Adam Brewer

“I myself don’t identify as a man or a woman, really, but feminist issues are very near and dear to my heart. I feel like it’s not my place to say anything [when] I have male parts, but I can play the guitar and shut up and let the ladies sing about it.” 

Adam Brewer, Age 30, Retail Employee and Musician; Hazard, Kentucky:

“[I’ve lived here my whole life and] I had a good childhood. You know it’s a coal camp community, so there’s not really a lot to do for kids. About all I ever did was go outside and play in the yard. [Played] G.I. Joes, Transformers, He-Man, all that good stuff. Then, I got into video games when I was a kid. I used to like to ride skateboards but I got out of skateboards and started playing the guitar. You can’t play the guitar with a broke arm, so I quit doing that!

My Papaw owned a furniture store for many years in Hazard called, Bruce Trading Post. My daddy took it over. He sells flea market stuff, but he also makes a lot of things. He watches YouTube videos and makes survival sticks, candles, and all kinds of things and sells it at the store. 

My room was right below [papaw’s] room. He loved to play poker; that was his favorite thing in the world. He would have a poker game about anywhere he could. Over time, he won so many things from poker. I had a painting that he won at a poker game. It’s velvet John Wayne with the eye patch on his eye from Rooster Cogburn. [Me and Papaw] used to watch wrestling together and UK basketball, Walker Texas Ranger and westerns, Gunsmoke, and we’d play cards. I really can’t understand cards, I’m not good with math myself, but he plays solitaire and he plays rummy. Stuff like that. 

My Mamaw’s still alive. She’s a foster grandparent at the grade school I went to, RW Combs. She watches kids and reads to them and they read to her. She teaches little kids how to read I guess. She’s real good at sewing. She’s probably the sweetest person I know. I spent a lot of time with her when I was a kid because I didn’t have any friends. Mamaw and me used to go to second-hand stores all the time, and we would go out to eat everyday. We’d go to Ponderosa, we’d go eat at Quiznos… we loved eating at Quiznos. 

My Mamaw had a brother that died in the [coal] mines. A rock fell on him, I believe. I don’t remember [how old he was], but my Mamaw still has his boots. My mom’s papaw I know was in the mines, but those were really the only family members I had that come to mind when it comes to the mines. 

I sure do [have strong matriarchs in my family]. My mom’s my hero and my Mamaw and my mom’s mommy, too. Those were people I looked up to when I was a kid. I didn’t really have a strong father figure in my life. He was there, but I was always afraid of him. So I talk more to my mom. I think that’s affected the way I am. 

When I was in high school, that’s when I got into playing music. When I was 16 I asked for a guitar. I didn’t want a car; I wanted a guitar. My mama plays ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’ on the accordion and that’s about it. That’s the only member of my family that I know played anything.

I taught myself [to play guitar]. I didn’t have anybody that could teach me. I didn’t know anybody that played the kind of music I liked to play so I had to learn on my own. I play hardcore punk, noise punk [and] I play in a Japanese hardcore punk style. 

(How to teach yourself to play guitar) You pick it up and you just beat it to death. Go to town on it. I can read guitar tablature, but I can’t read notes. I got a tattoo of a crossed out music note because I don’t like music on some counts because I don’t like regular music. I like country music, primitive music, but I hate music you hear on the radio. That stuff gets stuck in my brain and literally drives me crazy.

[My music] is noisy, political, extreme, violent; I beat myself up when I play. I take my belt off and whip my back. I beat myself to death. I’ve cut myself with knives in front of people. People have been stabbed while I’ve played music. I didn’t know about it till after it happened. I didn’t like it.

I have two bands. I’m a band called Globsters, that’s my violent one-man band, and I’m in a band called Google Boys, and it’s a political feminist band. We only care about issues that face women. That’s the biggest problem in our society lately; nobody really cares about women. Women have been cast aside for so many years and kicked down. I myself don’t identify as a man or a woman, really, but feminist issues are very near and dear to my heart. I feel like it’s not my place to say anything [when] I have male parts, but I can play the guitar and shut up and let the ladies sing about it. 

