Hello Friends This story that I’ve posted here is not part of my book. Y’all can purchase my book “The Greasy Creek Boy’s…The Adventures of Jesse and Silas” @ Amazon To read other stories I have written and posted, simply go to the box at the top of the page where it says “Search this Group” and type my name, Adam Robinson and all that I have posted will appear. Enjoy…Adam Greasy Creek Holler Part 1 Our house My name is John Henry. The year…it’s 1968 and I’m 42 years old. Where I was actually borne…I rightly don’t know. I was raised here in Greasy Creek holler in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. My Mommy, bless her soul, handed me out a train window when I was six months old. She gave me to a man and woman who just happened to be walking by the train station on the back streets of Pikeville that day. When I was a younger man, I often wonder about that day, the day Mommy gave me away, but now that I’m older, I don’t thank on it much anymore. I always figured that she didn’t have any food to feed me, so she gave me away. The old coal miner and his wife, who I learned to love and called Mommy and Daddy carried me back to the coal camps here in Greasy Creek holler. Living here in this holler, I have become a product of the environment. I have been damned to hell, I figure, as far as my work goes. Yes, I have been damned to hell, or as close as any man could be I guess. I am coal miner. Greasy Creek holler is no different than the other holler in Pike County; all these hollers run deep between these hills. Us coal miners occupy most of these small houses along the creeks bank. A few farmers live in these’s hollers, but mostly it’s us coal miners. Greasy Creek stretches eight long miles. Durin’ the summer and fall this dirt road is nothing but dry dust. Durin’ winter and spring this old Greasy Creek road is eight miles of slippery mud and pot-holes. Pot-holes so big, some say there’s a hole in a hole. Frozen or not, it’s a hard road to travel for us coal miners goin’ and come ‘in. When I was a small boy I helped Mommy and daddy fill coal buckets along the railroad tracks at the mouth of Greasy Creek holler. We’d carry those buckets of coal, seem like forever, get ‘em home so we have coal to burn through the winter months. When I was just a boy Mommy and Daddy died. I was taken-in by a family who were farmers. There was a school house within walking distance of the farmer’s house and the farmer’s children, nine in all, went to school, but I never did. Year after year, I wore the hand-me-down clothes the farmer gave me. They were old clothes, worn-out clothes and the shoes had holes in the bottom. In those old clothes I worked the farmer’s fields, milked his cows, clean his barns until the farmer and his family moved away and left me behind. When I was sixteen I went into the coal mine to work. I worked as a coal miner’s helper for a year. As a helper I was given the change at the end of each week from the miner pay check who I helped. If the coal miner was paid $10.54 cents, I got the fifty-four cents to live on until the next payday. I was old enough at that time to have a job in a coal mine like all the other coal miners I figured, but I didn’t understand what I was doing. That year, I starved most days while helping the coal miner. I paid for a one-room-out-house to sleep in from the change I got. Washed myself in the creek and ate sardines from a can. My first real job as a coal miner, I was seventeen. I was paid a quarter a day, that’s when I married Maggie. Maggie and me, we have three sons and two daughters know. My work has gotten’ a little easier through the years thanks the United Mine Workers of America. Me and Maggie and our children have lived here in the head of Greasy Creek all our lives. Well, it’s not quiet in the head of the holler, but its close. We live about one mile from where the creek begins and the dirt road turns into a path, a path that crosses over the mountain, down into the head of Rock House holler. Our home, it’s a modest one. It’s like most others in the holler. Underneath our little house, a dog can’t even find shelter from the cold winter winds. I wish I never built our house on rock pillars two foot high. It makes for a mighty cold floor to walk on. But we don’t worry about our drankin’ water freezin’. We draw our water from the well me and Maggie dug. It’s just outside the kitchen door. Our boys, are fine boys most days…Maggie tells me. The boys have just enough flat land in-between the hill and the back of the house to knock around a small rubber ball. And it’s a good place where I can put my old truck on the grease rack that me and the boys built over by the creeks edge. At the upper end of the house we’ve got a small spot of land we tend each spring and it make a fine garden. We grow all the vegetables that we eat durin’ the summer and fall. We have vegetables right up to the cold days of winter, if a person knows how to garden and Maggie does. Maggie’s a fine woman; she works as hard as me. I couldn’t have picked a better wife from this holler. When the cold winter winds blow and its one o’clock in the mornin’ and nature calls, the chamber-pot in the corner is no good for a foul odor in the house. The toilet outside, standing at the creeks edge, is the only place for a body to go. A persons teeth chatter as one stomps through the snow and a frozen sheet from the catalogue don’t help the backside any. I believe it’s the time of day when one is called upon to pay for sinnin’. It’s a hard life, but, it a good life. Greasy Creek Holler Part 2 Our porch My name