Appalachian Story of Remembering a day at Mamaw's House

[Music] so [Music] here's a little story that everybody remembers growing up but remembering the day at your male mom's house she was always babysitting me either my cousins or somebody now my grandmother lived in a place called no town just outside of minnesota kentucky and she was a widow from my grandfather i've never met he died from working in the coal mines and he just retired nine years before i was born and she lived in a simple little place she did have running water but no indoor bathroom you can see up the back here on the right side the little outhouse we used to use and she would always babysit us kids and she was never alone either as kids was with us or her kids or her grandkids and i'm just going to share a little story with you growing up me and my cousins at a day at grandma's now mom would always have to go on a friday sometimes a saturday most the time on a friday go shopping for the family and from miami we called my grandmother mammy on my mom's side and she'd take us up here to babysit me and my brothers and i had a sister and i always had a bunch of cousins there too i always we always had something going on and i'd get out of that old finger motion forward and when i was big enough to run i was running all the time just wide open around the house around the fields round up in the woods anywhere i could just run i love to run around the house always into something me and my brothers and my cousins now like i said i got two other brothers nod heads they tear up everything that i had or i'd get blamed for everything that they tore up and me and my cousins too they was usually older than i was and we'd run these fields and play in these woods and all day long just stay outside that was our playground and on a good dry day we would slide cardboard boxes down these fields these old sage grass fields and really have a good time we used to have an old car a hood that would get on and we'd slide down here it'd take four of us to pull it back up and when you got hungry mammy always had a pot of beans on the stove it didn't matter what time of day it was there was always some soup beans on the stove and she kept them fresh and i always kept another pot going and then when that you know i always kept a pot of beans on the stove you learned to love them with soup beans but she knowed i like fried taters she'd always make me a pan of taters always and i love them to this day i still love them and every once in a while she'd give us a little money she needed something down to store so me and my cousins [Music] we'd head down the lane here to the store and we'd check on the neighbors they're elderly people too and ask them if they needed anything at the store while he's out usually they'd want us to pick them up something some bread or some pop or something so we we bring back the pope to them and we go down here though we used to call seal medley store down here on no town road here you know what i'm talking about if you from no town that's long gone and we get in here and there's all kinds of goodies we loved it but we we didn't have no money unless we found something from pop bottles so we'd get what mammy wanted she usually wanted us to get a pound of baloney sliced up and they'd wrap it up for you and and a loaf of bunny bread we always got stuff like that for she may need something else and i always got some kool-aid because kool-aid would take care of a lot of people drinking those cousins and my brothers and sisters had no black and white tv and on saturdays around one o'clock i used to like to watch an old show would come on and uh the name of it used to be you probably remember it's old shop theater wlos out of asheville north carolina channel seven now here i used to like watch stuff like this some shark theater the old gill man used to love stuff like old sci-fi stuff well it didn't last long though because my older cousin she'd come in here change the channel she wanted to watch american bandstand but no i wasn't having none of that so before you know it i was pulling her hair out she's on top of me beating and mammy came in there and pulled us off each other well i got over that i had to go take care of some business out here at the househouse i hated going in that thing you never know what's in that thing snakes or bees or waspers or whatever i usually just being no young boy i'd go out in the woods if i could because you just never knowing these things and these old waspers they was the worst they just sneak up on you they hit you right in the back of the head and nothing ain't nothing worse than trying to run out of that outhouse with your britches down getting stung and they do hurt i'm telling you and my uncles kept a bunch of old black and tan dogs and blue ticks and i loved them i loved them to death i'd played with them for hours and they loved to see me too they was the nicest things i love them to death i love them dogs now my grandmother kept a bunch of chickens around the house had a chicken coop and let the chickens run around the yard during the day and then then they'd go in at night in the coat and i had to learn the hard way when i was a young thing you don't fool with them little baby chicks you get flogged i've been flogged two or three times and my brothers they're younger than i was they had to learn it the hard way too but demo roosters was the worst and when they give a lot of trouble these old horse tubs they was used for more than just washing i'll tell you that right now we always had some fresh fried chicken and she had a lot of apple trees up here behind the house june apples and red-laid apples they were so good and some plum trees too there wasn't nothing better tasting than more big plums she had some good ones there and he had no car sitting down here in the yard one of my older cousins just got a baby gun and he wanted to know what it was like to shoot a windshield and an old car what it'd do well here's what it done and i got one of the worst whoopings of my life from my uncles just for being just watching it had nothing to do with it and i got blamed for it and when the sun went down sometimes we'd stay over at night with mom ma'am off maybe she'd she'd always see us all out here all just kids going crazy you know trying to settle us down so she'd pull us all together real close and start telling these stories and before you know it you could hear a pin drop she'd talk about these old women and old witches that lived way back in these mountains that like to get kids and they'd come around at night and snatch these kids up well they'd keep everybody quiet and before you know it it was raw head and bloody bones oh my goodness i could just imagine what that monster looked like used to scare us to death and we'd stay over in the back room there and in that back room it had a window there no curtains on it it was always just black through that window and all them stories i'd been here and everything i couldn't help but look and watch that whole window just imagine what i'd see from what miami's been telling us these stories i was scared to death a little bitty thing and before you know it my imagination ran away i would see things in that window hand prints or somebody's face it never failed i it just kept me scared to death these tales she'd i always tell me i'd lay there in that bed trying my best not to look at that window but i couldn't help myself i had to look at that window but finally i'd finally go off to sleep i'm just sure exhausted and up next morning mammy's up cooking breakfast for us kids whoever was there she loved to cook i always had something going on for us and mom or dad would pull up that morning and that old finger matching forward i call it and gather us all up all this not headed brothers mine and my sister and we'd all load up fighting for a position in the seats in that back seat and we'd head on out of here going home did you mind your mammy while he was there of course we did yeah okay well that's all history now here's my mammy she's been gone 30 36 years now and i miss her so much her place is gone now it's tore down and gone but for her memory i draw the picture of it so i hope you enjoyed this little story i know you got memories too of being at your grandma's so i hope you enjoyed i thank you for watching and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: DONNIE LAWS

Views: 75,213

Keywords: Appalachian Story of Remembering a day at Mamaw's House, Southern talk, Mountain Talk, Southern ways, Appalachian History, Mountain people, Mountain slang, Country People, Sothern people, Appalachian culture, Hillbilly talk, Appalachian Coal fields, Mining Camps, DONNIE LAWS, Country Story Tellers, People of Appalachia, Mountain Folk, Memories of Appalachia

Id: RUH7eIR9M6Y

Length: 11min 28sec (688 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021