Kimberly Shepherd

“… all I want is for babies to be happy, and adults to be happy, for everyone to be present, and for our land to be cared for.”

Kimberly Shepherd, Welding Student; Loyall, Kentucky, Harlan County:

“I grew up in a holler called Catron’s Creek. We lived right by the creek [and] spent most of our time playing in that creek on giant rocks, running through the water. I didn’t realize, but my Mom told me later on that she followed us the whole way. I thought we were playing by ourselves! It was pretty magical, because we were able to be free. I have a younger sister, three years younger. We rode our bicycles [and] we had all kinds of yard sales on the side of the road. I can remember collecting rocks from the railroad and putting them on the table and selling them for money. I’m not sure if anybody ever bought one or not, but we kept trying to do it. 

I went to Harlan Independent [School]. I graduated in 2002. I guess it’s not that long ago, but it feels like a hundred years ago. I feel like a different person. I did cheerleading [and] gymnastics. 

I grew up with my Gramaw and my Grampaw and my Mom. My Papaw was a coal miner; he passed away about three years ago from respiratory distress…complications from black lung. He was a Vietnam veteran [and] he had a Purple Heart. My Gramaw used to let me get in her china cabinet and play with her dishes. To know her now, and how picky she is with her stuff, I can’t believe that. She must’ve really loved me if she let me get in her china cabinet. They’d sit on the front porch, of course in rocking chairs, while we ran around the yard. Sometimes, we would go out to eat on Sundays, and that was always really fun. I can remember going to Druther’s with my Papaw before it was Dairy Queen, and he would get coffee.

My Mom, a single mom, worked her whole life. She works at a pre-school, [and has had the] same job for twenty-five years. [She] gave us everything that we had, all on her own. I still to this day don’t understand how my Mom got by on so little money. I don’t ever remember wanting for anything ever, or even knowing that we didn’t have any money. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized that we were poor, but it wasn’t anything to me. Seeing her get by on little money is really inspiring, because right now I work for minimum wage, and it’s really difficult. I can’t imagine what it was like for her making even less than that way back when, with two kids, not just one. 

They [grandparents and mother] taught me that our family needs to stay close together, and that’s one reason I don’t ever want to leave here because all of my family is here and I don’t think that I should have to leave them to find a better job or find a way to sustain us. Make do. That’s what we do, that’s what Appalachian people do. We make do. We figure it out.

I like to cook. My daughter and I don’t eat animals, so I try to make Appalachian food vegan or vegetarian, which is an interesting path. It’s been so long that I’ve learned ways to navigate around it. This summer, we pretty much just ate food that grew out of the ground. You find interesting ways to do things, like we use sriracha on a lot of things because it livens it up. We eat a lot, a lot, of beans. Tofu sometimes, but I don’t really like it that much. It’s still processed. 

I feel like the mountains are special, because we were allowed to be wild and free, and so we were able to just be kids. [It was] an unplugged childhood, and that’s what we’re trying to give our daughter because it’s a lot different when you grow up learning things outside, than from a computer or a TV. 

What makes us [Appalachians] special is that we’re all connected in one way or another; we’re always willing to help each other out. We had some family pass away a couple of years ago and we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to pay for the funeral. Two days later, everybody in the community pulled together and completely paid for it, with money left over. 

I left here [and] found out that being away from here wasn’t the answer. I went to Lexington and Louisville. I guess I was looking for happiness outwardly, and didn’t realize I needed to look inward, so I came back home. It was exciting at the time, because I thought I wanted something different. But looking back, I felt really lost because everything was so busy. Here, you’re able to be present, instead of worried about what’s going to happen next. I drive six miles round trip to work every day. 

I just worked retail in Lexington, pretty much. I came home and I had a baby and after I had her, she was about three years old, I got divorced. After that is when I started getting involved in things in our community, because I realized that Brooklyn, my daughter, needed something to grow up in. I wanted to give her something, instead of just leave her something to repair. I didn’t come home to visit a lot when I was away, but when I saw the mountains it made me feel safe and comfortable and calm. Just made me feel really in tune. 

Right now, we’re sitting at a table [at the It’s Good To Be Young In The Mountains conference (IG2BYITM)] trying to register anybody who wants to register to vote. Whitesburg [Kentucky] just passed a power plan, and we’re trying to work on something like that for Harlan County. I’m not really an expert, but from what I understand [there is] federal money that would go to abandoned mine sites to be reclaimed. For example, we could reclaim some of the land and maybe put a business on it; create some jobs, or a park or something like that. They [Whitesburg] stood in front of their City Council and had them approve a plan so that they can send it in to Washington to show that they’re in support. Basically, I think that they want to stop the people who are blocking money from coming into Eastern Kentucky and say we want to figure out something better, work together. 

I took up welding last August. I have been working at a desk for a really long time, and it’s really boring, so I decided I wanted to try to work with my hands because I had never really done it before. I didn’t realize how much I really liked manual labor. I always tell everybody that welding is like meditation to me, because you have to be present when you’re doing it or your weld will look like [crap], pretty much. We want to open a shop, but mainly I want to have more kids and find a piece of land and let them run wild. I would like to maybe make furniture, do things on commission. 

