Summer Nichole

Summer Nichole, Age 22, Blacksmith in Training, Middlesboro, Kentucky:

“I don’t have a job. I’m staying at home with mom and dad. I’ve had seven hip surgeries. Been having them since I was sixteen. I had my first one the day after my sixteenth birthday. I was born with bi-lateral hips dysplasia; a birth defect, both hips dislocated when I was born. It’s getting closer to being better. 

I wanted to go to the National Guard or the Army but with all these surgeries I wouldn’t make it through basic training. It’s hard for me to walk and to sit for long periods of time. There aren’t many jobs I could actually do. I do work at odds and ends like mowing yards. It has to be something I do myself where I can take a break whenever I want to. I have to be my own boss.

During my spare time I do civil war reenactments, I’m into video games; watch a lot of TV, just relax.

I was born in Pineville, Kentucky. Grew up in Middlesboro.

I like living in the mountains. I grew up hunting. My dad always taught me if you know how to hunt you can survive about anything by yourself. I grew up fishing, camping. I practically spent most of my life in the woods. There is a lot of hunting. I like to go hunting; a lot of fishing too. I’m not gonna say I’m the best (At hunting) but I’m pretty good. I killed my first deer, maybe at sixteen. It weighed 70 pounds field dressed. I drug it out of the woods by myself. I’ve taught my little brother hunting and stuff. 

There are some really nice people here and some jerks. In my opinion there is a lot of stuff to do. If we didn’t have grocery stores city folk couldn’t live here. Us red necks, country people, we know how to out and go hunting, go fishing, raise our own gardens. We could survive. I love it here. More than likely I’ll be living here all my life.

(Outsiders) make fun of us. Frankly, if they don’t like how we live they shouldn’t come down here. The way we live and our attitudes make us different than them. We treat people better, southern hospitality.

Some people think hillbillies are inbred, nasty living. But if they came down here and actually got to know us they would realize we are smarter than they are. We can make anything out of anything. 

One of the saddest times in my life was when I thought I was gonna lose my dad. It was back in 2009. Other than that I’m always happy.

I’m just learning to be a blacksmith. With my hip injury I’ve not been able to do a lot of civil war reenactments. It’s a hot job but it is fun. I like having the ability to make stuff. I first started on a knife and got it too hot; melted it so I’m starting another one. My dad is teaching me all he knows. He’s a good teacher… sometimes.”

Don Pedi

Don Pedi, Renowned Old Time Mountain Dulcimer Player; Born in Boston, rambled around until he found his home in the mountains; Marshall, North Carolina:

“I got interested in traditional music through the folk revival in the sixties, Bob Dylan and all that stuff. There was a big festival in Newport, Rhode Island. I went to see Bob Dylan and all these kind of folks and ended up seeing these tradition musicians from out of the mountains. (After that) I just rambled around for a while. Met some fellows in Colorado and moved back to Asheville (NC) with them to play. 

I’ve lived most of my life in Appalachia. When we came in to North Carolina from Tennessee, across them mountains my whole energy shifted, like something settled in my soul. I felt like I was home for the first time in my life. That was 1973.

Learning to play the mountain dulcimer, I saw somebody do it, Richard Farina and his wife Mimi Farina, Joan Baez’s sister. They told me about Jean Ritchie. He had gotten his dulcimer from her. I went down to that Newport festival and saw her (Jean Ritchie) and these other traditional players and got real interested in that kind of music. 

When I moved back into the mountains, I moved back in with people who had lived there for generations. My neighbors to this day still plow with mules and horses. 

I just play the dulcimer. I don’t read a lick of music. I just play the dulcimer.

(Music in the mountains) is a source of pride, a source of self-betterment. It’s a history. These old songs talk of actual events. These songs are about real events that took place. That’s how they documented and kept the stories alive. A lot of the older music that came over from the British Isles, they kept that going and then it changed and developed into our music. (Mountain Folk) kinda shed the ornaments of that music and added the rhythms of African American music and Native American music. That’s how we got our version. 

The importance of it is and the differences of it, after World War II is when I see that it really changed. I realize the Bristol Sessions were 1927 but people were still playing pretty much traditional stuff. Some of the old time traditional musicians are still around but most of them are dying off now. There are pockets of people preserving the music the way they learned it from earlier generations. By this time, once bluegrass started, after World War II and the beginning of the folk revival it began to change. Musicians started to get themselves out of the way of the piece. My innovation is that I play them on the dulcimer, these fiddle tunes and such, but I’m not changing the tunes. Jean Ritchie for example, her innovation was to play counter melody to her voice because that just suited her. 

