The year is currently 2020 and we are in the midst of a global covid pandemic. I often think about how living conditions have changed over the past 60 years to the point that the environment I grew up in and the environment of today has very little resemblance.
I hear, not only younger people, but even people in their thirties and forties complain about the inconvenience of wearing face mask and quarantining themselves. Yet these things do not phase me in the slightest. I grew up in quarantine. We didn't have all the entertainment that is available today. We learned to survive from the land. If the land could not provide it, we didn't need it.
Obviously, many people today did not grow up in the era of one black and white TV channel. If a puff of wind came through somebody had to go outside and manually turn the antenna that was attached to the house re-directing it toward Knoxville so we could connect reception with that one channel.
I grew up in a very rule poverty stricken area of Harlan County, Kentucky in the heart of the Appalachia coal field. Yet, I never knew we were as poor as we were. We grew our own vegetables and we preserved our vegetables so we had plenty to eat throughout the year. During the spring and summer we had fresh vegetables direct from the garden. During the fall and winter we had canned vegetables that had been preserved during the last growing season.
In the spring dad and I planted a rather sizable vegetable garden. By July, it was time to begin canning green beans, corn, tomatoes, kraut, beets, pickles, chow chow among many other vegetable items from the garden. Often on Saturday mornings mom would allow me to sleep in a little, perhaps until 8:00 am. I would get up felling good from getting a little extra sleep that I wasn't accustomed to because I had to get up at 6 a.m. in order to catch the school bus through the week. I would yawn and stretch and step out onto the porch for some refreshing morning air when suddenly my heart would drop to my toes. It was then that I realized my dad had been up since the crack of dawn picking green beans. On the front porch was the evidence in the form of four to six bushels of green beans that had to be looked for insects, broken, and prepared for canning. It was going to be an all day activity. Following the breaking of the beans it was the washing and packing the fruit jars and tightening the lids in preparation for them to cook in a number 3 round aluminum wash tub sitting on cinder blocks in the backyard. My evening task would be to maintain the fire under the tub until the beans had cooked for their allotted time. Later we would allow the fire to die. Once the water had cooled a bit we would take the glass quart jars filled with freshly canned green beans out and set them on a towel on the kitchen table. To this day I can remember hearing the popping sound the jar lids made when sealing once they had cooled to a certain temperture. The popping sound was created when the outside pressure on the lid became stronger than the cooling inside pressure. Thus assuring the preservation of a home canned quart of green beans.
My dad always bought two pigs early in the spring and fed them all summer. By Thanksgiving weekend it was hog killing time. However, he only killed one. Much like Loretta Lynn's song "Coal Miner's Daughter," he would sell the second hog and buy my sister and me new shoes and school clothes.
My sister, Brenda, was nine years older than me. By the time I was six years old she was dating and entered into her first marriage at sixteen. Even before that she spent most of her summers in northern Ohio and southern Michigan with two of Dad's Brothers, Delbert and Arbie, and their families. Brenda was adopted by my parents when she was eighteen months of age. She was biologically the daughter of my dad's younger sister, Bernice. Mom and dad never kept from Brenda the true story and allowed Brenda to have a relationship with her biological mother. On occasion, in the summers she would go to southern Indiana and spend a week or two with Aunt Bernice. Whom she referred to as Mama Bernice. Due to our age difference and her frequent absence, I was literally raised an only child after the age of six. When you're an only child living in rural Appalachia you learn to be very creative in order to entertain yourself. I cannot express the number of hours I spent playing with my mother's basket of clothes pins building forts, houses, roads, and living in a fantasy land minus the leggoes that we could not afford. So being in isolation was a way of life for me growing up.
I was raised on Puckett's Creek. The head of Puckett's Creek is in Harlan County, Kentucky. When I was six years old we moved down the road about four miles into Bell County, Kentucky into the community of Tugglesville. As one travels Highway 72 along Puckett's Creek there is a different name for every wide place in the road.
When one first turns off of US Highway 119 and crosses the old one-lane Blackmont Bridge, the first little community is that of Blackmont which consisted of a small grocery store, a post office, a Pentecostal Church and a Baptist Church. A couple miles further one would drive between Tugglesville on the left and Black Snake on the right which combined consists of a small grocery store with gas and a Baptist Church. Occasionally when Reverend Cecil Miracle had the urge to hold a revival, a Pentecostal Church would emerge in somebody's garage or a rented house, and frequently in a tent.
