Darla Hood

“Sunday meeting on the ground, you meet in the family cemetery and you have a picnic right on top of the graves and eat and have a big time. …a lot of people say aren’t you afraid of that cemetery? Lord no! If you can go eat on somebody’s grave, if they don’t get you while you’re eating on that grave, they ain’t gonna’ get you! (Laughs).”

Darla Hood, Living History Actor; Duffield, Virginia:

“I’ve lived here all my life, and it was a lot of fun growing up here. [We would] run around; wasn’t afraid of nothing and wasn’t afraid of nobody. Everybody knew everybody and everybody was our friend. If you got in trouble and your mom and mad weren’t around, if another adult was around or knew that you was in trouble, they would help you. It was very enjoyable. I miss those days. 

We had farm animals, of course. We had cows and chickens and horses, and I loved horses! Every time daddy got the old plow-horse out, I’d have to ride the horse while he plowed. I thought that was heaven every time I got to ride. My granddaddy, he raised Belgian horses and he would have some of the prettiest teams of horses. They made a living logging and that’s the reason why he had the Belgian horses, he logged with the horses. 

It wasn’t like it is now, where they clear-cut. It was select cut. They’d harvest the biggest timber that was growing, and they would haul it out or pull it out with the horses. If they could, they’d put it on a wagon. Eventually, they would get it to the railroad and then the railroad would take it on to wherever it was going. That’s how they made a living. I don’t remember them doing that, but my Dad had an old forty-some model big truck when I was a little girl, and he would let me go with him. We went back in this mountain one day and it was just steep. Kept going right straight up. He got to the point where they were actually bringing the logs out, and granddaddy was up there with his horses and they made a pulley system where they would pull the logs up on the truck. After they got the truck loaded, Daddy was ready to go. 

I was just little, maybe six years old, and I thought we was in God-knew-where, way back in that mountain and I’d never been back in there. And he said, ‘Now you’re going to have to walk out of here. Follow my truck and walk out of here.’ I couldn’t understand, I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, the truck might get away with that big load and us, too.’ I can remember him going down that road and my little short, fat, legs (laughs). I was just running just as hard as I could to keep up with that truck. When we got down to where it was level enough where I could actually ride in the truck, I tell you what, I might’ve been little but I said a whole lot of prayers! I was just scared to death. 

But I can remember doing things like that. I always went with my dad. I was a daddy’s girl. And my granddaddy, he’d come by the house and he’d get me and put me up on his horses and I’d go with him to work, maybe on the creek pulling stumps where they’d cleaned the creek bed off. Just things like that. It was wonderful! 

My father’s mother and dad were just wonderful. My grandmother was Cybil Dishner, and she was a granny doctor in Duffield at that time. Anybody got sick or anybody had a baby, she went. They would come get her. They called her Granny, of course. Even when she was young, I think they called her Granny. Her grandmother was Cherokee and her grandmother had taught her herbal medicine but now, Grandma Dishner did not pass that on to anybody. I wished that she had. I really would’ve liked to have known how to do stuff like that. Grandaddy, he worked hard all his life. Just ol’ hard, rugged, work. 

My mother’s parents lived in Clinchport, Virginia. They were Mullinses. My Grandfather Mullins, he worked on the railroad and he was gone most of the time. Grandma Mullins was home and she ran a rooming house. They had a big old two story house and any time you went down there, besides the family which was about seven of them still living at that house when I was little, there would be about four or five more people. They’d say this is Uncle So-and-So and this is Aunt So-and-So. I don’t know if they were really my uncle or my aunt, but it was family. It didn’t matter! It was always something going on down there. It was a nuthouse. She’d cook these big meals, and everybody would come and gather around and they’d say their blessings and then they’d just eat like crazy. She was a good cook, I have to say that. She was generous. She would open a door up to anybody. If they needed somewhere to stay, she’d let them stay. I had good grandparents. 

Grandaddy had taken me down to the creek one day, he had one horse and this dog was with us. He always had a dog. They were cleaning off another section of the creek. Well, there was a groundhog come up. The dog got after the groundhog. Grandaddy loved groundhog meat, so he called the dog off, and he knocked the groundhog in the head. I played down there all day. We ate lunch and that groundhog was just lying there, never moved. Never made a sign. That evening about four o’clock, [granddaddy] said, ‘It’s time to go home now.’ I said okay, and he put me up on the horse and we came to the house and he threw the groundhog down at the edge of the driveway. 

