A Look Back at Bee Tree Creek

Samuel Paris McKinney (1822-1898)


The following story is about my wife Shirley's great-great-great grandfather. This story has been handed down for several generations, and was shared with me. Now I am sharing it with you.

Samuel Paris McKinney was born in 1822, and he lived most of his life in the rugged, wild mountains of Wyoming County, West Virginia. He received a land grant on Barker's Ridge where he made his home, but more often than not, could be found near his favorite hunting spot on Bee Tree Creek (which borders present day Wyoming and Raleigh counties). In Samuel Paris' days, there weren't many people in the Bee Tree Creek area and the hunting was excellent, perhaps even the best in the region. It was also considered so wild of an area that many men avoided it. People told tales of ferocious animals, evil spirits and even wild Indian hold-outs when speaking of the area. The tales grew even more frightening when they spoke of the great laurel thicket, a defining feature of the area. Samuel Paris liked it when he heard these stories; to him as long as people were afraid of the area it would remain wild and free of settlement. Taking advantage of the situation, he was often alone when he hunted, trapped and spent a great deal of time along Bee Tree Creek even though his official home was on Barker's Ridge, several miles away.

When Samuel Paris hunted, he carried with him a pack bag typical of men of the time. By his side was a mountain rifle and a tomahawk. His rifle was so long that many men found it nearly impossible to hold because the barrel was so long. There were newer rifles available to him, but his daddy had given him his rifle and it was a good rifle so he saw no need to "upgrade". He was known to be quite fearless in his exploits, taking chances that many deemed unnecessary but to him they were just everyday actions of living. Samuel Paris was known throughout the region as one of the first to raise hunting dogs, and his dogs were considered to be among the best bred and most well-trained in the region. Men would come from miles around to trade or buy a pup off of him, and it soon came to pass that having a good hunting dog by your side was essential to every hunting man in the area.

One time over on Bee Tree Creek, Samuel Paris had his favorite dog with him, and it wasn't too long until the dog picked up the trail of a great bear. When the bear realized it was being trailed, it broke into a full run right into the great laurel thicket. He had trained his dogs never to go into a laurel thicket after a bear because more often than not that action was a death sentence on the dog and quite often the man, too. But this time and against all its training, his favorite dog found a low trail and went into the laurel thicket after the bear.

Since this was his favorite dog, Samuel Paris saw no other option besides to go in after the dog. If it hadn't been his favorite dog, he probably would have just made camp and hoped the dog returned out of the thicket, but he just couldn't wait and hope when it came to his favorite dog. So against his better judgement he entered the laurel thicket after the dog. He planned on just retrieving the dog and getting out as quickly as possible, and his decision was justified after he entered the thicket. The laurel grew so thick that he was forced to crawl in many places, and seldom was there an area where a man could even stand upright. He was about a hundred yards into the laurel thicket when he located the dog, but soon realized that simply retrieving it wasn't an option. You see, the great bear had the dog penned up in a corner between two vertical cliffs on Bee Tree Creek, and was slowly closing in on it.

At this point, Samuel Paris was crawling along through the thicket as quickly as he could manage, trying to get to an open area where he could raise his gun. As it was, there was no chance of getting off a shot at the bear since he was practically dragging the rifle alongside of his body. He finally made his way into Bee Tree Creek, where the flowing water offered a slight opening in the laurel. But as he raised his rifle to shoot the bear, the bear had moved in so close to the trapped dog that it was impossible to get a shot at it for fear of hitting the dog.

Quick thinking coupled with the inherent and passionate bravery of a mountain Scotsman, Samuel Paris McKinney instantly came upon a plan. Without a moment's hesitation, he pulled out the tomahawk from his belt, ran up to the bear and grabbed the great beast by the hair on the nape of its neck, quickly and deftly swung the tomahawk once and split the bear's skull wide open, killing it instantly. For years afterward, stories were recounted about how Samuel Paris McKinney had killed a bear with only a tomahawk and in the process had saved his favorite hunting dog, all without getting so much as a single scratch on him.

