Bert Vincent and Ole Cap Smith

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!

Violets and Love

The romance of valentine's day must surely extend into every day...into our vast array of memories. I remember skipping along a lane with drifting apple blossoms, eating an ice cream cone and holding my daddy's big hand. I was four. It wasn't valentine's day, but it was wonderful to me.
I loved hot blackberry jam and my overworked Mama would get up and make it for me on a school morning with hot biscuits...it wasn't valentine's day but it was love to me.
I was sick with the flu and uncle Holly walked out of the holler and up to Claude Blair's store and then down to our house in the Scott Holler to bring me a big box of valentine candy. It was valentine's day and it was the simplicity of an old man's love for his niece who had grown up sheltered by her family's love. He was a simple man who could not read or write but he knew devotion.
I was a little girl of five and my brother found a wild baby rabbit and brought it home to me. We raised it. It wasn't valentines day but it was love.
Granny was dead. I was thirteen. They brought her home for the night and for her funeral. Pap and I sat together all night. Everyone else fell asleep. I drifted off and woke up to see him standing beside the coffin, a big handkerchief in his gnarled old hands, tears flowing down his cheeks. 'I loved her more than anything on earth,' he said. I took his hand in mine and there in the illumination of a lantern...they had no electricity; we cried together. It was not valentine's day but it was love. She was born on valentine's day.
He brought me a bunch of violets to plant in my yard...I missed the wild violets rambling all over the river banks and mountainsides in Ky. And my military husband knew my loneliness for Kentucky, and my love for flowers. It wasn't valentines day, but it was love. They grew wild and free in my yard and when he died they were blooming as I cried. It was love, but it wasn't valentines day.
Little grubby hands picked bunches of wild dandelion flowers, and sometimes my cherished rosé buds and brought them to me...it wasn't valentine's day, but it was love.
The day after tomorrow the candy will be gone and the roses will fade, and it won't be valentines day, but there will be love to turn into memories. Cherish the moments, the romance of simplicity, the pure romance of everyday life in all its glory. Happy Valentine's Day, tomorrow and the other tomorrow's...the simple days, those days of making memories from moments.

Spitting Snow and Living in a Church House

Quilt Pieces

Shirley Noe Swiesz

            Today is warm and a bit overcast in Harlan. The days are getting longer though. The cats wake me up at the crack of dawn and I notice that it has been earlier. It would be easier if I had a rooster, for it would just crow and wake me up...cats get on the bed and aggravate until my feet hit the floor and then they aggravate some more as I wearily climb the stairs. They have adjusted well to living in a church/house. I guess we all have. There is some thing wonderful about the tin ceilings and big windows that cheers one up, not to mention the sun shining through the stained glass windows and turning my world into beautiful colors.

            If you live in a church it is difficult to stay angry, bitter, or mad for long for truly there is a sense of peace that is comforting in this old building that reminds one of long ago. My church/house is ninety years old and has surely seen days of sadness and happiness as well. Someone said it was against God's plan to live in a church, but to me it is the graceful giving of new life to an old almost forgotten building. I enhance its' inner beauty with other old objects, that like me, have seen better days and together they seem to mesh and blend.

          As I sit here, so close to Valentine's Day, I remember back when I was young and my military husband would come home with a beautiful box of candy for me and smaller boxes for the children. I would keep the boxes until they fell apart and would fill them with treasures that I wanted to keep. They usually came adorned with a hard plastic flower back then.  He loved chocolate cake so I would bake one for him and fix him a good home made dinner. Our lives were simple and filled with little sticky hands, strong coffee, home made food, a clean house, and more little sticky hands. I enjoyed the military life and living on base. Not many wives worked back then outside the home and if the weather was nice we would take the kids outside to play and sit with our coffee and crochet or knitting and talk. Well, yes, gossip...the youthful innocence of those days when we were young and thought life would go on forever and that sticky hands, dandelion flowers, and sloppy kisses would never end.

            Each year, except when we were in Alaska, we would go home and visit Mama and Daddy. I remember the tears of joy when my mother looked on the face of the first grandchild she ever saw...she had three others, but she had never seen them.  We took my daughter home when she was nine days old, for I longed for Mama to see a grandbaby and she cried and cried. My sister in law, Bessie and Shirley McKnight gave me a baby shower. The entire community came out. One woman, Mrs. Tuttle, whom I dearly loved, came and told me that she didn't get an invitation but she knew I would want her to come. I cried and tears are close to the surface even now for the love of a little community that was always willing to welcome me back into their arms and would pray for me when I was sick, or bring me goodies when I came to visit. Such were the days of simplicity, love, and a sense of community.

               Tomorrow one of our own will be buried. Aaron Dixon who was a part of this community for many years will go to his final resting place and another of our pieces of history will be gone. His dad was a coal miner and he was killed in the mines, when Aaron was quite young.  Aaron's mother died when he was born or shortly afterwards.  He fought in World War II and he is a part of our rich history in this area. Aunt Katy raised him and Aunt Katy was an icon of our small community. She often came to our house and stayed a few days and helped Mama either with the canning or with her quilting, or whatever needed to be done. They were good company for each other, for women needed the company of other women just as men needed the company of other men. It was at those times that the women discussed life things, birthing, babies, quilting, cooking, church and men; men discussed tools, mining, logging, building, church  and women;  and they stayed together...it was a part of that 'you made your bed you lay in it' and whether it was right or wrong, in most cases they took the time to make friends, go to church and be a part of the community. We don't do that much anymore. We don't sit outside on the porch and talk with our neighbors or gather at the church to give the preacher a pounding...remember poundings? It was actually when they gathered up food and such for the preacher and his wife. I love that word! It has nothing to do with a beating but is a sense of community...only to us mountain folk!

