The Rural Poor Always Manage - Somehow

A few years ago I heard a news interview with a lady from Alabama who had taken a job in Washington, D.C.  She secured lodging outside the city and talked about the poverty she saw as she drove in each morning.  One comment she made really stuck with me, and came to mind as I’ve been preparing my next book.  I can’t exactly quote her (and don’t remember her name to site that quotation anyway) but she said ‘out in the country, poor people always find a way to survive’.

On the mountain, we often consider ourselves poor people – so maybe that’s why I identified with her comment.  Yet, the more I learn about the generations who came before me, the more I realize the abundance they enjoyed.  Of course when you discuss wealth, you have to determine which ruler to use.  A scammer called me once and after I shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him, he told me “I thought it would be okay to scam rich Americans.”  I would normally say I’m anything but rich, but I realize if my home, car, wardrobe and dinner menu were compared to the poor in Niger, Sierra Leone, or India (where that gentleman said he lived), they might just think I live like the queen of a small country.  And this is 2020.

In 1935 a cellar stocked with a good crop of potatoes, dried beans hanging from the rafters and a hog quickly fattening on fall’s acorns would’ve made most of the world envious. 

Don’t you wonder though, what did prosperity look like in 1900 or before?

In 1900 John D. Rockefeller, known as the wealthiest American of all time, would have been 61 years old and his Standard Oil Company was still intact.  The Biltmore House was just 5 years old and the industrial revolution was, well, revolutionizing America.  On Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, the Tennessee Central Railroad connected the Plateau to Nashville and the wide world with a line that reached to Emory Gap. 

While the railroad allowed stock and crops to be sold beyond the plateau, families here were still largely subsistence farmers.   Somehow, that term has become almost derogatory, as though survival is not enough.  In that day before you could compare whether your car was newer or faster than your neighbors, when no one had the latest iteration of cell phone or other technological gadget, wasn’t it enough to have good food on the table and healthy children?

And all of that abundance takes us right back to the land.  I think the land and the culture of those who’ve grown up close to the land is probably that ‘managing’ part of the rural poor. 

In years past, if a man could manage to get a little spot of land, he could begin building something – not just a home, but building a family and a life.  He would cut timber, work in the mines or hire himself out as farm labor until he could save enough cash money to buy a milk cow and maybe a mule to pull a plow.  He would put out a crop to feed both family and stock – and his whole family would help him. 

Sure there were cold times – homes weren’t insulated and heavy woolen coats were often a luxury.  Yet, if he worked hard cutting wood, his wife could sit close to the fireplace with the baby and they’d be okay. 

And there were hungry times as well, when crops didn’t fare well and the forest didn’t give up the game.  Yet, with a little grace (and a garden must be planted with prayer), and a lot of hard work, the land would give just about everything that family needed.  Clothing spun from cotton or wool, meat and vegetables to eat, could all be had with just a tiny amount of knowledge and a little spot of land.

It’s really no wonder that the home-place was revered.

Thinkin’ About the old Lands

Way back in 2013 I shared a little poem here that I wrote about the land, the old home places, and the mountain ghost towns.  Now, as I sit here trying to pull together a myriad of thoughts about land on the Cumberland Plateau, those words come back to me.

There is a place I love to go, where mountains roll and wildflowers grow…

              This land is but my living dream, of the past to which I cling…

It’s stories told, a history wrote…

              Tis a balm to the soul where none is old and all are whole…

I’ve often said it seems like I can hear the whispered voices of ancestors who walked the paths and worked the fields – but maybe that sounds just a little crazy… Really, I guess I hear the stories we’ve repeated so many times.  They are stories that teach lessons and keep characters alive in our memories.  These great-great grandparents, uncles, aunts and distant cousins seem like old friends to me.  Sometimes I forget that I never knew many of them, because I know their stories so well.

And those stories are inseparable from the land.  Not too many years ago, one of my great uncles took a little walk across the farm he’d grown up on.  My Daddy continues to run cattle on that same land, so the fences are intact and the scrub brush is mostly kept at bay.  Still, he marveled at the changes – saplings are now great trees with nicks and carvings grown above his head.  Well-worn paths are now grass-covered and the animals have carved new ways to water and feed.  Yet the land is the same – the hills still roll and creeks still flow.  His parents and most of the siblings he’d known on that land were mostly gone – in fact, Uncle Cletus has since passed away too.  Still the land remains.  

