Granny’s and Pap’s porch with jars of kraut working
In the Carolina mountains, home was a haven against the elements—most of the time. In the early days, it was not unknown for Mother to climb the ladder into the loft and sweep up the snow that had sifted through the cracks during the night before she could light a fire blow. Else, it would “rain” on the breakfast table.
From oats grown and cradled by hand would come the morning hoe-cakes, and when times were especially hard, bread-crust coffee filled in for the real thing. Thrift was not an empty platitude but in many cases the necessary means to real survival.
Yet, life within the home was rich and warm. There was no question about one’s belonging to a family so close knit and interdependent.
—Snowbird Gravy and Dishpan Pie written by Patsy Moore Ginns
My recent reading of Letters to Lori: The Family History and Stories of Opal Corn Myers left me thinking of home and how much I love mine.
In the part of the book I was reading Opal is living in Del Rio TN to be closer to her work as a teacher. She longs to be back in the cove she grew up in, where she still owns a house and land. Once she retires (or is sort of forced to retire) she gets to go back to her homeplace to live.
I’m not sure of the distance between the cove she called home and Del Rio, but with the poor roads of that time period I’m guessing it was 45 minutes to an hour.
If I lived that far from Brasstown I’d still be in Appalachia, but I wouldn’t be right here in Wilson holler where I was born and raised. Where the very shape of the ridges are familiar and the trees feel like old friends. Where the creek whispers of days gone by and days to come. And just like Opal I’d certainly long to come back to my homeplace.
Like Ginns and Opal I was blessed to have a good home. Times were certainly different from the days they was raised with snow coming in through the cracks and hard times for the kitchen table, yet there were still struggles in Pap and Granny’s house.
Money was always lacking, but somehow we got by with more than enough. Like most families there were ups and downs. But whether we were up on the mountain or down in the valley there was always a lot of love. We depended on each other to pitch in and help with making a garden, house work, or whatever else needed doing. Because of that dependency we were close enough to one another to share joy and heartache and we were all the richer for it.
Tipper
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Well I have heard you mention how granny set her kraut out on the porch to work and i was happy to see this post with a photo of the kraut out on the porch, why that visual makes me happy, I have no idea but it does, lol
I love homemade kraut but love pickled corn better!! With cornbread and buttermilk!!!!
What a lovely post Tipper!❤️
Good post. I lived in a 3-room shack that was originally a 2- room shack. On Murphy Hwy. Wood burning cookstove.. wood saver heater. On winter nights the wind would whistle through the cracks in the walls. Sometimes supper was corn bread and canned tomatoes,. sometimes white beans and cornbread.. but always cornbread. A memory, but NO, I would never go back. If God wanted me to live in the past He would not have given me today!!!!!
Listen to my late friend Larry Jon Wilson’s “Willoughby Grove” on youTube. I can certainly identify with it. We did several shows with him and the late Mickey Newbury at Eddie’s Attic and the Freight Room in Decatur GA back in the old days.
Warm thoughts in reading your post today.
A house filled with lots of love is a home! I’m thankful I experienced that!
/What a heartfelt warm thought to share today. It made my morning even more sunny. Thank you.
Beautiful ❤️
Home was good times. Home could have been bad times too. But whichever you lived or loved it’s always going to be home. Love and prayers for Miss Louzine. Stay strong and and be blessed always.
I love my home…not because it is so grand or fancy…but because it is now and always has been filled with love…because my hubby built it with his own two hands…because we raised our children here and now our grandchildren love to come here. Memories fill every corner.
I love going back to my childhood home too, but only in my mind. It is now a pile of rubble, but in my mind I can see every room and corner exactly as it was..with my brother and sisters and parents. It was a happy, carefree childhood. I pray that my own children feel that way about our home…those happy memories etched in our hearts and minds forever. Home is more than a house, it is a feeling of belonging.
There is truly no place like home. Although my homeplace burned down, my memories are still with me and for that, I am very thankful. Home is where the heart is, and my heart will always be in that old, white farmhouse.
There is just something about even the word ‘home’ – it has so much wrapped up in it that carries us all the way back to childhood and life as it was back then, but it also carries us through to the home we each made for our own families that carries its own memories. The word ‘home’ has an everlasting deep calling within the heart – we have a longing for ‘home.’ And the longing for the ‘home’ we go to when we leave this earth. “If only walls could talk” – all the stories we would hear! ‘Home’ is always where the heart is. I know I am always happy to be in my own little humble home that I have made into a comfortable nest surrounded by all things familiar and the memories it holds of days gone by.
The kitchen on my first hillbilly holler home had a shed roof on it with no loft above. Any snow that found its way inside ended up on the kitchen table in its original form. Sometimes, when there was a fair amount of buildup on the roof, the first fire in the cookstove would start to melt it and drips would begin on the ceiling. My mother would have a number of buckets and pans to spread out in an attempt to catch all the snowmelt but it seemed that there was always one more drip than containers to catch them.
