This Side of . . . . . . the Mountain

This Side of . . . Appalachia, Where Are Your Hills? Thank God for the mantling snow He sends to caress the ravaged hills. It covers the smell of the slag heap burning, it hides the scars that mar the mountains, and makes a shroud for murdered trees. I wish the snow would never stop. Once, long ago (or was it yesterday?) the mountains were like nurseries for the creeks and the young rivers. They were rich in green-gold bounty and strong with wide black bones. They held and nourished many people. Now my people sit, slack-handed, from chill, dark dawn to hopeless night. They sit, dreamless and patient, waiting for a sedative sleep to come riding down on the snowfallI pray the snow will never stop. -Sidney Saylor Farr 4 . . . the Mountain Bitter Creek Breakdown Up here on Bitter Creek the water runs green and acid yellow, clogged by Pampers and Qorox jugs, refrigerators and shells of old Chevrolets. The government run us a water line in 1968, so we got a mobile home, and Uncle John's Black Lung check pays the bills ever since we voted wet and a body can't make a living no more bootlegging. Cousin Jeff grows marijuana over on Poosey Mountain but he says it's hard to make any cash money. Last year some old boys from Hazard stole half his crop and this year the cows got in and et it. They give mighty good milk for a while, Jeff said, but then they got all sniffly and red-eyed, went to wearing red bandannas, and writing poetry. Brother Ben went to Vietnam and come home a hippie. Beard, hair, old Army field jackets and a strange look in his eyes. But now they made him a memorial over in Frankfort and the lottery-it's going to get Ben a hundred-dollar bonus so I guess it's okay that he still don't sleep at night, can't hear out of one ear or hold down a job. There's work up around Lexington, they say if a body'11 drive two hours each way, build Japanese cars, or sweep up floors for one of the coal companies that owns most of this country. No work here, though. Mines are about shut down, timber's all cut, and the government's idea of how to get us all back to work is to have us make quilts, whittle, spin and weave, and peddle our stuff to the tourists. Ain't no tourists here, though. And factories, they say, won't come to the mountains. Bad roads, bad water, bad schools, and we're all too damned ornery to work when it's squirrel season. So here on Bitter Creek we got to go it on our own, scrouge out a living somehow, and hang onto this hillside and 80 acres of scrub timber. You ask me why? Why, this here land's been ours for 200 years. Up in that graveyard they's markers for ten generations that lived here and died poor. But don't you worry none. When it's all over, when the coal's give out, the creeks is dry, and the do-gooders have done give up and gone we'll still be right here. I got to stay. Got to keep the strip miners out of Grandpap's graveyard; got to scratch out enough cash money to send the youngens to school and get 'em a little Christmas. -Garry Barker 5 ...