"Flooded...Yet Knott Alone" by Miriam Moyer.

With the massive flooding and steadily rising death toll from the flood in Texas on July 4, 2025, I am certain that quite a few people might be interested in this book by Miriam Moyer, a Mennonie woman and writer who lives in Knott County. The book contains nearly fifty short chapters, which Moyer describes in the subtitle as "short stories of what Knott County people experienced in the July 28, 2022, flood." In spite of the large number of what I have called "chapters" and Moyer calls "short stories", the book is only 303 pages and is a fairly fast read if you don't allow yourself to be overcome by the constantly repititous stories of near death and survival by only a hairsbreadth. I met Moyer and bought the book in October 2024 at the Alice Lloyd College Appalachia Day where she was selling the book. Although I have numerous friends in the conservative Mennonite congregations in Knott, Johnson, and Morgan counties in Eastern Kentucky, I had never met Miriam Moyer until that day at Alice Lloyd. As a native of Knott County, I was interested in reading about the floods even though I had no direct contacts among the hundreds of victims who survived or the 19 dead from the flood. I always have a large "To Be Read" shelf of books and it is pure coincidence that I had started the book in time to complete it during the week of the Texas flood. The book is based on recorded interviews with numerous victims of the flood, local officials, recovery workers, and others in the county. I firmly believe that if Mirian Moyer still owns the recordings of those interviews they deserve to be placed in a legitimate historical library setting such as the Special Collections Department at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. Those interviews will be of significant interest to writers, researchers, and family members of victims for the entire foreseeable future. But I was disppointed to see that Moyer did not use a lot of direct quotations from the interviews in the book. Instead, she used very minimal direct quotes and paraphrased parts of what I assume were the recordings to compose the individual chapters. The book also has a strongly religious focus as does all writing I have ever read from members of conservative Mennonite congregations. I have no issue with that religious aspect of the book since it is universal in Mennonite books. But the book lacks a great deal of information of a first person historical nature from the interviewees themselves. The maanner in which the interviews were utilized to write the book leaves a great deal to be desired in the final product. But I give full credit to Miriam Moyer for the massive amount of time she spent traveling the county, interviewing the subjects, and making an attempt to preserve their stories of the disaster as it affected them. I would love to listen to the tape recordings or read transcripts of them. They deserve to be preserved in a stable setting where general access could be granted to researchers and the general public under controlled conditions. One other shortcoming of the book is that there is very limited information from survivors of the dead victims and no full listing of the Knott County dead. But the book is worth reading from most of the general public. It can be purchased directly from Miriam Moyer at this address which is published in the book: Miriam Moyer 4589 Possum Trot Road Leburn, KY 41831 606-497-6527

March 19, 2025, An Interesting And Informative Day In Prestonsburg, Kentucky

On March 19, 2025, my wife Candice and I took a trip to Prestonsburg, Kentucky, to complete a variety of intended actions including a minor amount of shopping, eating out for lunch, and a hike for me at Jenny Wiley State Park where I often hike when we are in Floyd County. Our first stop was at Wal Mart to do a minor amount of shopping, and then off to Jenny Wiley State Park where one of my favorite hiking trails starts near the lodge and has about 4 miles of linked trails around the mountain, over and along the ridge, and a connecting trail which can take you off the mountain to the site of the former Jenny Wiley Amphitheater which still exists as a building but is, sadly, no longer in use due to the demise of the Jenny Wiley Summer Music Theater which functioned there for several decades. When we got to the park, I left Candice reading in the van as I often do and headed out to hike toward the trailhead near the lodge. As I approached the trailhead, I could see yellow construction barrier tape across the start of the trail with a printed message taped to a post. The message stated that this portion of the trail was closed due to a mudslide, and that the remaining portions of the trail could be accessed at the amphitheater spur. I started back in that direction, stopped for a few minutes to read the names and text on a monument to the children and bus driver who died in the 1958 Floyd County School Bus Wreck, and then headed on toward the amphitheater which is situated near the convention center which is used for a variety of purposes including state employee training sessions, weddings, banquets, and other public events. I have even once seen a rained out performance of the Roger Miller written musical "Big River" in the convention center. As I approached the convention center parking lot, I realized that several vehicles including a group of travel trailers, several cars from various othet states, and one or two vehicles actually marked with signs for the American Red Cross were in the parking lot. I realized the convention center must be in use as the stationary site for the Red Cross Disaster Response to the recent flooding in Eastern Kentucky which had devestated larger portions of Eastern Kentucky and Floyd County in particular. I also remembered that the Jenny Wiley State Park Lodge was once again in use as emergency housing for flood victims as it has been used on at least one other occasion under the incredibly effective and compassionate leadership of Governor Andy Beshear. I had to walk past the rear entrance of the convention center to get to the trail and when I turned that corner I saw two people sitting at a table outside the rear entrance. I suspected they were Red Cross volunteers and stopped to verify that and thank them for their work. We introduced ourselves and my hike turned into a long conversation with these two people and a third who showed up a bit later. They were from three different locations in the country, all long term Red Cross workers, one with ten years of service, one with sixteen years of service, and the third with an amazing forty-one years of work with the American Red Cross and on their third deployment to Eastern Kentucky in disasters. Our conversation quickly turned political and they opened up to me about their fears for the future of FEMA and the likelihood that TRAITOR Trump will destroy that agency and further worsen the disaster response to upcoming hurricanes, floods, forest fires, and other disasters. I expressed my own identical opinions and they reassured me that the Red Cross will always continue to provide disaster services since it is a private non-profit agency. But we all agreed that the future response from the federal government to disasters in the next four years, if TRAITOR Trump is not removed from the White House, will be slipshod at best with any federal funding likely to come to the states in block grants which will be pillaged on two or three levels before any of it actually reaches victims themselves. One of these Red Cross workers had actually been part of the response to the most recent Puerto Rican hurricane disaster when TRAITOR Trump was living in White House the first time and sent almost nothing to the people of Puerto Rico for a variety of reasons including his racism, ignorance, TREASON, and total lack of compassion and empathy. It was very refreshing to have this conversation with people who have traveled the world doing good works for the betterment of the human race, who understand the dire straits our country has been in since January 20 2025, and who can speak as openly as I do about the danger which is presented to the country by TRAITOR Trump and his Criminal Syndicate. I never finished my hike due to the length of that conversation but I have put in about a half hour between my parking location at the parking lot of the old golf course, the lodge, the closed trailhead, and the convention center. I also got a second half hour afterward at the Big Sandy Community and Technical College walking track and campus. As I walked across the campus, I encountered the sign at the top of this blog post, realized immediately that it would be considered a violation of TRAITOR Trump's malicious executive order against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and decided to document these signs for my readers before the Right Wing Radical Repugnican head of the state community college system in Kentucky can force these signs to be removed from the campus, and order that racism, sexism, and mysogny be practiced in the community college system across the commonwealth. Below is the seond sign which was available on the BSCTC campus and all the other community colleges in Kentucky.

