Greg Lilly

Greg Lilly, Electronics Technician; Check, Virginia, Floyd County:

“I live in Floyd County now, Virginia, a little town called Check. I was born in Beckley, West Virginia. I’m an electronics technician. I learned that in the Navy back in the 70’s. 

‘I was born in ’53 [in Beckley, West Virginia] and ‘course that’s a little while back; I’m not that old hopefully, but I remember things like the TV going off at eleven or twelve o’clock. That’s back when you had the black and white TV and some really good shows like ‘Seahunt’. The TV went off at midnight, and you had a test pattern till the next day. 

When you get of school and come home, you didn’t have to worry about latch down kids, everybody just came home and started playing till somebody showed up. It was no big deal in those days. Those were pretty good times, back when a dime or a nickel was worth something.

[Families tried] to instill good values in you. You might look back and say, ‘Well, I didn’t like it ‘cause they did this or that,’ but I think most people our age, right around sixty or so, we were brought up in school and it was okay to get a paddlin’ if you did something wrong. We said the Pledge of Allegiance in the mornings; we said our prayer in the mornings. Seemed like people were a little more aware of what they were doing, and if you made a mistake you got some sort of punishment for it. It really wasn’t bad. I don’t know of anybody that got a normal spankin’ that it really hurt them. I think you can get out of control with it. Nowadays, the kids go to school and you can’t give them a spankin’ and everything’s changed so much it’s just hard to see it. I just think I grew up in a good period. 

My dad and my mom both liked to hunt and fish. Up in this area, in southern West Virginia, that’s a big thing. Not only did we eat what we got, it was a good thing to take your family out and do that. Fishing was always fun. Some fish you didn’t take home and some you did. We’d hunt squirrels, rabbits, deer; just whatever was in season. We ate it and enjoyed it. I passed along the hunting and fishing part to my kids and they all love that. 

Seems like we always got together at Thanksgiving and Christmas and always ate good food, homemade rolls and certain recipes got passed down. Blackberry dumplings homemade, that’s really good. Eating was a big thing. I remember, ‘Bread and butter, come to supper’.

My mom and dad always had a garden. I remember I’d get in there a little bit and try to grow with my mom. We’d have a contest to see who could grow the biggest cucumbers. That was just part of what people did around here.

My grandaddy was named Clifford Lilly. He was a part of a coal company at one time. It was called LiIly and Hornbrook [and] they were out of Crab Orchard. They owned a water company also around Beaver. They were business people and they inherited that from his daddy, Prince Lilly. 

He had a mine in a little town called Lillybrook. It was called Lillybrook Mines. I have some coal script out in the car from those mines that was started in early 1900s, 1940s. If you worked for a company, and it wasn’t just coalmines, and they had a company store, they would pay you with script, which was a coin that was specially printed. It had denominations of like 5,10, 25 and they spent this script in the company store. You can get on Ebay and find it, it’s not real expensive, and there’s literally thousands and thousands of different scripts out there for different things. 

We used to hang out [at my grandparents] a good bit. He had a TV that had an antenna that turned, and that was nice ‘cause you could get more than one station. He’d always get mad at me for turning that little knob and making that antenna spin around all the time. They had a pretty nice house, comparatively in those days. 

He used to have a pool table in the basement, and that was a big deal. It was one that just had the ol’ leather pockets and you’d just go get the balls out of the pockets when you shoot. 

My dad worked in the coalmines some until the ‘60s, and then coal got to where it wasn’t real profitable even in those days, where it was only so much a ton. I think they invested in a mine and the seam ran out. Then, he left Beckley and moved to a little town called Wytheville, Virginia and was a cost estimator for Pendleton Construction Company for several years. He ended up starting his own construction company later. 

The late ‘60s and early ‘70s I wasn’t living in the coal fields then. I’d been in a few [mines] when I was younger; I’d crawled down in them and look around and stuff, but it just wasn’t really available to me as an option [to work in the coal mines]. I think around here, we know that the coal has really gone way downhill, and people are not having jobs because of it. I wish they could get back into mining more coal, but a lot of that is politics and regulations. 

