Some of my earliest memories of my childhood involved a little 105-acre farm Out the End of Red Hot.  I remember the rolls of hay laid out along the cemetery fence, how me and my cousins would chase each other on those rolls, bounding from one to the next.  I remember picking blackberries on the hill with my grandmother, Pauline, impervious we were to the thorns and briars.  I always look back in amazement, and I’m sure many share the sentiment that it is a miracle that any of us make it out of childhood alive.  I think of those thorns though, and the ancient rope swings into Tygarts creek, which made up the southern edge of the property.  I think of catching skittish little crawdads down on the creekbed, clueless about what other dangers lay below those slow, muddy waters.  I think of those humid afternoons either working or playing (or playing when we should have been working) on those barn tiers, some thirty feet off the ground.  I recall the countless tumbles we took off of the rusted tobacco setter, so focused on our work that we didn’t have time to brace ourselves for the jolt the tractor had just received from some unseen hole in the ground.   For me, it’s especially awe-inspiring that any wandering youngin’ of these hills made it to puberty.

            Pauline Harlow was born in 1933 in a small coal-mining town town in Bartley, West Virginia.  When she was but six years old, those mountains made their first mark on her when an explosion in the No.1 mine killed her father, my great-grandfather; along with 90 other miners.  Perhaps it’s a matter of perspective on whether this was a good thing or bad, that Pauline Harlow (eventually Tussey) never left these prehistoric landforms that we collectively refer to as ‘Appalachia’.  A true child of the mountains though, that lady knows better than most how to live off the land.  Today a formal education is compulsory, across America all elementary school children learn the same historical events, the same spellings, the same arithmetic, and so on.  As a child though I receieved a second, much more informal education.  I was receiving the same education that had been passed down for decades through my family and many others like it.  My ‘other’ education was rural living; and my classrooms were the hills, the bottoms, the creeks, the deer trails and tractor roads, as well as everything in between.  To say that I was only a mere pupil though would be inaccurate.  In a family in which I had 7 aunts and uncles, who begat a plethora of cousins, both to learn from and teach, there was never a lack of ‘lesson plans’.  In that atmosphere, I learned what it is truly like to be part of a family.  Not unlike an old metal chain, rusted yet dependable, we as links in that chain were all interconnected and depended on the others to stand firm and hold true.  And the lock to that chain, though not all shiny and new, could be counted on to hold the rest of us together.  The lock to that chain, the keeper of our family, was Pauline Tussey.

            To say though that I was only a small cog in a bigger wheel, to imply that any of us were interchangeable, would be misleading.  We each had our specific quirks, roles, duties; and to subtract or substitute any one of us would allow that chain to fall apart.  Honesty, patience, pragmatism, these were some of the traits that I gleaned from Pauline, and these traits determined my place in the family.  I was one part architect, one part game tracker, three parts arbitrator, and two parts ‘back-porch psychiatrist’.  I remember several times throughout my childhood, cousins both younger and older, coming to me for advice in their personal lives.  I remember having to settle countless disputes, both intra-family and also involving neighbors.  One such dispute arose over a felled deer, both sides disagreeing on which side of the fence it fell on.  When our neighbor stubbornly refused to admit that he had dragged the deer over to his property, I politely reminded him that he needed our hay fields for his cattle to graze and that we could turn off that faucet any time we liked.  I recall one cold November night, extremities numb and teeth chattering, helping a cousin look for a whitetail buck that he had shot hours before.  The big hand on the clock rested halfway past eleven when we found the buck, which in its dying moments (apparently there were plenty) managed to circumscribe almost the entire property in blood droplets.  I would do these things without thought, because I knew if I had a problem, who would be there for me.  In that dynamic, Out the End of Red Hot, we all leaned on each other.  A diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles; carried like dandelion seeds on the winds of modern commerce, carried away by jobs, careers, families.  But to those involved, there was one and only one “Out Home”, that quaint,  little one-story home and the land surrounding it Out the End of Red Hot. 