We like to go hiking. My daughter loves to do art. That’s all she does, all day long. Last night, she came to the punk show. She’s six and a half, and it was her first show and she thought it was the coolest thing ever. She told me she wanted to get a drum kit and start playing drums now. 

I reckon I’m a hillbilly. I guess some people perceive it as a negative term. We live in the hills, and we’re proud of it, nothing wrong with it. Stereotyping is really silly and I think that it’s tired. I don’t think that it represents anything at all that I see every day. We’re just regular folks like everybody else, trying to keep our families happy and healthy and sustain them. I always say the same thing; all I want is for babies to be happy, and adults to be happy, for everyone to be present, and for our land to be cared for. They laugh at me because they say I want to live in a Utopia. But I really do! I think that can happen. We can build something beautiful, if we all work together. 

I’m not an expert on the economy, but from what I see around me I can’t see it [coal] coming back and I think that talking about it... I don’t really want to say that it’s a waste of time, because we need to respect the past and what we have done, but we also need to look forward to the future because that’s what we’re leaving behind for our kids. I don’t really know what it says about us as a people if we don’t show that we want to make things better for what comes after us. 

Things are getting better all the time [but] things are still the same in the ways that I want them to be. Like my daughter’s school, all the people that work there are people that worked there when I went there. I think the fact that there are events like this [IG2BYITM], where everybody’s gathering together and realizing that everybody feels the same way and they don’t have to chose a side, I think that’s what’s going to make real change come. 

I won’t choose a side, it’s silly. Everybody wants to feel stability with their money, their job, [and] their family. Everybody wants to be healthy, I don’t think anybody wants to work a job that’s going to hurt their body eventually, or hurt the land that they have to live on. As far as the future, I think it’s really complicated because it’s going to take all kinds of things to make everybody happy because there are all kinds of different people here. The main thing we need to focus on is getting all those people in one place together. 

[IG2BYITM] is a conference for young people to come and pretty much celebrate Appalachia and talk about reasons that they can stay here or how we can change it to make it easier for people to stay here. I was thinking about it the other day when I was driving down the road [and] it made me want to cry. When I was in high school, there was nothing like this. I didn’t know that you should be proud of something as much as I am now. It’s nice to me that I can bring my daughter to something like this. Last night she saw a girl in a punk band singing on a microphone and it shows her that girls can do anything. I didn’t see that, in that context, when I was little. It’s really cool that they have a place to come where they can feel empowered and their voice can feel empowered. That’s something that people need too, they need to feel like their voice matters. 

I love living in the mountains. I think everybody should live here. [My daughter] Brooklyn is my legacy. I think she can change things. I’m working toward it, but I think she can do it.”

Nick Cornett

“If I used to do something dumb, or wear something dumb, my Mom [would say], ‘Boy, don’t you go out like that. People know you belong to me.’

Nick Cornett, Age 25, Bassist, Kudzu Killers; Knoxville, Tennessee, originally from Benham, Kentucky: 

“[Growing up in the mountains] was awesome. My Mom lived off, and I stayed with her through the school year, but coming back to hang out with my Dad was always super cool. You just got to hang out, and go play. You got to actually be a kid. You didn’t have to worry about who had the best stuff, because everybody was playing with sticks and rocks. They could have awesome, cool toys in their house, but everybody was like, ‘Let’s go play sword fighting with sticks.’ I don’t ever see kids doing [that] any more, which is sad. 

My Dad lives in Benham [Kentucky]. My Mom now lives in Lynch [Kentucky]. My Mom and my stepdad lived just outside Knoxville for a little while, [but] now they’re both here.

[My grandfather] was tough as nails. He died at eighty-two. He had a heart attack, and we knew he wasn’t feeling well, because he was letting my grandmother drive. You know how men are, especially here, so we knew that he was sick. Two weeks later, he came to see me one time while I was at work. He just stopped in because he was in town. I saw that he got in the passenger seat. Two weeks later, he died. 

He was a coal miner for most of his life. He built a bunch of Joy Stations before that, and then he managed some of those. They wanted him to go on the road, and he didn’t want to be on the road. They wanted him to manage three states worth of gas stations, and he didn’t want to do that, so he applied for a job at Benham, and he started working on the road. He worked on the road for a little while. I think it was about a month, and then Benham called him back and was like, ‘Hey, if you can be here Thursday, we’ll give you a job.’ He showed up on Thursday, and retired from Arch. 

[My grandparents] had a big place in Speedwell, Tennessee. When he retired, they moved to a hundred acre farm, because he [Grandfather] didn’t like down time, apparently. We put in a garden every year, and then we’d harvest it all. We’d can it, and prepare it, and things like that. I did that since I was ten years old. 

(High School days) I wish I could redo them, and do better. Had I known they were going to be as important as they were, are. I was [in] the last graduating class of Cumberland High School. I did not identify with a lot of people; you know how high schools are. They clique up real bad, and I didn’t identify with any of those cliques, so I stayed to myself a lot. Had a few friends, but in high school, I was real lanky and stuff, and I decided the way I was going to be able to get girls to talk to me was by playing guitar (Laughs). 