In the years following this account, progress inevitably took its toll upon the region, and the great laurel thicket was cut down and the area along Bee Tree Creek was settled. Later, coal mines dotted the landscape. As the area grew in population, Samuel Paris began to stay on his land high up on Barker's Ridge, and in his last days raised and sold hunting dogs to make a living. Men would come from miles around to buy his dogs and hear him regale his tales of yesteryear. The time of the rugged mountaineer had come to an end and those times were now found only in story form. And oh what great stories Samuel Paris McKinney told.

Mother's Day Flood

“You need to move your car!” These were the words that awakened us at 3:30am. Shirley’s brother, Ricky, was frantically pounding on our bedroom window to let us know that the floodwaters were quickly rising. Almost at the very same time as Ricky pounding on the window, the electricity went off.

I hollered back, “Okay, I’m coming.” Shirley jumped out of bed and, still half asleep, tried to help me to the bedroom door, however, in her sleepy stupor, she started moving items from all around the room into the middle of the bedroom floor. Since the room was pitch-black now due to the electric going out, she was setting up an obstacle course for me. The first thing I ran into, fell over and survived was a vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner is usually completely out of the way, but that’s to Shirley’s “helpfulness”, it was located directly between me and the bedroom door. After falling over the vacuum, then tripping over a suitcase, and then kicking another suitcase, I asked Shirley to please quit assisting me in getting out of the room. My lumbersome march across the bedroom had awakened Shirley’s mother, who hollered that there was a flashlight on the nightstand. I then made my way toward the nightstand, only to encounter the same vacuum cleaner (which Shirley had again moved to help me out). Eventually the flashlight was found and I managed to escape Shirley's obstacle course of horrors with only a fist sized bruise on my ribcage. I then proceeded on my way outside into the downpour to rescue our car.

It had started raining at just about dark on Friday evening. We had been sitting out on the porch when the storm blew in, and we rushed inside. It had been raining on and off all night, and it seems a torrential downpour blew in every half hour or so.

Luckily, Ricky is a night owl and had checked on the rain before going to bed, and had noticed that his front yard was under water. He ran out and moved his truck as far up in the yard as he could, there’s not much high ground in Coon Branch but the top of the yard is slightly higher than the bottom of the yard.

By the time I made my way out to move our car, Ricky was standing beside the car and was watching the floodwaters rise. They were right up to the rear end of our car by that time, and I pulled it up as far as I could. The water pouring off the bank behind the house made the driveway look like a creekbed. Ricky told me that his newly planted garden was already under water, and that Matheny Bottom road was under about a foot and a half of water. He said it was almost coming in his truck door as he was moving it to higher ground. I shined the flashlight out into the darkness and all I could see was raging floodwaters. We were flooded in.

The storms kept rolling in one right after the other, and while it was soemtimes hard rain, it had rained like that many times before without flooding like it was. Shirley commented that the people up the holler had recently logged off their property so there was nothing to hold back the water, and it was rushing off, bringing with it tree limbs, rocks and soil.

I came back inside and went back to bed, Ricky said he’d keep an eye on the floodwaters and if they got any worse, we’d have to evacuate and move up on the hill where Shirley’s mother had to wait out the Great Coalfields Flood of 2001. I figured there wasn’t anything that I could do about the flooding so I might as well get some sleep while I could. Shirley, of course, tossed and turned and worried about the stormy waters around us all night.

After a few more storms, which included thunder and lightning, dawn was soon breaking. I woke up and looked outside, it looks about the same, still raining though not as hard as it was. Floodwaters were again nearing the back end of our car, but it looked like it’d be okay. There wasn’t any higher ground to move it too anyway.

Morning found us surrounded by water, and with no electricity. Shirley’s mother was completely distraught over not having her morning coffee. I offered to go outside and built a campfire and heat some water for coffee, but she said the juice would be back on directly. I had my camera so I went out and took some photographs of the flooding, and noticed that now that the rain had stopped that the floodwaters were starting to recede. I could see the tops of the tomato stakes in Ricky’s garden. That made the garden under about 5 feet of water!

After a couple of hours, the waters had went down a little and word got to us that the problem was that the water from Coon Branch had got backed up when it tried to empty into Laurel Fork. Laurel Fork was running full and couldn’t handle any more water, so it was making Coon Branch back up all over Matheny. It was almost as if Laurel Fork was acting as a dam that was holding back Coon Branch. People were commenting that the reason Laurel Fork was so flooded was because of the Mountaintop Removal site located about a mile upstream from the mouth of Coon Branch. Stories were told about how the runoff coming from the mountaintop removal site was unbelievable. Even during the flood, people were blaming the mountaintop removal mining and the rampant logging on exacerbating the flooding. Even old timers there were saying that the water had come up faster than any of them could remember, even in times of harder rain. Without pointing fingers, it did seem like something was going on. It did rain pretty hard at times, but nothing that should have caused this amount of flooding.