Daddy had just gotten home from work, he worked in the mines at that time, and here this big ol’ fat groundhog was laying here on the ground and all of a sudden that thing raised up and went, ‘RARRRR!’ (laughs) Liked to half scared me to death! Grandaddy had that thing hung on that horse and it was right behind me and I thought, oh my gosh!! Well, here Grandaddy went and he knocked that thing in the head again and he said, ‘Well, I guess I better get home so your Granny can cook my groundhog.’ There was a lot of funny things like that, just crazy things. 

You find it hard to believe when you’re remembering things like that; you think did that really happen? But it did! It was just part of your life. And it was a good learning experience. I know a lot of kids nowadays don’t get to learn things like that as they’re growing up, but that’s life. That is part of the natural type of life. 

When I got out of school, I got married. I had just turned eighteen. My father told me that I couldn’t get married till I was eighteen and graduated from high school. I graduated in May and got married in September. We started raising a family. We had two boys, and I helped take care of my mother, she was sick. And helped my dad. It all revolved around family. We lived close to my mom and dad. I think that’s another aspect of being in the mountains - the family takes care of the family. We all pitched in and took care of mom and when daddy got elderly and got sick, we took care of Daddy. I wouldn’t change that.

My husband worked at Tennessee Eastman in Kingsport, Tennessee, but we lived in Duffield. We look back on that now and think, well how crazy! (laughs) But you know, he wanted to live over here and I wanted to live close to my mom and dad, and so that’s what we done. We still live there. My youngest son lives in my father’s house and I was born in that house. I know it sounds silly, but that house has a special hold on me. 

My dad built that house in ‘51, I was born in ‘51. When he built the house, he didn’t build a basement. So he decided after I was born that he wanted a basement in that house. He was using the horse and a sled. He’d get under the house and dig the ground out, and he ran into some black slate. He couldn’t get it out, so he was drilling holes for dynamite and the story goes that I was about three months old and they had just got everything settled in the house and he was still digging out on this basement. He was going to set off a charge. I was in the bedroom asleep, and the charge was right directly under me and he set the charge off. The house was just plastered inside, I reckon it raised the house up and cracked the walls and the ceiling. Mommy said that daddy come running up out of the basement because he knew he’d set off too big a charge and he ran in the bedroom to see if I was all right. I reckon that was the only thing he was worried about, and they said I was sound asleep. I always thought that was funny, Daddy would say, ‘You was just sound asleep!’ 

You have fond memories, tales that they tell you. Things that happened, all kinds of crazy stuff they would laugh and tell you about. I know they had a hard life ‘cause they had to do everything by hand. They didn’t have a lot of money to buy a lot of extra things, but I know they had a good life. And they enjoyed their lives. 

What makes us (mountain folk) different is probably the way we’ve been brought up. When I was growing up, I lived on HWY 23-58 and in that little community, everybody knew everybody. We had neighbors that weren’t kin to us and then we had neighbors that were. But everybody watched everybody’s kids, made sure that the children were okay. And I’m glad that they did! There were a lot of times I needed somebody to help me, and they’d always help me. I think that makes us special. Some people may say we’re clannish. But in that clannishness, we love each other and we take care of each other. It’s part of humanity, a part we all should have for one another. It doesn’t matter whether we live together or not. Show humanity towards someone else. If you see a child that you think may be in trouble, ask are you okay. I think that’s some of what makes it special and different here. But I’ve not lived anywhere else. People I’m sure in New York City, probably on these little community streets, I’m sure they take care of one another, too. 

Another thing, a lot of us have got Scots-Irish in us, and I think we’ve inherited that trait to be outspoken. I can remember when I was growing up; my mother was very outspoken for the time period. My dad, a lot of times would say, ‘Now you going to’ have to calm down...’ (laughs). But when I got old enough to understand, he’d say, ‘you tell people what you think. You tell them what you think and you don’t let them run over you.’ I thought, that’s what mother was doing. I can remember that. After I got older, I would think, when I would get kindly heated up over situations, I would think, ‘I guess I need to calm down a little bit.’ 

I love these mountains. I love it. Even love the copperheads (laughs). Nah, I don’t like them, but I can live with them. We’re re-enacting here today, eighteenth century cooking. And we’ve got a lot of different things going on. We’ve got the blacksmith and we’ve got candle making and we’ve got the brick oven. 

