Livvy’s pinning day

photos Vic gave me

Grandbabies

Vickie asked me a little while ago about recent pix of grandbabies and I said that I would post new pix when things settled down a bit.  Well they’ve been settled for a bit now but I just forgot it, sorry bout that, so I’ll do it now…

Part Four!!!

Gail or someone asked me for a date that these were made, I can’t remember the exact year but it was a year or 2 before Grandma and Grandpa died….

I was always the meanest one in the family, and of course I was the baby, I never remember my daddy whipping my but twice, he whipped me one time for putting the dog in a coal sack and he whipped me again for stealing his pipe out and smoking it and sneaking up in the crack of a rock I was about ten. We had a big ole yeller dog we called him, Collin   Up in that branch over where Lihugh Feltner and them lives well it had a coal bank about halfway up there and the old man, they always took their corn to the mill then, carried it in a sack, well his got a little hole in it, it started leaking out the mill and said now boys I bought me a new mill sack, I’ll give you this one for a coal sack, well we went to the coal banks, that ole big yeller dog followed us way up there and they was a big tide in the creek and about from here to the shop down there was, right off below where the mouth of where the coal bank was, it was so steep you’d have to hang to bushes to climb up, you couldn’t climb up and it was right muddy and big tide in the creek and I said “Lawton” I said “lets have some fun” he said “well how?” I said “lets put ole Col in this sack” he said “alright”, we worked about half and hour and got that big yeller hound dog in that sack and tied him up. Wouldn’t set up and he’d nod around and couldn’t see where to go and he wouldn’t giving us enough fun and I got me a stick about that long and I got jobbing that dog in that sack and he got to jumping that high with that sack and all jump and jump and jump and right over that bank he went and into the creek and was a drowning and buddy I scooted right down on my backend and right into that hole of water about that deep, I had a little ole knife If I’d of cut the sack cross ways the old man might have believed me, but cut it length ways, and didn’t have sense enough to jerk it upon the bank and let the water out, cut it length ways big enough to let that big dog out, (can’t understand what he says here) went back the house and old man said boys what happened to that sack, well I reckon it was just rotten and tore, brother he give us a goodun, he beat us just about to death for putting that dog in that sack.  And then crazier thing yet, Mother had some, she got a hold of some big old plasters,  (some kind of plasters) was about like sandpaper, and they’s adhesive on one side and they was a cure all, of course they wouldn’t cure nothing, they’d use it for everything backach, bellyach,  headach,  they’d stick one on and it would stick there a month if you didn’t pull it off , in the lower room, we had 2 big log rooms, in one room we burnt coal and in the other room we burnt wood, and Rellie and Net was big ole girls bout like, oh Net I guess was about like Kathy Lynn’s oldest girl and Rellie was bigger, Well mother knit our socks to come above our knees, but we wear em  till come holes in the sides of em and big as the palm of your hand while she was knitting us some more. Them girls was standing around the fire and I’d slip around and tear me off a piece of that plaster, bout like a band-aid, and turn my back to the fire and when it got sizzling hot I’d dab it the naked spot on them girls legs, (can’t understand what he says here) but the girls would yell at him saying “you little nigger” I bet I’ve heard that 200 times, well little nigger would wait until everything settled down and then come back for another round”, I’ll tell you what, I never remember my daddy whipping  me but twice, but mother, I bet you until I was fourteen, gave me three ever day and they was bad ones to, and she didn’t give me narry one I didn’t need.  Well she went off to town and the road went down into the creek and you could see from here to Ruth’s, well when she’d go to town I’d start a fight and we’d fight till she come back, well we’d see her coming and we’d kindly straighten up everything and lie about it. And we had two big ole rooms with a kitchen built onto it, and Rellie was in there getting dinner, she’s about grown then, 12 or 13, and I went in there and started a ruckuss with her and I hit her with a stick of stove wood, she grabbed a broom and took right after me, and they was a big long porch on the lower side, and right by the evening sun, Mother had set a churn out there, churned up milk out there, and left it the dasher in it and wrapped a rag around it to keep the flys and gnats and thangs out of it to let it warm up, had to warm to a certain degrees, if it was to cold, she’d set it in the sun to let it warm up to make butter and if it was to hot she’d draw up a tub of water out of the well and set it in that. Well she’d set it out there and went off to town and I whacked Rellie with a stick of stove wood and she took up after me with that broom, and the floor, the porch floor had been floored with green lumber and had cracks in it that big and it was up bout that high, well she’s making a hop for me and I run thru the house and her right after me and I run to that porch I didn’t have time to detour but I could straddle the churn but I couldn’t straddle the dasher and I took it over, right out and back under the porch it went I looked like a drowned rat, covered with ever bit of that churned milk, but now we lied about that and told her the dog turned it over. Man I was a bad (he laughs) now Lawton, Lawton was hateful but he was always sluggish , (grandpa laughs again) I got into about everything that was got into…         