After the rain completely stopped, it was only a few hours before all the floodwaters were gone and Coon Branch was left covered with a thick muddy muck that covered everything. The clean-up began, and damage was assessed. We also began to see sightseers coming and going, seemingly getting joy out of other folk’s misery of having lost everything they owned. Many of them would point and ogle at various sites that had been flooded out. I never could understand that. A real Appalachian would have asked if there was anything they could do to help, rather than just driving by to snap pictures and wave. There were even some of the younger people driving their jacked up trucks through the receding floodwaters and playing in the thick mud left behind. This was no time for play.

I was left pondering what is becoming of Appalachia? The land raped by rogue industries, the people ignored by politicians until something bad happens, increased flooding caused by poor stewardship of the land, then looky-loo’s who apparently get joy out of seeing others in misery. What is to become of us now that we are under attack economically, politically, socially, culturally and environmentally? There can be no Appalachia without the mountains that define us. There can be no Appalachia if the basic tenets of what makes us Appalachians are ignored and not passed on to the next generation. Are we to become a culture of victims?

While this was just a relatively small flood up a secluded holler in Wyoming County, West Virginia, it really opened up my eyes to the floodgates that are bulging with a change that will surely flood and forever alter the face of Appalachia if something is not done to curb the insanity.

Cora

For today's post, I am going to tell readers of my mother-in-law, Cora (McKinney) Stewart. The best way to do this is to post the song lyrics of "Song for a Miner's Wife", which was written specifically about Cora by her daughter Shirley. The song can be found on Shirley's upcoming CD, "Been to the Mountaintop".
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Song for a Miner’s Wife (Ode to my Mother)
by Shirley Stewart Burns

I came to this valley 40 years ago.
A young miner’s bride to have and to hold.

I was barely 16, and so scared was I
to leave mommy and Daddy and my family behind.

It’s a lonely life
to be a miner’s wife.
Such a lonely life, to have and to hold
Goodnight.

I soon settled into my daily routine.
Neely went to the mine, and I cooked and cleaned.
Three children we had, a girl and two boys

our lives they were filled with comfort and joy.



It’s a lonely life
to be a miner’s wife.
Such a lonely life, to have and to hold
Goodnight.

I prayed for my Neely as he went to the mine.
And I prayed that my boys never would find.
That they had not a choice but to go underground,
With death and destruction looming all around.

It’s a lonely life
to be a miner’s wife.
Such a lonely life, to have and to hold
Goodnight.



I watched as my Neely gasped for his breath.
His lungs were infested, the pain in his chest.
“We’ll grow old together,” he told me once.
But the mining did kill him, dead at 51.

It’s a lonely life
to be a miner’s wife.
Such a lonely life, to have and to hold.
Goodnight.

The years quickly passed and my children are grown.
Mostly out of this valley, out on their own.
I think back in time to my young handsome groom,
All alone with my thoughts in this quiet bedroom.



It’s a lonely life
to be a miner’s wife.
Such a lonely life, to have and to hold

Goodnight.

© Shirley L. Stewart, 2000

In Search of Rose Conelly

The ballad Rose Conolly follows the “murdered sweetheart” pattern of ballads. Folk songs of this type are commonly found in England, Ireland and the Appalachian region of America. Some similar songs are “Little Omie Wise”, “The Wexford Girl”, “The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter” and “The Old Oak Tree”.

Most folks credit Ireland as the place of origin for Rose Conolly, and the Bunting Collection says it was collected in Coleraine in 1811. But in fact, the lyrics and tune are entirely different between the Bunting version and all later versions. In 1979, folklorist D.K. Wilgus searched for Rose Conolly in the archives of the folklore department of University College in Dublin, widely credited as being the repository for the most complete collection of Irish folklore. In my opinion, Wilgus research is the best available for tracking down the origins of Rose Conolly. He could find no exact match, but he did however, locate the following folksong that was collected in Galway in 1929, it is obviously akin to the Appalachian version of Rose Conolly.

