There’s nothing that compares with “home in Appalachia”. Even with the coyotes a hollering in my mountains, I still feel a relief when I get home.
—Ken Roper
I’m like Ken I always feel a great relief when I get home after going on a trip. I even feel relief when I get back to Wilson Holler after going to town. I’m beyond blessed to love my home and the mountain ridges that surround it.
Last night’s video: Watermelon Hill 14.
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A few weeks ago, Blind Pig Reader Charles Fletcher sent me the following email: Tipper, Question for the Blind…
Miss Tipper,
I just want to tell you that my wife and I really love the YouTube channel and Blog. I’m from the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains there in Arkansas. I joined the Navy and left home when I was 20. I just retired this past year after 21 years of service. I know yall just lost miss Cindy which is absolutely terrible and we have been praying for yall during this trying time. I lost my Dad March 25th of this year and it hit my mother and I very hard. He hadn’t been sick or anything. My time in the service had taken me away from so much and I often find myself compilating my decision in joining the military. Pop and I had so many plans after I retired but not 6 months after my retirement he passed away. We live a long way from home up in New England due to my new job and Mom is back home, but she has lots of people looking out for her. I just wish I was closer to keep an eye out on her. Please pray for my family and no matter what we’ll continue to pray for yours. I just want to thank you for brining a little slice of home to my family and I. Much Love From My Family to Yours!!
James R. Triplett
How about a contrarian view?
My home is underneath my hat and it doesn’t matter where my hat is. I spent the first 21 years of my life on North East Street in Raleigh and lived at 5 or 6 other addresses in Raleigh before moving away. Until I was 50 years old, I had never spent 30 consecutive days outside Wake County despite having traveled to every region in the US and parts of Canada and Mexico. That changed, when at the age of 49 I took a work assignment in Madrid, Spain, where I worked for most of ’91. In ’92, when I was 50, I left Raleigh first moving to Clearwater, FL, then to Sugar Land, TX, then to central TX (Temple) where I’ve lived for the past 25-26 years.
I’ve come to love the wide open spaces of prairie land in this part of Texas with its undulating small hills and long vistas with few significant trees. I really like being able to see a mesa in the distance and seeing the horizon maybe 30 miles away (on a clear day). Central Texas is not desert as it is sometimes depicted in movies and on TV. That sort of terrain in Texas is a day’s drive West. I’ve become so accustomed to wide vistas and relatively flat land that going back to NC with the tall pine forests and big hills in the Piedmont and Western NC makes me a might uncomfortable. I feel closed in by the trees and get stomach flutters speeding down long hills. In my 20s I traveled in all 100 of NC’s counties and never experienced those feelings. Being away from them has changed my perspective, I guess.
Tipper, I’d be mighty surprised if the restaurant in Raleigh where you and Matt had oysters shucked for you at an oyster bar was not the 42nd Street Oyster Bar on West Jones Street in the middle of town. You mentioned having shucked oysters in your Christmas in July video. There may be others, but that is the name of Raleigh’s oldest more or less continuously operated oyster bar in Raleigh. It existed for decades as a tumble down dive in the same block of W. Jones before it was torn down and the new, fancy seafood restaurant was built and took its name. The new incarnation was started by the same folks who run (ran?) The Angus Barn out near the airport. It used to be Thad Eure, Jr. (son of the longest serving secretary of state in NC) and his partners, but that might have changed. I have eaten pecks of oysters shucked at both the old and new venues.
We continue to pray for good health for Miss Louzine (Granny).
God’s Blessings to all . . .
Prayers for sweet Granny. Tipper I know you are always sharing words used in Appalachia, I was wondering if this is something you’ve heard or used. Lately my leg has been hurting and the phrase that comes to my mind is one I have always heard when I say “My leg’s been giving me ginger!”
Becky-I have never heard that 🙂 Thank you so much for sharing it!
I sure hope that my husband and I get to experience Appalachia someday. It sounds amazing and beautiful. I wonder if it’s as magical for someone who didn’t get to grow up there and live there for most of their lives?
I spent some time in middle Tennessee and some time in the piedmont region of NC and it makes you feel like you’re smothering to death being away from home when your roots are deep in these mountains. Every time I’ve ever been to the flat lands and came back…that first glimpse of the mountains coming into view about makes me cry! Home sweet home!!!
RIP Ken. Thank you for sharing so much with us acorns.
I wish I could go back to my childhood home, but unfortunately it was destroyed by a fire, but I still have the wonderful memories. Now home is in town and when I pull into the driveway, I feel thankful, safe and secure.
Loved last night’s reading. Brought back many memories from my grandparent’s outhouse, to getting our first television, a black and white and it was big with the 4 legs at the bottom. I still enjoy the old tv shows that are in black and white. Have a blessed day everyone and prayers for Granny.
There is no place like home. I love where we live here in Tennessee. Home is more than a home it’s love, hard work, what you’ make of it. What you put into it.Tell granny hi and prayers still going up for her. Hope she doing better.
As others have also said, home isn’t just the place you live. It’s that comfortable, peace of mind that you experience when you are there. It draws you to that place where ever you may be, sometimes only in your thoughts. The older I become the more I like to be home. When I think of home I also think of my heavenly home that is nearer and dearer as time goes by.
