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DOING GOOD RICHARD RELHAM The author, writing under the pseudonym, Richard Relham, is a retired minister whose first three pastorates were in Appalachia, spanning the years 1936—1954. When the subject of doing good arises Carrie Suggs comes immediately to mind. On finishing the seminary, like most young ministers I was caught up in a surge of idealism and felt that, among other things, one of my duties was to do good and thus set an example for the flock. In those inexperienced days I did not realize that doing good was a difficult art that required wisdom, tact, judgment, restraint plus other qualities not often found in sufficient measure to do good without injury or embarrassment to the object or oneself. My acquaintance with Carrie Suggs was limited to a space of about three hours, but in that time I learned a lot about the pitfalls of doing good, and the incident is one of my less pleasant but more memorable moments. My first pastorate consisted of three churches (five, if you counted two oneroom schoolhouses where I preached and conducted a Sunday School) in the recesses of coal-bearing Appalachia. The unpaved roads shared the narrow valleys between the mountains with Calvin Creek and its tributaries, called Forks, while for the most part the houses and corn patches clung to the hillsides. The native mountaineers were subsistence farmers who were slowly being lured into the newly opened coal mines. During those days near the end of the depression the mines were operating only about three days a week, so there was no notable affluence even among those who worked in industry. This did not greatly trouble the inhabitants who had never been used to sustained work or much cash, anyway. As one young miner remarked, "Work a day and off a day. That's the way I like it!" Another thing I discovered about miners came as a result of trying to enlist some volunteer labor in building a church. I found I had to rely on men in other occupations because miners had a uni27 form excuse: they were used to working in a constant temperature in the mines, and it was too hot for outside work in summer and too cold in winter. This inability to work in any extremes of weather came in handy when the wife wanted the garden worked in summer or wood chopped in winter. Yet these same men who would not donate labor were generous with their money if you caught them on payday when they still had cash. I was single at the time and lived in the little settlement on Calvin Creek called Pilter, where I had a room in a boarding house and took my meals with assorted miners and other laboring men. I was a little ill at ease at first because I recognized that a "preacher" at the table tended to inhibit conversation; but after they became accustomed to me, they loosened up and in time I was subject to considerable badinage because of my calling. This joking was not unkind, however, because in their rough way they respected the ministry even though they were seldom seen in church. My encounter with Carrie Suggs was the result of a seemingly offhand remark thrown out at the table by a young man who arrived tardily for supper one summer evening. "Carrie Suggs has been evicted," he announced to the table at large. "Saw her and her kids and the furniture on the side of the road as I came down McCoy Fork." Although the miner did not look at me directly, I distinctly felt his remark was a challenge, almost as if he had said, "Preacher, what're you going to do about it?" Subsequent events made me realize he was pulling my leg, but at the time I took it as a serious call to duty. Accordingly, after supper I waited till most of the diners had dispersed and strolled nonchalantly to my car and took off up McCoy Fork. Sure enough I came upon this tableau laid out beside the road with a typical scene as a backdrop: a low mountain ridge cleared for a...

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