Well, the next installment of growing up in the hills!

I must say that by the standards in which I live today, the way I grew up was tough. But like I have said before, if it is all you know, it is just part of life and well, we never thought twice about it. We never really had any fears either. Hitch hiking to get places was no big deal. If we wanted to go hunting at night we would just grab the gun and go. The fear of perverts or well, being kidnapped and abused, never crossed our minds then. 

When I was maybe 9 or 10, I had gotten a new bike and we were not allowed to ride our bikes on the road. Not due to cars because there really wasn’t a hell of a lot of them lol. Coal trucks were in great abundance though. The roads were narrow, curvy and a fully loaded coal truck would hold 30 tons of coal and they just didn’t stop on a dime so, riding on the roads was a huge no no.  

This fine summer day we had gotten bagged on the road so Mom had Dad take our bikes an put them on top of the coal house so we couldn’t get to them. Well we could BUT, if we did, we couldn’t get them back up there so they would know so, they just stayed up there. So, my Brother James, myself and my sister Pat were out in the woods behind our house playing. 

At some point in everything I was chasing them and they jumped over a fence and as I was crossing the fence something happened which I later learned, the old post in the fence had broken as I was crossing and I fell, flat of my back with my arm twisted under and behind me, SNAP! Broken bone at the elbow and drove one part out a little and broke the skin. It was NOT pretty to say the least. 

So, my brother and sister helped me home where my mom put me in the car and drove me to the hospital, about an hour away, at least. It is such a suck ride too, bumpy old roads, old car with nothing but a pillow to rest my arm on, not fun times. So I got my arm set and splinted into a cast and we went home. When we got back home the bikes came off the roof and they NEVER put them up there again. My mom said she can’t win, she does one thing to protect us and I go out and break something without the bikes so whats the big deal. 

Not long after I got my cast off. My brother James and I, well we fought a LOT. He was much bigger than me and although he could beat me easy, I still would go back at him and make sure he suffered with some sort of pain. This one day though I think I won out in our struggle. 

He and I were fighting over something and he screwed up and allowed me to get my hands on weapons lol. There was a pile of split firewood next to the dairy and well, I grabbed a log and took a couple of swings, clipped his hand and he was lucky because I was going for the head. 

Well I then began to throw pieces of firewood at him and he took off running.  Now at a young age I was a pitcher so I knew how to throw very well and he knew it. He took off running and I must have just missed him several times as he rounded the corner of the house a piece of firewood glanced of a tree right next to him, he was so lucky!!! 

As I gathered a couple of more pieces of firewood and started after him, I slipped around the corner of the house, just in case he was waiting to jump me there and there he was, laying face down in the gravel driveway. Evidently the last piece I had thrown at him had glanced off the tree and around the corner of the house, hitting him squarely in the back of the head and knocking him out cold!

So I had to go into the house and tell my mom and dad I had clubbed James in the head and he was laying out cold in the driveway. That didn’t go over that well let me tell you! He got a trip to the emergency room where it was determined he had a mild concussion and I got a beating. All in all, it was worth it though lmfao! 

About a year later my older brother, unintentionally I think, got me back for the concussion! We were back in the woods and building a fire. We had done it hundreds of times, no big deal right? Well, on this fine day we were building a fire and we had a small container of gas. See now everyone reading this already knows this doesn’t end well.  

My loving brother James decides the fire wasn’t big enough, fast enough so he decides he is going to throw gas on the fire. In his process of doing so the fire backed up into the gallon jug he had and scared him so he threw it to the ground, when it hit the ground it then splashed gasoline onto my left leg and you guessed it, I’m now on fire. Thanks Bro! 

Well I laid on the ground and started putting dirt, leaves, anything on my leg to try and put out the fire. By sister and brother also began putting dirt and stuff on me to put me out. After what seemed like forever watching my leg burn we got it put out. Amazingly there was no pain, it didn’t hurt at all. My jeans were a little scorched but other than that, nothing, so I though. 

We were putting dirt on the rest of the fire and the trail of gasoline to put it all out and my leg felt itchy. I sat down, pulled up my jeans and then pulled down my tube sock to see what was up with my leg itching. OMFG, which is about as good as I can put it when I saw my leg. 

From my knee to my ankle was nothing but blisters, little ones and big ones and they were getting bigger. I had second degree burns over my entire leg knee to ankle and all I could think of was, how I was going to tell mom. She’s going to flip out, she will kill us or worse, this isn’t something I can hide either, this is seriously bad. To this day it bugs me that I was burnt so badly and my only fear was telling my mom. 

