Happy Birthday, Appalshop!

Last night, my husband and I attended the 40th Anniversary party of Appalshop here in the city. Appalshop is an Appalachian heritage, arts and education center located in my home state of Kentucky. I have been a fan of Appalshop and their creative product since I was a kid, so being with them on their trip to NYC was a delight. It inspired me to write a bit about my own Appalachian heritage. I hope you enjoy. Take a minute to check them out. I always find something supremely real when I do.

My grandparents on my mother’s side are from Appalachia. Both were born in Eastern Kentucky right before the onset of the Great Depression. But, it didn’t matter much there. Unlike other areas of the country, being poor wasn’t so much a shock to them. It was just the way life was.

My grandfather, Watson Craft, was the youngest of sixteen–from one mother. Not all of those babies lived, but most of them did. Once I asked him how she handled so many children and he told me she set aside a couple hours a day for them. She’d sit in a rocking chair on the porch and any child who felt he or she needed to be held and coddled could climb up in her lap.

In the darkest days of the Depression, he said, his mother put a giant cast iron kettle over a fire in the front yard. Every day she made soup out of whatever they had and it was available to anyone who needed something to eat. This kettle of soup and their ability to provide for others signaled to my grandfather that comparatively they were well to do. This neither pleased him nor shamed him. It was just the way life was.

The kids worked hard. The older boys worked in the coalmines (one brother died there) and the younger ones tended the fields, saw to the livestock and–my grandfather’s job–kept the bees. His mother was in charge of the food–the growing of it and the preparation of it. It was she who told his father what needed to be done each day.

Every evening the family had dinner together at a long wooden table. Great grandfather sat at the head with his wife to his right. The girls lined up down the bench on one side and the boys on the other. Food was precious to all of the children, but my grandfather recalled being especially interested in what they were having and how much. He was a growing boy and as the youngest, the last to be served.

Every year there would come an evening in the fall (he said he knew it was fall because it was around the time they slaughtered the hogs), when the nightly ritual was broken. Generally, as the children finished their meal they were allowed to be excused. But on this evening the first child would ask to be excused and denied. The other children knew what this meant. It was time to take stock of the food supplies for the winter.

After everyone had finished his meal, Great grandfather would address the table saying, “Children, your mother has something she wants to tell you.” She would sit there, rolling the thumbs of her clasped hands around and around each other in her lap, and without notes she’d start down the list: “Beans…we’ve got 5 bushel…there’ll be no shortage there…peaches…6 jars…there’ll be no shortage there…flour…4 sacks…each child gets one biscuit and there’ll be no shortage there…” This went on until she’d covered the entire stock for the winter. It was, according to my grandfather, an exciting event because it allowed each child to mentally prepare himself for the coming months. It increased their sense of security and gave them a plan for getting through the winter. There was no deviating from the plan. While that may sound uninspired to modern ears, it was just fine with my grandfather and his brothers and sisters because they knew they’d be eating.

After he recounted this story I asked a silly question from the perspective of someone who’s never had to ration food in her life. “But, what did you get for a treat? What was something special your mom made that you loved? Was there some kind of cake or dessert?” He laughed, his eyes twinkling and said, “Honey, just eating was a treat!” Then thinking hard about it he said, “I guess biscuits.”

As a child I visited the mountains with my parents and grandparents. We went to the annual family reunion and visited my grandmother’s mother who was alive and well into her 90s. I was 13 when she died and remember her well. I also remember how strange, dark, and soulful the mountains felt compared to my comfortable suburban home in Louisville, which was a metropolis by comparison. I loved going to the mountains, I felt more alive there. I was–even as a child–aware of the poverty and the endurance of the people there and it signaled something meaningful to me. It was verdant, spiritual, cut-off, and hard. It was unique then and is still today.

All of these and so many more stories color my memory and feelings about the Appalachian Mountains as a region, and part of my heritage. My grandparents are still my living link to the culture and remind me in ways both subtle and direct that I have mountain blood and that’s something to honor. As an adult I’ve often wondered what I could do to give back to the place that meant so much to my family. I’ve thought about projects big and small, professional and creative, private and public. I’ve planned trips in my mind, never finding the time in a busy schedule to execute them. I swear I will go back and I will give back.

Until I do, I find consolation in the fact that many people–young and old–feel the same way. For as long as I’ve known about the mountains I’ve known about a place in Whitesburg, near where my grandfather grew up, called Appalshop. Started in 1969 as part of the government’s War on Poverty initiative, the idea was to teach local youth media skills so that they might find jobs outside their impoverished communities. Instead, they stuck around and 40 years later, Appalshop is a highly respected and thriving arts and education center in the heart of the mountains.

This weekend the organization was honored at the Museum of Modern Art where several of their award-winning documentaries (Barbara Koppel’s Academy Award winning documentary, Harlan County USA, 1976, and Elizabeth Barret’s Stranger with a Camera from 2000) were honored and some were screened. At the party afterwards on the Upper West Side, I was able to meet many of the original and current members/employees/artists of Appalshop. Not surprisingly (southern hospitality travels with southerners even when they venture into places as foreign as NYC) it was the warmest and frankly, most thrilling, parties I’ve been to in a while. The weekend was a big deal for the Appalshoppers and they were ready to share their exuberance. We ate biscuits and pulled pork, sang an old mining dirge together, watched a film clip and drank bourbon. I was invited to come visit Whitesburg and offered a place to stay when I do. In a night, I made friends I hope to visit soon in Kentucky. Maybe just being there again will inspire the project I’ve always wanted to do. Or maybe it’s time to just go back and soak it all in, that dark, spiritual, earthy, enduring place…so far from my life now, but always easy to recall.