For the most part, the ballads and the old fiddle tunes people played them like they had learned from previous generations, often times family members. What changed with the folks revival and with bluegrass is that it now became ‘my performance of this piece, what can I do to change this and make it different?’. To me, the older way is what I cherish and preserve. 

I’ve carpentered, cooked, whatever it took to support my art habits. I do visual art and things but music is pretty much my livelihood. 

I think culture has to do a lot with your positioning, like class. I came up kinda poor, working people and when I moved down here I moved in with people who worked the land and got by. A lot of my neighbors were tenant farmers when they were younger. I have nothing against having money. I wouldn’t mind having more but it becomes a different way of looking at the world. 

The word hillbilly? It depends on how you take it, how it’s presented. I'm proud that somebody calls me a hillbilly. It’s a lifestyle that I embrace.”

Jennie Sams

Jennie Sams, Age 8, Harlan, Kentucky and Manchester, Kentucky:

“I live in two towns because my mom and dad have split custody of me. I kinda prefer Clay County because that’s where I grew up. 

I like living in the mountains because you get to hunt. (I’ve hunted) deer, squirrels, rabbits. 

My brother, he don’t live with us. My dad has a girlfriend and my mom; she just works. 

Sometimes I have sleepovers. One of the fun things I like to do is go to the waterpark. I think it is in Pineville or Barbourville. Barbourville is where it is at. I don’t know how this happened but I went down the blue slide and I came off my inner tube. It got stuck. I got it unstuck and got back on it and then it came out from under me again. At the end I went head first into the water, back flipped and then went into the splits. I landed back up on my feet. I don’t know how that happened. 

Once I got bitten by a dog. It was thanksgiving. We had ate and it was the next day. Me and my sister and my cousin went outside. We were sitting on the swing and my sister was gone and my cousin was gone for 5 seconds and I went to pet the dog and it bit my face. I had to go to the emergency room. First, we got t-boned by a truck on the way to the emergency room. My uncle was behind us so me and my mom, my dad and my brother and me got in the car with my uncle. So as soon as they started trying to put stitches in my face I started screaming. They had to give me medicine to knock me out. Then when I woke up they were still doing it and I threw another fit. I think I was four or five. 

My mom’s dad worked in the coal mines. In the coal mines you have to dig the coal and put it in carts and push the carts and then put it on coal trucks. The coal trucks take it to where it has to go. They use it for electric. 

My mamma likes to do flowers. She’s usually cleaning, sweeping, mopping. She does the work and my aunt and cousin live with her. My cousin wants everything. All she eats is sweets and stays in the house. She never goes outside. I have to drag her to get here to come down. When I get her to the stairs she says ‘OK, OK I’ll go’. I have to drag her to the first stair, then she’ll go. Then I kinda have to drag her out the door on her feet. She don’t want to do anything. I have to make her do it.

My aunt’s car’s quit working.

I’m a hillbilly. Hillbillies usually don’t dress up.”

Earl Moore

Earl Moore, Working on Masters in Computer Security Administration, Age 39; Hindman, Kentucky (Frog Town):

(Today is Earl’s Birthday. Happy Birthday Earl!!!)

“I was born in Pikeville, Kentucky at the Pikeville Hospital. My parents had the local CPA firm (Hindman). They always did books and all that for all the coal companies so I got to know all about the coal mines and stuff without going into the coal mines which was a good thing to me. They were on top of the old Ben Franklin Store originally, which is where the Artisan Center is now in downtown Hindman. That used to be the Ben Franklin Dime Store, general store. I loved it because I could just run down the steps and get me a candy bar or whatever. After that they moved behind the new courthouse. 

I experimented with drug use. It’s prevalent in the area. It touches everyone in the area. I fell into that circle. In this area you feel like there is nothing to do and that gave me something to do. That was a very dark time in my life, a low point. I saw the error of my ways though. Luckily I now see things from the other side of drug addiction. I just hope that kids can understand that there is really nothing good that comes out of drug addiction. You are just wasting your life away. When I look back I wonder why I thought it was fun. There is nothing fun about it. It encompasses your whole life. That was a very, very bad part of my life.

