Shannon Adkins

Shannon Adkins, Owner/ Adkins Alley Thrift & Variety Shop; Oak Hill, West Virginia:

“My husband and I are self-employed. We own a store out of Oak Hill, West Virginia. It’s a thrift and variety shop. [Has been running the store] About four years now. [Before that] I worked in the medical field as a receptionist. 

I was born in Beckley, West Virginia in ’79. I spent very little time in Beckley. We moved around quite a bit, bouncing from places like Odd, West Virginia which is down the river from Ghent here, to Oak Hill, back to Beckley, Mount Hope… several places. 

We had an outdoor childhood. There wasn’t much technology, and even if there was, we really couldn’t afford it. We made our own entertainment, built tree houses and climbed trees and all of that good stuff. 

The reason that we bounced around quite a bit, was my stepfather was a jack-of-all-trades. He’d have employment for a little while, and then he would move to another area because he would lose his job. He liked the bottle a little bit too much, but that was the main reason why. He just couldn’t hang on to it. He worked in the coalmines for a few years, and once the coalmines died, I think he just kind of lost hope.

My high school days was split between Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley, and Oak Hill High School. I was a little wild, missed a few days of school. Graduated on time in the top half of my class, but it was fun. 

I was mischievous. I did a lot of writing clubs, reading clubs, things like that. My last year of high school I traded all of that in, and was busy taking care of my sisters and getting in trouble. [Has] two sisters. 

My sister and I, she’s about a year younger than I am, she liked to borrow my clothes without my permission. It used to make me so mad. We got into a knock down, drag out fight and we broke every door in my mom’s house putting each other through them. 

She’d taken items that weren’t hers, and refused to give them back. And then she lied about it and said that, ‘I didn’t take it’ yet I found all of them packed away in her room. It ended up being quite a brawl, so my mom ended up calling the authorities. They came down and gave us quite a talkin’ to. 

I wasn’t a bad child, but boy, she could get under your skin. And, she smashed my fingers with cinder blocks when we were kids, so maybe that was my payback to her. She was rotten. 

[After high school] I went to college. I started out majoring in social work, and then changed my major to psychology and then ultimately, changed it to criminal psychology. 

I didn’t finish my degree, had lots of credits, but just couldn’t get there. I left college, went to work, got married, got divorced, got married again and that’s where I’ve been for quite some time. 

The closeness. That is what makes it [Appalachia] special. No place that I’ve ever visited in the world can you knock on the door at the neighbor’s house and still be able to borrow a cup of sugar. I think that the communities here are very close knit. If you’re an outsider, sometimes it takes a little while to be able to integrate into those neighborhoods. I think that that way of life is no longer in other societies. 

They’re [the people] are down to earth. No one is competing against each other. It’s not a rat race, it’s very laid back. Our expectations of people is that you are as good to us, as we are to you. You don’t find that anymore. 

I have family that lives in Texas, and when they come to West Virginia they’re so fast paced that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to live here. They’re just go, go, go, go, go. I think the likability of the people, the friendliness, that is what makes these residents special. 

Yes I do [consider myself a hillbilly]. What it means to me is that we’re friendly, we’re intelligent, we are still giving. You don’t find that anymore. It means that you run the mountains, and you might be barefoot. It does not mean that you’re unintelligent. It does not mean that we’re slow. It makes us a special type of person.

The media’s no one’s friend. It doesn’t matter where you’re from. When it comes to Appalachia, they portray us as hicks, ignorant. The stereotypes are mind-boggling. 

What I would tell them is that we are not ignorant. A slow dialect does not dictate that. We’re indeed intelligent, resourceful, we’re caring. We have that something that the rest of the world has lost. 

I like to sew. I like to surf the internet, spend time with my family, fish, hunt… little bit of everything. 

It’s [her store] called Adkins Alley. It’s a thrift and variety shop. We carry thrift items, we carry new items. It stemmed from the economy here in West Virginia. For every job that we had, it was downsized. 

