These Dark & Dreary Days

These dark, dreary days of winter,
Press down upon my soul,
And leach the life from me,
Like a succubus in the night.

Once I was like a seed in the ground,
Waiting, germinating, hopeful.
But the cold, lifeless days have surrounded me.
And cloaked me with their siphoning darkness.

The light on my path is extinguished,
I realize now with maudlin clarity,
It was these dark, dreary days of winter,
That incubated my soul.

A Jack Tale

Today's post is a cheater for me, so please bear with me, I'm covered up with working on this new book and don't have time to even look up. On top of this, we received some bad news that Shirley's cousin Diane passed away and her funeral is on Thursday so we will be attending her services down in Wyoming County. I thought I'd post a Jack Tale that most of you will enjoy for this latest post.

I currently have several posts in the works but don't have time to get them just right...so bear with me... I promise they will be worth the wait. Some topics I plan on covering include everything from Remembering Grandpaw's Calendar, to My First Fish, to Sled-ridin' on the Mountain, to How Fox Squirrels Cure Asthma! See, I told you they will be worth the wait. Thank you for your patience and your prayers over the next week or so.

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Jack and the Robbers

THIS HERE'S another tale about Jack when he was still a small-like boy. He was about twelve, I reckon, and his daddy started tryin' to make him help with the work around the place. But Jack he didn't like workin much. He would piddle around a little and then he'd go back to the house, til one day his daddy whipped him. He just tanned jack good. Jack didn't cry none, but he didn't like it a bit. So early the next mornin' he slipped off without tellin' his mother and struck out down the public road. Thought he'd go and tryhis fortune somewhere off from home.

He got down the road a few miles and there was an old ox standin' in a field by a rail fence, a-bellowin' like it was troubled over somethin'-

"Um-m-muh! Um-m-m - muh-h-h!"

"Hello!" says jack. "What's the matter?"

"I'll just tell you," says the old ox. "I'm getting' too old to plow and I heard the men talkin' about how they'd have to kill me tomorrow and get shet of me."

"Come on down here to the gap," says Jack, "and you can slip off with me."

So the old ox followed the fence to where the gap was at and jack let the bars down and the old ox got out in front of jack, and they went on down the public road.

jakc and the ox traveled on, and pretty soon they cam where there was an old donkey standin' with his head hangin' down over the a-goin' -

"Wahn-n-n-eth! Wahn-n-n-eth! Wahn-n-n-eth!"

"Hello," says jack. "What's troublin' you?"

"Law me!" says the old donkey. "The boys took me out to haul in wood this mornin' and I'm getting' so old and weak I couldn't do no good. I head 'em say they were goin' to kill me tmorrow, get shet of me."

"Come on and go with us," says Jack.

So he let the old donkey out and they pulled on down the public road. The old donkey told jack to get up on his back and ride.

They went on a piece, came to an old hound dog settin' in a man's yard. Hit would bark awhile and then howl awhile -

"A -woo! Woo! Woo! A-oo-oo-oo!"

sounded awful lonesome.

"Hello," says Jack. "What you a-howlin' so for?"

"Oh, law me!" says the old dog. "The boys took me coon-huntin' last night, cut a tree where the coon had got up in it. I got hold on the coon all right, but my teeth are all gone and hit got loose from me. They said they were goin' to kill me today, get shet of me."

"Come on, go with us," says Jack.

So the old dog scrouged under the gate.

The old donkey says to him, "Get up on my back and ride, if you want to."

Jack holp the old dog up behind him, and they went on down the public road.

Came to a old tomcat climbin' along the fence. Hit was a-squallin' and meowin', stop ever' now and then, sit down on the top rail -

"Meow-ow! Meow-ow-ow!"

-- sounded right painful.

"Hello!" says Jack. "What's the matter you squallin' so?"

"Oh, law me!" says the old dog. "I caught a rat out in the barn this mornin', but my teeth are getting' so old and bad I let him go. I head 'em talkin' about killin' me to get shet of me, 'cause I ain't no good to catch rats no more."

"Come one and go with us," says Jack.

So the old cat jumped down off the fence.

The old donkey says, "Hop up there on my back and you can ride."

The old cat jumped up, got behind the dog, and they went on downthe public road.

Came to where they saw an old rooster settin' on a fence post, crowin' like it was midnight, makin' the awfulest lonesome racket -

"Uk rook-a-roo! Ur-r-r rook-a-roo-oo-oo!"