Never wanted to work in the coal mines. I’ve got family that has worked in the coal mines. I just saw what it was doing to people’s lives. They would be under there and their backs would get so bad and their lungs, just all the health risks that came with it. It’s one of those risk/ reward things. I just didn’t see the reward being worth the risk of being under there you know. The coal crashing on your head or knowing you are coming out of there with black lung or a hurt back. That’s guaranteed if you go underground. That’s basically what you see around here now. Underground is what is meant for you after you are dead, not for while you are living.

I’m presently working on my Masters in Computer Security Administration. What I love is building guitars, artsy stuff. I hang out down at the Hindman Artisan Center’s luthier shop building guitars. Doug Naselroad (Artisan Center Resident Luthier) showed me kind of the ropes, got me started, got me on my feet. I’m in the process of building my own shop here in Frog Town. 

I bought a house in Frog Town, just down from my mother, of course, because my whole family was born and raised there. My great grandmother lived there. The old barn is still standing where she had her cattle and horses and so forth. We are talking about back in the early nineteen hundreds. 

I loved growing up here because it was a nice family atmosphere, especially in Frog Town. Frog Town is where the community kind of gathered. That’s where all the kids got together and played. We had whiffle ball games, we road our four-wheelers, we could hit the mountains, go hiking, just beat down a briar patch with a stick. All that kind of stuff is what we ended up doing. I feel like I’m the last generation that was raised doing the mountain stuff. I was lucky because I grew up with the (older) group there in Frog Town that knew the mountain stuff and passed it down to us. I’m sure I don’t know as much as my grandfather did; but I did learn a lot of the old traditions and stuff.

I just hate that the old traditions are being neglected by young folks because of video games, MySpace, Facebook social networking and all of that. I was talking to a kid the other day who was heading to Natural Bridge State park to go hiking. I ask him why he didn’t just go hiking here. He said he would get lost here. I ask if didn’t know how to count hollers and creeks and ridges as you go by to know how far away from home you are. He said, ‘what are you talking about? Ridges?’ I said really? I told him, ‘me and you need to go in the mountains sometime so you know the way to get around this area’.

I do have so many great memories of growing up here. I remember the Christmases growing up, Christmas and the holidays because the families get together, spending time together. At Christmas we would meet at my granny’s house. We would all get there about six because we would all do our other Christmases first. That would be Christmas Eve actually. Christmas Eve was the presents and all that. That was when the kids would have all the fun. That’s the part I remember and enjoyed the most because we were all together. We would have 25 to 30 people together at my grandmother’s house. Here we all are sitting in the living room with everybody opening their presents individually. We would go around in a circle. You got to see everybody’s present, the enjoyment and togetherness you get from that. 

Times like that, staying up in my granny’s attic, me and my four cousins, sleeping up there, messing around and having a good time playing poker, the family poker game, nickels and dimes. It wasn’t like we were making fortunes. At the end of the night if I made 20 dollars I did good, I had a great night.

Now it’s not the same. I have uncles; grandparents that have all passed away and I miss that part of the family although I know they are off in a better place. I’m here without them so I’m selfish in that respect. 

I don’t know where Appa-Lay-Sha is; Appalachia is where I’m at. Honestly, growing up I thought the word hillbilly was kind of a bad thing but now I love it. As I have grown older and come to know what a true hillbilly is, I’m proud to be one. I listen to a lot of the band Goose Creek Symphony, Charlie Gearheart. I started listening to them when I was 12 years old. I went over to a bar in Floyd County when I was 14 to hear them play. Folks slipped me in to watch the Goose Creek concert, which is amazing to me. It one of those lasting memories because I got to hear Charlie Gearheart do his 'Hillbilly Nation’ poem. It’s something I feel, It’s something I’m proud of now.

You look around here now; you think it might have been hard living here, growing up here, especially our ancestors, to get through those hard times and those struggles. It’s like my grandfather said, when the depression hit they didn’t really notice because they were already in a depression. It wasn’t that big of a change of life for them because they were already having to struggle to survive. Wall Street didn’t mean a whole lot to Eastern Kentucky because Eastern Kentucky has always kind of been cut off. I still consider us 10 years behind the rest if the world. I appreciate that. I like being 10 years behind. That always gives us 10 years to prepare. That’s how I feel.

But people are happy here. Even if families just have a dirt floor, they are still the happiest families I have ever seen. People around here have the warmest hearts and the greatest courage I have ever seen.”