So, I tried to lie and say I burnt it on the tiller while in the garden but when she saw the burn she knew there was no way that was from the tiller. So, I was off to the hospital, again, and you remember when I said it didn’t hurt, it was saving up for when they had to scrub the gasoline residue off my leg to help prevent infection. Almost 40 years later and you can still see small scares from where I was burnt that day. 

That’s it for today, more to follow!

Growing up hillbilly continued!

Like I said in my previous post, life was sometimes tough by the standard in which I live today but to us then, it was just life. Nothing special about it, nothing hard about it, it was just everyday life. You get up, do what needs to be done, go to school, come home, do what needs to be done, no big deal. 

So, my dad was a coal miner and he worked his ass off. As far back as I can remember he worked 6 or 7 days a week, the midnight shift. He would leave for work at around 10pm, and get home around 9 ish the next morning. He would go to bed and usually he was up around 3 pm if not sooner. 

When we were in school dad was usually up just before we got home on the bus and shortly after we got home, chores needed to be done, right off the bus to chores. Our chores varied day to day. Everyone worked the garden, period, no questions asked, get to it, this or that needs to be done. The animals well, we all did them but mostly the boys were responsible for them and man the fun you can have with them. 

No this is NOT me

You’ve never lived until mid summer when your pigs are getting to be about 250 to 300 pounds and up and ready to ride. Yes you read that right, pig riding is so unbelievably dangerous now that I am older but funny as hell when you are a kid growing up. If you are an animal rights person and this is upsetting you, stfu and don’t read anything else, it is just life there and when I was growing up if you didn’t like it, move on. 

So, one day while several of us were riding our pigs and laughing our asses off. I jumped on Bessie, yes that was her name and she did something they never do, she ran into the stall instead of running around the pen as usual trying to rake you off on the fence lol. Well, all I could do was hold the hell on and duck since the ceiling in the stall was low as hell. Bessie pretty much beat the hell out of me on the post walls inside the stall and then she hung me on a huge nail inside the pen and ran out without me leaving me hanging there on the nail. 

Now my loving friends and brother and sisters were of course laughing so hard they wanted to bust a gut wondering where the hell I was since the pig ran back out without me, not knowing I was hanging by my hip on a hug nail inside. As I began screaming for help they came in and saw I was in trouble, pulled me off the nail and walked me back outside. All the while saying how that was the funniest thing they had seen in forever. 

Now me on the other hand, I wasn’t having as much fun since I now had a huge hole in my hip, bleeding everywhere, blood on my shirt and pants which meant, mom was going to be hot for ruining good clothes but, we had to tell her. After all, who was going to drive my dumb ass to the doctors?

So I trudged in to inform my mother that while riding the pigs I had jammed a nail into my side and was bleeding. The first thing she said was serves you right for riding the damn pigs in the first place. So I ended up having to take a ride to the hospital where they flushed out the wound and gave me a tetanus shot which I swear hurt worse than the nail, then when I got home I got my ass beat, wounded and all for ruining my clothes! 

As nice as I could be about it

Yes it sucked getting a beating for something that was supposed to be fun but such was life. On a good note when it came time that fall to slaughter the pigs, I got to shot them so in the end I guess I still won out and you know, that pig made some of the best sausage and bacon I have ever had, even to this day lol. 

OK back to my dad and the mining. Coal mining is hard work and to this day I don’t know how he did it, he worked so much and still did everything around the house that needed to be done. I can honestly say I don’t really know my dad that well since he wasn’t long on words but he was a work horse. My dad never laid a hand on us as kids. Not that he was an angel he wasn’t because he never protected us from our mother either but hell, he never hit or spanked me he would have killed me because he was a tank. 

I remember a time when my dad was in the hospital because of a rock fall in the mine he was working in, someone was killed and dad had hurt his shoulder and back. We weren’t allowed in the hospital because I guess we were too little but I remember standing outside his window, he was on the second floor and he was taking stuff and throwing it down to us like an apple, banana, the cookie from his food tray, things like that. 

If I remember correctly that was a huge turning point in his life because while he couldn’t  go back to work for several weeks, instead of laying around like a slug, my dad used the time to learn about a new mining system that was coming around called long wall mining. Later when Westmoreland got the new system in their mines my dad was put on as the foreman because he had already been trained on it and eventually became the boss running several mines for them. 