Rosey O’Connell

It was on a Saturday morning
My true love and I did meet
Yonder a soddely garden
Our sorrows we did relate.

A bottle of poison I brought her
Of which she did not know
Which made me murder my darling
All under the banks below.

Rosey O’Connell she loved me
As dear as she loved her life
It was my whole intention
To make her my loving wife.

When it was the devil’s temptation
That soon entangled me
Which made my murder my darling
All under the ivy tree.

My mother she reared me tenderly
For seven long years and more
But seldom she ever thought of
That the gallows would be my store

My father often told me
That money would set me free
But now I am found in this country
And its hung I’ll surely be

I live in a castle of comfort
A little beyond the fair
Grief it is my comfort
And sorrow is my care.

My bolsted feathers are dingling
The whole length of day
I have but the cold floor to walk on
To pass the time away.

My father stood at the hall-door
With a watery eye
Looking at his only dear son
Hanging on the gallows so high

I leave it written on my tombstone
To read as they pass it by
That my name is James Mullrooney
That murdered Rosey O’Connell.

Since this version of the song was collected in 1929, it isn’t exactly safe to say that it is the precursor to the Appalachian version of Rose Conolly, especially since there are documented versions of the song here in America that are dated before 1929. Added to this is the flow of folks songs at the time from America to Ireland, as was the case of “The Boston Burglar”, “The Last Fierce Charge” and “Twenty One Years”. This reverse osmosis of folksongs from American to Ireland is largely attributed one of two things, either to Irish immigrants returning home from America after finding that the streets here weren’t paved with gold; or with former soldiers of the Civil War who went to Ireland to lead the Fenian Rebellion. So we are left with the question, did the ballad come from Ireland to America, or did the ballad originate in America and make its way back to Ireland?

In fact, the earliest documented report of Rose Conolly in the United States was found in the oil fields of Wetzel County, West Virginia, in 1895. American folklorists subsequently found the same song with little variation in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and even as far west as Wisconsin. The Wisconsin link is attributed to lumber men who left Kentucky to work the timber camps in the Great Lakes region.

Interestingly, if you read the original lyrics to Rose Conolly that were gathered in Wetzel County, WV, you can get another clue as to where the song began. There is the line:

“I had a bottle of burgaloo wine,
My love she could not know,
That I would murder my darlin’
Down on the banks below”.

Later versions of the song called it “burgundy wine”, or “burglar’s wine” but the earliest mention is “burgaloo wine”. What is burgaloo wine? It is a type of pear wine that was commonly made in central Virginia in the late 1700’s into the early 1800’s. If you follow migration patterns of people of that day, many families came from central Virginia, into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and then into north-central West Virginia. This was typically within one or two generations. There were earlier migrations as well, for example, the Whetzel family for which Wetzel County, WV was named, was in the area by the middle of the 18th century, and they hailed from the Lost River Valley in what is now Hardy County ,WV (Lost River valley is adjacent to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia). So this would place some aspect of the origins of the song in central Virginia between 1760-1830, but probably leaning toward the earlier portion of that timeframe. As time went on, many people could no longer relate to “burgaloo wine” so they renamed it something they could relate to, and today most versions use the term “burgundy wine”.

The ballad “Rose Conolly” was first recorded in Virginia is October 1928, it was recorded again in North Carolina in August 1937, but perhaps the most famous recording of the song was by Charlie Monroe in March of 1947, and he changed the title to “Down in the Willow Garden”.

My wife Shirley recorded “Rose Conelly” in July 2008, and I’ll include a Youtube video of her version of the song. Shirley said her Daddy taught her this song, and he got the song from his Granddaddy who said he had heard the song for years and years, so that would put the song in southern West Virginia during the late 1800’s.

Click here to hear Shirley sing “Rose Conelly”.

I will also post the “new” lyrics to the version of “Rose Conelly” that Shirley recorded, and you can compare them to the version collected in Galway, Ireland in 1929. Certainly, the two songs are akin, but who knows which is the parent and which is the child. Here are the lyrics Shirley uses:

“Rose Conelly”, traditional, with variations by Shirley Stewart Burns.