            When one sits down and reads various essays about this little corner of the world that we call ‘Appalachia’, one tries to glean from these essays what the author feels about the region.  To quote J.A. Williams, “From this standpoint, it is possible to see Appalachia as a zone of interaction among the diverse peoples who have lived in or acted upon it, as it is also their interactions with the region’s complex environment”.  All in all, I think this is a nothing-if-not impartial assessment of Appalachia.  I think this to probably be the best way to express the notion of Appalachia in black-and-white, because the shades of gray in between are far too numerous even to ponder.  It is my belief though that Mr. Casual Reader can dissect Williams’ definition, cut off a piece with yonder knife there, chew on it for awhile, and can fit each part of this definition to their own Appalachian experiences.  Here, I’ll show you how:  Let’s take the first part of this interpretation of Appalachia, “a zone of interaction among the diverse peoples”.  To apply this to my own extended family now: Yes, we were all indeed from the same gene pool, but even in a closely related, ethnically homogenic family, amazing diversity can be found.  Some cousins were fat, some athletic, some incredibly bright, some a little inept, hell, the margin between highest and lowest family income among our parents was still six figures.  So not only was there tremendous genetic diversity, but economic diversity as well.  I believe that the case of my family can be easily extrapolated to fit some basic patterns of Appalachia.  We all have acquaintances that, although having also grown up in Appalachia and sharing many of the same experiences, are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum in many ways.  In both cases however, and again I think this true both for my own family and for most (if not all) native Appalachians; no matter how different we seem to be on the outside, deep down inside we know that we are all connected, both to each other as well as these mountains, these valleys, these cricks, these fields, and this land.  So when Williams tells us that Appalachia is a zone of interaction among the diverse peoples and their interactions with the region’s environment, we have to look beyond the objectiveness of this definition.  We have to allow ourselves to get lost on those old gravel backroads, overgrown with kudzu.  We have to let ourselves examine those old-timers, the salt of the Earth, and let them reveal to us their life experiences.  We have to go out in the sticks, find that lone black family that has lived and thrived in these achromatic mountain communities, and ask them what it is to be Appalachian.  And after you have logged all of these miles, talked to all shades and hues, sipped Bordeaux with the elites and swigged a Mason jar of moonshine with the poor white trash; you will find that no matter what mask a person may wear, they cannot drive Appalachia from their soul.  The ‘Appalachian culture’, for us, is innate.  Before I wrap this up I want to evaluate that word, “culture”.  If you want the textbook, academic definition of the word culture, then you can look it up, because that definition means nothing outside of the classroom.  Culture, to me, is the life-blood that courses through the warm, arterial channels of our humanity.  Culture defines humanity. Culture is, most simply, Where You Come From.  A loss of culture results in death in three respects: A loss of that ‘life-blood’ leaves us cold and hollow, if we lose that humanity then we are no different than the basest of creatures, and if we forget Where We Come From then we are destined to wander aimlessly, with no direction, listless and confused.  Without culture, we are nothing.

three disparate baseball diamonds shoved

together to form an expansive, shapeless conglomerate. 

Blistering, crushed red brick

leaving its painful trademark on sunburned skin. 

Chatter and taunts from dugouts,

children who, no matter how

passionate or competitive, were never

able to outshine their parents’ fervor. 

Capitalism at work on the backs

of these young dreamers’ jerseys. 

One can’t help but ponder if the

“Murderer’s Row” Yankees were also

sponsored by local real estate agents. 

I’d like to think that they were. 

Dreams were lived out on

these manicured fields. 

Many more dreams died. 

I played first base.

slivers of sunlight

to the east cast off the blanket of dark that

dominated this country only twenty minutes before. 

The stars can still be seen, faintly,

just out of reach of the oncoming sunlight. 

The hillside to the east that the sun seems to be slowly

ascending is bathed in color as the entire horizon

in this direction is a magnificent combination of

reds, yellows, purples,

and every imaginable hue in between. 

Between us and the early sunrise, oak trees fill the portrait. 

The oaks stand tall and sturdy,

almost regal in their stubbornness to withstand

this unforgiving country. 

The leaves that once sprang from their

branches are mostly gone, as it is mid-November now.

 Small, condensation-ridden spider webs sag

in between the mostly bare limbs,

webs few in number because most of the

woods-spiders have made their annual pilgrimage

back below the soil for winter.  

In this early morning setting of peaceful emptiness

we can almost hear the sounds of a squirrel chittering,

or a turkey coming down from its roost. 

When we look closer, however, we behold

an awesome sight.  Steam pluming from its nostrils,

chest swelled proud, stands a mature male whitetail

that rivals even the stubborn oaks in girth. 

Upon his head an astounding set of antlers,

contrasting with the darkness

so greatly that they appear alabaster in color. 

He seems to be momentarily transfixed by the coming

sunrise that he views through the oaks,

the onset of another day. 

In one of these stout oak trees, twenty feet

above the leaf litter of the forest floor,

the viewer spies a dark figure standing on a platform.

This dark figure, his back facing the eastward sun,

cares nothing about the picturesque horizon behind him. 

The dark figure registers the chittering squirrels

with only the slightest acknowledgment. 

The figure, in this moment, ignores

the rest of his surroundings.  The figure is the epitome

of absolute concentration.  He stands on a small

steel platform, facing us, never knowing or caring

that he is being watched in that instant of time. 

He stands fully upright, back stiff, every muscle

and ligament in his body pulled taut in anticipation. 

In the dark figure’s hands we see an instrument that –

although new in technology –

has been around for millennia.  An instrument that,

having only started with wood and

dried animal sinew, has brought to a terminus

the existence of countless numbers of Man and Beast alike. 

He holds a modern version of an ancient tool,

a fitting instrument considering he,

at the basest part of his existence,

is simply nothing more than

a modern version of an ancient Man. 

His killing-tool drawn back, fingers

holding the string reaching back right

to the corner of his tightly pursed lips. 

Guided in a downward angle, the arrow

poised to deliver a lightning-quick death-blow

whenever the Man wishes it to. 

This man, with his dark camouflage draped from

head to toe, his face dissimulated by mixing the

right amounts of green, brown, and black paint.

