Status Updates From Gentle's Holler

The story doesn't really end at the ending...you can imagine the family going on despite the hardships. Livy Two tells how Gentle brings her family together.

Livy Two is a very smart young girl. She sees and wants a different world than what is in her backyard of the Carolina hills. She loves her home but is an explorer at heart. Her older brother does not get on very well with their father, who never has the time for him, and seems to favor Livy. Livy seems to be the speaker for her mom, who is worn out from having so many children, the care of them and no income.

Livy's mom is worn out from having kids, close together. Livy and Louise are just 9 months apart. Birth control was not readily available in the hills in the 60s, or in some cases, not wanted.

Livy takes her little sisters on fairy hunts near the creek. Wild berries, like blackberries, along with brother Emmett catching catfish feeds the family. Livy likes roasted peanuts. She dreams of songs that she writes. Daddy, who is driving Grandma Horace's car, is headed to Knoxville for the Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour radio show interview. There is something wrong with young Gentle's lilac-colored eyes.

All the tidbits in this story are interesting. Daddy drove a red Opel Kadette but sold it to a Mennonite. She says the hunger makes colors more intense. She loves the serenade of crickets, cicadas, and tree frogs. I do too. Livy is reading "Huckleberry Finn", "Leaves of Grass", and "Go Tell It on the Mountain" by James Baldwin. Sister Louise mixes her own paint from wild berries to paint her pictures.

Livy wants to travel to all the foreign places she reads about, from books in the lending library truck. She plays the guitar, her poetry writing Dad bought for her, and loves Patsy Cline, who she saw in person at the Buncombe County fair. The family listens to the Grand Ole Opry Hour on an old Philco radio every Saturday night. They don't have a TV. Livy mentions the cave-in in the Swannanoa Tunnel in Asheville.

The young ones are in a Granny's crib, so-called as it folds up into a chair. Livy (Olivia) likes the Pleiades, Seven Sisters, as she has 7. Sister, Olivia, has passed away. Livy has an older brother and a younger brother. Becksie (Rebecca) is the oldest. Jitters, (Myrtle-Anne)who is nine, is called "an itchy-mosquito echo". They live in Maggie Valley, in the North Carolina hills, with Uncle Hazard, their dog.

12-year-old Livy Two Weems - sits up high in an old red maple tree. She can see her Mama tending her baby siblings, Daddy is on the porch picking his banjo. Livy has a little sister, Gentle, who slept in a dresser drawer. Now she is in a crib with her sibling twins, Caroline and Cyrus. The newest baby, Appelonia has claimed the dresser drawer. This story begins with a picture of typical 1960 North Carolina life.

The first page was interesting - thank you to Mama Frances and her 13 children! Beanie, Jim, Nancy, Tomi, Teresa, Celina, Kiffen, Joseph, Eppie, John, Chauvie, Sam, and Silas. Very interesting names for some of the kids. Is Kiffin a balladeer of Appalachia ballads? The chapter titles are cute and revealing. Ex.: Daddy's roasted peanuts, Mama's biscuits, Grandma's glass eyes, Watermelon shoes, and Enka-Stinka!

Okay, Grandma Horace is pretty cool. Also, I've forgotten how good it feels to just sit down and read and do nothing else.

"Daddy kisses Mama and says, 'Lord, I got the prettiest wife that ever did take a breath of air.'"
Awwww this scene is so cute

I had no idea this was set in Maggie Valley; it's one of my favorite places on earth. *happy sigh*