Part Three!!

and people use to in the spring of the year they use to go fish, with a big pine torch, u know what I’m talking about, what we call rich pines, they’d have slivers of it that long as big as broom handles and they’d split them up and use that for a light they opossum hunted with em, coon hunted with em, fished with em and everything with that kind of a light. The first coal oil lamp ever I seen, my sister Bertie bought it after she got big enough, school teacher, I guess I was twelve year old.  I was about twelve year the first bed springs I ever seen too, they’d eat a hole in your feather bed if u wouldn’t careful, your bed under it, your straw bed. No people they hit it hard in a way, but in a way they didn’t. Well they didn’t know no different because everybody lived the say way, of course they’s a few people that lived around Hyden that lived better, but what I’m talking about was the country people. All the country people lived just a like, all just alike and worked, and they’s some that wouldn’t work and they liked to starve to death.  We lived by a family, I won’t say who, over younder on Hurts Creek that my mother kept them up for years, if it hadn’t been for that a, she’d give em meat and give em everything, and people then would raise their stuff and they’d have barrels full, pickle beans, crout, and my mother would put up a, she’d put up apple butter and she made cushah butter and she put it up in big tubs and just tie a cloth over, it’d would never ruin, and I never seen a fruit jar either until I was about ten year old they’d get these big ole tubs that lard and candy and so on would come in, big wooden tubs, great big thangs and she’d get them at town and she done her canning in em, you might say and they used a white powder about like shoe box, a shoe polish box of canning powder and they’d put them powders in there, couldn’t seal them up you know, they didn’t have fruit jars, they’d put em in those big tubs and use canning powder and they’d keep.  Back then they wouldn’t no such thang as an apple orchard a failing, no sir, it bore ever year and peaches bore ever year. They won’t do it now, and I’ve seen peach trees out in the woods, the here old Indian peaches they call em, red peach, small, I’ve seen em out in thickets where they growed themselves and boy they’d be loaded, and now you can’t raise fruit atall. But the reason, I’ll tell you one thang, I guess was the reason, back when I was a boy, well, I’ll say back from 25 year ago, when winter come like this you could look for a snow from about December until about the first of April.  We don’t have none, I’ll tell you something else, what you heard now, I’ve heard that different times, well so and so, fer ten years ago this was the worst winter in history of Kentucky, well they just don’t know and I’ll tell you why, we didn’t have no news papers, or no thermometers, and me and Lawton use to trap, we’d trap for opossums, and skunks and everthang, and the creek would be froze over until you could see no water, just looked just like a highway, just level ice and a, my uncle Calab Morgan (not sure of the name here) Roy and Pearl was a working for him one week they’d work up logs and he had six big fat hogs in the barn that froze to death. In 1917, in 1912 and 1917, two of the worst winters that was ever in the mountains of Kentucky. Why we ain’t had no winters, the winters for the past 15 or 20 years is farming weather…

Wedding photo’s

Just A Note

To let everyone know that the wedding was a success and the bride was beautiful, but then u all ready knew that. We liked to passed out from the heat, and it was a little unorganized, but other wise it went great.  Will blog more later and post more pix…Luv to all

Part Two…

and when I was a child and the old court house, we lived here where that white brick is, I’d go down the creek, sissy was always gone, and I’d go done the creek a fishing and I’d slip off and go to town and play marbles in that old court house yard on Sundays me and them town boys and it just went on like that, well it went on like that until they was highways built. I don’t know thangs are changed, and a man that had a wagon and team he was kindly up in, to haul goods with, he was sort of up in (Grandpa laughs here) the higher class. Yeah they hauled goods from London for years and years and years and then when the railroad come up from the North Fork River why they went to hauling them from Crippen,(can’t make out what he says here) Viper, Hazard and different places.  But a, I’ll tell ya back then I never seen a back of fertilizer until I was nearly a grown man and I remember my mother and dad had a fuss and scream over her planting to much beans tear his corn down. Now you can’t raise them, anything you put in the grown would grow and every body raised a big cane patch, big soggem patch, and they raised everything they used, and the woods run full of hogs, I remember my daddy killed about 9 big hogs one winter. And people had plenty work and people would work raise plenty of corn, plenty beans, raise a big garden, raise everything you could use, but now they was a few people around us that wouldn’t do nothing, they wouldn’t work for nothing. But now it went on that way for well about a, lets see about 19and this road was built when Frances, she was born right when they was building this road through to Hazard, that’s been about 65 year ago. But theys about a, theys about 30year of my lifetime that we lived just like I was telling you and everybody else lived the same way, a bathroom nothing like that was never heard of, oh they had outside toilets, when they had any atall some people didn’t have nothing atall. And I went to school, I never went to school nowhere but right over younder where Jr. Johnson lives, theys a school house there, Jesse Johnson finally bought it and tore it down and that’s the only place I ever went to school and I finished the 8^th grade 75 year ago. And us boys all we could do was take to the mountains that’s all the recreation we had, didn’t have nothing else, didn’t have no automobiles, no shows no nothing we just run wild now that was all they was to it, that’s been a long, long time ago.