So much of our modern culture has lost its connection to the land.  We’re in rented apartment buildings or on highways and city streets.  We work in buildings where we often can’t even see the blue sky.  Even our leisure time is often spent in city parks or public attractions.  I’ve written about a group of women headed out to pick wild greens in the early spring or hunting medicinal herbs.  We’ve seen pictures of a team of horses or mules that led farm families back and forth plowing a field or pulled them in the family wagon to church or into town on business.  And so many miles were covered on foot as young people walked to church, sometimes miles away, or family members walked to visit aging parents or adult siblings.  People walked in groups and enjoyed the trip as much as the destination.  They worked together and passed the long hours under the sun sharing memories or making plans.

It’s often easy to remember in black and white – so many old pictures from Appalachia look desolate and downright desperate.  Yet if the deep greens of grass and leaves were colored in, with the bright reds and yellows of wild flowers, the picture would be far more cheerful.  Dirty children in ragged clothes might be less pitiful and more delighted with a day of play. 

When you can walk those paths and see them in their natural brilliance, the life of the land somehow fills you – and even the stories of hard times are highlighted by love, joy, occasional successes and sweet memories.

Close to the Land

This week the nation of Israel commemorated 72 years of independence.  They declared their independence on May 14, 1948 according to our 12-month Gregorian calendar; however Israel schedules on the 13-month Hebrew calendar.

So maybe you’re thinking, Israel is a long, long way from Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau and what would a mountain girl know about it anyway.  Well, you’re right of course, but I’ve got friends – and more importantly, I’ve got a Bible.

Really, I’ve been thinking about land and I’ve praised the Lord repeatedly over the last few weeks of quarantine that we are on a little spot where my kids can run and play and not bump into neighbors, where we can put out a garden and spend our evenings sitting on the porch.

At the same time, I’ve been researching and plotting out my next book.  Anytime you write historical fiction set on the mountain, the land is really at the center of it, isn’t it?  And in one sense, that’s true of both the Bible and Israel’s modern history.

Just as a recap – and y’uns know this better than me, I’m sure – Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees because he was called to a land he did not know.  God promised to make him the father of many nations and promised a vast home-land.  All of these stories are preserved for us for lots of reasons, the chiefest of which is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as our savior, and our pathway to our eternal home in Heaven. (If, in fact, you did not know any of that, please comment below and I or one of my far more intelligent readers would be thrilled to explain in much greater detail!)

These people were looking for the land, they were dreaming of a home of their own – you didn’t think that was just the American dream, did you?  Enslaved, embattled, led astray from the Father who had given the promises, the Children of Israel suffered and searched throughout the centuries.  They occupied the Promised Land, then lost it.  Finally, after The Holocaust, when so many of God’s chosen people had been massacred and their homes destroyed, after they’d seen their Gentile neighbors turn their backs on them as they suffered, the world knew we must return to this people their homeland, and the modern nation of Israel was established.

Israel today has big cities with skyscrapers and traffic.  They have a little over 1,000 people per square mile compared to Tennessee’s 159 and Texas’ 105 people per square mile.  Still, they are farming over 1 million acres.  By contrast, ancient Israel was an agrarian society.  Sure, they had their walled cities which were necessary for defense in those days, and there were tradesmen who dealt in silver, cloth and pottery.  However, the vast majority of the people worked in some form of agriculture, including fishing.  They really needed the land.

 In fact, if you remember back in the early days in Egypt, when Joseph’s father and brothers first moved to Egypt, “Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land” (Genesis 47:22). 

Of course, people around the world see value in land, and I hope we are patriotic Americans and appreciate the blood that was spilled to establish and protect our country.  My friend Allen Lord has spent a lifetime studying, loving and working among the Jewish people and he summed up the country’s persepective so well, “Probably no other people in the world can truly appreciate the value of a 'Homeland' like the Israelis. The Jewish people are aware of the many times, throughout history, that God uprooted them from the 'Promised Land' because of sin. For almost 2000 years, since their dispersion in 70 AD, Jews have wandered throughout the world, exiled from the 'Land of Promise'. However on May 14, 1948, God began to fulfill the promise that He made to Jeremiah concerning the regathering of His people to Israel in Jeremiah 32:37 when He said; 'Behold, I will gather them out of all countries whither I have driven them in mine anger and in my fury, and I will bring them again into this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely.”

Allen and his wife, Hagit, sent me a video she took from her window of the beginning of the Independence Celebration.  Sirens sounded for one full minute and everyone stood at attention – even drivers stopped their cars and stood in the middle of the roadway. It moved me to tears.

We’ll talk a little more about the land in the coming weeks, and maybe you’ll remember these blogs when you read Lottie’s Letters in a few months.

A Good Place for Green Beans

It’s spring and I’m wanting to plant things, loving seeing the green trees and getting ambitious.  This often happens to me in the spring and I sometimes bite off more than I can chew.

