Hailey Mullins

Hailey Mullins, Age 8, attends Clintwood Elementary School; Clintwood, Virginia:

“[About growing up in the mountains] I think it’s pretty beautiful. You can’t get tornadoes! There’s not a lot of bad weather, I don’t think.

[Favorite part of school] Math, because I think it’s very interesting, and you can use it when you’re older. I like to read books. I like to read chapter books about all sorts of things. [favorite books are] Probably about magic! Well, you can use it for a bunch of different things.

I do [like to write], I know how to write in cursive. I’m actually working on [a story]. It’s about a girl who sees a ghost and she’s really scared. [I love scary stories], because they’re very exciting.

[On whether she’s seen a ghost] I think it was a dream, He [the mean ghost] stabbed me, 

Outside, I like to exercise. I don’t ride a bike. I jog, run and walk, because I think that it’s better than riding a bike, and you can get more exercise so that you don’t just get worn out and stuff. So you’re healthier and your body grows better.

[On getting someone to visit Clintwood] I’d say Clintwood’s a really good town! I’d tell them that it’s very beautiful and that it has all sorts of flowers and different kinds of animals and plants --- cats, deer, dogs, bears. [Saw a bear that was] ‘bout to that roof, maybe a little smaller. Probably as big as you! 

I think I’d like to be a vet. I actually have two [animals] myself. I have a dog and a cat that hate each other! My dog’s name is Prudence, and my cat’s name is Butterscotch. It’s a golden retriever, I think? And then it’s a bunch of all other sorts of stuff mixed together.

My dad weeds and mows and cuts down trees. He plays music! He plays music on the guitar. I love when he writes songs. He writes very silly songs and I like them. He makes up songs for me, 

My favorite food is strawberries. My mommy is helping me cook. She’s teaching me how to make scrambled eggs. And I already know how to make it and I don’t know what I’m gonna make next. I’m gonna see if I can help with anything else to make.

My mom says I have to be 25 before I can date a boy. I’m eight. I told her why not 18, ‘cause my dad said 18 and she said nope, 28. And then she changed it to 26, and I’m like ‘noooo!”

Melonie Baker

Melonie Baker, Dental Hygienist; Ramey Flats, Clintwood, Virginia:

“I am a registered Dental Hygienist. I was born and raised in Skeetrock, Virginia, here in the mountains. I lived in Wytheville, its a little flatter up there.

My papaw was a moonshiner, my father-in-law arrested him; I have all kinds of big tales. My granny said it kinda made my papaw real mad when he come in and dumped out all of her sugar, you know, lookin’ for the moonshine. My papaw said that it was real upsetting when he took his daddy’s truck. When he found out I was dating Seth that was a real big problem because that was the revenuer’s son, and know you just can’t be takin’ up with the revenuer’s son. ‘He took your great papaw’s truck and we didn’t have no other way to make a good honest livin’. [He made moonshine] all of his life, but it was only for celebratory occasions, good holidays. That was one of those Andy Griffith stories. He was a good honest moonshiner, like the sister’s on the Andy Griffith show. Just like them, that was it right there. 

My dad said it took him forever to understand why those men would sit beside the side of the road waiting on them in the same spot. My papaw would go up in the woods for a while, and then he would finally come back down. When they got about fourteen or fifteen years old they figured out that he must be going to get him something. But that was another time and another place. But it is a great place to live.

It is just heritage, gardening and canning and things you learn here that you just wouldn’t get in New York City and a lot of big time places. We are survivors I think, mostly. We are strong people, as far as you live off the land kinda culture. And I think that is true for Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Tennessee. You had to survive to make it. It’s a hard place to live in the winter but it’s pretty nice this time of year.

[If I could tell media] I’d tell them that some of us still had our teeth. As a dental hygienist, that’s my big thing right there. With RAM (Remote Area Medical) coming here, we get all of this; they’ve pulled 150,000 teeth this weekend in three days over there. People stood in line since 2 AM in the morning to get a number to get a set of dentures. It makes us look pathetic and just broken, and kinda’ pitiful. 

Everybody is not that way. There are some people really do try to do better, and need some help, and it is wonderful that they provide some help. Yet, it’s just a bad portrayal of Appalachian culture in general. I do appreciate what they do for health care and people that don’t have doctors, but there should be somewhere for people to go daily if you need a doctor. Not just a three day weekend. Go to the doctor or dentist if you need to. That just ain’t right. That’s just my opinion.