"Hello!" says jack. "What's troublin' you?"

"Law me!" says the old rooster. "Company's comin' today and I head 'em say theywere goin' to kill me, put me in a pie."

"Come on with us," says Jack.

Old rooster flew on down, got behing the cat, says, "All right, boys. Let's go!"

So they went right on down the highway. That was about all could get on the old donkey's back. The old rooster was right on top its tail and a-havin' a sort of hard time stayin' on. They traveled on, traveled on, till hit got plumb dark.

"Well," says Jack, "we got to get off the road an find us a place to stay tonight."

Directly they came to a little path leadin' off in the woods, decided to take that, see could they find 'em a stayin place in there. Went on a right smart piece further, and 'way along up late in the night they cane to a little house, didn't have no clearin' around it. Jack hollered at the fence, but there didn't nobody answer.

"Come on," says the old donkey. "Let's go in-vestigate that place."

Well, there wasn't nobody ever came to the door and there wasn't nobody around back of the house, so directly they went on in. Found a right smart lot of good somethin' to eat in there.

Jack says, "Now, who in the world do you reckon could be a-livin' out here in such a wilder-ness of a place as this?"

"Well," says the old donkey, "hit's my o-pinion that a gang of highway robbers lives out here."

So Jack says, "The hit looks to me we might as well take up and stay here. If they've done stole all these vitles, we got a much right to 'em as they have."

"Yes," says the old dog, "that's exactly what I think, too. But if we stay, I believe we better get fixed for a fight. I expect they'll be comin' back in here about midnight."

"That's just what I was goin' to say," says the old cat. "I bet it's pretty close to midnight right now."

"Hit lacks about an hour,: says the old rooster.

"Come on, then," says Jack. "Let's all of us get set to fight 'em."

The ox said he'd stay out in the yard. The old donkey said he'd take up his stand on the porch just outside the door. The dog said he'd get in behind the door and fight from there. The old tomcat got down in the fireplace, and the old rooster flew up on the comb of the roof, says, "If you boys need any help now, just call on me, call on me-e-e!"

They all waited awhile. Heard somebody comin' directly; hit was seven highway robbers. They came on till they got pretty close to the house, then they told one of 'em to go on in and start up a fire so's they could have a light to see to get in and so they could divide out the money they'd stole that day.

One man went on in the house, the other six waited outside the gate.

That man went to the fireplace, got down on his knees to blow up the fire. The cat had his head right down on the hearth-rock and that man thought its eyes was coals of fire. Time he blowed in that old cat's eyes, it reached out its claws right wuick and scratched him down both cheeks. The robber hollered and headed out for the door. The dog ran out and bit him in the leg. He shook it off and ran on the porch and the old donkey raised up and kicked him on out in the yard. The ox caught him up on its horns and ran to the fence and threw him out in the bresh. About that time the old rooster settin' up there on top of the house started in to crowin' right big.

The other robbers, time they heard all that racket, they put out form there just as fast as they could run. The one they'd sent in the house finally got up and started runnin' like a strea, caught up with 'em in no time. They cais to him, says, "What in the world was that in there?'

"Oh, I'm killed! I'm killed!" says the man. "I won't live over fiteen minutes!"

The others said, "Well, 'fore ye die, tellus what it was caused all that racket back yonder."

"Law me! That house is plumb full of men, and they've even got one on the roof. I went to blow up the fire and a man in the fireplace raked me all over the face with an awl. Started to run and a man behind the door took me in the leg with a butcher knife. Time I got out the door, a man out there hit me with a knot-maul, knocked me clean off the porch. A man standin' in the yeard caught me on a pitchfork and threw me over the fence. And than that man up on the roff hollered out,

'Chunk him on up here! Chunck him up on here!'

Ain't no use in us goin' back there with all them men in the house. Let's leave here quick 'fore they come after us."

So them highway robbers ran for their life, and kept on runnin' till they were plumb out the country.

Jack and the ox and the old donkey and the dog and the cat and the rooster, they took possession of that house, and just had 'em a big time.

But the last time I was down that way, Jack had gone on back home to his folks. He was out in the yard-a-cuttin his mother a big pile of stovewood.


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The Jack Tales, by Richard Chase. Copyright 1971.

