Quilt Pieces
Shirley Noe Swiesz
We got some unexpected snow here in Harlan last week. It was pretty but didn’t last long. I am longing for springtime when the flowers begin to peep their heads up through the cold, hard ground, and the frogs start yelling like banshees! Frogs have always been a part of my life in the mountains. One of my earliest memories was when we lived beside the bridge in Hiram, and I could hear this ole frog calling me. He would say, ‘wade in knee deep, wade in knee deep’. That frog scared me to death. I was only four. I was petrified of this particular frog and finally my brother and some of his friends went gigging and caught him. He was a fine specimen. Another time, my brother gigged a bunch of frogs and one got loose in the house. We hunted the place over for it and days later found it in a chest, dead. I loved to catch tadpoles in the springtime and would bring a bucket full of them home, only to have to take them right back and let them loose again. The most fascinating thing to catch or just to watch for they were difficult to catch, were the tiny, baby catfish that swam around in schools. I mentioned once that us mountain kids would eat about anything from the woods, and I would like to add to that: we would catch about anything we could get our hands on as well. I didn’t mess around with snakes, but I did catch many a green snake. I do remember playing in the river and the water snakes swimming around us…don’t get them mixed up with water moccasins!
My favorite name of places around here might be Frog Level, outside of Cumberland. For years, I thought that Defeated Creek was Feedie Creek. The old names of communities are being lost now for sure, but to me they had a lot of character. You take Poor Fork for instance. I don’t rightly think of it as being poor when I hear that name; I think it is a sight more original than Cumberland; (not necessarily better, just more original). Harlan used to be named Mount Pleasant until it was changed and named for Silas Harlan who probably never stepped foot in Harlan. He was a Revolutionary War hero and while we like to Romanize him, I recently read that he was a ‘hothead’ who did not like to follow orders and thus he was killed early on in the war. We knew all the names of the little communities when we were growing up. I doubt if the names Dionne and Splint are used much anymore either. I think they are mostly lumped in with Putney. I don’t even hear much about Totz. All up and down the roads were communities fed off the coal mines and they are albeit gone now, memories of yesterday when there were lots of children growing up and making their way to Cumberland High School or to Totz Grade School. How sad it is to go past the High School and see it deserted and lonely. Our memories are all tied up in schools and small communities and we can’t forget the small grocery stores. They were a haven for an ice cold pop and the makings of a balony sandwich. They had everything a body would need: things for sewing, material, thread and even patterns. You could buy a ball cap and a pair of shoes and beautiful dolls and toys, all while doing your grocery shopping. And there were always sacks of various kinds of grain to sit on. Men were never allowed to buy the grain for the women liked to choose the material that they liked. Of course there is the same concept of shopping or trading as we called it and it is called Walmart or Target but there was something very special about those old stores. The very smell was unique! The outside would be covered with signs advertising Coke or Pepsi or Nehi grape. The screen door would screech when you went inside and there was sure to be a fly or two waiting to get inside. Everyone in the neighborhood had a running tally and they would pay when they got paid. Some stores would have a post office inside such as the one that Dorabelle Kellamen ran in Hiram. Laurie Boggs was the post mistress for a long time. I think her sister Martha might have been before her. The first job that my brother had was hauling the mail to the post office in Hiram. In the back of the post office was a heating stove and some chairs and often people would go back and visit either with the post mistress if she was not busy or with each other. The catalogs that we got back then were pure heaven! Oh, the dolls and clothes and house hold goods that those pages revealed! The Christmas ones were the best. We couldn’t afford to order anything but we could dream. I would spend hours planning how I would furnish my house when I grew up and a catalog gave me hours and hours of pleasure cutting out things for my paper dolls. I was well rounded back then…I could play with my paper dolls and then go outside and walk around on tin cans or hunt for crawdads in the river.
I think that most of us mountain kids were not afraid of much of anything except the occasional haint or two. I am sure you all remember Bert Vincent? Well, once he wrote about a teenager whose friends dared her to go to a graveyard after dark. She was supposed to stick a fork in a grave to show that she had been there. Well, you know we wore those full skirts back then, probably made out of feed sacks, and this girl squatted down in her pretty skirt and stuck the fork into the grave. She was a brave girl…but that fork went into her skirt and when she got up it felt like someone was pulling her into the grave. Ole Bert swore that she had a heart attack and died. Now ole Bert was a writer and that bunch tend to stretch the truth about as far as it will go, so I have no idea if this story is true or not! My dad loved to read Bert Vincent’s stories. I can see him now, laughing to himself when he read some of Bert’s tales.