[My high school days] were mostly in the late ‘60s, so you had rock and roll music and the Vietnam War was going on and people being drafted. Everybody had hot rod cars. I graduated in ‘71 from George Wythe High School [in Wytheville, Virginia]. We had a group of friends we’d hang out together; probably six or eight of us were pretty close. I ended up playing golf. As big as I am, you’d think I’d have played football, but I was a better golfer. Seems like the times were much simpler then. 

I was one of the first classes that went to an integrated school. We really didn’t have any problems. You’d hear on TV about the civil rights and things, but it seemed like in town there wasn’t a problem with any of the people getting along; everybody was friends with each other and when we went to school and they put us all together it wasn’t like there was anything wrong with it. We were always friends anyway. I think people make problems when there’s not problems there, sometimes. 

I personally didn't get drafted. I joined the Navy in ‘73, but I had some friends that were in the Vietnam War. One guy, he got drafted and he wasn’t there two weeks and got killed. I think it was a mortar or something. He’s on The Wall up there in D.C. I remember him, he was older than me, but only two or three people I knew that were killed over there. 

[After high school] I had a couple of choices. I was going to go to college [or] go in the military. I ended up getting married when I was seventeen, and joined the Navy. I was in the Navy six years, and it was good for me because joining for six years they gave me two years of school. 
I ended up getting on submarines, believe it or not. That was good training for me ‘cause I’ve used that to do what I’ve done since then, which was work for decent companies like Hughes Aircraft Company and Sperry. 

[Being on a submarine] wasn’t as bad as people would think. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s they were bigger than they were in World War ll. The ship was four hundred twenty-five feet long, thirty-three feet in diameter and had one hundred thirty people on it. 

I had a pretty good job; I used to take care of the fire control equipment. It’s not fires like you think of a fire that burns; it was fire like you fire torpedoes. 

It was a real complicated system, more like a computer system, so it was good training to learn how to fix that. 

I spent all my time in the sonar room standing watches, listening to things around the ship, picking them up, and reporting what was around us. I was on that ship four and half years. Our patrols were in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of Russia. I was on the submarine that had the missiles on it [during the Cold War]. We’ve still got them and they’re out there as a deterrent. We don’t want to use them, but they are there if we need them. 

That was our job, to [be] ready at all times. I’m in the VFW because of [the Cold War]. We were there to be used as a missile platform, and we had constant radio communications where, if they told us, ‘Alright, the Russians have shot their missile at us, you guys go ahead and shoot theirs at them.’ We had [nuclear warheads] on there. It was something we needed to have, and it’s still kinda dangerous out there, so we have to be ready. 

There at the end of [the Cold War] I was working for Hughes Aircraft Company; I was working on a sonar system that picked up the Russian submarines. It was so good, that we’d pick them up as soon as they pulled out of port and they knew that. That was one of the reasons [that helped] them to give up fighting. They were spending all this money, and it really wasn’t working, and then they ended up separating. It’s still coming back and it’s really not completely over. 

Most of us here have left for some period, and then you end up coming back. One reason is these mountains are absolutely gorgeous. You can go out west and you can see the Rockies, or you can go anywhere in the world and see different places, but you don’t find many other places much prettier than this; the gentle rolling hills, the trees, the greenery, a lot of water. It just seems more peaceful here. 

I think [outsiders] hear some with more of a southern, or what some of them might call a hick accent, and they take that instantly as you’re not as smart as they are; or you’re a redneck or backwards, which is completely wrong. 

It’s just the way we’ve talked around here and it’s not good or bad it's just the way it is. 

[My biggest triumphs] are my kids. I’ve got three children, two boys [and] a girl. I’ve got five grandkids and two great grandkids. I’m only sixty-two. I teach them about maybe coming up here next year and try to get them to come. I think I’ve taught them some good values. I think they’re doing fine. I've been employed pretty much my whole life and I’m kinda proud of that. 