is Maggie. The year…it’s 1968 and I’m 38 years old. This old porch is the most important part of our house, when company comes. Me and John Henry built this porch, when we built this house, some twenty years ago. This porch is just high enough off the ground for a body to walk up to the edge, sit down, lean against a porch post and visit for awhile. There have been a many souls who have walked across my porch, and a many of souls have passed the time-of-day sittin on my porch. Over the years, my children and the neighbor’s children have played on this old porch. I’ve washed off a many foot print those little children made with their little bare feet after playing in the mud puddles out in the yard durin’ the summer’s rains and I smile a little each time I see those little foot prints…bless their hearts. These scuff marks right here on my porch. This is where John Henry’s sets in this ladder back chair and pulls off his work boots after a long day of workin’ the low coal. O lord…keep him safe. Over here, against the door, this where my boys put buckets of coal each night durin’ the winter months. I’ll use the coal to feed the fire durin’ the night. Then I’ll put the empty buckets back out here on the porch for the boys to fill up again, out at the coal house. Me, and my girls, we take turns mop ’in this old porch every Saturday morning during the summer months. It don’t matter thou, we can’t get it clean, no matter how hard we mop and scrub. Coal dust from the coal buckets, and John Henry’s work clothes and boots. The dust seemed too burry right into the paint. I like this old porch thou. Some days durin’ the middle of the week, when the children are at school, and John Henry at work, I’ll be in the kitchen doin some ’um and I’ll thank I’ll hear the porch swang chains squeakin’, even though, there’s not a sole to be seen when I come out here and there’s not a breathe of air stair ’in to move the swang. It’s probably a ghostly soul that came down off the hill from the cemetery to set for a spell, I figure. It keeps me on edge some days. Some days when I don’t have much to do, I’ll just take some time and set here in the swang, and stare out into the mountains. Every now-and-then I’ll look up or down the road, hopin’ I’ll see somebody. Somebody who’ll stop in for a visit, like my lady friends, they come by every once in a while, not very often, but every once in a while, like Hazel or Nancy Jane that lives close by. They come around ever now-and-then. One day next week, I thank I’ll walk down and visit LuAnn; she’s an elderly woman who lives down the road a piece. She’s my friend and I’m ashamed to say, I just don’t go and visit her as often as I should. She won’t thank bad toward me thou, if ’in I don’t go and visit. She’s a good Christian woman and she knows my days are hard, too. Let me tell you thou. This old porch, it has seen a-right-many visitors over the years. Friends and neighbors, I’ve even had Preachers and Judge’s set on my porch and sheriff’s too. The preachers don’t stop by very often, but when they do, they just stay long enough to have a cup of coffee and eat a piece of my stack cake, and it’s always good to see ’um. But those politicians, they are some’um. They have the gift to gab, you know. Some of the biggest lies you ever heard has been told right here against this porch post. It’s some ‘um to look forward to durnin’ an election year. The county judge or the sheriff, when their out campaigning to get re-elected they’ll stop by on a Sunday afternoon, right about dinner time. And they don’t turn down my soup beans, cornbread, fried tater, and a big piece of hog meat, neither, or a cold glass of cold buttermilk, if I got some. And then after they’ve eaten, they’ll lean up against this porch post right here, me, John Henry and the young ’ens, we’ll hear some of the tallest tails, it’s a knee slappin’ time. Maybe those politicians tell lies, maybe they don’t. It really don’t matter. John Henry says their good old boys. They stay for what seems like hours, tellin’ stories Ooh, this old porch. See this corner of the porch right here, it’s been a many of time’s I’ve gotten up on Sunday mornin’ and found my Daddy or my brother “Buddy” or old man Johnny who stops sometimes and picks his banjo, I’ll find ‘em here sleepin. They’ll crawl in hear after spendin’ half the night down at bootleg Charlie’s. Then they tell me they were to tard to walk home. Just too drunk, I figure. They know I’ll be cookin’ breakfast for John Henry and the young ’ens come mornin’, maybe that’s the reason I find ’um asleep here, they know I’ll feed ’um breakfast. It’s a sorry sight. Our best day on this porch is every day for Me, John Henry and the children. We’ll sets here in the late evenin’ hours, listen to the catbird hollerin’ down by the creek. Maybe say howdy to a neighbor walkin’ by or just talk about nothin’, right up till dark. Right up until the cool evenin’ air makes a body gets so tard, it makes you wanta go to bed. This porch is where Mary Ann and Cathy sit and talk with the Rock House boys on a Saturday afternoon. It’s also a good place to cool while talkin’ with a friend on a summer’s day or get in trouble when the Ohio girls come to visit as Jesse and Silas did. This little house, it wouldn’t be a home if it wouldn’t for this porch. And Lord, bring my oldest home. I promise, I won’t ask him to sit on our porch and talk of the war, unless he wants too. Thank you Lord. Written by Adam Robinson
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 21:48:36 +0000
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