I think, in a way, we have a lot more intelligence than a lot of people ‘cause like I said, we can survive in a hard time when maybe somebody else may not be able to find something to eat. Or if you can’t go to the store to buy it you might have it in the dairy to go get and if you raise your own beef and cattle and farm. Most people do farm still and garden, I think that is important. That is a thing that a lot of people have lost because it’s too easy to go to Walmart and buy it out of a can.

Green beans and cornbread and country ham all of those good things and cracklin’ bread. It’s hard to find those kind of things. You can’t go to the city and buy that. That is something you have to raise and make stone ground corn meal. Used to, there was everywhere in the holler somebody had a grist mill. That is just not the way it is anymore. You have to hunt for those on the weekend, it’s just like RAM, somewhere a special weekend a year somebody will grind your corn meal for you. But it does make your fried fish and corn bread a lot better. 

[Traditions] Food and we’ll not say moonshinin’ but it could have been. Not so much anymore. My father-in law put a stop to that.

We like to horse ride and hunt and fish and we like to eat good and I think that’s the main things. We got a two and four-year-old, so we stay pretty busy with them. We used to horse ride a whole lot more. On a weekend we would ride fifteen or twenty miles a day, trail riding mainly. We used to horse show some but not a lot in the last few years.

They [children] are wild as bucks. They are Indians my husband says. We have a fifty-acre farm so they have a little bit of free reign. So we have a lot of fun. They helped me pick ten gallon of sweet peas this year so we‘ve done pretty good. I’m hoping that they’ll learn to be good workers and hay stackers when they get a little bigger, so we’ll see. [Their names] Rhett Corbett and Ryden Lee Baker.

I guess I am [a hillbilly]. I am proud to be that way, just an Appalachian. I think most people are proud to be. We talk a little different, but that’s ok. 

It’s looking bleak right at the moment with our coal mines shuttin’ down. I’m hoping that we will find some sort of new economy that’ll come in and pick up the pieces. Maybe we can get some fossil fuels going or something. And its lookin’ bad for younger generations, everybody is moving off. I am blessed my husband is an attorney. It’s unfortunate that we have a lot of outlaws, I guess, that keeps him in business.

I think that everybody is lookin’ for a job at the gas company or in the coal fields, and they are just not going to be here anymore. The gas lines are already ran through here and it’s already pumping out. So there’s just not really a whole lot more I don’t think that is just going to be [available], especially in the coal industry. My dad and grandfather were retired UMWA miners and it’s just unfortunate that there’s no more union jobs around in the county now at all.

My dad and my grandfather are both retired UMWA men. My grandad worked in Bethlehem Steele that was a big thing in Kentucky. He drove over to Kentucky every day and worked there at Benham. My dad is a disabled coal miner. He got crushed, rocks fell in on him and he got pinned in at thirty-nine years old and he was lucky to come out alive. That’s the hard thing about being a coal miner. Nobody wants to give anybody any money any more for being, well you risking your life daily. People are glad to have a job, so of course they don’t care to risk their lives to have a job. It’s unfortunate, especially underground mines; it is really a hard decision to make.

People are going to be moving out to find other jobs, so of course we are not going to have as many people. It’s going to be hard, you have schools and local sports and it’s going to affect everything. It’s just the local culture in general, if there is nobody here to support restaurants, and all kinds of local things it’s hard to keep anything going. I’m hoping it’s going to pick up.

My dad just renovated the White Star [Restaurant] in Clintwood, and he put a lot of time and effort into it. There are some people who are running it now that are doing a good job. It takes a lot of time and effort to run a restaurant. You’re looking at a fulltime job several days a week. I think that that’s a good thing, but it’s hard if people want to drive to Kingsport [Tennessee] to eat instead. People go there to eat and shop. If there’s no shopping here either, it’s hard to want to stay here to eat. 

[The restaurant] was my great-great uncle’s business, John Branham. He had it before it closed. It was a family type business before then, and we were really the only ones left to try to open it back up. That’s why my dad bought it. I like to say I am a good cook, but I am not the cook that my grandmothers were. One of my favorite things to do is to cook and eat, but it’s hard to cook and eat for a whole county. Maybe one day when my boys get back in school I’ll think about it, doing a little more with the restaurant.

To shop [you have to go out of Clintwood] to the Walmart or Sam’s Club. You have to drive all the way to Abingdon or Bristol. That’s a long way to go. It takes half a day to get anywhere from Clintwood. That’s just the truth. 

When we go over there we try to buy in so you don’t have to go back again for a while because it’s hard to get those things, and then to drive that far to get them. [You’re looking at a whole day trip] Just to get basic necessities; toilet paper and paper towels. You can get those things at Food City but if you are going to buy bulk and especially for a business, you have to go there to get enough to do for a few weeks. 

