Brandon Cody Trivett

Brandon Cody Trivett, Farmer, Age 21; White Top, Virginia:

“I’ve grown up here all my life. [It’s] nice, peaceful. It’s just its own little place.

I like riding dirt bikes, horses, hanging out with buddies, taking care of my son and being around my family. We [he and his buddies] just ride around, and we might drink a beer or two here and there or just sit around and shoot the bull. Maybe light a fire or two here, you know.

I farm right now. I’m breaking horses for a woman up there, doing a little bit of fencing and little bit here and there…not too much and not nothing. 

If someone wants me to ground work some horses, I’ll work horses. Shoe, trim, whatever she wants me to do… mow hay… whatever. It is [rewarding] to me. I ain’t got nobody breathing down my back or nothing, you know, I just get to enjoy what God created. 

I got into horses with my dad, and I just picked it up from there. Enjoyed it, loved it, and just wouldn’t have it any other way. I first learned when I was about 5 years old, and started breaking them when I was about 13, 14 years old. I just like Quarter horses. 

(Training horses) You got to start them off on the ground, start them slow, and break them there. [You] love them up, get them to trust you a little bit, and then you start throwing a saddle on them. Not really throw a saddle on them, but start getting them used to working back and forth. Just listening to you and everything else and then you work them with a saddle. Eventually, [you] get on them, which is trust. 

Me and my buddy Logan was riding up on Fox Creek up there in Troutdale, Virginia and there was a tree draped across the road. He’s on this old Appaloosa, [and as] we were walking across, he grabbed that tree and his horse climbed out from under his hind end there and kept on walking. She turned her head and kept on darting down the mountain. We chased her for about five miles. That’s about the funniest thing I’ve got ahold of.

[Once] we found an old scrap metal barrel, and we found three trees right in line with each other. We tied three ropes to the trees, put that metal barrel on there, put a piece of carpet on and we made us a little ‘buckin’ barrel, like a bull. We weren’t much of bull riders, you know, but we used to love to ride that barrel. 

I wouldn’t call myself a hillbilly, I’d just say, ‘country.’ We’re just different kind of people. We’re a different kind of breed. We get along with everybody, everybody helps everybody out and there really ain’t much drama around here. [We] work hard, and take care of what we got to. 

I’ve worked a little bit of everywhere; I’ve worked up Roseville, Michigan, South Carolina and everywhere else, and I couldn’t stand being away from home. Everybody just seemed a little rude to me. You didn’t see mountains, trees, back roads and nothing like that. You had major public highways, four lane roads and buildings the size of, daggone, I mean they’re just ginormous! 

[After], a month or two, three months at a time, I just end up coming back every time. [My family [drew me back]. I’m very family-oriented, and everybody else around here is, too. I tell you what, it was just a relief [to come home]. It’s like I’m getting ready to see my family, I get to see my son and enjoy the mountains like I used to. It just never gets old. 

[My son is] a little over a year and a month old now. His name’s Calen Lane Trivett. He’s my pride and joy. He’s something else. He’s moving around, dancing, singing… hollering,’ dada’ and everything else, boy I’ll tell you what. Just makes me smile, yes sir. I love him to death.

(Explaining his tattoos) That was my best friend there, Mikey Balthazar. He ended passing away back when we was in school. I was 17. I was raised up in diapers with the boy. He was my brother, you know? Ended up finding a different road to take, and he just ended up passin’ on by himself. Hard to talk about, you know? That right there’s an old travel cross, got that one right there for my son and that one right there says ‘family is where it begins and never ends’. 

We keep losing jobs and everything else. Everybody is just shutting everybody down. The economy’s dropping, and nobody wants to buy nothing no more. We ain’t got much around here, so we gotta do what we can to make it through. 

We work hard [to survive]. We earn what we can, work our own gardens and everything else. Just do what we can to survive—hunt, fish, everything else. Take care of our family the way we should. We can make something out of anything. We can take a 10 x 10 log there and build anything with it. Build anything out of anything.

(On how to fix the economy) Shoot, I really don’t know. Get a different President in there and just help try to fix the government and not try to ruin it. Get all these these terrorists and everything and just get them on out of here. There’s enough stuff going on over here and everywhere else, I’ll tell you we don’t need no more. The way it’s going it ain’t going to be good.