I decided that I was going to start playing guitar, and, I really didn’t want to bother anybody with lessons, in case it didn’t take or anything. I didn’t want anybody to be out anything, so I got a beginner kit for Christmas one year, when I was sixteen. My Dad bought it for me, and it was a little Ibanez Stratocaster was the style of guitar, a little amp and everything with it. It was really super cool to sit, and just figure stuff out on it. I would sit for hours and listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn records, and try to play along, and fail so hard. One day, I just like woke up, and I was like, ‘I’m playing today. Today’s the day, that I am going to learn how to play,’ and stuff started making sense that day. It’s amazing what you can do when you [are] determined to do it. 

I don’t want to say I learned to play that day, but that things started to piece together that day. I started playing by myself, figuring stuff out. And then, some dude needed a bassist, and I was like, ‘I can’t play bass, but I can play guitar. Let’s do it.’ I figured that out, and that’s where I’ve been for a long time, playing bass. I did a lot of metal when I was young, and it was not at all what I wanted to do with my life. I thought it was, but it wasn’t. I listened to some really, really heavy stuff, ‘Lamb of God,’ things like that. Then, I met some dudes from Harlan that were starting up a band, and they needed somebody to come and play with them. I started playing with them, and that was about six years ago. They were some of the best people I’ve ever met in my life, and we were in a band for probably five years. I don’t play with them anymore. It was just standard rock and roll [with] a little bit of a psychedelic aspect to it. 

Now I’m playing with the Kudzu Killers, which Forrest’s dad is in, who is my best friend from the previous band. His dad’s the drummer now. It’s weird sometimes, because I’ll go to their house. Forrest will be there, and he’s like, ‘Hey, man, did you drive by, and see my car?’ ‘No. I’m here to just hang out with your dad.’ (Laughs) 

Kudzu Killers play a little bit of an amalgamation of things. It’s a little bit of rock and roll feel, with a funk soul, with a real foundation of the grass roots music, and it’s an interesting thing to lay down. I write music, I don’t write songs. I don’t mess around with words, but I can make music sound good. I play bass. Most all of us came up listening to Ricky Skaggs, and Bill Monroe, and Ralph Stanley, and all the big Bluegrass greats, and then, we got older, and we decided we wanted to play pop music, or a lot of us did. I know I did. One day we just woke up, and we were like, ‘I just want to play some honky tonk style stuff.

I was not prepared mentally for college. I didn’t know the kind of commitment it was going to take because I had teachers in high school that really cared about me, and they wanted to see me do good. They would be like, ‘You’ve got to turn in your homework. You got to do this thing.’ I would do it when they told me to do it, but then I got to college, and I realized that nobody is going to do that. I dropped out of my first semester and took about a year and a half off to grow up, and worked too hard for too little. I decided I was going back, and I went back. I’ve still not finished, just because of one thing or another [because] I don’t really know what I want to do. I want to do something, help people, directly impact people’s lives and make good things happen in the world. That’s what I’d do. 

I worked with Higher Ground as a stagehand, and I was a designer for two years. Higher Ground is a community performance group initiative where we will go out into the community and collect stories. From those stories we will change them, or string them together, or combine three or four stories into one to create a play that is the stories of these communities. It’s the actual stories of the people that are coming to see the play, and that’s a very interesting thing. I was lucky to have some great mentors through Higher Ground. [It’s about] building a community that is capable of not only identifying that the change needs to be made, but making the change, and being the change that they want to see. 

There are so many different factors in play that I don’t think that we even realize are in play, in making coal come back. I don’t want to say it won’t, and then feel dumb, when it does, but I don’t want to say that it will, and then feel dumb, when it doesn’t. 

My dream job right now is to open a bourbon distillery, in Harlan, and make the barrels in here with our lumber, and sustainably grow the corn, [and] find something that’s not a sugar to put in, use sorghum, something that grows here naturally. You sustainably harvest from our forests to make the barrels, and really get it down to a craft, and everything about it is Harlan. Everything down to the taste of the water that we put in it is Harlan. I don’t know if this is true, because I’ve not tested the water [or] seen the tests done, but they say that the water in some of those mines up in Benham is like ninety-nine percent pure before it’s filtered. 

I think with that attention to detail, that [what] can have here is really the answer [to reviving the economy]. Louisville and Lexington, and all those places up there with all that stuff, they got so much money floating around up there because of bourbon, and who’s to say that they have to own it all? Who’s to say it has to stay up there, in those areas, and it can’t come to Eastern Kentucky? Who’s to say good bourbon has to be expensive? Who’s to say that a working man can’t buy the best bourbon around, for an affordable price, and it still be environmentally conscious, and craft made, [with] beautiful hand blown glass bottles [that is] and a piece of art in itself? I’ve just been thinking about that for a while, because we could sell the barrels to other whiskey companies. We could make a company out of hand-blowing the bottles.

I honestly think that what makes [Appalachia] unique is the pride in the area, the pride and the willingness to work. People come and go in Appalachia, but true Appalachians are the ones right here, right now, working, and struggling to make ends meet. They’re working three jobs, so that they don’t have to leave, because this is home.

I think that [stereotypes] do exist, and I really get upset about them, because I’m not about that. [The stereotypes are] that we’re ignorant, that we don’t have the ability to do better. We’re barefoot, and dirty-faced, shirtless most of the time. We don’t know any better, when in all actuality, we do know better. 

