A NICKEL’S WORTH OF SALT BY BILLY ADAMS PUBLISHED BY BACKFIRE ENTERPRISES The events in this true story took place in the middle thirties and forties during the great depression when my dad walked in shin deep snow with rags tied around his feet to keep him warm. Most of the time he left home at the first crack of dawn and returned at bedtime and mom was always awake and waiting for him. In The daytime us Kids would help mom pick greens from the meadow to eat with our poke salad and cornbread. In those days in Johnson County there were just two classes of people “the rich and the poor” and to say the least, we were not rich by any means. Dad was a coal miner, and one of the mines that he worked in was at Van Lear Kentucky. For sixteen years he worked at the same mine that Loretta Lynn’s dad worked in, but because of black lung disease he was forced to retire and died in 1963 at the age of 69. In our neighborhood in Johnson County, there was a small grocery store that was owned and operated by a shrewd business man. Sometimes out of his kindness, he would extend a line of credit to the less fortunate. It was common in those days to find a group of men spinning tall tales around a wood burning stove in stores like that. My mother never seemed to fit in with her high class neighbors, when she wore her feed sack dresses and hand me down shoes. They always put on a big friendly smile when they greeted her, but when she walked away their tongues wagged a different tale. The morning was cold and frosty when my mother got out of bed to face a hungry family and a kitchen that was bare as Hubbard’s cupboard. As quiet as a panther’s paw upon the winter snow she walked across the cold wooden floor. After quietly opening the door, she stepped outside and started walking briskly toward the little store. Knowing my kind and gentle mother as I did, while walking the long dirt road to the store she was thinking about her hungry children, wiping tears from her eyes, and repeating in her mind what she would say to Mr. Williams when she arrived at the store. My mother always was a great listener and did not have to have the last word in every conversation and she always preferred everyone else. She was always the first cook in the kitchen and the last to eat at the table. When she learned she could win the battle through honesty, meekness, and kindness, my mother became a true survivor. In this story we see her using just plain mountain grit, when she considered her hungry children over her wounded pride. Tired and weary from her long journey, my mother was so glad when she finally reached the little store. Finally she was in a warm place and felt the heat radiating from the potbellied stove. In the store, the proprietor was standing behind a long wooden counter as my mother walked in. No doubt, it took every thing she could muster up to get the first words out of her mouth. Then he finally asked her what she needed and with a shaky voice she replied a nickels worth of salt. The usual group of tall tale spinners witnessed this conversation and probably were as shocked as my mother when he said, “I can’t let you have it.” My mother was totally embarrassed when she had to walk out of that store and start her long journey back home empty handed. When she finally reached her little humble home the sun was sinking in the west, but she was welcomed by her family who had heard these denials many times before and knew that mother would feed them somehow even without “A Nickels Worth Of Salt”.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 14:40:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015