On Laundry

My mom has a thing for laundry. It’s something of a holy sacrament to her. When I “moved out” I had never done a load of laundry before in my life. And I wasn’t a 17-year old college bound kid. I lived at home or with my grandmother for all 4 years of undergrad so at nearly 22 years old I got married and moved three hours away without the slightest inclination of how to keep myself in clean clothes.

And before you get the wrong idea, I wasn’t “doless” (a nice Appalachian phrase for someone who “don’t lift a hand at much,” I suppose that’s also Appalachian and not terribly helpful but you get what I’m saying, lazy). I wasn’t given a fair opportunity to learn how to do laundry, I was never taught. As the saying goes, knowledge is power- and mom was keeping that particular power for herself.

And I get it from both sides. When I asked my dad if he did his own laundry growing up, he said granny would never let him near it. Granny still washes her clothes to death and once told me that’s what attracted her to my Pap: “his clothes were always just so clean,” she said.  That’s all it took and she was head over heels.

Perhaps my mom didn’t have the patience to teach us the practice of laundry but I maintain that it was more about her affection for washing clothes. Each of my mom’s sisters shares this same attachment to laundering. The practices of letting things soak, stain removal, hot or warm water and the ever pressing question: when to use bleach are topics they discuss at length. When I was growing up mom would often lift the lid of our washing machine, which sat in the kitchen in our house, to watch the process in action before her very eyes.  

When my mamaw was raising 11 young’uns they had a Wringer washing machine (pictured below next to my papaw on the porch) but by the time the baby-my mama- came along they had built a bathroom where the washer sat while the dryer was housed in the kitchen. My mamaw enjoyed laundry too, she said that seeing all those white diapers hanging out on the clothesline made her happy. Mom said their water pressure was such that they rarely washed much besides under clothes and wash rags. They’d be lucky to get one load done in an evening by the time the washer filled up and didn’t have time to get it dried before papaw went to bed, and the dryer didn’t run when papaw slept.

As mom told me all of this it clicked with her at the same time it did with me: “Maybe that’s why we all love to do laundry now. It’s like a luxury.” So I don’t hold a grudge for my laundry inadequacies.

When I lived with my mamaw in college she would sometimes gather up a few of my things from the floor of my room while I was in class or working. Mostly it was jeans, which I later learned she never actually washed-she would wet the knees and put them in the dryer to make me think that she had washed them. Clever badger. Perhaps her love for laundry took a backseat to her belief that things were not dirty, especially jeans, if they were only worn once.

I called my brother while writing this to ask about his knowledge of laundry to see if at eighteen he was as clueless as my sister and I were when we left home. He is in high school and still at home and I asked him if mom was out of town and he absolutely had to could he do a load of laundry. He gave a confident “Yes!” which surprised me and I asked him to walk me through the process to which he replied, “I’d take whatever I need washed to granny or Wanda.” Problem solved. But I could relate, I would never have dared touch mom’s washing machine when I was at home without her guidance. When she and my dad moved into the home they are in now she only had space for a stackable washer/dryer and to add insult to injury the washer locked while washing, putting days of watching clothes soak and spin in the past.

I cannot say that I share in the enjoyment of washing clothes, although I am firm in the belief that anything can be a spiritual experience if you take joy in it. The being my clothesline, I delight in seeing my clothes drying on the line in the spring and summer months. I think of home and mamaw and mom and their love of it and I feel connected to some small part of their beloved practice of laundry.

Sidenote: my mom’s washers been broken for two weeks now so prayers are appreciated. 

"Ya'll eat yet?" An Appalachian Greeting

Encouraging my teenage students to be in tune with and celebrate their home culture is something akin to what I imagine it’d be like to call up my central Appalachian granny and ask her to adopt a new culture for the rest of her life: worship Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu in place of Jesus, begin making and eating naan instead of biscuits and wear a sari instead of her blue jeans and Keds. In other words many of my teenage students seem terribly intimidated by recognizing their cultural norms and practices.  

