The mountains are full of mystery and always have been. There are still places that humans have not trod on for hundreds of years and maybe even thousands. Brooks, rocks and crevices and no one knows exactly what is there. It seems in the past more reports surfaced of the…
(Author’s Note) : This article is written in honor of all those Grandparents who didn’t get to have as close a relationship with their Grandchildren as they would have liked. Also, for the Grandchildren who feel regrets that it is too late to know their Grandparent. As most of you…
The sun shone brightly over the hill as I kicked the toe of my worn out shoe against a clod of dried up dirt. I was eight years old and looking for something I could help with on our small farm. Since there were no boys on the farm, I…
If you are like some of us that are a little older, then you remember your parents talking about the one room school house or at least about the difficulties they had in reaching the school. The long walks that it took to reach school or the weather they had…
The sun shone a golden whirl of trees and leaves, as our old truck shook down the washboard road. We pulled off the road at an old house once covered in elegance, and dignity, but slowly losing it’s soul to age and time. The yard was covered by a hodgepodge…
Today, I turn to a subject many of you know about. Survival. Survival in the Appalachian mountains has never been easy, especially for our ancestors. It has always required a lot of effort and a willingness and knowledge to do just about anything. As they say, you got to learn…
If you grew up in the small communities that dotted the South, then you probably have fond memories of the ol’ country store. Whether it was a trip to get a soda pop and candy or just to look at some much wished for treasures, it was always an exciting…
It often seems in the busy lives we live now, we lose connections with the past memories, sometimes present memories, and even our whole connection to neighbors and community. I found myself in just such a state last October when I took the kids out for some hurried Halloween treating…
When you are a child, most family stories seem rather cute accounts of people that lived long ago. As you grow a little more mature, you sometimes notice that family stories creep in that no one is particularly proud of, but they nonetheless happened. I noticed many of THOSE stories…
If you grew up in a large, boisterous Appalachian family like I did then you realize how memories are passed from generation to generation. How the memories become stories that are told over and over until they are a part of your heritage. My father was an Ashe County native,…
