If We Did Not Die Then It Was Fine

One time I was riding a pony down the side of the mountain between my Granny Brennan's house and Meade's house next door. (Junior Meade was my Granny Brennan's sister's, Erma Lee, husband). Between the two houses was a fairly large strawberry patch. I was riding bareback with no saddle or bridle.

The pony decided that it wanted to eat some strawberries. When it put it's head down to eat the strawberries I slid right down it's neck and over it's head and uncerimoniously flopped on down the mountain. It put a great dent in my delusions of equine horsemanship.

Another time we were playing on the giant log up on the flat. The log was a wonderful place to play. We played school and used it for a balance beam and many a game of King of the Mountain. If I remember correctly (and I think I do) the boys would pee off one end of the log and the girls would pee off the other.

One time I decided to climb a little tree next to the giant log. When I say little tree I should probably say sapling. I shimmied up the tree probably about 6 or 8 feet from the big log which meant I was probably about 15 feet in the air - when the sapling broke! Of course it fell down hill and the mountain was very steep which probably doubled the height of my fall.

My aunts and uncles dusted me off and quieted my tears. Not out of concern but because they knew they would get into trouble if I went back home crying. That night I can remember having one of the worst MIGRAINES of my life. I cried myself to sleep in my mommy's arms holding my "Pokey". (remember Gumby and Pokey)

The greatest fall I ever had was at the park. We used to swing on grapevines. We weren't allowed to do this until my uncles had tested them for strength. We found a cable somebody had strung off of a tree about 40 foot up the side of the mountain. (Keep in mind these mountains are almost straight up and down) There was a creek underneath and then nothing but hard ground. We had a ball on that cable and we sought it out everytime we went to the park.

One day I was swinging on it for the umpteenth time. I fell. I don't know how or why but I fell and I dropped all the way to the DRY creekbed beneath me. I landed on my chin. To this day I can feel the bulb of cartilage that balled up in my chin that day. It was a cheap but very dangerous way to get a chin implant! I did not die so everything was fine.

That is how we gaged danger when I was a kid. If we did not die then it was fine.

Devil Anse Hatfield and His Bears

"We Had to Shave Our Heads to Get Rid of Our Lice!"

When I was first married we lived around the corner from a house full of welfare people. There was a mother and a few teenage daughters and each of them had 3 or 4 kids each. There were around 15 or 20 kids running around that place all the time. The house was barely a shell of a house. The doors were falling off and most of the windows were broken and to say the yard was in a state of disrepair would be to put it mildly, an understatement.

I was driving past the house one day and ALL the little boys were bald and ALL the little girls had very short hair. I stopped and hollered at one of the boys, "Hey, why'd y'all all shave your heads?"

The little boy laughed and said, "to get rid of our lice!!!!"

VROOOOM! I was out of there!

My nail clippers are my teeth!

How does this woman wipe her ass?

Newspaper Pictures from Devil Anse Hatfield Funeral

My 1978

Saturday Night Fever - this is what people really looked like doing that famous pose!

See the guy to the right with white hair...that was Willie Whitt. I was in love with him. He didn't know I existed. I was a sophomore and he was a senior. OOOHHH THAT HAIR!

THE FORCE WAS WITH US ALL!

We had a substitute homeroom teacher for the last month of the year. Mr. Kessel was pretty cool. One day he was trying to make a point about something when the daily prayer came over the intercom and interrupted him. This was several years AFTER the supreme court ruled that prayer in school was illegal. This did not seem to matter in Logan, WV. We continued to have public prayer everyday anyway.

He was so incensed by the interruption that he angrily wrote on the chalkboard while the prayer was still going on, "THE SUPREME COURT HAS RULED THAT PRAYER IN SCHOOLS IS ILLEGAL". We were in shock that he had the courage to write such a thing - even if it were true. I thought it was one of the coolest things I ever saw a teacher do!

We Were The Champions...Of The World! (in basketball anyway - don't ask about the football team)

Typical autograph page from a high school yearbook.

Robin Grade 12

This is my famous Aunt Robin. She is one year older than I. Her favorite story about us when we were kids is the time she told me I was adopted and I cried and cried and cried. She did this after her brothers and sister told her the same thing. Since she was the youngest I was always the one to be the next in line for whatever they did to her.

Of course I couldn't pass it along to my brother or sister because then "I" would be the one to get into trouble.