This is my own story as I remember events during my childhood. This is merely for the information of my children and grandchildren. As they grow older, like all of us, they will become interested in their roots and events that happened long ago. I wish my grandmothers had written an accounting of the events in their young days. I can only imagine what their lives were like, and I am sure it was much more interesting than I can imagine. Those events are lost forever and can never be recounted and passed on to their grandchildren and great grandchildren. They told their tales in front of fireplaces or around the dinner table, but never wrote them down to be reread by later generations. So much is forgotten in the mind whereas if it had been recorded on paper, we would know so much more about them than we do today. We probably would understand ourselves better and know why we behave the way we do sometimes. After all, we are only an extension of our forefathers and mothers and all have the same genes. I hope my grandchildren and great grandchildren (should God bless me with these), will enjoy these little events remembered in my childhood and think of me with love and understanding, and know that I love them very much and am thinking of them as I write this. May God bless us all and bring us to his glory, is my prayer-

One hot summer afternoon, July 23, 1929, Mama was in the kitchen washing dishes in a dishpan, as there was no running water or plumbing in the little mining camp house. She had just finished the noon meal and was cleaning up. The dishwater had to be thrown out on the ground to be absorbed back into the earth. As she picked up the pan of water and started for the door, she tripped and fell through the doorway. Being seven months pregnant, the fall gave her quite a jolt and she lay there for a few minutes to try to get her bearings and make sure she was alright. Suddenly she felt a stabbings pain in her lower abdomen. She crawled to the bed and pulled herself up on it and lay there until Daddy came home from work. He went for the doctor and brought him back as soon as he could. Later that day, a little girl was born, me, all 4 lbs, 2 ozs. Two months premature and two months before the great "Depression". For a while they were not sure I would make it, but I did. The next day Daddy found a lady to come in and take care of Mama and me. Her name was Larue, and since Mama had not chosen a name for me, and she liked the name Larue, thats what she named me.

Daddy was a coal miner for The Southeast Coal Company, in a little mountain mining community of Millstone, Kentucky, county of Letcher, in the southeast corner of Kentucky. He shoveled coal all day in the coal mines for $1.00 per day. The mines were less than 50 inches high, which meant he had to work bent over all day, plus standing in water most of the time.

We lived on a hillside in a campsite that belonged to the company. All the houses looked alike, so you had to really know the one you lived in or get lost trying to find it, especially in the dark. There were no street lights or electricity, no TV, no telephone or any of the modern conveniences we have today. All the water used for cooking, washing, cleaning and drinking had to be carried from a community well. Mama couldn't carry me and two buckets of water too and she had no one to leave me with, so she just put a feather on the floor and laid a rock on it to hold it down. then sat me in front of it. I would sit and look at the feather until she came back from the well. We moved to a house up on Rockhouse creek that was owned by my grandmother and grandfather, Ezekiel and Frances Yonts, my mother's parents. This is where my little sister Alleen was born, March 11, 1931. That summer, a cousin was visiting one day and we were playing on the front porch, which was several feet off the ground, and she inadvertently pushed me off, breaking my right foot. Daddy had to take me to the doctor on horseback many, many times before it was healed. I still have the scars today.

Daddy bought our food, clothes, supplies, fuel, medicine and everything we needed at the company store they called the "commissary" on credit. On payday, they took out what he owed them from his pay, which sometimes wasn't quite enough to cover it all. This was the way of life for everyone in this mining community.

The mountains were beautiful in springtime, but were even more breathtaking in autumn, with all the colors. The mountainsides turned to reds, yellows, oranges and browns. Then in wintertime the mountains turned white with snow and were equally beautiful.

The winter of 1929 was very hard on everyone. Daddy had to walk to work in deep snow, crossing a mountain to get to the mine. I did not develop and grow as I should have and was sick most of the time. The doctor did not know what to do for me. At 16 months, I still was not walking. The doctor said I had Ricketts, (a disease of the young that results from the lack of vitamin D in the diet, and is shown in defective bone growth). An elderly neighbor lady suggested they give me orange juice (which was very hard to come by) because my body was lacking in the vitamin D that I needed. As it turned out she was right and it was the best medicine they could have given me.

When I was about eight years old, I started out for school one morning. It was springtime and the spring rains had started. The W.P.A. (a workman's program formed by the government to help people earn money for their families instead of being on welfare. It meant "work projects Administrations", but was nicknamed "we piddle around"), had started work on new roads up the left fork of Millstone and were using a big piece of machinery called a steam shovel. This big monster would scoop up a huge bite of earth and dump it in a big truck. This monster was between me and the school house. I didn't know how I was going to get past this thing without it reaching out and scooping me up, so I detoured around it, going down the creekside, which was swollen from all the rains. When I finally arrived at school, a couple of hours late, I was minus my book satchel and my little lunch bucket. (a 4 lb. lard bucket I carried my lunch in). Also, I was soaked to the skin from falling into the creek. My teacher sent me home by my uncle Burley Kiser, who was two years older than me, and he led me around the old "monster" and got me home safely. My mother was fit to be tied when he told her what I had done. He went back to school by way of the creek and retrieved my books and lunch pail.

Once in my first school year, a severe rainstorm had come up just after school "let out" and since I had to walk a good two country miles to get home, my mother thought I would have sense enough to stop at a neighbors house to wait for the rain to stop, but I didn't and when she looked out the window, she was horrified to see her little firstborn trudging through the rain, soaked to the skin, trying to get home. Dry clothes, a warm fire, a hug and a warning never to do that again was all that was needed to get things back on the right track.

School was very enjoyable for me. All week long we had classes all day, but on Friday after lunchtime, the teacher would ring the school bell (not like the school bell of today where they push a button, but a brass bell with a handle) and we would all line up and march back into our classrooms. This is when the real fun began. The teachers would push back the partitions between the two larger classrooms to make one big room. The students in the third room joined these students in a special program. It was like amateur day. The principal asked for volunteers to go up on the stage to sing a song, or recite a poem, or display any talent they might have. My sister Alleen and I would sing a song, harmonizing with each other, while one of the older students, Creed Spencer, played the guitar. This would go on until school "let out" and we all went home happy.

When my sister Alleen was only two years old, she had polio. The doctor came almost every day to see her. Neighbors, relatives and friends of the family would come by and bring her little gifts and give her coins for her piggy bank. I felt so left out because she was getting all the attention and I was pushed into the background and getting no attention. I guess that is the nature of all little four year old girls. I don't remember ever wishing I had polio, but I needed some of that attention she was getting so much of. The doctor came every day for a long time and helped her learn to walk again. Her little legs were so weak and wobbly. I remember the doctor holding her arms and leading her across the room.

While this was all taking place, my second little sister was born on Feb. 8th, 1933. They named her Mary Magdalene. One of my earliest chores was to take Magdalene out on the front porch and swing her to sleep in the porch swing for her nap while Mama fixed dinner or washed clothes or whatever work had to be done at the time. She still had to carry water from the well about 50 feet from the house. As we all got older and there were more of us, the water bucket became empty quicker. Daddy used to say, "If the house ever caught on fire, the water bucket would be the first thing to burn" because it was always empty.

My brothers came along in the later years, then it became their chore to carry in the water except when one of the girls happened to be nearby and the bucket was empty and Daddy wanted a drink of water. Harold Dean, Carl Edward, Henry Clark and Douglas MacArthur were the next four to arrive in the family. By this time, I was pretty grown up or so I thought. Mama had me doing all the cooking, Alleen and Magdalene were doing the cleaning and washing dishes. I was so proud of myself when I cooked my first full meal and had it on the table for Mama when she came in from working in the garden. I was only eleven and I've been in the kitchen ever since!