Lord have mercy, I really don’t know [where Appalachia will be in 15, 20 years]. Lord willing, maybe a few more jobs, a lot more youngins’ around, better school systems, a lot less drugs—get the drugs out. There’s a little bit [of drugs] everywhere, and it’s just ruining everybody. It’s taking everything from us. 

(People making fun of Appalachian culture) It sort of breaks my heart, [and] it makes me mad at the same time. I’ve always been good to everybody else and treated everybody like I wanted to be treated. I just don’t see why someone would want to treat someone bad. You walk up to a stranger, I always shake my head ‘howdy, how ya doin?’ People walk right by you, give you these mean, smirky looks. Ain’t no call for that. 

Where I come from, your daddy raised you right, treat everybody like you wanted to be treated. Always be nice and if I got a chance to talk to somebody I’ll stop and say hey. If I can help anybody out, I’ll help anybody out. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done to me or whatever else, if you need help, I’ll help you. That’s the way we are around here and in my eyes, that’s the way it should be all over the world. 

[My happiest times were] When my son was born, and getting saved by my Lord, Jesus Christ when I was 16 years old and you know, about them two was probably the happiest I’ve ever been. 

I just want [my son] to be a hard worker, respectable young man, raise a family of his own and do the best he can with what he’s got and not complain about the rest. Life is what you make it.”

Ron White (not that Ron White)

Ron White (not that Ron White), Runs concessions in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Lives in Tazewell, Virginia (originally from Grundy, Virginia):

“When I was a kid you worked, not like now a days. We just worked. You raised what you eat. That’s just the way it was. You didn’t miss school unless you had to. Daddy worked and that’s just the way it was. 

[My dad was a farmer] and a coal miner forty-three years. Never got hurt; he was blessed. There was five of us [kids]. I’m the only boy. [I never went in the mines] ‘cause what it done to him. He couldn’t breathe. 

(Why did you stay in the mountains all your life?) The view and the people. You can’t get no better. They’re just all friendly; they don’t look down at the ground when they walk by you, they speak. 

I left here one time, but I came right back. I went to Myrtle six months. That was enough; I didn’t like it, I didn’t like the people, I didn’t like the crowd. I’m a hillbilly. That means everything. I’m a full-blooded redneck hillbilly. [That’s just] the way we are. 

I travel a lot. I’ve done concessions twenty-six years. I used to drive a truck, and didn’t know from day to day if I was going to work tomorrow. I was hauling’ coal out of the coal mines. Every time you turn around, they were talking bout laying off, so I said I got to do something. I was thirty-three. 

I’ve got two boys, they live in Tazewell. One has his own business, he’s in construction. The other works at Jennmar, makes roof bolts [for mining roofs], and that ain’t going to last long. 

I don’t know what people are going to do [when the mines are gone]. There is a hundred and seventy-eight homes for sale in Tazewell right now. A hundred and seventy-eight, man if you can believe that. That’s a lot of homes in the city limits. Ain’t nobody got money and what money they have got, they’re keeping’ it. 

[Outsiders] I don’t let them make fun of me. I tell them, ‘Don’t down me till you go try it.’ Go live our life. You’d be much happier than you are now. We’re always happy. We’re just happy, I don’t know why. Just cause of who we are, I guess. The way we was raised. 

[I ride] a motorcycle, a Heritage Soft Tail. I went to Sturgis once. That was a hoot. You need to go. It’s just a good time. Just take it at that; it’s a good time.”

Pam Robinson

Pam Robinson, Teacher at Wise County Christian School; St. Paul, Virginia:

"I am from the flatlands of Alabama. We came up here when I was thirteen years old for my mom to work for a coal company over in Wise County. [I’d] never been exposed to the mountains in my life ‘til we moved here. 

I remember just being in awe, just seeing the mountains. I had never seen mountains like that; even though I had lived all over the south and even lived overseas. [I lived in] Saudi Arabia. My mother’s second husband was a chemical engineer for an oil company. We moved over there with him, and lived for a short period of time and when they divorced, we moved back. We got here because she came back and needed a job. [I’ve lived in the mountains] thirty-eight years. 