What we’re cooking today is Three Sister Stew. It originated as Cherokee. The Cherokee garden had three sisters in it and the three sisters were corn, beans and squash. So that’s what the stew consists of. We’re going to make the stew and cook it on the fire, and we’ve got a bread to go with that. It’s similar to like, a dressing-type bread. It’s made a little different; it’s got a different consistency, grainier and not as smooth. We’ve got stuffed winter squash, stuffed with day-old bread and raisins and apples and brown sugar and walnuts. And then we’ve got the pumpkins. We’re going to put those on a bed of coals and let them bake for about an hour and they’ve got Apple Brown Betty in them. It’s pumpkin and apples and raisins, some currants and pecans and brown sugar and we’ve got brown sugar syrup. 

Old people, where I was raised, they would get the dark brown sugar. It’s got more of a molasses consistency. They’d take about two cups of dark brown sugar and one cup of water and boil that until it became a syrupy mixture, and they would make their pancakes and pour that brown sugar syrup on it. It’s almost as good as maple syrup! The pumpkins have the brown sugar syrup in it to make them moister. You cook that for about an hour on those coals, and after the stuffing gets to bubbling up a little bit, they’re ready, they’re good. 

While we’re doing that, we’re going to fry some pumpkin seeds that we cleaned out of the pumpkins. We’ve cleaned them and we’re going to poach or fry them. Then, we’ve got mint-cooling water. It’s very easy. Any type of mint that you have growing in your garden, you pick your best leaves and bring them in and wash them. Then you put them in cheesecloth. If you want, you can put a cinnamon stick or whatever else, but this is just mint what I’ve made today. You let that boil like you’re making a tea; you let it steep. After it gets done, it’s almost a concentrate. You take the cheesecloth bag out of it. It takes about thirty or forty mint leaves to make a gallon of cooling water, or tea. After you get your tea made you put sugar in it to your taste. You can put honey in it, if you want to. Then, you add your water to make the gallon because you have really made a concentrate with the tea. When we bring it up here, we put it on ice and we call it mint-cooling water.

I just learned all this growing up from my parents and grandparents, my mother in law. Different places, you pick it up. When I was growing up, I used to go back in these mountains all the time where these poor, old, people lived. They just lived from hand to mouth. I’d watch them cook and the poor, old, people didn’t have nothing, but they’d offer you. They’d say you’re here; we want you to eat with us. I had been scolded a lot when I got home after they found out where I’d been. ‘You didn’t eat did you?’ and I’d say, ‘Yes, I did! They offered!’ I couldn’t refuse them; I thought it would be an insult. I ate a little bit everywhere I went. But I loved walking in these mountains doing that, just visiting people. It was a lot of fun. 

It gets back to the basics of where we come from and how we lived, and how we made this country what it is, I think. There’s a lot of tradition in these things, but at the same time, you have to think - these people, they were actually living this. This was their life. Just like the lifestyle we live now, this was their life. This was how they made their living, this was how they took care of themselves. There was something to do every minute of every day. I think the younger generation, kids 18 and under, they need to know these things. And even older people who haven’t seen these things in a long time. I’ve heard a lot of people when we’re out there cooking say, ‘Well my Granny did that!’ You know, Granny did do that! It’s just part of living in this area and the way things are. It’s important to preserve that heritage. 

I guess i’m a good cook I eat enough! (Laughs) I like to eat, I like to cook. Traditional Appalachian cooking, well, a lot of it is the same thing as these people did in the eighteenth century, and they got it from the seventeenth and sixteenth century, so this stuff has been going on for a long time. I know they brought a lot of different types of beans over, but they actually got the corn from the Cherokee. And they got the squash from the Cherokee. The beans were from everywhere. We eat soup beans, mustard greens and corn bread. That’s a meal! And fried taters with it, or you could have mashed potatoes. I think they not only ate that type of food to nourish their bodies, because they were doing hard work and they needed that protein and the starches, but at the same time, if you’ve ever noticed when you’ve eaten a meal like that and you get really good and full, it’s a comfort to you. I think that was really a comfort to them and they didn’t have a lot of comfort during their lifetimes. 

I have researched a lot of these old recipes and they are so similar to what I actually cooked at home when my children were growing up. Like what I had learned from my mother and grandmothers, how to cook. I think it’s a tradition that is passed down to us. We cook just like they cooked. It might be more convenient the way that we cook; we usually aren’t out on an open fire or a brick oven. We’re inside on a gas or electric range cooking. And we have all these other conveniences we can use, a mixer and whatever. If they whisked up a whipped cream, they had to whip that cream! You couldn’t just put it in a mixer. They had to do it! I think everybody - Italians, Germans, Scot-Irish, Spanish, whatever heritage - that is something you have inherited from your ancestors. Your cooking! We can incorporate other groups into our cooking, but what you’re brought up with is what you go to. 