Each day started off with a hearty breakfast---fried eggs, large buttermilk biscuits, bacon or sausages, (fried chicken on Sunday mornings) and a big bowl of white gravy. Daddy couldn't start the day without his gravy on his eggs and biscuits. He broke the biscuits up in pieces on top of his two or three cut-up fried eggs and covered it all with gravy. He liked his coffee with breakfast and to top it all off, he would have molasses and butter with more biscuits. He loved to eat. He worked hard and needed all the nourishment he could get. We didn't know what shortening was until after the war, so we cooked everything with lard or bacon drippings. A big piece of fat meat went into every pot of beans. Cholesterol was not invented yet so we ate what tasted good and didn't worry about what it would do to our bodies. Exercise was not a problem, because we got plenty of it.

When company came, we really put out the food. Big pots went on the stove with a gallon of beans, a big pot of potatoes to be mashed with lots of freshly churned butter, cabbages were shredded for coleslaw. Sometimes, we dressed up to four chickens for frying. The chickens had to be caught out in the chicken yard and brought to the house where Mama would ring their necks and put them under a big washtub until they stopped flopping about. Then we had to pluck out the feathers and clean and cut them up for frying. We couldn't get in the car and go to the store and buy a chicken like you can today. Everything had to be prepared from the beginning. In winter, the potatoes had to be retrieved from the big hole in the ground that Daddy dug and lined with burlap bags and then covered with burlap, then covered with tin sheets. Many times the snow had to be shoveled away before we could find the opening to get to the potatoes. The smokehouse almost always had plenty of meat hanging to be cured or salted down for curing on the meat tables. There were very few times that the meat ran out before the end of winter. but it did happen.

Mama made sure we never went hungry. One night, all we had to eat was cornmeal mush. It didn't taste so good, but when you're hungry enough, you'll eat just about anything. One morning I walked out of the house into the yard and there was Mama with a calf tied to a tree and an ax in her hand. When she saw me, she told me to go back into the house and when Mama told you to do something, you did it. I was too small to really know what was happening, but in later years as I thought back to that time, I realized Mama was trying to keep us fed, and she did what she had to do to accomplish that.

Daddy had several "stands" of bees across the creek from the house, and he knew how to handle them. Each summer there came a time when it was time for him to "rob the bees". He put on his beehat, his gloves and got out the bee smoker. This was a thing that looked like an old coffee pot you took on a camping trip. He would fill it with old rags, set them on fire, put the lid on so it would just smolder not blaze. On one side it had a little bellows that you squeeze air into the rags to cause more smoke and puffed it out a spout on the other side. The bees can't take smoke too well and got out of the way of it while Daddy took the honey from the hives. He rarely got stung but if he did, he just pulled the bee off him and went on working.

Every now and then in the spring, the bees outgrew their hives and hatched another queen. She would take part of the population of the hive and leave to find another home. This was called "swarming". When the bees started swarming, there would be such a roaring and buzzing of bees you knew what was happening. Everyone in hearing range would yell "bee swarm" and grab anything that would make a noise. Dishpans came out being beaten by a spoon, plows being banged on by a hammer or anything that would make a metallic ring, was utilized to bring the bees down out of the air to a bush or shrub to "settle". If Daddy was home at the time of the swarm, he would fix up another beehive real quick and bring them into it, but most of the time they settled on a bush or old sheet and that is where they stayed until Daddy fixed up a new home for them. Sometimes the banging didn't do any good and we watched the large swarm of bees go out of sight into the woods. Daddy would go out the next day to try to find them. Sometimes he did but many times he didn't. One day Mama got in the way of a swarm while picking beans in the garden and she almost didn't make it home in time. She was stung many times before she got away from them. She went through bushes and tall grass and weeds trying to rake them off her. She was pretty sick for a few days.

The next year we moved back to Millstone to a farm in a holler (hollow) between two mountains. Here I grew up helping take care of my other sisters and brothers. Daddy still worked in the coal mines, but making a little more money than before. He still had to walk to work, and in the evenings and Saturdays during spring, he, Mama and all the children old enough to lift a hoe, worked in the fields, planting corn and beans. We had quite a large garden where we planted onions, potatoes, and all the vegetables we put on the table as well as storing for the winter months. We had apple trees, a pear tree, and a couple of peach trees for our fruit. We had a couple of cows for milk. One of them was a big old black and white cow named old daisy. She was so gentle, anyone could walk up and milk her. She gave us rich milk for many years. Daddy loved white leghorn chickens and it seemed every spring, we had a shipment of little yellow chicks show up at the chickenhouse. Sometimes they would arrive on a cold day and heat would have to be provided to keep them from freezing to death.

I started to school when I was five. Mama had already taught me the alphabet, forward and backward. School was never very hard for me as I learned quickly. I remember my teacher showing me how to write in script and block form. I was not happy until I made it just the way she did. Since I did so well in the "primer", first and second grades, I was advanced to the fourth grade, skipping the third grade. The school had only three rooms, primer and first grade in one room, second, third and fourth in the middle room and fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades in the third room, so it wasn't hard to pick up on the other classes when it was in the row right next to you.

Sunday mornings were spent cleaning the house, just in case we had company. We had no telephone, so if we had guests, they came unexpected. We did get a few minutes notice however, because we could see down the road quite a way, and was aware that someone was on their way. There were very few cars then, so most people came on foot. Therefore, it took a while for them to get there after coming into view. Our only church, the Elizabeth old Regular Baptist Church was several miles away, and only had church services one Sunday each month. The other Sundays, the meetings were held in other churches in Letcher County. This was called the "circuit". The members went to church every Sunday but to different churches. The first Sunday in the month was our time to have services. The meeting started about eight or nine o'clock in the morning and could last until noon or one o'clock in the afternoon, depending on how many preachers wanted to preach that day or how long each one preached, or hunger took over. The church did not have one particular preacher, any man who felt the call to preach got up and started preaching. They preached from the Bible and the Word of God with no lectures.

On that first Sunday of the month, we could always count on a dozen or more people to be at our house for dinner, so we stayed home to prepare food. I have made coleslaw by the dishpanful! The men always ate first and the women and children ate last. Sometimes there wasn't much left when all the men left the table, but we managed and everyone got fed. Then came the cleaning up!----the guests left for home soon after filling up, and guess who had to clean up the mess? Right!

One Sunday we went to Maw's house when my sister Magdalene was the Baby. The menfolk were in the front yard looking at a new pistol one of my uncles had just purchased. Mama and some of the womenfolk were standing on the front porch which was a few feet off the ground. Mama reached down and picked up her fretful baby and just as she did, the pistol went off accidentally and shot Mama in the leg. The bullet went through the space where the baby was standing just a second before. It hit the bone in Mama's leg just below the knee and went out the side of her leg, making a clean sweep. It was quite a while before Mama could walk without a limp, but everyone was so thankful that it wasn't more of a tragedy than it was. We learned later that that Poppy was the one who pulled the trigger.

Mama's oldest brother, Howard, was a handsome man. He was tall like the Meade side of the family. He must have been quite a "ladies man" because he was married four times. His first wife gave him three sons, his second wife gave him three sons and one daughter, his third wife had one son and his fourth wife gave him nineteen sons and daughters. Goldie, the fourth wife, was only about four years older then me, and she and Howard were married when she was only about fifteen years old. She was a beautiful girl with pretty blond hair. She loved Howard very much and lived with him until his death.

I have many, many first cousins, many of whom I have never seen. Uncle Earnest Yonts is a special uncle. He was in the second world war and fought the Germans in France. He was badly wounded by the Germans and left on the side of the road for two days. He was finally picked up by his platoon and sent to a hospital in England. We were notified at first that he was dead, but then another telegram came saying that he was badly wounded. He has a four inch bullet near his spine today, because they could not remove it without causing permanent damage. He was in the hospital for a long time. He was sent to a veterans hospital in Memphis, Tenn. His wife, Mary, went on the train to see him and be with him. The doctors told her to put him in a nursing home and forget about him because he would never be well or worth anything again. She told him he didn't know what he was talking about and she would not do that. He was her husband and she would take him home and take care of him, which she did.