I remember when I moved here, I’d hear people talk about soup beans. And I thought, well I’ve never heard of a soup bean in my life. Well, as soon as I went to somebody’s house and had some, I’ve been eating them all my life, but down south we called them pintos. That’s just all we called them, but they called them soup beans. 

It seems like every area has a little way that they do things just a little different, you know. I love cooking. I love to cook for my family and I can, I canned some beets earlier in the week. 

I went to school at Appalachia, Virginia, Appalachia High School. I played basketball and was a cheerleader and walked home most of the time back then. Of course, it was a lot safer for kids back then. I liked it. We got out when it snowed, stayed out until two or three o’clock in morning if they were cancelling school the next day. 

[My mother] was a draftsman for Westmoreland Coal Company, a draftsperson. Actually that’s how I started out. I was going to finish and go into engineering and started with that, and worked with that for many years and just decided that I wanted something more fulfilling, and I felt like the Lord was calling me to work with kids, so I kinda switched/changed tracks. 

Back in the late ‘70s, there weren’t a lot of women at all [draftspersons]. It took us a little while to adjust, because she was divorced and then a woman leading a home and then plus in kind of of a man’s job. It was a period of adjustment when we first moved up here. But, it all worked out and worked out very well. She worked there until Westmoreland shut down. It was a good thing --- it took care of us. She was able to raise us up on her own. My dad was not in the picture, financially or otherwise. So it was good.

My mother‘s a gifted artist, and went to a lot of the craft shows all around. I did that all my life with her. [We] traveled somewhere doing shows, Railroad Days at Appalachia and different things like that. We had a good life. I enjoyed it there. 

My mom does a lot of pen and ink portraits. She works in a lot of different mediums. She does oil. She doesn’t do as well as she used to…she’s getting older and having health problems and can’t do quite as much. The old Appalachian School that burned, she did a pen and ink of that and they made note cards and all that and sold them through the town and several of the historical places there and landmarks and things she did in pen and ink. 

[My mother] moved to Ohio two years ago. She said ‘Pam, you’ve took care of me for forty-nine years. I’m gonna go live near your sister and let her take care of me the rest.’ She moved up to Columbus, Ohio two years ago. It’s been culture shock for her up there.

To me living in so many different places, when I came here, there is a difference in the people. The morals tend to be a little stronger than other places that I lived. I don’t care for the negative connotation of ‘hillbillies.’ I think people here, their culture, their music, their arts things that I enjoy about the mountains, I think’s what people need to see and not the negative. To me that’s what makes a hillbilly, I would call it more a “mountain billy” or something. But I consider myself one; I’ve lived here longer than I ever lived anywhere in my life. It’s more home.

I am a born again Christian and I teach in a Christian school. To me, that’s important. As a whole, I don’t think we look at things like the rest of the world does. Our family, what your family means to you, your faith, those things are here, and that’s a good quality. People stick together, and you don’t see that all over the United States or in the South. That stick togetherness, help each other, you know, building your life on something that means something, your faith and raising your kids that way. That’s what’s important, I think.

There is so much culture here. Culture is its own type of intelligence, if you understand what I mean. You can read books and study all day, but if what you learn doesn’t mean something and translate in your life, it’s worthless. I‘m all about education. 

(Media portrayal) I don’t like us portrayed that way. These redneck country boys, jacked up trucks and drinking and all we do is feud and things, I don’t like that because I don’t think that is true. I don’t think that exemplifies the majority of the people here.

I like all the different flavors of speech. I love the way different people talk. So many different influences, it’s not ‘hicky,’ as I hear people say. There’s lots of lovely dialects here. I love to hear the way different people talk. That was one thing that fascinated me when I came here. Because they’ve asked me to talk, where I was from Alabama and I have kinda adapted to more like, I think, the people here. I think that’s very unique. 

The family bonds, that’s part of the culture, the music and the dance, it’s different. You can’t go to New York City and get what you get over at the Carter Fold. I don’t care what you paid for it. You just don’t get the same experience.