         My brother told me that he used to paint for Bert Vincent's nephews, Jay Will and Ray in Cincinnati. Jay Will started a painting business and Hagert and Jim Blair went to work for him. Not long after he had his business up and running, he got killed in a car accident and later his brother, Ray took over. I guess Jay Will had a bit of Bert's wildness and he loved to tell stories in the same way as his famous uncle.  Ray was more the religious type. I like to think they both had traits from their Uncle Bert.

            I never knew that Dorabelle Kellamen, Ot Lewis, John Lewis' wife, Goldie (there were two Goldie Lewis' in Hiram) and Doug Creech were brothers and sisters.  Doug Creech lived over across the swinging bridge where the convalescent Center is located between Chad and Sand Hill. John Lewis, who was married to Goldie was a revenuer...as in hunting and destroying moon shine stills. Dorabelle used to have a little store in Hiram and Andy Kellamen worked in the mines. Further down the road, Ot Lewis had a store and I think her husband was a miner as well. Doug Creech was a miner. I didn't know Ot or Goldie very well, but I thought the world of Dorabelle.  I did an interview with Andy a couple of years before he died and he talked and talked about his beloved Dorabelle. I think they had a true love story.

        I was talking to Doc Smith's son the other day. Doc died recently and he too was a part of our community. His wife Bea and their two sons went to the little church on the hill all the time. Doc was also a coal miner. I teased his son that the two boys were 'mean as snakes' but actually they were sweet boys.  Someone recently mentioned the name of Hence Fox and I had forgotten all about him. He and his wife had a little store near the Chad school. They raised their granddaughter. Why am I mentioning all these people that few people know or remember? They make up the small towns in our Appalachia. They lived the simple lives that we lived. They worked hard. They lived hard. They were survivors. They could easily be us or our families. I hope when you read my articles that you think, 'I had an uncle like that' or 'my grandma was just the same way'.

            Aunt Katy's little house was near the Kellamen's house. I think it had three rooms. I remember that she had lovely old furniture and she kept an oil cloth on the table in the kitchen and jars of jelly and jam set on the edge of it. Oil cloth was very popular back then. It lasted forever. Granny Ison had oil cloth on her long table and at one end there was jam and jelly and the ever present bowl of bacon grease. Pap loved to pour bacon grease over some sugar and he would sop it up with a piece of pone bread. Uncle Clarence did the cooking and he did not know how to make biscuits so he would make one big pone of bread in an old cast iron skillet. When I think of Pap now it is with gentle thoughts. I took him a candy bar the last time I went to see him and he quickly stuck it in his coat pocket for later. He wore that old coat all the time.  He wore overalls and blue work shirts and those old shabby shoes that he repaired on his shoe last. He slept on a corn shuck mattress. He made the best gnat smokes around. I think I told you that I tried to make a gnat smoke like his back in the summer and it caught on fire and burned to a crisp. I guess it is a good thing that there is always someone around to look out for me!                    

           Men would sit in the yard, hard packed dirt and not a blade of grass, and listen to the stories told by a story teller in the group. There was always a story teller. Dad was a great story teller and he loved a good laugh. Many times he would laugh to himself over some long ago tale he had garnered in his wide repertoire of stories.  They would lean their chair back on two legs and some would sit astraddle the chair with the back in the front.  I would love to have sat like that but little long legged girls with  dresses did not sit that way.  I loved to sit with the men and listen to the stories but in the same manner I also liked to sit with the women and listen to their gossip which was simply good stories to me.  Uh...huh...both men and women gossiped even back in the old days, but I think that most took it with a grain of salt. They seemed to have a second sense of who was telling the truth and who was stretching it until it bent and broke.  Now I am not advocating gossip. I just put it in story form and now, many years later, love the colorful aspects of men and women's lives. Like a patchwork quilt our lives make up a little portion of that quilt, some larger than others, some  touched with beautiful lace and buttons, some plain and uninteresting.  Around the border of that piece of velvet, linen, or cotton,  is a row of colorful thread, a zig zag of our lives.  Some pieces are large and some are very small, but all are needed to make up the quilt.

               There is a spitting of snow, dancing through the trees outside my church. Birds sit all fluffed out in their winter clothes, hoping for a few scraps of bread or better yet, some sun flower seeds.  I am home in the hills, far away from the flat land of South Carolina, the cold of Alaska, the sands of New Mexico and the  snow of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  How I love my mountains! They have traveled with me, snug in my heart all the years that I was away and I know that many, many feel the same. There is something special about these mountains, a mystic feeling that seeps inside and becomes a part of us, in the same way that our heart beat is a necessary to our livelihood.  The mountains are special to me. They sustained me and fed my soul when I was a child and now as an old woman they still sustain and feed the hurt and lonely parts of my heart.  I deserted them once, but I hope to never leave them again, except to become a part of them, to go back to the earth where I was once formed and leave a part of my quilt, finished and complete, embroidered with life.

             Well, I hope you are safe and warm today. Remember to smile at someone and a special hello to my friends Rachel and David. Send up a prayer or two for your enemy and  be kind to yourself. Blessings. You can call or write me at anytime.