There were layoffs, the company didn’t exist anymore, it was bought out… and we became tired of it. So we took matters into our own hands. We took $1,000 of our income tax return, we started out with a building and $1,000, and now we’ve grown to where the business can support itself, and it supports us and our family. 

My husband is a transplant from Michigan who came to West Virginia. He worked in the auto parts industry as far as selling tires, auto parts, service writer, but even those jobs were hard to hang on to. He had a son by a previous marriage. He did not want to raise his child in Michigan, so he moved to West Virginia where he had a better support system and it wasn’t quite so dangerous to raise kids here. His father is from Cabin Creek in the Summersville area. 

My paternal grandfather I never met. My grandmother is still living on that side of the family. She is a Godly woman. She now has dementia, but she raised a brood of children. All of them are military. I think there were five all together. 

My mother’s father was a coal miner. He was my pawpaw, I loved him dearly. He passed when I was age five. My grandmother was a homemaker and was wild as anything you could ever think of. She definitely had no problem bucking up against a man if he did something wrong. They divorced, and he remarried and she never did. When they passed away, they were still buried beside each other, even though they were divorced. 

He [her grandfather] was a buffer. He loved us, protected us, gave us whatever we wanted. He was just a good man and it’s hard to believe that you can remember back that far. But when someone makes that type of impact, you remember them. 

I can remember he had an LTD. We used to ride everywhere in that thing. I can remember dancing in the living room. He owned an old coalhouse and we would dance and sing and he would frequent the bars. He would just do little things, buy us candy. We never really watched a whole lot of TV, but when we did, our favorite show was Hee Haw. That was his thing. As a result, I still watch it whenever it comes on TV. 

The happiest time [in my life] was when I had my son. That was the happiest day. He’s six, thinks he knows everything. Six going on thirty. 

My best friend had a son who died of complications of leukemia and this’ll be going on the second year [since] we lost him. He was nine. I can remember when he passed ‘cause I traveled, she’s from West Virginia, we travelled to Kentucky. 

He’d been raised here for the first seven years of his life. He had made it about nine, ten months into his treatment. He’d broken out into a rash and no one knew what it was. The CDC got involved; they were trying desperately to figure out what was wrong with him. He had LCH, which is where the white blood cells attack the organ’s soft tissue and everything in the body. 

Ultimately, it killed him. He was only probably the fourth or fifth person in the world to ever have complications of LCH during the time in which he was receiving treatment. So that was hard. 

I asked her, ‘I’m going to come down and see you, what do you want me to do?’ and she said ‘Well I need you to be in the room.’ So myself and her and her husband and two of the other children that she has, were there. I said, ‘are you sure that you just don’t want it to be family?’ and she said, ‘well you are my family.’ He passed. She has good days and she has bad days. She lives in Shepherdsville [Kentucky]. 

I would have to say I was taught durability. I was taught strength. We were taught to be trusting of our family, and to be loyal and to be aware of people outside of that. I think that’s with most families in West Virginia. Perseverance. So those are the things I think that were handed to me. 

Mountain food. My grandmother used to make a thing called fried bread. It was a staple in her household and, now mind you, she was born closer to the Great Depression so they didn’t have a lot of food. So you just mix flour and water together. You fry it like a pancake and then you can put jelly and things like that on it. Deer of course is a staple. Venison is always a thing here in the mountains. Good lean meat. And squirrel. Sometimes you get squirrel. Turkey is another one. But I’m more partial to the deer and the fried bread. 

[On where things will be in 10 to 15 years] As a state, as a whole, I see [West Virginia] as a tourist attraction. That’s where it’s going. There’s been a lot of issues with closure of the coal mines. There’s been a lot of talk about our sale of shale, fracking, but even now they are having a hard time getting that type of employment into the state. The EPA is fighting them. I look for it to become a tourist destination. And it’s disheartening in a way. 

I love it here. I cannot imagine living anywhere else and I’ve visited places… Michigan, New York, Jersey, Bahamas, and this is just home. It’s comfortable. It fits like a glove. 

I feel relived [to see the mountains after being away]. I’m always happy to see home. I feel like I can slow back down and collect myself. I do, I feel relief when I come home.”

