Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction with some effort to keep dates and times of national events and other significant information close to accuracy.  It reflects the life of the author through her personal experiences, and some names may sound familiar that are used, but they too are to be noted as fictional, for the writer’s thoughts, opinions, and memories are as she remembers, and familiar sounding names and events are her interpretation of what seemed to have relevance to her life.  Truth may resemble reality, but this truth reflects the author’s vision, and names of people and places are coincidental in how they relate to the story.  That much attention has been given to the details of historical events, times, places, and characters;  They are to be considered to be subjective for the benefit of writing this Appalachian tale.  The author does wish to open thoughts to the plight of the citizens of Appalachian heritage at the expense of portraying significant events within her own life and her’s alone.  Each person must seek their own reality, and it is felt by the writer that what actually happened during her lifetime might give others the opportunity to speak regarding similar life histories and events.

THE DEDICATION OF MY BOOK

There are too many friends, loved ones, teacheers, and angels who have crossed my path to even begin some long letter of thanks.  You know who you are from Pisgah, To Franklin County Tennessee, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, and The Californians  that I would have to thank for the help and for the encouragment to write this book that I could not get the names on dozens of pages, So I have to narrow this down someway.

Thanks to Frank, my husband, and to the children, Especially Mary, Who has spent days doing the computer work. I thank Rebekah, My Daughter-In-Law, who set up my blog, and helped whenever and wherever she could.  I thank the groups I have written with, My friends, Joe Folger, and Shirley Keith, The Cincinnati Woman’s Club Group, Namad who made me keep reading when tears made me blind to what I had written, To Mrs. Betty Thompson of CWC who brought me in to Namad, To Mrs. Ellen Sewell and To Melanie Hunt Who Have Cheered Me on all of these years.  To Roberta Ley, Fr. David Robisch, And The Prayer Group of St. Marys who kept me hanging on. I, with great love than my brother, Robert Van Everett for writing his exquisite epilogue for me;  Lastly with blessings to the other brothers and sisters and to the souls of our parents, Amos and Thelma Everett;  I am nothing without the roads we walked together, and for the children of The Appalachian Trail From the mountains to the valleys below.  My thanks is beyond measure.

I be.  I do n

There was not much to be thrown out to us.  In our defense, all of us in group three, the “Clean,” people without;  We did know about self sufficiency:  Such things as canning, sewing, cooking, cleaning, and we were brought up churched, so we knew about morals, and in school and at home we were taught manners to get by on, but that too would fade away as give
  We have sins of arrogance to wash away, and I am tired;  I am tired of the denial that the poor people of America are not worth the dollars and your time.  The river runs, and there are souls to save, bodies to wash, and brows to be dried clean of the degredation, So come to this water, and this time;  May we all go together not someday but now.

Barbara Everett Heintz

Blog #59 -

I think my folks were glad that I would be closer in Ohio though, so they showed no disappointment compared to the disappointment that began to encircle about me as I sat on the moving boxes in the summer of 1970 while the movers picked up our belongings and baby Jacob and I sat waiting to have it all loaded up, since Frank had come on ahead to an apartment we had found in a last minute run through Cincinnati when we had paid a visit to Tennessee after his winning the audition.  I held my baby and I cried until I could cry no more, and for the first time in my life;  Had there been an escape chute on that lifeline;  I would have bailed.  As difficult as things had been changing from a young girl to a Mom in Washington;  I did not want to leave there, even for Frank.  I wanted to stay with the family that I had created even though every one, one by one were leaving as their time ended in the service bands, everyone but Stephen and Isabella who had decided to stay in the area getting pick up jobs in their fields of music.  “Oh please, God, May lightning strike this box that I am sitting on,” but do not send me to Cincinnati.

#58 Barbara Everett Heintz – Marriage, according to how I was brought up, included, “Keeping house,”  “Serving your man,” “Coming to know your neighbors,” and make certain that you took every suggestion which your mother-in-law had to offer, because by doing these things, you were automatically became a good wife.  I kept getting called back to The American Society of International Law, because they had not found a suitable replacement, and I worried about money. Oh how I worried about money, because there was always this gnawing fear that I would be without it again and I did not know how to ask my husband for help, but he did kindly and voluntarily paid off my two hundred dollar student loan which I so worried about on my wedding day. In my heart, I was caught between a new order where women were expected to have a career and the old model of the wife as homemaker. Most of my Appalachian sisters were not faced with that dilemma yet;  But I was in D.C. and I knew that something more was expected of me.