Coal Mine Disaster-July 7, 1935-Van Lear, KY-Consolidation Coal Number 155

Throughout the history of coal  mining in America, there has been a long history of coal mining disasters from a multitude of causes including roof falls, explosions, dam failures, electrical causes, and asphyxiation by lethal gases. For many years in the early days of coal mining, lethal cases killed so many men that canaries were actually used as early warning devices of high gas levels in coal mines, hence the expression "a canary in the coal mine" as a descriptor of an early warning device. While the number of deaths due to coal mine disasters has gradually declined over the last several decades, that decline has been more due to automation and increased strip mining in all its forms having decreased the number of working miners than to widespread improvements in the working conditions in the coal mines.  Total fatalities were generally more than 1,000 per year from 1900, when the US began to keep well organized statistics about fatalities, to about 1948 when only 999 miners were killed and the number finally dropped below 1,000 for good.  At least 40 states have had miners killed although there have been several types of other minerals involved in the mining in the states outside the typical coal mining areas of Appalachia and the Western United States.  But, just as the most tonnage of coal has usually been mined in those two areas, the most miners have also been killed year after year in those Appalachian and Western states.  I have never written on this blog about coal mining disasters although I have lived most of my life in coal country and came from a coal mining family with my father, one grandfather, and several uncles all being coal miners.  I also had one brother, Hewie Hicks, killed in a coal mine in a single fatality accident.  

The photo above is of the death certificate of  Virgil Clay in the Van Lear explosion.

Over the course of the next several months, when I have time, I will write about some of the worst coal mine disasters in Central and Southern Appalachia, the area I know best and the area on which the majority of this blog is focused.  I have decided to begin by writing about a disaster at the Consolidation Coal Company Number 155 Mine at Van Lear, Kentucky, in Johnson County which occurred on July 17, 1935, and killed 9 men.  This disaster is covered in both the Floyd County Times newspaper archives in the Floyd County Library local history collection and on the website known as "US Mine Disasters" which I have used for my own reading and research for several years and which is the website to which I have provided several link earlier in this blog post.  I will also refer from time to time to the websites of the official state and federal agencies which supervise and regulate mining in America.  When I can find local news coverage of these disasters available online, I will also use some of that coverage.  But, sadly, the Floyd County Times archives cited earlier are the best and best organized of all the newspapers in Eastern Kentucky.  Many of those newspaper archives have been completely lost.

The photo above is of the tombstone of Virgil Clay.  

The July 19, 1935, edition of the Floyd County Times in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, covered the Number 155 disaster in neighboring Johnson County with a front page story which carried a banner headline and three subheads.  The opening paragraph of the story began 

"Thursday morning saw nine men, all dead, removed from Number 5 Mine of Consolidation Coal Company, Van Lear, in which they were trapped by an explosion at 9o'clock Wednesday morning. 

I will note here that the Floyd County Times refers to the mine as "Number 5" instead of Number 155 which is the designation used by the US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines in their official report on the disaster which is undated  and authored by John F. Davies, District Engineer.  I will accept and use the designation of the mine as "Number 155" since that is the designation used in the official federal report.  

 The photo above is of the Roy Murray tombstone. 

The Floyd County Times listed the victims of the disaster as "William Kretzer, 42; and, Charles Kretzer, 50, brothers; James Vaughn, 42; Frank Tutzy, 45; Hantez Gould, 60; Deerwood Litz, 28; Roy Murray, 38; Virgil Clay, 23; and, Shirley  Hereford, 35."   The official report from the Bureau of Mines does not list the men by name at all.  According to the Floyd County Times, two other men inside the mine escaped and "...company officials immediately began a relentless drive to rescue the men."  The newspaper also reported that rescue squads were brought in from as far away as Jenkins in Letcher County where Consolidation Coal Company also operated mines.  But according to the newspaper story, " tons of rock formed an impenetrable barrier to freedom for the imprisoned men, and this barrier was negotiated, foot by foot, by would be rescuers equipped with oxygen tanks.  As early as Wednesday afternoon, it was conceded that little less than a miracle could save the men."   I will note that I have located burial sites for several, but not all, of the men on the excellent website Find A Grave and have still not located the burial sites of the rest.  But I will continue to search for them since one of the memorials I located does contain a screen shot from an unknown newspaper which lists rough locations for where all nine were buried.  However, that screen shot does not identify the newspaper from which the screen shot was taken.  

