Pinkhoneysuckle

I've got some things to say to you, and I have questions to ask, for I am an Applachian daughter; And I want to know where and when America decided it could bear to sentence segments of our population within 3rd world shame. I did not learn until I was older and put the pieces together that between Washington and a foul mouthed bunch of folks who though, "Redneck," sounded mighty funny that I was a third rate citizen in this country. America learned that our country boys would be the first to volunteer in war time, then some would come home and be ashamed to ask for war pensions, for that was asking The United States Government to lend a hand. My people of the Appalachians had hung out in the mountains and valleys to get away from government rule and to live the dream of independent lives, and they became a culture you knew as, "Rednecks," "Hillbillies," and, "Bible Thumpers." That was all alright just as long as you stayed out of our business, for we were independent. People planted hillsides, creek bottom lands, and they made schools of their own. We had preaching at school through the year that I finished in 1966, My mother and father were particularly hard hit, because my daddy got sick and could not join the war heroes, so we were just; "A Bunch," as my Granny Hood used to call us. My mother got married at age 16 to get away from an abusive father, and mother was so insecure that she saw herself only as other's "Property," even as Dad's wife. Beating your children half to death, was the discipline she endured. If she and Daddy did not have something to fight over; Then they would manufacture something, for it was a rare thing to have parents who really knew about love, for we were the left overs from those who settled Indian lands, married up with a lot of them, and we became the sin of America. Our Agrarian history and self reliance were our saving graces until President Eisenhower got in there and decided that Americans no longer needed all of this farm stuff, but we needed factories and other third world could do meanial task like plant cotton. I would tell the man to his face that he might have been a fine general, but otherwise; He was a darned lunatic, for after he was in office; The Appalachian towns and farms started dying like willow trees without a water bed to reach for, so like our people, bending thirsty in our world meant failure, so we saw grown women and men cry, because you took away the little bit of money we might could have made to pay a mortgage with. We put up with people from Washington deciding most of our fate, and you made a mess out of us, and so many are left to stand up and witness what happened when you said to stop planting our cotton and tobacco. People then tried to get work up town, and through President Johnson; We would see our factories disappear, so what were you going to take next? It was easy to call us all the names of homefolks; Hillbillies, crackers, and rednecks; But I am ready to call you all to stand up and ask why you were putting us on the silent trains to no where or worse, on to slave in the rust belt cities to watch our families lose the know how to get along on something without welfare. I was a kid born in the mid-century, and you tore our families apart, and our manufacturing is so slaughtered that people want to come home again. Sometimes they do and then they get caught up in the meth and drug labs that are the new medicine shows for the poor people. I just want to ask how and why we got labeled as third world Americans, and is there a day coming when Appalachian people are going to know it when the USA is lying to them to buy a vote? I am asking for my people, this daughter of Zion coming down from those mountains, I told my story to show how badly you broke us down, because we were too tired and too poor to complain. Gather around, for it is time for an accounting; and this time; we're the folks just waiting our turn
About the Author: Revealing in truth and in fiction one woman's experience of growing up in a 3rd world America hidden by the structure of its own roots as this country evolved from hidden people of the Appalachian mountains and valleys. The author will not allow you to know the places where fection ends and basic facts of her life take over, for she says of it that pain is a treasure chest. Open it, and look inside, but at the end of it; Long to find out more. How could one live the realities of the hidden white poor, especially when you were reminded every day of the horrid truth: Worse off than you were the black poor, and the bottom feeders in a river will fight for turf and for respect, because a whole lot of people knew hunger, the absence of health care, and the adults wanted you, no; they warned you to keep your mouth shut or what hide you had, the skin the covered your bones would be beaten off, and until that happened; You did not know, "Nothing." Church called out that the propehets loved you, and there was going to be a day of reckoning, so like the apostles of old that it was all coming to an end left you petrified, because one could never be good enough. Oh little girls and women; Just lean over, and if your skin shows; Then you have asked to be brutalized in the worst of ways. Girl, you're not pretty, even though your skin is porcelain; you can see them in the classroom crossing their eyes and laughing that bunch of boys other school girls want something from. You do not get it, for everything having to do with boyfriends until you find one like the television families growing up in Hollywood then is just a pack of danger. Everyone laughed at the idea that you wanted to fix your hair, but it grew like an Indian squaw, and were it not for your old man putting the word he out that he would kill the son of a bitch that defiled you; Then you would have been, "Mashed," in to the mud, for girls and women needed to be marked by the earth itself. You saw your friends get babies around school or disappear to girls homes, and words like incest, or laying down with a no good boy not desiring to marry left them worn out women, but, "No," They were still girls like me. Daddy did a really good thing protecting us from the snakes he could seee, but the hidden one was going to use you as a no account, because he could get by with it. Daddy never suspected that family was not always virtuous. The trembling girl lived to tell the story. "God;" I lived.