It was summertime and I heard a chicken loudly squaking and then mama and daddy got out of bed and went looking for it. Mama knew old Clementine was setting somewhere for she would come to the house looking for a handout and then disappear. We looked and looked but couldn’t find her but on this dark night she kept squaking until they found her on a nest of hatching babies! There were so many eggs and little scared fellows climbing all over their mama but my mama calmly picked up the wounded hen and handed her to daddy as he handed me the flashlight. Mama then put chicken and eggs into her apron and we made it back to the house. Now back in a holler at night, it’s very dark and a bit scary. But Clementine was hurt. Something had nearly gotten her for the top of her head was messed up badly.

Mama doctored the hen up with some sort of salve then built a fire in the cookstove as the little chickens tried to jump out of the wooden box looking for their mam and despite all the confusion chickens kept hatching!

Mama put eggs, baby chicks and mama hen on the oven door that she had opened. Since she had built a fire she made daddy some coffee. I’ll always remember that night. The three of us huddled in the kitchen with a softly glowing light from the coal oil lamp, with a half dead hen and around two dozen eggs and babies. Mama figured the other hens had laid in the nest too, which was not uncommon.

I think that we got little sleep that night, getting up checking on the baby chicks and their mama. Clementine lived and so did the babies and it was just one of the incidents we had with animals back in the holler. If mama had been a cussing woman I think she might have done some swearing over something trying to get her chickens.

Our chickens would roost in trees around our house, but when one began to set she stayed with her eggs. We had a high porch and they had nesting boxes under it to lay in but they frequently found their own spots. The smallest girl in the pic is me, the man is my uncle and the older girl is my sister.

Quilt Pieces

Shirley Noe Swiesz

We called her ‘grandma’ out of respect but she was no kin atall. In 1959 she was in her nineties, so she was born around the 1870’s. She still had a Scottish burr from her parents who came from Scotland before she was born. I listened to her talk for hours, but I never knew her name...just ‘Grandma’. She was a tiny woman not more than five feet tall and she walked around on fragile bowed legs.

She seldom watched their tiny black and white television but she liked to watch the evening news. I think it was David Brinkley and Chet Huntley. She liked old timey music and would hum to herself. She spent her days sitting on the porch in the spring and summer and quilting in the long winter days.

She told me about yesterday...those days when her large family was young. She told me about her son getting killed in the coal mines when he was about sixteen. He had gotten a job in a mine around Harlan and stayed with his older sister who had married a miner. They lived in a coal camp. She couldn’t remember the name of it but she remembered how her son’s hair was the shade of corn silks when the corn was ripe.

She told me that she had had eleven children, the first one when she was sixteen and the last one when she was thirty-six. Four babies died before they were a month old...either at birth or a few days later and one died of diphtheria when she was three. Then her son was killed in the mine, and another daughter died in childbirth. She was blessed though, for God had left her with the remaining four and they loved her dearly.

Her husband who was ten years older than she was, died when she was seventy. He had spent his life first in the lumber woods and then in the coal mines. They had moved to Harlan in 1925 right after her son had died. She remembered it well. They moved into a coal camp in a two room house. Later he was made a boss man and they got a four room house. The house was plain and simple but it was nicer than the one they had lived in in Manchester.

She told me about her handsome husband...his hair as black as the coal he dug, and how he was a ‘mule skinner’ and could cuss up a storm but never at her or the children.

She told of her parents who were poor when they came to this country with not much more than the clothes on their backs and with hard work they saved enough money to buy some land and build a log cabin. Her father had a trade...he was a smithy...blacksmith and her mother was a wonderful seamstress and sewed for the few that could afford it.

She had two brothers and one of them followed in his father’s footsteps and became a blacksmith and the other was a woodsman and eventually became a coal miner. They were both gone now and she missed them.

There were days when she talked about the home her husband built for her. It was back in a holler and she loved it. It was a good sized log cabin. Each year she had a big garden and there were enough apple trees to dry a right smart of apples to last for the winter. She had planted them when they were not more than two feet tall. Her mother had given them to her. She would dry beans in the summer and hole up cabbage to last the winter.

When her husband died, she had walked out of the holler for help. It was a cold winter day with almost a foot of snow on the ground. Her children had fussed and fussed about them living so far away from any neighbors.

They fussed for the next twenty years and finally she gave in and sold her land and moved in with her kids, staying three months with each one of them. She knew that the trees would be cut and the coal stripped from the earth. She tried not to cry when she told me about it.

“I think they forgot that they had once lived without a bathroom or even electricity. They forgot that they drank from a gourd and had to carry the water in each night. Hit never kilt a one of them to work hard.” And then she thought about it. “Except my boy. If he hadn’t agone inta that mine, he would be alive still.” She sat still for a long time and I could feel her pain.