A few yards further, we enter the community of Insull where the county line between Harlan County and Bell County separates the community down the middle. Perhaps the largest grocery store on Puckett's Creek was Reed Hale's grocery at Insull. Other than his grocery store there was the Baptist Church on the Bell County side and a Pentecostal Church on the Harlan County side. At this point we are exiting the Hulen, Kentucky mailing route and entering the Alva, Kentucky mailing route.
The next wide place in the road is Pathfork, Kentucky. Pathfork had its own post office. Again, we find a small grocery store, a mechanic shop, a barber shop, and at one time there was Tut Hubbard's custard and ice cream shop in addition to the Baptist Church and the Pentecostal Church. At the extreme eastern end of Pathfork was Granville Tipton's little grocery store of approximately 400 square feet. Don't let its size fool you. It had all the necessities. One has not lived until they have experienced a cold RC Cola and a moon pie or a package of salty peanuts poured down the neck of a cold RC Cola. Either combination could be bought for the going rate of 15¢ from Granville Tipton's little grocery store.
Over the next hill we finally arrive at Black Star. Of course, the first thing one sees is the Pentecostal Church. The Baptist Church is on the far eastern end of Black Star. Across the road from the Pentecostal Church was the Class A Blackstar Elementary and High School. The school closed in 1961 and burned sometime later. About a mile further east we come to the commissary owned by the Black Star Coal Company. During its hay day, this was the center of most of the social life of the Black Star community.
The commissary contained within its self a grocery store, clothing store, gas pump, and a barber shop. During the Christmas season the commissary converted into a Christmas wonderland that caused every wide eyed child that entered to be struck with awe. All of this was owned and controlled by the coal company. Coal miners were not paid with US currency. They were paid with script which could only be obtained and redeemed at the company's commissary. Tennessee Ernie Ford sang the song "Sixteen Tons." The lyrics of that song says, "I owe my soul to the company store" ... how true that was.
Behind the commissary, across from Old Doc Hodge's doctors office, was a community center and the Alva post office run by Postmaster Minnie Loftus...Yes, there were three post offices serving a six mile stretch of a sparcely populated Applachian hollow. Minnie was the Sunday school superintendent at the Black Star Pentecostal Church which we attended for many years. Minnie always started the Sunday morning with a smile on her face and a song in her heart... "Oh how I Love Jesus."
From the time one crosses the Blackmont Bridge and travels the length of Puckett's Creek to the far end of Black Star, approximately six miles, I would estimate that 95% or more of the people that lived along that route, and in the many hollows running perpendicular to Highway 72, were born on Puckett's Creek, their parents were born on Puckett's Creek, and their future children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren now live alone Puckett's Creek. Personally, I did not know anyone that had not been born in that area. I guess I assumed that wherever one were born God intended that they remain there for the entirety of their life. I was probably in my early teens before I learned that Minnie Loftus was from Rose Hill, Virginia. That amazed me. I was astounded that an outsider would come to Blackstar, Kentucky intentionally for a job. However, I am thankful that she did. She is one of my fondest childhood memories. Minnie never married and didn't have any children. She knew how poorly coal miners and their families lived. Many times, for no particular occasion, she would bring me a brand new shirt or pants bought...not at the commissary.
We lived in the Harlan County Coal Camp of Black Star until I was the age of six. We then moved about four miles west on Puckett's Creek to the Bell County community of Tugglesville. Almost all the adults that lived in that community worked in the coal mines or were retired coal miners. It appeared as if it was a foregone conclusion that when any male reached the age of sixteen they went into the coal mines. However, I think I understood why practically every adult male who lived on Puckett's Creek was part of the coal mining industry. In my mind I had come to the conclusion, especially after it was repeatedly pointed out to me by my parents and through my own observation, that if you did not have a sufficient education your only choice of survival was to go into the coal mines. Which was a job choice I did not aspire to. I remember as a child my mom once asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. My response was unspecific when I said, "I really don't know yet. But it has to be a job in which I will not get my hands dirty."
One of my childhood friends, James Perry, but the community knew him by his middle name, Henry, who was a couple years older than I, graduated from elementary school, wearing a suit that I let him borrow for the occasion. Like most of the young men in the community, Henry had never applied himself enough academically to even learn to read. He could recognize familiar words but was functionally illiterate. He wanted to get his driver's license but could not pass the written exam.
During my high school years I tutored Henry in reading. Even after I had entered college and my parents had moved to Tennessee, he often found transportation to come to our house so I could continue tutoring him to the point that he eventually passed the written driving test and he got his driver's license. I suppose it was during this time that I felt that I had the talent to teach. This one act of kindness on my part was perhaps the turning point in my decision to go into education. During his tutoring visits, I introduced him to a young lady that attended the same church that I did, Dana Massengill, and not long thereafter they were married.