Down in the Willow Garden
My love and I did meet
And there we went a-courtin’
My love fell fast asleep

I had a bottle of burgaloo wine
My love she could not know
That I would murder my darlin’
Down on the banks below

I drew a saber through her
It was a dreadful knife
I threw her in the river
Which was a bloody sight

My father had often told me
That money would set me free
If I would murder that dear little girl
who carried my baby

Now he sits at his cabin door
Wiping his tear-brimmed eyes
For his only son is hangin’
Upon the scaffold high

My race is run beneath the sun
Hells gates lay open for me
For I did murder that dear little girl
Whose name is Rose Conelly.

Copyright, Shirley Stewart Burns 2008.

Click here to hear Shirley sing "Rose Conelly"
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So perhaps Rose Conolly does hail from Ireland, but just as likely she hails from somewhere in Appalachia. As do the people here, our music comes from just as many points of origin. One thing is for sure, she is uniquely Appalachian now.

The Ballad of Fisherman's Holler

For today's post, I thought I'd share with you a song from my wife Shirley's upcoming a capella CD titled "Been to the Mountaintop". The song is titled, "The Ballad of Fisherman's Holler", and Shirley said when she wrote it, the song was given to her while she was sleeping. It woke her up and needed to be written. She had everything but the ending of the ballad when she started, and she tried to change the outcome of the song, but as she puts it, "the song had other plans".

Shirley and I both wonder if this is a true story that we just haven't heard about. The names and events are pretty specific. Anyone know?

Here are the lyrics to the ballad, you will have to click here to go to Youtube to hear Shirley sing it.

The Ballad of Fisherman’s Hollow

Verse I
I had but one love, Charming Luther.
I loved him like no other man.
He held me close and swore he loved me
and we’d be married come the Spring.

He became my one obsession.
His honeyed words they doused my ears.
His warm embrace, his sweet caresses
could not ebb my lingering fears.

I followed him one night after he left me.
I followed him to the riverbed
for I had seen him with pretty Jane Price
who I thought was my dear friend

Chorus
I’m going down to Fisherman’s Hollow.
I’m going to see my next of kin.
For the place where I am going, I never shall see them again.

Verse 2
From his pocket, he withdrew a box
and from the box a wedding band.
As she held it in her fingers,
I shot them both ‘til they were dead.

I approached the lifeless bodies,
jerked the ring from her lovely limb.
I looked down and saw the paper
clutched tightly in her other hand.

I stood over the bodies trembling
Could not believe my mortal sin.
for it was my ring she was admiring.
It was my surprise of which they spoke

Chorus

Verse 3
I pushed the bodies into the river
With rocks tied to their feet and hands.
In two wee hours, it would be sunlight
I bid farewell to life as it had been


I only pray that God will forgive me
for two lives are gone at my hand.
I’m too frightened to face a jury.
I am a coward to take the stand.

So I’ll steal away and they’ll not find me.
I’ll go away to some distant shore.
Where I will linger in my misery
until I die to knock on Hell’s vast door.

Chorus

© 2000 Shirley Louise Stewart

Click here to hear Shirley sing this song.

West Virginia, Oh My Home.

Today I thought I'd post about what amounts to a love song that details the feelings that many West Virginians share with the land and people we love so much. This song was penned by none other than Grammy award winning singer/songwriter Hazel Dickens (and distant cousin of my wife Shirley), and in my opinion, this song is THE best song out there about West Virginia. It sums up why we stay here, and why we return. The song lyrics are posted amidst photo's of various generations of Shirley's family.

West Virginia, My Home
by Hazel Dickens.

West Virginia, Oh my home
West Virginia's where I belong




In the dead of the night
In the still and the quiet
I slip away like a bird in flight
Back to those hills, the place that I call home.



It's been years now since I left there
And this city life's about got the best of me



I can't remember why I left so free
What I wanted to do or what I wanted to see
But I can sure remember where I come from.

West Virginia, Oh my home
West Virginia's where I belong




In the dead of the night
In the still and the quiet
I slip away like a bird in flight
Back to those hills, the place that I call home.



Well I paid the price for the leavin'
And this life I have ain't the one I thought I'd find
Just let me live, love, let me cry
And when I go, just let me die
Among the friends who'll remember when I'm gone



West Virginia, Oh my home
West Virginia's where I belong
In the dead of the night
In the still and the quiet
I slip away like a bird in flight
Back to those hills, the place that I call home.



