And the Road Was Mostly in the Creek

About the Book

In this memoir the author takes you to a small valley in the mountains of eastern Kentucky where she grew up in the twenties, thirties, and forties. She recounts the oral history of her earliest ancestor, and the settling of the valley by one of his sons. This son established the family she writes about.

She gives the reader a look into her valley and its life in those days. The joy of a creek to wade, hills to play on, and a special cousin to aid and abet her in all her endeavors, from directing wild west plays to catching tadpoles in a canning jar, to baptizings in the creek in the dog days of summer.

It is an upbeat look at a way of life in a place where the living was primitive by today´s standards.

She looks at the religion that is the pole star of her family and neighbors´ existence with humor and her own take on the church and its people.

The reader is taken through twelve months, along with alternate chapters, of her life as it was lived in the three decades encompassing the depression and WWII.

You can laugh with her as she gets through the longest "short" month of the year attending revival meetings, waiting for the mail boy, and eating hominy and dried pumpkin. Feel her excitement as she waits for the big dramatic finale of the school year! Step into the chilly water as she wades the creek too early, disobeying her mother without a backward look. Watch her and her cousin build playhouses, run miles with a wheel and paddle, visit their own mountain tea patch, and get their stick children dressed up in their own spring fashions.

Go along as she races into the wonderful days of summer; as she takes you through each month, enjoy her love for the food, games, and other activities of that particular month.

Meet the family with its dozens of cousins, aunts, uncles, and other important people in her life. The special cousin who believes in "ha-ants" and the others who wander in and out of the pages. Take a look over her shoulder as her father and older brother take on the chore of teaching her to cook.

Listen as she describes the crime rate in her valley, where the worst crimes she recalls were caused by people who were a little bit "thievish" and others who got a little too much "shine" in them. They all had their faults, she admits cheerfully, but she thinks they were still good folks who helped each other when times were bad.

You will laugh with her as she explains sex education as it was acquired in her family, and see how she coped with home remedies such as "boneset tea," smelly poultices, and one rather drastic experience with "poke root."

Feel her sadness as she copes with the death of friends and family. Feel the love she had for her parents as she tells you how see saw them.

Hear the music that was such an important part of her family´s life. Watch her and her brother dancing to the music of their older brother´s banjo, and watch her father give a grandson instructions in how to play a Jew´s harp.

Climb her favorite hill with her to pick blackberries, bring the cow to the gap for milking, or just sit and daydream of the future as she watches a plane far over head and grieves again over the disappearance of Amelia Earhart; the person who had inspired her to dream of one day flying a plane herself; of seeing herself drifting through the sky, sister to the wind.

Feel her love for the natural world around her. Listen as she tells about copperheads and shuckbeds, spring cleaning, and cats dragging in "hypocrites."

Feel her need to put her thoughts on paper as she moves through her life, hoping for a future for herself, when circumstances did not support that hope.

As you walk with her back through the valley she describes in this memoir, and the family she speaks of lovingly, perhaps you, too, will recall your own memories of family and "your place" where your roots are firmly entwined with the

About the Author

I am 75 years old. I was born and raised in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. I grew up during the depression on a small hillside farm. During WWII worked in a war plant in Ohio. After the war I met and married my husband. We have four children, nine grandchildren and three great grandchildren. In 1973 we moved back to Kentucky and have lived here since then. I retired from the University of Kentucky. I started writing as a child; stopped to raise my family; then resumed after retiring and have had been published in Kentucky publications.