B. Terry Ratliff

B. Terry Ratliff, Artist, Woodworker and Chair Maker; Floyd County Kentucky: 

“I’ve been making chairs for over 35 years, maybe longer if you count it out. I was inspired to make chairs when I went to buy some chairs on Conley Fork of Ball in Knott County. I went to buy some chairs off of ole Irvine Messer. He pulled a spiral bound notebook off the wall. He told me “I have a chair or a basket I made in every state in the union’. Then he showed me the book. ‘These people here are still waiting on a chair or a basket’. I bought the chairs then thought that there might be something to this.

I was raised a poor white boy here in Appalachia. At 12 years old, mom and dad moved to Indiana. It’s what takes most folks away from here; dad needed a job. He worked in factories up there. The coal industry has been boom and bust, has been since it first started. You would be rolling in it in April and shot down in May. In the forties it was strikes, unions getting established. Lately it’s been, what they claim, environmental cutbacks, but it's about natural gas, the cheapness and availability is what a lot of it is.

In a way, it was a lot of hardship, but in another it was a growing experience. I got to go to high school up there. I got a good taste of prejudice; I guess that’s a good word for it. I was the little hillbilly boy. Hillbillies are the only people you can still make fun of, poke fun at. They (other students) made derogatory statements and I was put down. 

From Indiana, I got an opportunity to go to school down here and I came back. I got the opportunity to go to the community college and then transferred to UK. I took it on as a job and finished in four years. Got my bachelor's degree and worked a few years in community mental health here in Eastern Kentucky. Not long after that, during the Reagan years, they had a big cutback and I lost my job. (Mental health) is also a boom-bust business, they empty the institutions out for a while then fill them back up. There is no easy solution to the mental heath problems that the country has.

I got laid off and started building.

I had been kinda helping a fellow build a log house and the job was about up. At that time, I started building my own log house and I started making furniture. I called it Smurf furniture. Big long slab tables with legs on them. Looked like something on those little Smurf cartoons. Then I was encouraged to begin making hickory bottom chairs along the lines of what Herb did. I changed it up just a little bit by strictly using hand tools. I didn’t use any power tools for the first eight years I was in business. 

I only used a shaving horse, a drawknife and after eight years, I began using a drill press to make the holes in the chairs to help out a little bit. And now, after 35 years I’m still making handmade chairs, just the way they have been made for thousands of years before the machines took over. I learned from oral traditions. I got out there and I wanted to do it so bad I felt I had to. The more people that told me I couldn’t, the more I wanted to do it. I took that as a challenge. 

I take pride in being from here. There are so many good things about this culture, from having a good work ethic to having heritage, to all the special things that set us apart from the rest of the world, from dancing to music to the way people treat one another. All in all people are good to each other around here and that’s why I choose to live here. I live here by choice. I think I could live about anywhere but I still live right here where I was born and where I got raised a lot. I’m still getting raised at 60 years old. 

But I feel like I live here by choice. A lot of it is because who the people are and how everybody treats one another. There’s bad apples in every bunch. I think there are a lot fewer bad apples here (in the mountains). I think that if you just greet someone with a smile and stick your hand out they will give you the shirt off their back. If they thought you were in need they would do everything they could to help you out. It ain’t that way everywhere. 

Since the war on poverty we have had folks come down here to help these poor Appalachians out. They come from Minnesota and Wisconsin among other places. They used to bring them out to my house to visit. My house was a treat. I fed them fresh lemonade and homemade cookies. Ever so often I would ask them, I’d say, don’t your people up there need a little help? You think we could have some missionaries here go up there and help your people out some? I don’t know how many people got it. Not sure who got it but I would like to get a group of people together and go up there, send them up to Milwaukee, send them up to Wisconsin and help those poor people up there out because they’d make you think there wasn’t any up there. It just sets a little funny to me. 

I’ve worked wood long enough to know it flows right up out of the ground like the flow of a stream. If there is an adversity there, if someone’s tacked bob wire to it, if there is a big rock there close to it, it will swallow it, surround it and make it part of it. In ways it makes that tree stronger. I feel the same way about adversity, about negative stuff that comes into your life… It’s hard to do. Your first instinct is to get the hell away from it but if you can, embrace it, deal with it. It can become part of you and make you stronger. If you allow yourself, you will grow over it and you will be stronger when you are done with it. You won't be weaker the next time it comes around. It won’t hurt near as bad."

Sharon Dixon Ison

Sharon Dixon Ison, Insurance Agent, Roots in Perry County (Little Leatherwood) and Letcher County (Isom), Lives in Lexington, Kentucky: 

“I was born in Northern Indiana. Lived there until I was 14. My dad left the mountains to seek work instead of working in a coal mine. He worked in the steel mills in Gary, Indiana. We would go back and forth, to and from the mountains. He would get laid off. We would move back and forth several times. When I was 14, we moved to Lexington, Kentucky. It was great because we were closer to home (in the mountains) to our people. 

