Uncle Joe

My uncle Joe always told me that I was his favorite niece. It took me until I was 50to realize that he only had two nieces and that he probably told both us the same thing.

Carrying Coal

Several years ago my sister surprised me with tapes by Michelle Shocked that rapidly became favorites thanks to their bluegrass melodies and the story-like quality of her songs. But, her lyrics about coal cars on the L & N railroad haunt me in a way I struggled to understand for a long time:

“I was born and raised at the mouth of the Hazard holler,
Where the coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door.
But now they stand in a rusty row, all empty,
Because the L & N don’t stop here anymore.”

My family comes from coal country. My father’s father spent his life as a brakeman for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, carrying coal from the mines to the mills and factories of the South. Coal built the railroads and brought jobs, schools, churches, business, wealth, alcohol, crime, poverty, and illness to the small towns through which it passed.

As a child, I could point out the sites of strip mines from the car window. Seams of coal, glossy sides shining in the sun, lay exposed in hillsides and I was fascinated to find the odd lump of coal lying in the parking lot. I was forbidden to pick it up, dirty, nasty, priceless coal.

Mom was born in a coal mine camp in Tennessee where her father ran the mine commissary. He died of alcoholism when she was 8 and my grandmother moved her children into her family home in Kentucky and found work with the railroads arranging shipments of coal.

My great uncle was the assistant postmaster and was legendary in the area. Folks far back in the mountains and the mine camps knew he could be counted on to make deliveries from town when he brought their mail. Local doctors kept his garage stocked with sample medicines and my uncle distributed them to families who had no way into town and no means to buy the medications they needed. They would send whatever they could back with him as barter, determined to pay their own way for their illness if not for their health.

We visited the town where my mother was born only once with my great uncle. I have a picture of it in my imagination – two dusty dirt roads, company-owned homes set back in the trees, the company commissary that my grandfather ran, and, off to the left, a dark yawning hole – the entrance to the mine itself. But, I never seem to picture the freight cars or the railroad in a tiny mountain clearing that was too small to have paved streets.

I knew the railroads carried my father and his brothers away to war, delivered my great aunts to New York City for vacations, and brought my mother, sister, and me into the mountains from our home in Atlanta on summer breaks. And, although it began its journey in camps too small to command passenger trains to stop, coal was always the railroads’ most important paying customer.

The families of miners heated their homes with coal, as did my mother’s family and all the others who lived in the valley. My sister or I would come down with respiratory problems early in our visits to Kentucky and we would quickly resemble the runny-nosed children we saw on the streets of town. My great uncle would lead us to his garage, unlock the door and pull it open to display shelves and shelves of cold remedies, cough syrups, and allergy medications. Mom would locate the products we normally took, the door would be relocked, and we would go on with our visit, somewhat drowsier but less congested. We never really questioned why this lovely valley triggered our respiratory problems with such regularity.

Although we moved to Atlanta well before my mother was 30, her life has been plagued with allergies, asthma, and respiratory infections. Last year, she began to have chronic bouts of bronchitis at age 78. When I accompanied her to the pulmonologist for her initial visit, I was stunned to hear him read in medical records provided by her family doctor that she had COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The specialist asked her only two questions about her personal history and the first was answered simply with a “No”:
1. Have you ever smoked?
2. Have you ever lived in a house that was heated by coal?

She did, of course. She was born by coal, fed by coal, warmed by coal, clothed by coal, and educated by coal. Somehow, its black dust has stayed with her, hidden in places where we could not see it or sense its effects. And, after all these years, it demands a price for its travels with her and the life it brought to the mountains and valleys of the southern Appalachians.

And now I know the words of the song are wrong – the coal cars have never been empty. They brought the very air that my mother would breathe from deep within the mines themselves. Now I sense the railroad is moving toward her, snaking its way toward a landscape we cannot anticipate, coal smoke blowing through its open cars, stopping to collect the riders who must pay its fare.

My mother will take passage. She was marked with coal for the journey long ago.

Not in Our Family

I never thought it could happen in our family. I’ve heard about it before. About neighborhood kids being warned not to play with THOSE children because their… About families having to move away because they couldn’t stop it… About the hallucinations and the addiction and the drooling… About trying to pull him away time and time again, all the while knowing that he doesn’t really recognize me or maybe even see me.

It’s happened in our yard, with our baby. Harry, our sweet, people-loving, wonderful Labradoodle, is a toad licker.

At first, I thought it was funny. Then he started to foam at the mouth, slobbering and smacking his lips continuously. I’d read about dogs addicted to toad licking before and know that toads in other parts of the country exude secretions so toxic that dogs can die from licking them. But, apparently, they die happy.

His sister Bess contented herself with chasing a moth under the spotlight. Not Harry. He followed the toad into every dark cranny, lunging to pick it up, over and over again. His mouth must have gotten numb fairly quickly. Thanks to that and Harry’s “soft” Lab mouth, so highly prized in retrievers, the toad escaped unharmed each time. That toad was covered in slime, despite what naturalists tell you about amphibians. Toad suckin’ dogs generate a lot of slime.

I finally got him to take care of business in the grass and pulled him into the house by the collar. Bess followed happily lured by the promise of a cookie. Harry lumbered to the water bowl and refilled it with slobber.