Bonnie Asher

Bonnie Asher, Retiree/Musician; Letcher, Kentucky: 

“I live here in Letcher, Kentucky, right near the old store and post office. Right now I can’t walk. I’ve had some health problems and I’m using a walker to walk on. So, I’m just enjoying being here. 

I was born down here in Letcher County at Ulvah, Kentucky. My mother was 17 years old and I guess my dad was about 21. He worked in the mine, had moved here from Tennessee. My mother had one child before me that was born dead, and after everything was over, they told them they couldn’t have any more children. Well, the next year I was born. I’m the oldest of 10 children. I’m 85 now and I have a brother that’s 84 and we two look alike. 

Daddy and Mom moved down to the other side of Hazard about five miles, to a place called Bulen, Kentucky. That’s where I was raised. We went to church there at the Baptist Church. I liked that. Had lots of friends and family. We were 10 and our best friends were from another family that had 10 children. We just always had such fun, and not much money. 

We had these little kittens that were born, four of them. They died in a flood. Mom helped us get a box and she covered it and put pretty material and all that in it. And we went up on the hill to bury ‘em. We had a cave up there. We liked go up and take a little picnic lunch. Nobody thought anything about it then. You’d go off, and no danger. You’d never think of that now. 

But anyway, a big train was at the lower end of the place and we had dug the grave. The one brother wanted to be a preacher and my older brother said, ‘now you know I’m the preacher, but you and Bonnie can sing a hymn.’ We started singing, and all at once the train come and that must’ve made the most horrible noise in the world. Smoke bellowed up the mountainside to the point you couldn’t see. 

My brother screamed, ‘Oh God, it’s the end of time’ and he threw himself down on the ground and was prayin’. So we threw ourselves down and we started crying. Then of course the train comes up and he stood up and said, ‘What’s the matter with you two?’ We said, ‘Well, you said it was the end of time.’ He said, ‘I didn’t think it was the end of time and all of you all know that.’ 

Up until I was up here in high school, I went with jeans, bangs, and I dressed like the boys. And that was good, ‘cause you had all these friends, you know. Well, John L. Lewis [UMWA President] was coming to town and they had put it out that he would stop at that coal company shortly, and for everybody that wanted to see John L. to be there. The only people that went was miners. 

Well, I got up real early and got my shoes on and went down there and I stood kind of under a bridge. The train stopped, and all, and I went up to him [John L. Lewis], this is awful to tell, but I did do it. John L. Lewis was a real tall man. He bent down to me and said ‘hello’. I said, ‘John L. Lewis is a SOB.’ And the miner next to me looked at me, and he knew me ‘cause I played with his kids, and he picked me up by the nap of the neck and he said, ‘Bonnie, you better get home fast and I’m going to report you to your dad.’

So I started running. I got home and I went into the bedroom and I crawled back under my bed, way back at the back and hid ‘cause this guy had said I’m going to report this to your dad. I got back under there. So when Daddy came, he’d talked, he and the other miner had, and he and Mom came and they started lookin’ for me. Course, Mommy knew where I’d hid. They told me I had to come out. I said, ‘No, I’m not coming out.’ I said, ‘You’re going to be mad at me, Dad.’

He got over there and said, ‘Come out I want to talk to you.’ He pulled me up to [my] knees and he said, ‘What I’m telling you is a secret.’ He said, ‘I’m not for John L. Lewis and a lot of things going on with him right now,’ ‘cause Daddy had just started his own mine at that point. 

He said, ‘But I’m going to have to give you some punishment, you’re never to go over to that railroad again.’ And so that ended that story. [My punishment was] I had to pick up rocks that washed up with the flood and piled them up. I was probably about eight years old [then]. I was out into everything all the time, me and my two brothers. 

John L. Lewis… Well, I’d heard that word [SOB], and I’d seen miners, they would fight. One would call the other that SOB, and they didn’t say the words, they said SOB, I just knew it was bad ‘cause I’d seen ‘em fight. So I figured that John L. Lewis wasn’t nothin’ but a SOB. So that was pretty bad. But after, that I never thought of him like that again.

