Scott Pryor

Scott Pryor, Tire Wholesaler; Blountville, Tennessee: 

"I was born in Michigan, Detroit, Michigan. My mom moved when we were real little and everything. Got away from up there. She liked it up here so we moved here.

I work in a tire warehouse. We wholesale tires to retail stores. 

(Been working with cars) probably about 20 years. I was building a 68 Camaro and ended up having to sell it. Then I bought this one. Took me about ten years [to complete].

It’s a 1931 Ford Sedan, 2 door, top’s been chopped, three and a half inches, frame’s been boxed in. It’s got a 373 Posi rear end under it, 350-turbo transmission with the B&M shifter, 3500 stall. It’s got a 350 in it and a 44 Fat Man front end under it; hardwood floors and dash. I bought the wood over here at Lowe’s. 

There’s a lot of car shows around here, lot of hot rods and street rods; always find the old cars up in the mountains. Buddy of mine had it [this car] in the garage. It was all to pieces when I got it and everything. It had a little four-cylinder Jeep motor in it. I got it, took it home, stripped it all the way down to the frame and started from the frame up. 

[Has been living in Blountville] probably about 37 years. I got a grandma who lives in Knoxville, aunts and uncles. My mom’s actually originally from here. My other grandma, her mom is from here. (My mom) she’s retired and my stepdad’s retired. He built a ‘38 Dodge and he just ended up selling it a couple of weekends ago. We was at a car show in Elizabethton and a guy came up, was interested in it and bought it. 

I gotta do bit more interior work and stuff to it. I got a fortune in this one. I would like to do another Camaro if I can find one".

Kyler James Mclendon and Kaleb Mclendon

Kyler James Mclendon and Kaleb Mclendon, Twins, Age 10, Members of the Harlan County Boys and Girls Club; Harlan, Kentucky:

Kyler: We had to share a lot of stuff and lot of things, you know, that we’ve got. We probably have to spend more time together, than any other brothers and sisters. Yeah. And we share, we used to share a room.

Kaleb: But I moved to live at my grandma’s house.

Kyler: I’m always putting up with him, fussing.

Kaleb: It’s me putting up with fussing.

Kyler: Yeah, I kind of accidentally pushed him in the pool.

Kaleb: With my phone in my pocket. It’s not an iPhone, it’s an iPod. Messed it up. Won’t even turn on any more.

Kyler: Yes, kind of accident. Still got mine. It’s not turned on right now. I loaned it, so you could make a bunch of skins.

Kaleb: He’s loaned it like one time, since it happened, and it happened like three weeks ago.

I play basketball and play X-Box. I like living in the mountains cause there ain’t no tornadoes, hurricanes, and stuff. If they fly out, go up a hill, I can just hide up in the mountain. 

Kyler: I like living in the mountains, because of the same thing he does. My favorite thing to do is to play basketball and football, and I like a lot X-Box and sometimes me and Kaleb, we have a trampoline at home, but with a basketball goal hooked up to it, so we can play basketball on a trampoline.

My grandma? Well, she’s kind of loud, on occasion, when him and my brother are fussing. And she gets loud, and then she’s quiet. She’s sick. She gets sick a lot. She takes medicine, medication for her heart, and the medication for her heart is making her hurt in her stomach. It’s bad. 

Kaleb: My mamma is seventy, and my papaw is seventy-nine. My mamma can hardly walk and papaw has one leg. The blood circulation wasn’t going to it, so it started to rot, and they had to cut it off.

Kyler: My mom went to jail, when I was seven months, and I was living in Ohio, so when she went to jail they put me in foster care, up for adoption. Well, my mamma got us, all eight (Referring to brothers and sisters) of us.

My dad’s in Ohio. I’m going to visit him, probably in a week. Kaleb don’t like to stay places far from his mamma. He doesn’t like that.
Well, right now we’re all in one house, because my mom, she tore a ligament in her leg. She stepped on a rake, and she can’t walk on it now. She said that she’d have to go to Corbin to get surgery for it.

Kyler: (I want to be) an NBA basketball player.

Kaleb: Same thing.

Kyler: He gonna be NFL and basketball.

Kaleb: I don’t like football.

Kyler: I’m gonna play college football. I’m never gonna play NFL, unless if I’m like hopeful.

Kyler: Kentucky Wildcats! Well, they won. They made it to the championship, and then they made it to the Final Four, and they got beat out by Wisconsin. Then they went through the whole season, and got thirty and 0, first people.

Kaleb: Thirty-eight and 0.

Kyler: The first people to ever make that, and then they tried to make it their forty, you know. That’s the world record up there, and they couldn’t make it to that, because they got beat out of the Final Four. They was thirty-eight and 0 in all. I like Tyler Lewis or Willie Cauley-Stein or Devin Booker.

Kaleb: When I’m around all my family, we’re like all cooking out and stuff… talking, running, and playing.