Around we like to have people over to eat with us and get together. Sunday meeting on the ground, you meet in the family cemetery and you have a picnic right on top of the graves and eat and have a big time. Now that was something! I really enjoyed that. There’s a cemetery behind our house and a lot of people say aren’t you afraid of that cemetery? Lord no! That cemetery’s got some of the best people in it that ever was. I’m not afraid of that cemetery. If you can go eat on somebody’s grave, if they don’t get you while you’re eating on that grave, they ain’t gonna’ get you! (Laughs). 

I can remember when I was growing up I had a cousin that had gotten killed, a car had hit him. He was older than I was, but after I got up to be a teenager and I was going through those teen rebellion type deals, if they told me no or I couldn’t do so-and-so and I got in a pouty, crying, mood I’d go up to the cemetery and I’d sit at his grave and talk to him. I’d feel so much better! I know that was just all in my head, but it was a comfort thing. I’m sure not everybody has the privilege to go to the cemetery and talk to their kin people about their problems, but that was a good thing for me. 

I’m just what I am. I’m me. I want it to be remembered that I love life. I love people. I like to have a big time. When I was able, I could dance all night! I loved to go to these hootenannies and stagger a little, do the jigs and all that stuff. I loved jigs when I was young. I grew up around a lot of music. My grandmother Dishner, her grandparents and uncles and brothers they played guitar and banjo and she played the autoharp. She would play that and yeah, it was a lot of music. My grandfather’s people were directly from Germany and they had this stiff type thing, but now he was a big teddy bear. He just loved you. When they’d all get together and start making music and stuff, he would cuss like crazy. He’d say that’s the laziest bunch he’d ever seen in his life! (Laughs) Wouldn’t do anything but play the guitar and sing and make music! But it was a lot of fun. Grandaddy really liked it, he just liked to raise Cain about it.”

James Hall

“We lived in different houses, all different sizes. We lived everywhere. Mom and Dad, they just moved around a lot. We would tell them that they moved so much, that every time they’d go to move, the chickens would run out in the yard and cross their legs, ready to be tied!” 

James Hall, Disabled; Abingdon, Virginia: 

“I grew up down around Greendale, Virginia. I liked growing up there. I never did like city life. As a kid, I went fishing and hunting, and worked in tobacco and hay. We just got out and wandered around and different stuff. We played horseshoes, we’d take corncobs and put feathers in them and a nail and make homemade darts…stuff like that. 

When I was able, I just liked to get out and go through the mountains. We used to ginseng hunt and hunt herbs in the mountains. My brother and me was young, and we would hunt ginseng every year just to get enough money to buy our fishing and hunting license. You had to make a dollar somewhere! You just dig it and dry it out and, after it’s dry you take it to the buyers and sell it. You can just lay it out. You didn’t hang it, there’s really just no way to hang it. Spread it out in boxes and stuff; put it out in the sunshine and let the sun dry it out. It’s according to how big the root was to see how long it would take it to dry. We knew where the buyers were. There was one over at Douglas Wayside over on 19. They ship it everywhere! When we were little, we used to peel bark. Slippery elm, they called it. And catnip root. I think they used slippery elm for medicine. 

My parents farmed. My Dad was sort of disabled. My Mom farmed and took care of the house and us six kids. We enjoyed farm life. You raised what you ate back then. We raised potatoes, corn, beans and stuff like that. A hog every now and then! We had a smokehouse, but we didn’t use it. 

We lived in different houses, all different sizes. We lived everywhere. Mom and Dad, they just moved around a lot. We would tell them that they move so much, that every time they’d go to move, the chickens would run out in the yard and cross their legs, ready to be tied! 

After I got out of school, well I just gandered around. I went to work at an early age, at eighteen. I guess my first job might’ve been Castle Mobile Homes. I worked there three or four month. Most of my work, I worked at Andis Palette Company for 27 years. I go hunting and fishing and stuff like that. Just lazy man’s fishing. Sit on the bank and catch whatever bites! 

