Brilla Tate

Brilla Tate, Runs Flea Market Business and Collects Old Cars; Big Stone Gap, Virginia:

"I help out elderly people, mostly; flea market and go out and look at old cars. I like helping the elderly; I go and sit with them. We’re going to have a car show and I’ll be cooking some hot dogs for everybody and stuff like that.

[Growing up in the mountains] has changed a lot [since] growing up. It’s a lot different than what it is now. You had just good neighbors and good folks. Things have changed than what it used to be. We were happy just to get out in the woods and go fishing, ride little motorcycles or little bikes like that. We would go down to Big Stone Gap park and go fishin’ all the time. That was our favorite spot [to go] fishing. 

There are a lot of new houses that come in, and a lot of people selling out. The coalmines and stuff are ‘bout gone. It ain’t like it used to be. All the coalmines has sold out, and everybody’s moving. Coal mines [are] what kept everybody around here. 

[We need] to get somebody here to make better jobs. There ain’t no jobs here for young people. Everybody’s moving away to try to get jobs. They ain’t hardly no jobs around Virginia here. They need better jobs and stuff for young people to try to keep family and people here. It’s put a hurtin’ on our people; cause coalmines was mostly the roots here in Virginia. 

[Cost of living is going up and income’s going down. You see food banks around. I tell you, when you go by them it's packed. There’s little kids don’t have things like kids need. There’s a lot of poverty here, kids and stuff. You see a lot and it wasn’t like it was when we grew up. Things were hard then too.

I’ve got one [daughter], she’s nineteen. She’s a little sweetheart. She was born December 6th, 1994. She weighed five pounds and four ounces. That was the best time ever ‘cause you love your kids when they’re born. 

She was a good kid and very respectful to others. And I’ve raised her; me and my husband have took care of her. She went to school and graduated and she was always a straight A student all the way through school, thank God. She was a real good kid, and stayed on honor roll, too. 

Now, she works at the Huddle House in Big Stone and then she’s got a job through AT&T. She does phone calls. Hopefully, this coming week, she’s going to end up getting a manager position. So I’m excited. But, she’s a good kid. Now these days when you get a good job, it’s hard to keep a good job. She’s been there two and a half years so far. She stuck with it. 

She won Miss Big Stone when she was three years old; which I won Miss Big Stone three or four times growing up in school. Those are the good days. 

There are a lot of friendly people here. Everybody knows everybody. It’s a small place and a small town. You’re not a stranger. Lot of people you went to school with and a lot of people has left here; they’ve moved back. 

The mountains; when you’re used to growing up on the mountains, you get to go fishing and seeing this, you go out of town, it’s not like being home. You know, my mamaw and papaw always says, ‘When you leave home, you’ll always come back to home.’ Home is home. I left here for about a year and moved to Bristol and nothing was like home ‘cause I missed the mountains. I missed the fishing and the hunting. That’s the good part about it. 

As I [grew up], my papaw,, my mamaw,, my mommy and daddy, they always helped others. Growing up, everybody was there for each other; and I grew up to be taught to help others also. If you know anybody’s in need,, and I know a lot of people ‘round here, that will help somebody if they need help. There’s a lot of family and that helps people. There’s a lot of people, the elderly, ain't got nobody or family around. I’d love to see people my age and the younger generation to pitch in and do more for the elderly, too. I really would. It would help a lot. 

Oh, yes [I’m a hillbilly]. I’m just a country girl and I like to fish and I like to hunt and we like our country music; and that flatfootin’. I’ve been doing that] a long time. I learned that from my papaw. Flatfootin’. He used to play fiddles and stuff like that. 

A lot of my family was farmers in Big Stone and places. Most of us lived off the garden, and we’d can stuff and put stuff up for the winter growin’ up to help save on food. My papaw used to have chickens as I grew up. My mamaw and papaw practically raised me, so I lived with them most of the time. Chicken or eggs and all that stuff; they had their own farm for everything. They would kill them and wring their necks. Before then, I couldn’t [eat chicken], but I like Kentucky Fried Chicken now. And soup beans, cornbread, I still eat that today. My daughter, if I tell her I’m cookin’ soup beans and cornbread, she says, ‘Mama, you better bring me some.’ ‘Cause you don’t get tired of it. 

