April 22, 2013
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Thanks For Giving My Book Positive Feedback
Old friends may get tired of reading this, but there are things we must do in life, and I take some time each month or so to say, “Thank you,” to the Xanga friends who have ordered my book. I will repeat that, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” has been seen my many to be the untold story which should have been on all of the front pages of newspapers almost 60 years ago. The Diaspora and removal of the southern Appalachian farm families from their garden to table way of life — Our propensity to waste nothing, our strange custom of not turning in our neighbors — Even if their living was moonshine all came together in, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” my book which is a story of one child who becomes a woman during this time period of the early 1950s when, “Making a living,” was dependent on an entire family’s willingness to forego worldly goods to endeavor to be as fully independent of what needed to be bought at a store as little as possible. We were the original organic farmers, and I was three years old when we had our first electricity in our house.
From the top of Sand Mountain, the southern most tip of America’s longest walking trail which goes all the way to coastal Maine, we were the hidden people with our own religious preferences, and our public schools which always was mixed with religion and patriotism, for each class room was either going to have a picture of Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln and a Holy Bible even if someone brought it back from a motel. We learned scripture, and we learned Shakespeare, for memorization was still a valued lesson. When people suffered a fire, all women gathered at the local churches and started quilting, for nothing, absolutely nothing went to waste. Rags became quilts of many colors to give to families who lost everything. Most of us only knew, “Home Cooking,” and we would pick other people’s cotton to make enough money to buy our school shoes and a couple of dresses, and if people sent over a box of someone’s out grown clothes, I can earnestly say that we simply wept to find something we could wear.
Once a year our mother made an order from the Sears and Roebuck catalog, and in that order, she would try to get us all some under clothes, and bless her heart, if she ordered herself a dress, that dress would be worn until it was thread bare. Our mother lacked the skills of many women of knitting and sewing, though she would try her best. We did not own a pair of gloves or a hat for winter, and if we had a coat — Then we were lucky, for it was passed down from someone. Our lives were not even as modern as the Amish who had not moved that far south then. I think we felt our most poor when winter came along, for Tennessee is a Mid-Atlantic state where we moved, and it could get colder than out on Sand Mountain where we left the heart of our family. We were encouraged to move by an Uncle, my mother’s brother who had no intention of moving us for a better life, for what he saw in us was a bunch of farm hands, and I bother to explain all of this to you to endeavor to explain that we lived in an almost less than 3rd world environment.
My book gives you the phases of poverty which have not been taught to you from any text book. It is hard for you to understand that while The Civil Rights movement was going on, that thousands of us in the farmlands deep off the main roads had been selected to be modern day slaves, but white kids like us did not get their pictures taken for National Geographic or Life Magazine, for it was not intended for you to know that an entire population of people were being used by those who had the larger crops. I definitely had my own cotton sack by the age of five years, and when I was about eleven or so, I could pack a sack of cotton so full that when it was time to empty our sacks, I once with grit and my knee hoisted a bag of cotton which weighed 90 pounds, more than I weighed, but I really needed some new school clothes. Kind people paid you four dollars for one hundred pounds picked in a day, but people would keep lowering it, and there were times it would be only two dollars, and Uncle Ralph announced that we were family, so we were not getting any pay at Granny’s farm. We did not get to go in and eat with the cousins, for being called, “The Bunch,” Uncle Ralph would go to the store and start handing out tins of beanie wieners and some meat sticks which I read what was in them off the side and would try to choke them down knowing that I was eating trash meat with beef heart and brains in it. My sisters had taught me to read playing with their school books. We got one cola, and maybe he would give us some twinkies while the others were in having chicken, ham and vegetables, to when this Uncle died, I knew God ran him off the road as he drove back with a load of cows from Alabama.
“Pinkhoneysuckle,” though is going to show you how the government with their, “Pay not to plant,” money did not come near making a crop’s worth, so almost over night, men losing their homes, for no mortgage could be paid, found any old car that was running and went north, thousands and thousands, and they would find cheap rooms or a filthy apartment on a known flood plain, and many — Like my Dad would do that for 6 years, shoveling straw at The Tuthill Brickyard, coming home when he could, and we kids and Mama were left to run the farm with my 15 year old brother to plow and do the wood hauling by himself — so one year of that, and he left too. Mother began to lose her mind, so the violence became more. She was out of control, and all of the neighbors knew it, but maybe they thought the screams were play. Mrs. Hannah, our angel, told us, “I hear you little children crying back there,” and she was worried. The county could have taken us, but we would have wound up back in houses of aunts and uncles who worked us to death, so we hid as much hurt as we could
All of you thought we were a bunch of coal minors, now did you not? No, we were farm kids, and adults too soon, for we were broken in every way possible; But our Daddy told us we were going to get an education, and when he was around, the books came out. Our problem was paper, for a lot of time we could not afford paper, and our folks did not know about the big packs you could buy up town, so we would erase a lesson to do another one for the next day. I do not care if you believe that any of this was going on, but Dr. Martin Luther King traveled around and he saw we cotton picking kids, and he wanted us as part of the marches on Washington, but the NAACP figured we had more than our share, thinking somehow white folks always got more. Reading my book, you will learn a lot of history of religions, blacks, whites, and how we treated each other == Because whatever you have thought before, you are apt to be wrong.