[The band has four members] Lil, she’s the singer, my friend Mikey plays the drums, and my girlfriend Katie plays the Theremin and sings. A Theremin was the first electronic musical instrument. It’s a box that’s got two antennas on each side. You turn it on, plug it into an amp, one antenna controls the volume and the other antenna controls the pitch so you can move and it just makes different sounds and tones. If you’ve ever watched Star Trek, the sound effects on Star Trek, that’s what they used… a Theremin. 

I write all kinds of songs. I’ve got some new songs I’ve not yet recorded yet. I’ve got a song called ‘Psych Ward Haircut’ because I’ve got a psych ward haircut. My girlfriend cuts my hair.

My stage name is ‘Adam Hussein’ like Saddam Hussein the dictator. Whenever Saddam Hussein was in the news and he got caught by the military in that hole, they kept calling me Adam Hussein at FedEx. That’s how I got my stage name. I adopted it because my favorite wrester is Sabu. I got to meet him recently. I love Sabu. Number one wrestler! [I became interested in wrestling] When I was a little kid. I got a picture of me with a Hulk Hogan doll I got for Halloween. I just never stopped watching it and I’ve been watching it ever since I was little. 

I sure do [plan on living in the mountains]. I’m too country! Every time I go out on a tour and play music, people notice my accent. I don’t fake it. But a lot people think I do and I don’t! I just feel like this is me. I really identify as a hillbilly. Hillbillies are resourceful, strong-assed people. 

[Appalachian culture] It’s isolated a bit. The coal industry is so extractive, it takes everything away, there’s nothing here. You got to be resourceful. That’s really part of the culture, being resourceful. Being strong. Living through the hard times, being ready for when life attacks. 

One time, I played in Miami and there was a guy there that played too, and he said some things about me on the stage, and I didn’t like that. That would be like me going there and saying something about Cuba, which I would never do. I have a lot of respect for outside cultures. I love Japanese music, I love Japanese wrestling, I love Italian music. I treat those cultures with respect because they are unique cultures. I just wish that Appalachia, eastern Kentucky, could just be treated as its own culture. 

Where I do music, I bring together a lot of bands from all over the world. I want them to feel right at home when they come here. It’s really my life’s work, bringing music that I like here, because I didn’t have it when I was a kid. Whenever you go [through] something like that it just hurts your feelings, you know? 

(Appalachian stereotypes)I think all my life it’s affected me because the stereotype’s been around so long. Since CBS did that thing in the 60s, really, and even before that. Even people around here would make fun of the way I talk. If you really listen to the Appalachian accent, my voice is very far removed from that. If you go back and find a real old hillbilly, their accent is going to sound like a completely different language. I just feel like people should be proud to be a hillbilly. 

Don’t judge us till you’ve come here and lived. Come here and try and live it, and you’ll find out how hard it is real quick. I don’t judge other people; don’t judge me. 

Maybe [coal will come back]. It’s something that ain’t going to go away anytime soon because there is so much suppression of the new technology to protect the coal companies. That’s really why they lobby against that clean car that never happened. 

[In 20 years, the community will be] Still going. Those hillbilly people are strong. We’ll find a way to keep it going. I read on the Internet ‘full economic collapse in 2016.’ Really if you look at it, it’s economists that are saying this. I don’t know how to cite it, but I’m ready for that. I can’t wait for the day that I’m fighting for my life and fighting other people to survive. I can’t wait for that, because I’ve been doing it for 30 years and it’s made me so strong that no man shall dare face me. 

[I want to be remembered as] Just somebody that supported other people and built others up. Who didn’t bring people down and made them feel good about themselves. Just a good friend. 

[For me, my life] just means getting up every day, going to work, coming home, feeding the cats, loving on my girlfriend, watching wrestling. That’s basically the highlight of my week. Monday morning. A lot of people don’t like Monday, but I do. I go to work, I get to eat good when I go to work, I come home, feed the cats and watch wrestling on Monday.”

Misty Skaggs

“[My mother] taught me early on not to care what people thought of you; just be who you are, and enjoy who you are, and go about your life. She taught me there was nothing wrong with being independent, and being a woman on your own. And there was nothing wrong with being creative and a little bit strange.”