My students tend to see culture as far-off exotic celebrations of fantastical clothing, precise rituals, beautiful artistic expressions and strange foods. Nevermind that my students live in one of the most inherently Appalachian culture-oriented towns in our region. I suppose it makes sense that an appreciation for your home culture often comes after you’ve moved on or meet others with different cultures to have a point of comparison. I certainly didn’t consider myself “Appalachian” until college and since then I have introduced myself as nothing else. 

The one thing I often succeed in helping students understand is unique to our culture is our relationship with food. The marriage of growing, cooking, and preserving of sustenance in the mountains is something many of them relate to and appreciate. Food also provides the basis for many conversations.

We Appalachians worry ourselves to death over whether or not each other has eaten. And we don’t go to visit friends or family without calling ahead first to see what they could use from our garden or pantry. My go-to wedding gift to friends and family is something we’ve canned. And I’ve traveled to the Pound many a time with rhubarb stalks, jars of moonshine, pickled peppers and more cukes than I could count. And come back with zucchini bread, canned beans, kraut, and slicing tomatoes.

And as soon as we arrive we can barely get in the door before being asked if we’re ready to eat. And even if the truth is that we ate on the road, we lie. Because they already have chicken fried or scratch-made biscuits in the oven. It’s our answer to any problem (much like the Golden Girls and cheesecake) except ours might just be a sliced cucumber which in my experience is just as effective as cheesecake.

 We attended a wedding this weekend and when I finally got a chance to hug the bride at the reception before I could stop it I heard myself ask, “Did ya’ll get to eat yet?” I guess it’s also Appalachian for congratulations. 

A Day of Menial Accomplishments or Bryce's First Birthday

With hair like mine, I didn’t wash it myself until I was nearing adulthood. Hence, the scene: a head full of shampooed curls and my mother leaning over me in the bathtub breaking her back to complete a task most children my age had accomplished years before. With mom and I occupied by the nest atop my head, the task of keeping an eye on my baby brother fell to my younger sister. If you knew my sister you’d know that this plan was set up to fail from the beginning. My sister, even now as an adult, cannot be relied upon for the most basic tasks because of her propensity for distraction. And at six years old with Rugrats on TV, she was doomed. My mom had poured exactly 1 plastic cup of water onto my head when catastrophe struck (catastrophe in this instance is relative to a mother on her son’s first birthday).

Mom jumped up and ran to assess the situation while I sat watching my feet shrivel in the chilly bath water. I heard plenty of banging and yelling followed soon by my sister appearing in the bathroom informing me that she had allowed our brother to pull his birthday cake off of the table. He had proceeded to play in it and while already in his birthday outfit leaving both the cake and his clothes ruined. All of this occurred while she stood inches from the TV laughing at Tommy Pickles get into a fun kind of TV trouble unaware that she would soon be facing the kind of trouble they do not show on Nickelodeon. Furthermore she informed me that mom was after her, I believe she even uttered the phrase “help me.”

Children who live in solidarity with their siblings have always been heroes to me because in that moment I knew which side I wanted to be on and it was not the losing side of my poor sister. So, because I am my mother’s daughter I called upon a look of disgust and shook my head at her while rolling my eyes to ensure she understood what a disappointment she was not only to mom but to all of us.

Seeing she would receive no sympathy from her big sister, she retreated to her room. In the meantime I was left to rinse my own hair for the first time in my life, my brother still managed to turn 1 despite the lack of cake and my mother’s wrath grew less intense after she threw a chair across the kitchen that day. The mystery of whether the chair was thrown at someone is still heavily debated each holiday when we are together. But overall, that was a day of accomplishments: hair-washing, birthday party, and self-reflection. However, the guilty party accomplished nothing and she will still ignore your every word if there is television anywhere near her. 

A conversation with Granny pt. 1

A while back I got to sit down and record a conversation with my granny. I'm so lucky to still have her to tell her stories to me. There's quite a bit of transcript I'm still working through but this is one of my favorite parts. I've left in her dialect because it's authentically granny. 

Meg: What do you remember your daddy doing most?