When you lose your parents and your family gets smaller, you think, well that makes me next then, doesn’t it? You think about that. I hope I’ve got another twenty or thirty years in me. Might be able to do something a little fun and maybe still be able to help people out. Not have to get up every morning and go to work for somebody else; that’d be nice. 

[I’ve] always been a hard worker and always been a decent provider. I’m not rich or anything, but you know, you don’t have to be. Money doesn’t buy happiness.”

Angie Adams

Angie Adams, Physical Therapist, East Kentucky Physical Therapy; Premium, Kentucky: 

“My parents are from here. My first fifteen years I lived up in Dayton, Ohio, then I’ve lived here for the last 33 years. At the time, [my family moved to Dayton] for jobs. 

My father got a job up there and I was raised up there ‘till I was fifteen. When we lived in Dayton, [my Dad] worked at a printing factory, McCall’s magazine. And then the company shut down. And of course, being from Letcher County, they came back to Letcher County. 

He came down here and did strip mining and reclamation. He worked for a strip mining company for years, and he retired from there. He is 74, and still gets out on his 4-wheeler and raises a garden. He and my mother both do. 

In my young life, it was every weekend we came to Kentucky. Oh gosh, [the trips were] long and just curvy, curvy, curvy. We didn’t have [highway] 15 and those kind of good roads. It took forever. Seven hours to get to Letcher County from Dayton. But we traveled at night. My Dad had worked second shift, so as soon as he came home at 11:30 at night we’d take off for Kentucky on Friday [and] get here at four or five o’clock in the morning. 

Mamaw would get up and fix us breakfast. Ohhh, it was eggs and bacon, and gravy and biscuits. She went all out when we came. I always loved it here. This is where I wanted to be. 

I always looked forward to coming down here with my cousins, playing and climbing trees and swinging on grapevines, all those good things. Those were the things that I do remember the most. I hated leaving. I really always wanted to stay here and spend summers here with my grandma. 

Oh yeah, [I’m a hillbilly]. I really always have been. It means, we are a special people. Good, family oriented people. I like that. I really dislike [the stereotype]. They always come in here and get the worst of the worst, when there is so much better than that. 

We live well. I think they just often come in and look for the bad and that really bothers me. Well yeah, you can [find bad anywhere]. I do go back to Dayton every now then and go to downtown Dayton and see the homeless. It’s bad there, too. It’s everywhere. You just have to look for the good. 

Probably one of the saddest times is when my grandfather passed away. He and I were very close and he had a ton of great grandchildren and grandchildren, but I was one that was very close to him. That was a real difficult time for me. I was 28 [when he died]. 

[My grandfather] loved to fish and play cards. That was what we did. We played cards. He would play rummy for hours on end and I just happened to be one of the grandkids that grew up playing cards. My Dad started me playing cards when I was about five years old. I’ve always been a card player. 

He [grandfather] was a coal miner. Worked underground. He never got hurt, and you know those coal miners loved their jobs. He raised eleven children on a miner’s pay and did pretty well. He was just an awesome man. Just a kind, caring man. 

I read. I love to get out on the 4-wheeler and get in the mountains, get in the sunshine, hanging out with friends. I love things like that. I’m an outdoors person. I have been hunting. I’m not good at it because I like to talk and I can’t be quiet. But it’s fun and I’m all for hunting. 

I really think tourism would be a great thing for here. Some family of mine has cabins up on the mountain. There are people that don’t live around here that would love to come to those places and stay for the weekend. We have a lot of festivals and there’s a lot of things for people to do around here. I don’t think coal is ever going to be what it was, and we have to look for other options. 

I would say come down here and visit. Talk to people. We’re a friendly, kind people. Give us a chance. I think you would like the things that we do, and the people that we are.”

Brice Baker

Brice Baker, Retired/Whitesburg Farmer’s Market Vendor; Whitesburg, Kentucky:

“I love farming. I love gardening. I’ve been retired since ’91, and I’ve worked in about all my life, where I was raised up at home. 