Misty Skaggs, Writer, Blogger, Artist; Stark Ridge, Elliott County, Kentucky;

“Growing up here was a fantastic experience, and I’m sure of that a lot of people say that because it is. It’s an amazing, wild childhood where you can get out and run around. My cousins and I would get out in the woods and play. A lot of kids don’t do that these days, but we were just outside all summer long. The only time we come in the house was for a baloney sandwich and a cup of Kool-Aid, and we were gone again.

I came from an odd family, I guess, for the region. Mama was an artist, and Grandma was an artist, too. I had the whole farm girl experience, but I also had the experience of traveling and going to art shows, and meeting a lot of interesting people.

When I wasn’t outside, I was reading. We would buy boxes of books wherever we could find them, yard sales, junk stores, auctions. I would just buy boxes of books, fiction, non-fiction, anything. I mean it when I say anything. One of the first books I ever remember really loving, was a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. It was one of those really thin volumes, with the super thin pages like I’d only seen in a Bible. My Dad’s cousin, Terry, was the first person to ever buy me brand new books. We had tons of books everywhere, but I never had brand new, like fresh from the store, books. He bought me an illustrated ‘Little Women,’ probably in third grade, and a copy of ‘Gorillas in The Mist,’ and I read and loved them both. 

I [went] to Berea College right after high school. First time away from home, very over-protective mother, so I got out on my own and got into a little bit of trouble. I actually got arrested for shoplifting. I had my little anarchy t-shirt and my spiky hair, my dog collar, and I thought, ‘Well if I could just steal from Wal-Mart, that’s going to change the world.’ So I got busted in Berea with blank tapes and fish food in my purse. (Laughs) I was going big, obviously. The bad part of it was, I was an RA and supposed to be in charge of three hundred girls, and I was in jail for the night. 

I ended up coming home for a while. I was a waitress for a while, and then I just took off. You don’t think of a nineteen-year-old running away from home, but I did, and it broke my Mother’s Grandmother’s hearts. I moved to Missouri with a boy, and lived out there for about three years. I did nothing but get into trouble. I went to a lot of punk rock shows, and just had a little life experience, I guess. I was so homesick the entire time. Like, crying myself to sleep, homesick. I think the only reason I didn’t come home sooner was because I was genuinely too stubborn. I didn’t want everybody to know I couldn’t handle it on my own. About three years later I came home, and I haven’t left since. 

It’s a different world out there [Missouri]. It was the flattest place I have ever been in my life. It was like an ocean of beige and corn everywhere, and I just couldn’t stand it. I’d spoken to people from the Midwest who had come here, and they say, ‘Oh, the mountains make me claustrophobic.’ It was the exact opposite for me. I was completely stunned at all that space. What they called the woods was like a stand of trees. I was like, ‘Y’all have never seen the woods!’ 

Mom would drive ten hours just to pick me up for two days. One year, I was working in a truck stop. I was the night shift person and I had to work on Christmas Eve. Mom and my little brother drove all the way from Kentucky to sit at the truck stop and just spend the holiday with me. I called home two or three times a day, every day, but it was heartbreaking being away from everybody.

[While in Missouri] my great-grandpa was sick. I made it home for the funeral, but I wasn’t there when he died and that about broke my heart. I just knew it was past time to get back where I belonged. 

(Decision to come home) It was probably the feller. I mean, it wasn’t going too well with us, and my Papaw was sick. That did a big number on me. I came home for a visit and just never went back. I left everything I owned. I came home with a pair of pants, two pairs of underwear, and a couple of shirts in a grocery bag, and that was it. I was like, ‘That stuff is stuff. I don’t need it. What I need is home.’

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in all the meanings of [home]. When you start to see those mountains pop up, it’s an amazing and soothing feeling at the same. It takes your breath away, and makes you feel comforted all at once. When you’re from way-out Eastern Kentucky, Louisville ain’t even hardly part of Kentucky. (Laughs) But as soon as we passed Lexington, I could breathe.