Another thing we did, we decided we was going to ride the train, and we’d get [a sibling] who was younger, of course, to take our books home and tell Mom that we were helpin’ the teacher clean and stuff. 

He said, ‘I’m not going to tell no lie,’ you know, he talked kind of funny. And I said, ‘Well, it’s not really a lie, if you take our books we’re going to be doing some things. So he said ok and little fella got three book bags and off he went up the back road. We got up to the railroad track and when the train came we got right on. He climbed up first, first Hershel did, and then I climbed on second, and we were going to get off at a place just about a mile up the road from us and the train didn’t stop. 

It kept goin’ and goin’ and Hershel hollered hang on sis, hang on and I could tell he was scared. It stopped and we jumped off. We got off and we went down to the commissary. We went back and got under a meat case they had down under it. We just sat back there and Hershel said, ‘Now we can’t say a word. And I said, ‘I know.’ He said, ‘We’ll walk home in the morning, but we’ll stay here tonight, so be quiet. And I said, ‘I don’t think they going to want kids stayin’ here in the store.’

Well, here came a miner. He said, You’re the Childers kids aren’t ya?’ We said yes. He said, ‘Would you like an ice cream cone? We’d shake our head. He went and got us an ice cream cone. 

He was there a little while, and another man came in and he came back and he said, ‘You Sherman’s children?’ That was my Dad’s name. We said yes and said we’re waiting on him. We came up with that, I did. Then Hershel pinched me ‘cause we weren’t supposed to say anything. And he said, ‘Would you like a candy bar?’ And he brought us a little sack of candy. 

Well, in the meantime, we found out he went out, and went to the commissary and he called where Dad was and Daddy happened to be there. So he thanked the man and he came and got us. And for three weeks after that we never got to leave the house. We was at school and back and somebody checked on us. But we said we’d never do that again because that very next week after we had been on that train, one of our schoolmates got on and it didn’t kill him, but it cut his legs off. Up until this past year, [when] he passed away, he sold papers in Hazard the rest of his life. 

Growing up, we each got one thing [for Christmas]. Our stockings were filled always with one tangerine, a few nuts, a little bit of peppermint candy and things like that. But we’d have a big tree that Daddy would put up on Christmas Eve and get at the uncle’s land. We had a beautiful Christmas tree and we’d do the lights and sing. 

My greatest thing that I got was a desk. And [all my children] used that little desk. But that was the nicest gift I got. And then I got a ring, which I still have. One time, my brother, we was all taking our stockings down on Christmas morning and he ran and got his. His was a great big one and when he opened it, it had some blocks of coal in it. And he threw [them] at the hearth and threw himself in the floor and he said, ‘I’ll never like Santa Claus again.’ 

I was taking out my ring and everybody was taking something out. And then, Daddy ran around the corner and got a big stocking and he had a little gun and something else he wanted. So we had experiences like that, but we did get stockings every year. And the desk I got I was so proud of it ‘cause I could use it in school. I think all in all, being my age and all, I’ve had a good life. 

I met my husband who lived here when he came from the Navy, and we married. I was going up to the nursing school over in West Virginia and we decided to marry. I figured I’d do my nursing down at UK. 

We went to UK, which he already had two years there, and they had no nursing school. They had one nursing school in the whole town and being married, they didn’t accept you. I kind of forgot nursing, but on an elevator there at the Good Samaritan [Hospital] I met the lady who ran the one nursing school they had. We were talking and she asked me what I was going to do. I said, well, I was looking for a job and she said, well I need a new secretary. So I worked for her for a couple years. And my life just went on. 

I got enough education I taught Kindergarten. I spent some time teaching folk dancing. I was editor of Cary News in Cary, North Carolina. 

I had an interesting tale there, where I went [to] a big mansion. In the basement was a liquor-making place. I went to get the story, and my husband came and he didn’t know where I’d gone and he was real unhappy with that. And he said no more, ‘cause the police had already let him know when he was calling that was a bad situation. And so in Cary I did that, and I taught Kindergarten there for I guess, five years. Amy [daughter] graduated from the Kindergarten I taught in, but I put her in another room. We had five Amys there if you can believe, in Kindergarten. 