Flooding the World

In my last post, I talked about my Grandmaw’s spring that I used to carry water from. Well that reminded me of another story. This story concerns the Bent Family who lived down the road from us. They were related to us in almost every way imaginable since they came to the mountain about the same time as we did, and like my family, they never left either. But for some reason, the Bent brothers didn’t have good common sense, they always done foolish things and were known far and wide as the laughingstock of the area.

Well one time, three of the Bent boys decided they were gonna dig a well close to the house so they wouldn’t have to carry water so far. As it was, they were carrying water from a nearby creek. Since we all lived up on the mountain, a person had to dig a well quite deep to hit water, unless you were lucky enough, as my Grandmaw Mary was, to have a natural spring on your property. Well, the Bent boy’s water witched all around their house and located a powerful stream of water right outside of their yard gate. They say that the Bent boy’s used a peach limb to water witch with, and the force of the water stripped the bark clean off right in their hands, a sure sign that there was water here…a lot of water…and not located very deep either. Everyone figured it’d be less than 30 feet down, which was great for up on the mountain, where most wells were 50-100 feet deep. Well, the Bent boy’s got real excited over this and took to digging their well. They got down about 10 feet the first day, and started on it again early the second morning. Oren Bent was doing the digging that morning, and his brothers Les and Res were shoveling and hauling the dirt up in buckets. About midday, when Oren was down about 15 feet, he felt the ground give a little under his feet and water started filling up the hole. They got real excited at this and quickly dipped the water out, so they could dig another few feet. It is common knowledge that once water starts coming into your well, then you only have to dig another 10 feet or so for storage.

Well they started digging more, but water started filling in the well faster than they could dip it out. This made for slow going but eventually they dug out another couple of feet. About mid-afternoon, the three boys stopped for a break and to eat, and when they started back digging at the well, they hit a big flat rock. Well, Oren said he just knew that the water was under than rock so it had to come out. They pounded on the rock, and pried on the rock with a big iron bar. Eventually it was starting to loosen. Then Oren said the rock started to shake a little and he got scared and come up out of the hole. Soon after he got out of the well, water filled up the hole. Thinking it was a wet weather stream of water that was feeding into the well, the boys didn’t think the water would last in the dry summer months, so they had to dig it deeper. They fashioned a crude water pump and hand pumped all the water out of the well, and by then, word had passed around about the goings on with the well, and several neighbors had gathered around to witness the spectacle, and lend a helping hand if it was needed. As soon as the well was pumped dry enough to dig some more, they once again started prying on that big flat rock. One of the neighbors offered to help by bringing his team of workhorses over to pull out the rock. Everyone agreed to this and Oren got a chain hooked around the rock and to the horses. With sheer horsepower, the rock was pulled up out of the well, and with it a great gush of water that shot several feet into the air. It didn’t let up either, water was going everywhere. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, and one old-timer said that it was what was called an artesian well. Everyone was jubilant that there was plenty of water now at the Bent home, and they all went home and spread the good news.


Mom & Dad's hand-dug well.

After a few hours, the water was still spouting up out of the ground and the Bent brothers were getting worried. They couldn’t get the well walled up or anything, and it looked like a river running down through the front yard. They got to thinking that if they couldn’t get this water stopped it was going to flood the world. The more they studied and reasoned on it, the more they convinced themselves that just that very thing would happen, so they knew they had to do something. They worked each other up into a frenzy of worry. After about an hour of this, they decided the only thing they could do was try and cover the well back up. They grabbed up anything that was heavy enough to sink and frantically tossed it into the newly dug well. They threw in old junk, they threw in rocks, and they threw in metal. Eventually, they had a heaping pile of garbage over the well, and then they covered that up with dirt and made what looked like a small mound over it. They felt pleased that they had saved the whole world from being flooded.

When the neighbors found out what the Bent boys had done, they were flabbergasted. Why, they asked, did the boys fill in one of the finest wells in the county? But the boys couldn’t be convinced that they had done anything less than helpful now that they had succeeded in saving all of humanity from a great flood. They never again tried to dig a well for their house; they were content to haul water from the creek for the rest of their lives.

I remember hearing this story from my Granddaddy Burns. He was a boy when the Bent brothers dug this well, and he said that there was a helluva stream of water down in that well. He showed me the little mound of dirt that covered the junk-filled well, and you can, even to this day, even see the water still seeping up to the surface from it. The ground all around there is wet and marshy, and it flows down onto my Uncle Chub’s property where he captures it into a small pond. His pond, fend from the Bent well, never goes dry and it is a great watering spot for cattle, even in the driest of years.