My dad did what he needed to do when he needed to do it and if you have never been in or around a mine, it is a thankless job, dangerous as hell but a way of life for so many people in the world. Let me digress just a little and explain a little of what I know about mining. In most mines the ceilings by LAW are required to be at least 36 inches high. Yes, that is correct, 3 feet high and some of them went 2 miles and occasionally more down to reach the face (face: the end, where the work is currently being done to extract the coal) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_coal

The way to get to the face was on an electric car or locomotive. I am no expert on mining that’s for certain, it’s why I left home right out of high school, and I didn’t want to work in a mine. Now when my dad started long wall mining, life for him changed and it made his family’s life better as a whole. No I am not saying that any other type of mining isn’t good I am saying the ceilings in long wall mining tend to be 5 foot or higher and there are less cave-ins in long wall mining due to how it is done.

These men are lucky, they can sit up, many can't.

Another example most will not understand. When my dad was a worker, and in the union and there was a strike which were way too often, We would visit our dad on the picket line and man the shit they did, by today’s standards, they should all be  in jail. BUT, when he became a boss, company man and he was no longer in the union. These same people in which he was great friends with, turned on him during strikes and we would have to take turns taking our dad to and from work armed, yes armed with shotguns, kids, in the back of a truck armed to get our parents to and from work during strikes. 

Now when the strikes were over they all wanted to pretend like nothing was wrong, they are all still your friends but to me and my friends that had to take our dads to and from work during the bad times, we never really trusted them again and I don’t think my dad really ever did again either. He was civil and so were we but in the hills it can be very unforgiving to turn on a neighbor, look at the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s lol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield-McCoy_feud

I never saw my dad take a drink until I was a teenager either. We were at a race, oval track, hillbillies love NASCAR you all know that haha. We ran around with our friends while our dads sat and drank and watched the race. I can honestly say before that I have no memory of my dad ever drinking. I know he probably did but we never saw it. 

We had this great old TV, you know the kind in a box lol, and we had an antenna up the biggest tree in our yard and from time to time it would get out of position and me or my older brother had to climb and move it. Dad would open the window and when we got it in the right place to see the 3 channels we got, we would hammer the nails tighter to hold it in place. When he needed the channel changed he would simply say, change the channel and he who was closest changed the channel, turn the volume up or down, whatever he wanted, no questions asked. 

One thing my dad could do was pick us up by the hair on our head. I know it sounds painful but really, it wasn’t after the first few times it didn’t hurt at all but let me tell you, if he picked you up, he was pissed and wanted your undivided attention and you know what, he got it lol. 

To be continued:

Growing up Hillbilly, how it began

OK well, let’s see where to begin, the beginning maybe?  I grew up where everyone, even us say, we are hillbillies, or better known to me as the middle of frigging nowhere and that is being nice. Some people comment that it must have been a hard life or maybe that they are backwards and well, it is all prospective. Think about it, you don’t miss what you never had or even know about.

So, I grew up in the mountains of Virginia in an area called Sandy Ridge. Sandy Ridge is located in the mountains about 10 miles outside a very small town called Coeburn and well, on the Wise County, Dickenson County line, literally right on the line is where I grew up.

My father was a coal miner all his life with exception of 4 years in the army in which he drove a tank. There were 5 of us kids in all and I was next to the youngest. I had two older sisters, and older brother and a younger brother.

When I came into the world it was in the year 1961! Yes kids, 1961 is an actual year lmao. At this point in my life we were living in what became my grandfather’s garage for 1 car. We had a living room, kitchen and 1 bedroom. My grandparents house was so close all you had to do was step outside, walk across the driveway and there was there 3 bedroom house. Did I mention the outhouse and the fact we had running water, in the kitchen only.  All the kids started out in our parent’s room but as new ones came along we ended up either on a pullout, a folding bed or the couch. There was a tiny stream right next to it and for kids, it was heaven.No these pictures are not actually them but they are close trust me.

Toms Creek, near where I grew up

Let me flash back a little to my birth. I’ve always loved this story. It was Halloween night and my mother was visiting a neighbor seeing things they had done to improve their house when her water broke. So now my dad had to take her to the clinic to have me, it was raining on Halloween late evening and of course his car had little gas in it so, he had to siphon some from an old truck to put it into the car so he could take my mother to have me.