 The photo above is of the Charles Kretzer tombstone. 

The July 19, 1935, story in the Floyd County Times goes on to describe the disaster as "the worst disaster in the history of Eastern Kentucky Coal Mining."  However, that statement by the newspaper is not accurate since just three years before on December 9, 1932, at Yancey, Kentucky, in Harlan County an explosion had killed 23 men.  Another disaster in 1925 in Harlan County had killed 17 men.  The newspaper lists the two men who escaped as Anse Wilson, water pumper, and Fire Boss Stanley Crane.  Wilson apparently gave an interview after the explosion and stated 

"I realized what had happened and I ducked behind a pile of rails.  Slate and rock hailed about me.  Then, when it was all over, I started for the outside.  I crawled about 300 feet through smoke and dust till I reached good air.  Mr. Crane was on ahead of me, that is, nearer the opening.  Is it good to be alive?  You don't know how good it is.  I only wish the others were here--they'd say the same." 

The following week on July 26, 1935, the Floyd County Times carried a front page story under the headline "Daniel Charged With Six Deaths", and with the subhead "Warrant Sworn Out by Miner Accuses Department Chief in Disaster".  John F. Daniel was the Department Chief of  the State Department of Mines and Minerals.  The warrant was signed by John B. Mollette, the secretary of the Van Lear local of the United Mine Workers of America.  Mollette accused Daniel of failure to enforce state mining regulations, failure to order the company to furnish sufficient fire bosses to inspect the workings, and that state regulations required at least five such fire bosses and at the time of the explosion only one was on duty.  It appears that the single fire boss on duty was Stanley Crane who survived due to having been quite some distance from the work area in which the men were killed.  The newspaper article quotes Mollette as stating that the warrant was turned over to the local constable, Brown Wells, who would serve it as soon as John F. Daniel returned to Johnson County.  "We have made charges that Daniel is responsible for nine lives in the explosion and we expect to prove them."  The news story about the warrant is continued from the front page of the paper to page six where it is found in the extreme right hand column of the page and that area of the page used to create the digital record of the paper in the Floyd County History Collection has some damage which makes it difficult to read.  But the gist of it is that John F. Daniel and attorneys for the coal company both disputed the claims contained in the warrant.  But the local Judge B. F. Conley stated in the paper that he had issued the warrant and had turned it over to Mollette.  The county Sheriff Fred Adams is also quoted as saying that the warrant could be served by any peace officer in the county.  A search of the Floyd County Times for the ensuing month after the warrant was issued for John F. Daniel does not contain any further news about the disaster or the service of the warrant or of any failure to do so by the Johnson County law enforcement community.  

The photo above is of the William Kretzer tombstone. 
 

The Find A Grave memorial for Virgil Clay and those memorials of at least one of the other victims contains a screen shot of a short news story about the disaster and the burials of the nine victims from some unnamed newspaper under the headline "27 Orphaned By Disaster At Johnson County Mine".  Since the headline uses the words "Johnson County Mine", it seems likely that the paper must have been published in an adjoining county but I have not been able to verify which paper carried the story.  The story states that Deerwood Litz was buried at East Point in Johnson County. I also note for the record that the name of Litz is spelled "Derwood Litz" at times and that is  most likely the correct spelling.  This news story states that the Kretzer brothers were buried at Hitchens in Carter County.  The cemetery in which the Kretzer brothers are buried is listed on Find A Grave as The Kretzer Graveyard but the address is now listed as Reedville.  James Vaughn and Shirley Hereford are both listed in the news story as having been buried at Ashland in Boyd County but I have been unable to verify the locations of their burials.  Roy Murray is listed as having been buried on George's Creek in Lawrence County.  Hantes Gould is listed as having been buried at Van Lear.  Frank Tuzey is listed as having been buried at Paintsville.  I note for the record that Tutzy, Gould, and Murray have also had differences in the spellings of their names in the various records which makes it more difficult to locate accurate burial information.  But it is somewhat simplified by the common date of death for all nine men and I will pursue their burial sites further by searching a variety of phonetic spellings of the names.  The last paragraph of this little news story states 

"Tuzey, last of the men to be taken from the mine, was caught beneath tons of slate.  His body and that of Gould were the last to be recovered, and were not reached until Friday.  Some of the bodies were badly burned, it was said."  (Unknown News Source Taken From Screen Shot On Virgil Clay's Find A Grave Memorial)

Virgil Clay's death certificate which is signed by Leon Spencer, presumably the Johnson County Coroner, listed the cause of death as "Traumatic External Violence Mine Explosion".  I have located the Find A Grave Memorials for the Kretzer Brothers both of which also contain the screen shot of the news story and photos of their tombstones as does that of Virgil Clay.   Roy Murray's memorial on Find A Grave shows that he was buried in the Murray-Young Cemetery at Lowmansville in Lawrence County and also contains a photo of his tombstone and the same screen shot of the news story.  I cannot locate a memorial or a definite burial site for Frank Tutzy under any phonetic spelling of the last name which is presumably Italian.  If Frank Tutzy was actually one of the many immigrant miners working in Eastern Kentucky at that time, it is possible that he was still single and may well be buried in an unmarked grave.  

On February 24, 2023, I received the following additional information from a person named Jon Bellomy who is related to the Kretzer brothers through his mother and also related to Virgil Clay through his paternal great-grandmother. 