Do any of you readers out there have a well or spring story? I’d like to hear them if you do.

Grandmaw's Water Bucket

The below poem triggers memories of my Grandmaw Mary. It conjures up visions of the old spring that rested upon the hillside above her house. It was always a great honor to be asked my Grandmaw to fetch her a bucket of water. I know I always took great care to dip the bucket way down into the cool, clear spring to get the freshest and coolest water. I remember there'd always be a chance that you'd pick up a salamander in the spring so you'd have take special care to avoid that. With the greatest of care, I'd heft the full water bucket to my side and inch my way down the hill on the old footpath, worn smooth by the generations of feet who made this very same trek. In the springtime, I'd usually stop and smell the apple blossoms on the Yellow Delicious apple tree that grew by the footpath.

Grandmaw would always meet me at the back porch and take the water bucket from me. I know now that she most likely done this to keep me from slopping water on her kitchen floor, after all, how steady could I have been, I was only a little boy carrying a 2-gallon bucket full of water. After taking the bucket from me, she would heap praise upon me and give me a cookie or a piece of pie that she always managed to make appear as if out of thin air. She'd then sit the water bucket up on the water stand beneath her cabinet near the back door.

Grandmaw Mary in her kitchen.

She usually had two buckets and kept one full of fresh water, and used the other bucket of "dead" water to heat for washing dishes. Grandmaw said that once water set overnight, it became dead and people shouldn't drink it. I do know that fresh water tasted better. Grandmaw always kept cheesecloth over her water buckets to keep flying insects out of it, and she had a little metal dipper that you could dip down into the bucket and get out a drink. Nobody ever thought anything of it then, but nowadays people would think this unsanitary. You'd drink right out of the dipper, and toss the rest out the back door. You were never allowed to put the water you didn't drink back in the bucket, but you could dip a second dipper if you were still thirsty.

I remember a little shelf behind the water buckets. Grandmaw had two little teacups there, no doubt gifts from some of her children on one of their travels. Grandmaw typically didn't go anywhere, her extent of travel was limited to Franklin and the Bartow Flea Market. I was always fascinated by those teacups, one said "Paw, Come git yer coffee" and the other said "Maw, Come git yer coffee". On the Paw cup, it showed a hillbilly man sleeping outside on the door stoop, and on the Maw cup there was a mountain woman plowing a field and the man was standing in the door way hollering out at her in the field. I found a "Maw" cup in an antique shop right before Christmas and bought one for my mother. I need to get her a Paw cup now. They have them on Ebay, where I found the below picture.

It's amazing how a poem can trigger all of these precious memories of Grandmaw Mary, one memory triggers another, and so on. I could sit and talk about my Grandmaw Mary all day long.
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The Old Oaken Bucket

by Samuel Wordsworth

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollections present them to view !
The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild wood,
And every loved spot which my infancy knew;
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill which stood by it,
The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,
And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hung in the well.

That moss-cover'd vessel I hail as a treasure;
For often, at noon, when return'd from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
The purest and sweetest that Nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing !
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;
Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket arose from the well.

How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
As poised on the curb it inclined to my lips !
Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
Though fill'd with the nectar that Jupiter sips.
And now, far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell,
As fancy reverts to my father's plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well;
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-cover'd bucket, which hangs in the well.

Anderson's Lament

For my great-great-great Grandfather Anderson.

Anderson's Lament

A man of privilege born into a good family,
He had all of the makings of greatness.
His loving Dianna and the children all looked to him as a hero
And their expectations took him to stand for the Cause.
Four years he honorably served a nation destined for failure,
And with it his livelihood.

The thinly disguised looks of pity and disgust
Cut his soul to ribbons as childhood friends
Watched him open his land to sharecropping.
Better to starve with dignity, they said,
Than to do work that is beneath you.
They didn’t realize the old society was dead.
He was determined that his children would have better,
In this new world in which he had no place.

He signed it all legal with the attorneys that morning
Knowing full well that he was not strong enough
To stand idly by as the land was sold off, piece by piece.
Land that belonged to his father, and his father before him.
None of that mattered now; it was thoughts of his sweet Dianna
That filled his mind as the rope snapped taut
And the eternal darkness washed over him.