Well my dad had a tooth bothering him and he had not taken care of it and got gas into the tooth which I hear is extremely painful. He would still grit his teeth to this day thinking about that. So they finally get going and take my mother to the clinic in a small town called Dante Virginia. Let me explain the clinic in Dante. It was a one room clinic so run down that while my mother was laying on the table trying to have me, the midwife and her helper had to swat away the bees that were living in the wall. My dad I understand had to stay outside, either in the car or in the rain, no idea but I do know he was in a lot of pain after getting gas in a bad tooth.

So, I came into the world at 6 minutes after midnight, the day after Halloween while my dad was running around in pain with a bad tooth, my mom, the midwife, and her assistant were fighting off bees. By about 6 am I was home with my parents in our one bedroom, garage lol. For the first 4 years of my life that was home.

Personal freedoms, omg as kids in the hills, you did whatever the hell you wanted. Everyone had to of course work around the house, in the gardens and take care of the chickens and such but there was no fear, no kid had fear and in diapers I was out the door with the other kids. Now we lived on a dirt road that dead ended not much further down that evidently as a child, I loved because I was told I was always missing up or down this dirt road visiting everyone and their kids or I’d just be found playing along the road.

Now understand, when I was a year old my mother was in a seriously bad car accident and lost her right leg just above the knee. With a husband who worked 7 days a week for 25 to 30 dollars a week, 4 kids at home, grandparents who were well, mean, I’m trying to be nice but they were fucking mean people. They never did shit for us except loan us the garage, in which my dad paid, rent for. My first memory of my grandfather was him chasing me with a belt.

Bear Rock, not far from where I grew up

So back on track, I was always on the go and my mother was and still is one of the toughest people I know. I kindly refer to her as the meanest woman alive and you know what, she still is but she kind of had to be, she just took it to extremes that today would put her in prison, but that is for another blog. She told me of one day I was intent on going up the road to the neighbors to play and since she was now on crutches and me being almost 3 was testing her limits as often as I could. She said she was yelling for me to get into the house and I would turn and put my hands on my hips and tell her, “I’m don’t hap too” and the start walking again. This, I guess happened more than once but even on crutches she could run me down and beat me all the way home.

When I was about 4 ish we moved from the garage to Sandy Ridge. My dad had changed jobs to another mine and the 3 bedroom house with a pond was HEAVEN to us kids. I’m still not certain if anyone considered it a bad thing or not but within a short walk was Waltons grocery, a small country store that to us was the hangout of hangouts and they got every dime we had for years.

Now I was still to young for school but my brothers and sisters started school there on sandy Ridge in a small 2 room school that was about 2 miles down the road. Yes, that is the actual picture of the school they went to at first. I remember the school but only years after it was closed as a school and turned into a community center.

Yes this is the actual school near where I grew up on Sandy Ridge

Just before my 5^th Birthday my dad bought a small house not far from the house we were renting. 3 bedrooms with an upstairs, 5 acres of land and a couple of small outbuildings we called the dairy and the coal house. The coal house was just that, a small storage building with a place with a dirt floor for coal and wood storage next to it. The dairy was a thick block building with a wood door about a foot thick. It has a foot thick sawdust insulation in the ceiling to help keep it cool, even on the hottest summer day the dairy was nice and cool and it housed the well and the only water we had in the house was in the kitchen, no bathrooms. The heat was a small buck stove in each room for heat and yes, at age 5, I was just as responsible as any of the other kids for building and maintaining a fire.

The outhouse was behind the coal house, and about a hundred yards away was the barn and chicken coop. This was home and to this day my parents still live there and all the kids except me aren’t far away from them. Yes I’m the black sheep or as they put it, the god damn northerner.

Now if you have never used an outhouse you have missed out on so much lol. You have no idea how to appreciate a bathroom indoors until in mid January, 9pm at night; snowing and you have to go so bad you know you will NEVER make it till morning. At 5 years old I would get the oil lantern and well, go the bathroom in the outhouse. Damn that was cold lol, really cold BUT, in the winter, it didn’t smell which the ONLY bonus to it being winter was the lack of smell!!!

At age 5 I thought I’d go to school with my brother and sisters but, the luck was on my side and they started busing from Sandy Ridge to Coeburn. It was an hour ride each way down of the mountain on the bus but just worth the trip. You have no idea how I dodged a bullet by that one simple thing. My fondest memory of going to Coeburn schools, the indoor bathrooms. Yes, see, the two room school although only a couple miles away had outhouses also. We learned to hold it, especially in the winter till we got to school.

