Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers

Paradise in Price Hollow

Lou y.p. CRABTREE Lou VP. Crabtree was born in 1913 in the hills of Appalachia, where she has spent most ofher life. She now lives in Abingdon, Virginia. Crabtree graduated from Radford University and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Faegin School ofDrama. She taught for thirty-five years, served as regional auditioner for the American Academy (New York and Pasadena, California, branches), played in the Rock of Ages Band, and participated in school and community drama throughout much of her life. Currently, she lectures on astronomy and writes space poetry. Her stories, poems, and historical essays have appeared in publications such as the Laurel Review, Shenandoah, American way, and Sow's Ear. Sweet Hollow, published in 1984 and now in its fifth printing, consists of seven stories about the lives ofAppalachians fifty years ago, stories that are both stark and mystic. Her play Calling on Lou was performed in 1984 at the Barter Theater, the state theater of Virginia in Abingdon, and toured in 1985. Crabtree has completed several novels and short story collections that have never been offered for publication, including The Village, Portions, Time in Place, and Nine Christmas Stories. * * * Paradise in Price Hollow Paradise in Price Hollow was partly Adam's paradise before the apple got caught in his throat. Was I a spirit set down in that paradise for sixteen years, to find out what it is to be human? Or was I a human set there to absorb the spirit that would last eighty years and plant something in the heart ofme? That something would save me-help me to stand apart, isolated, all the while observing the diversity oflife's systems, circles, patterns. That something would give me roots to write from. Price Hollow is a small hollow between hills and ridges, so deep that when you look up, crosses from a winter's sun break through the naked trees. It is in Hogoheegee, Washington County, Virginia, a wide area that the Great Spirit gave to Indians to hunt and fish. But perhaps Price Hollow could be anyone of the thousands of hollows in the great Appalachian chain extending from Maine to Georgia. Perhaps readers could name it Snake Hollow, Hant Hollow, or Tin Can Hollow and see it as their own. Even winter had its wonders in Price Hollow. Long shadows from that sun, like the arms ofnight, arrived early in winter to give sweet rest to man and animal. Red berries of the hawthorn bush became black "haws" over the cold days and made good springtime chews. In Price Hollow, faith taught one to wait out the winter, to smell the odor of peppermint on the cow's breath, or the odor offreshly laundered clothes hung on the line like Dutchman's britches-a flower. Faith took you from the softness of the mole's ear to the softness on the belly of a leaf Contained in that same softness , one learned years later the answer to the question-what is faith? Part of faith is wait. In the wintertime, one learns to wait. Forbearance was in every soft breeze. Mistletoe caught in tops of highest oak trees. Holly and bittersweet climbed upwards over cliffs. Holly and mistletoe brought the Christmas season dear to writers. In Price Hollow, Christmas was one orange, holly tied with a red ribbon, a native tree with paper chains. Christmas gave me nine stories-never published, but blessings still. "Next year Baker would be gone from Christmas Island," I wrote. "Tomorrow he would look where the Saints rode off on a whale's back toward a plume of smoke, fifty, perhaps a hundred miles, from Christmas Island." In "Noel" the birth, again, mysteriously signals a journey. "This was the night of departute. Many years ago 82 Lou Y.P. CRABTREE members of the Huron tribe began making the trip to Mackinac at Christmas time. It was forgotten how long ago." In spring, there was honey in the bank and honey in the tree. When Old Mother Goose picked her geese or turned over in her featherbed, spring snowflakes settled down and never thawed or melted. The service tree bloomed, its flowering the first sign ofspring. In Price Hollow, imagination ran from "apples in the hole," buried for greater preservation, to the moon wrung out in lifeblood-observed in simple flowers, the bloodroot. Enchantments ofthe heart-bees buzzing, bluebells ringing...