- [Mark] All right, Ruby? Ruby, where'd you grow up? Where are you from originally? - [Ruby] Leslie County. - [Mark] You grew up in Leslie
County here in Kentucky? - [Ruby] Yeah. - [Mark] How would you
describe your childhood? - Well, I'd say I had the
most wonderful childhood could of been, I stayed
right behind my dad's back. We raised five acres of farro beans, peddled them on the mining camps, and then we'd take a load of
groceries back to White Oak to the store from the
breaks along down here all the way to White Oak, we would sell everybody
groceries, stopped at her house till we got in home, and we barely had anything from
the store when we got there. - [Mark] You were born in what year? - 1934. I'll be 87 in April. - [Mark] 87, and so you
growing up here, you had I assume you had no electricity. You had no running water. - Nobody didn't help that. And we got water out of a coal bank and you took sacks and
went up to the coal bank and drug your coal down
the hill to the house to burn in the night. - [Mark] To keep it warm? - Keep it warm. - [Mark] And for food you'd go where? - No, we raised our
food. I still raise food. I've got three deep freezers full and hogs to kill and everything. I don't hardly buy, I buy 50
pounds of pinto beans at a time and a big stand of lard
like I growed up in. Big 25 bounds of sugar and salt, and you don't have to go to the store, but just like occasionally. - [Mark] Yeah, so you're, and you garden? - Oh yeah, we raise everything. - [Mark] You grow everything? You've done that your whole life. - Yeah. That's what I eat. That's the reason my health
is nothing wrong. I think. - [Mark] No, I see how
hard you're working. - Yeah. - [Mark] We found you here
at nine o'clock this morning and you were coming back from,
from what were you doing? (Ruby laughing) - I was getting ready, we got
put electric pole up today to a trailer and start tearing one down. - [Mark] And you hunt for,
tell me what else you do? You stay busy all day long. - Yeah, I get up, well,
usually about five o'clock and then I lay down maybe
seven or eight at night. I get it turned in like, and get in bed. - [Mark] But you spend your
days doing what kind of stuff? - Well, mainly chasin' renters. (laughing) - [Mark] Chasing what? - Renters. I rent properties. - [Mark] Oh, you rent properties, so you're trying to get people-- - Yeah, and the kids have
to have it for college. I had to give one boy this week $4,000. I went and paid tuition for him to get, drive big trucks, this week, so that's what the rent goes for. - [Mark] And do you have
children of your own? - Oh, yeah. I've got five generations, and I've schooled all of them.
Sent them to college, so far. Right now, going and
getting them college hours to drive a big tractor and trailer. He's getting out of the mines. He was driving five hours
a day to work and back. So I went and paid his
tuition was 4,000 this week, having that money. - [Mark] When you say you
have five generations, you mean your children have had children who have had children. - Yeah, that's what I'm putting this week. This one track right here,
this old Texico park. It goes into five generations it can't be sold out of the family, and this property all
belonged to my grandfather. - [Mark] How many acres? - To begin with. - [Mark] How many acres? - There is about 500 acres right here in this thousand acre
patent, from 421 highway. - [Mark] And you're up
in a mountain top here. It's beautiful. - Yeah, on top this mountain. I had cancer in 1970 and they
closed my restaurant down. Or so they said, and I took that money and sold out and come up here and my grandfather passed away
in 1970, about the earliest I can come up here and five years later I got some insurance
and had cancer surgery, and I'm still sitting right here. - [Mark] What kind of cancer? - Female. - [Mark] Yeah. - And they closed my restaurant down, I couldn't never don't understand that. - [Mark] You're the healthiest 87 year old I think I've ever seen. - Well, far as I know there's
nothing wrong with me. Every bit of my joints is
as limber as they can be, but I got six joints of backbone, now a lot of people may hear this, busted up in a wreck, and
that was about in '55 or '56, and out here at the miner's hospital the lady and man was
doctors from over seas and they put me on a jello diet. Each night, now you got a
microwave to heat your water in, just set a cup in there, put
a teaspoon full of jello. I like lemon and lime, and
now you can see how limber, and I get that guitar
and I can play anything. My legs is as limber as a 15 year old. - [Mark] Yeah, you move
like your 30 years old. - And that hint of jello
keeps my gelatin in my bones and everything built in
my bones, good and sturdy. It does that the jello
does, it's supposed to. - [Mark] And your eyesight
is good too, right? - Huh? - [Mark] Your eyesight is good too? - Oh yeah! - [Mark] And your hearing? - Yeah. Nothing wrong no wheres I know of. - [Mark] You don't wear glasses? - No. - [Mark] To read? - No. - [Mark] To drive? - Nope. - [Mark] You still drive? - Yup. Drive every day going
here and there or something. - [Mark] You still-- - They say the Bible says
long as you got work to do, he'll keep you here, so it might be me running the
road in a truck. (laughing) - [Mark] You're a
religious? You go to church? - Not since my husband died.