I like to scrapbook. I like to do anything with my kids. I love my kids. Very devoted to the Lord, my church, my ministry at school. It’s not a job, it’s a ministry and I like to tell people about the Lord, especially children. I am turned towards them. I like to go fishing, anything outdoors.

I’ve got three [children]. I have got one that is thirty-one. She is a registered nurse, and she is finishing up her Bachelor’s right now. She had to leave and go to school as soon as she saw her boy showed today {at the Rich Valley Fair], she left to go to college at Bristol and she’ll graduate in December. I have got a son that is thirteen, and I’ve got a daughter that is twelve. Then my thirty one year old has two little boys, so I’ve two grandsons, one that’s seven and one that’s three. They are all very unique, but they were all born here so they are authentic hillbillies. I am adopted, but they are authentic hillbillies.

(Raising cows for show) Our heifers look a little different than some of the other’s because our heifers go back into the field to breed, and we don’t want ‘em too fat so we keep ‘em on grass, mostly during the summer. We don’t throw a lot of show feed to them. They [the children] have just gotten interested. My son is very interested in everything agriculture related, so they decided to get into [it] this this year. 

He was the first one that had shown an animal at the Bristol Steer and Heifer Show in about thirty something years in Wise County, so he made the paper there and they were thrilled just to get it jump started again with the kids. We have a very small farm, just about twenty acres, and he is raising him three little steers. He‘s doing it all himself. He sells them, and turns the money over and buys more. 

His heifer actually came from my son-in-law and his dad. They told him to pick out whatever you want, you raise her and show her and enjoy her, and we’ll turn her back in the field. We have a garden and my daughter has two old horses she fools with. We don’t show those big time or anything, but they like to ride them and enjoy them.

They are little, rotten, dirty farm kids I call them. They like to get out and get into something all the time. It’s a pretty good life I think…pretty good.

[Coming home from Ohio] I feel comforted. I can go back to Alabama and visit my family there and not having the mountains, I am okay with that because it has a certain familiarity. But now, when I go to Ohio I feel very out of place, nervous and it’s like when we come back out of southern Ohio and back into Kentucky those mountains just start growing and I think about things and I think comforting would be a good word. It makes me feel good to be home. 

Some of the things we saw the last time we went were a little disturbing because a lot of the coal yards that were up there are just leveled. And it breaks my heart because we know a lot of people that don’t have jobs because that’s going downhill. But it’s comforting to me. I mean I consider this home. It took me a few years, because Alabama was always home. But now I realize this, I’ve been here so long and there is something here that I don’t have down there, I guess. This is home for me, you know."

Buck Martin

Buck Martin, Flea Market Vendor; Deane, Kentucky, Letcher County:

“[I grew up] at Halo, Kentucky. We had four miles of dirt road. Lots of times you couldn’t get home and had to walk and park your car. Especially, if it flooded. It’s country, you know. Most people kindly relied on garden stuff to live and so on. Some of us didn’t have no power. Some did. Some had television. Some didn’t. It’d just depend on what kind of family you came out of. 

Wheelwright School is where I went to High School, but I didn’t graduate. The little first school was Jack’s Creek School. I’d say about four rooms. It still exists over there. It’s made out of stone.

I went looking for work up in Ohio. Went to Columbus and found me a little job there and worked two or three years and it wasn’t paying nothing, 95-cents an hour, so I worked a while and I quit and come back. Then I drove a truck for I’d say about five years, hauled coal. Then I quit that and went back to Michigan.

I worked there about eight years for Ford Motor and then Washington Asphalt in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Worked seven and a half years for them. My mother had a store at Halo and she was getting old and she wanted her baby boy back, so I bought her store and come back. I run the store and sold tires, and my wife, she helped with it. Had a little gas station. 

Martin’s grocery was the name of it. We had two pumps there, maybe three. We had diesel, gas, high test and low. It was close to the post office there. Really what it was, it was a small area and population was low, you know, and it was the post office. I was close to the post office, so they’d wait in the store till the man come with the mail. 

Then, I went back in the coal business. I had two or three little small truck mines and didn’t make no money, but I got experience. From that, we got a trucking business. [We] built up about five tractor and trailers, and then we’d haul coal out of Perry County and then some into Virginia here. It was mine and hers [my wife] together, but I just fixed her a corporation and I worked for her. Let her be the real boss for a while. 

