For my Project, I chose to do an Oral History Project. I Interviewed my Grandmother. Her name is Dottie Lawrence. These are the questions and the answers that I asked my Grandmother. She grew up in Drift, Kentucky. She was born on October 15th 1951.
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| TJ and Granny Dot |
Appalachia in Person
School
Q: Describe your classroom in 4th Grade.
A: It smelled. There was this smell in Drift school. I went to Drift Grade School. We walked to school. And, when you open the front doors, it was a nice school for that time. But, you opened the doors, and it always had this smell. I think it was a combination of, you know like when you sharpen pencils, you know how that smells sometimes? It was that. And, oil that went on the floor in the hallway, that kind of thing.
My room had a front door to it. You go in the hall, my room was over on the left. And, it had glass in it, but it was glass you couldn’t see through. It had a wooden bottom, and then glass panes. Well, you go into the room and there was a whole row on the side of closets. Closet space: it was almost like closets in a house; you pull the doors and, it would kind of fold back. And, that’s what the teachers stored their stuff in.
The teachers desk was usually in the front or over in the corner. And there was a regular old chalkboard. There were no dry-erase markers or anything like that. It was just a chalkboard. And, all the desks; have you ever seen one of those old desks? Ours had the things that raised up. You can store your stuff in it. And, it also had space under it where you could put your books. Cause we only went to one room. We had every subject in one room. And, of course we had maps on the walls. And, the globe. And, they had the ABC’s up around the top. And, the 123’s. And, there was always a place in our room where we have a bulletin board where we could put stuff we made. That kind of thing. And, it was almost like a school now. It was a little different. And, good teachers.
Q: Who was your favorite teacher and why?
A: My favorite teacher was Orphie Akers. Because she was like a grandma to everybody. She loved everybody. And you could talk to her about anything. You can talk to her about school work, you could talk to her about anything. And she’d listen. She would just listen to you. And, as a matter of fact, she lived by the school at that time. And, she’d send you over to her house to get stuff. She was a nice teacher. I liked most all my teachers. But I liked her best. She was real nice.
Q: Describe one of your funniest stories from elementary school.
A: Okay. I’ll tell you about this time when I had a little accident in school.
We had a playground in the front. And, I was gonna show off in front of this little boy. As a matter of fact, he’s the same guy I have on Facebook right now (we grew up together).
I was gonna show off in front of this little boy. Cause I was gonna swing. I was gonna show him how high I could swing. I got into the swing, and somehow I got off balance. It wasn’t funny when it happened but, now it’s funny. I got off balance and I fell and, you know how the swings are at playgrounds cause they have those big poles. I hit my chin on the pole. My face turned blue. It was blue all the way under my eyes. It looked like somebody had been beatin’ on me. And, of course he thought that it was funny. He didn’t know I killed myself! But he laughed. He thought it was funny. And, you should’ve seen me. For two weeks, I had a blue, purple face. And your great granny thought that I had absolutely killed myself. But, that was funny. It wasn’t then, it was funny now.
Life Growing Up.
Q: What chores did you have growing up?
A: Everything. My Mom worked. And, there was nobody at home but my sister and me. NovaLou. And, she was older. I was the younger. And, we just did everything that had to be done. Anything that our mom left us to do. ‘Cause she was not there a lot. She got up and she went to work when we went to school. And, she came home right before we came home. And, on Saturdays and Sundays, we stayed with our Grandma. So, we did everything. We cleaned the house. We didn’t cook a lot. My Mom did that. We cleaned up. We did dishes, we cleaned up and stuff like that. But, we tried to help her. We did everything we could to help her out, because she worked a lot.
Q: Describe your family.
A: My family. My immediate family; there’s only me and my sister NovaLou, my mom has been passed away for quite a while. But, growing up there was my mom, and me, and Novalou. And then, there was my grandmother, and my Aunt Evie, my Aunt Annie, and my Aunt Pearl. They lived across over on the other side of the hill. And, that was our family. And, our family liked things like music - kind of like you do. And, that’s what we did. That’s what we did all the time. And, when my grandmother all of my moms family (cause she was the oldest of 13 children! And, Aunt Pearl was the youngest of 13 children) would come back from where they’d moved to Ohio, and Michigan….when they would come back home, they’d come to our house. Because, Granny Pack was gone. She’d passed away. And, that was the only place they had to go. So, they’d come to our house and, we would cook outside, we’d set up a big fireplace with a big grill thing on it, and, it went back in the hill made out of brick. We’d cook outside, we’d have so much food. And, they would sit up all night and play music. We’d string lights up outside in the front yard. And, I had a good family. A lot of them are gone. Now it’s kind of strange because my family now is all younger. They’re my children, Aunt Nova Lou’s children, you guys, Alyssa and Josh and, extended family all over the place. All the way out in, well, even in Arizona!
Q: Tell a favorite memory about your parents and grandparents.
A: I can’t tell you a whole lot about my parents because I don’t remember my Daddy. My Mom. I’m a lot like my Mom. She was funny. She liked to have a good time. She liked to have her children around. She liked to have her whole family around.
