I'm from...........

Recently I have become a huge fan of Minton Sparks.  She is a spoken word artist here in the Nashville area.  Last year she was the main attraction at the Midnight Cabaret of the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough. She's a poet, a storyteller, buck dancer, and has a wonderful guitarist, John Jackson, who accompanies her. I've never seen anything like her in the storytelling world I live in.  She makes me laugh and sometime her humor is so poignant it takes my breath away. Here's the link to the website. http://www.mintonsparks.com

One of Minton's most loved pieces is "Where are you from?"  This morning I woke up with part of this piece in my head and this blog is my attempt to describe where I am from.  

 I'M FROM........

I'm from people of the mountains; quiet people who don't let you inside 'em for a long time.

I'm from rural country with muddy roads that go nowhere or to a lonely shack.

I'm from Minnie and Ewing, Issac, and Edward, Phrona, and Dona. Seventeen aunts and uncles who came and went out of my life.


I'm from hog killings, chicken butchering, cattle dehorning, bull castrations, and bee keeping. I learned biology and animal anatomy before I knew my own anatomy. 


I dodged spittoons, ambeer, pork and bean cans, and Aunt Ruby's spit that could travel 6 feet. I know Days Work and Garrett's Snuff and the feel of spittle on my hands from chewing 'tbacker'spills.


I'm from illiterate, fist pounding, Bible waving, foaming at the mouth preachers screaming scripture and ignorance in my face. I'm from February baptisins' in frozen creeks and ice clinging to my pure white dress pinned between my legs. I'm from preachers who knew a woman's place and when on the road for revival meeting visited those wet, warm places.


I'm from Aunt Ruby who loved me like her own and helped me forgive my Mama when she "didn't know no better!"


I'm from green, thick mountains that change clothes ever season; mountains where rugged, dirty people survived a cruel civil war and then family feuds.  The Hatfields and the McCoys are in my bones along with the Greene - Jones feud from my own ancestors. Folks fightin' so long they almost forgot what they were fightin' agin.


I'm from clapboard schools built by the WPA, three rooms, three teachers, a coal pile and two outhouses and still I know the capitals of all the states, the order of the presidents, and the love of folks like FDR and Eleanor who thought we were something. 


I'm from mountain creeks filled with leeches, minners, smooth rocks and skinny naked kids. Creeks now full of toilet paper, plastic milk jugs, refrigerators, pesticides, coal bi-products and blown away hillsides from strip mining.


I'm from runnin' shine in muscle cars, meth labs, oxycotton addiction, and good people who say, "There ain't nothing you can do about it."

I'm from Ewing who told his youngins they could make it in a larger world if they got educated, tried and left the places where they had learned to survive one kind of life. Ewing, who could not escape himself because his wife could not imagine a bigger world than she knew.


I'm Patsy with three brothers who loves the PBS series about the Appalachian Mountains and still holds hope for all that is good and right in Appalachia.