her own words as I can remember.

  “BEFORE I WAS EVER MARRIED, I fell in love with an Asher man. He promised to marry me, but then took up with another girl and married her. I was pregnant by that time, but I did not tell him. I had a girl child, named her Susie—she’s your grandma.”

  “They’s a place called Dark Holler. Who can say why it’s called that? I reckon they was dark deeds done there in days gone by. But that’s where they buried my Joe and Little Mike.”

  “My first husband died young. He got lung fever and seemed like no time a-tall then Joe was gone. That left me with no one to help me. My kinfolk had all died out—not meaning, of course, them in the old country.”

  “Some folks said what I done was wrong, and maybe it was. But I reckon the Good Lord will take everything and add it up and judge me a fair judgment. I’m a-counting on that.”