I just stay at the house. - [Mark] But you would consider yourself a spiritual religious person? - Oh, yes. - [Mark] That's a big thing
here in Appalachia, isn't it? - Yeah, usually every
night before I go to bed, I play Amazing Grace
on my guitar and sang, and that tides me over, and my jello. - [Mark] How much schooling did you get? How far do you go in school? - Ah, I got a high school
education at Berea. We worked our way down there. Peeled taters in the morning,
wash dishes in the night. That paid your board and place to stay. - [Mark] And have you traveled
around the U.S. or the world? - I've drug trailers out of
Aurora, and from everywhere I reckon in the country. You buy 'em off, where they
come in with flood disasters. You buy them trailers for
$50-300. Drag in all you want. - [Mark] No, but have you traveled? - Yeah. - [Mark] Where have you been? - Traveled pulling the trailers, and Aurora is about the
furthest way I've been. Over the ocean, like, there. - [Mark] Aurora? - In Florida. I think it's in Florida.
It's called Aurora. - [Mark] Okay. - And we come through
Tennessee with 'em here, and when we get back, like
you see this mountain. Oh boy, I's a gettin' home. I didn't like that level country. - [Mark] What is it about Appalachia that makes it difficult
for people to leave? Because it's a difficult life. - Well we've got, I
think, perfect air here to keep you in good health, and I don't know people's mind and everything just stays better. - [Mark] I think you're tuned into nature and you're living the way-- - Well, and now, me raising
all my food about it and hogs and stuff like that. The meat. And my kids, Roy is 70
year old. My oldest son. And the baby is 64 lives right
down there, right below here. Roy lives right down there in that house you first
passed by, the green house. - [Mark] So this way of living, yeah, it's very difficult here
for people to find jobs. - Well, I don't know, seems to me like they get paid good wages, but right now with people
the mines are going out. - [Mark] That's what I'm
saying, the coal mines-- - They just took a coal
out, they go over there, back of one of my granny Martha Medca patented 150 acres over
there back way in the 1800s. Here down behind it, they set in, and they went straight
down where there's coal in the back of mine in
the bottom seam was nine seams of coal, ten foot high,
that they took and cut out. And that's the reason
there's no work here, they just went to top the mountains and just cut the coal out down flat. In my opinion now, you know
if they took it all out ain't nothing to work. - [Mark] Yeah. - And they went down in Gracie
and went under the mines and they went through White Oak, they went through Wolf Creek, and they come out way on
Kuching, busted out the mines. They went all the way
through under the mountains and took the coal out. Nobody knowed it. Nobody got no money. Nobody got nothing. They took everybody's coal. That's a fact. I know that because I've
seen where they come out at and where they went in at. They went plum like right
here, you see them mountains through here? They went down and they was
down at the creek level, and see now you go over there, there's no water in the creeks. I was baptized where
my grandfather drowned, and what I call it was a splash down, and I was over there the
other day and drove by and you know what? There ain't
no water over there no more. There ain't enough to get
out there wet your feet, in the whole creek. It's awful. And I think it's the mining underneath us the water's just sinking
Des Pennington told me that when I was a kid in White Oak. - [Mark] Yeah, that would
make sense your digging there. - He said there'll be a
day when you won't even see no water washing down this branch. - [Mark] What do you make of the future of this part of the world,
part of this country? - It's coming back to like we growed up. You're gonna have to
get a mattock and a hoe and get out and go to farming
and raising what you eat, and get your milk cow back, and your butter, and hogs, and chickens. Our families all got it. We got 212 acres below
this road down here, and we've got all them animals down there. And then they've got four
horses, so we got wagons, you can hook them wagons up and ride them anywhere you wanna go, and all the little tiny stuff is stored down there from the family. - [Mark] It's a difficult life, but it seems to make Appalachians
a little more resilient and compassion for each other. They were very kind and
helpful for their neighbors. - Well as far as I know,
everybody is with me. Everybody treats me like I'm
their sister or their mother, and I've rented to so many. The kids like him have growed up and I don't know them no
more, but they know me. There's too many, and they're so sweet. I just love them little children. - [Mark] What was the
best time of your life? - Well I just wouldn't
know it's all been good. - [Mark] That's a great answer. - And it's still been
good out hittin' the road. I have to get up at five
o'clock to get ready to go and get things done and get
back about seven. (laughing) - [Mark] Do you feel like
you've lived the life you wanted to? - I live it just like I want to. If you don't, you've