[My grandparents are] amazing people. I was always really close with my Mom’s mom and dad, and also my great-grandparents on the maternal side. My great-grandmother, I took care of her at the end of her life. She was smart as a tack and hilarious. It was such a wonderful experience, because we all knew her as this matriarch. She was the glue that held the family together, but I got to know her as a person, and as a woman, and I got to hear all of her great stories. She could remember what she wore to a picnic in 1912. If you asked her, she knew. 

My Great-Papaw was quite a character. He was a farmer mostly, but he was also a trapper, and he kept bees. He ran a seven-mile trap line until he was in his seventies. He walked fourteen miles a day. He was a short, little guy. He might have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, and he would be walking across the porch and just break out into a little jig all of a sudden. He loved to make people laugh, and it was funny because my Great-Grandmother was the straight man to his comedian. They had perfect timing with each other, and they were probably the happiest couple I’ve ever seen in my life. She was in her seventies, and she’d bend over to take biscuits out of the oven, and he’d come up behind her, and smack her on the butt. She’d be like, ‘Charlie Blankenbeckler!’ But she loved every minute of it. It was a true partnership, and I think that set an example for me of what marriage is supposed to be. 

My Papaw passed away in 2010. He was the first father figure in my life, and he was a very special man. He battled mental illness for his whole life, and survived a very abusive childhood and turned out on the other end, to be the kindest, most gentle soul you could ever meet. He loved us unconditionally, and I miss him a lot.

I live with my Mamaw still, and we’re very close. We do everything together, and she’s not what a lot of people would picture for an Appalachian Mamaw. She’s very adventurous, and we try all sorts of new things. She’s also just clever as can be, and super artistic. 

My Great-Papaw, one of his favorite stories to tell was, his father was a very serious, very religious man, and supposedly also a healer, which is an interesting thing here in Eastern Kentucky. [Great-Papaw] he and his brothers, there was five of them, were running a batch of moonshine. They had just brought a big truckload of sugar to the farm and they were trying to hide it because somebody had called and told them the revenuers were coming. They’re out there loading sugar onto the truck again after they just unloaded it, and Papaw said, ‘I was bent over at the waist, and all I saw was my Daddy’s shoes.’ He looked up, and there was his Dad standing there just as serious as could be. He said, ‘Daddy, you can whup me, but first let me move this sugar before the law gets here.’ He helped them move it and hide it, and then he whupped them. We’re talking about grown men, but they were going to take their licking. 

There was a big moonshine culture where I live. It’s the middle of nowhere, and there was a rock called ‘Toenail Gap,’ and the moonshiners used it. It was a straight bald-faced rock went straight up, and they carved little notches in it, so you could stick your big toe in there and climb it barefooted, but the revenuers, who had shoes on, couldn’t get up the face of the rock. So you go to the ‘Toenail Gap’ when you’re running from the law. 

[My mother] is an amazing, fantastic woman. She was unmarried when I was born. Back in 1982, when you live as far out in the middle of nowhere as I do, [it was] still kind of strange to be an unmarried woman having a baby. People even asked her, ‘Are you going to let Lonnie and Joyce (my grandparents) raise her?’ No way that was happening. My Mom was very protective. We moved right in with my Mamaw and Papaw. We all lived together in a big house. Actually, there was a whole bunch of us. All my aunts and uncles were there, too. [My mom] is one of the most kind and compassionate women I’ve ever come across in my life, and she’s just so creative. Everything in our childhood was fun. We were poor, but we didn’t really know it, because we had a blast the whole time. She’s most definitely been an inspiration to me through my whole life. 

I am who I am, because of her. She taught me early on not to care what people thought of you. Just to be who you are, and enjoy who you are, and go about your life. She taught me there was nothing wrong with being independent, and being a woman on your own. And there was nothing wrong with being creative and a little bit strange. She taught me the value of kindness and family. She taught me all that. 

When I was at Berea College, I studied art a little bit, not a whole lot. Recently I’ve taken up painting more, and I’ve worked it in with my writing. 

I’ve written as long as I can remember. I always had a journal or notebooks or was always scribbling. The funny thing is, I never considered myself a writer. I went to college for art and psychology. I was going to be an art therapist the first time around, but I don’t remember ever not writing. When I was in seventh grade, my Papaw bought me a computer at the school auction. It was one of those old Apple IIs, and the only thing on it was two games and a word processor program. 