When he was well enough to leave the hospital, they put him on a bus going back to Kentucky. He was paralyzed from the waist down and was on crutches. He swung his body with the help of his crutches and made it. He wore his uniform proudly and many people tried to give him money, but he refused it. They knew he had been hurt defending their country and wanted to do what they could for him. When he arrived home, Mary helped him with his coat and found his pockets stuffed with money, where people had slipped it there without his knowledge. Mary began doctoring him, by soaking his legs in hot water and massaging them every day. In a few months time he threw his crutches away and graduated to a cane. It wasn't too long before he was able to walk without the cane and today he walks straight and tall as anyone. He is such a jolly, pleasant person and has never been bitter over his experience.

When Leonard and I visited them in later years, Mary told me they had been married forty-five years and he had never said an unkind word to her. Mary has been a very devoted wife to him and still is. They are in their seventies now and take care of each other. When they get up in the mornings, he gives her an insulin injection and she helps him with his "patch" over his heart. He has had a severe heart attack but never complains. With a big smile, he always hugs me and says "How are you little girl?". They still live in Deane, Ky. up a hollow in a neat little white house. Mary always has beautiful flowers growing and they still plant a garden. Natural gas was found on their property many years ago and the only have to pay for a meter to use all the gas they want. Once when we were all complaining about how high our electric bills were and with his dry wit, told us if his bill went any higher, he would have them come and take it out. When we asked him how much his bill was, he replied: $1.93. He got a big kick out of teasing us.

P.S. In March, 1987, Leonard and I drove back to Deane, Ky to attend the funeral of my beloved Uncle Ernie. On the first day of spring, he was plowing his garden, getting it ready to plant potatoes when he had a massive heart attack and died. It was so sad to see so many of his relatives and friends weeping openly for their dear one. The funeral director told me that he has had his funeral home there for many, many years and this was the biggest crowd he had ever had. He could not get everyone in the funeral home. There were many people outside on the porch who couldn't get in to view his body and to say goodbye. He was buried on a hillside where his parents, his brothers and sisters are also buried. He was the last member of the family of Ezekiel and Frances Yonts. He was given a full military funeral by the Disabled American Veterans of which he was a member. We shall miss him for a long time to come.

We had several dogs and cats while I was growing up on Millstone Creek, but some are remembered more than others. One dog that was very dear to us was "Fido". Fido was a remarkable old mutt. He was white with big black splotches. I don't remember if it was Mama or Daddy that trained him to bring in the cows each evening, but all Mama had to say was, "Fido get the cows" and he would run as fast as he could go into the back pastures up on the hill or wherever they were grazing, and brought them all to the barn. One day we had company around noon and Mama was bragging about how well Fido was trained and she mentioned how all she had to do was tell him to bring in the cows and he overheard her. Well, in about fifteen minutes he had all the cows in the barnyard ready to be milked. She was very careful how she spoke about him from then on. Fido kept the snakes away from the house, the chickens out of the garden, wild animals away and guarded the children from anything that might harm them. He let us know if we were about to have company. He knew if anyone was within a half mile of the house.

Mama did not like to have animals in the house and would not allow it, but one bitter cold winter night she let Daddy bring Fido into the house to be warmed by the fire. I will never forget how that dog acted. You would have thought he was going to his doom the way he slinked through the door. He had never been inside the house before and was unsure of his surroundings. But once he discovered the warmth of the fire, he lay down and slept peacefully the rest of the night.

Fido lived a long life in spite of being snakebit many times and tangled with many a wild animal of some nature, we were never quite sure what, besides encounters with skunks, o'possums, raccoons and other animals of the woods, but one day Daddy came in and told us that Fido had run away and he couldn't find him. Daddy never told us but as we grew older, we suspected that Fido must have died and Daddy didn't want to make us unhappy by telling us he was dead. He was replaced by a new puppy that was brown and white. We tried to come up with a good name for him but we couldn't agree on one. Finally we came up with the name of "Rags" because of a story we had been listening to on the radio that had a dog in the family named Rags. Rags was trained to bring in the cows the same as Fido and each day brought in the cows to be milked. It sure saved a lot of walking on our part to have the dogs bring them in.

Daddy traded an old victrola for an old jersey cow. She gave more milk than any other cow we had. We gave all our animals names and this old jersey cow was called "Old Daisy". Old Daisy gave us milk for many many years. We seemed to get more butter from her milk than any of the others. I am sure she would have won the blue ribbon at the State Fair if we had had a State Fair. Many neighbors tried to buy her from us but Daddy wouldn't think of selling her. Old Daisy was so gentle, that any of the children could walk up and milk her and she wouldn't move.

One cold, rainy day, this little kitten showed up at out back door. She was wet, cold, skinny and very hungry. We took her in and gave her some warm milk. Mama said we could keep her. We really gave her the attention she needed, but we just couldn't come up with the name that suited her. Mama suggested that we call her "Susie" after an aunt who was sort of on the "heavy" side. The name might help her put on a little weight and grow. Well, it worked and Susie became a big cat. Susie must have had nine lives like all cats are supposed to have, because during the 17 years plus that we had her, she must have used up all those nine lives. Daddy came home one day and told us he had seen her on the side of the road, dead. But a few days later, Susie showed up at the house good as new. Many times she would disappear for days then come home again.

Susie was the one that taught me the real story of how babies are born. Mama and Daddy were from the old school, where they never talked about sex or the birth process. When we asked where babies came from, Mama would just say the doctor brought it in his black bag or it came from Heaven. I thought that it just magically appeared from nowhere and we suddenly had a new member of the family. Well, one Spring morning, I heard Susie crying. She was in her box, that Mama had made her a bed in , under the cookstove in the kitchen. When I pulled the box out and looked in, there was Susie giving birth to a tiny little kitten. I was so stunned to see this little life arriving into the world like this, that the answers to all my many questions were right there before me. It took quite a while for the fact that I had come into the world just like that to soak in and too, I couldn't believe that all of us kids could fit into Mama's little tummy. Susie gave us many, many years of joy. She had many litters of babies during those years, and we gave them to friends and loved ones but always kept Susie.

Getting back to the cold winters, I remember one winter, when around noon one day, the skies turned dark and it began to get colder. The temperature kept dropping all afternoon. Mama told us that we had better get started on our chores before the snow came. We each got busy doing our respective jobs. The eggs had to be gathered, the chickens fed and watered, the hogs had to be fed, the cows had to be milked and fed, and enough firewood and coal brought in to keep the fires going. About four o'clock in the afternoon, the snow started falling in big flakes. you could hardly see 20 feet in front of you.

By the time our chores were done, there was already a foot of snow on the ground. We all gathered around the big round oak table Daddy had made, with the lazy susan in the center, and had supper. The snow kept coming down ever so quietly. Everything was so still and peaceful with a big fire in the fireplace. After the dishes were washed up, we listened to the radio for a little while and then one by one the children got sleepy and went to bed in the big warm feather bed, with the patchwork quilts Mama, Grandma and my aunts help make in their spare time during the summer and fall.

The next morning when we awoke and looked out, we couldn't look out......the window was covered with snow! I ran to the kitchen door and opened it. Daddy had already gotten up and had gone to the barn to see about the livestock and had had to shovel a trench in the snow to get to the barn. I stood in this trench and had to stand on tiptoe to see over the snow. I don't remember just how deep they said it was officially, but I was over three feet tall at the time and it was deeper than I was tall. Daddy was afraid the roof of the house would collapse but he got part of the snow off the roof and the warmth of the house melted some of it so it was ok.