I like old cars; my favorite thing is old cars. And I like animals, let me tell you, I love animals. If I see a stray animal or something I’ll take it in and take care of it. I’ve got a Boxer, I had three Boston Terriers, and I had one when she was at six weeks old and she was sixteen years old and I buried her in the backyard and I even got her a tombstone. I named her Ladybug. She was precious. She had two [babies], and I’ve got them; I kept them. I wouldn’t take anything in the world for my animals. 

My brother started me out [liking cars]. The newer cars ain’t like the older ones. The older stuff is, well, more built than these newer ones. My first cool car, and I’ve still got it, was my 1979 Smokey and the Bandit; and it ain’t going nowhere and I love it. It’s black and [its] interior has T-tops and it’s got a 455 in it. It had a 400 motor in it, and we put a 455 in it. It will fly. I baby it; just like my daughter, I baby it. “

[Outsiders] they think we’re hillbillies. I don’t know, they think we’re old hillbillies or something because we don’t have much here. But if they were raised like we [were]; we might not had a lot of money growin’ up and everything, but we respect what we have. We’re thankful for what we do get. We don't think ourselves better than nobody else. If they had to live here, I think they would love it. 

We got the mountains, we got the beautiful animals and we do have a lot of freedom here. We ain’t got a lot of crime issues like you do other places. I mean, no matter where you go, you’re gonna have crime but it’s not like out of town and out of state. 

Everybody knows everybody here. That’s the good part. You can be driving in certain places where I live at in Big Stone, everybody knows everybody, if they’ll be outside they’ll throw their hand up at you and wave. If you’re out of town, places like that, you don’t see that. 

[Grandparents legacy] To be loving and caring; and go to church. Now they were good church going people. They’d want me to do other stuff growing up that I’d wish I’d done. Went to college and done a lot. Everybody makes mistakes. I took care of my family and I took care of my grandparents. So that means a lot when you do that. 

[Happiest times] Spending time with my papaw and mamaw. That was the happiest. Something you never forget. [The saddest] was when I lost them. That was the hardest. When you’ve got good grandparents, you miss them. I stood by them when I had them, you know, and took care of them. I tell you, you lose them, it’s hard. If I could go back and do all over, I would. It just hurts. I lost my grandmother two years ago; that was hard. That was the hard part. They were good people. My grandad, when he worked, he took care of me; anything I wanted he done for me. 

I wish, if they were alive and stuff now, there’d be a lot more I wish I had done for them before they passed away. Anybody would, ‘cause you don’t know what you’ve got till they are gone anyway.

Jeremy Brock

Jeremy Brock, Coal Miner and BBQ Competition Competitor; Evarts, Kentucky: 

“I’m a coal miner, repairman/electrician. I [have worked] underground in deep mines for fourteen years. Once you get used to it, I wouldn’t do nothing else. It’s a culture; it’s brotherhood. 

When you first go in, it will make you nervous ‘cause the mountains will pop, crack, and moan. It’ll scare you, but after a while, you get to know the sounds; you get to know everything around it. It sounds like it’s coming in, but it ain’t gonna fall. It’s just the weight setting on the mountain. It’ll mess with your mind for a little while. When you pillar, you’re more than likely gonna get almost caught sometimes. You’re pulling a pillar, and it’s falling. It’s designed to break where it is, but you’ll be standing there. You know where it’s gonna break but still, it’ll put the fear of God in you. 

I’m on third shift. We do all the maintenance that the coal run people can’t. We’ll change the motors; if they can make it run they’ll make it run. Then we come in and fix it right. That’s what we do. We service the equipment. 

When I was young, I wanted to get away from it [Appalachia]. I wanted to go away. And now that everything’s hit the fan, like with the coal mines and everything, I look at it and I just think, you know, if somebody don’t stand there and do something then it’s gonna die. And it breaks my heart now because I just don’t want to go anywhere else. It’s home. 