Those of you who don’t know Bert and never heard of him, he was a columnist for the Knoxville News Sentential back when I was growing up. We couldn’t afford a paper so Corrine and Ralph Price gave us theirs after they were finished reading it and Daddy would read it word for word, beginning with Ole Bert. Sam Lewis lent me his book called the Best Stories of Bert Vincent, Sage of the Smokies. It was illustrated by Bill Dyer. Now ole Bert was born in to a family of educators at Bee Springs, Kentucky in 1896. He got a college education and went to work as a newspaperman for the sole purpose of someday becoming a governor. But I am getting ahead of myself. He taught school for a while but he quit for he said the students were picking up Vincent habits of cussin’ and chewin’ tobacco. He worked for such newspapers as The Kansas City Star and St. Louis Post-Dispatch but eventually returned to the Appalachian Mountains. At the time of the printing of his book in 1968 he had worked 35 years as a columnist doing his popular ‘Strolling with Bert Vincent’. He started the Cosby Ramp Festival in which Harry S. Truman once visited. He solicited funds to build a chapel for people at a ‘poor farm’. His humanitarianism brought him many awards; his literary talents brought him honorary college degrees. An anonymous friend once said about him, ‘Bert Vincent has religion and doesn’t know it!’ But my words for him are, ‘he was a character!’ A few years ago a man said that he picked up a stranger hitch hiking over around Whitesburg, making his way toward Harlan. ‘He was higher than a kite,’ or perhaps he said, ‘he was drunker than a skunk’…I can’t quite remember exactly how the man said it. Anyway the inebriated man told him his name was Bert Vincent. I have heard that old Bert liked ‘shine along with tobaccy and cussin. He was a true mountaineer who liked to sit on sacks of grain beside the old men who hovered around a stove at the local store and listen to them tell their stories, trying to outbest one another. He was loved by housewives and adored by children for he offered homes for pets in his column and was liberal with his compliments to the ladies. I think he only did one book. A friend of mine who lives in Florida and grew up in Jonesville, Va. reminds me a bit of Bert. His name is Kermit Kirk and he is a marvelous writer of the old days. I have no idea why he reminds me of Bert, for his writing is different, but I guess because I admire both of them. I have shared some of his stories from time to time in my column and one was about the soaring Eagle that he wrote in memory of his brother.
Some have told me that they faithfully follow Ole Cap Smith’s story. I realize that it is difficult to read, but after trying to use the words of today or as we called them ‘proper words’ it just wasn’t the same. The words they used then and many still use today, are a version of words brought over from Scotland and Ireland by the first settlers. They got all turned and twisted throughout the years, but we are different and I wanted to bring out that difference. We are a unique people and I hope that all of you stand up tall and proud when you say you are from Harlan County Kentucky.
Cap Smith’s Story:
“Sissy war th oldest gal an we jest got ta calling her Sissy an hit stuck. She was as beautiful as one o th Lady Slipper flowers thet a body would run acrost in th mountains an as rare. She had allus had a wild streak in her an she wanted real bad ta git away from th mountains. Truth be tolt she hated th mountains an th unending poverty. She had a way o makin fun o th people right in front o them an they didn’t seem ta understand hit. She allus tolt me thet she didn’t feel like she belonged around har.”
“Mam allus had control o her when she war alive but adder Mam died, there war nothing ta do but let her have her way. Thar war times thet Pap stropped her with th leather shavin strop but she didn’t shed a tear. She would stand thar an glare at him with hatred in her eyes. She war a right good worker an she could make a biscuit as good as Mam’s eny day. And Lordy how thet gal could sang. At least some o us allus went ta church an she would allus sang. Iffen someone war sick, th rest o us would go an thet war about ever Sunday. Hit war usually us younguns fer Pap war allus sick on Sunday’s adder Mam died. I hate ta admit hit but Pap hit th ‘shine right steady adder Mam was gone. Nobody could hardly blame him. He worked long hard hours in the coal mine an then he come home ta a bunch a younguns. The womern who war keepin the new babe finally got hit on a bottle an Pa wanted ta brang hit home. Sissy got real upsot. “I can’t take keer o another younun, pap!” She tolt him. “Ye’ll do as I say gal!” He tolt her an got th strop. Mam never let Pap use th strop on us.”