If I used to do something dumb, or wear something dumb, my Mom [would say], ‘Boy, don’t you go out like that. People know you belong to me.’ There’s a pride in our appearance that we have because of that. I overcompensate a little bit, I know that.

Appalachia’s the backbone of the nation. There’s so many people that come out of here, that are intelligent, and they have to move away, because of job opportunities, because of one thing or another. There’s a work ethic here you can’t find other places. Not to say other places are lazy, but that there’s something distinctly Appalachian about the amount of work that we put into something, and also the amount of ingenuity that we have. If we don’t have something, we’ll make something to make it work. 

I was out with my stepfather, and my grandpa on a boat and the engine died. We couldn’t get it to start back, and we couldn’t figure out how we were going to get back across the channel to where we could see a dude that was there camping with a boat. I just pulled some nets out, put some life jackets in them, I wrapped some duct tape around it, and I made some paddles. If we dropped them, they would float. That’s probably the biggest [example of Appalachian ingenuity] that I’ve got so far. My Grandpa was so proud. He told everyone that story for like ten years.

Appalachians are so resilient that we would stay silent for centuries and just take it, if we could just make ends meet every day. I think because of the economic state we’re in we’re rapidly approaching a time when Appalachians are going to need someone to lead a movement, and I think that’s what we’re starting here. I think that’s the beginning of it. We’re getting together, we’re banding together, we’re building a community across Appalachia. 

(Most difficult time) It’s been pretty good for the most part. My stepdad got real sick when I was in high school, and called in the family three times because they thought he wasn’t going to make it. But he’s a fighter, man. He just wouldn’t give it up. But when my grandpa died, that was a big one.

(Happiest time) I moved away, and my Dad just called me. He just called me, and he was like, ‘What are you doing? How ya doing?’ I was like, ‘Do you need something?’ He was like, ‘Nah. I just miss ya.’ I was like, ‘My Dad misses me. That’s sweet. I like that.’ 

When I was living with Mom and stuff, we would talk on the phone sometimes, but I was too young to realize that he was trying to communicate with me. And then high school was bad, and it disconnects you from your parents all the time, because that’s what high school does. I always felt like I was letting him down when I tried to go to college, not making it, and then moved. I [had] just moved to Knoxville. He just called, and I was pretty stoked about that. I still live in Knoxville, but I come to see him more than I did when I thought I was a screw-up, and letting him down. 

I love going out with Dad. He taught me how to hunt and fish. He’s a State Trooper [so] he taught me how to shoot guns, gun safety, and things like that. All the things that you need to know to be a young man. How to be responsible for your actions, even when you don’t want to. Which sucks. How to work hard for a living. He taught me all those things, and I’m super grateful that it happened, and although I may not have wanted to learn those lessons at the time, I’m glad that I did. It’s a great relationship now that I realize all those things were for me, and not just him going, ‘Why are you such a screw-up? Gosh, do better.’ Now I realize that he was actually showing me something, and teaching me how to be a man.”

Rebecca Atkinson

“September 11th, we were eating breakfast watching the news and it happened…the Pentagon was hit, and my husband was supposed to be at the Pentagon.” 

Rebecca Atkinson, Stay At Home Mom; Lanark, West Virginia, Born in Beckley, West Virginia:

“We lived in a small town, Fireco. We used to joke that you needed a passport to live there, because it was so far back. We were poor, like typical poor, but we had a good time. [Closest neighbor] was about half a mile to a mile. 

We had older siblings, but there was six of us younger ones, after they left home. We would just go out in the woods and play all day. We’d play with rocks, grapevines, acorns, swing from the grape vines and drop down into the ravines. Little did we know, there was jagged rocks there. Didn’t matter, we had fun. There were nine of us [kids].

Our dad had a chicken farm that we had all of the other animals, cows occasionally until they butchered them, pigs and raccoons. I had a pet raccoon [and] her name was Sissy. We got her when she was a baby. We’d get her out, and she was like thirty-five or forty pounds. She would sit on our shoulders and she was just like a big pet. She did not like guys, and she would scratch them when one of them would try to get her. We found it, brought it home and it just became ours. Dad made a big pen for it. One thing I didn’t know about raccoons is that they wash all their food before they eat it. So, we had to give it its own special extra water bucket so it could wash its food. It was litter trained, just like a cat. We had a squirrel one time that didn’t have a tail, and we went to feed it and my brother let it out. Our dad had a deer, Rufus. He would come around up until a few years ago, and he just quit coming around. We had ducks, geese --- all kinds of interesting stuff.

We did wear shoes, contrary to popular belief about West Virginia, but we only wore them to school. When we came home, we took ‘em off and we played. When we came in we always would wash up, Momma was always real good with keeping us clean. We had well water until it froze up and they’d unfreeze it and we’d heat the water on the stove in big wash pans. As time went, on stuff got better. 

We had gardens and we would work the gardens, and that’s basically what we would eat. Whatever we could grow and whatever Dad or the boys could kill was what we would eat. Because I was smaller than a lot of the other ones, I would carry the little bucket with the seeds, or I would help pull the weeds. All of us would feed the animals and water. Mostly the boys would do the outside stuff, and the girls would do more inside stuff. Mom could cook, but dad basically would cook a lot better, so dad would cook. He always tried to teach all of us girls how to cook. I didn’t really pay attention. I can’t cook. [Favorite meal dad would cook] I’d have to say brown beans and fried potatoes and corn bread. And then we would make blackberry dumplings in the summer time. 