My Mom always waited up for us. After we got older, we went out a lot. We went out on dates, went out to ball games and stuff like that. And, she always waited up. She never went to bed till we got home. And, if she did lie down, she’d always stay awake. She wouldn’t sleep. So, one time she went out and, me and Nova Lou stayed home. And, my Mom liked to do square dancing. She’d go out. She had some friends of hers. They’d all go out and, they square danced. Well, you have to remember: we didn’t have a dryer. So, we had to hang up clothes on the front porch. When it was rainy, you couldn’t hang them out, they’d get wet. So, we had to hang up clothes up on the front porch. She had clothes lines up across the front porch. And, we were watching TV. We had this big ol’ TV with the big legs. And it was a scary show. And, the doors were locked. But, we heard somebody out on the front porch. We were up on this mountain. No one was around but us, and Granny Packs house. And, clothes were hanging up so we couldn’t see. And, when she….(it was my Mom) she got to the door and, it started to open. And, it scared the day lights out of us. But, we couldn’t see her because the clothes were hanging up. And, you couldn’t tell who it was!
And, my Grandparents. I don’t remember my Grand Daddy. He was gone before I was born. But, my Granny Pack. Oh, she was a hoot. She died young. She was 51 when she died. And, she worked hard all the time. She was a real pretty woman. And, she threw a tea cup one time at Aunt Pearl. And, that was kind of funny. But, Aunt Pearl didn’t think so. Granny told her to do something and, she would say, “No. I don’t what to.” Or something like that - she was a teenager. And, so Granny was sitting on the front porch, she was in the swing, swinging, and her front porch was a high front porch. And, Aunt Pearl told her something that she wanted her to do. And, I don’t remember what it was. Granny Pack was drinking a cup of Coffee. And, she had finished her coffee. And, she was sitting there holding her coffee cup. And, Pearl turned around and said something to her about not wanting to do something. And so, Granny Pack just politely threw the cup at her. That was Granny Pack.
Q: Describe what it was like when your family got together for special occasions.
A: Like I said: music. People up in the holler would sit out. And, when they knew that all of my Mom’s family was back home, they’d sit out on their porches at night to listen to them play music. They all played guitars, and banjoes, and all kinds of stuff. And, when they all came back home, and people around there knew them (grew up with them) that played, too, they’d all come to our house and we would sometimes have 75/80 people at our house. And, like I said, we’d cook out, string lights. Some of them played Rook (they played cards). But most of them played music. And, that’s how I got involved in music. Cause, I loved it. They played bluegrass music, gospel music, and, it was good. And, that’s what we did. And, everybody just had a good time. They didn’t drink. They didn’t do anything like that. They just had a good time. Sometimes, we would have people laying all over the house at night cause they would just fall asleep. We had kids laying in the floor, and out on the porch. And, they’d play until daylight. People would just stay out, and listen. And, we were always called The Pack Family. So, you take that from them.
Q: Do you remember anything about your great grand parents?
A: No. Not really. Just things that I heard. Things that I heard people say. But, I don’t remember them because……..my Daddy was killed before I was two. And, my grand Daddy…the only grand Daddy I had left died January after my Daddy got killed. My Daddy was killed in August. Great Grand Daddy Shannon died in January. And, Great Grand Daddy Pack was dead for a long time. My Grandmother Shannon had been dead for a long time. So, it just left my Granny. She was the only one I had. So, I don’t know a lot about them… but I DO know this. My Grand Daddy Shannon looked like something from The Hatfield and McCoy Feud. He had a handlebar mustache. He was a lil’ bitty feller. He wasn’t really big. He was so mean. They told me that he was the meanest thing. But, that’s all I know about him. I just know him from pictures.
Q: Tell me what you thought about coal mining as a little girl.
A: Never really thought too much about it because every body did it. You know it’s kind of like saying everybody in the neighborhood’s a teacher, everybody in the neighborhood is a nurse or something like that. Everybody worked in the coal mines. And, I mean, it was nothing to see a whole bunch of coal miners walking out in the holler, because when the shifts changed, they’d all walk out together. They didn’t drive a lot; there wasn’t a lot of cars or anything. And, the only bad thing about it is your house never stays clean. ‘Cause you had coal dust on everything! But that was the way you made a living. And, I never really thought about it, until I grew up. And, then I knew about the dangers. I had a lot of family that got hurt in the mines, that got killed in the mines. My Grand Daddy Pack got killed in the mines. My Daddy was killed in the mines. My Uncle Harry was killed in the mines. It was one of those things that you didn’t think a whole lot about. It was just a part of life. But, after I got older, and, I started to realize what a bad thing – well I don’t wanna say a BAD thing. Because, coal mining isn’t any more dangerous than getting out and driving a truck for a living. It’s just the thoughts of getting back up in the hills. And, it feels scary. Of course, Uncle Ben does it. He loves it. And, he wouldn’t do anything different. That’s what he wants to do. I just never thought a whole lot about it. It was just what we did. And, they did it well.
This book is about a girl who lives in the mountains. I have read many books about kids who lived in the mountains, but I like this one because it gives details even though it is a short book. Basically, the girl is describing her normal days and nights in the mountains. From her Grandpa coming home from the mines at night, to her dinner of cornbread, and fried Okra. In the night when the "Johnny house" was the only bathroom. To going to the swimming hole where Snakes swam but they jumped in anyway. On their way back from the swimming hole they go to the store to get "white butter", and back home again. From pumping and heating the water for a bath, to drying by the black stove where Grandma cooked dinner. From waking up in the morning to go to church in the school house and getting baptized in the same swimming hole they swam in. From Grandma killing snakes with the hoe and getting a photograph of themselves with the dead snake on their shoulders, to sitting on the porch swing peeling beans and sharpening pencils with a pocket knife. At the end I like what she said: "I never wanted to go to the ocean, and I never wanted to go to the desert. I never wanted to go anywhere else in the world, for I was in the mountains. And that was always enough."
