Where I'm From

I am from an Appalachian mountain hollow, from Duz detergent with free glasses, and from dirt roads.

I am from a 1900 clapboard farmhouse, a Warm Morning stove for winter heat and open windows in the summer where I fell asleep listening to the sound of whippoorwills and an occasional barking dog.

I am from day lilies (we called them flags), rose of sharon, butterfly bushes and mountain laurel.

I am from a Viars breakfast, from a place where it was unheard of not to have potatoes at nearly every meal.

I am from the Viars and the Evans – frugal and hardworking folks, where love was found both in hugs and their provision.

I am from sitting up late listening to the grownups talk about their childhood days, where I learned more about my heritage from those conversations than I would have from a thousand questions I may have asked.

I am from ‘salt will dry your blood’ and ‘if you look at that centipede all your teeth will fall out’. From ‘come on over and sit a spell’. From a neighbor who would chop down a hundred year old tree with nothing but an ax because he thought it was preventing your mobile home from getting to your land.

I am from a country church where the Holy Ghost was as welcome as the preacher, from the community/family cemetery where Decoration Day was the annual family reunion.

From a one room school, a hand pump where we drew our drinking water, from making cups from a sheet of notebook paper.

I am from born at home in a three room house, catching crawdads in the creek, and fishing with a stick pole, string and a bent safety pin.

From a place where mountain people stuck together just because that’s the way we were. Where ‘outsiders’ were not easily accepted but had to earn our trust, just because that’s the way we were.

Where I’m from is a place where I will probably never go back to live but will live forever in my heart. For it is the place that helped to form me into the person I am today.


Where are you from?



Hugs,
Molly