From there, we lived in Florida. I did several things there. That was a nice place to live, but when we came back, we came back to Cary, North Carolina and bought a home. Bill [husband] had four years of medical school training, and decided he didn’t want to be a doctor, he wanted to do research. We lived up in Seattle, Washington then, for about six years. Then we came back to North Carolina. 

I love the mountains. We loved Seattle. He was hired by the forest service for the summer. We both were. People had to walk to get into there, but they flew us in. We had a big, strong log house and a big stove that went half way across the wall. This was outside Seattle, Mt. Rainier. That big stove I learned pretty quick, and two days a week I’d cook cakes and pies.

We decided to take some time off, ‘cause Bill had done all of his work and his papers had gone to England and ever where and he was just real happy. We came here, and were just going to stay a year and he was going to go to Alaska. They had some research open there, and offered him the job. 

When my husband had finished the research he was doing and all, it felt like it was a good time to come home, and his dad had been sick. Of course, when we came back, we ran the store down here, just about a year. Then he started teaching Anatomy & Physiology at Hazard Community College. They couldn’t find a science teacher and he decided he’d go down. They contacted him to do it for a semester and he did it for 12 years. Taught 12 years, until he passed away. 

We stayed a few months and we loved it, being back home again. So, we came back here and we’ve been here 30 some years. 

I worked for Mountain Comp for 30 some years. I was a receptionist at the clinic. After that I worked for the Letcher County Library system. I did several things including driving the bookmobile. Folks loved seeing the bookmobile drive up and they all loved reading books. And recently, when I had the trouble and had to have the surgery, I was still doing a Saturday day down at Blackey [Library]. I helped get that library going. I had a couple falls and it’s been nine months now. I was working till I was 84 years old. 

I did bookkeeping for Letcher County libraries, and there was a million dollars all the time. When I resigned from there, the guy that was taking over the bookkeeping, he said that he told the board that it was just wonderful having me there and he’d never known anyone to do bookkeeping so carefully and they never had a mistake. So that was fun. 

(What makes this place special?) Well for me, I guess maybe being born here. We had mountains all around us, and I have always loved the mountains. Florida, I liked the people, but I didn’t care for it because it was flat. You know, no mountains and that was just really bad. Of course, going to school up here we would go in the mountains over here across the road and walk different places. There’s just something peaceful about it. 

I had colon cancer. They’d given me three months to live, and I’ve lived 37 years since then. I would go out with the two Boxers we had, out here to the old church that sits on our land, or near our land. The church sits on its land but we own around it. I’d go out there and take me a book and just sit and enjoy being there. We had horses we’d ride out in the mountain and Bill and I would camp. We would just take good quilts and sleep on the ground. And take food for the horses. 

Bill graduated, he had three degrees from UK and he was in the Navy. When he came out of the Navy and married me, that’s when we went back to UK. But, he wasn’t an outside person when he was young. Later, after all we got into here, in [our] free time we were on the mountain or [would] go somewhere and swim. We’d take the kids, when we lived in other places, take them swimming and camping. We camped out a lot of places [where] unless you worked for the government you couldn’t even be there. So, we had a good marriage. We had three really wonderful kids. 

I had never done anything [musically] until my husband bought me that dulcimer on the wall over there. I learned to play that and do songs with it. I got an auto harp that Bill bought me. I played that and I did better on it because I had to do everything by ear.

Jean Ritchie had a nephew that lived in a house in the coal camp next to us. She came over there once we had moved from downtown more up that way and I heard her singing and all and I got interested. She would teach me a song when she would come to visit them and have supper. Only once I’ve seen her since when she came up to Whitesburg to the Appalshop there. She remembered me, of course. I met her dad once. I have a brother that played music when they were at Berea College together, with her. 