Home, home, home.




I can see it so clearly in my mind.



Home, home, home.



I can almost smell the honeysuckle vines.


In the dead of the night
In the still and the quiet
I slip away like a bird in flight



Back to those hills, the place that I call home.

Click here to go to Youtube and hear a version of West Virginia, My Home.

Cold Weather Stories

It’s Cold. Since all the talk seems to be of the weather, I thought I’d tell a few stories about the chilly times on the mountain.



Old steamshovel wreck on North Mountain. Granddaddy Don is in the back row, 3rd from the right (wearing a toboggan).

I remember my granddaddy Don used to tell of how cold it got out on the mountain when he worked in the timber camps back in the early 1900’s. He said that it was a real danger for the timber men when it got down real cold. Frostbite and hypothermia were regular occurrences in the camps. He even told of it being so cold one time that a tree exploded when they started chopping it down. He said the tree split apart into several pieces and piece shot in every direction for several yards around and that the base log cracked up the tree about 15 feet. Granddaddy Don also told of how deep the snow would get in the mountains around lumber camps. He said many’s the time they’d cut timber in the winter while standing on the packed snow, and come spring when the snow would melt, they’d go back over the same area and get another 8 to 10 foot log off the stumps which were previously buried under the snow.



Granddaddy Don & Grandmaw Mary

This reminds me of another story that occurred about the same time as when Granddaddy Don was working in the timber camps. This one involves Grandmaw Mary and the kids who were left at home while Granddaddy Don was off at work, sometimes for months at a time. He’d send money to them in the mail, but not on a regular basis. Grandmaw always fended for herself, so she canned and put up food all summer long so they usually had enough food, but they’d sometimes run short on firewood, especially when Granddaddy was gone for long periods of time. One time, it got down real cold and Grandmaw Mary saw they were running out of wood. She told the older children that they would have to go cut down the old Chestnut tree near the fence line in order for them to have enough wood to get through the cold spell. The oldest of the boys was only about 12 at the time, so it was a major undertaking. Well, the kids took to chopping at the huge chestnut tree with axes, and since the tree was dead (courtesy of the chestnut blight), it made a great racket as they hammered away at its base. Well this noise alerted the cantankerous neighbor man who lived up the holler from Grandmaw. Well, the man came down to where they were chopping down the tree and cut a fit on them. He said that the tree belonged to him, and that it was on his property, when it was clearly on the Burns side of the fence. The boys went and got Grandmaw Mary and told her about what the man was saying, and she went out to talk some sense into her neighbor. She told him that the tree was on Burns property, but the man argued that the fence line was in the wrong place. Grandmaw then saw that it was futile to argue about whose tree it was, so she tried a different tact with him. She explained to him that since Don had been gone for the past few months, that they were running low on firewood and were in great need of it. She said that the tree was dead and needed to be cut down anyway, lest it fall over on his fence. Besides she added, Chestnut wood wasn’t the best for burning, it cracked and popped a lot and created a lot of sparks, so really it wasn’t her first choice either, but when you need wood, you get what is readily available. The man seemed to understand that Grandmaw meant to have that tree, and he appeared to acquiesce but just as the boys finally felled the giant Chestnut, the man took to cussing and carrying on and saying how he was going to have them all arrested for stealing his tree and damaging his property. Grandmaw once again told him that the tree was on Burns property and that it belonged to her, and she instructed to boys to keep cutting. The man then started cussing the boys and threatening them with his gun which he said he was going to go get and he’d show them whose tree it was. Well, Grandmaw, fed up with the cantankerous old man, said to the boys, “Come on boys and let’s go back in the house, and let the old bastard have the tree. Maybe he can use the lumber to make himself a coffin so he can go through Hell a-cracking”.



Grandmaw Mary

Well that old man was so stunned by Grandmaw’s words, that he immediately took to apologizing to her and the boys, and he said, “Now Mary, if you need that wood, why you just go ahead and take it.” Grandmaw, now with her dander up responded, “I aim to.” The old man then told her, “I’ll go get my boys to come and help you all split that wood up, and get it stacked in the woodshed. Now Mary, are you all okay with food? We have some hams in our smokehouse that we’d gladly share with you all.” Grandmaw told him they had plenty of food, they were just out of firewood. She always got amused at how fast the threat of a crackin’ coffin in Hell will turn people around!