Frank dropped me off at sister’s house the night before the wedding and when asked what I was doing for flowers, I said that I was going to make my own bouquets. Having chosen Diane as my bridesmaid,  we would just sort of coordinate our dresses.  Frank planned the music with my favorite canon from Appalachian Spring and a couple of pieces which he had arranged for a woodwind quintet and he honored my request that they play the traditional wedding march.  By the time I had planned the entire thing and after I bought the flowers for the bouquets at some K store kind of place, we had spent less than four hundred dollars and fifty cents and I could hardly look Frank straight in the face to say that we had spent that much which he thought was somewhat hilarious of me.  Our friend Merlin was to photograph the entire thing for us for free, him being a photographer as a hobby.  Poor guy and his wife had their cars trashed twice, because Merlin did amateur radio, and they, having chosen to live in a trailer park, got labeled as Communist because of the antennaes on their house and because Merlin had a Russian name, but I was so appreciative that he was voluntarily taking his time to do our wedding pictures.

Mama had sent me a little box that had, as she put it;  “Just a little something to wear on my wedding night.” Without opening her package I knew that it was, “Baby Doll Pajamas,” and I told Frank so, and I was surprised that he had never heard of such a thing, so I was feeling extremely amused that I was going to have, “Baby Dolls” to spice up my wedding night. 

I got to the church and Frank had something to tell me, a last minute message about walking down the aisle, because the pastor was feeling more Episcopalian that day and I could hear all of the prelude music as Diane hugged me trying to calm me down, as only Diane could do and then it came. The wedding march. I undoubtedly almost ran down the aisle. 

Probably the thing that happened which helped the most was that Diane and Jim had us there for Thanksgiving once more and having married on a Saturday with that next Thursday as Thanksgiving, I could see my husband in the same light in which I had met him and I would take him in my arms when we got home and the bad memory would just fade and it would be paradise from then on;  A foolish thought if I ever had one, but it seemed to be the balm that covered the wound, that sealed it up enough that I could be his lover once more and not just an estranged new wife who was terrified that I had walked in to a chamber of horrors.  We would be well again and the two of us once more, because contrary to love meaning that you are never going to have to say you are sorry, a theme from a movie we would see later, it means you apologize as if it is a prayer;  It cannot take a day or two or five;  It must be done when needed.  Then it occurred to me that in my parents life, neither of them could say to each other the simple;  “I am sorry that I hurt you so.” They would end their days calculating the normalcy of husbands and wives and how it is so normal to what they called;  “Fuss and Fight Sometimes.”  I wish that my Mother could have heard those words once, could have said them once, but the power of conversation was not in their tool kit for taking care of themselves or their children and it would be years before I would learn to use conversation instead of packing sorrows in like dead wood melting into a forest floor.  Oh my happy day had come and gone, but a new me was already beginning to emerge and I was going to need some help along the way, so my dear ones, remember these words,  “I need help” and find a place where someone hears your voice clearly.

Entry # 56 – Pinkhoneysuckle

By 1969, most of the group whom I had loved so very much, The VISTA and Peace Corps volunteers, the  young men who were my first insight in to the relationships of men and women, so many people from the governing body of downtown Washington, D.C.,

I loved my job in many ways, because I liked to make people feel good and I did not really put it together until later that other than the fact I could read my boss’s impossible handwriting, which helped to get me hired.  I was also young and was expected to look my very best and at that time, most of the clients who came were men. I wanted to think that it was all my brain power, but as I have aged, I know that they placed someone at the front desk who had some poise and maybe a glimmer of youthful beauty, which I am loathe to admit. So if you came to our place off  Massachusetts Avenue in late 1968-69, you would have been greeted by me and I would have made you feel comfortable, important, and wonderful.  Insofar as Washingtonians go, I did have a deep respect for the lawyers, especially those in International Law and for those members of a future or then present Supreme Court. Then you were on my list of world’s smartest people of whom I did not mind showing some respect.  I usually did not bring bad days to work and even into later life, I tried to make it a rule that if something was wrong in my heart, people for whom I was responsible were going to have to be mind readers.