I got hurt off of the trucks, and since then I’ve just been flea marketing. I wrecked a truck over in Pike County, down Cowell Creek Mountain. 

My Martin side grandparents, they came from close to Ashland. Eventually, they moved from there to Whalen, Kentucky and what they call Pumpkin Center. My Mom’s side, she was a Hall. She come out of the Hawk Hall family around Knott County. Hawk had nineteen kids and he was an Old Regular preacher. He had two wives. One of ‘em died and he got a new wife. That’s where he got all them kids from. So my last aunt, I’d say about two years passed away. All of ‘ems gone. 

(About Old Regular Baptist Church) Well, now my Mom, she belonged to ‘em. And I joined one up in Michigan. It was a Southern Baptist. So I joined up there and I probably wasn’t about 25 or something like that, so I grew up in that type of church. My Mom wasn’t strict like the others. She’d go to my church or I’d go to hers. We didn’t fight ‘tween that. Long as you know Jesus. 
I like the scenery. The mountains. Sometimes they give you problems when it snows. When you need to go shop like [in a town], you can run to Wal-Mart real fast. Well, when I get ready to go to Wal-Mart it’s 30 minutes any way I go to town. You spend more gas and time. If you live in town like Columbus, or I lived close to Detroit, there’s stores everywhere you look. 

I really was raised here, and want to die here. I’m just partial to the mountains. 

You live harder here. You gotta work. When I was small, me and my mother worked in a cornfield [for] 50-cents a day. The wages ain’t so good. Now, if you [were] lucky here to work for a [coal] company, the little town would have their own company store. Them people lived pretty good. But, if you grew up and your Dad was hurt or you had people that got killed in ‘em [mines] you didn’t wanna work in ‘em no more. So, I was one of them that took off. My Dad got busted up. It didn’t kill him but he was crippled up. He run a motor, they called it a tram, and he hit another tram and it busted him up. My relatives, a lot of ‘em got hurt. Mining, you know, it’s dangerous in there and everybody don’t know if they’re gonna return or not. 

They’s lots of people that like to come down here. It’d be good if they could just get the money to fix the area, ‘cause they take these mountains and make back trails out of ‘em, horse trails, and 4-wheeler trails and they’d come from everywhere. And whenever they come like that, they need a motel and they gotta eat, so you get a lot of business. But, fiscal court has to vote whether they gonna spend on a job or not. Depends on who is the judge and all that is. That’s like the whole country. Depends on who’s in power. 

Me and my neighbor night watch for one another. He changed around and got on day shift and didn’t tell me. I dialed his phone, and [it wasn’t the] the right number. Anyway, I was watchin’ for him so I heard the 4-wheeler stop and I looked out the window, and there was a flashlight going over all his stuff. So I tried again [to call] and couldn’t get him. I made a little racket, noise trying to scare ‘em. I said well I don’t know what it is or who it is so I’m gonna call 911 and let them take care of it. Turned out, he [the neighbor] was at home and it was him out there with that flashlight and the cops come to him and pulled him out of bed. He was barefooted. They said, ‘well he must be the one that lives here. He ain’t got no shoes on [and] a burglar would have his shoes.’ I called the law on him! But I didn’t know. I was protecting him. 

I like coin collecting awful well. I did have a big one [collection] and I’m getting older and really don’t want things like that laying around. People would be more tempted to rob you and kill you. I got robbed two or three years ago, about four thousand dollars. They were so good at it, they broke the window out, double paned, they broke one pane and didn’t break the other. They had a little girl about this big with ‘em and they shoved her through that kitchen window and she opened the big door for the big boys. I was out like this and so they knew that. They know I’m gone now, but I hope they don’t try that again. I have security that watches ‘em and I know who done the other one. That’s another reason I quit coining. 

Right now, I got a bunch of cars. I’m an antique car dealer. I like old cars. My wife died three or four years ago and I had a little money and I had a few little friends that liked money and I got beat out of a little more money. I said well I’m gonna put it all in old cars, and if the girls get the cars, I’ve had it.”