 

Talking about the Town of Hyden:

 

Oh it was about with the scattering , it’s about third big as it is now I guess, and had old wooden streets board walks, and the first brick building was built in Hyden, well two of the first ones built about the same time, is that one down there right below the Dimestore and that little brick building right next to Rockhouse,  my uncle built that for them, and that’s where the old post office use to be, Green Morgan and Jesse Maggard built that and that brick was, that first brick built in Hyden was in 1901 that’s  two year before I was born. They never paved the streets of Hyden until way after this road was built here, no they was muddy streets, the road went under, went right down the river bank and come up between the Drugstore and the Dimestore, and the streets were so bad that they had big rocks cut out oh just big enough so a wagon could travel them from the courthouse over to the stores. Up this left hand side of the creek was lined with stores, old box buildings they was several stores in Hyden. They didn’t have no need for nothing that tended to cars and so on, Rachel’s grandpa had a blacksmiths shop right out there about where the, about where the Library sets, old muddy streets, he had a blacksmith shop there and he repaired watches, had a little jewelry shop below the road in a little red house. And right, out thru the streets there youn side of the bank where it’s all level there, theys a big deep, u could see up on the left theys a hollar that come down there, where the creek would come down.  No you couldn’t walk thru the streets and them board walks yous liable to fall and get crippled theys all rotted out and it was that way until they brought this highway thru here from Hazard. No thangs have changed a lot, and after I got big enough, (Grandma says something right here, and Grandpa said she’s talking to somebody, I can hear her but can’t understand what it is she’s saying) after I got big enough wear shoes I got one pair of brogan shoes, you never seen a pair, but all these old people know, about December wore them out about March. Use to go chestnut huntin and would have to wait until the frost dried, before I could, had to go barefooted and everybody else, all the poor people was in the same fix, but now they worked hard and they raised plenty of stuff but then, they just wouldn’t no, they just wouldn’t no money

I remember that mother would keep a basket hanging from the ceiling from the joists and she’d keep a basket up there with the tax money and matches in it, the first matches that come could poison a ground squirrel with it, the red headed one was poisoner then strictnine …

Grandpa!!!

Several years ago I get some things on tape from Grandpa, Dad, Mom and Uncle Roy.  I had tried once before to translate them to paper and for some reason didn’t get anywhere much, but I’ve decided to try it again and I thot I would share with all of you what I have gotten done so far.  This is written just the way that Grandpa talked on the tape.

