“How do you measure your value?” ~ Loretta Lynn

Imagine you're a bored little girl with nothing to do but stick different metal ball barring's in your ear until one is finally small enough to fit...and then it proceeds to fall deep into your ear canal and cannot be retrieved without a doctor. Or whilst pushing laundry through a motorized wringer, your arm goes catches and gets pulled through, what are the chances that while enjoying a wonderful day of sliding on cardboard boxes down a steep hill, slick with prairie grass, you hesitate in jumping off to safety in time and tumble and roll right on to railroad tracks and one of the spikes spears your leg? The closest doctor is over the mountain and across the bridge.

These are the stories I've heard all my life growing up. As I've gotten older I've been collecting them in a little black notebook whenever my Mother feels like sharing. I'm preserving time I tell her because these incredible, crazy, outlandish things actually happened to my mom and her siblings while growing up in the rural, dirt-poor coal mining mountains the Appalachian Mountains. Often I would have to try my best to remember all of the details because most of our conversations would occur on long car rides together. She and I have traveled "many a roads" she'd say, as we both never hindered or hesitated about traveling either alone or with a companion.

Mom's reaching her late seventies now, so more often than not I volunteer to go and keep her company versus saying that I worry about her going alone. To be completely honest, I love her stories and have tried hard to document them as best as possible. She experienced hard times and poverty I will never know, and my children cannot fathom. I look at her now, and simply marvel at the fact that she was indeed a "coal miner's daughter" that grew up with almost nothing that wasn't hand-made or handed down. Momma used to tell me of the joy she had over getting to choose a new pair of shoes each year from the Sears and Roebuck Catalog.

I can clearly remember the look on my daughter's face when she shared the story of only having one new pair of shoes...for an entire year. The wrinkled brow, the half-cocked head, the utter look of confusion and disbelief. Sadly, these are the realities of the current Appalachian Mountain families in 2021, as true today as they were when Mom grew up there. Even more so now due to the isolation from the ripple effects of the pandemic.

One of my favorite memories, and what truly inspired the writings was taking her back there, back to the mountains for her seventieth birthday a few years ago. She wanted to see it one last time, and I wanted pictures to go with all of the stories. I'm glad I took my son and daughter, for so many reasons. They had three days to hear her stories for themselves, and they were amazed, shocked even, at what she had to do as a little girl, just to help her family survive.

She would go out with other children during the summers finding larger lumps of coal that had fallen off of the trains that ran through. They would gather them to keep so when it became a chilly winter the home could stay warm. Mom used to tell me that to survive the bitter winters, the children would distract the engineers at the train depots, then the men would then climb on top of the mounds of coal in the cars and toss them down to the women to catch in their aprons. I have heard that story a million times growing up complaining that I was cold. I learned as a child, and have passed it along to my children to suck it up and layer up!

She would also explain how life wasn't just about hard work, that even though they were money poor, they were rich with love and family. Friends and neighbors were all thought of as relatives, and the kids would run wild in the summer swinging on rope swings, taking walks across the railroad track bridges on dares, and as I mentioned in the beginning, sliding down steep hills covered in prairie grass. The spot on my momma's shine bone has always been a place you could never touch. I'm not kidding. As a child I would try to sneak a touch, she would move her leg swiftly and reactionary to avoid any contact. She said it made her bone ache.

While traveling through tiny, small, blink and you'll miss it, Keokee, Virginia we went back to the house she lived in. I'd always known of this house, and had a picture of my Grandmother standing on the porch. It was amazing to see the same house, still standing and lived in by an older couple who grew up with Mom and her siblings. Another extended adopted "Cousin" who she was tickled to find there. They let us walk around and look, take pictures and soak it all in. I could see all the memories flooding my mom's mind as she pointed and told her grandchildren about their roots deep in the Appalachian Mountains.

After visiting the graveyard, which sits right beside and behind the house up on a hill, she shared how at night when she had to go outside to use the outhouse, she'd never turn her back to the graveyard. She busted out laughing and told them it was a wonder she hadn't knocked herself unconscious a time or two falling over a rock or stump trying to get back into the house walking backward. It was at that moment, with my son and daughter laughing along that I saw that they "got it" how special this was.

I marveled at showing them the place that she grew up, especially in conditions that sadly, many in the Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia mountains still live in. It made an impression on my children I don't know that they will ever forget. Seeing it as an adult was defiantly different for me. As we drove around from one cemetery to another to locate my grandmother's people, then my grandfather's we became more engrossed in her stories.

My grandpa grew up just a hop skip and a jump over in Robbin's Chapel, Virginia. I remember the mountain with the face profile that juts out across the road from my own childhood. I also remember always getting stuck in the back with my cousin Craig who would get car sick every time on the hairpin curvy roads. Grandpa's sister raised peacocks on the side of the mountain. As a child, I thought that was amazing! We went to lunch with her favorite cousin Betty and her husband, and while out ran into several somebody's that knew somebody's daughter's, sister's, or brother's wife! One thing that was unmistakable, however, anywhere we went was the strong bond these people had.

It's been several years since I took mom on that trip, and I hope one day to finish up with my collection of her stories of the love she has for the mountains and its people. It has had a great deal to do with my upbringing for sure. She had this incredible way of having patience, that I wish I had more of! As I write this I am going to try to fly out of here and run by the bank then pull into Harris Teeter and push a button...tell them my name is Stone, and have them bring my groceries to my van. I won't even have to get out of the car.

Boy, times have changed...Coal miner wives would have to walk for miles on pay-day just to go and get the basics. Normally up and over mountainous terrain in all kinds of weather. We really have become so spoiled to convenience, ruined by instant gratification and lazy by all standards. It was once again reinforced when over lunch with her last week. I was distracted by the time it was taking to get our food because I only had an hour for lunch! Slowly she started catching me up on the going's on at her church, how my stepdad was feeling, and things she had come across and was so excited to share with me a "feel good" story she said. And just like that, I relaxed a bit, and waited for her to begin.

My mother loves stories with good morals and happy endings, this one had both. A priest in Kentucky handed out more than $20,000 to miners struggling to pay bills after the coal company they work for filed for bankruptcy protection. Father Jim Sichko signed checks for more than 100 miners who are currently out of work. They met at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Harlan, Kentucky. If they brought their last check stub, a photo identification, and their utility bill, he’d pay the bill as long as the funds lasted.

Almost two hundred miners and their families lined up outside of Holy Trinity. The last coal miner in line received a check that covered his utilities for an entire year. Father Sichko came from a family of coal miners. His grandfather and uncle both worked for United States Steel at the Robena Mine in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania. “Everyone is going through difficult times and if you can assist in any way, do it,” Father Sichko said in an interview she had printed for me to read.

"See?" she beamed at me, "Look how awesome that is! People still want to be good in this world Kimberly, they really do! We're all in this together!" I could only smile at her and think to myself, how incredibly lucky I am to have her as my mom, and how blessed I am to have this beautiful history of such deep roots.