Duck Boxes

It was the coolest job ever! I'm talking about being a wildlife manager on the Pennsylvania Game Commission game lands in Greene County, PA. My main position there was to design and implement a Wood Duck Nesting Box Program. This sounded daunting, especially considering I needed to do this over the entire 7,200 acre game lands, but it was some of the most fun that I have ever had.



Part of the game lands.

With the assistance of Larry, a longtime employee there, we were able to scout out and locate nest box sites for wood ducks. Apparently, about 10 years before, someone had tried to start a wood duck program on the gamelands and they had scattered next boxes all over the game land, many of which were in some awkward places, and their whereabouts recorded only with a vague description (such as "On Whitely Creek"). Well, Whitely Creek runs through about 20 miles of gameland, so you can see my dilemma.


Putting up duck boxes on Whitely Creek. Notice the ladder, which I carried all over, and which was used to cross the creek!

Soon, I realized that it would be much easier if we just put up new boxes rather than locating old ones. This made sense to Larry as well, considering most of the old boxes we found were in bad disrepair, packed full of leaves (courtesy of squirrels), or were filled with field mice. Once field mice have set up residence in a wood duck box, it is pretty much gone because you can never get the pee smell out of them. With a new plan in mind we asked our boss, Dave, if we could enlist the convict work crew to build duck boxes for us. Dave told us sure, so with an armed gunman watching over us, we demostrated to the convicts what we wanted done, and gave them run of the power tools. I was kind of hesistant tp be surrounded by convicts wielding saws, hammers, screwdrivers, etc. but you know, they were a good bunch of guys. Most of them were just happy about getting out of the pokey on work release. I got tickled at them because everytime I'd ask them to do something, they jump right to it and say, "Yes, Sir". Of course, with an armed gunman lording over you, a person will do alot of things they normally wouldn't. After a few days, Dave turned over the convict work crew over to me, and I supervised them. I got to know many of them and they were genuinely a good bunch of guys, they had just been dealt a bad hand.


A wood duck box. The convict work crew made over 500 of these for my project.

After we got the duck boxes, I done some research on wood duck habitat and scouted out prime habitat all over the gamelands. Larry and I cruised all over on our trusty gamelands steed, and soon placed and recorded all of our wood duck boxes. I found that wood duck boxes facing water and in the general direction of East, had the greatest success rate. I also found that wood shavings from a local woodworker worked better as bedding in the boxes than did sawdust. The woodworker was only too happy to give us the sawdust, it kept him from having to dispose of them.


My trusty steed!

One of the drawbacks of placing my duck boxes was having to climb trees that stretched out over a creek. I'd hang on with one hand, and pound up the box with the other. I learned to be an acrobat, but sometimes I'd take along the convict work crew to do this. Was that wrong of me?lol. This type of box placement was beneficial for the success of the project though since this was wood duck habitat, and this also reduced the predator rate for the ducklings.

A wood duck box along Whitely Creek.

Also during my tenure at the Pennsylvania Game Commission, I waded through the wetlands and constructed mallard nest structures, I built and placed huge bat colony boxes (again with the help of convict labor), and I assisted with a controlled burn of the warm-season grass fields on the game lands. Being a fire-bug at heart, it done my soul good to see the 50-foot high flames racing across a field of dry grass. Burning is necessary for warm-season grasses to thrive, and when the grass is on the fields, it provides habitat for numerous wildlife species. The warm-season grass was also a major money maker for the gamelands since switchgrass seed was harvested annually and sold to grass seed wholesalers all over the region.

Part of the game lands.

My time at the game lands was short-lived. Budget cuts made my position non-existent, so I didn't get to witness the results of my wood duck program. I kept in contact with Dave though, and he told me that my wood duck program was a complete and total success. The following fall, there were wood ducks everywhere, and hunter success was around 95%! Before my plan was enacted, hunter success was around 20%, so it was a considerable improvement. Dave told me that my plan was being implemented on other gameland sites all over the state of Pennsylvania. I am very proud of that fact, even though I couldn't be the one doing it, but I still consider myself very lucky to have had this experience. It was truly the best job ever. Perhaps the future will take me back to the game lands, or somewhere like it. Who knows? I remain ever hopeful as we watch a new President take the reigns of power.

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.