On the coldest of winter days, when the fire in the cookstove burned low, the drips would cease and begin to form icicles. By morning of the next day those were long enough that I could reach them from the floor. Others find it familiar to break off icicles and lick them into oblivion but few are those who did that from the luxury of their own home.
“There’s no place like home” expresses the unique comfort, security, and belonging we feel in our own home! The phrase highlights the irreplaceable sense of familiarity and deep emotional connection that a home provides, making it the most comfortable and welcoming place to be. Home is where the heart is!
I purchased the book ‘Letters to Lori’, very, very good read!
There’s no place like home.
They say you always go back home, but I’m sure I never will. The place where I was born and raised reminds me of Barbara Taylor Woodall’s book, It’s Not My Mountain Anymore. The wonderful memories of growing up there are often dulled by the financial struggles of the entire town, which depended on a coal miner’s paycheck. Those lonesome hollers and hard times didn’t stop Mom from hanging “Home Sweet Home” plaque on her doors and walls.
About a year ago my Mom passed away. That year was the last Thanksgiving we were all together. We had to sell the house and property where we all grew up. Sister moved to Hickory to be close to her kids and grand kids. Brother moved to Barnardsville . I live in Florida. I looked forward to coming home. visits with family and friends an just sitting on the porch smelling the fall leaves and seeing the mountains was the best stress cure one can ever get. But now I feel I’ve lost my home. At 76 I don’t feel I could just drive up there and get a motel somewhere. You are sooooo right there is no place like home with all its memories and beauty. I simply love that place !!!
Wonderful story!
Reading this makes me think of my childhood home in WV. There have been so many times I longed to go back and be there again. Sadly, that home is not the same. Both my parents and my oldest brother have passed. My childhood home was sold many years ago. When I go back to visit my living family I always drive by the neighborhood I grew up in. Over the years I have cried seeing our once beautiful neighborhood with all the homes well kept and lovely flowerbeds now gone to waste. The neighborhood now looks like trash city. Houses falling apart, over grown yards with junk cars and overloaded trash barrels make it look abandoned, however it’s not. My childhood home that once was my mother’s pride and joy where she spent the majority of her Spring and summer days before it was sold planting beautiful flowers all around the house are now gone. She had our front porch closed in after us kids had gone on to start our own families. She had large windows installed so she could sit out in any type of weather and watch traffic go has since been removed. I must admit seeing the original porch post and banisters were exciting because it brought back so many wonderful childhood memories at first. Then realizing how that once beautiful porch was now in need of repair and paint, just made me sad. People have told me you can never truly go back home again and now that I’m older I understand what they mean. Home is not home anymore, past or present. Home is where the heart is and my heart longs for no place on this earth. When my time on earth is done, then and only then will I truly go home to live in glory.
Beautiful. Your thoughts warmed my heart this chilly morning. ❤️
I have lived here at the same place all of my life-71years, you couldn’t drag me off and make me live somewhere else. The property once belonged to my maternal grandparents, my parents bought half of it when they married, now I have already gave and deeded it to my son. I have heard my daddy talk about waking up with snow on the bed when he was growing up and living in some of the sharecropper houses. My maternal grandparents home was not a sharecropper home, but it was built on field rocks used for pillows, cracks between the floor boards, the windows would rattle when the wind blew and it was cold as the dickens in the winter time except for the room with the big coal heater. Needless to say they did not have any inside plumbing and only one pull string light in each room hanging on a cord hanging from the ceiling. The happiness with the family that old home brought to so many of us can’t be measured. I would like to go back one more time before I die if I could to some of the places I have visited in my life (many of them one day trips) but just like my Grandaddy, I want to be at home in my own bed at night. There is no place on earth for me better than this place. Tipper’s last paragraph says it better than I can about the reasons I love this place like I do. In my early life it was not only family helping one another, but also our neighbors- we were all in the same boat
God bless Granny Wilson, there’s no place like home, we lived in several places growing up, but one was my favorite, God bless you friends have a great day
There is that about us human critters that knows without quite knowing how we know that there is more to life than the material. Time and chance, along with necessities, may draw us away, but we still know. The richest, fullest and most meaningful life is one of love that is not self-seeking. I’ve known some givers, my Grandma and my Mom for two, that never had a lot but always had enough to give. You couldn’t leave Grandma’s house without having something to take with you.
There is no place like home. I long for a place that I can go back to that holds so many memories, but I married a man who was in the ministry and we have moved many times. We are in the process of our 13th move now. It is hard! Although my heart longs for deep roots in a space, I know that Heaven is my real home and I want to go there some day. Until then…I will just make our home wherever the Lord leads us to….today.
I guess that is why I love your channel so much. It gives me something that I am missing in my own life. Thank you for your videos and sharing your life, family, and faith with us all. God bless you and yours.
Home is special, it’s deep in our hearts. Most times home is like a member of the family.