wasted the whole thing. If you sit down and do what
somebody else says for you to do that ain't your way of
living, or it ain't mine. I've never let nobody get in my way. They get in my way, I'll go
on around 'em. On I'll go. - [Mark] And your kids are
doing what kind of things? - Well, they've all retired from jobs. - [Mark] But what kind
of work did they do? - Roy was in social
services, my oldest son. He went to college and he
went in social services. I'm gonna get him started
on his cousin in here, and so Vern, she worked at the court house in the clerks office till she retired. She passed away three
months ago. She was 66. She smoked cigarettes and
got cancer of the lungs. Couldn't get rid of 'em at all. And my baby one, he got hit in the head with the limb of a tree
when he was probably 18. I just got three. I lost
two babies at birth. And so we've had a fine family. Now we got five, me and
Henry's got five generations of children, which I'm more
than two probably this week, go to the courthouse and get this put in. The five generations, it
can't be sold or mortgaged right here we're on. This park property. This old Texico park, I come here and walked across the hill, and went over my grandmother
lived right down here in June the 15th of '52. Me and Roy, he was two year old, and we walked across this little hill. Got out right here at the road, my grandpa had a store and we walked over and come on over here to granny's house, right down on the hill here, and Henry went to work at Jellico Grocery, which has stayed there about 30 years, and the mines had shut down when we come here at Blue Diamond, so you had to go where there's work. - [Mark] Yeah. Have
you been to big cities? - Yeah, I've been, I guess,
in every city they are. - [Mark] What do you
think of the big city? - Well, I don't care for it. I'd rather be back here in the mountains. It's just too jammed up and you know, I like it where it's
like sure you can look, me I can look a top that
mountain and we are not on it. Next to it. - [Mark] Yeah. - And I like that. - [Mark] You don't have any neighbors. - Well, I got all these renters. - [Mark] Yeah, but I
can't see another house in any direction. - Yeah, not right here. I don't allow that because my grandpa. My dad bought out the
heirs and left this to me. It was his part of the estate for me, and this is the most important
piece of property I've got, is this old Texico park property. And you oughta take a
picture of that big tree where the Indians supposed to
have supposedly climb up there and watch for people coming in on 'em. They had terms of watching. - [Mark] And they'd climb up
there to get a better view? - They climb up there
and see they can see 'em coming up the mountains on 'em. - [Mark] What kind of Indians were here? - Cherokees. - [Mark] Cherokee. Do you have a Cherokee? - Yes. - [Mark] You're part Cherokee? - Yeah. - [Mark] Somewhere in your-- - Well, I'd say probably I was a fourth or fifth generation down. Maybe not that much. I don't guess. I probably was second or third generation. - [Mark] And tell me
about growing up here. So you got vehicles at
what age? Do you remember? - Oh I have gotten every vehicle but four that I bought since I
went to drive in '52. - [Mark] '52 is when
vehicle kinda came to your-- - Yeah, oh, that's older than that. They're down on the hill,
all these down through here, then down at my house. - [Mark] No, but you went how
many years before the vehicle really came into this part of the country? - Well, I was down at
the foot of the mountain. I just really don't know.
In '52, I was born in '34, so I didn't go to drivin'.
'34, '44, '54, '52. 18 I went to driving. - [Mark] Okay, so automobile came to-- - Yeah I've got, I've sold
two since then. Since '52. Two vehicles I let go,
I trade them in on too, and after that I just kept them and bought me something else. - [Mark] And you had outhouses? I think you still have an
outhouse now, don't you? - I guess they are out houses. - [Mark] No, didn't I see
one next to your house? - For people to use, no
them ain't outhouses. They're stuffed full
of old time-y antiques. - [Mark] Oh, okay. It
looked like an outhouse. - They've got all kinds
of antiques in them. - [Mark] But that's
probably how you grew up. With outhouses and stuff like that? - Yeah, I grew up that
way and up here we had 'em pretty well till they put
the water down the mountain, and that's not been probably,
what, 12-15 year ago if it's been that long. - [Mark] Yeah, there's still people living with no electricity, no
running water, today. - Yeah, I'd say they are. - [Mark] Yeah. - And a lot of people
use generators anymore. - [Mark] Right. - Like if I rent a place for them just to pull in a camper and live, they have generators just to hook 'em up. Back on Dingo - [Mark] Do you have
any regrets in you life? - Any regrets? No I
don't fool with nothing that would 'cause me a regret. Only thing, you know, we always hate you've lost a
baby or something like that, that you didn't get to be with. Henry lived to be 85, so
you can't regret that, and my dad was, I think he was about 96, and then I kept my uncle
and took care of him and I'm not for sure what his
age was when he passed away. I've kept the family and took