Bill helped me, and taught me [to play music]. Then he made me the beautiful dulcimer hanging on the wall and it plays and it sounds really good. But you know, since Bill passed away I haven’t played anything. But, one day last week, I thought I’m going to get my dulcimer out, and if it’s not in tune I’ll get somebody to come and tune it. 

And sometime, I’ll tell you just about my husband, ‘cause he was a genius. That’s all there is to it.”

Colin Fultz

Colin Fultz, Miner, Construction Worker, Entrepreneur, Owner/Kentucky Mist Moonshine (Opening September 2015); Whitesburg, Kentucky:

“I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve been to a lot of different places, but I always come back to here. It’s just a small town atmosphere, I guess.

I think everybody’s kind and gracious. In a lot of places you go to, you don’t get that. You don’t feel as welcome, or the people is pushy, trying to sell you stuff. Here it’s not like that. You can walk up and down the street, and if you want to go in somewhere, it’s fine, and if not, that’s fine.

I travel quite a bit. I like the Caribbean a lot, but I’ve not really lived nowhere, but here. I spend a lot of time in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. 

I was in Barbados a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t think I’d be so happy to see Miami. I kind of felt like I was home when I got to Miami. (Laughs) But when I got to where I could really see the mountains, I was like, ahhh, I was relieved. When I crossed from Virginia into Kentucky, I was glad to be home.

[Growing up] we all had dirt bikes. We rode dirt bikes and played in the mountains. A lot of people would visit [and it would be] just kids hanging out, playing football and stuff like that.

I didn’t go to college. My father was always into construction, and he laid brick and block for people. When I got eighteen, I got married, and started working for him. I’d grown up working for him my whole life. I got a job underground at a coal mine, and that was in August or September of ’89, and I worked underground for, I guess, about six years. 

I started my own contracting business that done underground contracting work, and I still do that today. We rent self-storage units, and my wife does a drug-testing company, and then, it just kind of evolved from that. 

The six years that I did work underground, I worked for a place called Golden Oak Mining, and then I worked at a place called Reedco. I was eighteen, and a relative of my wife’s gave me a job. It kindly got me started underground, and then I was real ambitious, so I started work on the side for other mines. That is my career, I would say, contracting for other mines.

It was just because someone gave me a break, and asked me to do a job, and knew that my dad was in construction, and it kind of got me into the business. It got into me hiring a lot of people, and doing that a lot. And then in 1995, I quit working underground for anybody else, and just started working for myself fulltime doing contract work.

I worked for my Dad, outside doing contract work, building houses and stuff like that. It was much easier going underground. I didn’t have to worry about getting wet. I didn’t have to worry about it being too hot or too cold. To me, it was a lot better. I got more money. I stepped up. 

Underground work, I love it, and I consider myself a coal miner. I have foreman papers and and I still keep all my training and stuff up. But you know, I’ll probably never really work underground again, but I still consider myself a coal miner. 

We done one of the mines that exploded. I forget what year it was, but it was Kentucky Darby Mines, in Harlan County, and we went, and put some seals back. I’ve had a few little scrapes. I got hurt there just a little bit, building some seals back for ‘em. A rock fell on my leg, but nothing major, no real accidents. 

Everybody’s moving, and everybody’s looking for different things to do. It’s just a hard time right now. They’re looking for alternative income because the economy is so bad. Even some of my family has moved for work to Western Kentucky. It’s just a hard time for coal right now, and I don’t see it getting any better anytime soon. 

Everybody in Whitesburg seems like they’re motivated to try to try to make something happen here, like they’re interested in doing different. Everybody’s been very supportive of me in the venture. It just seems like they want something more here. They’re wanting tourism and everything. 

[I will be opening a distillery called] Kentucky Mist Moonshine. We’re going to make flavored moonshine and regular moonshine, corn whiskey, and a lot of different things. We’re going to make, and we’ll be able to distribute and sell. We’ll be able to sell from the store here, and distribute nationwide. 