Beyond the camouflage face-paint, a clenched jaw,

an image of grisly aplomb. 

Set in this dour face are two eyes focused

in almost to the point of closed, thin white slits

that are completely immersed in the task at hand. 

We cannot take our gaze away from the man’s eyes,

completely animated yet totally devoid of anything

that could be considered a human emotion. 

One would take pity on anything that these eyes were focused on,

because it would see that these eyes are

unwavering, unflinching, barely human at all. 

These eyes, despite their elaborate nerve network,

optical rods and cones, are only able to see

one action in this moment: The Kill.

We step back from the portrait and move on,

leaving Man and Beast, frozen in this small instant of time. 

As we leave, we take notice once again

of the sun trying to peek out over the horizon,

and the faint stars of the night-sky

that are just out of reach of the oncoming sunlight.

   These photographs are from the day my Dad and I constructed a quaint little tree stand in the crotch of those two branches in that rather large oak tree.  This construction was occurring on land that I leased along with my brother-in-law and a handful of Kentucky State Troopers.  I intentionally included the picture of my old truck to demonstrate the topography of this land:  Of 800 total acres, that strip of grass and brush represents roughly the flattest land on the entire property.  Tennessee Gas owns the pipeline that runs the entire length of the property, and they were so kind to come along and clear that brush every five years.  The remainder of the land consisted of steep hills and some of the thickest tracts of woodland that I’ve ever seen.  It could be described (dubiously) as a “bow-hunter’s paradise” since that’s the only means of hunting that the land really permitted.

   I have often written on the relationships that Appalachains have with the land – working with the land, making the land work for you – and nothing in my life exemplified the concept of making the land work for you more than my experiences with this property.  As I alluded to, this land left its wildlife inhabitants a definite home-court advantage with its vegetation and topography.  To overcome this, I (and the others on the lease) had to adapt and become very creative indeed in our approach to successfully hunt this property.  In this way I believe that we all identified with the truly Appalachian experience of finding innovative solutions to problems presented by a stubborn landscape. 

These are various pictures of my grandmother’s farm out in Red Hot, in Greenup County, Kentucky.  Much of eastern Kentucky is comparable to West Virginia in terrain, so as you can imagine, you make good use of every foot of flat land that can be found.  This farm is 105 acres, and of that maybe 30 acres are flat enough to be put to agricultural use. 

            The first is a photograph of the lower end of the farm in wintertime.  The house, barn, and smokehouse can be seen, all three structures are over sixty years old.  On the southern edge of the property, Tygarts Creek – one of the tributaries of the Ohio River – can be seen.  Beyond Tygarts, Rt. 7, which spans the entire breadth of Greenup County, is in the background.

This next photograph is a photograph of Tygarts Creek.  This creek offered all sorts of recreational opportunities to the children growing up nearby.  Cold, deep pools of water up to ten feet deep to cool you off on those sticky July days.  An endless abundance of muskie, bass, and bluegill to be caught.  In the particular picture, the creek is rather low – in spring when the rain pours for three days straight, this creek will often rise twenty feet above the level shown here.

The next is a photograph of me filling one of the deer feeders we have positioned at key spots on the farm.  As anyone who utilizes this strategy knows, fifty pounds of corn in one feeder will only last two days, so this tends to be quite a costly venture. 

            The fourth photograph is of a tree stand my father and I built.  As you can see we found three trees (the tree on the left forks at the base) that form somewhat of a rectangle.  From this we were able to fabricate a platform stand, complete will walls – and yes – a tarpaulin roof.

            The final photograph is the payoff you will receive for the hours put in such tasks as building your own tree stand and filling those feeders every few days.  This guy was taken last fall in the very first hour of that tree stand being used. 

            Honestly, I couldn’t begin to list the multitude of Appalachian ideals espoused to my experiences with this particular piece of land.  Every nook and every cranny of this property brings back memories.  From the various implements contained within that musty, creaky old barn to the yearly battles struggling to contain the scrub and brush from escaping its borders to the rather smallish, humble home you see – all emblematic of the Appalachian ideals of hard work and humility.

Anyone who knows me well knows how loyal I am to University of Kentucky athletics.  My father received his degree from UK, so naturally from infancy onward I was raised in Wildcat attire.  Some of my earliest memories - in pre-school, no less – were of sitting next to the radio with Miss Peggy, listening to Kentucky play its early round games in the NCAA tournament while all of the other children were playing with blocks.  I recall crying myself to sleep on that fateful March night in 1992 when one Christian Laettner connected on his last-second shot.  Call me biased, but I truly believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Kentucky has the greatest fans in the country.  The legacy of Kentucky basketball speaks for itself, as illustrated in the first video.   Having been to several games at Rupp Arena, let me tell you something – the atmosphere of Rupp Arena is unmatched:  The whole arena descends into pitch-black darkness, 24,000+ rise to their feet in anticipation, then you hear that fierce, thunderous Wildcat roar and the entire building erupts with noise, shaking it to its very foundations.  No matter how many times you’ve been inside Rupp Arena and experienced this ritual, it still sends chills down your spine.