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 8th 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 …