"William and Charles Kretzer were brothers of my maternal grandfather (Ernest August Kretzer). They were so badly burned that their caskets had to be placed in front of the Kretzer farm cabin for the wake. Wax representations of their faces were placed upon them; as they were already in an advanced state of decomposition—because it took awhile to get to them. Granddad Kretzer had lost another brother — Louis Kretzer — four years prior in yet another mine: he was crushed when the roof caved in on him. Virgil Clay was a kinsman of mine through my paternal great grandmother Clarinda née White Bellomy (her mother was Julia Ann Clay, and her father was John White ((Shawnee lineage all the way back to Pekowi Shawnee Chief Meaurroway Straight Tail White Opessa — and many generations beyond him; all the way to a Mohawk Turtle Clan Chieftain who married into the Pekowi line)). My mother, Kathleen Evelyn Kretzer Bellomy, dearly loved her Uncle Bill and Uncle Charlie. She was a couple-three weeks shy of eleven years old when the tragedy hit. She spoke of them often up to the day she died at age 91; a few days short of 92. Her mom lived to be 94. Good genes."

Some Thoughts On "Crossing The Bar" by Alfred Lord Tennyson

There was a clue on "Jeopardy" quite a while ago about the poem, "Crossing The Bar" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, which is one of the most well known poems about death other than possibly "Thanatopsis" by William Cullen Bryant. Because the language is a bit simpler and the poem much shorter than in "Thanatopsis", "Crossing The Bar" was for many years one of the most often printed pieces on the back of funeral memorial cards in Appalachia. I have a sizeable collection of such memorial cards and wrote about them in the blog post at the preceding link. I have probably seen it on the cards at a hundred or more funerals in my life. It is a great little poem and, in it's own way, a major part of Appalachian history and culture.

 

With the recent massive flooding in Eastern Kentucky and the still unfinished search for the likely dead, many more of those memorial cards in being printed in several of the most Appalachian counties in Kentucky.  One of those is my native Knott County and, luckily, so far I have not heard of anyone being among the dead from my relatives and acquaintances.  I also have deep ties to Floyd County which has had severe flooding especially in Wayland and Garrett on Right Beaver Creek and all up Left Beaver Creek, all of which lies in Floyd County.   I spent the first 6 years of my life on Steele's Creek in Floyd County just a mile from Wayland and still have many friends and relatives there.  The next 17 years of my life were spent on Right Beaver Creek at Dema in Knott County just about three miles from Wayland.  Most of my closest friends during my teenage years were from Wayland including my two cousins, more like brothers, Jack and Johnny Terry.  It is horrible to think of having anyone die in a flood and it is just as horrible to know that several thousand people in about 7 counties in Eastern Kentucky are now homeless because of this flood.  So, in memory of the dead from the Eastern Kentucky floods of July 29, 2022, here is the complete text of "Crossing The Bar".

 

Crossing the Bar

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

 

 

 

The Genius Of Joel Pett And The Inability Of Appalachians To Understand It

 

A few days ago, the Lexington Herald-Leader published this cartoon as part of their ongoing coverage of the Eastern Kentucky flooding and it literally caused a storm of strong, often totally irrational, comments about how horrible the cartoon was, how little Joel Pett understands Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia, and how "he done us wrong".  First of all, let me tell you about Joel Pett's resume as a political cartoonist and a little about my resume as an expert on Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia before I tell you what I think about Joel Pett, his work in general, and this cartoon in particular.  Joel Pett, after having done freelance cartoon work for about 15 years, following his graduation from Indiana University, began working as the staff cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in 1984.  His cartoons regularly appear in many of the best national newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe.  He has won the 1995 Global Media Award and the 1999 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.  But those are not the greatest awards his work has earned.  Joel Pett has actually won the Pulitzer Prize, count them, ONE< TWO<THREE>FOUR times,  and was a finalist for the Pulitzer twice more.  That's not bad, folks!  He has also been chosen at times as a jurist for the Pulitzer Prize.  

Now, let me tell you a little about myself and my qualifications to speak on the subject of Appalachia, Appalachian Culture, poverty, and Eastern Kentucky.  First of all, since Knott County Kentucky is the worst hit of the counties being discussed in the news about the flooding, I was born and raised in Knott County.  I grew up in a country store where for many years my parents dealt, on a daily basis, with a broad selection of Knott Countians.  I grew up walking up to ten miles a week to sell Grit newspapers, garden seeds, Cloverine Salve, and Rosebud Salve to my neighbors.  I graduated from Knott County High School, not the new Knott County Central High School.  I grew up in the KCHS in the photo below which was built by the WPA in 1939 on Caney Creek which just a few years before was having mail delivered by mule back.  

I attended Upward Bound for one year on the Stuart Robinson Campus in Letcher County at Blackey.  I attended it another year at Alice Lloyd College on Caney Creek in Knott County.  I also attended, but did not graduate from Alice Lloyd College.  I also attended the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia, but did not graduate from that institution which was primarily a training ground for young Appalachian writers, several of whom have gone on to become respected writers on the subject of Appalachia.  I received a Bachelor of Social Work degree from Morehead State University and a Master of Education Degree in Counseling and Human Development degree from Lindsey Wilson College and served as an adjunct instructor in the same program for about 3 years for LWC.  I have worked as a door to door salesman out of Logan, West Virginia, primarily in the counties of Logan, Mingo, Boone, Lincoln, Wayne, Wyoming,  and McDowell in West Virgina, and in the counties of Pike and Martin in Kentucky.  I have worked as a mental health and substance abuse therapist in Montgomery, Breathitt, Jackson, and Wolfe Counties.  I also  have a Kentucky auctioneer license and have held auctions, several hundred actually, in Floyd, Letcher, Johnson, Magoffin, Morgan, Fayette, and Kenton counties in Kentucky.  I am a regularly published writer on the subject of Appalachia including professional articles on the subject of Culturally Appropriate Counseling in Appalachia.  I tend to believe that most judges would accept me as an expert on Appalachia and Appalachian Culture.  