[Soup beans] They would just soak ‘em overnight in water, and then they would put ‘em in a pot and they would just cook it on the stove on the pot and put a big salt pork, or a hambone in there or bacon, whatever meat we had. Dad would use every part of the animal. We never wasted food no matter what.

[Going to school in West Virginia] School was interesting but we were growing up with the same type of kids that we were. Not everybody had a lot of stuff, so we were never judged about what clothes you wore or anything like that. My mom always made sure we were all clean and had clean clothes for school. 

I didn’t know there was anything was different about the way that we lived. It never crossed our mind. There would be days when you’d be eating dinner, and half of the neighbor’s kids would all come and knock on our door and say like, ‘it’s dinner time.’ And mom and dad would feed half the whole neighborhood. We didn’t have that much, but they were always welcome to come and eat and share what we did have. If we were out you just knocked on [the door] of whoever’s kid you were playing with and you got fed. Or if you got hurt, they’d patch you up and send you home. 

We did crazy stuff that we would never let our kids do. We used to have the big fifty-gallon drums, and our land was never flat. It was a big hill that went straight down, and then over another hill and then straight down again and at the bottom was a pond. We would get in these fifty-gallon drums and there were six of us, the six smaller ones because it was after the older kids had left. We would wedge in there as tight as we could wedge. We would take them to the top of the hill and we would wedge in ‘em and we would roll off. Luckily, I used to always try to get in the middle, so we didn’t fly out. But by the time we got to the bottom, when it went over that last hill we were airborne, flying. 

Luckily, I don’t know how, but we never went into the pond, it stopped right before we hit the pond every time. There would be arms flying and legs. We would fall out, and then we would just get back in like we thought it was fun. We were crazy! If you went in crying you had to stay in. That was mom’s rule, if you got hurt and you came in you’re staying in, you’re not playing for the rest of the day, so we would stay out. 

One time, Andrew, my little brother, was playing on a swing set [and] he broke his arm. I remember I was out there with him [and I said], ‘don’t tell mom, you can’t tell mom.” He had his bone almost sticking out, and I was like, ‘I will fix it.” I tried to fix it and I think I made it worse. He went and told mom and they had to take him to the hospital because it was broke pretty bad. On the way to the car I was like, ‘you’d better come back with chocolate.’ We got chocolate when he got home. We didn’t get sweets a lot, but he was hurt so he was definitely getting something. I gotta say, he brought all of us chocolate home. I don’t know how he survived.

[My husband and I] were high school sweethearts. We got married and he was also in the military and we moved away. We’ve lived in a lot of states. We’ve been all over the US. He was stationed in Egypt for a while, so I visited Egypt and that’s a whole different experience. We’ve just traveled all over. He served almost fifteen years and they medically retired him [when he hurt his back]. He used to be a petroleum supply specialist, which he would refill aircraft or refill the trucks and stuff that they need. But, they would take him from the job he was doing, like all military does, and military spouses know this, they just put you to doing whatever they need you to do whether it’s your MOS or not. So he would do a lot of different things. 

When they deploy, you just hold down the fort; you just do it all. There was one time when my husband was deployed; he was in Egypt. It was during Christmas time and it was stressful anyway because my son was five and my other son was two. I was trying to put up the Christmas tree. It kept falling over and the whole time my little boy Robert, he was five at the time and he was going “if daddy was here he could do it, if daddy was here he could do it.” So I took fishing twine and I twined it around the Christmas tree and I staked it to the wall. But it worked! We had a Christmas tree that year.

A lot of people don’t tell you the struggles that you go through [as a military wife]. It’s hard when your husband leaves and you have to be mommy and daddy. And that day can come anytime. You can get a call and your husband can be gone. Like on September 11th, I remember that day clearly because we were stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia. He was flying out of Langley. He would do flights from Langley to the Pentagon, and he had been doing that for about a week. I was watching the news, and my son was two, almost three, and we were eating breakfast watching the news and it happened. And [the news] said the Pentagon was hit, and my husband was supposed to be at the Pentagon. 
Your whole world just changes. I think I called my sister in Germany, and I freaked out and she freaked out. I didn’t hear from my husband for twenty-four hours. I tried to go to post and they had the whole post locked down. You couldn’t get on, or you couldn’t get off. All the lines were jammed so I had no idea what was going on. Thank God his flight got grounded that morning and he never left the post. We were very lucky. It was horrible! The love of my life would have been gone. And I would have had to raise my kids by myself and I was scared. He just came home. He opened the door and I ran to him. It was one hundred percent relief.

[I’ve been back home] for five years. We got really lucky that [my husband] got all of his pensions and everything right out of the service since he was injured. So, we just sit home and visit family and raise our babies. I have a sixteen year old, he goes to Woodrow. I have a twelve year old son and he goes to Beckley Stratton and a nine year old daughter. We are lucky that we are retired and were able to come back. A lot of people our age are leaving because there are no jobs here. There’s not a lot of opportunities here. The cost of living is way higher than what it should be. It’s higher in this state than in any state we have ever lived in.