I tell people to check everything on Snopes. I looked. This isn’t on Snopes. But you can Google “dogs that lick toads” and see photos of cane toads and Colorado toads and giant toads and marine toads. All guilty of dealing to dogs.

With a little luck, you won’t see Harry’s picture posted yet. He’s a first offender.

Family History

The stories in my husband’s family come to us as letters and documents dating back to the Revolutionary War. Their tellers include a slave, Revolutionary and Civil War Army officers, members of Aaron Burr’s family, Kit Carson, General William Tecumseh Sherman, General Lew Wallace who wrote the classic Ben Hur, Presidents Andrew Johnson, William McKinley, and Grover Cleveland, and various US Secretaries of State and Secretaries of War. They fill a cardboard box that came from an aunt’s basement to sit on a shelf in our closet.

We’ve been told many times how lucky we are to have these stories. But the truth is that my husband’s family chose to perpetuate the stories of their ancestors rather than live their own. They were crippled by the profound burdens of responsibility and privilege at the stories’ cores. The contradictions they tell are too powerful for us to pass on as legacy to our sons.

My husband and I have decided to put all the family documents up for auction, to let them be studied and shared as they never have been before. Despite the wealth of family history, we find ourselves collaborating by necessity with people who value them for the thousands of dollars they bring. Somehow, we’ll create a new story.

Daylillies

When I was a child, we made summer trips to the family home in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Upon arrival, we were greeted by hundreds of yellow daylilies blooming in my great aunt’s garden.

When all the older family members were gone, grandchildren and nieces and nephews gathered one last time to distribute the furnishings, photos, and mementos. My husband and I were the only ones to spend a few minutes digging up lilies to plant at our first home in South Carolina. Each time we move, we take just a few with us.

Soon George and I will move into what is planned to be our final house. Only the things we truly love will go with us. And, next summer, my great aunt’s lilies will welcome us each time we come home.

Tall yellow lilies,
Lush memories of childhood,
Call us to come home.

Routine Exam

In 1972, two days before my 21st birthday - the Thursday before Easter, I had a routine physical. I was home from college for spring break and had promised my mother that I would finally go to the doctor. I told him that I had a minor illness a month or so earlier and that the "townie" doctor who examined me in the college clinic was particularly attentive to my thyroid. After explaining that I had taken thyroid medication for a short while as a younger child, he proceeded to deal with the sinus infection that brought me to the college clinic in the first place.

However, our family doctor was more concerned. He checked my thyroid gland, immediately had me get up, dress, and go straight to the local hospital to take the medication that would allow me to have a thyroid scan the next day, on Good Friday. Our family doctor was a life long friend of my mother's and he called her while I was at the hospital to explain his concern and the urgency for the test.

Mom accompanied me to the hospital on Friday for the scan. My twenty-first birthday was on Saturday. My parents and our doctor insisted that I not return to school on Monday, as planned, but wait until Tuesday when the results would be available.

When the phone rang on Tuesday, I joined the conversation between my mother and doctor on another phone. My mother insisted that I get off, ordered me to get off, and wouldn’t hear anything else but that I get off the phone. Finally, I gulped and spoke straight to the doctor. "I'm twenty-one and I will not give you permission to discuss this with my mother unless I am on the phone." I've always admired the way he paused and then told my mother that he would explain the results to me while she listened, with my permission. He proceeded to tell me that the test showed that I had thyroid cancer, fortunately detected in the earliest stages. I had surgery about a month later and have had no further problems with cancer in thirty-four years.

I do still have to gulp and force myself to take responsibility to speak up occasionally but this moment reminds me of how important it might be.

Mornings After

The morning after my father’s funeral, the women of the family gathered around the kitchen table for breakfast and ended up talking for hours. I wondered if my grandfather’s name would come up and, suddenly, it did. Just as suddenly, my sister and cousin clutched their arms over their chests and jerked away from the table as if to protect themselves from an impending threat. My sister said, “He scared me.” My cousin said, “I never liked him.”

I was 42 and I’d never told anyone, but I decided this was the time. When I was about 5, we visited my grandfather in the boarding house where he lived in his retirement. My sister and I spent the night in his bedroom. Mom and Dad were across the hall.

I remember it as being “my turn”. I can only assume that’s what he told me, but that morning after my father’s funeral at the kitchen table, my sister indignantly said it certainly never happened to her. My mother said it couldn’t be true because my grandfather always gave her such nice presents. My cousin said our grandfather had molested the housekeeper who raised her following her mother’s death. The only other comments were on the times my grandfather was found alone with elderly women in the nursing home where he spent his last days.

My own memory is selective. My grandfather’s bed is against the wall; my sister is sleeping across the room. The bedroom is dark – the hallway is dark- the wide steps down to the front door are dark. The images from the bathroom are vivid and, thankfully, filled with light - black and white checkerboard tiles, a pedestal sink, a claw foot tub. However, the knowledge of this night is present in every second of every interaction I have ever had with every other adult male until this minute in my life, sitting at this kitchen table at age 42.

The morning after, my family walked across the street to the diner where my grandfather ate breakfast each day. He sat at the counter with other men from the boarding house. The four of us found a table in the crowded restaurant and ate while sunlight flooded through the windows.

But, light can’t expose everything.