Now that you know who Joel Pett and I both are, let's talk about the cartoon above, which has caused so much ire in Eastern Kentucky.  The cartoon is very simply and directly worded and drawn as a cartoon version of several well known photographs of Eastern Kentucky residents clinging to roofs during the recent flooding. The language in the cartoon is simple, direct, and a bit unnerving I will admit.  It says just eight words and they are powerful words.  "When it rains, it pours on poor people."  Since the cartoon talks about poverty, let me add one more resume line for myself to prove I am also an expert on poverty.  I worked for 8 years at the Hope Center in Lexington, Kentucky, which is a large, inner city homeless shelter.  I know poverty, both in the city and in the country.  

To help us understand what poverty means in Eastern Kentucky let's look at the reality of poverty in the counties which have been involved in this disaster.  Floyd County has a 32.4% poverty rate.  Breathitt County has a 32.5% poverty rate.  Knott County has a 32.1% poverty rate.  Letcher County has a 31.1% poverty rate.  Perry County has a 28.9% poverty rate.  Johnson County has a 25.0% poverty rate.  Pike County has a 23.8% poverty rate and yet in the 1970's was often touted as having more millionaires per capita than any other county in the country due to the coal boom. These are some of the highest poverty rates in the entire nation.  Nearly a third of the population in all these counties are below the poverty level.  So now let's look at how poverty works and just how precise Joel Pett was in this cartoon in getting directly to the point of the consequences of a major disaster in an area where such a large percentage of the population is poor.  

Poor people have little or no resources, weak social support systems, and little recourse to supportive means when times get hard.  Times don't ever get any harder than when your living quarters and every thing you own have been washed down Troublesome Creek, Squabble Creek, or Beaver Creek and you and whatever is left of your family are clinging to a tree or a barn roof in a muddy flood.  Poor people never live in the best houses in the best locations in any community. They live in poorly built houses and trailers in low lying land where the better off locals didn't want to build a house but were perfectly happy to gain some side income by placing rental property in bottom land they no longer farm.  Poor people rarely own their own homes and almost never have renters insurance because, if at the first of the month, you have a choice to pay either your rent and utilities or your renter's insurance, you pay what keeps a roof over your head and some basic food necessities for the next month.  Poor people often have poor to no credit ratings.  When everything you own has been washed down a muddy stream, you can't run out to the Ford dealer and buy a new truck or car.  You can't run down to the local bank and borrow money for a new double wide on higher ground.  You do damn well to buy two changes of used clothes at Goodwill for each member of your family.  Poor people don't have large amounts of savings and often have none. Poor people often don't have computers or internet.  If they have a telephone, it is usually a prepaid phone and often out of minutes. When you live from paycheck to paycheck, you can't suddenly find a new place to rent, pay a deposit, buy a full replacement of clothing, food, utensils, and bed clothes for a family.  You can't just get up, dust yourself off, say "well, that was a pretty bad little storm", and trot off to another set of living quarters in new Levis.  Poor people rarely have life insurance, health insurance, car insurance, or any assurance that they can survive a blowout on the 20 year old car they are driving to a minimum wage job, or a new refrigerator if the old one dies. When a family member dies among the poor, they usually have no life insurance, no savings, and no way to pay for a funeral and this flood has caused far too many funerals.  I personally know several funeral home owners who often bury people on credit with little or no down payments and hope they will be paid someday and be able to survive in business by getting paid by other concerned contributors and the profits they earn on high dollar funerals for the well to do.  I also know one less compassionate undertaker who will not touch a body until he has enough money in hand to cover the cost of his materials or has a mortgage on a piece of hillside land.  That is how the poor get treated on many occasions. The reality of poverty is that when you are poor, you are poor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and, if it's leap year February 29 is just another day of poverty.  

So that should bring us back to Joel Pett's cartoon and the reality of being poor in a major disaster.  Those eight words, "When it rains, it pours on poor people", have caused a great deal of ire in Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia.  I had one friend who, despite growing up poor in Floyd County attempted to compare Joel Pett to J. D. Vance, the worst enemy of Appalachian people since Harry Caudill.  That is like comparing Mahatma Gandhi to Adolph Hitler.  I saw another lengthy diatribe from a woman on social media who kept ranting about being a "proud hillbilly" and how ignorant Joel Pett is.  I am certain that woman has no idea that the word "hillbilly" is never a matter of pride.  It is just as defamatory, demeaning, and debilitating as the "N" word, the "K" word, the "Q" word, or the "C" word. It is a cultural and ethnic epithet and no member of any cultural or ethnic minority should ever resort to referring to themselves by the same misnomers their detractors use. When I confront people of any ethnic or minority group about their use of these cultural and ethnic epithets in reference to themselves, I frequently hear them say it is an appropriation of the words which empowers them.  By the same logic, which is deeply flawed, we could say that any suspect in a police interrogation should eventually confess whether or not they committed the crime in question. Using such a word about oneself with a note of pride in the voice is a sure sign the user is uninformed and unlikely to benefit from future enlightenment. What I have seen in the hundreds of comments about Joel Pett and his work falls into two categories.  The poorly educated, ill informed, and less fortunate commenters think Joel Pett made a personal attack on them, their families, and their pet dog.  The better educated, better informed, and more fortunate Appalachian commenters see the truth in Joel Pett's eight little words and are glad he is speaking out in defense of the poor of Eastern Kentucky as they try to pull themselves up by the boot straps one more time in the face of a horrible disaster.  The cartoon in question is another case of Joel Pett hitting the nail on the head with his art work and his words.  That cartoon is another example of why the best newspapers in the country regularly publish his work. That cartoon is another shining example of why Joel Pett has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize six times and won it four. That cartoon is a masterpiece.  Those eight little words are right on point.  "When it rains, it pours on poor people."  That cartoon is proof, once again, that Joel Pett is a genius. 