My personal history was my grandfather. He always made moonshine, and he spent a lot of time in prison over moonshine, about eighteen years. He was in Atlanta Federal Prison for quite awhile. He was there when Al Capone was in Atlanta, before he got transferred to Alcatraz. To people here, it’s just a way of life. That was something that they could do for income, and a lot of families here done that. When I first started this, even my Mom and them, they don’t really want to talk about it. It’s kind of like a black mark in their past. I think it’s great. I mean I love it. I love listening to the stories. This is gold, what they tell you. My grandpa would load up the kids in the car, and fill the back full of moonshine when he needed to transport it, because he said the police would never stop a carload of kids. 

[What makes moonshine different is] the process of making the mash. It’s how you go about that, and the temperature that you get right. Moonshine that we’ve got today is not what your grandpa made. What my grandpa made, he done it to make money. He didn’t care about how good it was. What I’m trying to make is something that’s clean, and I can mix with fruit and stuff like that. But you know, the old timers, they made it strictly from corn, because they didn’t have access to sugar cane, or any other kind of grains. They used corn, and you get a real strong flavor from a corn whiskey. 

Water is important. We get our water straight from the City here. Our local water here, is really good water. The only thing is you sometimes need a sediment filter, or some kind of filter. The water’s great, and the better quality stuff you put in, the better you’re going to get from it.

The building was built [in] the early 1900’s, and was originally a car dealership. Where we’re sitting right now, with the windows in front, this was their showroom. And then they worked on vehicles in the basement. It was called KYVA Motor Company. You can still see the name a little bit on the outside of the building. After they had this one, I guess they grew, so they built a building next door, which is this building over here, and that was their showroom. So they moved, and then they just turned this whole place into the service center. Through the years, it’s been all kinds of other things. When I got the deal from the City, I’m turning it into a distillery. 

The room we’re in right now is the distillery room. These doors are closed. They’ll be closed all the time. This is going to be the storage area back here, and those two, the rooms here with the air conditioning units on top, that’s the bathrooms. This is going to be the gift shop area here, and the tasting bar over here. Then, we’ll be able to keep all the moonshine behind the bar. 

Seems like stuff just comes to people [getting] opportunities to do things. I just come up with the idea. Well, my grandfather made the moonshine, I guess, to start with. So I got interested in it that way. And I was like, you know, my family never would talk about it and this or that. But I kept getting interested in it, so I decided I was going to buy me a still, try to do that myself. So I did, and I got to where I was making it, and friends was wanting it. 

One day, I just said, well, my wife had been onto me about it, ‘You’re going to get in trouble over that.’ And I was like, ‘No, I don’t make nothing.’ I said, ‘I’ll just check and see how hard it is to get my license to do this.’ I called an attorney friend, and I said, ‘Could you check on that, and see how hard it would be for me to get my license? ‘Cause I have a place, a barn at home, I was planning on using.’ 

I thought he would call me back in a week or two. Well, he called me back the same day. He said, ‘I’ve checked on it. You know it wouldn’t be that difficult for you to get your license. If you done it within the city limits, you could have a gift shop and a tasting bar. If you do it anywhere it’s dry, you can only have the distillery and distributing.’ So he said, ‘Would you be interested in doing it in Whitesburg?’

I said, ‘Yeah, I mean I wouldn’t care, that would be great, but I don’t have a place.’ He said, ‘Well, what if the City helped you with a building? And then it kind of come from that. 

The City kind of let us look at the building and then we started doing it. We’re getting close, but it’s been a hard job. The building was in such bad shape. At one time, they wanted to tear the building down, and put something else here, and then it was put on as a historical building. 

I’m hoping to open the first or middle of September. At first, a lot of people didn’t want the distillery here. We had a little opposition about that. I think it’s going to be great for tourists. If somebody’s driving by, and they know there’s a distillery here, it will probably bring ‘em downtown. But some people, if they even try it, if they’re even close, like they’re in Pikeville or Hazard or something they’ll probably come here. So I think it will be good for the economy. 

Right now, we’re focusing on the selling it from the distillery, but we’ve talked to a distributor for Kentucky. We’ve not ventured past that. We want to get open, and get a stockpile made. Then, we can move on to something different, because we’re just a small distillery. 