My middle son Chad, he loves the outdoors. We’ll walk through the woods and my mom was really good. She would tell us which plants you can eat, if you have a cut which plants you can use if something happens. Unless somebody broke an arm or a limb, we didn’t go to the doctor when we were kids. If we got hurt, our parents would just patch us up. Mom’s favorite saying was, ‘it’s too far from your heart to kill ya.’ She would say that, no matter what. You could cut your leg and you’d be bleeding and she’d patch it up and be like, ‘it’s too far your heart honey to kill ya, so go on and go play.’ And we believed it. We didn’t know that we had an artery there that could have killed us. 

A lot of people don’t that know if you are bleeding profusely from a cut and you’re in the woods, you can take cobwebs or spider webs or even pine sap, and put that on it and it stops seals the wound. For sore throats, they have this root that people dig. It’s called yellow root, and you just make a tea out of it and drink the tea or gargle with the tea. I still use that on me and my kids. You can chew the bark of the birch tree. We used to, because we didn’t get a lot of candy growing up and it’s sweet. It tastes like gum so mom would take us in the woods and we would chew it as a sweet snack.

I’d have to say I am a hillbilly. I think it’s somebody who can be resourceful on their own if you need to be. You have respect for those around you. You can be as back woodsy as you want to be, no shoes, but you still have respect. You have respect for those around you. 

You can make it on your own without anything. You can have absolutely nothing as long as you have your family and a means to get food, you can make it. You can be in the woods and you can survive, we could survive.
[Triumphs] My kids, I’d have to say my kids. All I want is people to know that I love my kids no matter what. Family comes first, no matter what. Just to love people. Take the situation, even if it’s a bad situation, and you can change it. We came from a bad situation. We were the poorest of the poor, and we rose from that. We made our life.”

Kateena Haynes

“…one of her favorites was ‘Oh, Wayfaring Stranger’ …she’d be crying, and singing, and talking about she couldn’t wait to get to heaven. I just thought, ‘don’t go tonight. I’m spending the night with you!”

Kateena Haynes, Executive Director, Harlan County Boys and Girls Club; Cumberland, Kentucky:

“Growing up in the mountains was a very comfortable experience, just because everyone knew each other. It really was like Mayberry, and you could rely on your neighbors and your friends, and whenever someone died, you took ‘em food. Everyone just looked out for each other, took care of each other, and you didn’t have to worry. I played out on the street until dark. I rode my bicycle for miles and miles, and my parents never worried that anything would happen to me. I knew I was taken care of.

My parents were quite a bit older than other parents of kids my age, and I think I was a happy, little accident. I have three older brothers, and no sisters. My oldest brother is sixteen years older than I am, and my youngest is nine years older, than I am. Dad was forty-one when he had me, and my Mom was thirty-six.

My Dad was a Sears repairman, and my Mom was a beautician. I remember one of my happiest memories was, I went to school, just about a couple of blocks away from our house, and it was Catholic School. I would come home for lunch, and I would see my Dad’s Sears repair truck out in front of the house. I would come in, and I’d have lunch with my Dad, and it was just me and my Mom and Dad. It seemed like we always had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. After lunch, I’d go out and I’d play on his truck. Mom was a beautician, and she had her shop in the house and I would play in her shop. A lot of times, I’d get in trouble, (laughs) because of that. If she was out of her shop, I’d be in there talking to her customers, and acting like I was fixing their hair, and curling their hair, and messing with the chairs, and doing things that she wasn’t real happy with. 

When I [finished] high school, I thought, ‘I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to move to Knoxville or Lexington,’ and, ‘I don’t want to live here.’ I think the only reason I thought that was because I was told that. I don’t remember ever thinking for myself, ‘There is nothing to do here.’ But I just remember being told, ‘There is nothing to do here.’ And so, I had every intention I was going to leave, and I was going to go to college, and I was going to live in a larger city, because that was what I was supposed to do. And now that I’m back here, I think, you know, ‘Where, where did they come up with that at?’ You know, where, why is that the mindset? 

I get really angry and aggravated when people say, ‘There’s nothing to do. There’s nothing for kids to do here.’ We have God’s playground here. There are mountains and streams, and hiking trails, and plenty of places to bike and explore. When I went away to college, and I was living in Central Kentucky, I can’t even explain the feeling that I had. My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, was not from here. He was from Cave City, Kentucky, South Central Kentucky, and I remember thinking that I had to get home. I had to get home to the mountains, at least once a month, because there was this anxiety that built up in me because there were no mountains around. Without the mountains, I felt more vulnerable and alone, and it was just a really strange feeling. I would have to come home and just kind of get a mountain fix, and then I’d be okay for a while, and I could go back to my classes, and go on.

I went to college at Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky. (When she first sees mountains after being gone.) Relief. I’d feel relief. I know this sounds corny and cliché, but it was like a hug, there’s mountains all around, just comforting, and kind of cradling me. 

I will tell you my favorite thing about Appalachia, and this is really kind of bizarre; funeral processions, when people will pull over. It’s a respect, and a community love that you just can’t find anywhere else. When someone dies in Harlan County or Eastern Kentucky, you don’t have to know that person, but if you’re driving down the road, and if there’s a funeral procession coming by, you pull off the road. You just pull off the road out of respect until the procession is over. When I’m somewhere else and there’s a funeral procession, and people are buzzing by, that’s so unnatural for me, just to not show that kind of respect to someone.