Personal issues got left on the doorstep, except I befriended the law librarian who introduced me to things like the knowledge that she and her family made The Marboro Music Festival a summer’s tradition and they knew about my betrothed’s school, the Curtis Institute of Music. The Marboro lovers were impressed with the credentials of the young man who would pick me up many days.  Suddenly I was in another world with all of these folks and I did not apologize for my not completing my own education, but I merely told the truth, that I was going to pick up school again when it was a time and that I did not need to work so hard.  That turned out to be a statement sort of like, “I am going back to school when my arms are broken, I can only walk with one crutch and I am blind presently, but eventually, I will see.” For an easier time was never going to exist, but again I learned everything which I could from those good people and my salary remained fairly good by Washington standards, so I had something to write home about now and then. Once again I found it very easy to marginalize what I had taken on and the job was sometimes very hard.  Try typing up International Law Statistics on an old IBM Selectric, greet a senator or two and then escort them to the famed conference room, which I might have prepared during my down time.

Kathy and Carole still kept some presence around for a little while, but their big venture was to hit the road and to do what people did back then. Hitchhiking out West was an alternative, but Carole had a car as well, so a time or two they headed for the happening place, California.  If you were just released from state prison, it was not unusual to hitchhike back in those days and now and then I wondered if I was missing out on the time of my life by learning about music festivals and planning to marry my boyfriend, for a lot of people made it sound as if it was the only and best time they ever lived.  After the hitchhiking days were over, most went home and married the boy left behind in Ohio or California that they had known all of their lives.

Our circle of friends kept growing in the service bands and we always had company or we were company in our spare time.  Disappointedly though, Jim and Diane had made a decision as a couple and when they made the announcement, I thought that a baby might be in the picture, for they were eight and ten years older than me. But it was one of those totally logical decisions made by couples in the 1960s, for they were going to sell all that they owned, move to Ireland and roam around the country making their living with Jim playing flute and Diane singing vocals and I had no idea what Wendell and Frank and I would ever do for the next Thanksgiving.

I felt broken, for Diane had been my best friend for well over a year and Jim, Frank and theater types all hung out together doing such things as improvisational theater now and then with a friend they called Hobbs. That was his last name. 

How many little pink hands would never feel their mother’s breast, nor take her milk, much less just lie in her arms, just because pregnancy was seen still as a woman’s shame.  I praised some of the old country preachers who were making some waves in churches by suggesting to fathers that they might have had a hand in creating a child and the younger pastors were picking up some of this as sermon and passing it on.  It would still take another decade, if not two, before women would be able to dream of themselves as equal partners and whether out of necessity of loss learned from lessons of enslavement, black women seemed to huddle around far earlier than the white women to take care of their pregnant girls. Unfortunately with the lack of teaching as to how to spend dollars provided as a service of our government, many of the women would find having children as an option to learning skilled labor, so in that respect public money was misused in most communities.  Yet even before that, I saw a remarkable love within the communities that were made up more of people of color which recognized first that a little child was a gift and a reason for celebration.  Poor white women, well in to the late 1970′s, would still see the burden of a newborn as something to be shared only when the equation of perfect family model was met. A mother and father and other children got big points for a job well done, but the sharing, the gathering and the grace of celebrating that mother to be was still awkward were it an unwed caucasian mother.  Oh, I ache for the children and the mothers who had to part. Know that sweet mothers, that someone and many of us still grieve for your loss and we will not forget you and those of you who were the babies. Your mother had little choice, so mourn for her and she will be mourning for you in the afterglow.

    “Goodbye” and so many would return less than the sons who had left, because the painkillers available on the battlefield this time which could be bought for a price were things like heroin and per every war, the alcohol flowed like honey.

These moments were golden, as golden as I would find the summer hills of California one day and I will not live my life asking, “What were my happiest moments?,” then I would probably give them an example of 1969 when I was filled with an emotional chalice which seemed love filled, did not tip over from doubt or shame, and a whole new world seemed to be dancing on the sun rays cast down to me from a boy from San Francisco who had chosen me.  Never once before in my life had I the confidence of one’s conviction, but that Frank meant it when he said we were to marry when the spring came again;  I must have sparkled like the imaginary diamond worn on my hand.  I did not need the ring as proof, for I had better;  I had the man that I was going to marry — And doubts could not prevail.

  I cannot rule the world, nor can I see a day soon when the people of the world finally say that we are all brothers and sisters under Heaven, because greed, anger, hostility and vendettas are the rule of this new world and where is it leading us?” 