I sat down in the sweaty back bedroom of their trailer and spent the whole summer writing a book. It was about a girl who fell in love with a ghost. (Laughs) That was the first thing of substance I ever remember writing. When I came home after being in the Midwest, a local author named Bob Slone (he passed away a few years ago), found a few poems I had written on MySpace. He was like, ‘you have to send these somewhere. You have to get into writing. You’re a writer.’ It was the first time I really thought about professionally studying writing. It was always a passion of mine. All my writing is set in Appalachia. The characters are Appalachian. I just seem to write what I know. Even when I tend to write about people who are away from here, they’re always from here and somehow ended up somewhere else. I write a lot about the experience of spreading out all over the country, and having those Appalachian roots. Once they’re with you, they never leave you. 

I’d love to travel and see the world, but for me I have to have a home base, and this is it. This is my fortress. This is where I come from. I will probably be hunkered down in these hills for the rest of my life. 

I tell people that Appalachia is a special little pocket of culture that you don’t get anywhere else in the world. We are so rich in music, and art. When you think of the hillbilly stereotype, you don’t think of an artist, but they exist. There’s mysticism to this place I think, and there’s also the closeness of family that is something that I’ve learned over the years. Other places [I’ve been], I’m like, ‘Don’t you have any cousins?’ And they’re like, ‘I don’t know.’ How can you not know? I know where all of my first cousins are right now. 

There is a connection to the land here that goes beyond just appreciating nature, or liking to go hiking. It’s your land. It’s the land that raised you, and the land that sustains you, and that’s a big part of it. My Great-Papaw, he was not a church-going man, but he was a Christian man. To him, going out and standing under a big oak tree was just as much [religion] as going into a chapel. It’s the connection to the land that a lot of people today just don’t have. 

There were a lot of stories about mysticism in my family. My great-great-grandfather was supposedly a healer. The story my Grandpa always told [was], a boy got cut in the logwoods. His leg got cut real bad, and they brought him to Watt Blankenbeckler. [Watt] said that he had a dream that a Bible verse came to him, but he would never tell anybody what it was. He leaned over and whispered that Bible verse in that boy’s ear, and the blood stopped. 

You’ve heard about things like marking a baby, and that’s something people outside of Appalachia have never heard. That’s another good story my Grandma used to tell. Well, it’s not a good story. It was a sad story, [about] my great-Grandmother. A carnival came into town that had a freak show. She was about six or seven months pregnant, and they told her, ‘don’t go to the freak show because it might mark the baby.’ I guess the idea is that you see something like that when you’re pregnant, it can be so traumatizing that it has an effect on this unborn child. She went to the freak show and she saw ‘Jo Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy,’ and her child was born deformed. She went to the freak show, and it marked the baby. There’s a lot of spirituality and superstition mixed together here, which is really special. 

I am a hillbilly, and it’s a loaded word, isn’t it? It’s one of those words I’m taking back for myself. You get sick of outsiders using that term in a derogatory fashion, so why can’t I call myself a hillbilly? Why can’t I establish a positive meaning, and a happy and dignified connotation for that word? There’s a rich heritage to that word. Some of us embrace it, and some people don’t like it. That’s their prerogative, too.

I’m only thirty years old, but when I graduated high school, if you were an intelligent person and you planned on having a future, you got the hell out of here. We’re starting to examine the reasons why we were pretty much forced out of our region by poverty, lack of economy, lack of jobs and all that. We’re taking our whole culture back. There are Appalachian restaurants springing up in Brooklyn, so if there can be hipsters playing banjo, I can use my culture for good, too. I can bring people here and show them what it’s really like, and a lot of people are coming together to do that now. People from my generation are saying, ‘Maybe we can do this. Maybe it’s not as hopeless as we’ve thought.’