Granny: Well he farmed. I guess he enjoyed it that's all he done. They worked hard. Daddy worked hard but Daddy used to be a drinker now he loved moonshine.

Meg: Did he make it?

Granny: Yeah. He just never did get caught but he made it. He sold it. And Mom sold whiskey till she said they was coming across, they carried it outta Boggs Creek. They'd have to go up there and get it and carry it out. And she said one time her and Estel was carrying a load out to sell for the next day you know and it was dark. And said they set down to rest and said Estel was always the type of person that never said any bad words they set down and he never had anything bad to say about anybody. She said they sat down on that log and he said "mom, don't you think there's another way that we could make a living besides this." And she said, "well Estel we'll try it." And she said she never sold another bit after that... 

But that's all they had to do, I mean they had to do something to even survive. And I know she said the ones that used to buy the whiskey from her, I think one of the men was ***** ******** and people like that but anyway said they come to buy some day or two after she said she wasn't selling no more and said he said "Well Pearlie I guess you think you're too damn good to sell whiskey." And she said no I'm not too good but I can make a living another way and she said that right there was the turning point, said she never did sell no more. But my daddy sure did drink it. She used to go up there at the barn and unscrew the cap on the whiskey and let it leak out so he wouldn't drink it. Cause he was the hatefulest man ever lived when he was drunk. God, I was scared to death of him. But then when he wasn't drinking he was a good person. That's just the way they lived. 

Laurel Fork

When you move away it’s always hard to pick and choose what events warrant a six-hour round trip and someone always thinks you should’ve come home when you didn’t. Birthdays, church homecomings, reunions, weddings, etc. As we’ve gotten older and busier we go home less but we try to choose those prime events where we can see the most people and get the most bang for our buck. Some holidays win out over others.

For us, Christmas has always been the constant. We’ve never skipped it. My mom’s entire family is always in Pound for the holiday and both of my dad’s brothers along with their closest cousins are there too. One Christmas, as often happens during holidays, my dad started romanticizing his younger days. His brothers and cousins soon joined in waxing poetic about the Laurel Fork trail near the Pound dam. They hadn’t been up there in years and truth be told it’s entirely possible that not a one of them had ever been there sober. The days when they ran through the hollers and trails of southwestern Virginia were long gone. They got it in their head that come spring when they were all back in town for Easter they’d get on that trail again.

The cold months passed and April arrived, cooler than expected. Easter was never a given for us, we remained non-committal until the last possible minute and always made a game-time decision. This particular year we packed up the dogs in the Subaru drove South on I-81 until we reached Abingdon where the dogs know it’s time to lay down because nothing but curves lay ahead for the next hour while we trekked as far as one can go into southwestern Virginia.  The Pound. 

My husband went ready to hit Laurel Fork with both dogs and some of my dad's family. When it came time to put their money where their mouth was only one of my dad’s cousins and my husband were going to make the trek. These men had hunted, fished, camped and carried on in places like these and maybe they didn’t want to relive it.

I had, personally, never been on the Laurel Fork trail and were it not for the events that transpired that Easter weekend I likely never would have. After not hearing from the husband for several hours I knew something was up and when I called he informed me he'd lost one of the dogs. 

Our Dolly is a rescue who had been a part of our family for only a few months. She’s part hound and part demon, her heightened energy and penchant for whining make her a lot of work. Word soon spread through our tiny town and when family members learned that the closest thing I’ll ever have to a child was missing in the woods it didn’t take long before they rallied to me. Relatives showed up in droves, some of them simply to sit in my car while I cried and threatened to divorce my husband if we didn’t find her.

My dad hiked up on one trail and his brother, Tim, drove up and to walk back down in from the other side. For hours we all traversed the trails and former trails of Pine Mountain. Night fell and still no Dolly. Cut to resurrection morning and my family in the woods calling for a dog instead of at the sunrise service. After a break for Easter dinner, night fell and still no Dolly.

Monday morning held a happy ending for us and Dolly. She'd had her fun and waited to be found in the parking lot at the Laurel Fork trail. Still wearing her hiking backpack and a bit worse for the wear she was ready to go home. 