I went to grade school over at Colson for eight years, and then I went to Whitesburg High School for four years. 

My Daddy died when he was forty-five, and he was sick fifteen years before that. That’s a young man to die at that age, and we all worked together, and helped in the home as a family. 

Seventy-five or eighty percent of what we ate, we growed our ownselves. Even the beef, the hogs, the sheep, and chickens. But we farmed enough too, we raised enough food to keep ‘em during the winter time. 

I stayed at home during the time I was going to school. In the summer, I would go off somewheres and work when I got of age, in construction work mostly. I worked up in Manassas, Virginia, during the summer, two years in a row, my Sophomore, and then my Junior year. 

My Senior year, I went to Indianapolis. I worked [for] Thermobuild Manufacturing [making] storm windows and doors. Then I came back home, and met this woman [I saw at a restaurant], which is my wife, and we got married. We’ve been living happy together thereafter. 
Last year, we had our fiftieth anniversary. We went on a cruise down in Florida, and went to the Bahamas, and come back to Gatlinburg. 

I went straight from high school to try to find me a job somewhere or other. I worked down here for a dollar and ten cents an hour, and I was going to get married, like I said, in ’64. And I told [my boss], ‘I can’t support a wife on a dollar and ten cents an hour. You’re gonna have to give me a raise.’ And I said, ‘If you don’t want to give me a raise, that’s fine. I’ll give you a notice that I’m gonna quit, and find me another job.’ So he said, ‘Find you another job.’ 

So that tickled me, [when] I got paid three dollars and sixty cents at another job that I went to from there. So that was a big increase in my pay. 

I went to Chicago first, and I didn’t like it there at all. I was gonna try to find me a factory job, that paid good money, ‘cause I’d just got married. I didn’t like it in Chicago. 

The newspaper was on strike, and I went to the unemployment office up there, and got a temporary job. One week, I worked thirty-two hours, just spot labor. That’s what they called it, I think. And I got me a job working in a Coca-Cola plant, a helper on a Coca-Cola truck. I went to take my check to the bank to cash it, and everybody in front of me, they would hold their checks out there, and I would glance at ‘em. 

Their checks was three times more. I said, ‘If they can do that, I can, too.’ So I went to the steel mill, and got me a job in the steel mill, and I went to bringing home three or four hundred dollars a week, too, just like them. So that was the extent of that. 

Far as living there, I didn’t mind living there. But it wasn’t nothing compared to here. Everybody’s in too big a hurry to do something ‘nother, go somewhere, and my wife didn’t like it at all. 

I owned a home on East Fourth Street, next to the city airport there, and it was called an ‘income home.’ It was a two-story brick home. I lived downstairs, and rented the upstairs for more than what the payment was for on the home loan. 

I think we bought it for like thirteen thousand dollars, you can tell how long ago that’s been, and I sold it for twenty-six thousand dollars, and we moved back here. I rented a U-Haul and loaded all my furniture myself, and we’ve been here ever since.

I wouldn’t have cared to stay there at that steel mill, till I retired. I wanted a job, that I could retire, and get a pension from, but I didn’t never do that. I had too many jobs. 

I started working for Southeast Coal Company. There was some layoffs, and strikes, and stuff. I worked for them twenty-seven years, and most of that twenty-seven years was underground. 

I done all aspects of mining. I was a foreman for them, mostly on setups, and some on coal runs, but I didn’t like that coal run. I’d usually get it ready for them to run, and do the dead work, move ups and backs, and that’s about all. But, I run the miner, I run the bolt machine. I’ve run shuttle cars, continued haulage, cutting machines, joy loaders. About everything that they had, I could run it, and do it as well as anybody else.

If you get used to working under the ground in the mines, it stays about the same temperature the year round. And we had gas in the Premium mines, and it was pretty bad. Methane. I’ve sat on a miner before, and it hit a pocket of it [methane] and fire would fly clean back into the controls, burnt and singed the hair on your arms. It would be that hot. 