A lot of the distilleries today, they don’t even make the alcohol they’re selling. They’ll buy the alcohol, and then they’ll flavor it with some kind of artificial flavoring. What we’re going to do is a little bit different. All of our flavors will be real fruit, infused real fruit. It’s a little bit more work, but I think it’s a little better quality in the end. But everything that you taste from here, will be made here. We won’t buy anything from anybody else, and resell it. 

I just hope everybody sticks to what they’re wanting to do right now, and everything keeps growing, and don’t let the coal business get ‘em down, because it’s so bad. They’re just going to have to find other things to do, to make a living here. 

Starting out we’re thinking like four or five people [will be employed there], and then we’ll just see from there, and we really don’t know, until we decide on the hours we’re going to be open, and how we’re going to run the still. It will have a lot to do with that. Yeah. I’ll have to run the still. Oh, I’ll have to run the still, for sure. (Laughs) 

I hope that it will help the economy, and we’re going to do kind of like a consignment shop in our gift shop so that people that has stuff like honey, that wants to sell here, they’ll be able to. I’ve talked to quite a few people at the farmer’s market that makes stuff. We’re going to let ‘em sell their stuff here, and I think it’ll be good. I mean it will help. It will help us, and it will help everybody, too. We’ll have arts and crafts, [and] we’ve had people from spaghetti sauce to books, a little bit of everything. So anybody that has something to sell, that we can help ‘em with, we’ll probably let ‘em set it up, and we’ll try to sell it here in the gift shop. 

We’re going to get a lot of people just coming in to tour the distillery, but they’ll be able to see a lot of local stuff that is made here, too, in the gift shop.”

Victoria Jennifer-Lynn Atkinson

Victoria Jennifer-Lynn Atkinson, Student; Beckley, West Virginia

“I go to school. It’s boring ‘cause you’ve got to do work. I swing on my homemade swing. We have a tire swing, and a wooden swing, my Mom and my Dad made me, and my brothers and I made. [I like to] play outside [and] video games.

(Do brothers pick on you?) (Nods head) We wrestle a lot. My big brother is Robert. He acts like he’s gonna put a booger on me, but he’s not. A booger! He does this, and he acts like he’s picking his nose. He always tickles me. I sound like a goat whenever [he does that]. 

My Dad was in the Army. He tried to create a new world for other people. It’s important ‘cause he was a protector of the Army and of our family. (And U.S.?) Yeah. He just makes me proud. He broke his back while he was in the Army. 

My Mom is one of the Lilly’s. She was in the Lilly family. She still is, but now she’s an Atkinson. 

We usually do girl stuff, like you go to the mall. We go to my Grandma’s sometime. I stay the night with her sometimes, and I play games with her. Sometimes I trick her. I trick her, into giving me some coffee. (Too young for coffee?) No! I’m not. 

She plays with her dogs with me. Pedro and Carmen. Pedro bites. 

My dog is] a German Shepherd, same as Carmen. Her name’s Luna. Me and her play outside. Sometimes we play tag. I say, ‘Tag!’ and I run. She runs after me. She pushes me down, and tags me. Every time she pushes me down, she licks me. She barks at me, like she’s, ‘Arf!’, and it sounds like she’s saying, ‘Tag!’ and we do the same thing over and over again. 

(Hang out with Grandpa) Sometimes. I like playing with his chickens. I like doing that stuff. He used to have a deer named Rufus, but it died. Somebody killed it. He has a duck. I call him Quack Quack, ‘cause he likes quacking a lot. He lives outside with the chickens, but we have to feed ‘em sometimes. He’s just like my brother. 

[There are] a lot of animals around; horses, bears, deer, foxes, raccoons. I like deer, and I like cats. 

(Are you a hillbilly?) No, that’s Dad [and] that’s my brother. I’m not. [It means] that you do hillbilly stuff, and you go fishing, and you make your own homemade boat, with wood and stuff. No. I don’t wanna drown. (Laughs)

I want to be an animal shelter person, do good in school, and stuff like that. I want to move [away] ‘cause I want to ‘splore the world, and see what else I can find.”