I like to believe her antics were a ploy to get my daddy and his brother in those woods again but maybe she is just ornery. 

Mamaw's Yard pt. 2

Mamaw never knew what she had bought us for Christmas. After opening gifts on Christmas morning she’d often say, “Let me see what I got you.” She’d give mom the money for us and trust that mom would get us what we needed. This particular year she’d bought me a pair of American Eagle khaki pants and I was pleased as punch.

Another of our family talents is our penchant to make Christmas last as long as possible. Growing up I always enjoyed this tradition of making the holidays last longer. First of all it gave me more opportunities to wear my new Christmas clothes over the holiday break (hello new khakis!)  But also I loved holding my relatives hostage in Pound at Mamaw’s house, once they all left I’d still be there and I appreciated the company. Therefore, Osborne Christmas dinner is not held until December 26 each year.  

No one gets to sit around waiting on dinner, everyone’s given a job. In the last years of Mamaw’s life she’d encourage me to hone my domesticity around the holidays. For example, the year I got married when she pronounced this would be the year she would let me make the chocolate pies. But in my middle school days the tasks entrusted to me were much simpler though still never anything I looked forward to.

On the third day of Christmas and no doubt thanks to the confidence I possessed in my new pants I was sent to the dairy on the hill to fetch two jars of something I couldn’t be bothered to remember the name of. Chow chow? Kraut? Whatever it was I knew it would not make its way onto my plate.

The back yard is a hillside with 5 little rinky-dink steps on the steepest part. I carefully took the steps up and opened the creepy door to the dairy, ducked my head to enter and pulled the chain so the single light bulb could illuminate the spider webs and mystery jars. I retrieved my treasure swiftly and with jars in both hands headed toward home.  

Although disgusted by their contents I knew that much like pimpin’, cannin’ ain’t easy. So when I missed one of those pathetic little skinny steps and began to fall my priority was securing the jars! Unfortunately, this made a casualty of the Christmas khakis.

The only thing injured was my pride, Christmas dinner was served (complete with the mystery canned goods from 1980) and Mamaw patched the knee of my pants with a stiff piece of fabric that never gave the way the knees of pants should. A sobering reminder of my clumsiness each time I wore them and attempted to sit down.

Even now, grown and with a garden of my own, I’m still a disappointment to her (she is a mountain mamaw after all).  I haven’t learned to use the sewing machine she left me so that I can patch my own clothes. I’ve never mastered pie-making and my canning recipes come from Pinterest. But each time I use my water-bath canner, gather eggs from the chickens or slice a cucumber I’d like to think she notices and is proud. 

Mamaw's Yard pt. 1

 My family owns its own Santa suit. In some ways that tells you everything you need to know about us but another of our more brief holiday traditions may help create a better-rounded picture of us.

My grandmother’s house, where all holidays were celebrated, sat in a cozy little neighborhood in our small southwestern Virginia town and her front yard was home to many a game of kickball and freeze tag. Whatever image you’re conjuring up of her yard, it was smaller than that. Long, skinny and sloped. Also if you kicked the ball too hard it’d go rolling down route 83 never to be seen again.

We went through about a ten-year period where my cousins and I had all aged out of wanting to hide and hunt eggs on Easter. Our mothers still insisted we color eggs so come the day of resurrection we were left with three to four dozen multicolored eggs sitting in the refrigerator with no real intention of doing anything with them.

Boredom was not a word any of us were allowed to use and that made us resourceful. Hence the scene that lay before me that Sunday. Before I could comprehend how it had come about a gutsy cousin was on the pitcher’s mound i.e. middle of the front yard (again whatever you’re imaging it’s too big) tossing eggs underhand toward my brother who waited at the opposite end of the yard with a bat. When the egg made contact with the foam t-ball bat the pitcher’s reaction time was key to shield their eyes and mouth from the egg debris.