September’s [supposed to be a lay off]. We had a contract with US Steel that they pulled from us, and it ‘bout killed us, but then they come back and wanted the coal. We were very fortunate. 

Hillbilly? Some people take it as offensive but me, that’s what I am. It’s not really a bad word. We’re self-reliant people. We can do a whole lot of stuff people in the city can’t do. A lot of us can farm; a lot of us are auto mechanics. Anything we want to be we do it. We’ve got what most people ain’t got. We gotta do it ourselves if you want something done. MacGyver [had to be a coal miner.] A coal miner can fix anything with a cap wedge and black tape. You’ve got to make do with what you’ve got; to work with you’ve got to do with. 

I guess these days things are a lot fast paced. People don’t care about people. Mountain people actually care about the other. That’s what me and my wife say. Even if there’s a coal accident in West Virginia and kills somebody, you feel it because you know what they’re going through. I’m pretty sure the city [people] don’t do that. If somebody gets killed, oh well, somebody gets killed. [Here] It’s like a brotherhood, we’re mountain people. We care about people. 

[The proper pronunciation of Appalachia] Appalat-chuh. I don’t know who came up with Appalay-shuh. I just laugh. I know they’re not from here. They’re somebody from away from here. 

You’ll see a media show and they’ll be five people that’s crazy as a bat, I’m sorry but that’s what it is, and instead of showing the actual people there, they’ll go get them. It’ll be like one percent of the population, but that’s what they’ll show. People should just come and see for themselves. You know, meet the people, and they’ll be very surprised. 

I really hide it, but the drug epidemic in our area. I was a part of that; I got addicted for about five years. I’ve been clean now for eight years. My little girl [turned me around]. Kytalynn, she’s eight. She’s my world. I’ve got a little boy now too; he just turned one in May. He’s a handful now. That set me straight. I was wanting to [be set straight]. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. They look at these people and [say] ah, ‘That’s a dopehead.’

People don’t understand it’s a sickness. It really is and the people that are doing it don’t want to do it. They done something for fun or experimenting, it got them, and they can’t get away from it. It can be done. I did it. You just gotta put your nose down and go and don’t look back. 

My kids. That’s everything you live for. People will tell you, you don’t know love till you have kids. That’s definitely true. [I’m] a country man. It’s just what it is. Once you get a kid, that’s what you live for. The coal miners that go underground, they don’t do it for fun. People say they do it for money, that’s a lie. They got a family, they got kids, they got a wife they gotta provide for. That’s why they do it. Family’s important to the country person. I teach my kids [the importance of Appalachian culture] every chance I get. Be who you want to be. 

My hobby is competition barbeque. This is highly competitive. I’m a new team, and I’m trying to get started. I do a little bit of catering here and there. I hate to brag, but I am the best in Harlan County. Hands down. Come taste it, I’ll tell you, I’ll show you. It’s good. I’ll hopefully turn it into something, after coal mining maybe, if coal mining falls through. 

I’m trying to get a trailer up, but times is hard. Look around, these people got seventy-eighty thousand dollar rigs, and I’m cooking out of a tent and a Tractor Supply trailer. That smoker right there is high dollar. I’ve got about twelve thousand dollars with everything I do. It’s been building for two years. 

My wife bought me a barrel smoker from Wal-Mart. I went by it, I was nineteen years old, and I said, ‘Man, I’d like to have one of them.’ I worked second-shift in the mines. Well, I come home one night and there it sit. That’s what she done. She worked at the nursing home as a nurse aid then. She used her own money, I didn’t know about it. I was very surprised. I cooked on that and it drove me crazy ‘cause you can’t control the temperature. Then we went to an electric smoker. It was a little easier and gave the food a better taste. 