"Death and Dying in Central Appalachia: Changing Attitudes Practices" by James K. Crissman--Book Review

 

This book was published by The University of Illinois Press in 1994 which means that it is somewhat dated in terms of changing attitudes and practices in the Appalachian region.  But no one has published an adequate book since this one was released to account for any changes in the intervening 27 or so years.  The only book I know of which comes close is "Decoration Day In The Mountains" by Alan Jabbour and Karen Singer Jabbour and it is directed only toward the practices of decorating graves and cemeteries and not toward the entire broad spectrum of how death, dying, burials, grave digging, funerals, memorial services, and numerous other aspects of how we, as a people with one of the most unique cultures in the entire country, deal with our dead.  Until another author produces a book of this quality and depth of research which covers the entire width, depth, and breadth of the field, this is the book most likely to give the best answers to any interested person about death and dying in Central and Southern Appalachia.  I have mentioned this book at times in several other blog posts on this blog but I have never written an entire blog post about it and, in that respect, I have been remiss.  Due to the fact that it was published by a major academic press, there are usually a few good used copies available at one or more of the large used book websites on the internet and it is well worth buying for the serious student of Appalachian Studies or the avid reader who is simply interested in any aspect of the book.  

The author, James K. Crissman, did a well researched, scholarly job of discussing nearly every aspect of death and dying in the area of Central and Southern Appalachia in the slightly more than 200 pages of this book.  His bibliography and notes are exemplary in both their volume and precision and he supplemented his writing with numerous photographs throughout the book.  The one shortcoming of the photographs is that they are all in black and white.  The book is comprised of an Introduction, ten chapters and a Summary.  Chapter topics include Familism, Neighborliness, and the Death Watch; Preparation of the Body; Burial Receptacles and Grave Digging; The Wake; The Funeral Service; Burial Customs; Grave Markers and Other Forms of Memorialization; Funeralizing and Memorial Traditions; Dying, Death, and Central Appalachian Music; and Mining Disasters and Death.  All of these chapter topics are important and many aspects of all of them have changed in some ways over the course of the nearly thirty years since this book was published.  

If we look briefly at some few aspects of most of these chapters we can get some general idea of how these aspects of death and dying in Appalachia have changed.  Firstly, let's look at the top of Familism which is a word many readers may not fully understand.  Familism is a concept from sociology which amounts to somewhat of a double edged sword for the people who practice it in their lives.  But it is less widespread in Appalachia today than it might have been thirty to fifty to one hundred years ago.  Familism occurs when members of a family, especially an extended family, have deep ties to the family and to each other.  Familism is a bit of a double edged sword.  It means that a second cousin might take a day off work to drive his cousin to a doctor's appointment or to help her move.  It also means that family members and families can become negatively enmeshed to such a degree that fights can occur over very minor points and, yet, two family members who have been in disagreement for months will spring to the defense of each other if an outsider comes in conflict with one of them.  Neighborliness is now less likely to result in extensive assistance being provided by neighbors in the event of a death than happened in the past.  Today, death watches in Appalachia usually involve only family members or close friends with an occasional involvement by a church member or co-worker.  In the past, it would not have been uncommon for neighbors to visit at least once daily to offer sympathy and assistance as a person was approaching death.  Preparation of the body for burial in Appalachia in this day and age is almost always performed by undertakers, embalmers, and their assistants in a funeral home.  Even in my childhood, it was much more common for female family members, close neighbors, or "granny women" to come to the home of the deceased and wash and dress a dead person for burial.  I am nearly seventy years old and I can only remember one person in Appalachia who was buried unembalmed in a shroud. But I do know of several who have been buried, at their request, unembalmed and dressed in everyday clothes instead of the now common fancy burial dresses and suits. But I do remember the Old Regular Baptist preacher Clabe Mosley who was buried in a homemade casket which he bought, paid for, and tested for fit almost a quarter of a century before his death at 102.  Clabe was also buried under a concrete homemade tombstone which one of his sons constructed to Clabe's specifications.   I also remember seeing graves dug for the old, cheap, wooden caskets which were buried without a  vault.  In those situations, the grave was dug in two different widths, a close fit for the casket in the bottom two feet of the grave, then the top three or so feet was dug with a step outward on all four sides of about six inches so that boards of rough, hardwood lumber could be laid over the casket to help retard the eventual rotting of the casket and body along with subsequent sinking of the grave. Today, cremation is much more common in Central and Southern Appalachia than ever before.  At the time Crissman wrote this book, almost no one in Appalachia was being cremated. When I was young, almost no one was ever buried in a grave which anyone had been paid to dig and graves were always dug by hand.  Now, almost all graves in Appalachia are dug by a backhoe and it is truly rare to see neighbors, family, or friends perform the grave digging service as a sign of respect for the dead.  

Today, nearly all funerals in Appalachia are held in a funeral home and it is incredibly rare to see a home based funeral where the body is brought home and a visitation and church service is held nightly for up to three days which is how most of my family members were funeralized until about 1980.  Grave markers have changed drastically in my lifetime.  When I was young, it was possible to still see a few people who were buried with only a sandstone or rough lumber marker and that changed in my childhood to markers being primarily either professional granite or marble tombstones with carving on them.  Double tombstones for married couples and occasionally a parent and child were also the norm and that is still common.  In my early years, nearly everyone was buried in a small, privately owned family cemetery.  That is far less common today.  The majority of people are now buried in commercial cemeteries although family cemeteries have not disappeared completely.  Many, if not most, of the commercial cemeteries now require that markers be made of bronze and lie level with the surface of the ground so the entire cemetery can be mowed with a riding lawn mower or tractor without the operator or an additional laborer ever being required to move flowers and other decorations or stop and**** get off the mower.  Most also have strict rules about how decorations such as flowers may be used on graves.  Up until about twenty years ago, all tombstones were simply engraved with names and dates of birth and death along with one short phrase such as "Asleep In Jesus", "Gone Home", or the like.  Today, it is common to see laser decorated tombstones with very complicated scenes which may be purely artistic in nature or copied digitally from a photograph.  