We were stranded in the house for several days, but we had plenty to eat and kept warm. Mama would let us roast potatoes in the ashes in the fireplace and pop popcorn. We always had plenty of meat hanging in the smokehouse just outside the kitchen door, and I have gone there with a big butcher knife and cut a big slab of cured ham, bring it back into the house, put it on a poker (the iron stick you stir up a fire with) and hold it over the fire until it sizzled. A big onion, a piece of cornbread and a baked potato was all that was needed for a feast fit for a king or queen.

We had many big snows but this one was never repeated and hopefully will never be again, however, it will never be forgotten by me. We loved the fresh fallen snow, because we loved to make snow cream. We'd scoop up a big pan of snow, sprinkle sugar on it, add milk and vanilla flavoring and stir. Each of us grabbed a spoon and dug in! Delicious!

Usually on Saturdays, Daddy took the old pickup truck (he finally bought one) to town to buy staples: flour, salt, sugar and other items that we couldn't grow on the farm. He would always bring back stick candy canes with rings or some little toy attached to them. Sometimes he brought us "all day suckers", which were called "black cows". It was hard caramel candy on a stick. Impossible to bite, so it took all day to eat by licking. It kept us busy and contented although somewhat sticky.

He almost always brought home a loaf of sliced white bread, which was a real treat for us. We didn't use it for sandwiches and things you normally use bread for. Mama used it to make a bread pudding. She made a pudding sauce and spread it between the slices stacked on a plate, then put meringue all over it and browned it in the oven. I can taste it now. It was delicious!

Early one spring Saturday morning, Daddy decided to go to Neon, (a little town a few miles away) to get some onion sets (little onions that make big onions) to plant in the garden. He was gone all day! Late that night about ten o'clock, Mama and I were still up waiting for him to come home. Every now and then we would walk out on the front porch to look down the road to see if we could see a light indicating on that he was on his way home. I don't remember why, but Daddy was not in the truck that day. Maybe he just left it where he parked it in Neon, but on one of our trips to the front porch, we heard someone yelling or more like hollering. Mama and I were scared because we couldn't tell who it was and if it wasn't Daddy, the who? We hid down behind the old Maytag washing machine and waited.

Finally, Daddy stumbled up the steps to the porch, drunk as a sailor (as the old saying goes) on moonshine. He had met with some of his friends and one of them had a gallon of "shine". We had the radio on as usual, and as usual on Saturday night, it was tuned to the Grand Ole Opry. We helped Daddy into the house and got him as far as the lower bedroom and layed him down on the floor in front of the radio. One of the performers on the Grand Ole Opry, Lew Childres was singing a song about a train that was bound for Glory Land and it didn't take on any gamblers or moonshine drinkers. Well, Daddy heard him and raised up and called him a G.D.S.O.B. and told him where he could go.

The next morning, the kids and I went down the road, which was a creekbed remember, and picked up the ten pounds or more of onion sets that were slung out of the bag in Daddy's arms as he went from one side of the bank to the other, trying to get home in the dark, and being not too steady on his feet. We didn't let him forget that incident for a long while.

We didn't get electricity in our home until the late 1930's or early 1940's, therefore, everything that is usually stored in the refrigerator was kept in a spring house. A spring house was a small place dug out of the creek bank or on the side of the hill where a cool water spring ran through it. It kept our milk, butter and other items in glass jars, cool to keep them from spoiling, especially in the summertime.

Washing clothes was a problem. Water had to be carried from the well or creek and heated in a big iron washtub outside over an open fire. Clothes were washed on a washboard outside and in the wintertime posed quite a problem. Usually the wash was put off as long as possible and sometimes put off until spring. Daddy finally bought an old used maytag washing machine, but since we had no electricity, it had a gasoline motor which made made washing clothes much easier. It had to be started by a foot pedal similar to starting the old fashioned motorcycle. You pushed the pedal down with your foot to start the motor and sometimes it would take several attempts before it kicked off. All day long that loud. monotonous "putt-putt-putt" of the motor would drive you our of your mind until it ran out of gas. Then you had to refill it and start it up again until the washing was finished. With a large family, sometimes it took all day to do the wash.

The washing machine stayed on the front porch because the water had to be drained out on the ground when we were through with washing. Usually the last rinse water was carried into the house and the floors were scrubbed with it in the summer or whenever the weather was warm enough to leave the doors open to dry it out. We had no rugs, just bare wooden floors. The kitchen was the only room in the house that had linoleum on the floor and nothing was colder than walking on it barefooted! After scrubbing the floor with the broom, a hole was punched in the corner to let the water run out, then a bucket of clean water was dashed on the floor to rinse it. The hole had to be plugged to keep snakes and bugs from coming in.

The laundry soap, by the way, was homemade from lard and lye. It was boiled in a big pot and poured into pans to cool, then cut into squares. It was shaved into the wash water and melted to clean the clothes. Also, the clothes were boiled in water over an open fire outside to kill any germs or bacteria. I don't think anyone knew that was why they were boiled, but everybody did it and always had.

Every year about November, or when it got very cold, we knew it was hog butchering time. We fattened the hogs all year and then it came time when Daddy, my Grandpa Kiser and some of Daddy's brothers would come to our house to help with the butchering and processing of the meat. First they built a big fire out in the yard and put a big tub of water on it to get hot. When Daddy came into the house to get his rifle, we kids would hide under beds or any place we could find and put our hands over our ears. No matter how hard we pressed on our ears, we could still hear that "crack" of the rifle fire.

We stayed out of the way until the big hog was pulled down by the smoke house and put on wooden boards. They carried the scalding hot water and poured it on the carcass to soften the hair on the skin. Then they took sharp knives and scraped it clean. From there they hoisted it up by the back feet in a tripod-type contraption, and processed it, getting it ready for the smokehouse. The hams were salted down to be cured and the bacon, loin chops, pork chops and all the other parts of the hog were also salted down. It has been said that you can eat everything about a pig except its "oink", and I believe it because we threw away nothing except its insides, and some of them we kept.

Daddy always sent a nice piece of meat home with grandpa and everyone who helped him with the butchering that day, as was the custom. He helped others with their butchering in the same manner. It took all day long sometimes, and the next day was spent making sausage, rendering lard and processing the smaller parts of the meat. That night we always had fresh pork chops. What a feast!.

Autumn was also the time for other things that had to be processed for winter. Molasses making was a fun time. Although we didn't raise sugar cane, we enjoyed going to a neighbors house and watch them make molasses. They had a huge bonfire in a pit with a huge vat built over it. As i can barely remember, it will be hard to describe how it was done, but a mule was tied to a long pole that was fastened to a contraption inside the vat. The cane was fed into the vat where the sweet juice was crushed out by the turning of this contraption which was powered by the mule walking around and around the vat. The fire cooked the juice and make it thick and foamy. The result was molasses. The foam was skimmed off and was delicious when we dipped a piece of cane into it and ate it.

We almost always had an abundance of apples. If we didn't get them off our trees, Daddy would bring in bushels and bushels of apples to be canned, dried, sulphured or any other means of storing for the winter. Sulphured apples were processed this way: The apples were peeled, cored and cut in slices. Then they were put in big crock churns and weighted down by a plate with something heavy on it. A container with some sulphur was put in the plate and ignited. A cloth cover was tied over the top of the churn and the fumes from the sulphur would penetrate the apples and preserve them. The apple slices stayed snow white and were delicious when fried, baked or used in pies.