I started cooking for people at the mines and cooking for little festivals with that electric smoker. They’s like, ‘That’s real good. You outta do something with it.’ Then, I finally made the step to the big one. Charcoal wood, that’s all you use. Got a computer system to control the airflow. It’s just wonderful. People don’t realize just how much goes into a competition. It’s the color, the size, and the shape. It’s meticulous work. It’s all about the little details. [I’ve been competing] two years. This will be our tenth contest. We won sixth place in pork in Sevierville out of sixty-two teams. We just placed ninth in chicken in Knoxville a month ago. We’ve placed fifth in pork in Barbourville. We placed fourth in pork in Tennessee last year. We’re just getting to where we know everything; we’re getting to know things. There’s a lot of tough teams, but I’m gonna give it hell trying.”

Colton Smith

Colton Smith, Auto Parts Store Assistant Manager; Marion, Virginia: 

[When asked about his love for automobiles] “Oh, yeah! I bet I’ve built twenty-two Chevrolet trucks over the past twenty years. [Rebuilt his first vehicle at age 12.] You probably seen it, I brought it to the car show. ’81 Chevrolet short bed. [It took] three months. Yeah, we redid it. Off the frame, restored it. 

[When asked who taught him to work on vehicles.] That man right there. That’s my dad. We painted it orange, put a big Dukes of Hazzard 01 on the side of it. Four-speed, 350 4 bolt main, thirty over. Had a set of forties on it, pretty nice, old truck. Hot rod. Oh, yeah. We don’t build nothing, but a hot rod. 

I don’t believe many city people could have done it. Honestly. I got a ‘84 ¾-ton we’re redoing. It’s gonna have 44’s on it, and a 454, when I get it done. [Will he sell it?] Yep, to somebody that wants ‘em more than I do. 

[I’m] Twenty, I’ll be twenty-one in September [and just] bought a brand new truck. Spent forty-two grand on it, but I like it. I wouldn’t own nothing, but a Chevrolet. 

I grew up on twenty-five acres. We had fifteen Tennessee Walkers at one point [and] rode all the time. I had a horse one time; it was like a frigging dog. I ain’t kidding! One time, I left the gate open. I was probably eleven, and I left the gate open. That sucker followed me home, and was sitting on the back porch, looking through the window. That ain’t no joke. 
Tractor plowed, put up hay, cut tobacco --- all the nine yards. I loved it, man. There’s just no other place like it. Go out there on your back porch, and not worry about nobody else. You know, we’ve never locked our house door, and I always leave the keys in my truck. You can’t do that anywhere else. 

Every time was fun. Not many thirteen, fourteen year olds can jump in a pond, and play with catfish. You know how that goes. I fish all the time. We have a house in Ridge Valley now. It’s got a big, old pond. We put two hundred fifty catfish in it this spring. Not much on hunting. I don’t like the cold. 

That’s about it. [I] build cars and farm. 

[Toughest time] Probably when I lost my grandpa, honestly. I was ten years old. Yeah, rough times. He was just; he was my idol, man. I hung out with him every day. He’d put me on the school bus, and get me off the school bus. He learnt me everything I knew. [He] farmed and everything, on his days off. He was the third man at W-L, a construction company out of Chilhowie [Virginia]. He was there forever. He built 81 [I-81]. Every time I smell asphalt, I think of pawpaw. 

[To me, a hillbilly is] somebody that goes up in the mountains. [The media] just portrays us like bad people still living in the 1700’s with slaves. The media has just blown up this little thing, the south. You can’t be a southerner no more. It’s just a bad thing to be. 

It’s all the same, all the time. You know everybody. You don’t know a stranger over here. 

You don’t ever see anybody sad in the mountains. Everybody has tough times; people in the mountains deal with ‘em. They don’t worry about it. It will always get better. God’s all right.”

Pam Howell

Pam Howell, I work for the head start preschool program, an anti-poverty program for three and four year olds, finance person; Marion, Virginia:

“I grew up in the very country part of something they called Adwolf. We didn’t lock our doors at night; we stayed out and played and caught June bugs, lightning bugs and told ghost stories. To me, it was a wonderful childhood. 

I’ve never lived anywhere else. I’m a small town girl and I like to keep small town. What makes [Appalachian culture] special to me is, I think everybody is kinda a neighbor. Even people that you maybe [don’t] know that well lend a helping hand. 