We’ve been working hard to clean up a field we let get to close to overgrown and now with some dead trees down and scrub brush cut back, I suggested to my husband, “We could do something with this.  Why, we could grow a crop of green beans here!”

Of course for a girl raised in the bean field, that’s the first thing that comes to mind, isn’t it?  Well, it reminded me of a 4 part blog series I wrote way back in 2013 and I wanted to share that with you this week.  Below is the first part and at the end are links to the next 3 sections. 

I’d love to hear YOUR Green Bean stories!

The Green Bean Phenomenon

November 14, 2013 Beth Durham

                The shadows lengthened as the summer sun lazily began his trek over the horizon.  Coal oil lights burned in the homes as supper was finished, prayers were said and children tucked into their beds.  Sleep was welcomed, for the people of the plateau had worked hard this day.

                Today was not unusual; it was summertime and the green bean harvest was upon us.  Early in the morning, men, women and children alike streamed into the bean fields to pull from the vines little emerald sticks of wealth… or at least livelihood.

                The green bean phenomenon began its sweep across the plateau in 1933 and lasted until the 1980’s.  In the wake of this sensation we find a community transformed, and lots and lots of stories! 

                As the story goes, in 1933 work was scarce and money short.  Well that’s just history – U.S. history.  We all know that with the stock market crash of ’29 the nation was plunged into The Great Depression.  I’ve heard stories of farm families who had no stake in the stock market, little money in the 20’s and therefore felt the depression years only mildly.  Perhaps that would be the case on the plateau as well – for there was no industry here before the depression years, no great companies closed their doors in that time, no breadwinners dismissed from good jobs. 

                Needing work and unafraid of hard work, Dempse Cooper spotted a truck loaded with green beans headed south through Fentress County and wanted to know what that was all about.  He fell in behind him and followed him till he could stop and question the driver.

                It seems the load had originated in Kentucky where farmers were growing green beans for public sale. Mr. Cooper saw an opportunity. He planted a single acre of beans.  By 1954, 6,000 acres of plateau farmland was planted in green beans and income from the crop had topped 1 million dollars.

                Green beans are somehow legendary in our community.  So, the telling will take several chapters – or weeks in the blog world.  Next week, we’ll visit The Bean Shed!  Now you know you won’t want to miss that do you?

Part 2: The Bean Shed

Part 3: First Diesel Truck ‘Round Here

Part 4: The Mechanical Pickers

The Demise of William Riley Hatfield

The following blog is re-posted from Backwood’s Adventure’s blog by Scott Phillips.

As a backcountry guide I love researching the rich history “some happy and some not so happy” of this area and sharing it with my clients. I’m going to pass along this story as it was told to me.

My 9th cousin William Riley Hatfield also known as WR Hatfield. Born 1824- died from a gunshot wound January 22, 1892. He passed away on the banks of Station Camp Creek in what is now inside the boundary of the Big South Fork NRRA.

On January 22,1892 at age 68 WR Hatfield was on horseback near the banks of the Big South Fork River and Station Camp Creek when he got into a heated argument with a guy on foot near the trail. As the tempers flared between the two WR spun his horse around in the attempt to trample the man that was on foot. The guy then raised, aimed, and fired a 45-70 caliber rifle striking WR in the abdomen. The large caliber bullet traveled up the body cavity exiting near the face of WR Hatfield. Even with such a devastating and deadly wound WR managed to hang on to life for a few hours before passing away.

He is buried in a small cemetery near Station Camp what is now known as Charit Creek Lodge.

Ironically WR Hatfield’s son William Claiborne Hatfield known as WC was also shot and killed at the age of 51 in 1924. He was killed by a man named Newton Blevins who served one year for the killing of WC.

Newton Blevins was later shot and killed as he rounded up cattle with his wife.

I have been asked several times if WR Hatfield and his family that lived near Station Camp were related to the Hatfield’s from the well known “Hatfield and McCoy feud”.

To the best of my knowledge I would have to say yes. I have traced his family originally coming from Virginia into Kentucky and then down south on the Big South Fork River into Tennessee and then to the banks of Station Camp Creek where he lays at rest today.

WR Hatfield would be my 9th cousin and the Captain William Anderson Hatfield better known as “Devil Anse Hatfield” would be my 8th cousin. Devil Anse is known as the patriarch of the Hatfield family during the Hatfield and McCoy feud.

My research also shows Devil Anse Hatfield’s Great Grandfather is a brother to WR Hatfield’s Great Grandfather.

I have often wondered if WR moved here to get away from the original Hatfield and McCoy feud and it’s violence just to be killed in an unrelated circumstance.