Winter Issue 2018 Web

the week would see you in the bed with an empty and ungrateful stomach. If you’re hungry
enough, you’ll eat it, Mama would say. And eat it, we did. Even if it was beef liver and onions,
or sauerkraut and wieners, or another bowl of soup beans, or fried fatback and turnip greens.
As I recollect it, I never knew the splendor of pizza, or a fast food hamburger, or a carbonated
beverage until I was old enough to buy them myself. No, never.
But that Appalachian ground allowed us garden vegetables in the Virginia shine and yellow
months of summer, and we’d eat cucumbers and tomatoes and bell peppers raw and warm,
rain-washed and perfect. Yellow summer squash, too. Rhubarb and sweet strawberries and
a grove of wild grapes, too. And golden honey from Granny’s hive, ambrosial and warm and
gifted from Nature herself, and regular heaven on bites of her biscuits, yellow-crusted tops
and all. Yellow like the siding on the new house Daddy and Mama were able to build, thanks
to the boom of the coal industry in the late 1980s. Yellow like the April dandelions that prove
Life lives here, thank you very much, and plenty of them to afford a Spring tonic to wake up
your Winter bones.
Oh yes, if you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.
I learned that lesson too hard. A plentiful handful of us are still eating, even when we’re full
and tired. We’ve put up with more than we can digest, simply because we were hungry at the
time, and because silence is golden, girl. You know what I’m talking about. Oh, yes. You’re
silent when you want to scream. You learned that lesson too hard, as I did. As Granny did,
too. If you start it, you finish it. You made your bed, now lie in it. And you might go to bed
every night, full and fed up to the gills, and pray to God to wipe away the leftovers on your
plate, for you weren’t as hungry as you once thought. Yes, you know what I mean. Food ain’t
the only thing that’ll fill you up. We’ve seen the ending of that black and white film too many
times.
Take a lesson from our dear Mother Mountain. She gets tired of that gray cloak, and then she
shakes it off and becomes a wild woman, naked and shining golden and loud. I’m here to tell
you that you don’t have to eat it if you ain’t hungry, girl. You might have asked for it. You just
may have heaped a second helping of it on your plate. You may still be having it for dessert,
even if it ain’t sweet anymore or soothing to your palate. Even when you’re no longer hungry.
Even when you ain’t sweet anymore, neither.
I’d rather starve than eat another pone of cornbread and another bean, I’d tell Mama. I’m
tired of lettuce and bacon grease and onions and this yellow government cheese, no matter
how regal and good it is, and people looking at me like I’m nobody, like I’m just another
pitiful mouth in another Appalachian holler.
I grew tired of watching that same black and white film. I grew tired of expectations and
promises and those godforsaken beans. I grew tired of being silent. I was full as a tick. But
alas, I’m not hungry anymore. Lord, no. Too many years and seasons worth of beans and
liver and things that sustain only for the time at hand and not for the time to come. Oh, yes,
girl. You can be nourished and still not healthy. Fed and still not full. Throw those scraps out.
Somebody else can use them, and you know it’s true. One girl’s trash is another girl’s treasure.
Another girl’s yellow outfit.
Long gone are the days of that modest mobile home and the garden cucumbers and
tomatoes, and that glorious government cheese. But I’d wear that yellow outfit again if I
could, and those pink jelly shoes, too. I’d wear them everyday, for as long as I felt like it. I’d
make government cheese grilled sandwiches and make a poor girl feel regal again. I’d suck
the yellow marrow out of those days, had I known they’d be gone soon enough. I’d punch
that girl with the big brick house and big perm in her fat mouth, and ask her if it hurt, and
inform her that her blood was the same color as mine.

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Oh, yes. We know how this movie ends. And beyond the recollections of mean girls and hunger,
the golden yellow awaits us. Once again the Mother Mountain will rise up from her long sleep
and shake off the gray. And so will you. And she’ll spread out a feast of yellow sunrises and
garden vegetables and wisdom and warmth. We can wait a bit longer. Yes, you can wait, as
those yellow-winged Monarch butterflies swarm in your belly. Our summertime youth and
playground days are hidden beyond the layers of clouds and holiday bills.
No, ma’am. Silence is not golden. Golden is the lightening that cuts a path through the heavens
and hollers like a panther, and says without an ounce of doubt, I am alive, poor and soup beans
or not. I am reborn again and again. You might play me again next year, but I’ll always come
back, just like that old movie with the ending you already know. Golden is that regal cheese,
the sweet butter, the hand-me-down-outfit, the very yellow sunshine that sustains us during
that predictable black and white film and the soon to bloom dandelions.
I’ll say it once more: silence is not golden.
I am a wild woman, bright yellow and roaring like the Spring lightening. Listen for it, girl. Throw
out those scraps. That Spring tonic will bloom soon, yellow and proud.
And if you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.
Anna writes at https://appalachianink.net.

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Contributers:
Robert Canipe
Calvin Reyes
Kelsey Crowe
Richard Eller

Tim Peeler
Heather Wood Davis

Granny Eckard
Richard Eller
Ashley Kirby
James Thomas Shell
Jeffrey Wilhelm
Gabriel Sherman

CVMC
Adam York
Steele’s Construction
Stephen Brooks
Sean Presnell
Hickory Station
David Zealy-Wright
Steve Watson
Ryan Gant
Anna Wess

Visit our Office!

153

Ana Cristina Godoy In our next
issue...
Accredited Jewelry Professional
Jewelry Appraisals Pottery

Graduated Gemologist We take a look at pottery in our region,
GIA#0010127822 starting with Jugtown. We’ll talk about face
jugs, Burlon Craig (shown right), and tradi-
Custom Fine Jewelry tional techniques. We’ll talk with Kim Elling-

828.493.3744 ton, one our most exceptional potters.

Anacristinagodoy.com A New Cidery
[email protected]
We meet with Justin Fox, 2nd Place winner
154 of the Edison Project, and his family to talk

about his heirloom apple orchard and his
exciting new cidery.

From the Ground

Spring will be arriving, and we’re always ex-
cited to see what bounty our land produces.

We’ll talk to farmers to better understand
how our food is grown, and we will discuss

our native plants.

Doc Watson
and MerleFest

Doc Watson is one of our most well-known
musicians. We’ll take a look at the music fes-
tival named after his son, and we’ll discuss

the mark Doc has left on our hills.

And more!

Our next issue is stuffed full of goodies, and
we can’t wait to share it with you!

If you don’t have a subscription, you can
take care of that at:
foothillsdigest.com!

Photo by Jon Eckard 155

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Photo by Galyna Andrushko
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Photo by Jasmina K 159

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