During the first nineteen years of my life I can recall only knowing two people from my community that had a college degree. There were a few around the Puckett's Creek area that had nursing license, but to my knowledge only two acquaintances had a college degree. They were my elementary school principal, Rue Jackson, and his wife, Sarah Jackson, who was my third grade teacher. They were very much reclusive in the neighborhood. I never saw either of them in a community setting.
There was a third person with a college degree that I was aware of but had never met. His parents lived just at the bottom of the hill from where we lived. He was several years older than I and had left home to attended the University of Kentucky long before I started school. He graduated and gained employment in the Fayette County, Kentucky school system.
On 983, I was transferred from my first teaching position at Forge Ridge High School to head the math department at Powell Valley High School in Speedwell, Tennessee. As fate would have it, I finally met, Bobby Slusher, the third person with a college degree from Tugglesville. He was now my principal at Powell Valley High School. Even though I had never met Bobby Slusher, until that day he became my principal, he had always been somewhat of an inspiration to me. Because of him I realized that with hard work and dedication one did not have to remain in the poverty-stricken area in which God had seen cause to drop me.
Looking back on my twelve years living in the isolated community of Tugglesville, I realize that the uneducated neighbors had a positive influence upon me as well. They were all good people. Yet, I had a desire to do better. I had no desire to enter into the coal mining industry. By seeing the physical toll on the older men in my community as a result of years of strenuous laboring in the coal mines and looking years beyond their actual age made me realize that there was another life out there and it could not be realized by remaining on Puckett's Creek.
It was during those twelve years of my childhood and teen years that I attended Blackmont Elementary School and Bell County High School. I rode a school bus more than 15 miles to and from Bell County High School every day. Even in my teenage years, not having the financial means for gas to travel to school events, other than ball games and band events, I stayed home, much in isolation, and entertained myself.
My very best friend during those years was classmate and neighbor, Rose Senters. I was probably in the 8th grade before we had our first telephone which was on an eight party line. Bernice Miracle was a grumpy old neighbor who was a nurse. When she got home from a shift at the hospital she dominated the party line. One of Rose's and my favorite entertainment activity was to torment Bernice. I would pick up the phone at my house then Rose would pick up the phone at her house. I would pick up the phone at my house then Rose would pick up the phone at her house. Each time Bernice would hear the click of someone entering the line and Rose and I would learn a new sailor vocabulary! But we didn't care. Bernice never did determine who was interrupting her phone calls.
We lived in Tugglesville until I was nineteen and I left home to go to college at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee. When I left home for college, mom could not stand the thought of me living in a college dormitory. She felt there would be too much sin and evil around me. She felt that since I had lived such a sheltered life that I would be consumed by my newfound freedom and succumb to the evils of the devil. So she convinced my dad to sell and buy a small farm between Harrogate and Tazewell so I could move out of the dormitory and live at home. That was part of the story. The other part was...she could not live without me.
In 1975 I graduated from LMU with a degree in secondary education and certifications in mathematics, psychology, and behavioral science. During my college years I observed my mother's health quickly declining. She was a cronic diabetic and as the disease continued to ravage her body she came to the point that she often went into diabetic comas with little or no forewarning. With all the sacrifices that my parents had made in order to assure that I would have a more successful life then they had experienced, I was real disappointed that my mother was in the hospital and unable to attend my college graduation.
Following the graduation ceremony, of which I was so proud because I felt I had achieved my first major successful milestone in life, my dad, my sister and her husband, Mom's sisters Oralean and her husband Joe, and I all went to the hospital to tell Mom about my exciting accomplishment.
My mother said something to me that day from her hospital bed that was unexpected and cut my heart deeply. As I told her about the graduation ceremony she lay in bed with an emotionless look on her face yet keeping constant eye contact with me until I finished telling her about my exciting day. With no facial emotion at all, she looked me straight in the eyes and said, "The worst mistake I have ever made in my life was allowing you to go to college." I was stunned! I was speechless! I was hurt deeply that she was not celebrating my big accomplishment which she had sacrificed so much in order for me to achieve. At that moment I just could not understand from where she was coming. The others in the room were so engaged in conversation that none of them heard her comment. I quickly dismissed myself and stepped out of the room long enough to compose my wits. To this day, none of them ever knew why my mood suddenly changed from jubilant celebration to fighting back painful tears. Once I had time to reflect and understand the thinking that was behind mom's cutting comment, I was okay.