We’re all involved here today with an animal rescue group and the Humane Society. We’re trying to help homeless animals. People are out here just opening up their pocketbooks and helping us. You don’t meet many strangers here.[Working with the Humane Society] is very enriching for me because I’m a big animal lover and I don’t like to see the animals in the shelter get put down ‘cause there is too many. We work really hard to find them homes, rescues and foster homes for animals also. It’s just something I’ve loved all my life. I’ve been an animal person; I was the person who found the hurt frogs and all that. 

There was always something going on at my house. The worst thing that I ever did was; there was a coon hunter that lived in my neighborhood and he kept a raccoon caged in a cage to use as bait for his dogs to train them. So I caught him not home one day and I let his raccoon go. I just couldn’t handle that. Even though I’m from Appalachia, I’m not a hunter. I always have been [an animal lover]. 

[Appalachian perception] I think they think we’re a little bit ignorant and maybe not well educated and that we all eat cornbread and beans all day long. I have some friends in DC and other places and I’ve educated them a lot. I’ve had them down here and they all love it down here, by the way, when they come. Letting people know there’s people here like everywhere else. They’re hardworking, they’re educated; they’re members of their community; they go out and try to do things. 

There’s a lot of art and culture here that they don’t even realize exists. There is very talented musical people here; artistic people. I would just like for [people that don’t live in the mountains] to know that it’s not hillbillies. Let’s just put it that way. We’re not hillbillies. 

[The word hillbilly] use to offend me when I was a child. I had cousins from Pennsylvania, who would come down and they would call me a hillbilly and it would make me cry. In my mind a hillbilly was this barefoot person with a corncob pipe and no teeth and he ciphered on his fingers like Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies. So it did offend me when I was little. [As an adult] I’m kinda proud of it. I have people when I have to call other places they’ll say, ‘You must be from the south.’ I’ll say, ‘Yes I am.’ 

I like to read a lot but I’m not really artistic, unfortunately. Reading and the cinema. I’m a big movie buff. I like them all; independent films, any of the major releases, and I have a soft spot for the Disney Pixar pictures. 

We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up and I was a child of divorce. It was not a popular thing in the early seventies. Children like that felt a little outcast. We didn’t have all the things that our friends had. I don’t know if that had anything to do with southern culture because that goes on everywhere, but I would say that was the saddest part of my life; living through my parent’s divorce. When they actually divorced I was twelve. Things had gone on for a while. My dad owned a fuel oil company; heating oil. Later on, I think he owned a gas station and some other things. 

My father remarried and had other children that were treated different, in my perspective. But guess what? On down the line, before his death, me and him, you know forgiveness is important. We had a great relationship and we were adults. I think he saw [in] retrospect that maybe he didn’t live his life the way he should have. I felt a lot better about it as I grew older. 

I just think there’s richness here. This is where a lot of things began. There wouldn’t be country music if it weren’t for the immigrants and people that were here in Southwest Virginia that started all of that. You see Riverdance in Ireland; that’s cloggin’ okay? I think [people] need to see that is part of American culture just as much our history as anything that went on with the Mayflower and New York City. It started here. These were the first pioneers and they did everything themselves. 

I don’t know how to do anything anymore, but my mother, she could cook, can, whatever it was, she knew how to do it. Some of that’s been lost generation to generation. I didn’t [grow up on a farm] but my grandparents had a farm, [and] I did grow up in the country. We had gardens and we had blackberry bushes. We crawled in the woods and we hunted them and that kind of thing. 

I wouldn’t complain about my life. 

I’m married and have two children and five grandchildren. All those are good things, but probably the thing I’m the proudest of is my oldest daughter is now a nurse practitioner; she’s one step away from being a doctor. My other daughter is in school to be a veterinarian tech. My grandchildren are bright. My daughters were scholars and they made wonderful grades and went on to higher education. 

I didn’t get to, but that’s another story. I’d liked to maybe have had an early education. I wouldn’t want to trade my marriage or my kids or anything for all of that; but if I could have found a way to add it in.”