Lordy, What a Woman! (A Visit With 87-Year old Aunt Josie Tackett On Beefhide Creek)

Lordy, What A Woman! (A Visit With 87-Year old Aunt Josie Tacket+ On Beefhide Creek) Visiting with 87 - year old Aunt Josie Tackett on Beefhide Creek in Pike County, Kentucky, is like visiting with a very, very, precocious child in her playhouse; and listening to her stories and songs is like hearing the accumulated wisdom of great age and experience revealed through a child's clear, uninhibited vision. The road was long and winding, looping and curving through vistas of green hills, the last few miles, rough and narrow - almost creek travel. Once you were on the right road up the hollow, there was no more need to ask directions . If you knew about Aunt Josie Tackett, you wouldn't miss the place. The appointment was for 9:00 a.m. There she sat on the porch serenely waiting, the little white house, weather boarded over old logs, neat as a pin, and shaded, in the bright sun, by a tremendous weeping willow. Color everywhere. Activity everywhere. Immediately, and without forcing the Aunt Josie At Our Appalachia Day imagination, you are in the land of fairy, the little people. On one end of the porch a gathering of little ladies - at a tea party? ~ all brightly dressed. In one side yard a little man rides a spirited little 62 Staff horse with other little people gathered around. In the other side yard, among other colorful arrangements a tiny man is walking away but looking back at a lady. Arranged around the porch are angular stones painted with designs like primitive art, bright yellow and red flowers sway by the walkway, the grass is neat and satiny green. You rub your eyes. Aunt Josie explains the little people. For each she has a name and a comment. They are cast off dolls and toys that washed down the creek. She repaired them, painted them, made clothes for them, and placed them in exiting and natural arrangements. The rocks she had carried from the hill nearby. Then the stone cellar, the shelves filled with homecanned apples, peaches, beans, sweet potatoes, berries, krout, pickles, jellies, jams. Comment: There's enough here to do a big family a long time. Aunt Josie: Lord - ha - mercy, yes. I canned all this myself. Don't neet it now. Then into the house filled and glowing with colorful handwork, rugs, covers, pillows, bed spreads, and mementos - pictures of her son and daughter who died young, the feather crowns taken from the pillows of the two dead ones where the feathers had somehow woven themselves into a crown and that was a favorable sign, a FEATHER CROWNS picture of her grandmother a Cherokee Indian, whom Aunt Josie loved so well ("She was the sweetest woman I ever met up with"). And then back to the porch to sit in a rocker and remember old times - and comment on the new. She told about old times, how people would walk miles up the rough roads at night to "set and talk" and children 63 APPALACHIAN HERITAGE would "tear the house down" playing blind fold and nobody cared they was so glad to see you. "And you didn't have to take your shoes off at the door then." And how good the neighbors were: "Lord - ha - mercy, I reckon! They was good neighbors. Lord - ha - mercy, yes. Divide what they had with you." Then talk of old time work and chores, how to make lye soap, how to make the wooden tub for battling clothes, how she worked like a slave for fifty cents a week and went to the store and bought a hat. Aunt Josie has had her tragic events too - the death of her brother with whom she had such good times making music and who made up songs, the death of her son when he was fifteen and her daughter when just a child. The son "took" in his side while working in the woods. He was hauled down in a sled first and then in a wagon to the railroad. But he died of a burst appendix after they finally reached Pikeville. The daughter walked out as a toddling child and fell in...