Lastly, mine deaths and disasters are less common than they were in 1994 when Crissman wrote his chapter about them.  They are not totally non-existent today and I cannot remember the last occasion when coal miners were permanently entombed in a mine due to the extreme danger of further deaths of recovery workers if attempts were made to remove dead bodies after an explosion.  Crissman devoted an entire chapter in his excellent book to that subject and it deserved to be addressed at that time.  Now, most attempts to address that topic have become historical in nature due to the steady lessening of mine deaths both due to mechanization and decreased underground mining.  

James K. Crissman produced one of the best books in the entire field of Appalachian Studies with this book.  It should always be included in any attempt to create a broad personal library of Appalachian books.  The subject of death, dying, and burial practices in Appalachia should never be addressed without including a discussion of this book.  It is masterpiece.  If you haven't read it and consider yourself a student of life in Appalachia you should read it. 

Thoughts On Having Survived A Bad Winter Storm

 

Yesterday, Saturday, February 19, 2021, at about 4pm our electricity was restored after having been off since Monday, February 15, 2021, at about 6pm for a total time of about 94 hours.  The outage was due to a combination of 3 sequential winter storms or, if you prefer, 1 long winter storm with about 12 to 15 hours time off in the middle.  The first onslaught began as freezing rain which eventually turned to snow to leave us with about 4 or 5 inches of snow on top of an inch of solid ice.  We live on a hill with a markedly steep blacktop driveway which is about 130 feet long with a large paved parking area beside our house.  I have an emergency generator which I have had since our last major ice storm in 2009.  It is free standing and is not wired into the main electrical service as the best standby generators are.  I had some trouble with it earlier in the fall when I attempted to test run it as I have always  done about once every three months.  I got it out several months ago on schedule and it would not start.  So I finally got it repaired after having it worked on by two different other people who failed to do the job.  I had test started it on Sunday, the day before the storm was due to hit.  I chose to not run the generator on Monday night since it was already dark and I did not want to go through the effort to drag it, the power cord, my bevy of extension cords, etc. out of the storage building and basement. We used candles and a Coleman lantern to get by until bedtime on the first night.  On Tuesday morning when I got squared away I dragged it out, started it on the second pull which was a relief and set it up as I usually do with cords running to one lamp and the television in the family room, the refrigerator and microwave in the kitchen, and the big 21 cubic foot freezer in the basement.  We would eat breakfast and supper with the generator on, watch about 3 hours of television morning and night, and ascertain that the freezer was still staying sufficiently frozen since we have several hundred dollars worth of pasture raised chickens, two boxes of wild caught frozen fish, a bushel of frozen peaches, and a passel of other frozen fruits and vegetables.  That is far too much to allow to thaw and go to waste no matter how good your home insurance may be.  I also took the contents of the freezer compartment of the refrigerator and placed it in a large Styrofoam ice chest, carried it outside and leaned it against the rear wall of the house, covered it about a foot deep with snow and left it to wait for the return of power.  If you have your own power outage problems in the future, this is a great way to save what you have in the refrigerator if you don't own a generator.  Just put a tight lid on the food in a solid ice chest, cover it with snow outside your home in a safe spot, and uncover it as you need items until the electricity comes back on.  It never fails. 

But my biggest personal issue in such a disaster is that my wife, Candice, is in a power wheelchair and sleeps on an alternating air mattress due to a long term neurological disability.  The main power on her wheelchair only has to be charged every few days unless she is going outside a lot which she had no intentions of doing.  But she also uses an alternating air cushion in the chair which has to be charged every day as does our cell phone.  I had neglected to get all my gasoline cans filled before winter hit and only had about five gallons of gas.  We also do not have city water and our driveway is long and steep  as is the state highway from our driveway to US 460 about 100 yards away. Our water pump is 220 volts which makes it impossible to run both the pump and the 110 volt outlets at the same time on the generator so we never run the pump during a power outage. But we are planning to buy and install a propane powered standby type generator this coming fall and have it wired directly in the electrical system of our house by a licensed electrician for all the obvious safety and legal reasons. YOU SHOULD NEVER WIRE A GENERATOR INTO YOUR HOMES ELECTRICAL BOXES UNLESS YOU ARE A LICENSED ELECTRICIAN!  THEY CAN KILL A LINEMAN IF THEY ARE RUNNING IN AN OUTAGE!  I keep commode flushing water in jugs in the basement for any possible emergency and we always have lots of staple foods in the freezer and in canned goods.  We also have a set of propane logs in the family room which heat the family room and kitchen area and keep the rest of the house warm enough to be able to stay safe in most winter weather. Food was not an issue but Candice's needs are always primary.

I got out early on Tuesday morning after firing up the generator and walked to the bottom of our driveway to try to begin the job of clearing a road to the highway.  I realized when I saw the state road that it was not at all likely to thaw that day since the temperature was not projected to rise above freezing.  But I started working on the driveway immediately since I knew it was going to be a big job.  But I did not figure out just how big the job was until I started shoveling.  What I found was that aforesaid several inches of snow on top of an inch of solid ice.  A heavy duty plastic snow shovel will not begin to deal with that kind of ice.  Also, due to the steepness of the driveway, in a rain there has always been a lot of runoff down the driveway.  In the freezing rain, it froze in a thin layer on the surface of the blacktop and later the remainder made that hard inch layer which makes it very hard to break completely free since that first little layer bonds the whole thing to any small openings in the blacktop.  

