Christmas Appalachia 1965

[HerNameIsBuffy]

I ran ran across that documentary on youtube and it really moved me and brought fundies to mind, even though it's not what it was about.

From 1965 which is only a couple of years before I was born - such a stark contrast in how the media presents things then compared to know.  Frank statements about their abject poverty and no softening of the message.  

people featured talking about how their kids aren't in school due to lack of proper clothing, concern over what their lives will be without an education, families having child after child while expressing fear of the kids they have not having enough to eat or basic necessities.  But no mention of the elephant in the room...why are you having more when you cannot care for those you already have?

i wonder what these people would think of some of the fundies we talk about.  Not the Bates or the Duggars with their money - but like the Nauglers...choosing to deny their children an education, choosing to raise them without running water or a decent home. Would they understand why anyone would chose to underecuate and deprive their children when they are alternatives?

anyway..just made me sad.  And extremely grateful for my life.  I don't wallow but there are times I feel bad for not being able to give my kids all I wanted to give them in life...sometimes resent life not being as easy as I would like.  Then I watch something like this that happened in my lifetime (as I doubt all their problems vanished in the following couple years before I showed up) and I think I need to eat a big bowl of stfu because I clearly have no concept of living life of this kind of hardship.  

 

 

 

 

[Arete]

That was so very, very heartbreaking

[albanuadh_1]

I thought that people in the village I grew up in were poor, including our family but NOTHING compared to this!

[RosyDaisy]

I've heard the stories first hand and have my great-great grandmother's midwife journal. Life in Appalachia was beyond horrible. Thus the mass exodus of some to bigger cities to find factories. Also, this kind of poverty was not limited to Appalachia. It was also in many rural southern areas.

[formergothardite]

Thank you for sharing this. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

My Grams was from the Ozarks - born at the turn of the last century into a family that migrated there from Appalachia.  It's a shared culture in many ways, from my understanding.

We used to laugh at how she said she was glad Grandpa was easy to love because she's have married the devil himself to escape to a city.  She thought the worst fate she could suffer was marrying a local boy...she married a handsome Irishman she barely knew solely because he would take her to Chicago.

As a kid I thought of it as like a Jinger Duggar thing (long before Jinger Duggar was even alive) that she just knew she wanted to live somewhere more exciting or whatever...the more I learn about her early life the more I realize she wasn't running to anything, she was running away from the devil you know to the the devil you don't...where maybe your kids have a shot at a better life.  

I don't know the extent of the deprivation she knew growing up - they did own land and had a farm so while poor I got the impression that food wasn't quite as scarce for her as for others, but leaving was the only way she was going to live in a home with indoor plumbing or her children access to consistent education.  

 

[TXGirlInAMaterialWorld]

One of my favorite books growing up was "Christy" by Catherine Marshall.  It is a fiction book but based on stories of Catherine's mother moving from Nashville (I think) to Appalachia to teach school in the early 1900's.  

[danvillebelle]

Thanks for sharing that; I have a thing for Appalachia and I will watch it later today.

My Nana grew up in Eastern KY in the 20's and 30's.  One of six children.  Horrible stuff.  Absolute grinding poverty.  She watched her mother die in the bed while pregnant with 7th child; baby had died, no money for a doctor, mother died of blood poisoning and sepsis.  Their house was burned down because her father testified against the wrong person in court (serious Hatfields and McCoys-type shit).  He remarried a woman with 4 of her own kids and there were so many they couldn't feed them all; my Nana and 3 of her siblings shipped off to live with oldest sister who was married (and a hateful, mean woman).  

All the siblings married and got the hell out as quickly as they could.  The one brother went to NY at age 19 and NEVER came back except to visit once or twice.  My dad remembers going to visit in the late 40's and his grandfather and family were still living in a one-room house with no electricity and no running water (outhouse).  

[Seahorse Wrangler]

THanks for sharing..I don't know much  American history but it's something I want to know more about.

[danvillebelle]

Seahorse Wrangler, just FYI, sadly, it's not history in a lot of places in Appalachia.  There are many people, most horrifyingly senior citizens, who live pretty close to the conditions in that documentary TODAY.  And prescription drug addiction is rampant, destroying what little opportunities there are for some people to get education or build any kind of savings from their already poor-paying jobs.  If you want a heartbreaking (and yet sometimes inspiring) view, look up the video "American Hollow" on Youtube.  It was done by Rory Kennedy and is very good IMO.

[choochoo]

I know this thread is old, just wanted to add that Christy moved from Asheville, NC across the mountain to near Newport, Tn.  

  Sadly this isn't all in the past as someone up thread pointed out.  When I was growing up in the late 80's and early 90's  my mother's family was still living this way.  My grandmother lived in a house with no bathtub or shower, just a kitchen sink and a toilet.  When we were dropped off to spend the weekend with her we took baths in a washtub in the living room in front of the woodstove.  I also had a great uncle at the time living in a cabin in the mountains with an outhouse.  

[ophelia]

Thank you for posting this documentary. I don't know why, but Appalachia somehow gets under my skin and interests me a lot.

 

Does anyone of you have recommendations for documentaries showing the modern day poverty in this area?

 

[OGEmoji]

I live in central Kentucky, and work with the public from all over the state. Sadly, this kind of poverty still largely exists in the state. The economy relies on struggling  industry (coal mining and tobacco farming), and there is a huge resistance to outsiders and change. It is hard to watch, and hard to know that people like the Naugs willingly subject their kids to that. I have a friend whose husband decided he would also be an off grid homesteader. He quit work, relies on her LPN salary, and built a "cabin" in the middle of eastern Kentucky and moved the wife and 2 kids there. Thankfully the kids are allowed to go to public school and get an education, but the whole move was so he could be lazy. It is infuriating.

 

I have my sights set on leaving the state, but I've been here my whole adult life and it is difficult to cut ties with the life I've created.

[fransalley]

I just stumbled on this topic.  I may dig up this documentary, because I'm also from Appalachia.  I was born in Harlan, Kentucky and I still have relatives there.  We moved away when I was four; I grew up in Florida.