One of the saddest times in my life was when my parents passed away. One of the happiest times, back then, was whenever we sold that tobacco! (Laughs) We was going to eat then and we had a little money

A lot of people outside the region don’t know how it was growing up. A lot of them these days didn’t grow up the hard way. Everything’s handed to them now. The hard way was, if you ate, you got out here and you raised it. There weren’t any certain jobs. [You did] anything; hoed tobacco, corn and the whole garden, hung tobacco. About September, you cut tobacco, and then you hang it. You got to hang it to dry, it cures out. The last of October, first of November, you start working it off. Stripping it. You strip the leaves off the stalk, then you put it in a box and you bale it. Then, you just take it to the markets and you sell it. I haven’t raised none in years, but they’d have an auctioneer and they’d be a bunch of buyers who would go through, 

I’ve got two kids. I tried to teach them to stay out of trouble. The way things are these days, there is a lot of dope and kids are into a lot of trouble these days. Thank God I’ve got two good kids. I’ve got one that’s sixteen, still in school and one who is twenty-three, she’s disabled. She’s had three heart surgeries. She had her first one before she was a year old; she had a hole in her heart. The second time she had what they call patent ductus valve. They had to go in and sew it shut. The last time, she had a microvalve put in. She’s doing wonderful now. She’s doing wonderful. 

I want to be remembered just the way I am.”

Kendra Williams Calhoun

“When I was in high school I had a teacher tell me when I applied for the University of Kentucky, ‘I don’t know why you’re applying there. No one from Harlan can get in there.’ The day that I got my acceptance letter, I went to the school and made copies and I hung it up on his door and said ‘look, I made it. I’m going.’”

Kendra Williams Calhoun, Unit Director, Harlan County Boys & Girls Club; Evarts, Kentucky: 

“Growing up, my father was in the military so my first year I lived in Alaska. He was stationed in Alaska and they brought me back to stay with my grandparents here. I went to school with at the University of Kentucky and as soon as I started talking they were like, ‘you are not from here, where are you from?’ But I love the town. 

My grandmother raised me for that year I stayed with them when I was an infant, and then my parents moved back. [My father] is a State Trooper and he doesn’t live here in Harlan anymore but he is a State Trooper over in Paintsville now. Before he was a State Trooper, he was a police officer for a different county and city, so I think I’ve grown accustomed to it now. As a child, you didn’t think, ‘hey, my dad is out here in these dangerous situations,’ but now that I’m older and I look back, you realize that it’s really a dangerous job. 

I wasn’t into the video games and stuff. I loved going outside and playing games with my cousins and my aunts. I was an outdoors person; I was a tomboy. I wanted to be outside with the boys playing in the dirt, riding bikes. I knew I needed to be home when the streetlights came on. I just really enjoyed playing outside with friends and family. Watching grandma and aunts cook, and learning how to do different things like that.

My mom, she is a very, very hard worker. She works for the county attorney here in town. She raised my brother and me—I have a younger brother, he just recently turned 20. Anything we needed, she worked and did whatever she needed to do to provide for us. We never needed or wanted for anything. She made sure we had it. Mom was more of the strict one of the family. Normally it would be reversed, but dad was more of the one playing jokes [on] us, more laid back. 

My grandma is an amazing woman. I love her. She is a real selfless person. She would do anything for anyone. To this day, she is still taking care of people. A lot of people will look at me and say, ‘hey, that’s Jackie’s granddaughter,’ because that’s how they know her throughout the community because she’s always doing so much for the community. She used to work for one of the local head starts, and then my grandfather had got really sick and had had a stroke so she had to stop working to take care of him. After he passed, we found out she had Lupus. She’s on the City Council, she’s on every council I can think of—she’s fighting for just anything that we need in the community! I love to help people, and I know that’s where I got it from because I would always go with her to sit with someone elderly if they needed someone to sit with, or [I’d] go to the grocery store or run errands or anything anyone needed. I’m grateful for that… I really am. 

[My grandfather] was [a coal miner]. He is no longer with us, but I can remember he would drive the trucks… I loved the trucks. He worked in the coalmines, but mainly I can remember him driving the trucks. I’m African American, and he wasn’t your typical [African American]. He would have on cowboy hats and the cowboy boots and he would be on the radio stations singing country songs! My grandparents, I just… I’m going to get teary eyed talking about them… I’m very grateful for them and just the lessons that they have taught me. I think that they have definitely played a huge role in how I see things in the world and who I am today.

