Ramblings
I have fallen into a bad habit. I wake up too early each morning.
Of course that is only a relative bad habit. The alternative is one which I don't really wish to contemplate seriously, that of not waking at all.
And when I do wake up early--I'm talking about 2:30 to 3:00 AM here, folks--I begin to think of what I should be writing about. But, like all night thoughts, the ideas I get that early in the morning disappear before I can get around to writing about them.
Like this morning, I had a great idea, about being born and growing up in Appalachia.
But most of what I thought has gone from my mind now.
But there is one thought that sticks in my mind.
And that is that you cannot really generalize about something like that. You see, the Appalachia of today is not like that of twenty, thirty, fifty or sixty years ago. And that is a darned dirty shame.
The advent of good roads, more and more airline flights, television, computers, both fathers and mothers having to work to scratch out a meager living, families needing to have two or three vehicles, more options for education in the public schools, cell phones, and the plethora of other distractions that are available - and owned by those from two to a hundred - have taken away the tight knittedness (I just make up the words I need as I go along) of the family in Appalachia, and across the country and the world.
There used to be a song that went, 'how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree.' And now the farms are gone and so are the kids. And a lot of the smartest and most able of our citizens have moved out, along with a whole bunch of the other kind, too. And they have been replaced by some of the smartest--and smart-alecks. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, we saw the influx of the hippies back in the hills where they could grow great marijuana - and they did - and from all I understand it is some of the best quality in the country, commands a higher price than the run of the mill stuff. And is the largest cash crop in Appalachia now, replacing that old burley tobacco.
Tom T. Hall wrote a song about how "It's a million miles to the city." And that did seem true back in the Fifties, when it took six hours and more to get from the Huntington area to Morgantown, and was an all day trip - or even two - to get to Martinsburg. But now that trip to Morgantown is a short three to three-and-a-half hours and Martinsburg is a fifty minute flight. Pittsburgh and D.C. are just about an hour, Atlanta two, and Chicago not much more.
And kids have always been the backbone asset of families in Appalachia. Fathers and mothers did whatever it took to raise their kids and depended upon the kids to help them when they got older. But with the coming of Medicare in the Sixties, there was no longer the acute pressure on the kids to take care of their parents, Medicare paid for the required medical care, and Social Security gave them a pittance to keep body and soul alive so the kids felt that they could move to California or Texas or Michigan or Illinois and why worry about the old folks, they would be taken care of, one way or another.
Besides that, you could see all the better things available on the television (I do not drop into the habit of calling it a TV.) Old Tom T. also wrote about an old guy in Kentucky who said 'they want to see what all they've heard about,' and they do, the kids do, and they want it now, not wait the ten or twenty years it took their parents to acquire what they have. So the kids went away to the city, got married, got kids, got CREDIT. Unfortunately, not too many got the jobs to support all that, and a lot of them came back home to live with, or live on their parent's land in a trailer or double-wide if they could get it on CREDIT. And most still did not take care of their parents, even then.
And this was something new. And so was the MEDICAL CARD. And the FOOD STAMPS. And so was the SSI. And, wow, do they ever use it.
My grandparents, back in the Fifties, survived by the skin of their teeth, by my parents, and their siblings, letting them live in an old ramshackle house rent free, and providing food and cash as needed, transportation the same way. AND by receiving WELFARE - if you could call it that.
My grandmother, a widow in her early seventies by that time, lived in that old house with two adult sons, one of whom had a job which paid fifteen dollars a month, the other semi-disabled at a job some forty years before. She received a grand sum of twenty bucks a month. And Mom made out a rent receipt each month for fifteen dollars, or Grandma would not have received even that much. Can you imagine, five dollars was all that she received, over and above the 'rent'? Of course, they counted the wages her son brought in, and thought that the family of three could live on twenty bucks a month, after 'rent.' They didn't, they survived.
And it took the whole family of some eight children, total, to keep them. But the family was glad to be able to do so. It was what they had been brought up to do, in Appalachia. It was just a part of living. And seeing that others did, too. There was no television, no steaks, no car or truck, it was an old radio, game the grandkids could shoot and fish on occasion when the fish were biting, eggs from the chickens that had to run free because they could not afford feed for them, vegetables they could raise on poor land. And shank's mare for getting round to the store, and then there was the once a month bus ride to town.
But they were well-respected and thought of a s on the wealthy side because their kids tried their very best to take care of them, and, considering, they actually were better off financially than some others in the rural neighborhood.
And that was what it was like in Appalachia. People took care of each other. Whether it was a ride to the doctor, sitting up with a sick neighbor, helping with the canning or hoeing a neighbor's garden, there was always someone to help. One fellow couldn't afford coal for his heat and cooking, so we let him get a bucket a day out of Grandma's coalpile - which her kids bought for her.
It was caring and sharing.
And I have rambled too much.