She lived frugally although I knew she had a lot of money from the sale of timber and coal rights but she still wore her faded cotton dresses and cotton stockings and lace up shoes. Sometimes she would slip me a couple of dollars or a pretty handkerchief, smelling of a cedar chest, or a string of old pearls. The pearls had belonged to her daughter who had died so long ago in childbirth.

I asked her who delivered her babies and she said an old midwife and the neighbor women. There were no doctors close enough to come to them. “Oh, let me think,” she said, “Yes, one was delivered by a doctor when we lived in a coal camp. He was drunk though and the little one died. I never trusted a doctor adder that one.” “How could I have pert near forgot that?” She said, mostly to herself.

Her eyes would water over and tears flow down her wrinkled checks when she mentioned her dead children. I could feel her pain, but I was young and could not fathom the depth of it.

I spent many happy hours with this old woman. I would quilt with her in the winter and sit with her outside in the summer, swinging quietly in the swing. Sometimes in my dreams I go back and visit her. In my mind’s eye I can see her grey hair, bundled up in a knot in the back, and her arthritic hands weaving in and out of her quilts.

I had left home when she died, but my tears fell when Mama wrote me the news. Like the grandmother I had lost, I loved this old woman who had worked so hard and loved so much. There is nothing quite so special as those old mountain women of yesterday.

Well, it has been rainy up here on Sukie Ridge. It hasn’t stopped an occasional bear from visiting us or the nightly raccoons and opossums, though. The other night a young deer, still with its’ spots, ran up the hill. The squirrels dance on the power lines and the crows visit me regularly.

Well, smile at someone and take the time to pray for your enemy. Blessings.

I ran across this that I had written a few years ago and thought you all might enjoy it even though Christmas is over.

As we rush through the next week, tired and weary, take a few minutes to tiptoe and listen. Listen for that small whisper that will take you to Bethlehem and tiny hands that will beckon you. You remember it well...when you were very young and believed in the magic of Christmas...and the excitement not just for gifts but the awesomeness of Christmas itself. Put away the gadgets and turn off the music and remember...those days at granny’s house, not a gift or an ornament but Christmas was there in a gentle face and the work worn hands that gently combed your hair. The Babe was there in the stooped old man who loved you no matter what and the uncles who begged you to read them the Christmas story one more time. You were young but you were the only one who could read. You probably had a similar family if you grew up here in the mountains and you remember mama ...cooking that big dinner...one of the few times you had meat. And there were oranges and nuts...the only time you had them.you must remember your dad...his hands were rough and crusted with coal dust...no matter how often he washed them. He got in the firewood and coal for the cook stove and the old warm morning. There wouldn’t be many gifts but you knew the Babe was there. Even the schools were in on the season...it was there in the happiness of your friends and the Christmas plays with little angels missing two front teeth, decked out in angel clothes, turned slightly rusty from sulphur in the water. The babe nestled in the tiny little manger made by somebody’s grandpa and you knew the little doll was only a doll but the Babe was there. And the church...how you loved going to church services on Christmas Eve...the perfection of the imperfect; little girls with hair that had been curled with paper poke curlers and little boys with hair that was slicked back with water and whose pockets bulged with marbles and maybe a chaw of tobacco he had sneaked from pap. And that wonderful bag of candy, fruit, and nuts that you would take home and share with the family. My eyes well in tears for I know He was there and I miss the innocence of walking with the Babe. Go there now...for a little while and touch his little head and hold his tiny hand...Merry Christmas! Shirley Noe Swiesz

A lifetime friend of mine, Reggie Hall, was the son of a coal miner. He was one of seven children.

When his dad came down with a lung disease, probably black lung, and he could no longer work, his wife picked up the slack. She sewed for people and I remember once she had an old coca-cola ice chest and she bought large blocks of ice and sold snow cones to the neighborhood.

She, like so many in my day, was very frugal. Her mother had been married to my great grandfather and after he was killed in a bad storm by a falling tree, she later remarried and had three daughters. So Reggie’s mother learned from the best how to stretch a dollar.

She was a wonderful person, deeply devoted to her husband and children. She went to church at the little church on the hill where I went and often sang in church. Her family was musical and the children learned to play the piano on the church piano.

The oldest two boys were amazing guitar players and they won all the talent shows in high school.

Having seven children called for a lot of birthday parties and every kid in the neighborhood would be there. We would play games till dark and she seemed to enjoy them as much as the children. She baked the cakes and it was always a great party. I remember once I had no gift for the party so I took an old wooden container that had shaving soap in it that had been long used up. I cleaned it out and painted it silver. I was in the fourth grade. I talked to her a few years ago and she said she still had it.

Reggie loved comic books and we swapped often, for I was an avid reader of funny books.