Coeburn High School

Now life as a hillbilly has its short falls yes but it also has huge advantages. We had a huge garden, a little over 2 acres and we all had to work in that but we always had fresh vegetables and all the extras were stored in the dairy. We froze, pickled, canned, and preserved everything.  We raised our own pigs and every fall we would kill them and have pork and sausage till the following fall because in the spring we would get another couple of pigs and start over. Chickens well, eggs every day and if one didn’t lay eggs for a few days, that was dinner. We had a couple of cows and a horse.

Not my dad but you get the point

By age 9 my dad had moved up in the company he was working for and started to make a lot more money so we started to get things in our house. First thing my dad did was to add 2 rooms onto the house and at the same time added plumbing and heating, all in the same year. He had the frame done and my dad, my older brother and yup me, we had to finish it to save money and although I can honestly say I did not know what the hell I was doing, my day knew and taught me and he only showed you something once, you were expected to know it after that.

When I was like 10 or 11 they installed an in ground pool with a diving board and well, life changed dramatically for us in a very short period of time. To go from having nothing, using an outhouse and buck stoves to having everything and a pool within a matter of 2 years was just crazy. You do learn to appreciate what you have though and we worked our asses off to insure everything was taken care of. Pool was clean, garden, animals fed, morning and night, homework, and yet we still had time to go out and play with our friends and get into trouble.

Here is a truly funny ass story but every word of it is true. Several of us kids had pretty much taken our fathers chainsaws and axes and gone deep into the woods and built a log cabin. A big one too but we had made the door in the top instead of the side to help keep people, grownups, and animals out. It had a small stove for heat and an old bed someone had taken from god knows where.

Well, several months had gone by and none of us had gone out to our cabin because the weather had been crap, snow, slush, rain, just not worth trudging through the fields and the woods to get there. Once it cleared a little we decided, hey, we are going to stay overnight in our cabin, hell, we put in a stove for a reason so let’s do it.  We grabbed our bikes and gear, met at the store and off we went to our cabin.

We ditched our bikes behind old man Walton’s barn and headed off. When we got to the cabin, climbed up and we handed off each other’s gear to the roof and then lowered into the inside. Right away Regan said, hey someone’s been here, it is way to clean in here and he was asking us and none of us had been there. So the search was on and it didn’t take long to locate several items, some porn magazines and a few other things and one big one, a huge dildo! What the hell was this thing doing there for god’s sake?

 OK so, we sat around for hours laughing and trying to figure out who, how, or why this stuff was there and if they were going to come back looking for it. As kids, the porn magazines were of course a bonus but the toys, especially the big rubber dildo was used to torture each other, throwing it at each other in the night and doing what kids do.

So, the next morning we left our cabin after setting a few little snags to trip anyone up that might go near our cabin in hopes they would complain so we could find out who it was. Well Regan brought along the big toy and as we were crossing old man Walton's field he went up behind a cow and doing what kids do, shoved it up the cow, yup you guessed it, the cow took off running and howling. So here we all were trying to catch this cow and retrieve this huge dildo because we could not imagine old man Walton and what he would say if he found one of his cows with this thing shoved up its ass.

Finally after running around ½ this frigging pasture chasing this cow it fell out, whew, crisis averted!!! So Regan pick it up, walked down to the pond and washed it off and we proceeded to our bikes. When we got to our bikes Regan was like dude, give me the tape and he taped the dildo standing up between the handlebars of his bike. As we would ride this thing swayed back and forth and it was the most historical thing you have ever seen. A kid, about 11 with this huge dildo taped to his handlebars swaying back and forth.

About a mile or so down the road there was a car coming which to us made everything even more hysterical and as the car passed us and were in tears laughing, they slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop. OMG it was Regan's mom, she jumped out of the car, walked over to him, snatches the huge dildo from his handlebars knocking him and his bike over, then grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to her car, throwing them both it the back seat and driving off. We were in shock, she never said a word at all, nothing but she was obviously pissed.

We took his bike to my house and for the next several days none of use saw him. When we did I can honestly say I laughed so hard I pissed myself. It turns out, Regan's older sister was the one who had been at our cabin and all that stuff and the huge dildo she had taken there BUT, his sister had stolen it from his mother who had been looking for it for weeks and then it turns up on her son’s handlebars. I still laugh to this day about that. One of the best memories of growing up hillbilly!

More to follow but that is a start to growing up hillbilly!