Of course that is only a relative bad habit. The alternative is one which I don't really wish to contemplate seriously, that of not waking at all.
And when I do wake up early--I'm talking about 2:30 to 3:00 AM here, folks--I begin to think of what I should be writing about. But, like all night thoughts, the ideas I get that early in the morning disappear before I can get around to writing about them.
Like this morning, I had a great idea, about being born and growing up in Appalachia.
But most of what I thought has gone from my mind now.
But there is one thought that sticks in my mind.
And that is that you cannot really generalize about something like that. You see, the Appalachia of today is not like that of twenty, thirty, fifty or sixty years ago. And that is a darned dirty shame.
The advent of good roads, more and more airline flights, television, computers, both fathers and mothers having to work to scratch out a meager living, families needing to have two or three vehicles, more options for education in the public schools, cell phones, and the plethora of other distractions that are available - and owned by those from two to a hundred - have taken away the tight knittedness (I just make up the words I need as I go along) of the family in Appalachia, and across the country and the world.
There used to be a song that went, 'how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree.' And now the farms are gone and so are the kids. And a lot of the smartest and most able of our citizens have moved out, along with a whole bunch of the other kind, too. And they have been replaced by some of the smartest--and smart-alecks. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, we saw the influx of the hippies back in the hills where they could grow great marijuana - and they did - and from all I understand it is some of the best quality in the country, commands a higher price than the run of the mill stuff. And is the largest cash crop in Appalachia now, replacing that old burley tobacco.
Tom T. Hall wrote a song about how "It's a million miles to the city." And that did seem true back in the Fifties, when it took six hours and more to get from the Huntington area to Morgantown, and was an all day trip - or even two - to get to Martinsburg. But now that trip to Morgantown is a short three to three-and-a-half hours and Martinsburg is a fifty minute flight. Pittsburgh and D.C. are just about an hour, Atlanta two, and Chicago not much more.
And kids have always been the backbone asset of families in Appalachia. Fathers and mothers did whatever it took to raise their kids and depended upon the kids to help them when they got older. But with the coming of Medicare in the Sixties, there was no longer the acute pressure on the kids to take care of their parents, Medicare paid for the required medical care, and Social Security gave them a pittance to keep body and soul alive so the kids felt that they could move to California or Texas or Michigan or Illinois and why worry about the old folks, they would be taken care of, one way or another.
Besides that, you could see all the better things available on the television (I do not drop into the habit of calling it a TV.) Old Tom T. also wrote about an old guy in Kentucky who said 'they want to see what all they've heard about,' and they do, the kids do, and they want it now, not wait the ten or twenty years it took their parents to acquire what they have. So the kids went away to the city, got married, got kids, got CREDIT. Unfortunately, not too many got the jobs to support all that, and a lot of them came back home to live with, or live on their parent's land in a trailer or double-wide if they could get it on CREDIT. And most still did not take care of their parents, even then.
And this was something new. And so was the MEDICAL CARD. And the FOOD STAMPS. And so was the SSI. And, wow, do they ever use it.
My grandparents, back in the Fifties, survived by the skin of their teeth, by my parents, and their siblings, letting them live in an old ramshackle house rent free, and providing food and cash as needed, transportation the same way. AND by receiving WELFARE - if you could call it that.
My grandmother, a widow in her early seventies by that time, lived in that old house with two adult sons, one of whom had a job which paid fifteen dollars a month, the other semi-disabled at a job some forty years before. She received a grand sum of twenty bucks a month. And Mom made out a rent receipt each month for fifteen dollars, or Grandma would not have received even that much. Can you imagine, five dollars was all that she received, over and above the 'rent'? Of course, they counted the wages her son brought in, and thought that the family of three could live on twenty bucks a month, after 'rent.' They didn't, they survived.
And it took the whole family of some eight children, total, to keep them. But the family was glad to be able to do so. It was what they had been brought up to do, in Appalachia. It was just a part of living. And seeing that others did, too. There was no television, no steaks, no car or truck, it was an old radio, game the grandkids could shoot and fish on occasion when the fish were biting, eggs from the chickens that had to run free because they could not afford feed for them, vegetables they could raise on poor land. And shank's mare for getting round to the store, and then there was the once a month bus ride to town.
But they were well-respected and thought of a s on the wealthy side because their kids tried their very best to take care of them, and, considering, they actually were better off financially than some others in the rural neighborhood.
And that was what it was like in Appalachia. People took care of each other. Whether it was a ride to the doctor, sitting up with a sick neighbor, helping with the canning or hoeing a neighbor's garden, there was always someone to help. One fellow couldn't afford coal for his heat and cooking, so we let him get a bucket a day out of Grandma's coalpile - which her kids bought for her.
It was caring and sharing.
And I have rambled too much.
posted by tanstaafl | 10:59 AM
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1 comments