Reggie passed a few years ago but we were good friends and when he visited Harlan he always came to see me. I miss him. Harold, the youngest boy, is the only boy still living.

I miss those old friends and the sound of our laughter still rings in my heart and mind.

Have a good evening and God bless!

Good evening! I love the old mountain music especially the old religious songs that are dug out of the hearts of preachers and coal miners, or perhaps women humming with a couple of clothespins stuck in her mouth while she hangs baskets of wet clothes and hopes it doesn’t rain before they dry!

Some of my favorite memories are of me when I was nine or ten, singing with a mountain preacher, standing in the shadow of a coal-oil lamp, as we shared a tattered songbook at granny and pap’s house. Granny would be lying in a feather-bed, propped up with feather pillows, a smile on her sweet face. Granny was tall and thin, and she had ‘heart dropsy’ and hardly enough energy to get around. She was always cold and still dressed in clothes that surely were popular in the late 1800’s when she was born. Her dresses were down to her ankles and she wore cotton stockings and home made bloomers and slips made of feed sacks. These were the ones made that had pretty designs. They had writing on them and she had boiled them until at lease some of the writing was gone. They were used for everything…towels, sheets, pillow cases, curtains, and underclothes for granny and many other things. I had one of her old quilts that had been made from any material she could find. One quilt piece had a patch on it. It was from one of her dresses, faded and worn.

The old music takes me back to the people I loved, so many of them! They were all poor, hard workers and God fearing. It is amazing that my grandparents were born in the 1800’s and i spent time with all of them. My grandfather on my daddy’s side was killed in a feud and granny was pregnant with daddy. Her first child had died at birth, her only girl. She had four sons by her second husband and we all loved Pap like he was our true grandfather. She went through so many heartaches and pain but never lost her faith. Her smile still lingers in my mind as she listened to preaching and singing. To my knowledge she only came out of the holler twice in my lifetime…once to go to the dr to get her ears cleaned out in the hopes she could hear better and the next time was when she had a stroke and went to hospital and passed away after 13 days.

Fire flies, persimmons, walnuts, roses, popcorn and big fat sweet potatoes are some of the things that remind me of pap, granny, uncle Holly and uncle Clarence. The old songs take me back home to yesterday when time moved slowly and my grandparents could talk about the 1800’s in truth for they were there!

My grandma Halcomb could tell stories about her grandfather who was thought to be the oldest man in the US at the time. Old John Shell. You can look him up!

Good morning! It truly amazes me that there are so many books available in today’s world. There were few to be had when I was a child. My dad and I were avid readers. I learned to read sitting in my daddy’s lap while he read the newspaper to me. He didn’t care how old it was and he would read every scrap of it. Once when I was eight or nine I heard him telling my brother about a book that he had read. It was rather spicy and he told me I was not to read it! Of course I did but could not understand much of it.

When I stayed with mama and daddy while my husband was on an isolated tour, I would go to town on the bus with my little girl and check out books at the new library. It was in an old feed store where once you could buy all sorts of seeds and things and the remnants of hay and animal food still lingered. The floor was a little off kilter and the shelves rather crooked. I loved it.

Mrs Evans, the librarian, had worked hard to get a library in our small town. She was the mother of a boy I went to high school with, Allen Evans. I am still friend with Allen and his sweet wife Susan although I never knew her back then.

Mrs Evans welcomed me back to give my first book signing and when I worked for the newspaper I did a story about her. She was an amazing woman and I loved her dearly. She was always rooting for me as a writer and a person.

I would check out books for dad, picking out things I thought he would enjoy. Some of you probably remember me telling you that daddy would pick up a book that I had started and read where I left off and then ask me about the first part of it. He said we could read twice as many books that way.

I have never known anyone that loved to read as much as he did. I would take boxes of old newspapers home to him and he would read them from back to front! Every article, every page! He was not choosy about what he read at all. Once I checked out a book about old time superstitions for him. He loved that book. He read that if a person was mean or had a grudge against someone they would come back as a snake or send snakes to torment that person ! Well he and granny argued all the time. He loved to get her going over something small. She fell for it each time. She told him that he would never live in her little house. Well he got sick and couldn’t work and my uncles convinced him to move into granny’s old house since it was empty and he wouldn’t have to pay rent. That summer he killed around fifty or sixty copperheads, just escaping getting bit each time. No one else came close to getting bit but daddy barely avoided it. Finally he couldn’t take it and moved.

I love reading almost as much as he did and I miss, after all these years, the conversations I had with him about books. I wanted so badly for him to write a book with me about his time in battle but he never would.

I don’t watch television much anymore more but I read way too much!

I often think of Mrs Evans and the people that encouraged me in life and there were many. God bless those people in the past who made life sweeter and gentler for the young people from ‘down the river’ and the hollers! Picture by Sami of her barn yard!