My mother and father divorced when I was 3 years old. We were living in Baltimore, MD at the time, as were other family members that had moved there during WWII. After the divorce, Mom brought me back home to live in Wallins. I never really knew my Father. I never saw him again after that, or had any contact with him.
Like many other kids of the time, I was raised by my Mom with the help and support of my grandparents. My grandfather, Stoke Osborne, was the only father I ever knew. I called him "Poppy." He was a larger than life character, known by most people in Harlan County. He was the elected 5th District Magistrate, and served in that capacity for many years until his death in 1960. I was 14 years old at the time. It was a crushing blow to lose him. I somehow thought that he would never die. But he did, and this left a huge hole in my life.
I would follow him around on his daily travels. He had an office in the old bank building on the second floor. Whenever he would see anyone on the street, his trademark greeting was, "Tell It, Tell It."
I also got to know all the hiding places for the bottles that he conveniently hid out of my grandmother's sight. He had the taste for an occasional nip of strong drink. She would not allow alcohol in her house.
My grandmother, Martha Blanton Osborne "Marthie", was a fine Christian woman, and a member of the Wallins Baptist Church. As most of you know, most Southern Baptist are teetotalers. Thus, if there were to be any drinking, it would not be in her house.
My grandfather deferred to my grandmother's wishes when it came to any matters around the house. He may have been the head of the house, but she ran the day to day operation. I only saw him one time when he appeared to have had too much to drink. I think this was when he and Pearl Hensley, his close friend and constant companion, returned from a trip across the mountain. Pearl and Poppy would make these occasional trips across the mountain to electioneer, as he would call it. Grandma put him directly to bed. He woke up a few hours later at dusk and thought that it was morning. I never before or again saw him in that condition.
Poppy would strategically place a few bottles around the homeplace. I always followed close on his heels, so I was in position to see where he hid them. They were in the pump house, chicken house and the coal shed to name a few places. Harlan County was a dry county during those years. I think that he had a lot of his friends who dropped by from time to time for a little taste.
Poppy was an interesting character. In his younger years he had made a couple of trips to Africa. He worked for a logging company at the time. I remember being enthralled with some of the stories of his travels. On one of the trips, he was a passenger on the sister ship of the Titanic. I later found out that the ship was the Olympic. He said that they received the distress calls from the Titanic as it was sinking, but could not get there before it sank. He said that they picked up some of the survivors who were in the boats.
Family was always very important to me as a kid. My mom had seven brothers and sisters. Listed in age order as follows: Sylus, Snowden, Clyde, Arnold, Ruby, Harold and Lowell. Mom was next to last. Some of them lived out of town, but would frequently come home with all their kids for visits. There always seemed to be enough sleeping room, no matter how many were there at the same time. The downside to this was that many times I had to sleep at the foot of the bed, or between two grownups. This was not a pleasant experience. If you have not had the privilege, you won't know what it was like.
The extra people also impacted other things. All the family could not be accommodated at one time for meals. So the grownups ate first while the kids waited for them to finish. We were instructed to go outside and play until they called us to dinner. It was very hard to do this, as we were smelling the good smells from the kitchen. I know that this will sound foreign to most of us today. I think most parents today make sure that the kids eat first, before seating the adults. I can also remember getting stuck with doing the dishes for the meal. After all, the adults had to take a nap after a large meal.
Other things, which required some coordination, were bathroom facilities. We had an indoor toilet, but were not allowed to use it except for emergencies, because it would not flush very well. We also had an outhouse which we were instructed to use. This outhouse was located inside the chicken yard. You had to open a large wooden swing gate to enter. You then had to navigate the last twenty yards through "hostile rooster" territory. I would keep a stick near the gate to help defend against attack by the barnyard rooster who was protecting his harem. I remember that we wound up having rooster for dinner after one of my uncles was attacked. Inside of this fence we also had our smokehouse and pigpen.
Bathtime was an adventure. Nothing like 2nd or 3rd water in a number two washtub. For those of you that have never experienced that, let me explain. Bathtime for kids was mostly accomplished in the kitchen where it was the warmest. Usually the heat was provided by a wood-cooking stove. Water was heated on the stove and poured into the tub to an acceptable temperature. The washtub size was important. It was hard, but possible, to get your legs folded up enough to get into a number two tub. The number one was impossible, and the number three not practical because it would require too much water. If you were the first one bathed, you got clean water. I hated to be the second or third to use the same water. But hot water was hard to come by, so you just added a little fresh and inserted another kid.
