When we lived in Stretchneck holler life was not always the best but one thing we always had food. (mom didn't have much food growing up). We had a cow that was our milk and butter. We had chickens that was our eggs and chicken and dumplins, fried chicken. We had hogs for meat. We had gardens and I canned beans and dried beans. I made chow chow from left over vegtables (tomatoes, corn,beans). We raised potatoes, put them in the dairy and they lasted until spring. In the spring most of the boys and men went into the mountains and dug ramps. They were like a wild onion or garlic. The leaves were flat not round like an onion. They were boiled with a hunk of meat. The smell was not the best but they tasted good. The smell from your breath after eating them was terrible.
Junior's father had bees and we had plenty of honey. We picked black berries, rasberries and wild strawberries. I canned the black berries. There is nothing better than country food. Junior would buy a bushel of peaches and that was our fruit. We had apple orchards that Junior's grandfather (Ben Cloud) and his brothers started in the late 1800's and early 1900's. There was a lot of different kinds of apples to can each spring and fall. The apples were used for cakes, muffins and to eat with biscuit, gravy, eggs and ham for breakfast.
Work was scarse and we didn't have very many clothes. The cow feed came in pretty sacks and I made dresses, pillows cases and sheets. I taught Portia how to make doll clothes on my old pedal foot sewing machine, taught her how to crochet. When she was six years old she would stand at the sewing machine and make her doll clothes. She only had one doll as a child. I made artificial flowers for Decoration day out of crepe paper and sold them. I sold eggs, butter milk and butter. I would get Blackie Sexton to come in his taxi and take me to all my stops. Junior made extra money by digging jen sing in the fall. The roots would be sold as soon as they dried out. This extra money was always used for something we needed cash money to buy parts for the stove or washing machine . Junior would also make money by shoeing horses and mules, killing hogs, grinding corn into meal for people. When we didn't have money to buy coal. He opened a mines entrance on both sides of the creek. On our side he would go in and dig out coal. On the other side of the creek he helped uncle Elmer get coal.
We used to listen to soap operas on the radio, our favorite was Portia Faces Life. Thats where Portia got her name from. This was before we had electricity we had a battery radio. After electricity, we listened to Amos and Andy, the Lone Ranger and country music from Nashville.
We went to church on Sunday morning for sunday school, and morning services and back for Sunday night services, we also went on Wednesday night. At Christmas the church gave a bag of treats to every man, woman and child who came to Christmas services. The bag would have apples, oranges, nuts, candy and gum. The kids really looked forward to that bag of Christmas treats. That would be the only oranges they got all year.
There were people who would drive to the center of Dizney and then walk up every holler peddling their wares. One time we saw the pack peddler coming up the holler and we all went to the unfinished room behing the kitchen and didn't answer the door. We heard our mean dog who was tied up on a chain in the front yard barking like he was going to eat someone up, and then we saw the pack peddler racing out of the holler like the devil was after him. He probably didn't see the chain, just saw that mean dog come out of his dog house and come after him.
When it rained Roger, Tony and Portia would play under neath the high end of the house. It sat on the side of the mountain and the lower half sat on tree posts the other end was even with the mountain with part of the dirt dug out to make a walk way around to the back of the house. They never had any store bought toys. They made roads under neath the house and used cast off pieces of wood for cars. In the winter they didn't play outside in the snow very much because they didn't have really warm coats, shoes and clothes. If they did play in the snow and get their clothes all wet I would dry them on a line on the unfinished back room. But they were outside playing or doing chores every day. When the March winds would blow the small rugs on the floor would be blown off the floor from the wind coming in the cracks in the floor.
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