It was Christmas and the little girl was sick. Sick enough to warrant a doctor’s visit on Christmas eve day. The four year old had strep throat and was running a high fever despite the medicine her mom had given her an hour ago. She was lying on the couch…
Our Appalachian people held to time honored superstitions and traditions regarding the Christmas season. The Old World traditions were carried to the mountains by the early settlers. While a few have remained, most have changed to fit the modern times or disappeared altogether. Here are just a few traditions and…
The week of Christmas has always been a busy time for the Appalachianwoman. Parents, aunts, uncles and cousins would often visit, and that meant plenty of cooking. Some Appalachian Christmas treats were fried apple pies, pumpkin, squash and mince pies, and popcorn balls. One thing my mother made almost every…
My mother’s family never had a Christmas tree. Momma would tell me about how she used to see them in the stores in town and that she often wished for one. Her first tree was the year she got married, 1947. She told me that one day Daddy came home…
It’s summer in Ashe County. The little girl is up early, her blond hair in a rat’s nest from snuggling up to her mother while soundly sleeping. Mommy is already up and in the kitchen. The little girl hates that she missed helping her mother wind up her brown hair.…
Appalachian women are some of the smartest women I know. Quick witted and sensible, when left to their own devices, they can figure out a solution to any problem. Although a formal education isn’t always achieved, the Appalachian woman is an intelligent woman with plenty of common sense. Years ago,…
My mother was born on a farm in a very rural area here in the mountains in 1924. With no tv and no money for frequent trips to town to see a movie, music became the perfect source of entertainment. Music was her way of escaping her everyday life of…
Preface: This is a fictional account of how death and burial were handled in our mountain communities years ago. It is not real; although I’m sure there are aspects of the story that ring true to anyone who has lost a loved one. RJW How quickly a person’s life can…
The Old Ways, superstitions, and healing came along with our foremothers on the ships from Ireland, Scotland and Northern England and drifted down on the mountains where they settled. Some beliefs were borrowed from the Native Americans living among them. These beliefs made their way down through the decades. Our…
Great-great aunt Ida was very different from all the other young ladies that lived in the early part of the nineteen hundreds in the mountains of western North Carolina. She wore pearl earrings in her pierced ears and was known to dip snuff and use the juice from elderberries to…
