Buy now

Appalachian Storyteller in a Feed Sack Dress

DESCRIPTION

To tell your own story, it takes courage, a sense of humor, and hope. Here, I am telling the story of my life as I lived it...in storytelling fashion. Each chapter is a story in itself.
Born and raised in Western North Carolina with a grandfather who impressed upon me to save our family stories, I realized early on how important it was to save our heritage. Therefore, when I began to write, I had a purpose. The books I’ve written before this one, books that make up the trilogy of my family, took years to accumulate, and while I was busy writing, my whole life changed, almost in between the words.
This book begins with my reason for becoming a storyteller, and then goes back to “On Wolf Mountain” and “On Cullowhee Mountain,” then proceeds with the many lives I’ve led: mountain child, piedmont child, teenager staddling both cultures, a WAF (Woman in the Air Force), wife and mother, owner of a truck and trailer repair shop, college student, author/freelance writer, divorced woman, co-founder of Catch the Spirit of Appalachia (a nonprofit organization), playwright, publisher, and of course, a storyteller in a feed sack dress— over twenty-seven years of telling stories along with my sister, Doreyl Ammons Cain, who spontaneously illustrated the stories, bringing them alive...once more.
Here is a compelling story of a mountain girl who found the courage she needed in her own life as she listened and then retold the stories of her family and her heritage.

EXCERPT

Time is So Precious

When winter comes in the mountains with row upon row of stark bare arms sweeping the gray hills, it brings bright blue skies! Driving through the mountainsides you see wood smoke rising from many chimneys, and when you roll the car window down, you can smell it! What memories it brings back for me. As children, my sister, brother and I would begin our mile-long walk down the mountain before daybreak in the early morning mist to catch the school bus. Holding hands in the beginning, for it was scary with the undergrowth of laurel bushes reaching out their dark leafy fingers. We would stay in the middle of the dirt road, stumbling over the bumps, but so safe in the grip of each other. By the time we reached our short cut...a trail we’d made through the woods...daylight had filtered the fright from the bushes...and we could let go of our hands to do other things.
David would usually pick up a rock or two and sail them out across the valley. Doreyl would find a perfect leftover leaf on the ground and study it’s beautiful shape, and I would gaze at the diamonds caught in the spiderwebs spun in the bushes, then take in what I saw just below us: the smoke rising from the chimneys joining the fading mist, the early morning sun rays skipping along the Tuckasegee River, leaving it’s shining silver footprints behind, white fluffy clouds hanging from the bluest of sky, and the yellow of the school bus winding it’s way along route 107. I knew we had plenty of time, for the bus would go past our stop and go all the way to the top of the mountain to the power house above before turning around and coming back to pick us up. There were no sounds except the wind, the songs of bob whites, and an occasional rustle in the dead grass as a rabbit or squirrel peered at us through the brush.
That time was so precious! For some reason, even as a child, I relished those moments. Daddy had impressed upon me that I had to take care of my brother and sister. So, like a setting hen, my gaze never wondered far from my charges. Seeing them now enjoying this little time of freedom, I would smile...a smile that went all the way through me. Looking back upon it, I guess I felt like a little mother.
Our lives during those times were not easy. We had many things that were happening in our family that brought tears on occasion, and difficulties we had to endure that might have bowed the back of a grownup. Isn’t it funny how you simply leave those difficulties in the dark and only bring to light those memories that give you pleasure.
So, this special time of freedom with my sister and brother, is one of those special memories I treasure. it was all so simple, there within the cold of winter, underneath the crisp blue sky, with the aroma of wood smoke drifting about our heads, we were caught in the wonder of just being children.