We also had an abundance of green beans! We had green beans coming out of our ears sometimes. Some years we had such a large crop of beans that we would have a "bean stringing". We picked beans all day long and piled them on a quilt in the middle of the floor. Then we sent the children out to tell the neighbors there would be a bean stringing that night. Everyone strung and broke beans until the last one was done, then the mess was cleaned up and we had a party. One time we started playing "postoffice", where the boy delivered a letter and the girl had to kiss him. Well, Daddy didn't go for that too well and he put a stop to that real quick. (I didn't even get a turn at that game.)

The next day, we washed mason jars and filled them with beans to be processed in that same old wash tub out in the yard over a big fire. We must have canned over one hundred half-gallon jars that day. We had to use the larger jars because we had such a large family, it took a lot to feed us all.

One day, Mama and I were picking beans way up on the hillside, and it was almost dusk. We were picking fast to get through before dark. We were on the last row, I started on one end and Mama started on the other. We met in the middle and Mama got to the last hill of beans before I did and when she reached down to pick the beans, out struck a big copperhead snake! She jumped back and screamed. Thank goodness it missed her, but if I had gotten there before she did, it would have bitten me, as I was not as quick as she was.

Our dog Rags was nearby and he grabbed that snake and the two of them rolled to the bottom of the hill, each biting the other. Rags won out, as he didn't stop until that snake didn't move another muscle, if you can call it winning out, because the next day, Rags was so sick and swollen. His head was twice its size from being injected with so much venom. Mama doctored him, the best she knew how, and he pulled through. In a couple of weeks he was as good as new, but it was touch and go for a while. We did not have veterinarians in those days, and you did the best you could with what you had for your animals. Old Rags lived many years after that and killed many, many more snakes. He was a good old dog and a good friend. He died after I left home to go to Nashville to attend business college.

In 1942, when I finished grade school, I was scheduled to go to Whitesburg High School, which was about 15 miles away and was supposed to ride a school bus. But this year, the war was going on and there were no busses available. Daddy and Mama didn't want me to miss a year of school, so they arranged for me to attend my first year of high school in a remote little school in Harlan, Kentucky about 50 miles or so from home, which meant I would have to stay at the school. I had never been away from home before, but I was too excited at the prospect of being away from all the chores and the hard work and to be doing something different.

The day finally came when Daddy packed all my things in the truck that I needed, and away we went. Mama had made my uniforms that were standard for all the girls at Caney Creek Community Center. White pleated skirts, long sleeve middy blouses with sailor collar, black tie, white stockings and white lace-up shoes. Freshman girls wore black ties, sophomores wore green ties, juniors wore blue ties and seniors wore red ties. We crossed the mountain and drove down into the most beautiful valley. With all the buildings on campus, it looked like nothing I had ever seen before. They showed me to my room I was to share with another girl. She had not arrived yet. The floor was bare wood, there was only twin beds and a dresser-desk and a fire-place. There were white curtains on the window and the window was raised to let in the fresh air. There was a nice cool breeze and the curtains were moving with the wind. It was July and the mountain air smelled sweet.

When Daddy left for home, I had such mixed emotions! I felt my independence on one side and my homesickness on the other. My housemother came in and helped me get settled, and showed me where the dining room was and helped me with the schedule and rules of the school. She kept me so busy, I didn't have time to be homesick for quite some time. She was Miss June Buchanan, and at this writing she is still there, but not as housemother, but as head of one of the biggest and best colleges in that part of the country. The school was started in 1916 by a lady from Boston, Mass. by the name of Alice Lloyd. She and her mother came to this remote little mountain valley and built the first school for these mountain people. Miss June came to help her friend in 1919. She came to help out for only three months and has stayed for almost 70 years. At this time she is 99 years old and is still running the school.

When I attended the school, in the fall of 1942 and spring of 1943, it was really an experience I will never forget. The girls sat on one side of the classroom and the boys on the other. We were not allowed to speak to the boys at any time or they to us. They lived in a dormitory on the other end of the campus and were not allowed on our end of the campus. There were large trees with big leaves on them called "Waahoo" trees and some of the older girls would slip out the windows at night and meet their boyfriends under the waahoo trees. But Miss June patrolled the area with a big flashlight and we could hear the girls scampering back into their rooms as Miss June's light could be seen going down the path toward the trees.

Each afternoon after school, we had to go down to the central office and check the bulletin board to see what our duties would be for the afternoon. Sometimes I would have to sweep porches or work in the kitchen or help in the dining room. The dining room was called "Hunger Din". All buildings on campus were named. The office was "Eagles Nest". I'll name the other buildings later on.

Anyway, sometimes I worked in the office helping stuff envelopes. (This was my first experience with office work and found I liked it). The schools only means of support was donations from people back East where Mrs. Lloyd came from, so she sent out newsletters to everyone she thought would be interested in helping out financially or otherwise. Most of them made donations in the form of clothes, linens, shoes or anything that could be used by the people of the area, which was almost anything. The local people would bring eggs, milk, chickens, vegetables, fruit or anything they could and trade it for items in the "store".

There were always lots of toys in the store. At Christmas time, every child in the grade schools in the nearby counties received a small gift from Caney Creek Community Center. I remember looking forward to this extra little gift every Christmas when I was in grade (Grammar) school, besides the gift I received from drawing names in school. My Christmas at caney was very memorable. We had a special program and later each girl received a big box stuffed full of all kinds of goodies, toys and games and on top of each box was the most beautiful doll I'd ever seen.

I didn't get to go home very often that year but I wrote letters home and Mama would answer. She wrote very often as we didn't have a telephone and it was our only means of communication. They couldn't come to see me because Daddy had to work so much and Mama had so many kids to take care of. Anyway, I made it through the year.

Mama would make cookies and gingerbread and send to me. That was the best eating ever and I knew it because everytime she sent me a box of goodies, the next day there wouldn't be any left and I wasn't eating it all. One of the girls in the dorm had been slipping into my room and eating them while I was doing my chores. I caught her one day and really laid into her about it. She just hung her head and said she did it because she was hungry. I knew this wasn't true because we were all well-fed. When I wrote Mama and Daddy about this, Daddy made a wooden locker with a lock and brought it to me. She didn't get any more of my goodies unless I gave her some. I shared with some of the girls and they shared their goodies with me. However, some of the girls were from very poor homes where they didn't have anything to share.

No one had to pay to go the the school. Everyone did their share of of work to keep the chores done. Everyone had to bring along their book of rationing stamps. This was a book of stamps issued each person from the government during the war, because there was a shortage of so many things, like sugar, coffee, shoes, gasoline, and many more items. We had to have our stamps to get our share. If you didn't have a sugar stamp, you couldn't buy sugar until the next month when you received another stamp. So the routine went with everything there was a shortage of, so that everyone shared.

When the end of the school year came it was hard to leave all the new friends I had made at school. I had had a few "football" notes thrown to me during the year but I was too shy to pay any attention to any of the boys. One of the notes I received was from from a boy across the classroom who included his picture in the note and wanted me to meet him under one of the waahoo trees that evening. Of course, I did not but that same boy grew up to be a candidate for Governor of the state of Kentucky!

I did not have an autograph book for all my friends to write in, so I made one out of two pieces of cardboard and sheets of paper in between them. I made holes in the sides all the way through and tied ribbon through the holes to hold the whole thing together. I am so glad I did, because today I still have that little book and remember every one who wrote in it and the sweet things that were written. The next year, busses were available to Whitesburg High School so I finished my three years of high school there.

When I was a senior in high school and Alleen was a junior, we wanted to go the high school prom, but neither of us had dates because we lived to far away in the rural area to have dates pick us up to go and besides Daddy wouldn't let us date anyway. We decided to go but did not have prom dresses so we made our dresses out of a white nylon parachute that an uncle had brought back from the war. I was so proud of that dress. I am sure some people were aware of what they were made of but I didn't care. Alleen and I went to the prom dinner and enjoyed it. They called it a prom but I don't remember anyone dancing, just eating. (Daddy took us there and came back for us).