I could possibly describe my mother as a religious fanatic. In her beliefs there was no gray. You were either a god-fearing sinless Christian or you were going to hell. For nineteen years she had completely controlled my every thought, opinions, and beliefs. She now realized I had differing thoughts, opinions, and beliefs than did she as a result of leaving her protective cocoon and venturing out into the world where I had learned to think for myself. Even when presented with facts, if it was not in her belief pattern I was quickly told that I had the wrong facts.
I remember distinctly a discussion, perhaps you could call it an argument, that mom and I had when I was a sophomore in college taking world literature. For that particular assignment we were studying the poetry in the book of Psalms. During that assignment I occasionally ask Mom for her interpretation of a biblical passage. I knew that it was her belief that the Bible had been written by God's hand itself. She believed that God physically picked up a writing instrument and literally wrote the Bible. I explained to her that she was wrong. I gave her the historic fact that in 1611 King James of England assembled a group of learned men, priests, clergy, Rabbis, translators, and other religious leaders of the time and task them with translating the ancient scrolls into the English language. I explained it was not God's hand that physically wrote the Bible. Rather scholars who interpreted the ancient scrolls. It was they who physically wrote the King James version of the Bible. Looking back and remembering the expression on her face while we were engaged in that heated discussion it was at that very moment that she came to the realization that she had made a mistake. I now had a mind of my own, beliefs, and opinions that were different then hers and she could no longer control my thinking. She had kept that emotion bottled up until the day of my graduation. To this day it hurts me somewhat to think that my coming of age may have hurt her. However, I am sure that she went to her grave four years later thinking that she had failed me in some way.
When we first moved to Tennessee in 1972, I met one of my new next door neighbors, Kenny Venable, in my first math class at LMU. In the English degree that he was seeking he was only required to take one class of mathematics. He hated math so much he had put it off until his final semester of his senior year. As a freshman with an excellent background in mathematics, math was my forte. We often had the conversation about how he could not comprehend math and how impressed he was that I could. It was during those conversations that he discovered I was a self-taught piano player and it just so happened that the Pine Hill Baptist Church in our community, where he was the song leader, needed a pianist. During my entire college experience I played piano at the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in the Pine Hill Community. Soon after our friendship began, Kenny, his mother, Joyce Lambert, who played guitar, and I formed The Mount Pleasant Gospel Quartet. Almost every weekend we would travel to other churches in the tri-state area and participate in weekend singing conventions.
After my graduation from LMU in 1975, I found myself in a life-altering conundrum. I had been in Tennessee for only three years. I knew very few people in the county. I was constantly being told that in order to get a teaching position in Claiborne County I had to know the right people. I had no idea who the right people were. The church superintendent at Mount Pleasant Church was Bill Barnard. Bill was the postmaster in Tazewell. I thought if anybody knew who the right people were it would be Bill. One Sunday after church I approached Bill and ask him if he had any pull with anybody in the school system that might help me get a teaching position since I had just graduated with a degree in mathematics. He said, "Of course I do. I went to high school with the current superintendent of schools, Clay Neely." He told me to meet him the next day in Tazewell at the school board office and he would introduce me to Superintendent Neely.
Upon meeting Superintendent Neely, Bill explained that I was a new graduate from LMU with a math degree and he practically told Superintendent Neely to give me a job. Superintendent Neely said, "Your timing could not be better." The smallest High School in Claiborne County was Forge Ridge Consolidated School. The superintendent explained to me that the principal of that school had just retired at the end of the last school year and the math teacher had been promoted into the position of principal and therefore there was a math position open at Forge Ridge High School. He told me that I needed to go meet my new principal, Beagle Hopper. He told me that he happened to know Mr Hopper was at home that day hanging tobacco. He gave me directions to Mister Hopper's location and the first job interview of my life took place in the hallway of a tobacco barn with the interviewer on the top tier of the barn hanging tobacco. All went well. The following Monday I arrived at Forge Ridge School to begin my 32-year career in education. Thinking back on it, I probably should have offered to help Mr. Hopper hang tobacco. However, I was from the coal mining region and I didn't know one end of a tobacco stalk from the other. But my lessons in tobacco farming was forthcoming.
Over the weekend following my first ever job interview, I was warned by several that Forge Ridge was a very rural and a very family cliquish community where everybody knew everybody and most everybody was related to everybody and if the family didn't like me, since I was an outsider from Kentucky, I would not last long. Needless to say, as the very first day of my teaching career arrived, I was very nervous about entering an agricultural community that I knew absolutely nothing about and knew absolutely no one. I felt like the proverbial fish out of water. However, I went in with a positive attitude and tried my best to make a good impression on both faculty and students in a very intimidating situation.