I was born in 1903 down yonder in Wendover, I was born in one room log house and they had kitchen blocked up with boards because it didn’t have no door in it.  And as far back as I can remember, I was 18 months old, we had a little black dog and we called him major he’s about a half hound, and he run upon the hill there was walking path coming across the hill coming from up Tugs-point down that branch, and there was some dogs up in the  hill that jumped on him and feller come along and killed him. And I’ll tell you how come me to know that I was 18months old, they drug him off down to the yard and was standing out there looking at him and I was to little to walk out there and my sister Bertie carried  me out there on her hip,  and I can see that there round bloody hole behind that dogs fore lag just like I was looking it right now, they said I was 18 months old.  I tell you something else, back when I was child up till you got about 3 year old both girls and boys wore a dress, big long shirt they called it but it was a dress.  And I remember mother made me a dress out of something like plaid, alton I guess, and I remember it just as well as if I was looking at right today. It was great big plaid blue, brown and green and I thot more of that dress then you would a Cadillac now.  Now we always had plenty of food and good beds, but had no cloths and no money and my dad logged all of the time, and I was 7,8 or 10 years old before I ever seen a coal oil lamp, we burnt pine, and my daddy was a Baptist preacher of course and he’d make me set and hold them pine lights by the fire to read the bible by every night, and I get lazy and let that pitch drop down on my bare feet and buddy I’d bought kick the chimey down. Yeah we always had plenty to eat because you could raise anything then but we didn’t have no cloths and no money, and finally we moved over here to Hurts Creek about where Gillis Morgan’s house is now, that white brick, of course you know I built that in later years. We moved there and we was rentin then and all we could then was, us boys, all we could do then was something mean, we’d run wild sheep, and wild hogs wouldn’t no huntin laws and everybody had a fence, they’d fence up everything even their gardens and I was 14 or 15 years old before I ever seen a set of under ware and my mother would make me britches out of the bigger boys and my daddy’s old parts that were good, that they had wore out, they just come down above your knees. Then my daddy was a farmer and a logger and back them days, I don’t guess you’ve seen a raft, but these old people have, it was the only way to get their timber to market was to tie them together, as long as from here to that road over younder and pull them down to the river and when the tide comes take some of them to Frankfort and some to Beatyville, where ever they could sale them you know they had sawmills down there and a dam to catch them.  And why they run timber down that river until 1930 something, I remember Mary Breckenridge said that she set on her porch and watched 75 rafts go down the river in one day, there wasn’t no highways and roads were just good enough till you could haul a wagon over them, that was all. And the people they worked hard and they lived hard in one way and they lived a lot better then they do now in the other, they didn’t have no newspaper’s or radio’s and all they knowed was something the neighbors told them and they didn’t know nothing to tell them. A feller could be dead 5 or 6 miles from here and you wouldn’t know it for 6 months.  And we all worked hard but we lived hard in ways, now we had good beds and we had plenty of food, but we didn’t have no cloths or money to speak of.  Now I’ll tell you, my mother had oh I don’t know how many 75 to 100 head of sheep and she’d sheer her wool , now I’ll tell you how we had good beds, she’s sheer her wool and then they hauled goods from London in a wagon and it took 13 days to make the trip, and she’d send her wool to London and send it to Riverside woollen mills at Covington, and by the way I read about 10 years ago in something where that old Mill standing yet, and they’d work up her wool on the sheers and I’ve seen her with blankets stacked higher then you can reach in the corner of the house, big wool blankets, they wouldn’t no such thang as a living room, they’s all living rooms. And if the front room was big enough you’d have about 3 beds in it and I’ve seen her go out to the corn field and shuck corn half a day and shred them into strings with a fork then she’d cut that nub off of them then she’d put them in a big bed sheet and a big feather bed on top of it. And that was just the general run of the, of course they’s people around town that had more and lived different, but the people all out in the country lived just about the same way, they worked hard and in other words they just about raised what they used. My mother would preserve food in big barrels. She done her canning in big wooden lard or candy tubs.

 

And after the railroad come up North Fork river in 1912 I was just 9 years old, I can remember that too, well after it come up here they got to haullin they’re goods from Hazard and Viper and Krypton, oh they hauled them from, well they hauled from Hazard in wagons, over in that country in wagons, until they built this Highway then they started trucking them.  It took at least 2 days to go to Hazard and back, a day to get there and a day to get back, but now London is 55 miles from here, a man told me that he had, usually when they hauled from London they used oxen, steers, they’d use some mules, but mostly they used oxen because they was slow but could stand up under pressure. Roy Melton said, June Melton’s dad, he said he’d haul goods from London, and he said that the roads was so muddy and bad that he had drove all day and looked back and could see where he’d stayed the night before, that’s the reason it took so long.  And in the wintertime they’d come down hector like the road goes now except it didn’t go through the gap of the mountain and, in wintertime they’d haul goods up Redbird to the mouth of Big Creek on Ice.  Now I’ll tell you everything was slow, people now know to much, they didn’t know nothing then except what some neighbor told them and he didn’t know nothing to tell.  And they didn’t have no cars, no movies. They didn’t have nothing for recreation oh they’d meet down there at Hyden and have a ballgame every week-end, down right where the parking lot is now, down by the river and we’d go down there and watch them play ball…………

to be continued

Oops, sorry I forgot…

I’ve blogged now twice and forgot to tell u about Sheena, she’s having a girl, and if she doesn’t change her mind she’s planning on nameing it Kaden Nichole…just thot I’d let everyone know…luv u bye

 

CHILDREN!!!

It amazes me how ur children came make a lier out of u everytime, u expect it out of the little ones, but it doesn’t change to much once they r grown.  Sometimes I think they get out of the bed in the mornings and think “now what can I do today to make mommy lie”.  I so had my hopes up about Kristy, (could u tell from the last blog?), but of course that all feel thru today.  She took him back and she’s got it in her head that things r gonna get better, which they want.  Like I told her, Jason has it made, he can stay up there and do almost nothing but sit on the pc and play video games, and treat her however he wants too,  all because he knows that he came back and tell her some big sob story and promise her this and that, and she’ll welcome him back with open arms.  Can u tell that I’m very frustrated with her and the situation???  Carolyn I agree with u and Gail 100% Kristy does deserve better then that and we’ve all tried to tell her t hat but she won’t listen, all I can do is pray that she will open her eyes or that he really will change.  Oh well I just wanted to let u all know that I got my hopes up for nothing and I’ve learned my lesson, I’ll not post anything about them breaking up again until they’ve been broke up for a long time, if that every happens…Luv to all, hope u have a good week.