I graduated from high school in May, 1947, being the first member of both sides of our family, the Kisers or the Yonts, to ever finish high school. I was very proud of that fact. My uncle Willis had to go to the war before he could finish but went back to school when he came home and graduated the next year.

On Sunday morning, July 13, 1947, Mama and Daddy took me to Whitesburg and put me on a Greyhound bus for Nashville, Tennessee. I was dressed up in a dark suit, high heel shoes, and a black hat with a flower on it. All my personal belongings were in the only suitcase we had in the family. I was so excited and at the same time scared to death. Just thinking about going so far away from home all by myself, not knowing a soul in that far-away city, was frightening and exciting at the same time.

A nicely dressed gentleman from Nashville had come to our Whitesburg High School that spring to recruit new students to his business college, Andrew Jackson Business University. He said my grades in high school had earned me a $100.00 scholarship to his school and if Daddy would permit me to go to Nashville, he would find a good family for me to live with. I would help with the household chores for my room and board. It sounded like a good deal to Daddy, so he made arrangements with the president of the college, Mr. D. E. Short, to meet me at the bus station that night.

I was on the bus all day that Sunday. We had a four-hour layover in Knoxville, which threw me late getting into Nashville. I arrived about 11:30 pm and Mr. Short was nowhere in sight. I went to a phone and dialed the number on the brochure from the school and he answered. In no time he was there to pick me up. We drove to his home on Woodmont Blvd., and it was the most beautiful home I'd ever seen. His wife was a lovely, gracious little lady and made me feel so welcome. She took me to a lovely guest bedroom with its own bathroom. She ran a big bathtub full of warm water with bubble bath in it. Such Luxury! My first bath in a real bathtub instead of the old round galvanized washtub! I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.

I slept in a big double bed all by myself. The next morning when I woke up, Mrs. Short had breakfast on the table. It smelled so good. I was too excited to eat and yet was hungry enough not to pass it up. The sun was shining through the kitchen window and you could hear the birds singing outside. Mr. Short took me to the school with him and showed me how to enroll and get my schedule worked out. Later that afternoon after school, he took me to the home where I would be living for the next two months.

The family I lived with had two sons. One was almost a teenager and the other one was about 5 years old. The teenager seemed never to be home but the 5 year old was my responsibility. I also helped cook the evening meal and clean up the kitchen. In the mornings, I helped with breakfast, fed and dressed the little boy, then I got ready for school. I caught a city bus in front of the apartment where the family lived, and rode it to town then transferred to another bus that stopped in front of the school. The fare was only five cents including the transfer ticket. In the afternoon, this procedure was reversed, except there was a few minutes wait downtown between busses. There was a fresh orange juice stand just across the street from the bus stop at Fifth and Church Sts and a girlfriend and I would dash over and drink a big glass of freshly squeezed orange juice before the bus got there.

This same routine went on for about two months, but one day one of my classmates told me about the place she was living. It was a boarding house where the girls helped fix meals for boarders from Vanderbilt University. The lady that ran the boarding house was a widow lady whose name was Mrs. Jack Norman, Sr. Her son was a big lawyer in town and was well known. My friend told me that Mrs. Norman needed another girl and would I go see her. I did and she let me move in. There were three girls living in the same room and sleeping in the same bed!

It seemed I took a step backward in the working and sleeping arrangement, but it was all new to me and I did my work, my school work and anything else Mrs. Norman wanted me to do. We bought large quantities of groceries, cooked large meals, served the boarders, cleaned up the table, washed dishes, scrubbed the floors and in our spare time, we studied our books. I worked hard. The other two girls worked hard also, but they lived closer to Nashville than I did and went to their homes on weekends. I stayed to work on Saturdays and Sundays.

One weekend, about six weeks later, the girls stayed in town. They wanted to go into town shopping. Mrs. Norman gave them some money and said have fun. She made me stay home and clean shelves. I was really hurt that she would treat me this way and I asked her why. All she would say was that she needed me there to do what had to be done. I didn't think it was fair and told her so. She told me, if I didn't like it to pack my things and leave---so I did! She told me to leave by the back door. I did but walked around the house and went down the front walk.

I went to the school and sat on the front porch not knowing what to do. I had tried to call Mr. Short all afternoon, but couldn't find him. Finally around three o'clock in the afternoon, I reached him and he found me a room in a boarding house, for $8.00 a week, including two meals a day. The "room" was the entire third floor of a big house. There were eight beds, each occupied by one girl. We each had a dresser between each bed. This is when I really felt my independence. I was really on my own now.

Daddy would send me money to run on. About every two or three weeks Mama's letter would have a $20.00 bill in it. Sometimes I would have to stretch that money another week or so as Daddy didn't have may $20.00 bills to spread around. I paid my rent, bought school supplies, bus fare, clothes, and everything else that I needed. Finally, I got a part-time job in the office of a trucking firm, Super Service Motor Freight Co. I went there after school and worked until five o'clock every day and a half-day on Saturdays.

One afternoon, I stopped in the livingroom of the boarding house, to see if I had any mail from home. There was a letter from Mama, telling me that I had another little brother. Born November 9th, 1947, Gary Wayne Kiser. I didn't even know he was on the way. Mama didn't even tell me she was expecting again. I suddenly became so homesick it was almost unbearable. I decided then and there that I was going home! The next morning at 4:00 am, I called a cab and went to the bus station and caught a bus home. All day I rode that bus, it seemed it would never get anywhere. We must have made every stop between here and Hazard, Ky and had an hour or two layover in each one. When we got to hazard about 10:00 that night, the bus drivers went on strike. Everyone on the bus had to walk about a half-mile to the train station to take a train the rest of the way.

I had about 25 cents to my name. I bought a cup of coffee for 5 cents and called Mr. Holbrook in Millstone, (the only person on Millstone to have a phone), and asked him to send someone to tell Daddy to meet me at the train. I stepped off the train at 1:00 in the morning, bedraggled, hungry and so tired. I stayed home for about a week and then headed back to Nashville. They were glad to see me at home but would have worried about me if they had known I was having so much trouble trying to get home.

Daddy was a very superstitious man! Where he got his superstitious ideas, I will probably never know, but I suspect that most of them were handed down through the family for many generations. Sometimes it was a little eerie the way he proved his point, but he believed in it and no one could tell him any different. Some of his superstitions rubbed off on his children, but as far as I am concerned, I have put a lot of these beliefs behind me and do not believe in them anymore, except every now and then one of them will pop up and make me stop and wonder if I am doing the right thing.

Daddy would never think of planting corn until the right sign of the moon, or put a new roof on the house unless the sign of the moon was right. He said "every nail will come out of the roofing if I put the roof on in the wrong sign". Or fence posts will sprout or come out of the ground if he didn't wait until the right sign of the moon and then you couldn't pull them out with a bulldozer. He planted underground crops in the dark of the moon and above ground crops in the light of the moon. It must have worked, because he always had good crops and everything grew well. I think the manure from the barn he spread on the ground in fall and spring had a lot to do with it too.

One summer Sunday, Mama wanted to go see her mother, whom she had not seen in about two years, and Daddy said he would take us all to Maw's house. (Mama never learned to drive and only left the house when Daddy took her or she walked.) It took us about an hour to get there and when almost there, a black cat crossed the road in front of us. Well, Daddy turned right around in the road and started for home. He knew it was bad luck to go on. Mama started crying and we kids started crying too. We wanted to see Maw and spend the day at her house. Well, he felt sorry for us and we went on to Maw's house. That evening when we got home, one of our cows had given birth and the baby calf was dead. Daddy said if we had come on home that morning, it wouldn't have happened and it was because of the black cat and we did not heed its warning. This is only a few of the many things that happened and he blamed it on superstitions.

