The old joke is that the wolf wouldn't dare to have come to our door; we would have cooked him for dinner. One thing we learned well in our West Virginia home was that Christmas had little to do with presents. It's not that we didn't get any, because our mother particularly did what she could, but we were glad to receive whatever we got, without regard to what we wanted. Christmas tree or not, what I remember about Christmas was a time of worship and celebration.
The little church across the holler always had a Christmas play when I was a child, and it always told, in one form or another, the real Christmas story. All of us got a little present from the church, consisting of a paper bag with chocolate candy drops and some fruit, usually an apple and an orange. On one or two occasions, at least, this present was better than what we got at home, though we always appreciated something from Mother and Daddy more.
Traditionally, we exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, with Daddy playing the part of Santa Claus, without the red suit and white beard. My oldest sister and her family were usually there with us, and eventually one of my other sisters and her family. Things got a little crowded in our little four room house at that time, particularly when it was too cold to go outside.
We did have a Santa Claus at the church when I was young, and my mother taught us about him, but it was never the main thing about Christmas. I grew up knowing that Christ was the most important part of the word "Christmas", and our very poverty meant that materialism never replaced that simple truth. As an adult, I have become increasingly aware how much damage the Santa Claus myth has done, not only to Christmas, but to our entire culture. I am thankful that my own heritage, however imperfect, carries with it the firm belief that without the birth of Jesus, there is no Christmas.
My brother Joe was the oldest boy in the family, about 12 years older than me. Daddy relied on him heavily, along with brother Jack, to carry on the work of our family farm. Most of us remember him, though, for his love of his guitar. He didn't play fancy, and he didn't know a lot of chords, but we loved to hear him. A lot of the times we got together to sing happened to be when Daddy was drunk, a state my brother often shared. No matter that we almost always sang the same old country songs and hymns, we enjoyed doing them anyway.
Joe loved Hank Williams, and I think he sang about every song ol' Hank ever wrote. Beyond that, he loved to pick Wildwood Flower, a song every local guitar picker had to know back in the day. On a few occasions, when I wanted to sing some new-fangled song like one by Johnny Horton, he would complain I wasn't singing it right, because he couldn't find a chord that fit. None of that mattered; he was still the family's resident musician, and we loved and admired him for it.
I recall vividly the night in September 1967 when Joe got up from the bed where we were sleeping, sitting on the side as he pulled his boots on. Hours later, I woke up to hear the wail of an ambulance siren going by. It wasn't until much later in the day that we discovered that Joe, only 30 years old, had been killed in a car accident with two of his friends. It was a devastating blow, especially to Daddy, who refused at first to believe the news.
It was largely because of my memories of my brother that I began learning to play the guitar about a year and a half later. That has been one of the great blessings of my life for almost 40 years. It is not at all unusual for my mind to go back to Joe when I play, particularly when I play "Wildwood Flower".
Two of my daddy's brothers were long-time teachers and school principals in Fayette County, West Virginia. The oldest, Uncle Hugh, played a key role in the lives of all our family. He offered us the use of the farm which became our home for most of my childhood. When Daddy got in financial trouble because of his drinking, which he often did, it was Uncle Hugh who bailed him out. Each of my brothers and sisters can probably point to times when he helped them out; I can think of many for myself. I spent one whole winter with him during my senior year in high school, while the rest of my family was out of state.
Hugh Cavendish was a confirmed bachelor, and if his occupation was teacher, his lifelong love was farming. He owned large amounts of farmland, and with his brother, Herb, raised hundreds of head of cattle, and the grain and hay to feed them. Daddy and my two brothers often worked for him during the hot summer months. I spent short periods in the hayfields, too, but it was far from my favorite thing to do.
Uncle Hugh had a rough exterior, and was not above bursts of righteous anger, but underneath he was a kind, even gentle, man. He wasn't known for a great sense of humor, but he was capable of a dry brand of it that was typical of his entire family. Sometimes you didn't know your leg was being pulled until a rare grin split his face; open laughter was even more rare for him.