[The saddest time in my life was] when my grandfather passed away. I was a freshman in high school, so I’m trying to think how old that would have made me! My parents were very active in my life, but I just was grandma and granddad’s baby. I would stay with them and especially when he became ill, I wouldn’t leave. I practically said, ‘hey mom, I’m going to live with grandma and grandpa,’ which was right next door. Although my father was in my life, my grandfather was a huge role model in my life, so that was probably the saddest time. It wasn’t the first time [I’d experienced death] but I think it definitely had the biggest impact on me.

My grandfather had heart disease and diabetes and he had to have one of his legs amputated. A lot of people would let that get them down, but not him. You could not stop him. I can remember him having a mini van and he would fix everything and he would roll his wheelchair up and he even created a thing to where he could slide it up in there and hook his wheelchair himself. He didn’t want anyone to help him. I can remember growing up I hated that van because there were a thousand flags on it and I thought, ‘this is so embarrassing.’ But now, I look back and when I think of that van I just smile and laugh. 

I can remember being in elementary school and I would always dread when we would have to go over things dealing with Black History Month because you know, when it would come time to read about stuff like that, I can remember teachers being like, ‘well, we’re going to let Kendra read this’ because they didn’t want anyone else to say the word ‘negro.’ I can remember times on the bus where people have been like, ‘oh well, we can’t sit with her, we can’t talk with her because she’s black.’ It never really fazed me because I would go home and my grandparents would be like, ‘well you know maybe they really don’t understand,’ and we would just move on, never let it bother us or get us down. 

I still think even in today’s society it’s all a matter of how you’re raised. Of course I can remember kids making remarks and things like that. I could have retaliated or something but I didn’t let it bother me because I knew my grandparents and parents had educated me on race and things like that. 

My high school days… I miss them! I definitely miss them. I played sports, I tried to stay as active as I could. Was a straight A student. Played basketball, did the dance team, volleyball… I just really liked school. I wish I could go back. I stayed busy! 

I went straight from Harlan to the University of Kentucky! Go Cats! Here, it’s a small community, everyone knows everyone so growing up, I didn’t have to deal with anything there. But I can remember going to UK and I felt like it was kind of different, just being in the atmosphere in Lexington. People that I would sit down and talk to would be, ‘this certain group, you don’t need to go here because they’re not too fond of blacks’ and stuff like that. I just think, you can go off of other people’s experiences and things like that so you kind of get a feel for yourself. Moving to Lexington was a huge transition. I can remember calling home and being excited because Wal-Mart was open 24/7, so, the fact that I could go to Wal-Mart at two o’clock in the morning to get something that I needed? I loved it!

I got a Bachelor’s in Family Science. I am [the first in my family to go to college]. I’m very proud! When I was in high school I had a teacher tell me when I applied for the University of Kentucky, ‘I don’t know why you’re applying there. No one from Harlan can get in there.’ The day that I got my acceptance letter, I went to the school and made copies and I hung it up on his door and said ‘look, I made it. I’m going.’

I would try to come home, at first, like every other weekend when I was a college student. Just [didn’t] have the money for that! But I did miss home. It was new for me so I liked being there. Just seeing the different things that they had to offer and exploring and branching out. 

I missed the closeness of everyone. When I was at UK I worked retail through college. Just the people… the people were different. When I would work there I would have customers come in the store and say, ‘you’re not from here, you’re too friendly!’ I was like, ‘no this isn’t just me, everyone is like this!’ After that moment I just took a step back to look and you know, everyone here, even if I walk outside and I don’t know someone, I can have a 30-minute conversation with him or her. So that was probably the biggest thing that I missed; the closeness and the friendliness of the people here. 

I definitely [missed home cooked food]! My grandma, hands down [is the best cook in the family]. I can remember growing up, every Sunday before we would go to church, we would have fried chicken and white rice and biscuits. Every time I would come home I would have her make me some collard greens or some fried cabbage or some beef stew or chili. Just some good, home cooked meals. 

I was one of those people that when I left, when I got to UK, I said, ‘I’m not going back to Harlan County. I like this. I’m not going back.’ When I graduated, I started looking for jobs and I saw the job posted for this [one] and I think that was the first time I had really thought about, ‘Hey, I want to go back home.’ I thought about when I grew up, and some of the things that teens and kids had to face growing up and how I felt like there weren’t people that I could go to and talk to. I just wanted to come back home and feel like I was making a difference, being a positive role model or bringing something positive to the kids here. I heard so many times in high school, ‘Oh you’ll never leave Harlan. You can’t leave Harlan.’ So [I wanted] just to be an example and show the kids, if you want to leave you can do whatever you put your mind to. You can do it. I just wanted to come back and mainly be a good role model for the kids here. I’m making a living in Harlan County.