I hope [the economy here] will be better [in the future]. Personally, I think people are going to pour in here because ten or twenty years from now, people are going to realize, ‘Maybe we don’t want to be packed in on top of each other in the city. And maybe we don’t want to breathe filthy air, and worry about smog blocking the sunset.’ I think people are going to see what Appalachia is, and they’re going to want to be here, which could be good and bad for us. In the past, outside interests moving into the area hasn’t exactly been great. People don’t realize Appalachia has been exploited as far back as salt mines. It goes beyond coal, and it’s still being exploited. Even now, those hipsters in Brooklyn playing banjo…that’s exploitation of us on a different level. It’s hard to say where we’ll be, but I hope that things will be better, and I hope that a lot of people keep working on what they’re working toward now.

If I can make somebody know that they’re cared about, if I can write a story and make somebody say, ‘I’m not the only one that’s happened to,’ well, I don’t even care if my name’s attached to it. I like to help people, and that’s so corny, but it’s true. I would like to make an impact in a positive way, on a region that really needs it.”

Wayne L. Williams

“I have based my life on coal, and I think that’s something this country needs. I have seen people killed, I have seen people hurt, and it touches your heart. They eventually died from it. At one time, I had a lot of people that was friends and family working, but it’s down now.”

Wayne L. Williams, Retired Coal Miner, Lashmeet, West Virginia:

“I had a pretty good childhood. I was like every other child. I liked to play, and ride bicycles. I had a couple of serious wrecks on bicycles, not watching what I was doing. [Growing up] I hunted, and I fished, and rode horses. I built cabins, and played in them, just different things.

I’ve had a lot of things happen to me as a child that I remember as good times. I had two sisters. My oldest sister, she was a tomboy, like kind of followed after me a lot. [She] Liked to go fishing, liked to do this, liked to do that. My younger sister, she was too young to do things like that, but my older sister, she was pretty close.

Both my grandmothers passed away before I was born. I had two grandfathers, one used to help build tipples back years ago. My other grandfather lived in Princeton, West Virginia, and he operated the first streetcar in Princeton. [From them] I learned just different things. My granddaddy did a lot of farming back then years ago, and he did teach me to garden, and farm, how to put hay up. Good hard work.

I graduated from Matoka High and I went there from 1st Grade to 12th Grade. That was a lot of fun. It had its ups and downs. I reckon the ups was when I was trying to learn something, and the downs was when I didn’t mind and got corrected.

I went into the Army [and] I served during Vietnam. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go [to Vietnam], but I did take the training to go. I ended up going to Germany [where] I was an 11B-20 foot soldier in Infantry. I helped protect the country, because we were stationed on the border. I ran equipment and different things [until I] got out in ’69. 

After I got out of the Army, I went to the coalmines. I really enjoyed it, and I reckon it got in my blood. I stayed with it as long as I could. I was an underground miner. I ran equipment; roof bolters, scoops, unitracks, and shuttle cars, which some calls a buggy. I have been hurt a couple times. I got covered up one time back in the eighties. It’s a whole new, different world. You’re underground and it’s different heights. Some of it might be thirty inches, some of it might forty inches, and some of it might be six and seven foot tall. I worked them all, but most of them were forty inches, to four foot. You had to duck walk, duck walk is just bent over. 

I enjoyed the men I worked with, and when you work underground, most of the time you get real close. [It’s] Just like a brotherhood, and some men you can’t get close to, but most the men that you work with are close. They’re closer than your brother, because you’re with them eight hours a day, ten hours a day, five and six days a week. 

I usually tell the story of a funny thing I seen happen to [my friend] one night. He was an electrician [and] he was working on a feeder. He didn’t have his britches legs bloused, and a rat got up in his britches legs. He couldn’t go nowhere. All he could do was squall and holler for help. We laughed, and then we helped him. 

I have based my life on coal, and I think that’s something this country needs. I have seen people killed, I have seen people hurt, and it touches your heart. They eventually died from it. At one time, I had a lot of people that was friends and family working, but it’s down now. Technology needs to get with coal, and work together and get something worked out where it can be used. That’s my, my belief. Whether or not I’m wrong I don’t know, but that’s my belief. 

