On Friday, June 27, 2025, I Spent Some Time With Some Of My Favorite Immigrants

On Friday, June 27, 2025, we traveled to Lexington to finally get new batteries in my wife's power wheelchair. They had been dead for about two weeks and it was a bad time. We needed a break and, for a while we got one. After spending time with the technician and his wife at the wheelchair company, getting the batteries installed, and then moving on to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant where despite living about two hour away we are regulars. We love the food, we really like the manager and his entire staff. We got done eating and then traveled to a little Asian food store for one item of a chile paste which we cook with sometimes. I will no longer name any immigrant, immigrant owned business, or other identifying characteristics of a business due to the danger which is being presented on a daily basis to ALL IMMIGRANTS by TRAITOR Trump and the Criminal Syndicate which poses as a "cabinet". We spent little time in the business and, it is my impression, that the family which owns it are American citizens. I chose the one item I was searching for, looked around the store and figured I didn't need anything else. When I walked to the counter to pay, the wife of the family was working in the store area away from the counter. Immediately, her young son who is about 7 or 8, in my estimation, moved from another spot behind the counter to the register and rang up my purchase, took my debit card and, with some help from his mother, completed the transaction, thanked me in perfect English. I was instantly taken back to my own childhood growing up in a country store in first Floyd County Kentucky and then another in Knott County Kentucky. I had also been trained to work in the store from a young age as soon as I could count change. I was flooded with memories and instantly told the little boy that I had also grown up in a store with my parents, how much I had enjoyed working in the store, and I tried to let him know, in no uncertain terms, that it is a good thing to be a young boy working with your parents in a family owned store. Yes, it is summer and school is out of session. I have no knowledge that the boy is ever in that store on a school day, or that he is ever working in any dangerous capacity, or that he is ever doing anything that makes his providing help to his parents is illegal. It is a parental choice they have and should always have to bring their children to the store with them, teach those children to work as young as they are capable of doing whatever job the parents choose to have them do. It is valuable training to help a child become a contributing citizen in the world and a worker who is committed to being a part of the working class. It is a damn fine thing to be a young boy working in a family store and I am an expert on that subject. When I was three days old, my parents carried me home from the Lackey, Kentucky, hospital and placed me on the counter in our store and, as I lie about sometimes, told me to "greet customers until you are big enough to do something else. I am proud of that boy and I am proud of his parents.

The photograph above is of my father Ballard Hicks sitting in our family owned country store at Dema, Kentucky.

"The Keeping Quilt" by Patricia Polacco, A Great Children's Book For Multi-cultural Education

 

Several months ago, I bought a fairly large collection of books from the estate of a retired school principal and this book was in that pile.  It is actually the second book I have read and written about in that purchase.  The other was "The Play Pretty Book", an Appalachian children's book which was produced by a Kentucky based educational non-profit and illustrated by Appalachian artist Tom Whitaker.  I read many different genres of literature and high quality children's literature is one of them.  This book, "The Keeping Quilt" was a winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries.  It was also a Carnegie Medal Honor Book.  This book is about a Russian Jewish family which immigrated to the United States with a little girl named Anna who is the great-grandmother of the narrator.  Anna has a much beloved babushka and dress which, naturally, become too small for her in time.  Her mother decided to invite the neighbor women in to hold a quilting bee and make a quilt from the babushka and dress so that Anna can keep something made from her treasured items. The quilt gets passed down from one little girl to another through several generations of the family throughout the life of the book.  

Since my real academic specialty is Appalachian Studies, let me say that this is a wonderful book to be used with Appalachian children since quilts and quilting hold such a special place in Appalachian Culture.  I grew up sleeping under what is called a "tacked quilt" which, instead of being sewn in regular stitches, has yarn "tacks" all over the body of the quilt.  The creator of such a quilt uses a darning needle and a skein of yarn and at uniform distances of about 4 inches in each direction passes the needle through the quilt twice at about the distance of a regular stitch, cuts off the yarn at about 3 inches and ties the two ends in a knot to make a "tack".  As I fell asleep at night, I would doze off holding and playing with the "tacks" on my quilt.  I have known many other Appalachian children who grew up the same way with "tacked quilts".  Thousands of Appalachian children grew up sleeping under regular patchwork quilts also.  The story of a quilt in this book will make a connection in the hearts and minds of most Appalachian children.  It is a great book for use in teaching Multi-cultural Education and Tolerance to young Appalachian children.  