I am the Unit Director here at the Harlan County Boys and Girls Club. The main thing is being a positive role model and helping kids in our community. Here in the facility, the membership number is 183 kids, but we go throughout the community so we probably serve around 2,000 different kids each year. We go into the schools and we teach a drug prevention program to all of the county schools as well as the independent schools. We go and we set up booths at the swapping meets, the Poke Sallet Festival, just basically trying to let people know of the different services that we have here. A lot of people know that we’re The Boys and Girls Club, but they don’t realize everything that we do as far as the homework with the kids and our feeding programs, Money Matters and the different programs we do. We try to do all of our programs around health and life skills, character development, fitness and education programs. 

The kids normally start coming in around 2:30 pm and we’re open until 6:00 pm so they know as soon they get here after school we do a thing called ‘Power Hour’ and we come in and we go ahead and take care of homework because a lot of the kids may not have people that can help them at home with homework, so we make sure it’s done. If they don’t have homework, we still do something educational with them for the first hour, and then after that it’s kind of like fair game for them to have fun and play in the game room and go outside and just relax, of course [while] being supervised by adults. We have a computer lab, an air hockey table, a pool table and we recently made a Lego table out of one of our old air hockey tables and the kids really enjoy that. We stay up to date with the game systems and the games that the kids want. [It is] just basically a good place where they can come and have fun in a positive place.

Poverty because of the lack of jobs [is the biggest problem in Appalachia]. [That] would be the biggest one that I see. I think working here and working with the families and seeing the families, that’s the biggest one. 

I’ve had families come in before whose mom and dad, neither are working because they can’t get jobs, just struggles of like homework and not being able to have the help or the parents aren’t educated to help with the homework and they may come in and see if we have extra food leftover for the day. You can really see a difference in the kids. We do a food program here at the club. One thing that, when I first started, little things you take for granted. I didn’t think maybe some of these kids weren’t getting meals at home. We partner a lot with Harlan Independent Schools. The test scores actually increased, their grades increased, because the kids were coming and we feed them a good meal and we give them snacks. That’s the greatest feeling.

I know one thing that I love about living here is the closeness and how I feel like the families here you can rely on different people to help you. We’re amazing. We’re probably the best people around. We’re kindhearted. My husband is from Louisville and he lives here with me now. He grew up in, they call it the West End; downtown, kind of in the Shively area, that’s where he’s from. He would come in and visit and the breaking point that made him decide “I want to live here”, we had come to visit one time and we were in Wal-Mart shopping and my kindergarten teacher came up and hugged me. We had a conversation and she was telling me how she followed me during college and everything that was going on and he was really amazed. One of the comments he made, he said, ‘if I was to run into my principal, they wouldn’t even know who I was.’ [He was impressed by] just the fact that these people really cared about you as a person, and wanted you to succeed. 

I lucked up. I really lucked up and was able to get a job and move back home. I think nowadays it’s hard to find jobs here and that’s sad because a lot of our people are leaving not because they want to leave, but because they can’t find jobs here. I don’t know [whether coal will come back]. I wish some of these kids could have the experiences of ‘I’m proud of my grandfather for being a coal miner,’ you know? I feel like a lot of the kids now, some of the kids ask, ‘well what does a coal miner really do?’ They don’t really know too much about it, and I wish that it could come back. 

Even if we get to the point where we see that the coal mines are not going to come back, I think as a community for whom coal mining was a living, [we need to] have more of an open mind to think of some other things to bring jobs here. I feel like, not like we’re stuck in our old ways, but that we’re kind of closed-minded and we just want our coal mines back and we’re not trying to think of what we can do to really build up our community. 

I think [drugs are an issue. Even growing up, it was a big thing, you know. That was one of the reasons that I wanted to come back to my hometown. My focus was actually substance abuse. I wanted to do something because it was such a big thing growing up that I wanted to be able to come back and help in those areas. I feel like it’s different from when I grew up, but I still think the problem is still there. My parent’s were very active in everything that I was doing. I stayed busy, so I didn’t have time [to try drugs]. I would see friends that would be like, ‘Oh, come on’ [and I would say], ‘No, I don’t have time for that.’ My parents made sure they knew what we were doing, and who we were with and [that we were] staying busy.

I do not like [stereotyping], but I think that everyone does it. I try really hard not to stereotype because everyone’s different. You can’t place someone in a certain stereotype. I’ve had people tell me before, ‘you’re trying to talk like a white girl, you don’t talk like you’re black.’ I didn’t know there was a difference! There’s a lot of stereotyping.