I’m a hillbilly and I’m proud of it. I think [outsiders] get the wrong attitude on things. One time when I was a boy, I went up north to spend some time with the people, and they embarrassed me. They come out a-looking, and they said, ‘Well, you’ve got shoes on.’ I said, ‘Yeah, we wear shoes where I’m from.’ They said, ‘Well, we’ve been taught that you all was barefooted and lived in caves. That really hurt me. We’re just like everybody else, we’re from the hills.

Well I did like to hunt, but now I don’t hunt as much as I fish. I trout fish, mostly. I first started getting into fishing when I retired here a few years back. I had got me a new set of waders, and I was doing real good. This boy had lost his lure, and he told me to get it. It was in November and when I went down, I run out of bottom, and I got soaking wet. All my friends laughed and laughed about that. We were at the hunting camp, and I had to go back to camp and change clothes. When I come back, they were [still] sitting around at the park laughing about it. 

I want to be remembered as trying to live right, and do right. Even though we have our downs and our faults, remember that God loved us first, and when we do wrong, we have somewhere to go to make it right.”

Ronnie Walker

“One of my instructors, I remember her saying, ‘Integration is good, but it’s maybe going to ruin the black kids.’ I asked her why, and she said, ‘because I’ve never seen any more well-mannered children, than came from down here.’ 

Ronnie Walker, Retired Nurse; Harlan, Kentucky:

“I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood, and so they say, ‘It takes a village.’ Well, truly it was like that. We had our boundaries, but we also knew that anyone in that neighborhood had the authority to tell us what we could and couldn’t do. I was raised up in that time.

What did I do as a kid? Just like typical child stuff. We played ball. We played in the street. We had a park at the end of our street, but we played ball in the street. Yeah, it was all like the hide and go seek. Fishing. My brother’s the fisherman. I was one of those that I wanted to put my hook in, get the fish out. I didn’t have the patience to really fish. We had family, church. 

I started [high school] in a predominately black school, Rosenwald High School. They integrated in ’63, and they took the first top three grades. I didn’t go into Harlan High School until the 9th grade. That was an experience because I started out at Rosenwald in the 9th grade for one week, and then they said, ‘You’ve got to go to this other school.’ So, they just dropped us down there. We didn’t know anybody. We didn’t know the school. We didn’t know anything.

Because of the way they [integrated], it was sort of scary because we didn’t get to go to the preview [and] didn’t get to tour the school. We didn’t know where our homerooms were, our teachers, or anything like that. It was a culture shock because I went from a school where discipline was one of the number one things, to a school where sometimes, anything goes. It was strange, because some of the things we saw the other kids do, we were like, ‘We would not have been allowed to do that.’ 

One of my instructors, I remember her saying, ‘Integration is good, but it’s maybe going to ruin the black kids.’ I asked her why, and she said, ‘because I’ve never seen any more well-mannered children, than came from down here.’ As years went by I saw what it did do, because they [black students] thought, ‘Well, if they can do that, I can do that.’ Some of the kids that came up after me, they sort of forgot what they were taught.

I come up in a time where you had the black waiting rooms, like at the bus station; there was a black portion where you had to sit in the back of the bus. When you caught the bus, you got in on the middle door and put your money in. When they decided to build another pool, the blacks got the pool on Elm Street, which was actually bigger than the pool that they built that replaced it. So you had kids swimming, black kids swimming over on Elm Street, and then the white kids. 

But you know, there’s things that we did here, that I can tell you in the cities, [or elsewhere] in the south that they would never have done. We had accounts at major department stores. You’d have to try clothes on, [and we would] take them home, look at them and then send them back. My Dad worked at a florist for fifty-five years on account of everybody knew him. We were allowed to go in the restaurants, order our food, but we couldn’t sit down. You had to take it out somewhere. It was so routine that you just never thought about it. 

The one time I ever really experienced true racism, believe it or not, my Dad’s boss would take my brother and me to Knoxville shopping with her. We were little, and we went. It didn’t happen here at Harlan, but we were in a little Volkswagen and we went to the Little Tunnel Inn on Cumberland Gap. She had these two little black boys with her, and there she was going to eat breakfast. We were not allowed to eat breakfast with her in the main dining room. We had to go in the kitchen and sit, and [there was] something instinctively in me [and] I wouldn’t eat. I was like, ‘Why are we here?’ My brother went on and ate, but I wouldn’t eat, because I’m like, ‘She’s there and we’re here.’ I was about six or seven. I was real small, but I still knew it was wrong. 