This went on for some time considering the number of eggs we’d been forced to color. The pitcher was exchanged every time someone needed to go remove the boiled egg and purple shell from their hair. Each of us had our turn at bat leaving a carpet of boiled egg all over the front yard.  

Video cameras rolled while we laughed our asses off at each other and soon Mamaw emerged from her perch on the couch inside to stick her head out of the door and take in the scene. Mamaw, never one to mince words, waited until she had everyone’s attention so she could demand “Who’s gonna clean this shit up?”

Today we have lots of babies to hunt Easter eggs so some of our traditions have returned to the more conventional. My husband still dresses in that red suit with pillows stuffed in his pants every Christmas Eve speaking in an unidentifiable accent (Jamacain?) but our batting eggs tradition died with Mamaw. There was an unspoken understanding that there would be no way to top that opening game with her most sincere reaction. I keep a pack of Marlboro Lights in my sock drawer to light up when moments like those get foggier than I would like. I take a long draw and close my eyes hoping to hear a bit of her sass and relive those moments on Beech Street. 

Coal & Roots

My roots are defined by two things. Land. Appalachia is land first and foremost. My roots are deep in the mountains of the first frontier. They are buried in the mountain soil which has been overturned each spring and harvested each fall. Though occasionally stirred they are too deep to uproot. The second part of roots is what they twist around under the dirt. People. My roots are knotted, spun ‘round, and tied up with so many mountain people I couldn’t extract them even if I wanted to.

But you can’t untangle the two. The people would not have survived here without the land. The land breathed life into the people and sustained them. The people of Appalachia have always relied on this land. Logged it. Plowed it. Grazed it. Planted it. Overturned it only to do it all again the next year. This is how the land sustained them. But amidst all this planting and growing our people found something to change the relationship between land and people. Black gold. King coal. And upon its discovery the mutual respect ended. The land had provided for the people in exchange for a fallow year. A chance to catch it’s breath for the promise of another bounty in a couple of years. But no more. The occasional Sabbath ended.

Raped. Plundered and pillaged. Some mountains taken to within an inch of their lives only to put a golf course on top of what used to be a peak and in the words of John Prine  “they wrote it all down as the progress of man.” This threat to our roots came from outsiders, from those who didn’t understand us enough to respect us only enough to manipulate us.

Boom and bust. We lived and died with the price of coal. Layoffs and mine falls. Matewan to Upper Big Branch. And when papaw was on strike UMWA would make sure mommy got her lunch for free. And now, we’ve gone from fighting against the man to fighting tooth and nail to defend him. Arch & Alpha have fed our families so long we’ve forgotten how to do it ourselves.

I can’t extract my roots from coal any more than I can put the top back on Red Onion mountain. But I can tell you it does not define us. We are so much more than “keeping the lights on.” We are a rich people, loyal to a fault, and hard-working as the day is long if you only give us a chance. Our roots are people and land and it’s high time we remember what this land has given us and start to give back to it. It’s sustained us long enough. We must find a way to remain here and sustain ourselves. 

I am apple butter.

I am apple butter.

I take planning and dedication.

My process is lengthy. I am slow-burning and hot to the touch. And I require constant attention and affection.

I am of the mountains. I belong with the hill people, those who appreciate the process. The togetherness. The ones who have biscuits and coffee no matter the time of day. I belong with those who bring me out of the dairy house for family, not just any old person who doesn’t understand the work that has gone into me. I am formed by old timers telling stories over me, praying over me and dedicating days to me

I started so humble-grown on a tree with so many just like me. Then I was taken from all I’ve ever known and while my neighbors got to stay, I’ve been mixed up with other kinds.  

Cooked down until I’m unrecognizable to those I spent my formative years with, taking on flavors of my new neighbors and those I’ll grow old with. I become something they’ll see as unnatural-away from my roots & limbs.

I keep well, for the long-haul: loyal and steady. But I must be canned quickly-I’ve required a lot of sugar to sweeten me up. But that’s apple butter and that’s me. I’m not quite sweet though it seems I should be.

The churning is constant. The turning over and movement from one spot to the other but always in the kettle, What do I want? Who will I be? Where do I want to live? What will my life turn out to be?