When I went to UK, people would ask, ‘do you have running water down there? Does either parent work? Do you all even have lights out there?’ Even had someone ask me one time if we had an outhouse to use the restroom. But, I think the biggest thing is like, ‘everyone’s hillbillies there.’ When I hear that I laugh and tell them, ‘Yes, I am a hillbilly. I’m a hillbilly and I’m proud!’ 

I think the happiest time would be… I have a two-year-old boy, would be when I had him. That would be the happiest. HIs name is Kyree. He’s two years old, so we’re going through the terrible twos right now, but he is just a big ball of joy.

I love to scrapbook. I really, really love to scrapbook. People like to make fun of me because I think I have a picture of every day [since] my little boy was born! I love going outside and taking pictures and making different scrapbooks to show. I may just go outside and take pictures of fall and be like, ‘look how beautiful it is here.’ I love being outside. I could walk around for hours just looking at the scenery. The scenery here is just beautiful. 

When it comes to building things and fixing things, it’s normally me! I think it just goes back to the way that you’re raised here. Being here in Harlan, you use the things and people around you to get by. Instead of having the new technology or whatever’s around, you make things. So, when you come across these people who are in the big cities, like for example my husband, he’s like, ‘I don’t know how to fix this.’ And I’m like, ‘oh all, we need is this. This will fix it, we don’t need to go out and buy that!’ It just goes back to the way that we’re raised here.

I would like to be remembered exactly like my grandma. Like someone who has made a difference in the community whether it’s doing stuff here with the kids or just leaving a positive impact and helping here in the community.”

Rejeana Pollitt

“You want to know something that makes me angry? I got really angry yesterday, at break. Somebody was saying bad things about me. One thing they said was that I was a pure ol’ meanie. I’m not a meanie.” 

Rejeana Pollitt, Age 8; Fairview, Harlan County, Kentucky:

I go to school at Harlan Independent. I like math. It’s easy. I got held back. Last year, I used to make all F’s and now I make A’s and B’s. I take my time and try harder. I don’t really know times (multiplication tables). I won’t get good at it I bet [until] third grade, but I’m practicing. 

For fun, I like reading chapter books, that’s almost all. At the Boys and Girls Club, I like to play pool. It’s fun, but I’m not very good at it. Outside, I like to play with my friends. [My happiest times are] when I play dancing and all that; when my friends play with me.

Sometimes, [me and my mom] do fun things together. We went to the park in Middlesboro. I love her a lot because she’s nice. My mom just got out of surgery. She went to the hospital on Saturday and they admitted her into the ER. They said they had to do a CAT scan, and then they said we’re going to have to do an emergency surgery. So, that didn’t go very well. My nana had to take care of me while she was in the hospital and my stepdad did too. She’s home now. 

My stepdad, he’s nice, I love him, too. He works in Harlan; he’s a deputy jailer. I don’t know what he does (at work); I don’t go to work with him. 

My mom had a baby last May, on Easter. She went into labor and she went in to the hospital. She had had to have oxygen on. I had two brothers who died. Somebody killed them I guess. They were only three months old. I got one sister. She’s seven.

The new baby, Cannon, he’s one [year old]. He’s mean --- he pulls hair and bites and pinches!

I don’t play a lot with my sister. Most of the time, I have to play with my baby brother. We play lots of stuff. He kept coming in my room so I let him sleep in my room and I slept in his room. 

My nana, she is nice. This year, we went to Black Bear Fall Festival. It’s where you ride stuff. They didn’t have all of it set up, so, we just rode the trains. She works at The Laurel (a nursing home). It’s where people stay and over five people have died there because they were getting old. One of them is 105 years old! I haven’t met him, but I’ve met a couple of people from there. I love to go there and visit. Seems like I get to color more there and do more puzzles than at home.

(What’s the saddest thing that’s happened to you?) When my friends break up with me. I’ve had that happen. When people don’t play with me, who were my friends.

You want to know something that makes me angry? I got really angry yesterday, at break. Somebody was saying bad things about me. One thing they said was that I was a pure ol’ meanie. I’m not a meanie. 

I love to sing. I sing a lot, a lot of songs, but I can’t remember all of them. I could sing you one? (Sings) God bless America, the land that I love, stand beside her and guide her, from… To the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans…God bless America, my home sweet home, God bless America, my home sweet home…”