I went to college, I went to Eastern for two years, and then after I left Eastern, I went to nursing school, and I worked as a practical nurse. I was a practical nurse for about three or four years and the hospital, I worked in Pineville, sent me on to RN school. They had an RN school here at the hospital, The School of Professional Nursing. I was in the next to the last class they had. I worked at the Pineville Hospital for twenty-eight years. Then, I started working at a Social Service agency here in Harlan, called Pathfinders for Independent Living. It helped people with any kind of difficulty or handicap to live independently. I was there until 2014, and it sort of went to the wayside, and so I said, ‘Well, should I retire or what?’ I went to the Social Security, and I said, ‘what’s the difference between that year and the year I was supposed to [retire]? She gave me a money number, and I said, ‘Sign me up. I’m ready to go.' I’ve been busy ever since, though. 

I’ve been associated with [Higher Ground] since the beginning. I’ve been in four plays, and I was in the last one. I didn’t start out to be in Higher Ground. In the first one they had a lot of stories put together, and one of my stories was in the first Higher Ground. I went and saw it, and I thought it was nice. The second Higher Ground, I actually got into it by accident because they heard our church choir sing a song, and they wanted that song in the play. We went and sang the song, and then still I’m like, ‘No.’ [regarding acting in the production] Then, they had a trip to Dahlonega, Georgia and the bug bit me, and I’ve been in it ever since. I love it. I like the challenge of doing something that I’ve never done before. I’m not one of those who always steps outside of their comfort zone, but with Higher Ground, I’m able to do a lot of things. If I do public speaking, I get really, really nervous, but when I’m on stage I don’t. It surprised me. I don’t get nervous, because I’m someone else.

Higher Ground is an outlet to tell people what’s going on here, and offer some solutions through theatre. The first one was about coal mining, [and] also the drugs and the floods. The story that I gave them was when we had floods here, before they built the floodwall. We lived in a different area, and we had five families come to our house. Everybody became a family, and they stayed with us. We had one bathroom, and we had five different families. They got up to go to school, we got to school, we fed them, and they stayed with us for weeks; about twenty-five people in one three-bedroom house. People around here, if they tell the truth, it [the flood] was a good time, because everybody bonded. We knew it was a disaster, but we knew we would survive [and] we’d move on.

I’m a homebody, and anything I want to do, I know I can always go out there and do it and come back home. I love these mountains, and I love the people here. We are family, even with all our difficulties. Like Higher Ground, we have people in Higher Ground that believe in God, [some] don’t believe in God. They love one another, and they have different opinions about different things, but when it comes down to it, we’re family. All in. 

[Hobbies] I like Higher Ground, acting, reading, my church and cooking. I like to try all kinds of new things. I bake cakes, I like to try different pasta dishes, I like to just get recipes and I’ll make it the first time like it says. Then I’m like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to tweak this a bit.’ Just something new; take this out, put this in. My Mom taught all of us to cook. She’d say, ‘you never know. You might have to do it for yourself.’ One of the interesting things is she taught me how to fry chicken. The last years of life, she was an invalid and I had to take care of her. I would fry chicken and she wouldn’t eat my chicken. I’d get her Kentucky Fried Chicken, and she’d eat it all up. One day, I said, ‘Mom, why are you doing that?’ And she says, ‘Because your chicken tastes like mine, and I get tired of my own cooking.’ So she wouldn’t eat my chicken, because it tasted exactly hers. (Laughs)

We’re [Appalachians] so misunderstood. Sometimes you get people to come in here, and they already had that stereotype in their head, so that’s what they go looking for. They’ll find that stereotype. I tell some people, ‘Those people, that’s the way they want to live, and we don’t bother them.’ They fail to look around and see all the other stuff, any of the progress or any happy people. Growing up, I never knew I was poor. We were, but we were so rich in everything else. And I think that’s the difference. [Outsiders], they see us differently. Their eyes are already clouded over before they get here.”