[Appalachian people] have characteristics and traits you won’t find anywhere else. It’s a love and a respect, and a sense of community, and a sense of family, that everyone here, even if you don’t know that person --- you’re still somehow connected to them. You have this magical connection to other people in Appalachia.

I am a hillbilly. I’m just a mountain person. I have mountain beliefs and values, and you know, it’s not to me the stereotypical toothless in a straw hat. It’s something to be proud of. I’m proud to be a hillbilly, and I’m proud that I have values and beliefs and a love of family, a love of God, and a love for each other. And that’s what it means to me to be a hillbilly.

I’ll tell you the first real experience I had when I left Harlan County, and I went to college. I had a government professor [and] the very first day of class, he started talking about Eastern Kentucky and Harlan County, and saying that it was the third world of the United States. He said there are tour buses that take people to Harlan County to look at the poverty. I don’t know if he had never had a student from Harlan County, or what. I was absolutely floored, and my little hand went straight up and I said, ‘Excuse me! I live in Harlan County, and I don’t recall ever seeing tour buses with people coming in to view the poverty.’ That was my first experience of how other people viewed us, and how heartbreaking, when you come from a family that you love, and a community that you love, to go somewhere else, and just know that people have this really terrible view of you. I have a Master’s Degree. My husband has a Master’s Degree. He’s a Librarian. You know, we’re educated. We have plumbing, and windows, and floors in our homes, and for people to generalize to an entire community, and discount them as a whole because they view them as uneducated and impoverished, is really disheartening. 

In a lot of ways, we have a lot of advantages over people in bigger cities. I have so many friends who have moved off, and they live in a neighborhood and they don’t know their neighbors, and they have no friends. People retire and they move back here, just because they’ve missed that. We really have beauty here that is unmatched. You can go up on mountains in the fall, and see colors like you’ve never seen before, and it’s absolutely just remarkable, the beauty of our area. 

What drives me crazy, is when the media comes in, and they don’t do an equal representation of what’s going on in Appalachia. A few years ago, Diane Sawyer came in and did this really dirty expose’ of Eastern Kentucky, and there was no positivity to it at all. The people that she interviewed, it was like she went out and looked for these people. I’m not saying that these folks don’t exist. There are toothless people in Appalachia, and there are toothless people everywhere, and you can find them if you look for them. But, we have neighborhoods with million dollar homes in them. We have a lot of wealth here, and we have a lot of intelligence here, and that is underrepresented in the media. If I had control of a major news network, I would go into the neighborhoods and show these homes, and interview the doctors, and the attorneys, and the professionals in Appalachia, and try to do an equal representation across the board. 

One of the best memories, we lived right in town. I ironically lived in the same house that I live in now, the same house that I grew up in, and the same house that my father was literally born in. It’s been in our family, since 1921. It is very close to Main Street, and my Granny lived across the yard. I could go to her house, and I’d watch the parades, and we could hear when a parade was going through town. Cumberland used to be a real bustling town, and we had several parades a year. I remember looking out the window at my Granny’s house, and I called them the Dumadings [the marching bands]. I remember watching the Dumadings go down the road and I ran to the window, and I said, ‘I wish those damn Dumadings would shut up!’ My Grandmother took me in her bathroom, and stuck a bar of soap in my mouth. 

When I was growing up, my Grandmother bought me chickens for Easter, and we had a little outbuilding [for] these chickens [because] we lived in town. We raised them in the outbuilding. I named them, and I went outside every day to feed them. Being a townie, I guess I never made the correlation of where my food came from. One day I went outside to feed my chickens, and they were gone. I looked in the window, and there’s my little, frail, tiny Grandma, holding onto a chicken, wringing its neck. We had chicken that night for supper. I went about six years, without eating chicken after that. 

[Granny] was Old Regular Baptist, and if you’re not familiar with [it], it’s truly a huge part of Appalachia, and my growing up. They start services about 10:00 in the morning, and they go till about 2:00 in the evening, and they have seven or eight preachers, and they’re not boring. It’s hellfire and brimstone, and they’re full of energy, they have handkerchiefs just to wipe the sweat off. They have to tag team the preaching, it’s so intense. I’d go to church with her [grandmother], and they’d have foot washings, and everybody would just wash each other’s feet, and I think that’s really indicative of Appalachia, because that’s what you do for each other. You’re not afraid to get down, and help each other at whatever level. Then, there would be dinner on the ground. It was all these Appalachian cooks, [bringing] all these wonderful dishes, and we would eat, feast, and fellowship with each other. I remember being at my Granny’s, and she would sing these Old Regular Baptist songs, and one of her favorites was ‘Oh, Wayfaring Stranger.’ I remember being a little bit traumatized, because she’d be crying, and singing, and talking about she couldn’t wait to get to heaven. I just thought, ‘don’t go tonight. I’m spending the night with you. I don’t want you to go to heaven tonight!’ (Laughs)

[My parents] were artists, and they didn’t really start that until later in life. My Mom had a paint by number set, and she wanted to paint. She started doing that, and then she loved painting. She was probably fifty before she started painting, but she loved it so much. She would paint anything and everything that was a flat surface. She painted saw blades, pieces of cardboard, and pieces of coal, slate, and just anything that had a flat surface.