When we lived in Indiana, mom and dad would take off in a heartbeat; just throw stuff into suitcases to come back to the mountains. I can remember taking off in the dead of winter, one lane traffic out of Chicago, on 421, snowy, blizzard conditions. For us, it was a 16 to 18 hour drive to get back home to the mountains. We would go down after dad got off work on Fridays and come back on Sundays so he could go to work. Stay the weekend, then come back north. These trips back and forth, mom and dad did them like they were just down the street. They didn’t think anything about it. 

We always enjoyed coming home. We tried to come home as much as possible, throughout the year, holidays, summer etc. When we left the mountains to head back up, it was always emotional for both my mom and my dad, for us as a family. They hated departing; they hated to leave the mountains. They always missed home. But, at that time there wasn’t any work here other than the coal mines. Leaving was always a difficult time, but you always looked forward to the next time. 

I always looked forward to coming back. Both my grandmas would make fresh cornbread, had homemade butter, fresh milk, chicken and dumplings, fried pies, fresh vegetables and things like that. They just kept cooking and cooking (when we were here). It was such a good time.

I remember as a young girl helping my grandmother with her laundry using her wringer washing machine. Pushing the clothes through there. It was always fun. It was always good and happy times. 

My maternal grandmother Sparkman was a midwife going all over Eastern Kentucky delivering babies. My grandfather Sparkman was a miner. They also raised a big garden, had six kids. They had to supplement their living off their crops, the food they put away. They raised hogs, chickens, goats etc. as well.

My paternal grandparents, the Dixons; my grandfather Dixon was a schoolteacher. He taught grades one through eight in a one-room schoolhouse several places in Eastern Kentucky. He would leave and be gone for a couple of weeks, teaching school. He would come home on the weekends when he could. They had twelve children. My grandmother Dixon would take care of the kids and the farm. She would make sure all the jobs were done. I heard that she worked like a man. All my grandparents did. They all worked really hard.

My grandfather and his brother were also known to make moonshine. It was well know to be pretty good stuff. My grandmother would put it on horseback around her saddle and cover it with her dress, riding across the mountain to Cumberland, Kentucky, Harlan County to sell it. The federal people wouldn’t bother a woman, wouldn’t look up her dress, and wouldn’t pull her dress up. She could cart quite a bit of moonshine. They did get caught once, but they did pretty well with it.

Even though I now live in Lexington, this is where my heart is. I want my children to know my people. I don’t want them to meet them at the end of a casket. It is important that my children, my grandchildren, know about the mountains, the culture, where their roots are. If I don’t tell them, nobody will. I don’t want them to learn about the region through all this distorted stuff (through the media). I want them to know what it really is. I want them to know that it is their people. We are a peculiar people. We cherish holding on to our traditions. That’s part of who makes us who we are. Even if people leave here, for the most part they don’t forget. They know where they come from and I think that is so important in life. I just want my children to know their people. I want them to know they are from somewhere that cares. I want them to keep that connection with our people and home.“

Alex Bynum

Alex Bynum, Age 12, Student; Sunshine, Kentucky:

“I love to play with my friends, swim, hunt, play in the mountains. I’m an only child. I was really sad when my granny died. I was nine. She was 86. I’ve gotten over it now.

My dad stays at home now. He had a stroke. He is 52. He’s always there for me. He was an X-ray surgeon. My mom works. She takes care of people, people who are sick in a nursing home. My mom is nice, honest and works hard.

I wanna play in the NFL, play in the NBA and race NASCAR. But I wanna play basketball most. My hero is Stephen Curry. When I retire from the NBA I’m gonna drive NASCAR. When I make all that money I’m gonna give it to the homeless.

Coal mining? It keeps the lights on. 

Have you ever ate snake before? It’s good. We put it on the grill. Snake tastes like Chinese food. My friends think it is nasty.“

Dakota Mullins

Dakota Mullins, Age 18, Does Odd Jobs and Attends Music Festivals; Hurricane Mountain, Wise County Virginia:

“I grew up in Camp Jacob, close to a place called South of The Mountain in Virginia. It spills right over into Kentucky. Then I lived near Coeburn, Virginia and now Wise, Virginia.

I love Appalachian food, good fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, chicken and dumplings, beans and cornbread. 

Music is my roots and that of most folks I know. Traditional Appalachian music has been a part of us for hundreds of years. It is a way to connect with your elders. That interests me. I play a little guitar but I (mainly) play the drums. I play classic and southern rock with an Appalachian twist. You just throw it in there. You gotta know how to do it to have that (Appalachian) feel to it.

I love hunting and fishing. Living in the mountains is free, get out into the woods and be by yourself. 

Outsiders believe we are pretty wild people, uncivilized but this place is in our blood and we have to protect what we have. We are not what they think we are. I love it here and I’ll stay here until I die.

I’m proud to be a hillbilly. You can’t criminalize the word. It’s not about a person but a people. It’s about where we are from, the hills. We live more off the grid. We rely on fewer resources than others do (outside the area). I’ve had so many fun times growing up here. I love to fish, Bass mainly and Catfish. And camping out, I love it too. Just go where you want to, set up and be one with nature. It’s who we are. We aren’t from (City) buildings; we are from nature, the wild.

We are people of the hills. 

We are hillbillies.”