I got burnt in the Premium mines. A pump blowed up on me. It burnt me pretty bad. The skin rolled off [and] I stayed off for about two weeks. Then, they let me stay off outside for about a week, and then I went back to work. 

I worked over in Virginia in the mines, and it was gassy, but it wouldn’t near like that. I had my Kentucky mining papers, and I had my Virginia mining papers. I was the only one that worked at Dixieana that had Kentucky papers; that could boss in the Kentucky side, or the Virginia side, either one. I guess that’s why they hired me, too. But during the time I was working in Virginia, there was a layoff from Southeast. They couldn’t sell no coal, so I got me a job over in Virginia. 

I owned the Hilltop Grocery over here then. My wife was working it, and I worked on the hoot owl over there, in Virginia. The third shift. Most of the time, we started at 2:00 in the evening, and we would work till, well, eight hours, most of my time was ten hours, because I was the foreman, filling papers and stuff out. It would overlap into 6:00 in the morning we’d get off. And so we done real good, far as making enough money to survive on. 

We got three kids, two boys and a girl. The girl is the oldest, and we got two boys. We had one boy that had leukemia, and we stayed in Cincinnati for almost a year up there, and he relapsed, and we went to Houston, and stayed down there about nine months. But he’s doing real good now. He’s living up in Madison, Wisconsin, and he’s working at a hospice, but he’s a minister, and he’s a good kid. 

I got a good family, and the main thing, I’m a Christian person. I go to church, and I’m a deacon of our church, Jeremiah Missionary Baptist Church. So that’s about the extent of my life, you know. 

The business around here right now, we need politics to take care of Eastern Kentucky, not Louisville, or not Lexington. We need something ‘nother here. Now I think a prison is going to come in here real soon. That will help this right here in this neighborhood, not only the housing, but the economy all the way around, it will help. And I think I heard sketches of it yesterday, that we was definitely supposed to be getting a prison, down at Roxana. It’s Federal, so it will be real good for this area.

(What’s special about the region?) It’s like comparing here to where I lived in Detroit, downtown Detroit. I moved back down here [and] it was like getting out of jail. The traffic [in Detroit] is bumper-to-bumper, and just rush, rush, rush. Down here, you can take your good, cool time, and do anything you want to. Up there, you have to be in a haste to do it.”

Denise Bates

Denise Bates, Public Relations, Mountain Comp Health Care; Blackey, Kentucky:

"I’ve lived in several places, but I was born and raised here. [My childhood] was magical. I’ve written several stories about it. I grew up about a mile down the road. We call it the compound. It's the Bates’ Compound and almost everybody in my family used to live there. My Dad still lives there, and my brother. 

We had a farm up on the River Road. My Papaw had livestock, and every day we would hop in his truck and get on the tailgate, go to the farm and feed everything and take care of stuff up there. They didn’t have any worries about us kids riding on the tailgate back in those days. 

Over there was Joe Begley’s store. It’s CB Caudill’s, but all my life it was Joe Begley and his wife Gaynell’s. We never went by there that we didn’t stop and get a pop. We grew up swimming in the creek and the river, going barefoot and picking berries. It was a beautiful childhood. 

We were carefree, and my cousin Amy’s dad built us a treehouse up at the farm. We started a club and named our club ‘The Unspoken Roses,’ after a bottle of perfume. It was just a bunch of us girls that lived up there. We would conduct the meetings with the upmost of meeting decorum. 

We had a basketball team. We had a rock singing group. It was all imaginary. I don’t remember what we called our singing group, but the imaginary people in our group were Donny and Marie, Elton John, Cher and Olivia Newton-John. Everything we did was a lot of imagination. I regret that I think kids today are doing video games and watching TV and movies and stuff, but we really didn’t have TV. I mean, we had TV, but nothing was on so we always were outside and running around.