The other teacher in the family, M. B., was better known by the affectionate nickname of "Poodle", a label he picked up as a boy for a reason that is not entirely clear. He was my high school principal, and I was not far removed from being a privileged character as a result. Both he and Hugh were church members, and practicing Christians for most of their lives, but I spent more time attending church with Uncle Poodle. He loved to hear our family group sing, and would almost always request that we sing his favorite hymn, "How Great Thou Art". He married twice, and outlived both of his wives, both good women.
Uncle Hugh died at an advanced age of cancer, but not before arranging to pay the funeral expenses of both my father and my mother. Poodle died at an old age as well, of Alzheimer's. Both of these men had a great influence in shaping my view of life, and of what is right and wrong in it. I look forward to meeting them both in glory.
When I was growing up, we lived about half a mile from the nearest church, a little one-room, white frame building. That was a rough half mile, though, down to the bottom of the hill, over the creek, and up another hill. In our vernacular, it was "cross the holler" from the house. It was the only church I knew until I was in high school.
Mt. Zion Methodist Church was built around the turn of the twentieth century, and served a small congregation on Hawver Road, where it stood, and nearby Saturday Road. Most of the people who attended there were elderly, but besides our family there were a number of other children and teenagers. We rarely had a piano player, so we sang most of the hymns acapella, at a painfully slow speed. The preachers we had were mediocre, but I was saved during a revival featuring an old white-haired preacher named Rev. Pennington. He continued preaching until a very advanced age.
One of the leaders of the church while I was young was an old man named Percy Potter. He walked with a cane, and lived in an old, rundown house just down the hill from the church. I didn't have much appreciation for him at the time, but he knew the Bible, and he had a kind heart.
One of the interesting features of having Sunday School in the church was that all the classes met there in the same room; there was no choice in that. The young people met in the back left corner, with the men a couple of pews toward the front, the women on the right rear, and the small children on the right front. Eventually, the adults combined into a single class. As simple and unadorned as it was, that little church was where I was first grounded in the Word.
A number of years after I left, the church added an addition at the rear, with classrooms and a basement. Attendance has fallen off dramatically over the years, and now attendance averages only about 15 people, mostly from my family. Most of the older people who attended there are long dead, and the two or three who remain won't be around long. The church is gradually dying out, which is sad. It forms a large part of my spiritual heritage, and holds many fond memories for me. I do pray the Lord will see fit to breathe new life into it.
Reading books did not become an important part of my life until about the fourth grade. I don't know what it was about that period that piqued my interest along literary lines, but my memories of books at that point are quite vivid. We didn't have much in the way of books at home, a four room shack in the West Virginia hills, but I did read everything I could find there. These were mostly old text books, like history and geography, and the greater part of a Bible. In my school classroom, we had a little library, and i literally read every book there. The only ones I remeber had to do with horses, like the ponies of Chincoteague Island. I do know that, by the end of that school year, I had read 72 books, and my teacher gave me some kind of sticker.
It was also from that point that my grades in school went from mediocre (B's and C's) to very good (A's and B's). I always had a knack for being teacher's pet, and by the fifth grade my grades were good enough to justify my teacher's approval. My whole life was wrapped up in reading, which was an escape from the harsh reality of living in grinding poverty with a father rapidly progressing toward alcoholism. At home, most of the new books that came around were paperback westerns, and i read them as voraciously as anything else. My record for a single day, as I recall, was seven.
People in the real world were much less important to me than the fantasy world I found in books. The friends I had in school were not at all close, and most of the kids found me aloof and distant. I don't blame reading for that; it just helped reinforce my isolation. As I got older, up through high school, this was less the situation, but I still did not socialize much beyond a small circle of friends.
My interest in reading did not subside. I developed a preference for murder mysteries and sci fi, with the occasional spy thriller. On the occasions when I was working and living alone, I haunted the public libraries, and would usually check out as many books at once as they would let me. The waterhed came when I got married, and my interests turned to more domestic everyday affairs, like raising a family and paying bills.
I still enjoy reading a good book, mostly fantasy along the lines of The Lord of the Rings, but most of my reading now is in the Bible. Much of the success I had throughout school I credit to the unconscious learning of study habits, vocabulary and language structure I learned over many years of reading. I no longer need it as an escape from reality, but the pull of a good story is still a very powerful one.