Kyler: One time Kaleb hit me. I went like this, and my nose started bleeding.

Kaleb and Kyler: Yep, I love soup beans and cornbread and spaghetti.
Kyler: One time Kaleb dared me to put soup beans inside my spaghetti, and then I eat it, and it was good. I mean, you can eat it all.

Kaleb: I don’t go in the mountains.

Kyler: Sometimes I go up there and look around, and go get mountain water and drink it. It ain’t that clean, but another brother and I got a big jug of it, and that water had like dirt all in it. 

Kyler: I didn’t go. If I went all the way to the top, it probably would of have taken me like half a day.

Kaleb: I love pizza!

(In regard to taking their photograph):

Kyler: I don’t know. Can we be holding a ball, a basketball?

(In response to my request to put their arms around each other.)
No. Nah.

Kyler: How about I have a football, and he has a basketball. We haven’t done that.

(Second request to put arms around each other.)

Kyler and Kaleb: Nah. OK.

Janice Dean

Janice Dean, Student, Teen Staff Member at the Harlan County Boys and Girls Club, Age 13; Evarts, Kentucky:

“I go to Black Mountain Elementary, but I’m gonna be going to Harlan County High School. (Nervous about going into high school), new people, bigger environment, harder classes.

I like to draw, I like to read, I like to crochet. I like to do a lot of things. I mainly read kinda more of the adventure love novels. Here lately the biggest series I’ve gotten into is the Immortal Series. 

When I graduate, I’m gonna be seventeen so I’m gonna get a part time job or two until I’m eighteen. And then when I turn eighteen I'm going to go to a college and the college that I want to go to is either MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Harvard. I’m on my academic team and get good grades, so I guess I’m fairly smart. I’m mainly good at math and science, so. 

Most of the boys, they’re like, ‘I love hunting and riding motorcycles!’ Me, sketching and reading, I’m a book nerd. Being a nerd, it’s a compliment. I don’t know exactly the definition of a nerd, but most people say it’s like smart people or people who like anime. Whenever I get out of college I’m either going to be a physicist, a mathematician, or a therapist. That’s a whole ‘nother field, but I like psychiatry and I like to help people.

Whenever I was really little, like maybe a year or two, I lived in Ohio, but we moved over here because it was better than Ohio. 

My dad’s from here. My dad is a coal miner. He gets home really, really grouchy because he says that a lot of people at work are kinda stupid and don’t know what they’re doing. He is the person who runs the trains and stuff and he’s the only one up there that knows how to do it. He (also) helps my papaw. He helps him out with the work that he does (in the mines). I think it's good for now to where we still have (coal), but eventually in the future we’re gonna have to find some other source of energy because we are running low on it and it’s slowly diminishing and people are overusing it. My dad has a messed up back from working in the mines. You know, there’s just a lot of problems that come out of (working there) like a lot of sickness and physical problems. My grandpa, he actually has to limp. He has bad lungs and his back does hurt. 

I don’t exactly live in the mountains; I live by mountains. It’s kinda fun cause you can see like all the pretty sights and everything, and plus, you can like, sketch them out.” 

Hillbilly? No, I’m more city because everyone who says that they’re a hillbilly usually likes the country. I despise it. Well honestly, and plus hillbillies, they have this kinda weird accent, which I might have it and just not realize it, but people tell me I talk more proper.

One of my happiest times, it was winter. I was eight and we just got done being outside building a snowman. And my dad has a four-wheeler so he ties our sled to the back of the four-wheeler and takes us sledding on the road.

One of my saddest times was probably whenever my cousin Daisy, who lives in Ohio (died). We only got to see her a few times, and she passed away because she had a really bad heart condition. She was only bout two years old.

We don’t go to Ohio as much. There’s not really much difference besides maybe like the way the houses look and the neighborhoods. To me, personally, around Harlan the neighborhoods all seem to be fairly well, but in Ohio they’re some neighborhoods that are really, really well and some that are like, in bad condition.

I like the outdoors, but my mom and dad don’t like me in the mountains too much cause they’re scared of snakes and stuff. 

The closest thing that I think that I’ve had to mountain food would probably be deer meat, and I only eat it in chili, but it’s really good. I like cornbread if it’s sweet. Soup beans, I despise them. My favorite things to eat, I like junk food a lot and I also like fruits. So, so my favorite is blueberries and cheesecake.

The Boys and Girls Club, it’s a really good place to be for kids. Especially if they are having like either home problems or school problems ‘cause they always have someone that they can talk to. Even the teen staff, like me and Cheyenne and Zach, they can still come to us and we won’t be like ‘No, we can’t help you or don’t talk to me.’ It’s a friendly environment. It means that you help out the younger ones and it means you also help out the staff.

I’m not gonna say names, but there’s this girl, she’s having boy problems to where she likes a guy but he’s kinda rude to her. So I’m trying to help her understand she doesn’t have to change herself for him.”

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.”