Growing up in the mountains...
Is being called backwards and uneducated...
Being asked if you wore shoes in the summer...
Assumed to be unsophisticated...
Having your accent ridiculed...
Being called hillbillies and hicks...
But growing up in the mountains, you are heir to a legacy...
Ancestors who tamed the land, cut down trees without power tools and built homes without house plans.
Growing up in the mountains means you are only a generation or two from having to grow gardens because it was necessary to keep from starving-- not just as a quaint hobby...
Grandparents who smoked meat and dried beans for the long winter...
And carried water from a stream to cook and wash with...
A mountain accent is a blend of old English, Irish and Scottish--a tribute to your heritage.
Mountain mothers worked in the fields, tended their young, raised chickens and were masterful cooks. They kept their homes in order, and were usually the moral compass of the family.
Mountain fathers worked all day in the coal mines, worked in the fields, built their own house, made caskets for the deceased and could shoe horses.
Mountain people are resourceful, extremely hard working and innovative. They won't cower in safe spaces. They were the originators of dealing with whatever life threw at them. They never expected handouts or thought that they deserved anything.
If you are from the mountains, be proud of who you are...where you came from...and don't let anyone dismiss you. Show the world your grit.
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Story credit: Douglas Couch
Photo credit: Joe Clark [Retrieving water from the well], photograph, Date Unknown; https://digital.library.unt.edu/.../67531/metadc489387/m1/1/: accessed November 14, 2020, University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.
Hi Brock,
ReplyDeleteI was "Blessed" to be married to a Sampson County, from Roseboro, NC "COUNTRY GIRL!!!" In a few daze, the 23rd, will be 11 years since she left us to be with our Lord!!! She was from the "Sand Hills!!"... Not quite the "Mountains!!" But still... it was "COUNTRY!!!"
We get ridiculed "down here" in the "BOOT!!!," the "Swamp" S/E Louisiana.... TOO!!!
That's OK, we all know who we are, where we came form and couldn't care less about what "THEY" think of us.....
Why yes I think I'll have another "Bourbon and Branch Water!!!".. and if you ask "THEM" what "Branch Water" is "THEY" would have no clue!!,, 'Cuz in daze gone by the preferred water was from the "Branch Stream" that fed into the Main stream as the "Branch Stream" had fewer impurities in it!!.... But we already knew that!!!!
Audentes, Fortuna, Iuvat!!!!,
skybill
Bourbon and Branch Water
DeleteClose enough for government work! I'll be coming to CA for Christmas, by the way and you may have already seen the link below.
https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2014/02/mint-juleps-general-buckner.html
I’m branch kin with a few, lol
ReplyDeleteBranch kin and branch water. :)
DeleteUsed to be the old joke when someone ask you if they were kin, and you said yea, we are branch kin, I pissed in the branch and he drank out of it. I gotta a good spring on my property and that water is as sweet as it can be. Got lucky there.
Delete