care of them as they passed. - [Mark] What's the most
important lesson you've learned in your 87 years? - To be saving with my money! (laughing) The youngins is gonna need
it. The children. (laughing) - [Mark] And your husband
did what kind of work? - He worked in the mines first, and then one thing I'd like to tell you, Mr. Corman, him, James Corman, they were masons of the Nolan
Lodge up at Pine Mountain. And I'm getting ready
to send to the lawyers, some pictures of Mr. Corman, right now, and I think thems really important things. My husband joined the Nolan
Lodge at 22 years old, we was a dating and he
couldn't hardly come on Saturday night 'cause
he had to go up there, and we dated 27 months for we got married, 'cause I was in Berea
school most of the time. And I come in that fall, that summer, and I didn't go back at fall. We just got married, he
had me a house built, and it furnished, so I just went home and I've had a home ever since. (laughing) - [Mark] But you've lived a
great life, in your opinion? - I don't think that anybody's
lived the life I have, and it's all been great, and I go to town, everybody hollers, Ruby Baker, Ruby Baker. Comes running to me. Them kids have growed up and
I don't know who they are, but I don't tell them
that. I don't say anything. I just meet them, and
maybe hug their neck. - [Mark] But it's not your memory, it's just that there are so many. - They so many, yeah. - [Mark] But your memory is
sharp? Your health is great? - Yeah, I've been in business,
since I guess I was what, maybe 22 when I put up the rest
at the foot of the mountain. - [Mark] Do you think staying busy, staying working, active, is the key to-- - Oh, if you sit down, you know, you're going to get big
and fat, and you can't get. I've got renters, can't get
out of their wheelchair. If they get down on the floor. If anybody's listening, the best thing to do is
lay flat on the floor, or put you down a pad or a mattress. You twist this leg over.
Then you twist that leg over. Then you roll this back
over and that back over, and you can twist every bit
of that weight off of you. See, look at me. - [Mark] You look perfect. - And I'm just as limber as a dishrag. (Mark laughs) - [Mark] Cute as can be. Darlin', thank you so
much for talking with me and sharing your story. You're amazing. - It's been wonderful meeting you. - [Mark] Yeah, likewise. I wish you-- - Maybe somebody will
see something in this will help them, and they'll
be here when they 87, or will be 87 here what? 4-5 more months. - [Mark] I'll bet you you're gonna make it well past a hundred. - Well, my family usually
lives to be 104 or five. - [Mark] Yeah, I don't see
you slowing down anytime soon. - Not without something
much to come up, you know, it could get in a wreck or
anything can happen every day, but you don't worry about
that. You just keep a trucking. But now one thing is we
pick a lot of huckleberries. See all over these little ridges. We pick our blackberries, put them away. I've got peaches, apples put away. I got pumpkins down there in
the house, new this winter, and I think a lot of good
healthy food is good. But everybody don't
live where they can have hogs and stuff like us. - [Mark] No, they don't. - That's the reason you
gotta keep this land, and right now get it in five generations. I've got five generations, you can put it, that they can't sell it that long, or mortgage it, and I
don't want either one. - [Mark] You wanna play a
little Amazing Grace for me? - [Ruby] If you want me to? - [Mark] Here. (guitar strums) - Now when I get ready to
go to bed at the night, that's usually what I do. ♪ Amazing Grace ♪ ♪ How sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪ ♪ I once was lost ♪ ♪ But now I'm found ♪ ♪ I was blind ♪ ♪ But now I see ♪ ♪ When you been there ♪ ♪ Ten thousand years ♪ ♪ Bright shining as the sun ♪ ♪ We've no less days ♪ ♪ To sing God's praise ♪ ♪ Than when we'd first begun ♪ ♪ When I've got my mind made up ♪ ♪ And my heart is right ♪ ♪ And I'm going with Jesus all the way ♪ ♪ Got my mind made up ♪ ♪ And my heart is right ♪ ♪ And I'm going with Jesus all the way ♪ ♪ Lord I feel that Holy
Spirit climbing down ♪ ♪ Lord I feel that holy
spirit climbing down ♪ ♪ It's the power of our nation ♪ ♪ We can read the Revelations ♪ ♪ Lord I feel the Holy
spirit climbing down ♪ - How's that? - [Mark] Beautiful. - That's all I have to have, just play that if anything's bothering me, Lord I just feel that good
spirit, maybe it's crazy, but I just feel that
and I can just march on. I feel like I can just
march so far at that time. Well I have. (laughing) My house caught on fire
and I had to run out of it! - [Mark] Beautiful,
Ruby. Thank you so much. - Oh Lord, now that'll make my day. - [Mark] That was beautiful. - I can sang it and I can really get on, and I think right there is the reason that I don't get sick or nothing. - [Mark] Yeah, I buy that. - If everybody can live like that, wouldn't the world be different? All this medicine could
be cut out. Everything. That'd be wonderful. - [Mark] Ruby, you are spectacular. - [Ruby] I'm just an old time woman. (Mark laughs) Been here many, many years. (guitar strums) If I can live like this,
everybody else can.