That is a big inconvenience of living here. Because everybody is like, ‘oh gosh, why do you want to stay here?’ My husband got an interview from NPR radio wanting to know ‘why did you stay here, you know, why would you want to be in such a down ridden area where there is nothing to do?’ 

Like he told them, we liked to horse ride, we like hunt we liked to fish, there are things here that you can’t do elsewhere. And people come from miles around to get to do that on deer hunting weekend or rafting at the Breaks. That’s another big thing we have that a lot people don’t ever think about. And we actually didn’t ever go rafting until a couple years ago. And it’s wonderful. We went from the spillway down to the Garden Hole at the Breaks and it was one of the best experiences we ever had outdoors. I think people need to take advantage of things we have here; local nature kind of things.

I think there is a lot of potential to get a lot of people in here. We got the Grand Canyon of the South right next door, you just have to drive over there. I think there is a few ideas with tourism. We have Birch Knob and the Towers. It’s beautiful up there. A lot hiking, things like that. Just depends on what you are looking for. 

I think we always thought big coal would always be here and there would be big mining and there would be big jobs and people would make it and then [they] they started shutting down. There used to be two hundred and some coal mines or maybe three hundred in the seventies and eighties and now there is like twenty in the whole county. So that is a lot of decline from the seventies, eighties to the late nineties. And now there’s not even maybe that many. I’m not really for sure exactly how many we have.

[Sad times] is when death comes to your family in general, like grandparents passing away. I guess I have been blessed; I have had a pretty good life so far. I am thirty-seven but Seth and I have had a good life. We have been married thirteen years, and dated five, so I am almost to the point I’ve been with him longer than when I’ve been without him, but I reckon he’s a keeper. I guess it just depends on the decisions you have made and choices and I have been blessed to have a good job in dentistry. 

I was actually a dental hygienist when Seth was in school, and he want to law school in Grundy. We have the law school in Grundy and we got an Optometry School and Pharmacy school over there. So there are reasons for people to come back to the coalfields or to stay in the coalfields to go to college. There are things for people to do to get a profession here. 

Raising my two boys, so far, would be my biggest accomplishment. My biggest triumph probably would be passing my dental hygiene boards and supporting Seth with his business, because he has had his own law business for ten years in Clintwood. And hopefully he will soon be our Commonwealth Attorney in Clintwood. He’s unopposed so I’m sure he is gonna be a winner. I think that is gonna be a good thing.

I’m just proud to be Appalachian and I think that we have a lot to offer. It’s a well- kept secret and I’m just satisfied to keep it that way. I think that’s the best way to be. If people want to move here and find out about it then that’ll be alright and if they don’t then they’ll just have to do without. I guess that’s all I have to say.”

Danny Dorsey

Danny Dorsey, disabled truck driver, photographer, originally from Princeton, West Virginia, has lived in Bristol, Tennessee since the age of seven:

“My dad’s job transfer [brought us to Bristol, Tennessee]. He was a milk manager for Flav-o-Rich Dairy. 

My grandfather died in the mines. I never got to meet him. He died when I was probably three months old, so I never knew him. I was too young to remember. We just never got to talk much about it. I had three cousins that worked in the mines. All of them are retired. I had a lot of family from West Virginia work in the mines. They grew up in a very rural part of West Virginia, and that was all that was available. 

I graduated from Tennessee High School. [My childhood years] were great. We spent a lot of time at the lake, instead of school. It was good. 
We did a lot of stuff with sports, and stayed pretty busy. My dad was a mountain guy. We hunted, fished, camped, every day it was possible. 
[It was] very laid back. Just living in the mountains, doesn’t get any better. The love of the mountains. The love of the people. 

I drove a truck for thirty-five years. I started the minute I got out of high school, and never looked back, which was a mistake, but I learned a lot. Made good money, and I was out of the area. 

I drove with the best group of guys, and we always tried to trick each other. I was in the sleeper one night sound asleep. A buddy of mine had a truck that was real high, and he pulled up and shined floodlights in my sleeper, and he had a train engine horn on his truck. So when he blew the horn, I woke up, stuck my head out of the sleeper, and thought I was getting ready to be nailed by a train. I dove headfirst out of my truck, and he was sitting there, just dying laughing. 

I’ve hauled gasoline. I’ve hauled everything imaginable, except explosives. I didn’t want to get into that. I traveled all over. And then, I finally came home, and went local. 

Coming home, [I] was at peace, because you were in a rat race, flat lands, nothing, cornfields for miles. I couldn’t stand it [in the cities]. I like the quietness. I like being out. I like just waking up, and not hearing traffic. Horns blowing. People screaming. 