Mom & Dad, Summer 2005

Another story about the cold weather was when my Dad was a young man. After Granddad Thompson died when Dad was 10 years old, Dad moved up to Monkeytown to live with his parents. You see, in my family, it was custom that the oldest grandson live with his grandparents. Well, once Dad moved in with his parents, it became abundantly clear that there wasn’t enough room. My granddad worked in Baltimore at the time and came home just long enough to get Grandmaw pregnant, and then he’d leave again. He’d sometimes send money, but often he did not. So the next summer, when Dad was 11 years old, he went to work in the hayfields in order to get money to help out with the family expenses and in order to build himself a room onto the house. Dad was big for his age so the farmers all thought he was about 15 so they hired him on for a dollar a day. Dad worked all summer and come the fall, he had saved enough money to buy the lumber to build him on a room. With the help of a few people, they built a very crude room onto the front of the house. There were cracks in the walls that you could through a cat through, and it had one little window that resembled the one in the storybook of Noah’s Ark. But it didn’t matter to Dad, he finally had a bedroom all his own. Well, for a few days anyway. His little brother Tom decided that he would sleep there too, so Dad soon had a roommate. Since Tom was still little, he often wetted the bed, and Dad would have to get up and change the covers out, and give them to Grandmaw to wash the next day. Well, winter soon set in, and Dad said that many mornings he’d wake up with a dusting of snow on the bed covers. He said they left the door open which was next to the kitchen where the wood stove was, and that on the side facing the door, you’d be real warm, and on the side facing the window, you’d freeze. He said you learned to turn a lot throughout the course of the night. As the weather got colder, someone gave Dad and Tom a big old feather tick to sleep under. Well, one night when the weather was down around zero, Tom pee’d the bed and Dad didn’t realize it, and when they woke up the next morning, the feather tick was frozen to Dad’s bed clothes! Dad then told Tom that he couldn’t sleep with him any more until the spring! Dad’s room is still on the house, only now it has been remodeled, and is now the kitchen area. It doesn’t, however, resemble the rough little room of necessity that Dad built so many years ago.



Me & Shirley, Fall 2007


My final story about cold weather concerns one of the first times that I took Shirley home to the mountain to meet my family. Shirley, although a child of the coalfields, always led a pretty pampered life. She grew up with all the amenities, including central heating. Well, Mom and Dad still have a wood stove so the heat comes from only one area of the house. Shirley insisted on closing the bedroom door that one night, which I advised her was a bad idea. I told her to sleep in my bed…a heated waterbed…but her modesty and upbringing wouldn’t allow her to sleep in the same bed with someone she wasn’t married to, so Mom set her up the old cast iron bed to sleep in. Well, it was down around zero that night, with the wind whistling around the corner of the house. Shirley kept waking me up with her question, “What is that? It sounds like a banshee.” I’d always reply, “It’s the wind. Haven’t you ever heard the wind before?” She’d say, “Not like that!” and would soon go back to sleep. Well this went on nearly every hour, until finally about daylight, I was awakened by a nudging on my shoulder. It was Shirley. I asked her what was wrong and I turned on the lamp by my bed. There stood Shirley, pitifully asking, “I’m s-s-s-s-oooo c-c-c-c-old. C-c-can I g-get in b-e-e-e-e-ed with you?” I swear to you that her lips were blue! I reminded her that I told her it would get cold if she shut the bedroom door, and that of course she could get in my nice, warm, heated waterbed. She then decided that she needed a drink of water and walked over to get her glass of water on her nightstand. She gasped and I asked her what was the matter now. She said, “my water is frozen!” I told her to open the bedroom door and to get in bed with me. As soon as she opened the bedroom door, the warm air flooded into the room and she soon warmed up. She slept like a baby the rest of the night. Shirley still claims that is the coldest that she has ever been in her life. Poor girl, she sure has led a sheltered life!

So just keep in mind over the duration of this current cold spell, that it won’t be long before we see the first green sprouts of spring, and soon thereafter, the warm breezes of summer will return to these hills. The nightbirds will once again croon their songs of passion, and nature will once again caress us into slumber with the softness of the season.