Pulling Power

Ruthie had a reading assignment, A Ride to Remember by Lizzie Jumper which told the story of a Tin Lizzie and the local men’s teasing that a horse would not roll backward, have a flat tire or get stuck in the mud.  In the end, they indeed did get a horse to pull them home.

It was a cute story and reminded me of our own family story of Uncle Ernest Hall coming to Key Town (from his home in Roslin) to visit his grandmother, Mahala Key.  He drove his A Model Ford and made it just fine until the trip home when he tried to ford the just west of Millard Stepp’s house.  Just like in Ruthie’s reading lesson, the Ford was stuck fast.  Ernest walked up to the house and asked for help. 

Millard gladly brought his pair of mules down, stretched a chain from the double tree to the bumper and began talking to the animals that listened to his voice day after day.  The horses leaned into their collars and slowly the wheels began to turn.  As Millard continued to encourage them, they pulled the big car up the hill till it safely rested near the house.

Ernest looked at the old man and said, “Millard, I didn’t think they were goin’ to pull it out.”

Millard was proud of the mules and answered, “Oh, they’d have pulled it in two if I’d asked ‘em to.”

Just to pass along a word of trivia - Do you know what the Tin Lizzies were? It was a nickname for the Model T - which of course pre-dated Uncle Ernest’s Model A by 2 decades.

Reasons to Learn History

Each week, as I think about what to share with you, I can’t help but be influenced by the people I’m spending time with and the books or articles that I’m reading.  This week, literary agent Dan Balow wrote about God at Auschwitz, and I was once again reminded that even the ugliest moments must be learned lest, in forgetting them, our sinful nature would allow another monster to rise up and eradicate nearly three-quarters of a population.

I’ve been considering writing a non-fiction book exploring the question of whether we ought to be studying history – is it edifying in our Christian walk?  Whenever I read someone else’s articles about Christians studying history, or a Christian’s perspective on history, my mind goes back to the possibilities of such a book. While The Stories generally seek to celebrate the history of the Appalachian people, there are certainly many eras of history that we absolutely must never allow to reoccur.  The Holocaust may be at the top of the latter list.

I don’t need to recount for you the atrocities committed at Auschwitz by a deranged dictator and his followers.  I can’t begin to either relate to or even understand the loss to the Jewish nation of the more than one million people who were viciously murdered at Auschwitz.  And I can never imagine how God’s perfect Son could die for those SS officers, yet he did.

And that is exactly the point Mr. Balow is making in his article – God’s great love is so far beyond our human understanding that we cannot begin to understand it.  We can only humbly accept His gift of love.

World War II affected everyone I know who lived in the last half of the 20th century – can you even imagine how it would have affected you if you had lived in Poland?  One of the questions Mr. Balow ponders is whether the people of the little churches in the local village could smell the smoke from the crematoriums.  I can’t help but wonder how they felt in the days following the camp’s liberation.  If they were truly ignorant, or powerless, the reality must have been devastating.  Did they blame themselves?  I’m sure some did.  In fact, I imagine the loss of all those precious Jewish lives haunts many Europeans even today.

As my grandparents’ generation, who lived through and fought World War II, passes away, I fear we are in danger of forgetting and failing to teach the next generation.  Yet memorials like Auschwitz and Holocaust Museums stand to remind us.  Let us not turn our eyes from the ugliness only to allow it to regrow unseen.

Grass Fed

There are buzzwords in our markets these days. “Grass fed” meats and “organic” vegetables command higher prices and are much sought-after by some consumers.

Well I am reading a very interesting book published in  1913 and Mr Horace Kephart mentions the grass fed beef of the Appalachian highlands.  “Our Southern Highlanders” details Mr. Kephart’s adventures and education from time spent among the mountain people.

He says, “The truth is that mountain beef being fed nothing but grass and browse, with barely enough corn and roughage to keep the animal alive during the winter, is blue-fleshed, watery and rough.”

Now my grandpas always wanted to fatten up either a beef or hog, and they had their own personal ‘formula’ for the best tasting meat.  For pork, Grandpa Livesay swore by straight corn.  Daddy’s recipe for beef seems a little more complicated – ground corn and grain, feed them three times a day and all they’ll eat but don’t make them lick their feed box.

Fresh water is the common ingredient.  You know that animals want to step in or muddy-up their water trough.  Giving them fresh, clean water seems pretty logical to me. 

All of these methods are geared toward nicely-flavored meat.  So now I’d like to hear for y’uns – do you eat purely grass-fed beef?  Do you find the flavor superior to traditionally, fattened stock?  Or, have you experienced Mr. Kephart’s ‘watery and tough’ meat?

I’ll be sharing more thoughts from Our Southern Highlanders in the coming weeks. 

The Expansion of Stuff

Have you noticed that our stuff seems to be taking over?  From the rise of hoarders (and their very own reality tv shows) to the booming storage business, Americans have an awful lot of stuff.  And I’m no different.