“Pap war becoming a right mean drunk. None o us hed ever seed this side o him. I war scart when he staggered ta work with me at his side. He had them little packets of sin-sin thet he would use ta kiver th booze on his breathe.”
“ Sissy war no more than a kid herself but she war havin ta take keer o us all an I saw tears stream down her cheek when th babe war brought home. First time I ever saw her cry. She hadn’t even cried when Mam died. The babe, hit war a purty little thang an Sissy fell in love with hit, but th drudgery o th work got ta her. Three months adder Mam died, Sissy left us. Thar war a drummer (salesman) who follered her around a lot an she complained ta Pap thet he made her feel uneasy like. “Did ye do somethang ta make him thank ye war interested in him?” Pap ast her in a frightening way. “No, Pap! He is a horrible man! I hate him! I hate this place!” Pap got th strop agin.”
“Thet night she left us. Pap looked ever where he could but no sign o her. She seemed ta have disappeared inta thin air. Aunt Versie allowed she would stay with th younuns fer awhile an she moved in with us. Aunt Versie war no kin ta us but she loved people an she loved ta hep. She had been hepin out some other folk er she woulda hepped sooner, she told Pap. “Hit be too hard on thet pretty young girl ta take keer o all them younuns an clean an wash an do a growed womern’s work.” Pap reckoned hit war. Sissy would have smiled at hearin Aunt Versie defend her thet way, fer th old womern hed often been at th stingin end o Sissy’s remarks.”
“Th drummer left th same night thet Sissy did so everybody thought she went with him. I didn’t though. Sissy hadn’t took a thang with her, not even a pair o shoes. She would never have left with somebody without her shoes, sich as they were. “Somethang’s ahappened ta her, Pap,” I kept sayin.”
“ He allus said th same thang. “She hated this place an she hated takin keer o all them younuns. I guess I didn’t do right by my little girl.” He would say an I knowed he grieved. Sometimes I would find him at th graveyard, talkin an acryin ta Mam. Hit jest about broke my heart. Hit got so thet I started ramblin in th mountains looking fer her. I hed this sinkin feelin deep in my soul. My beautiful sister hed ta be dead.”
“Hit war nine days adder she left thet she war found on th river bank. She war deader then a door nail, jest like I thought she war. A man war going fishin an come acrost her body, almost in th water. Pap an me hadn’t gone ta th mine yit when th sheriff come ta see us. “They fount yer little girl,” he tolt Pap. “Hit looks ta me like she war beat ta death. We figgered the drummer did hit but he is long gone now fer shore. I am sorry!”
“The men at th mine built a casket fer her an Aunt Versie an some o th other womern lined hit with a quilt. They brung her home fer thet last night…th pretty young girl who had never lived. The casket war never opened but Pap went ta th company store an bought her a dress. Hit war th prettiest thang you ever did see an all I could thank o war how much she would have loved hit. Hit seemed so pitiful ta me, even though I war a boy an still a kid, thet she hed never hed a thang beautiful when she war alive an then she war dressed in that purty thang.”
“Th preacher said, ‘Th good Lord giveth an He taketh away an ye all need ta git yer sins shet from ye right here an now so ye can meet up with this girl. Ye needs ta git saved right now!’ Well right thar in our little camp house with my sister laid out in th front room Pap give his life ta th Lord. People started singin an shoutin. I war right glad thet Pap got saved an all, but I war rightly grievin over my sister an not only fer her, but my Mam too. I missed them both so much. I cried and cried.”
“Pap never did drank enymore adder thet day an fer thet I war thankful, but thar war two empty spaces in my little boy heart. I jest couldn’t fer th life o me figger out why life was so unsartin and painful. I guess ye might say I couldn’t figger out God. Hit took me a long time ta figger Him out, but I guess He had patience.”
Well, that is all for today. I have a new phone no if any of you want to call me. It is (606) 505-0925 or you can write me at PO Box 1433 or email me at sswiesz@gmail.com. Don’t forget to smile at someone and pray a few prayers for your enemies, if you have a mind too…it would be a good thang!
