A hundred years ago, it was bad news if you received a letter with black on the edges…join us on Appalachian Moments and we’ll discover why! Families back when experienced death more often. What do you think that means and why? Several reasons, first, families were much bigger and childhood…
When I was growing up on Church Street several decades ago, life was very different than it is now. Everything revolved around family, friends, and church. All of the neighbors were close and helped each other out. Daddy and several of the men on the street shared the produce from…
We pay a literary tribute to a musical legend of the High Country of NC. The phrase “pay it forward” might be a bit overused these days, but no one exemplifies it better than Albert Hash of Grayson County, Virginia who paid forward his love of mountain music. In 1917,…
Although I knew all the neighbors at least by sight, only a few of them were close friends of my parents. The Wall family, including Claire, James Wall, and his wife Esther, and Tommy and Lois Shore were our best friends and neighbors on the street. All of the Walls…
My parents were Gilmer James and Louise Smith Hartley. Everyone called my dad “Slick.” How I wish I had found out where that came from! In any case, I remember that Mother and I debated whether to put his nickname on his tombstone when he died in 1985, and I’m…
In this final episode of the three-part series, “Over the Top with the 80th,” private Rush Young watches from the front lines as World War I intensifies, and the Allies finally begin to push back, but how is this North Carolina mountain boy going to make it through? Young was…
In this second of a three part series called “Over the Top with the 80th” Ashe County, NC private Rush Young finally reaches France to fight the Germans in World War I, but discovers that he’ll have other battles before he reaches the front line trenches. Fresh-faced and ready to…
Today in Appalachian Moments, we celebrate the end of World War I (November 2018) by reliving a fascinating first-hand account of a farm boy from Ashe County, North Carolina in our 3-part series “Over the Top with the 80th.” Rush Young, who was raised in Grassy Creek, NC, was 23…
In this edition of Appalachian Moments, and in the Fall of the year, we have a tasty test to determine how Southern you are, all you have to do is answer a simple question, stay tuned. This question is a bit more involved than the you say ‘potato, I say…
In today’s edition of Appalachian Moments, we travel to a mysterious graveyard in the Slipper Hill area of Avery County, North Carolina. There have been mysterious lights seen on the Slipper Hill graveyard by different people for many years…a lady known as Aunt Dixie said her mother called them “tokens,”…