And then when you come home, and topped the mountains, and you see it, it’s like coming home all over again, every trip. That’s what I live for. 
[In Appalachia] the biggest thing is the friendliness. Nobody meets a stranger [and] for the most part, everybody’s friends. I think it’s really a special breed of people. It’s different to a lot of other people, but they don’t understand the culture. I mean it’s just a way of life. 

The variety of people, all the different stuff people do. You take people that have so many different talents. Like in the art industry, they’re from one end of the spectrum to the other. I just like the way people take small stuff, and make huge things. 

I sing some. I listen to music. I love music. Music is my getaway from all the stresses of life. It’s a huge part [of the culture]. I think that’s what built this area. All the different types of music, I mean, it’s anything from bluegrass, country, rock and roll, gospel. You’ve got it all. 

[Outside media portrayal] I know they’re missing the boat on a lot of stuff. The beauty, what God’s created, living right in the middle of it. We take a lot of it for granted, and then when you go away, and you come back, you really appreciate it.

Come down here, and live for six months, and let you see the difference. They think we’re just dumb hillbillies, that can’t do anything, that don’t know anything. They don’t understand, what all is available here. 

I say Appalachia. [When you hear ‘Appa-layshia] Well, that’s when you go, ‘And they call us hillbillies?’ (Laughs).

(Are you a hillbilly?) I guess I am. [A hillbilly is] somebody that loves the mountains, lives off the mountains, enjoys being in the mountains 24/7. Capturing what God’s made. 

I think we need to provide more for the younger generations. People are moving for the money, and we need to somehow work on getting the money back in here. I don’t know where you start. We’ve got to get the pay increased. To keep people here, we’ve got to provide more opportunities, and that’s going to be up to our government. 

I do photography. I’m trying to capture what I see, and I want everybody to see what I see. I do a lot of landscape photography. I also do people. I travel Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, just wherever I need to go. 

The perfect shot? I haven’t found it yet. I’m still looking. I just want people to see, like early morning. A lot of people never see that. I’ve got friends that are handicapped, that can’t go [out in nature]. I just want to show them what’s out there, that they can’t get to.”

Diane Hall Creech

Diane Hall Creech, Service Champion at Taco Bell; Skeetrock, Clintwood, Virginia:

“I grew up in Wise, Virginia. I am a Service Champion at Taco Bell in Norton, Virginia.

Growing up in the mountains was fun. I ran around, played on strip [mining] jobs, played in the creek. I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house as a child, me and my brother and my cousins and my sisters. We just played. We played in the woods and played on the strip jobs and got into mischievous meanness I guess as kids. [We] played in the woods and got into mamaw’s garden. Our curfew was when the street lights came on. Our parents didn’t call our cell phones. They hollered at us.

This is home. This is my home. I couldn’t imagine myself in a city setting. [What makes it home] is the people. Around here, people are friendlier, we care about each other, we tend to want to help one other and we know each other. 

[Hillbilly?] To a point. [What does Hillbilly mean] The way we cook, the way we talk, the way we act, our attitude toward one another, things like that. We help one another. In the city settings, in some places, I’ve noticed that people turn their head. They don’t want to help you, you know. 

Here we want to help our neighbors. I am from Wise and Norton is where I grew up. When I moved down here, when I got married to my husband now, and I got moved down here, it’s like when people pass away, people bring food to your homes. And they want to be there for you. 

See, I am not used to that. In Wise and Norton, we don’t do that. Families don’t do that. We go to the funeral and we go home. That is the difference, and it’s like here, when we go to the graveyards they stay and they help bury your loved ones. Our funeral homes in Wise and Norton, the funeral is concluded. You can go home, you can come back in a couple of hours. Your loved ones will be buried. You can come and say your final whatever. That is the difference between there and here.

[Change attitudes of city folk] I would tell them to just come and stay here for a week and observe and witness how we are towards one another, the hospitality we show one another and the kindness we show, especially in times of death, in times of need. [In] the winter, how families will come together and help one another, especially the elderly. How we help the elderly out. How we will go to their homes, how we will help bring them blankets and help dig them out and things like that. 

Our food is wonderful. Cornbread and soup beans and greens, fried green tomatoes and things like that. Typical food you would find on your grandmother’s table. That is what I miss the most about my grandmother. She was a unique critter, if I have to put it that way. Our relationship was strained. She was a wonderful cook, she canned she gardened. She loved all of her grandkids in different ways. You never left her house hungry that was for certain. 

