Beth Durham's Blog, page 32

Old Home Place

Deep roots are a familiar theme both in my writing and among our Appalachian people. Whatever it was that brought a particular family to the mountains, some remnant of them always seemed to stay here. Last weekend I had an opportunity to visit the home site of what must have been one of my first relatives to move to the plateau. It’s an honor to still be able to find such a place and standing among scattered foundation stones I’m flooded with both sentiment and questions.

Stephen Key was bo...

Do you need an Appalachian Dictionary?

Do you ever have to pull out your dictionary or Google a word when you’re reading? I’ve been reading through the Psalms and recently hit a word that I had to look up – twice. And that got me to thinking about my own writing and use of Appalachian English.

I think my marker got moved from my Bible and I read Psalm 45 more than once. Verse one starts out, “My heart is inditing a good matter…” I knew I had recently read that Psalm because I had to look up “inditing” both times. (If you’re wonde...

Let’s talk Laundry

Children are a precious, wonderful, miraculous and infernally MESSY gift from God. Let’s talk laundry!

I’ve mentioned here before how much I value some of my modern conveniences, especially major appliances. Well if you ever doubted the value of your washing machine, you’ve never had seven children in your home. As I told you several weeks ago, our household swelled to twelve when we were blessed with the addition of a missionary family. This has really opened my eyes to some of the life my g...

The Faithful Farm Sled

My Daddy recently built a great little toy for my children – a sled. When I mentioned Ruthie wanted to be pulled on the sled, a friend asked how you could play with a sled in the summer? Well, if you didn’t already know it, sleds are not just for snow and fun.

In fact, the farm sled has been a mainstay of Appalachian farms from the beginning – and in fact it’s a tool they brought with them from the old country for examples can be found among Viking artifacts as wells as ancient Egypt where th...

A Pound’s a Pound, Right?

Am I the only one that’s flabbergasted at the soaring costs of food? I recently remarked that either we are eating a lot more or the prices have really gone up – could be a little of both and I need to work on one of those!

I made a birthday cake this week – a chocolate robot and his arms and legs were Swiss Cake Rolls. I decided to use the Swiss Cake Rolls after buying a box of strawberry filled Shortcake Rolls. Then we had a little communication breakdown and two of us bought two different...

Tent Graves

Two weeks ago I shared Highland Cemetery with you and some of the pictures prompted further research and comments from readers. (You can’t imagine how happy that makes me!) The comments are always available for everyone to read but I thought today I’d share with you some of the research it led me to.

Shawna asked me what are the graves that are covered with large slabs of stone. Believing I knew the answer, I confidently explained these tend to be among the oldest graves in the cemetery and...

Fried Chicken

I’ve kind of been on a food-thing lately, haven’t I? I mentioned to you that I’ve been trying to be more disciplined with my food – and that just makes you crave all the good stuff. But today’s thoughts are more about feeding a large group of people.

You’ll remember from a few weeks ago that I have a full house right now. It’s a blessing and a challenge. I’m unaccustomed to regularly cooking for a group of eleven. Therefore when Fried Chicken rotated up on my menu list, it was a new cooking...

Found: A New Cemetery

Highland Cemetery in Dry Hollow, Tennessee. Can you see the steeple of the little church peeking up beyond the hill?

Well I had a grand time on Decoration Day last Sunday and I sure hope you can all report the same. I’m sorry I didn’t get to visit with many of you. When I arrived at Campground with rain threatening, there were only a handful of people. I did get to see one neighbor, Lorene, who isn’t able to get out much these days due to an ailing husband, several Atkinson and Miller cous...

Decoration Day Memory

Sunday is Decoration Day at Campground. We’ve talked about this holiday here before but as I go to place flowers on graves, I am always reminded of a special memory that I wanted to share with you today. Now, this is not quite so historical as most of my research and writing – especially since I like to consider myself young enough that my childhood isn’t HISTORY.

I have a lot of memories of piling a bunch of people into the cab of a Ford F150 pickup truck. Both of my grandfathers drove these...

Personal Space

We in the Durham household are very honored to have a missionary family staying with us for a few weeks. The Lyons have five children aged nine and under, add in my two and that’s a lot of energy. A home with seven children is pretty out of the ordinary these days – if they stayed very long I’ll bet we could even get our own reality show out of it. However, a couple of generations ago, this would have been a very normal household.

As we’ve talked about adjusting schedules and feeding the cre...