Now we’ve talked here https://tennesseemountainstories.com/blog/2016/9/15/snuff-glasses-and-other-useful-re-useables before about hanging onto valuables lest you should need them another day.  It’s a hard habit to break!  Well I’ve been trying to declutter my home and I’m ashamed of the scope of this task.  In fact, I have a junk room (yes! a whole room) that started out being a place for hunting clothes and craft projects.  My ironing board was in there and it was the logical place to drop clothing that needed a little mending – 3 of the 4 people in this house are very hard on the knees of their pants! Well lately I’ve been a little behind on chores, and certainly haven’t had a chance to work on sewing and crafts and I guess it just all got away from me.  In fact, I’ve been wondering what ever became of my sewing machine – you can imagine how happy I was when I uncovered it in that junk room.

I can’t watch those hoarder-shows, they scare me.  However, I’ve seen enough to know that the experts assert there is a psychological basis for the condition that usually begins with some trauma.  Whether it’s abuse or loss, a hoarder begins to find their security in stuff and eventually the stuff overwhelms them.  There is a point where you want to fix the problem but you scarcely know where to begin.   

This is not my problem – really!  I have a great dislike for waste – and we have a lot of waste in our world these days.  Just because clothes no longer fit me, doesn’t seem to be a good reason to send them to the landfill.  Enter the thrift store.  What a blessing those stores are – if you just have the time and skill to sort through it all.

My grandmas always kept a scrap bag for quilting.  That seems like something any decent woman would have in her home, except I haven’t actually pieced a quilt in years and in fact I’ve inherited numerous quilt tops that simply need quilting.  If I’d finish those quilts (and the one I’ve been working on for months) my family would sleep warm for the rest of our lives.

There was a period of time when the most economical way to buy a computer was as a set - CPU, monitor, keyboard and mouse and all the necessary cords (sometimes even a printer came with it).  Then if one part of the set failed, or you chose to upgrade it, along came duplicates of the components that were still in perfectly good working order.  Surely someone would need those, someday.  It always seems a shame to me to discard all of that, yet it sure adds to the junk in the house, doesn’t it?

Televisions were large and expensive for a long time.  Those wooden consoles were hard to part with and I’ve seen many homes with TVs stored throughout the house.  (I’m not guilty of this one – yet.) 

Paper seems to be another culprit - it’s easy to feel like you have to keep certain documents and colorful magazines make you think you’ll want to read them again.  I have a number of “reference materials”.  Old publications that I am certain I can learn from, report on and include in my writing.  You can’t just trash books – does the Bible mention that as a sin?  Books have been valuable throughout history.  Today we have more access to the written word than at any other time, yet I realize not everyone enjoys the same luxury.  Our church has amassed a lot of Sunday School literature and I’ve been pleased to learn that missionaries are still working to use and distribute that around the world.

I’m not sure if I’m rationalizing my collections (a collector is not challenged in the same way a hoarder is, you know) or if I’m warning you dear readers to check up on the expansion of stuff in your world.  Either way, we certainly have a lot of stuff.  Whether you are paying for storage units you can’t really afford and never visit or living in half of your home because your collection requires so many square feet, the trick is to not be a victim of the expansion of stuff.

What You Leave Behind

I wasn’t planning this article last week when I wrote about grave stones.  Then I received a note and pictures from my third cousin (per Legacy Family Tree’s relationship calculator) and I just knew I needed to share it with all of y’uns.

I’ve said before that the novels I write are fiction (of course, that’s what a novel is) based on truth.  My extended family often reaches out to me in one way or another asking how I knew these details of our ancestors’ lives and I have to remind them, it’s fiction.  Because of that, I do slightly change names – to protect myself more that any innocent party, I think.  Still, folks root out the inspiration for the characters. 

My Great-Great-Grandparents, Daniel and Lottie Todd, had a Great-Granddaughter, Wilma, who read and shared Margaret’s Faith.  She had bought her son a copy of the book and when she passed away recently, he found notes she had left for him that detailed the family connections she saw in the novel.

I can’t tell you how honored and humbled I was to see that this dear lady would not only buy the book but would leave notes on it for the next generation.  And perhaps even more exciting is that her son appreciated the gift she left him!

So we’ve talked here before about journaling and sharing your own stories.  I’m not a good hand at writing about myself – I guess I’m spending too much time writing about all these other people and they do seem so much more interesting.  This is a point I mentioned in an article here a couple of years ago.  And, I’ve shared with you my Great-Great-Grandmother’s journals here (and a couple of other times I’m pretty sure). 

Those journals seem to chronicle rather mundane days and yet so many members of my family have enjoyed and learned from her writing.  And now I use them as a valued reference tool.

I feel like we are losing so much history with every passing day.  Every memory a dear soul carries into eternity without first sharing it seems like such a huge loss.  Maybe you have great wealth to leave to the generations that come after you, or prized possessions that might be converted to great wealth, businesses or lands – all of that pales in comparison to the gift of your memories and family history. 

Remember, if The Lord has brought you through something, He’s spared your life so you can strengthen someone else in a similar trial!