My Dad did folk art. He would make things out of gourds, and trees, and anything that he could find up in the mountains, and he would put it together, make these creatures out of it, and it was just really neat. They started an organization in Cumberland called the Poor Fork Arts and Crafts Guild in the early 80s. It was to help Appalachian people promote their art. As a Sears repairman, my Dad saw the art that Appalachian people had made. [When] he went into these homes, and he would see corn shuck dolls, and paintings, and all this really cool Appalachian art. He wanted to help give them a venue for their art. After he retired, he formed Poor Fork Arts and Crafts Guild, and still have a store in Cumberland where local artisans and craftsmen can sell their goods. 

My parents were really promoted a love for each other. Dad, if he saw someone struggling, he would go to the store, and buy them a truckload of groceries, and give to them. We’d go camping, and our favorite campground was Elkmont, in the Smoky Mountains. We would go there at least once a year [to] camp. One of the main things my Dad taught me in life was, ‘You leave a place cleaner than you found it.’ My husband and I were actually talking about this. We went to the Smoky Mountains, and all these hikers have a slogan, ‘Leave no trace,’ but Mack Wilson’s slogan was even more than that, just leave it better than you found it. If there was trash there, even though you didn’t put it there, you pick it up, and you make it a beautiful place for the next person. He was really involved in cleanups in our area. I remember as a kid having to go with garbage bags and little trash picker-uppers and rubber gloves and pick up trash along the highway just because that’s what we did. We had pride in our community, and that was just the thing, that the Wilsons did. We took care of our community, and we took care of each other.

I’ve had a few [sad times like] losing my parents. As I said, they were older when they had me, and I grew up just knowing I wouldn’t have my parents around as long as other people had their parents. It was kind of morbid, but that was always in the back of my head. My Dad was diabetic, and my Mom had had breast cancer, so I was on a time clock with them. Losing them was hard. Also, my early twenties were really difficult because I had severe panic attacks and anxiety, and didn’t have a job for probably two or three years. I don’t have a lot of good memories about that time. 

Probably [my happiest time was] having my kids, just being a mom. I always knew that I wanted to have a family. Just being a mom, and trying to get them raised, and whenever someone tells me, that they’ve helped another kid, that they’re a good person, that they’re helping someone else out, then that makes me feel really proud, and I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do what I was meant to do.

I have two daughters, two natural daughters, and one is fifteen, and one is thirteen, and then I have an adopted daughter, who is nineteen. They’re all great kids, but they’re all really different, and every day’s an adventure, just living with them, and following them in their activities. 

I get a real bird’s eye view of the economy, being the Director of the Boys and Girls Club. In the past ten years, I’ve seen it spike up, and then go back down. We’re having a really difficult year this year. We lost a grant that we’ve had, and we’re losing coal severance funds just because the coal is not there. We have more boys and girls, than we’ve ever had, feeding about seventy kids a day. We have kids there, because they’re struggling at home, and they’re having a hard time. They need food, and they need homework help, [and we] to try to supply these services to kids. 

I have been at the Boys and Girls Club for eleven years, and we serve the gamut. Our mission is to inspire, enable all young people, but especially those from disadvantaged circumstances to realize their full potential. There are a lot of social services in the community for disadvantaged folks, but there may be some stigma that goes along with that. We really try to counteract that, because we’re for all children. We believe that every single child has some kind of need, and whether they need a hot, evening meal or help with homework, or they need positive role models, or if they are interested in technology or computers, we try to individualize our services and help every single child in Harlan County by doing what we can do to serve them. 

We serve about two thousand different kids each year, and every day during our after school program, we have about seventy kids, age six to nineteen. They come in and they receive a hot meal, and they get help with their homework, and we do fun stuff. We want them to feel like they belong to a community, and have friends, and people who care about them. 

It’s a really difficult job at the Boys and Girls Club. You wind up loving so many kids, and wanting to help them, and it’s really hard when you’re trying to help kids, and then you send them home to these terrible situations, these terrible circumstances. And you’re wondering if what you’re trying to do, is making a difference. [Last winter], we had thirteen kids who lost a parent to a drug overdose. We were having about sixty-five, seventy kids a day, and so about twenty percent of the kids at our after school program lost a parent to a drug overdose. 

I’ve always thought we have such a beautiful area, and if we could just show that to other people. [Maybe] there’s ways to increase our tourism and bring people in. We have one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and we have really smart folks. When smart, young people leave Appalachia, it’s disheartening because we have a lot of talent here. We’ve coined it, ‘The Brain Drain.’ I have three daughters, they’re all very bright, and I don’t want them to feel like they have to leave here to make a living. If we could just find some industry; we are isolated, we don’t have great roads, but now with technology there are industries available where you don’t have to have that. If you have some broad band internet [and] some intellect, you can do a lot with the resources you have. 

I think I just want to pass on what my parents passed on to me. You take care of each other, and you take care of the earth that you’re on, and that’s the legacy that I want to leave, just the love, a love of art, and a love of nature, and a love for each other.”