Yes, this book is a bit aged having been published in 1988.  But it is also a timeless book about family, cultural traditions, expressions of love by elders doing things for young children, and quietly makes the point that the family are Jewish.  The book is published in 8 1/2" x 11" format, both written and illustrated by the author who actually wrote more than 50 children's books, and is a wonderful illustrator.  Her illustration style is unique in that most of the page areas are in black and white with only key areas or items in color.  I have included a page or two from the book here to demonstrate the illustration style which serves to strongly emphasize the importance of the key item in each page of the book. If you are a parent or teacher of kindergarten or first grade children, this is an excellent book to begin the discussion of religious tolerance with.  

"The Play Pretty Book" by the Kentucky Youth Research Center & Illustrated by Tom Whitaker

 

The title of this book uses an old Appalachian expression for children's toys, Play Pretty, and was produced by the Kentucky Youth Research Center and illustrated by the renowned Kentucky artist Tom Whitaker of Magoffin County who also taught art at what is now known as the Big Sandy Community and Technical College for many years.  It is subtitled, and further described on the flyleaf as "An Appalachian Curriculum Handbook for Teachers of Preschool Children".  It is an interesting piece of work and in some ways difficult to describe in a few words. It was produced by a committee of at least 8 or 9 people from the counties of Breathitt, Clay, Elliott, Floyd, Jackson, Knott, Lee, Leslie, Letcher, Magoffin, Morgan, Owsley, Perry, and Wolfe.  The book was funded by a "special grant from the Kentucky Social Welfare Foundation."  I have extensive experience in nearly all of the 14 counties from which the committee was selected from professionals working with preschool children.  For the first 6 years of my life, I lived in Floyd County within a mile of one of the hundreds of Appalachian coal camp towns, Wayland, which is still today one of the most physically intact of such towns.  For the next 14 years of my life, I lived and was educated in Knott County but still only three miles from the Floyd County line and the town of Wayland where on August 31, 2024, I will be attending the Wayland Homecoming.  I was actually born just across the county line in Lackey, Kentucky, in Knott County; and, ever since at least 1790 my extended family and ancestors have lived in Knott and Floyd counties.  For the past 32 years, I have lived in Morgan County.  I have also worked as a social worker, mental health and substance abuse therapist in Magoffin, Breathitt, Jackson, and Wolfe counties.  I have worked as an auctioneer holding both estate and consignment auctions in Floyd, Letcher, Johnson, Magoffin, and Morgan counties. At the risk of appearing a bit overly impressed with my own resume, I believe I can state that I am an expert on Appalachian Culture.  I believe that I can state unequivocally that I am qualified to discuss the many aspects of culture, education, mental health, and most other aspects of life in any of these counties on that list of 14 since I have also spent large amounts of time in all the other counties on the list. I have also coauthored two articles about culturally appropriate human services and culturally apprroprate supervision of counselors in Appalachia which are on the permanent data base for counseling professionals of The American Counseling Association  Therefore, I am proud to say that this is a book which was and still is well suited to be used in early childhood education for the children of Appalachia.  Admittedly, the book is a bit aged, having been published in 1975, but it contains a small fortune of great cultural information which deserves to be preserved and passed on to the children whose predecessors have lived it.  

 

The book is described in the introduction in this manner:

"We sent a call out over the mountains and into the hollers.  "Tell us about your Play Pretties, the ones you make and do at home with your children and grandchildren, and those you make and do at the centers where you teach."  Mountain Folk took time to remember Play Pretties made for them when they were children, Play Pretties they make right now...It was our great, great grandparents who came to the mountains...They didn't have toy stores in those days to buy us toys so they made Play Pretties out of what was at hand, corn stalks, buttons saved from the store bought clothes, leaves, twigs, seeds, and nuts." 

The book is spiral bound, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, and 96 pages broken into six sections entitled, "Introduction, Play Pretties, Let's Go Play, Fixin' Vittles, Jist Lookin', and Frolickin'." It is illustrated throughout with black and white line drawings by Tom Whitaker who is best known for his many paintings and prints of life in Appalachia during both his own lifetime  from 1945 to 2020, and the Appalachia of his ancestors who lived in the region for several generations before he was born.  The various sections address numerous kinds of Appalachian Play Pretties, how they are made complete with instructions, how they are utilized, and also includes some recipes and songs from the region.  I had strayed into a few apparently unused copies of the book in a sizeable purchase of books from the estate of a former Morgan County principal and teacher.  If you teach young children in Appalachia or are simply committed to the preservation of Appalachian Culture and can find a copy of the book it is well worth buying and utilizing either in a preschool classroom or with your own young children and grandchildren.  It's a fun and truly unique little book.