My dad [worked in coal] for some time, my grandfather did. My girl’s dad does now. His father did, my former father-in-law, he works in coal. It’s important to this area. It is what keeps this area going.

My ex-husband, the father of my two girls, when he first got his job in the coal mines, I didn’t sleep for a month. I won’t lie. My girls didn’t sleep for a month. He’s had a few injuries, none life threatening, thank goodness. Of course I have fears. We have been divorced for five years, but if something happens to him it’s going to affect my girls. They are grown now, but it is going to affect my girls. And I do have fears for that. He has hurt his hand, and he has scraped his back on roof bolts and things, and he has come home and told me stories of rocks falling and things like that when he has been in there. But like I said, if he gets hurt badly, or God forbid, loses his life, there’s going to be effects on my daughters. That’s their dad. There is always fear.

I have lost a lot of family in the mountains. I lost my brother four years ago. He was killed on an ATV, a four wheeler, flipped with him on it. [He was] thirty four. It is still difficult to talk about it. [We were close].

There have been a lot of happy times, the birth of my girls. My wedding two years ago was a happy time. There’s many a happy times.

There is a tradition with a box. My mom and her sister have this duck box. Every year for Christmas, I think my mom has the box this year. My Aunt Rita bought my mom these coffee mugs one year for Christmas, duck coffee mugs. And every year since, their gifts have been in that box. And this has been going on for twenty plus years. I was fifteen when Rita bought mom the mugs, and I am thirty-nine now. 

Every year, the gift has to be small enough to fit in that box. The box is duct taped. The box looks hideous. But every year, the box gets passed back and forth, so that’s been a tradition. It’s just something that they latched onto. My uncle passed away in January, my aunt’s husband, and she recently moved in with my mom, so their relationship has gotten stronger, the bond has gotten stronger. I don’t know what it is about that silly box. But that’s been a tradition. 

I don’t think we have any food traditions. My pasta salad has become a big thing every year. I’m in the process of writing a cook book for my daughters and I‘ve started a group called Jasper's Journey. 

I am really passionate about puppy mills and how horrible they are and I am a really big advocate for animals. That’s become a big thing. But that silly box gets me tickled every time I think [it]. I was teasing them one day that when they are both gone from this earthly realm, and they are floating wherever they are floating, and I will end up with this hideous box. I told them no, scratch that, whichever one of you goes first - the box is going with you. So we have done decided that. But that is really the only silly tradition that I can think of.

[Puppy mills]. Luckily, animal cruelty has become a felony in all fifty states, so that’s a good thing. We’re trying to put a stop to puppy mills where dogs are constantly bred for profit. We are trying to put a stop to that. You can no longer advertise on the side of the road, dogs for sale. That’s became a law. We are trying to put a stop to animal cruelty in general, that’s a big thing I’m an advocate for. 

I’m an advocate for child abuse. That’s a huge problem in this world. Elderly abuse is a huge problem, just abuse in general. Mental awareness; people doesn’t realize the struggle. It’s a silent pain. I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I used to think it was a military thing. But it’s not. I‘ve had a lot of traumatic things in my childhood and my teenage and adult life. They said that my brother’s death just completely went and triggered it. So yes, I am an advocate for mental health awareness as well. I’m a lot stronger now.

I love to read. I love to cross stitch. My animals are a huge hobby. I have three dogs, a cat and two hamsters. I have Molly Ann, Raleigh Mae, Jasper, Jinx is my cat, and I have Sampson and Princess Eowyn is my hamsters.

[My daughters] are both in Wise. Brooke, my oldest, is twenty and she works at Asia Café. Brittany will be eighteen in November, and she actually lives with my ex-husband and his new wife in Wise. She’s an upcoming senior in Central High School this year. She is so smart it’s scary. She will either be Salutatorian or Valedictorian, and she works at Mr. Gatti’s, along with going to school. 

He is a good dad, he‘s done a wonderful job with her. I get to see her whenever I want, we came to that agreement and it’s worked out well. Brittany is a good kid and she has grown into a wonderful young woman and so has Brooke. [Brittany] as of right now she wants to be a psychologist. Brooke is wanting to be a tattoo artist and a photographer. They are both wonderful artists. I will support them in whatever they want to be in life. I am right there behind them one hundred percent. I am very proud of both my girls.

[Instill Appalachian values in your children] Growing up as kids, I just tried to teach them the value of living where they lived. Don’t ever take for granted the mountains. Because when you are not here, you are going to miss these beautiful views and the food, the traditions that their grandmothers instill in them, their aunts, their uncles and their parents and everything.”