Folks who went in to the auto industries decided they had enough money to bring whole families north, so what they came to were flood planes, schools worse than ours, and more trouble to get in to, so most of us wanted Daddy to know that it was way better that we never saw where he lived. His worst times with us was when the Uncles thought it was fun to get him drunk, and those situations tore our house up for weeks. You have not read these American stories, our stories, for we never complained, but we hid for fear of what people would think of us. Read of my own coming of age, and learn the distance we would go to make our parents proud, for we knew how they had been the black sheep in both families, and now that we are older — We know the false friends to my mother within our family, those who made fun of her despair, but if you follow my book and hold on, then you will find the redemptive powers of a family who believed that all people deserved better. The sweet little farms are gone now, the dreams, and our folks passed away, but we left them pride beyond any thing which they could have imagined.
I hold nothing back from the shame which was inflicted on me, to the relationships I would not know how to handle when I left for the city; But go ahead and laugh when you feel like it in my book, for it has humor, and you are going to cry some.
I am happy to say that I have a television interview on channel 64 serving this tri-state, and I will be recording a radio show for WVXU which serves the tri-state. I am so honored that world traveler and television and radio star, Kathryn Raaper has found my book, and she will host me. She hopes for me to see either a Sundance Film, A Documentary, or even a Hallmark Hall of Fame show out of this, so read about this wonderful woman, and know that on May 18th, I will be on a syndicated television show with her, and then to top it off — I have the wonderful Lee Hay who is here in our tri-state area a wonderful interviewer with whom I will pre-record on May 22nd, for her WVXU scheduled program of local interest for this tri-state area of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. A radio show with Kathryn will come later, so after being very ill, I am getting this book launched. Most of you know that it won 2012 Book Festival Awards in San Francisco, an Honorable Mention, and in Hollywood California, for the Book Festival there I received 1st in my division for Wildcard, a book of mixed genre’– History, coming of age, redemption, and pulling it all together. I thank my judges so very much, and if all goes well — We are working to secure a book signing at Joseph Beth, among the nicest book stores remaining, for it is others who have seen this book as Faulknerian, Humorous, and an incredible tale.
I have been able to share it at The Santa Rosa Book Fair to help their food bank this past winter, as well as to show it below my hone in San Francisco at a progressive church in Noe Valley. Maybe my time has come, and if it has, I will thank and praise every Xangan who came along with me. I want to thank you all, for I learn so much from what you write, and I will readily tell you that I have, in no way, recovered the cost of publishing, but to get the message out for the beloved people who changed my life so long ago, the living and the dead, I must continue the work, and if I have a miracle such as a film or documentary — Then I will see the mothers, fathers, and little children getting up a dawn and getting the animal care done, so they could make it to the cotton patch, I feel their presence in each step further which I go, and I will not leave them alone ever. I am their voice, and The Southern Appalachians torn apart as good farmers may look back to its roots for a bright future.
Thanks again for checking in, for purchasing books, for prayers, and the kind wishes. Many ask me advice about getting a book out there to sale, and I must be truthful that I have worked between illnesses, and I write dozens of letters outside of Xanga, and for the first time; Praise God, my Cincinnati audience is going to learn about where I am from along The Appalachian Trail. I must carry the message on, and among my latest readers is a very educated young interpretor from Wahon a city in The P.R. of China. I can earnestly say that I am moving up globally, and I thank God for this. My Xanga friend, Vegas Mike picks me up and pushes me onward when I am down. Many find my brother’s prologue to the story simply great, and he, as did I said that we were going to put the truth out finally.
My blessings to all, and there is no magic to any of this. If you are a writer people have found they wish to read more of, then to take it up the first 20 story mountain, then you are on about step 3, even after all the work which I have done. Apologies too, that I still have some few errors which bug me if no one else, but you would be apt to read over them not knowing they are there. I respect that it is important to clean up our books, and everything has a cost, but if you believe in what you are doing as strongly as I feel about getting the word out about, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” then you will rise up and take each battle on one by one. I do wish to give you the loudest warning that if you are using a publishing company — Please have a legal person read the fine print of your contract. You can, “Play it safe,” as I did and use Amazon’s arm of publishing.
Bless you all at the Fountain of Life, and keep writing.
Lovingly, Barbara Everett Heintz