As I was shoveling at the edge of the highway, I spotted our mail woman driving past and being followed by a sheriff's cruiser with two deputies inside.  I stopped the deputies who were out making visits to the known ill and elderly although we have never been on that list since I am able bodied.  I inquired if they knew anyone who could bring me some gasoline and drinking water which I made clear I was willing to pay for.  They told me they would contact the local disaster services and see what they could do.  A couple of hours later as I was eating lunch, one of them called me and said, "We are on the way with two cases of water and ten gallons of gasoline.  Meet us at the highway."  They came to the house with the supplies and I paid them the reimbursement.  They refused to allow me to buy their lunch.  We now had enough generator gas and drinking water to last us about three days at our rate of use.  

On Monday night, about 8 o'clock, my good friend Aquila Derstine, a conservative Mennonite who lives about thirty miles away had called me as he sometimes does on a Monday which is not a church night for him.  We laughed and joked a bit and he asked me if I needed anything.  I said "no not really but I will need to come to your sister-in-law's bulk food store in a few days to buy some oatmeal."  I never thought another thing about that comment until Friday about noon when we heard a knock on the door.  I opened the door and found Aquila standing outside with a box of oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies, and dried mango which I buy to eat as a snack.  He had driven thirty miles from home to bring me that food because he said, "it is Anna's (his wife) birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her birthday."  He refused to let me reimburse him but we will take that up again in the near future.  If he and his sister-in-law both refuse the money, I will lay it down in front of them with the suggestion that they put it in the Mennonite disaster relief fund or some such charity.  To say the least, Aquila is a great friend and we have known each other nearly twenty years.  He also offered to shovel my driveway and I refused to allow him to do it since I am able bodied and had no reason to leave until I ran out of gasoline.  Aquila is very serious about his religion and has even adopted two small children in his fifties after having raised 8 of his own to adulthood.  In fact, Aquila and Anna have several grandchildren as old or a bit older than their two adopted children. Their oldest son Asa, his wife, and their three small children including one daughter only a few months old are living in a Mennonite missionary operation in Ghana and will be there for at least three years.  The youngest daughter was actually born in Ghana.  I have known Asa since he was a small boy and he practices his religion just as strictly as his father which is why he agreed to take his family to Ghana in the face of the Covid 19 pandemic. There are several posts on this blog about my Mennonite friends, their lifestyle, and a young female Mennonite author, Emily Steiner, who is also a friend of mine.  Each of these previous links goes to a different post about Mennonites, their lifestyle, and my friend Emily's books.  I am truly grateful to live in a community with people like the Derstine family and my numerous other Mennonite friends.  

 

I have left one of the most interesting stories from our power outage for last.  I called our electricity provider, Kentucky Power, almost as soon as our power went out because in our area we had serious advance warning that the freezing rain was coming, and we also have had several periods of multiple day power outages in the 28 years we have lived here.  It was rapidly growing dark, the rain was pouring and freezing as it hit the ground, and I knew we were in for trouble.  When I was connected to a live human at the power company, he was a very nice young sounding man who said he was working from a call center in Ohio.  We went through the usual questions an answers which are standard when you report a power outage and I was standing in front of the picture window where this computer sits watching the freezing rain and rapidly falling darkness as I talked to the man.  Suddenly, I saw a rabbit, which appeared to be about three quarters grown, come running around the corner of our house on the blacktop driveway and cross into the front yard out of sight.  Then what I first thought was a ground hog came running along the same area from the corner of the house into the front yard.  Even though we get lots of wildlife in our yard and in our sights year round where we live, this event was so unusual that i mentioned it to the young man at the power company.  My first guess was that it was due to the freezing rain having flooded the burrows the two animals were living in and said so the young man before I hung up.  He agreed with me that it was unusual.  But before I walked away from the window, the second animal returned from the front of house, where it was out of sight, carrying the rabbit in its mouth.  That was when I realized it was a mink and had been chasing the rabbit as prey.  It carried the rabbit back across the blacktop farther from the house than the original chase, crossed below a large maple at the edge of the parking area and disappeared out of sight presumably toward its den nearer the creek about fifty yards below our house.  In 28 years of living in this house, we have had fawns raised in our yard including five in one year by 3 different does; wild turkeys both being raised in and around our yard and eating bird seed in winter off the blacktop; a red tailed hawk making a kill on another bird in the front yard; raccoons, opossums, and skunks traveling to our front porch when we used to feed outdoor cats there; several red foxes crossing our property; baby snapping turtles being hatched from eggs buried in the outer reaches of our yard; and a large male coyote crossing the edge of our yard in broad daylight.  But we had never seen a mink in our yard and definitely had not seen a mink making a kill there.  Actually, I never saw the moment of the kill because the mink and rabbit were out of sight.  But I did see part of the chase and the end result of the mink carrying the dead rabbit back to its den.  I love being in a place where so much wildlife exists within my field of vision.  There are only three species which are common in our area that I have not seen in our one acre which happens to be in the middle of several large farms: bobcats, and I am certain they do pass through at night; bear which have been spotted within a few miles; and elk which have also passed by within a few miles.  I have also seen one bald eagle eating a road killed opossum in a country road about 2 miles from our house.  It is great to live in a very rural area even in a power outage with the exception that it takes a long time to get the power back on.