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.
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