Daddy was a very strong willed man. Kisers are well known for their strong wills, also known as "stubbornness". If he didn't want to do something, no one could make him do it and if he wanted something done, you'd better do it! One time he tried to get a cow into the truck to take her to a neighbors farm to be bred, but she wouldn't get into the back of the truck. We thought he was going to beat that cow to death and we all started begging him to stop. Finally he did, but he never did get her in the truck, instead he tied a rope around her neck and tied it to the back of the truck and made her walk all the way to the neighbors.

My mother told us stories about her childhood that were very interesting. She had a very hard time growing up. With eleven children in the family, hardships came often. Some of her brothers died very young. One was kicked in the head by a mule. One stepped on a nail and died with lockjaw. This was before we had tetnus vaccines. One brother was killed in the coal mines.

My grandfather, (her father) Ezekiel Yonts was a real moonshiner! He had his own "still" up on the hill beside a creek above the house. One day he took Mama to the still with him (she must have been about 10 years old), and while he took a nap under a tree, she took his pocket knife and carved his initials on the still. Needless to say she wasn't able to sit down for quite a while after he woke up and saw what she had done. The revenuers would know exactly who owned that still, if they happened to find it.

He gave up moonshining but the revenuers found another still on his property, he said he didn't know about, and he had to go to Atlanta for 11 months and 29 days in the federal penitentary because it was on his property and he didn't report it. Seemed a little unfair to me, but that was the law in those days. He returned home and confronted the man he thought ran the still. The man met him at the front door with a shotgun and blew the top off my grandfather's head.

He was buried just before Christmas in 1939. The ground was white with snow and was bitter cold. Someone came and told Mama about it in the middle of the night and got Daddy to go help make a coffin and help get Poppy (as we all called him) ready for burial. I woke up and sat with Mama all night. We heard a dog howling way up on the ridge and Mama said "A howling dog means that there has been a death in the family". She believed this and to this day, I do too, because it has happened to me many times. When I hear a dog howl that mournful sound, I get a very strange feeling.

We drove to Poppy's home the next day in a car with a "rumble seat". This is a seat that opens up on the outside back where the trunk is on present day cars. It was very cold and the snow was really coming down on us, but we were wrapped in warm blankets and quilts. We all stayed at Poppy's and Maw's house.

Poppy's body was in a coffin in one of the bedrooms. (There were no funeral homes then). The adults took turns sitting up all night and all day with the corpse. (They tell me the reason they did this was, a long time ago, they watched over their dead loved ones to keep rats from getting to the corpse.) This was kept as a tradition up until modern day funeral homes came into being.

Anyway, all the children piled up in the big old feather beds to sleep. Some at the head, some at the foot, some crossways and some barely hanging on to the edge. The preacher came and preached a sermon over Poppy then they took him to the cemetery for burial. Pictures on the wall were turned around facing the wall and black cloths were hung over the mirrors. Mourning continued for several days.

We were sure glad to get back home to our own beds, even though we still had to sleep three and four to a bed. The three girls slept in one bed, and across the room, the three boys slept in the other bed. The baby always slept with Mama and Daddy. When the next baby came along, the former baby went to the big bed and the new baby took his place.

When it was time for a new member of the family to arrive, Daddy would take all the children to Grandma Kiser's or to a neighbors house. Sometimes it would be in the middle of the night. It sure was hard to get out of a good warm bed and go somewhere else in the dark. Sometimes it would be during the day, then Daddy would go get the doctor and bring him to the house. He stayed there until the baby arrived. We would ask Mama where the baby came from and she would tell us that the doctor brought it in the little black bag he carried with him.

All ten of Mama's babies were born at home. When my little sister Joan Elaine was born, it was in the afternoon. Daddy took the others to Grandma's but let me stay home with Douglas. A neighbor lady came in to stay with Mama and help the doctor. She asked me to take Douglas outside and walk around and don't come back until she called for me. I must have walked five miles for the next couple of hours, but she finally called to me to come home and said I had a little new sister. Two more boys were born after Joan Elaine, but I had already left home to go to Nashville, Tenn. Gary Wayne was born on Millstone in November, 1947 and Larry Dale was born after they moved to Winchester, Ohio in January, 1950.

We did not live in a Christian home, but Mama tried to instill all aspects of the Bible in us. She taught us right from wrong and always told us that we could not do wrong and get by with it. I always believed that and it has been proven many, many times with so many people that I know. We did not get to go to church very much, because the only church we had was several miles away and they only held services on the first Sunday in each month. When they did have services, a lot of relatives showed up at our house for dinner, therefore, we stayed home and cooked. It was not unusual to kill several chickens, dress them, cut them up and have a hugh platter of fried chicken with big pots of vegetables, pies and cakes that we had baked the day before, and have dinner ready when company came.

We did not read the Bible or pray out loud. Only in our hearts did we talk to God. I am sure Daddy believed God existed, but he never mentioned it. He had many superstitions and believed in them wholeheartedly. Even when I was a child, God answered my prayers. Sometimes it was not the way I expected them to be answered, but I always believed God knew best and I accepted His decision.

We were not allowed to play cards, dance, say "bad words" or curse. (Daddy was always saying curse words especially when he was angry) I think it was more habit than anything else, because his brothers did a lot of cursing too. But Mama would always tell us that cursing was bad and she would wear us out with a switch if she heard us say a bad word. We were not even allowed to say "devil" or "darn" or "hell". Those seemed to be the worst words. I guess she thought if we thought these words were bad, then the really bad words that Daddy used, were really terrible. She must have gotten her point across to me, because to this day, I do not use profanity in any form and cannot tolerate anyone who does. It is so offensive to me to hear someone use profanity.

So, what she taught me about following the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and that Jesus loved me always, was the best Sunday School lessons or Church preaching anyone could get in any church. Missionary people would come from far away to our school and get us to learn verses from the Bible and for 10 memorized verses, we would get a New Testament. For a lot more (I forget how many) we received a whole Bible. I still have my Bible to this day.

God has been good to me. He blessed me with a good husband, three wonderful, intelligent sons, a nice comfortable home, three grandsons and a sweet granddaughter. I am in reasonably good health for my age and I feel very fortunate, because very few of my female relatives have lived passed 65 years. Most of them passed in their 40's and 50's.

This is a little background on my family's history, what little I know. Grandpa Kiser was a coal miner just like his daddy before him. It seems his grandparents came across the mountains from either Virginia or West Virginia, I don't know which, but they never talked much, if any, about their ancestors, except that they were from Germany and were coalminers. My grandma Kiser was born Mary Elizabeth Richardson. Her ancestor's origination is still a mystery to me, but she was from a large family. It seems everyone in those days were from large families. She was a very strong-willed lady, who bore 14 children and miscarried with at least one child that I know of. Daddy was the oldest child and the youngest child was named Burley, who was born just two years before I was born. A list of all the children is in my family history book.

My mother was born Hattie Rea Yonts. I never learned where her family originated, but her great grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian and was known as "Granny Haley". Her family were not all coalminers like daddy's but were farmers, living off the land, and having the barest of necessities. There were 11 children in all and not all made it to adulthood.

Times were hard for all, especially in winter. But spring always sprung and new live came forth to renew their spirits and give them hope. At the first sign of spring, the old plow came out of hiding and sharpened. The old mule came out of the barn and harnessed with all the gear that went with plowing. No modern machinery. No tractor or disk to break up the big clods of earth. Just a hoe or maddock wielded by other members of the family, following behind Poppy (Grandpa Yonts) and the mule, as they broke ground for the spring crops. Sometimes they had to clear new ground by removing trees and bushes, rocks, logs and anything else standing in the way of preparing newground for growing crops for food for the coming year. From daylight until dark, they worked by the sweat of their brow to get the crop in. Then the spring rains would come and the little seeds would sprout and grow. Sometimes the rains would be too heavy and much of the crops would be washed down the hillside into the creek. Then they would have to start all over again.

