Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: Memories: Mother and her sisters were very close, which is not unusual. What is unusual was that the four husbands were great friends as well. When they got together, the one thing you could be sure of was that it would never be boring. I think they saw themselves as the Four Musketeers; in reality, they were closer to the Keystone Cops. No matter what they got into and how many bruises and scratches, Mom and her sisters would take them home, patch them up, and put them to bed because they usually needed to sleep it off.
When Dad, Claude and Ed Sullivan ran their own coal mine, they had ponies that pulled the coal cars. Now these weren't those tame little ponies that you sat your children upon to take their pictures; these ponies were a bit wild. Claude had one of their ponies pasturing in the field in front of his house. This was when they still lived up the holler beside Aunt Mahalia. When we asked to ride the pony, we were always cautioned to stay away from them because they were not tame. We would try to pet them and even tried to bribe them with apples, but they would always shy away from us kids. We were cautioned to stay away from the ponies, but the grownups didn't take their own advice.
One Sunday afternoon when we were all gathered at Pauline's house, Dad bet Claude that he could mount that pony "The Lone Ranger" style; that is, by jumping into the saddle from the back of the horse. No doubt Dad had seen it on television. They didn't have a saddle, but that didn't deter these two intrepid souls. They brought the pony out into the road in front of the house, with all of us as spectators. Dad took a big running go, put both hands on the back of the pony, and the pony promptly bucked him off into the gravels and tried to bite him. My memory gets a little fuzzy after all these years, but I don't remember Uncle Claude trying it after Daddy showed him how NOT to do it. I am amazed that we grew up somewhat sane. I did say somewhat..
Remember the "Molasse Makin" when we were kids? I recall the field in front of Mary Suffridge's old house, but there were probably other places too. Grandpa grew sweet sorghum or sugar cane, as we called it. He would harvest it, strip off the leaves, feed it through the mill and this wonderful sweet juice would flow. Grandpa would hitch old Sally to the cane mill - round and round she would go, plodding along. Sally was a horse, by the way, not a person. We kids couldn't wait for it to be boiled and canned. We would get a piece of sugar cane and swipe it in the juice. While you were waiting, you could always chew on a stick of sugar cane. Better than a candy store.
Every time I drive up that holler, I remember Mary Suffridge's old place. There was a natural spring there that flowed into a concrete tank. That water was always cold even in the heat of the summer. Becky and I used to walk from Grandma's house at the top of Possum Holler by cutting through the valley, coming down through Suffridge's land, and stopping there to get a drink of water before going to her house. I spent a lot of my summer days walking up and down that holler, looking for adventure and somebody who would share it with me.
I remember Mother, Pauline and Mahalia used to make apple butter in Aunt Mahalia's yard. They had this big cauldron - sounds like a witches' tale, doesn't it? There were apple trees along the path between Mahalia's and Pauline's houses, so we didn't have to go far for the apples. Picking up apples was a good job for the kids. Those were the sweetest apples, as I recall. They sat on the porch, peeling apples, and talking while they worked. The apple butter would cook all day long, and the smell was divine. Grandma taught them well because they knew everything tasted better with lots of cinnamon. I still love apple butter. One of my favorites.
Becky and I used to build playhouses in the woods directly across from Grandma's old house, up the road from Aunt Mahalia's. There was the perfect place there, under the mountain laurels in bloom. We would gather up everything we could find, including some things from Aunt Mahalia's house that she didn't know about. We would pick up apples, dig up potatoes from her garden, and "cook" dinner. Aunt Mahalia couldn't find her broom half the time, because we had it at "our house". Our house had it's own swimming pool too. We would dam up the creek so we could go swimming. Actually, it was pretty much crawling in the mud, but it was still fun.
Daddy and Doug were going to the mine once to get coal for our furnace. I begged to go along, and they finally agreed to take me. We got in one of the coal cars, with Daddy holding a rod that sparked the electricity to run the car. This had replaced the ponies. We wound our way back into that mountain, and all you could see was this tiny pinpoint of light in complete darkness. I was terrified and still can't imagine anyone going into that darkness every day. I never asked to go back, and I came away with an abiding respect for the men who do that for a living. It takes courage to be a coal miner.
Daddy used to keep a moonshine still on the mountain in Virginia City, where their mine was located. I don't know exactly where but I can remember him sending Mother to the store to buy loads of sugar. He would bring the finished product home. I was always afraid Daddy would end up being pursued by "revenuers". No need to worry about him trying to sell it; it was for his own personal use, although he did share it with a few select friends. When not in use, he stored the still in our basement. Everybody had a moonshine still in their basements, didn't they? I remember getting lessons on how to recognize good moonshine. He would hold up a pint canning jar full of crystal clear moonshine, shake it, and tell me you could always tell good moonshine by how clear it was and the way the bubbles went to the top. A useful lesson in life, I am sure. Daddy would also let me sip the foam off his beer, on those rare occasions he settled for beer. I would sip beer foam and eat pepperoni sticks. What's amazing is that I don't like beer and never had the desire to try moonshine. I still like pepperoni though. Maybe watching Daddy's life unfold was enough of a lesson. Mother always said that Daddy taught us well by showing us what not to do in life. I guess she had it right. None of us grew up wanting to drink anything other than Cokes and Pepsi's.
Peggy is a wonderful sister, and she has been a gentle blessing in all of our lives. She was my big sister, and I believed absolutely everything she told me. When I was a little girl, I had this nervous habit of picking at my navel. To break my habit, she told me that if I kept it up, I would unscrew my legs and they would fall off. I went around terrified for weeks, waiting for my legs to fall off. Then there was the time she talked me into letting her cut my hair. That was the one and only time too; it looked like she had put one of Mother's bowls on my head, and it took forever to grow out too. We shared a bedroom until she married, and I had a nightly ritual of having to write on her back until she fell asleep. I often wondered if Leon did that for her. I know she did the same with Teresa; I heard her talking about it once.
Leon didn't drive when he and Peggy were dating. Doug and Peggy taught him to drive, and Doug took him to get his license after he and Peggy got married. You had to parallel park in those days with just a yellow line behind you and it was hard to see. Doug did the same for Leon and me. He would casually walk back and stand on the sidewalk next to the yellow line so we wouldn't back over it.
I remember the new bride and groom getting into Peggy's old Mercury leaving the church after the ceremony. They got married in the Crab Orchard church, not Mount Olivet. Peggy got in the driver's seat and Leon got in the passenger side. When they were dating, he would hitch a ride to our house, and Mom drove him back home. The first time Leon came to our house, he and Peggy were sitting in the living room, and here comes Daddy with a rifle. Leon turned a little pale, but it turns out Daddy just wanted to show him the gun that had belonged to Grandpa Buchanan. It's a wonder Leon ever came back.
I can remember Becky and me riding bikes off the mountain from Grandma's house, starting at Medford's and coasting all the way down - on bikes with no brakes. How we survived I don't know. Someone must have been watching over us.
We used to sit on the porch near dusk at Grandma's old house and listen to the frog chorus. There was a pond down the road from their house, and it was a veritable environmental petri dish, with frog eggs, tadpoles, and reeds growing in abundance and probably a few snakes thrown in for good measure. All kinds of slimy little creatures to thrill a kid's heart. We used to watch the little black dots in the center of the frog eggs hatch into little tadpoles. Science in action.
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