It appears that we are brewing more danger, becoming less free everywhere and endeavoring to stop snowballing into a universal catastrophe. So I can only give you a memory of playing on our nation’s streets when the peacemakers began to chant the word; “Peace.”  It is not impossible to have global peace, for we can now communicate across the waters and to the edge of other planets, but it will take leaders of all nations to vow such to be their mission.  Oh yes; If I ruled the world, then I would make that purpose my ultimate goal.  Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Georgia, with his Nobel Peace Prize has honored this goal more than anyone on the face of the earth;  So is it implausible to take the vow that we are all marching toward that goal;  Oh, “Dr. Martin Luther King,” “Mother Theresa,” and the great; “Pope John Paul,” help us out here, for we just keep messing up.  Winter has passed in Washington and the Azaleas bloom in every hamlet there, all colors, so beautiful;  Let the children and theirs know the winters of our lives which we lived are still achievable;  Oh yes, someday.

WELCOME NEW FRIENDS CHECKING OUT MY NEW WEBLOG BOOK, “Pinkhoneysuckle.”

I especially welcome friends from Mexico and the Philippines who checked in today along with several others across the United States.  If one approaches this  book which is on its road to completion after several more chapters from me and a prologue about being an Appalachian boy growing in to manhood from my brother, Robert Van Everett, a sweet truthful reflection of his years there and his years of adjusting to big city life as well which will be added at the end of this raw copy of Pinkhoneysuckle for convenience sake, then you are going to have a very good idea that though we write in different styles,  we are both independently opening doors to an Appalachia which you may be shocked to understand as existing to this day.  We, in no manner, claim ownership to the desperate conditions of our upbringing, but it is time that America woke up to a place, a time and a people who need help.

I believe that both of us agree that the 1960s War on Poverty failed miserably.  Right now there are people all over these areas who could benefit from learning organic farming to show that there is a place for small farmers.  No one taught us to irrigate fields or about the benefits of the homeopathic medicines of our ancestors growing within our woods.  And instead of welfare checks, which discouraged many people from learning to can, to sew or to work in local factories,  people were left to believe that free and fast money could be thrown at a problem and all wood be fixed.  We never heard of programs like, “Farm Aid,” for we were the hidden people.  We got stuck somewhere between The Civil War and The Cold War and though our boys were the first to volunteer for the armed services,  a lot of skills learned there were not transferrable to the, “Wide Spots On The Road,” as our towns were known back then. The arrogant of this age still talk about much of the Southern United States rural areas as if nothing good comes from them.

I am going to challenge some of you to get in your cars;  Take Route 64 down and through Tennessee – All the way across the heartland of the South and then get off those roads and go up to places like Pisgah, Alabama up on Sand Mountain and look across from the top of the mountain to the Valley below. You are in the heart of areas where TVA made dams to create electricity and to open up areas of recreation,  but for the people left,  it has been a hard row to hoe, as we might say among the many generations who grew up in the hills and valleys.  People are going to be curious about you,  but offer a handshake and shop at the local stores and farmer’s markets and look for some good fishing places.  For myself, I happen to know that the biggest and best catfish are caught in the water near the nuclear plant in Mother’s old area around Coon Creek.  People, in the South a raccoon is a coon and whatever you do,  do not come back with some dumb racist complaint about this remark.  A place called, “Carvers,” just below Sand Mountain, has the best catfish fried in cornmeal as the Lord intended it to be cooked.  You need to know though that it is in or near Hollywood, Alabama though, because a strong wind comes up and blows off the sign now and then.  Mom and Dad had their last and 65th wedding anniversary there back around 1998.

But if you approach my book and I would hope you would read an entry or more, then please start at Chapter 1 and move on, because you are going to miss so much of the culture which is genuine to the South, which keeps giving its sons in wars, but where all the factories closed which they might have come home to.  Other areas of the Appalachians suffer the same issues  and the line between rich and poor is growing even larger as you know from television news and reading your papers;  Do we not all endeavor to keep up with what is going on around us?  Most of our people of color moved North until the South started growing again.  Atlanta and North Georgia became a megapolis, but there are still black poor in the country and small towns of my youth.  Again, please just extend a hand and not a hand out.  I would like to see the Gates  Foundation and Mr. Warren Buffet and a whole lot of rich people just admitting that we have some third world issues in America. My brother and I can only tell you our story.

God Bless you all for checking in.  #54 entry to Pinkhoneysucle should be coming out to you before the weekend, but while I have you around,  I wanted to tell you what some of my story is about me and thousands more like me;  Though I have been blessed and I think part of my blessing means that I open my heart in this story.  Easter Peace;  Happy Passover; Welcome Springtime.

Barbara Everett Heintz

Author, Pinkhoneysuckle