I agree, there’s no place like home. We feel the same way after we’ve been on vacation or to town, nothing like getting back home on the homestead.
Yes, there is no place like home. I am glad you and Ken and so many others know the comfort of it.
I love my home! We too live in Appalachia close to a lake❤️ it is so beautiful here. I’m blessed beyond measure. Prayers for Granny and the family.
Home is our refuge. We’ve had a few houses in our almost 51 years of marriage. Now we are in a one bedroom apartment in an independent senior community. Even though it is small, we have made it our home. At times we have 10 of our family here and to them this is Mom, Dad, Grandpa & Grandma’s home. Size doesn’t matter, love makes a home! Praying for all. Take care and God bless ❣️
I have been away from those beloved Blue Ridge hills for a long time, but they still beckon. Always will. But I know in my heart that I won’t see them again. I have lots of fond memories of my early life among hill folk, of which I represent at least the fifth generation.
I still have a bit of land on the same piece of property where I was born and spent the next 25 years. I have had many offers to buy it. My wife and kids more than once said “You ought to sell that place, you’ll never do anything with it.” Maybe not, but as long as I have it, I’ll still have my little place in the mountains. I live here in my house but it isn’t my home.
I have long since lost my ability to travel any distance. My “home” is only about 2 hours away by car but I haven’t been back there in many years. I have another, much smaller, place set aside for me that’s less than 2 miles away from my “home”. My wife is already there waiting for me.
Ken is back home now and so will I soon be, sleeping beside my wife until Christ comes back to wake us up.
As much as we’ve travelled, we’ve always relished returning to our own familiar beds and home. Travel is a diversion; home is where the heart remains.
Mom loved to decorate with anything that had “Home Sweet Home” written on it. I feel the same way. Even when I’m on vacation, I often wish I had stayed home.
God bless Granny today and every day. I hope she gets her belly full of green beans and cornbread and doesn’t worry about a thing.
I’m so sorry to learn of Granny’s recent diagnosis. satannever gives up. He’s after Christians on a minute by minute basis. I’m still praying for y’all and it’ll be for Granny too. Please tell her I’ll be praying for her, and your entire family. love y’all.
7/23/2023
Jeri Whittaker
Near Athens, Georgia
Home is where the heart is.
Always praying for your mother and family.
Have a blessed day!
There is indeed no place like home, but the older I get, I realize home is where you make it. For some, it’s a grand mansion, for others it’s a trailer, for some it’s a cookie cutter house, and for a good many it’s a tent or tarp to keep out the elements. I figure as long as it’s me and God, it’s a hopa. I hope to stay in my home, but y’all it’s best most people don’t know just how dire our homeland situation is. Please keep an open mind anything is possible at this time. Don’t expect truth except from one’s who truly love you. Who you think you can trust might just fool you. To me home is a cup of coffee, a few cats, a piece of dirt I can stomp around on and a place I can get outside to breathe and explore. I’ve slept in tents, on tarmacs, in the jungle, in the forest, in a yurt, sitting up in chairs and I think the best bed is at my place each and every night. It ain’t fancy, but it’s a place for me God put me in and I’m happier than a pig in mud!
I also love being home, but I get an urge to go shopping, go on a little vacation, or just a long drive to get out of the house. It’s amazing how being gone for the day makes you appreciate home so much more when you get back. Home is a place for family dinners, for the sound of grandchildren running and playing, for working in the garden with my husband, for reading or relaxing on the front porch listening to the birds singing…for just the cozy feeling of belonging. I feel so thankful to live in the mountains of WV.
There is no place like home. To me home is not only a place to live but a place that gives me a feeling of safety and security. I have lived all of my life (70 years) on the same family property(35 country acres) and only twice in my life have I spent as much as a week away from home. Each of these times I couldn’t wait to get back home. My granddaddy would go anywhere you wanted to go with you just as long as he would be back home by nightfall. He wanted to be in his own bed at night. With everything that has happened to me in the last few years, I feel like someone else commented, no matter where I go and no matter how short the distance or time may be , I get a feeling of relief as soon as I get home. I always dreamed of having a log cabin type of place to go to somewhere in the mountains but now the only other home I think about is called Heaven.
I haven’t been able to get home as much as I used to… lately. Last month, I taught at a writing workshop in Amesville, Ohio. It was only an hour from my parents. Even though it wasn’t, necessarily, “my Appalachia,” I spent a week in the Hocking Hills and it was close enough. Close enough that I miss Amesville, now!
There’s a pull this place has on us. Those hills are the only place that makes sense to me.
Richard
There truly is no place like home! ❤️ Continued prayers for everyone.
There is no place like home!
don’t be afraid of the Coyote’s, fear God the one who can give you life or take it , Praise God for each day! thank you God for letting me live God bless granny with love care and protection with healing and health in Jesus name
I so love the Friday Reads….Take care of Granny and God Bless you guys.
I feel exactly the same way about my home. Just yesterday we had to go pick our car up from the mechanic & it only took about 20 minutes & I couldn’t wait to get back home. Driving up to our gate from being away just brings an inner joy & relief that feels like safety & security. Hugs!
I wish I knew someone there to let me spend some time together for the feel of the Appalachia.
God bless you and comfort you! ❤️✝️