We’re just old mountain people. That’s all. We worked hard growing up. We had to work in the garden. I’ve shoveled manure, picked hard corn, shelled hard corn, strung beans, canned beans, made applesauce and apple butter and soap and just all that stuff. 

“It’s a heritage that my daughter [never] really got to experience, because I was a single mom and I was just working. I was busy while she was growing up. Not just with my stuff, but with her stuff. She didn’t get the same exact kind of upbringing as I did, but she got to experience some of it. She got to know Pap and Granny. 

I’m a schoolteacher by degree, and I did that for a long time. After high school, I went to college. I first went to Clinch Valley over in Wise and I lived with my Uncle Willie and his wife Teresa and their daughter Heather, who was a little baby at the time. I did that for two years, and then I went to UK. That’s where I got my degree. I lived in Lexington for quite some time. 

I moved back here, and that’s where I did all of my teaching career. In 2006, I moved back to the Lexington area and I just came back here recently. I did some other stuff. I had a paralegal business. I always was interested in the law, and so I did that for quite some time. I lived a year in San Diego, which was different. [When I lived away] I was coming home frequently. 

As my grandmother always said, ‘The mountains just beckon you.’

They once had to move to Florida because my uncle, who is now 70 and is fine, but he had some real serious health problems when he was a baby. So, Pap and Granny and my dad and all of his siblings had to move to Florida. She said they stuck it out as long as they could, and they had to come back to the mountains. 

My grandmother, Eunice Cornett Bates, comes from a family from up here on the River Road across from our farm. Her parents had 12 children, and all 12 children were college graduates. Most of them are gone now. Some of them are still here. Elwood Cornett, who is the pastor at this church is her brother. I think that’s a pretty incredible story. 

Pa Cornett was a farmer and Ma Cornett was a school teacher, she only had an 8th grade education, but back then, I guess you could be a school teacher with that. It would be amazing if anyone now could do that: have 12 children and all 12 children graduated from college. I guess all of them [attended] Alice Lloyd or Berea, because it was free. But they all finished. They all went on to be very successful people. 

We have such a sense of place, and I don’t think everybody has that. I knew almost all of my great grandparents. I’ve been to so many funerals. Not too long ago, I met people who have never been to a funeral in their life. It’s weird because a funeral around here is almost a social event. 

An Appalachian funeral is like nothing else in the world. Sometimes, there is drama at funerals. People get upset or angry with each other. It’s a very high emotional situation. So many, many, many, many nights my dad has sat up in this church with a body. [The church] is Old Regular Baptist and they meet once a month. Yes, [they believe in the families sitting up with the bodies]. Not everyone still does that, but a lot of people still do that. I’ve been to wakes where the body was in someone’s living room. 

I wrote a poem about it one time, “Sunday in Blackey,” because you wake up and look out the window, and there’s not a place to park in this whole town. Everywhere you look on this side, over there, it’s full of cars because they [funerals] get a huge crowd. 

A funeral is just a part of the culture. Baptisms are also part of the culture. Been to many of those. 

I remember a story, I was too young to know really what happened, but my great grandfather’s name was Washington Russel Bates. Everyone called him Wash. He was a sheriff and he had a moonshine still. There’s just tons of stories about Wash. He died when I was in the third grade. 

At the funeral, one of the preachers said that when Wash got baptized all the fish down river died. I don’t know [if they still do baptisms in the creek here behind the church]. I’ve not seen a baptism here in a long time, but the last one I went to in the river was across from there because it’s easy to get down to the river back there. 

[At an Appalachian river baptizing] everybody goes down to the river after church and the person being baptized is in a white robe of some kind, normally. The preachers wade out in the river, and the person to be baptized does too. Everyone sings. “Shall We Gather at the River” is a staple. Then of course, there is a little preaching and a prayer and they baptize them, they put them under water. They raise up and they feel like they are glorious. 

Oh, I’m a hillbilly. I like Bluegrass music and riding around on the mountain. I like the way I talk and the way the people I know talk. I like everything about being a hillbilly. I have been all over the place, and it’s never been anything but a plus for me."