Cloudbursts were not uncommon. There would be so much rain in a short time, that it would rush off the hillsides all around us and the creek would rise at a rapid rate. The creek in front of our house would be a raging river in a matter of minutes, with nothing standing in its way. Our house was high enough on the bank, that water never got into it, but many neighbors living in low-lying areas, lost everything, including their livestock. After the waters receeded, neighbors helped neighbors get back on their feet and start over again.

My dad was born Joseph Henry Kiser, eldest son of Namon "Goff" Kiser and Mary Elizabeth Richardson Kiser. He only had a few years of early grade schooling, but he was excellent at figures and kept accurate records on his coal mine transactions in later years. He was self-educated and knew how to do many things. He was a very hard worker all his life and made sure his family was well-fed and had a roof over their heads.

We had a coal mine on the hillside in front of our house, with a coal chute running down the side of the hill. This was the best and the fastest way to get the coal from the mine to the bottom of the hill. When Daddy brought out the railcar full of coal and dumped it in the shute, it sounded like thunder, because the shute was lined with corrugated tin sheets and the coal bouncing down that chute made the loudest noise, that it hurt your ears. We kids loved to play in the coal dust and would get so black. If it had not been for out cotton-top hair, you would have mistaken us for another race of people. Mama seemed to take it all in stride though. She fussed at us but washed us and out clothes anyway.

Our house was small. Only three rooms in an "L" shape. Two rooms were sleeping rooms with a fireplace in each room which shared one chimney. The other room was the kitchen. The only heat in the kitchen was a large wood stove used for cooking. In the wintertime, it would get so cold, if the fire went out in the cookstove, that was the coldest place on earth. Daddy would start a fire in the stove at 4:00 in the morning, and get me up to cook his breakfast and fix his dinner to take with him. Several times he would come into the kitchen, ready to have breakfast, and find me asleep in front of the stove waiting for it to get hot, but the fire would be either out or roaring hot. It is hard for a teenager to get started at four o'clock in the morning. Many mornings I would have to break the ice in the water bucket to wash my hands or get water to make coffee.

Winters were hard on everyone in Millstone, but nothing seemed to stop. Everyone went to school, to work, or whatever had to be done. The cows had to be milked, the eggs had to be gathered and the chickens fed and settled for the night and the pigs and hogs had to be fed and watered. There always seemed to be chores to be done seven days a week, some twice a day.

Sunday afternoon seemed to be the only time we could have a few hours free to do as we pleased. In summer we would take long walks (my sisters and I) and join up with other girls our age who were doing the same thing we were doing, something different. I still had to babysit. I carried my little baby brother on my hip wherever I went. I didn't mind too much because he was sweet and cute and wasn't too heavy, except sometimes, we wanted to go to a girlfriend's house and talk "girl talk" and little brothers are a real bother then.

During my growing up years, for some unknown reason, I didn't like my sister Magdalene very much. I have searched my memory bank and cannot come up with a valid reason, except maybe she got more attention than I did and I was jealous. Being the oldest, I seemed to be the first one called on to do whatever had to be done at the time. As a new baby came along, the youngest child sort of merged with the older children and the baby got all the attention until another one came along.

Anyway, I remember telling her one time that I wanted her to never to set foot in my home when we grew up and married. She may or may not remember my saying that, but at the time, I really meant it. Now I regret all the time I wasted on my thinking this way, because since we grew up and married, we are such good friends and I love her very much. We have such a good time when we are together. Our husbands are a lot alike in their thinking and doing, so we have a lot in common, except I have three sons and she has three daughters.

Christmases were wonderful at our house. Since we never received gifts the rest of the year (not even birthdays), Christmas was especially nice because our stockings were filled with candy, nuts, oranges and apples. This was the only time we ever got oranges so they were a real treat. Also there was always a doll for the girls as well as play dishes and little items Santa knew we would enjoy. The boys got red wagons, cowboy guns and the things little boys enjoyed. There wasn't much, but enough.

Our Christmases were very memorable and some of the happiest days of my life. We really believed in Santa Claus, however, as I got older, I noticed the shopping bags that were hanging on a nail very high up just before Christmas, seemed to suddenly disappear after Christmas. Of course, thats where our toys were hidden. I often wandered how Santa knew how to spell my name. It always seemed to be in Mama's handwriting. I asked her about that and she said that Santa was so busy and in such a big hurry, he asked her to help him. When a girl in my class in school told me there was no Santa Claus, I felt I had lost a friend.

One Christmas, two of my first cousins came to spend Christmas Day with us and when they told us that Santa had not been to see them, I felt so sorry for them. We shared our candy and fruit with them. I could not imagine Santa passing them up, because they seemed to be good boys. It did not occur to me that they were poorer than we were.

Wintertime meant we were confined to the house more. After the chores were done, we would settle down in front of the fireplace and daddy would tell us ghost stories or we would listen to Fibber Magee and Molly, Jack Benny or Fred Allen the radio. The Green Hornet or the Lone Ranger was always exciting. Saturday night was always Grand Ole Opry night. From the time it came on until it went off, we listened to it, our ears glued to the radio. Friday night was always professional boxing night for Mama and Daddy. I could never understand how anyone could beat-up on someone else, but Joe Louis, the champion heavy weight boxer of the time, seemed to always win.

Sometimes we'd get up a game of chinese checkers, if we could find enough marbles of the same color to play a decent game. With so may boys in the house, marbles were hard to keep up with. If we couldn't find enough marbles, we would just play a game of foxes and geese. This was a board game where we used 22 white kernels of corn for geese and 2 red kernels for foxes. The geese had to move around the board avoiding being caught by the foxes. Sometimes we popped popcorn on the fireplace by the dishpanful. You see, we didn't have television back then.

My mother, Hattie Kiser, became the wife of a coal miner in 1928, just before the big depression, when she was only 20 years old. She endured many hardships and weathered the storm of hard times without a complaint. She had 10 children and would have had an even dozen if she had not miscarried with twin boys when she was 42 years old. All ten of us were born at home, not in a hospital, four daughters and six sons. She had to work hard to keep our family going. We did not have electricity, running water or inside plumbing. Living on a farm in a remote area in Southeast Kentucky, there was always work to do. We had animals to feed, cows to milk, chickens to take care of and all the chores that goes along with farming.

Mother washed clothes on a washboard in water carried from a well and heated in a large tub over a fire in the backyard. In that same tub, she processed canned green beans, tomatoes and many other vegetables. She made hominy, lye soap and boiled our clothes in that big tub. She cooked our meals on a big woodstove in the kitchen. At the end of each day she would have a tub of warm water ready for Daddy to take a bath when he came home from the coal mines to get the black coal dust off his body.

She was sad when each of her children started leaving home to make their way into the world. She grieved when each of her six sons went into the armed services, one in the Army, three in the Marines, and two in the Air Force. Three went to Vietnam. She rejoiced when they all came home safely, but the experience took it's toll and made her old before her time.

When we were small children, she invented games for us to play to pass the long cold winters. The house was warmed by two fireplaces which burned coal. In the summertime, when we were not working in the vegetable garden or cornfields, she would take us exploring in the woods to find "Mountain Tea" (a bright green plant that tasted like wintergreen), or blackberry picking for a cobbler for supper. She taught the girls to cook, crochet, quilt and make clothes and underwear from bleached feedsacks and flour sacks. She also sewed bleached feed sacks together to make bedsheets for our beds. The most important things, I guess she taught us were, there was a loving God, make do and be grateful for what you have and always tell the truth, no matter what!

Mother is gone now, but her memory and teachings will last on forever in our hearts and is being passed on to her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.