I like to be surrounded by people, in theory, but when it comes down to it one at a time is all I can handle. I am heritage, roots and Appalachia. I am fall foliage, sweaters and family gatherings, long and tedious. Fun at first but I quickly turn into a lot of work. More work than I’ll be worth later.

I’m messy and I don’t go easily from the fire. The work never stops until you’ve put me under pressure and shut me up, finally.  Enclosed with thick, black cauldron walls to the cool home of a jar-glass walled and exposed.

I am meant for breakfast with biscuits. Scratch made. More work. And isn’t that just like me? The work never ends. I can’t stand alone, I have to go along with something else.

Cans. Jars. Lids. Rims. Labels. Time. Shelf-space. I wait impatiently surrounded by jars that look like the new me. Looking for our turn: to show the unique flavors I have to offer.

Although I may look like it, I’m not like the others. I want you to like me just a bit more. To brag on me to your relatives and friends, “Now that’s a good jar of apple butter,” you’ll say and they’ll know what you mean, as compared to the others. And I’ll be secretly thrilled.

Maybe I’ll be that batch. The one. The batch they’ll remember each year as they count the hours-stirring when they say “I hope this years is as good as 1989s, now that was good apple butter.”

You’ll run out of me before next year. There’s never enough of me and I won’t make it till next October. So you’ll be left wanting more. But that’s the appeal, if I was around all the time, you’d take me for granted-I wouldn’t be special anymore. I’m not just any old jelly that’s easy to come by-I’m rare. 

Mountain Mamaws

Mountain mamaws do a lot of things but one thing they won't do is dote on you. You've gotta have tough skin around mamaw. She is liable to tell you "you're gettin' kinda wide" or  "your hair looks like some of them people down at Bingo."


Mamaw doesn't know the meaning of (nor allow the use of) the word "bored" and her hands never idle between the cannin', crochetin', quiltin', picklin', plantin', and porch sweepin'. She has no time for foolishness and your book-readin' doesn't count as being busy. What busy means is your hands are a-movin'. At the very least you could be playin' puzzle but better still you'd be knittin a pot-holder or making that chocolate pie.


Her religious beliefs are more akin to old wives tales than anything she heard from some preacher while sittin in a hard-backed pew. It's simply bout what's practical. You know like the danger of canning kraut during your time of the month. That's something you can live by, you have to can that shit every year. And she is washed in the blood but Jesus ain't gonna dig the potatoes or string beans so she stays home on Sundays to do what Jesus won't.


Mountain Mamaws have gotten the short end of the stick from the word go. They are the loyal wives of drunk husbands who have spent their marriage washing coal dust out with the Wringer washing machine on the front porch. She don't have time to think about arthritis or whether her knobby, gnarled fingers are afflicted with it. Mamaw doesn't make the money but she sure as hell hid it when it came in the door else it would've been squandered, drank, gambled and pissed away by Papaw.


Mamaw is a martyr. It's all she knows and she's earned it. She's raised eleven children and a husband who was still a boy when they drove to the preacher's house in Coeburn and he called them "man and wife."


And when the black lung settlement finally comes, she'll move out of the holler and into town. She'll quit keepin' a garden (save for a few cucumbers) because for the first time in her life she don't have to. But don't for one second think she doesn't expect you to raise one.


You know Mamaw will slice you up one of them cucumbers anytime you ask and she'll run you outta the house stokin' up the wood stove in April to make sure ain't nobody never cold. But Mamaw is still a hard woman. The words "I love you" don't come naturally to her. She shows her love through her works.


There aren't many mountain mamaws left. But they live on in our mamas and the way they struggle to show affection or know when to take a rest. Being raised by a mountain mamaw leaves you with  grit and gumption but what it won't leave you with is a tender heart.








These are broad descriptions of several different mamaws I've known. Mostly of Beulah and Marie but also of Shelby, Peggy, Pearlie, Gracie, Georgie, Sally, Eunice, Minnie Sue and countless others.