We had a couple of grates in our house that we used during really cold weather. For those of you who have never seen these I will explain. Older houses were built with small grates, (miniature fireplaces), which we usually burned coal in. Some people may have used wood. But coal was available and burned very hot. I loved sitting in front of the grate, feeling the warmth and light of the fire, while I used a poker to poke through the openings in the grate. Many evenings were spent in front of the fire exchanging stories or playing games. At bedtime we would bank the fire. This was a process using coal and ashes to dampen the fire and keep it going until we woke up in the morning. We would then shake and poke the embers in order to get the fire restarted without having to build it all over again. This was very important when you had to get out of a warm bed into a cold room. It was not a very pleasant experience trying to build a fire from scratch when you were cold and shaking. In either case, you really didn't want to be the first person to get up in the morning.
It was such fun for me to get to play with all my cousins. There were so many things to do. In the summer time we could get out and about. Our house had a big porch on three sides with a swing. It was also fun to sit on the porch during a rainstorm. You could feel the dampness without getting wet, while smelling the fragrance of the rain.
We had a large bush at the end of the porch. It was a brightly colored bush with blooms that attracted hummingbirds. It was not unusual to see dozens of birds at one time on this bush. I enjoyed watching them so much. I was fascinated by the speed of their wings. Today it is unusual to see more than a couple of birds that are periodically attracted to a sweet water feeder on our patio.
In our yard were six large mature water maples. They provided much needed shade in the summer, but the leaves which fell required much raking in the fall. You should have seen the enormous amount of leaves they generated. In the fall I would rake up the leaves and throw them over the fence into our garden. This created a large pile that was suitable for jumping into. The only problem with this was getting those scratchy leaves under our clothes. This was so much fun. I wonder if kids still do this?
My boyhood years were entirely shaped by family. My grandma also had a lot of brothers and sisters. I think her mom, who was called "Mammy", had thirteen children. It was a family joke that Mammy liked men, as she had three husbands, but didn't like children. Good thing that this was before birth contol. Most of the siblings were sisters. I think that there were four brothers. Two died in their youth. One brother, Millard, was shot and killed by his sister's husband. This caused a lot of bad feelings against this sister from that day forward. Another one of the brothers, John, was released from prison because he had terminal cancer. He died a short time after being released. He had been sent to prison for killing a man whom he suspected was seeing his wife.
The other great aunts that I remember were as follows: Sarah who we called Aunt Diddle, Vestina, Vina, Ida, Dora, Nora, Suda and Shirley. All the names were pronounced as though they ended in "ie". So what you had was Vestinie, Vinie, Idie, Dorie, Norie and Sudie. They were all characters. The two aunts that I was closest to were Diddle and Vinie. I remember Diddle as a big woman with a very loud voice. When she came to stay, I especially liked for her to cook. As I remember, she made very good gingerbread. Vinie was married to Carlo Brock. They raised a large family, then helped raise a large family of grandkids. They always reminded me of Ma and Pa Kettle.
My Grandma, Martha or "Marthie" as she was called was a very strong woman. I remember her before she had a devastating stroke which left her paralyzed and bedridden. She was a very good cook. I remember a homemade white layer cake with white icing that she made from scratch.
She was a worker. In those days, "A Woman's Work Was Never Done." You had wash day and ironing day. There was cooking and canning. It took the participation of all to get the work done.
For the almost 10 years that my grandma was bedridden, she was cared for by my mom. She took very good care of her, evidenced that in all those years she never developed a bedsore until the very last days of her life. This is very unusual due to the fact that she was unable to turn herself, thus intensifying the pressure on her backside.
I remember that my grandma would fill out her church envelope, which she sent by me to the collection plate each week at the Wallins Baptist Church. God mercifully took her home in 1963.
This was the year of an intense flood in Wallins. We had 4 1/2 feet of water inside our house. When the water rose and we had to evacuate our house, Muscles Osborne carried her out in his arms. She stayed at her sister Vinie's house until she could be brought back into the house. I mentioned Muscles previously in a story listing him as a town personality.