The next day, as I was beginning my second period algebra class the door to my classroom suddenly swung open and, uninvitedly and much to my startlement, in walked one of the uglyest and most frightening mountain woman I had ever laid eyes on...and I had seen a few in my time. Her rough and rowdy demeanor led me to believe that she was there on a mission. She was dressed in a pair of men's work pants that had unmistakingly been worked in...for quite some time. She wore a saggy baggy man's dirty work shirt, as well as, a pair of men's steel-toed boots that were probably as old and worn out as she. Her hair had not seen a comb or brush in quite some time not to mention neither had it seen soap and water. She had no teeth and I am convinced that in one of the front pockets of those work pants was a loaded pistol. My life flashed before my eyes and I assumed that she was the self-proclaimed president of the "get the hell out of Forge Ridge" committee! However, as she quickly approached me with a smile on her face, the first obviously uneducated words that came out of her mouth were more puzzling than "who the hell is this wild woman?" The first thing she said to me was, "You're W.C. ain't ya? I haven't seed you since you was just a little boy."
First of all, no one but my immediate family and church family knew me as W.C. I did not know who this intruding woman was, but I was quite certain that she was neither. However, it didn't take long for her to explain to me who she was and how she knew me and she was beside herself expressing to me her eternal and undieing love of my dad.
She began by saying, "You probably don't member me but I is Olie Pace. I was Olie Clark when I was a kid and lived in Black Star up in School House Holler." As she was telling her story I was able to put the pieces of the puzzle together and I realized that I knew exactly who she was.
When my dad worked for Black Star Coal company he was the bulldozer operator and heavy equipment mechanic. On several occasions he would be sent high into the mountains to cut a new tram road or to maintain an existing road. When he went on these job assignments he often went up some godforsaken hollow that in most instances the sun didn't even shine. I suddenly remembered him telling me stories of the Clark family that, in his words, "Had a house full of kids that were poor as dirt, lived way up in School House Hollow and were completely uneducated. So when Dad was given a work assignment that would take him into School House Hollow he would first stop at the commissary and get a bag of hard candy. He said that when he got within hearing distance of the Clark shack and the kids realized it was him coming on his bulldozer, kids started falling out a trees, climbing out from behind rocks, crawling out from under the house, and from behind the chicken coop and pig pens. He said there were kids running in every direction to get to him because they knew he would be bringing them candy.
As Olie was telling her story, I recalled hearing dad laugh and tell this same story to me so many times. I was now overcome with emotion to the point that I ignored the body odor and dirty clothes and I gave her a heart felt hug. Once again she expressed her undying love for my dad. She then explained that the reason she knew I was there was I had one of her daughters in one of my math classes who came home the previous day and told her that she had a new math teacher who's name was Carl Nichols.
After she got everything off her chest, she did not linger long. Upon her exit from the classroom she let me know in no uncertain terms, as she patted the left front pocket of those filthy work pants, that if anybody in Forge Ridge gave me a problem I should let her kniw. She would take care of them. It was at that moment I knew I had been accepted into the fauna. Not having a crystal ball, I was unaware that years later, before my education career was over, I would have another hilarious encounter with Olie Pace.
When I started teaching in 1977 tobacco was king in Claiborne County as well as throughout many southern states. For many families in Claiborne County and especially in the Forge Ridge community tobacco was the family's livelihood. Many farming families had a term note mortgages on their farm. They only made one bank payment per year and that was usually in November after they had sold their tobacco. What they had left after making their mortgage payment was what they had to live on until the next November.
Being from a coal mining community, this was something I was not familiar with. I quickly learned the importance of tobacco to the families of the children I was teaching.
At that time all tobacco had to be separated into grades before being taken to the market for sale. The process of doing this was calling grading tobacco. I had never heard the term and had no idea what it meant. I quickly learned it was a mind-numbing process that was necessary in acquiring the highest price for tobacco at the auction sale.
In many instances it could mean the difference between survival an starvation for many of these families that tobacco farming was their only means of income.
The grading process, which usually begin in early November and lasted until mid to late December, could only be accomplished during times in which there was an ample amount of moisture in the atmosphere. When the atmosphere contained enough moisture so that the tobacco leaves did not crumble when being pulled from the stalk and put into their appropriate grade this was referred to as "tobacco being in case".
By early November if it was a foggy damp morning and tobacco was in case there would usually be no more than a total of five to ten students in the entire School which consisted of grades 1 through 12. If it was a day, that at the time the school buses ran, the atmosphere was too dry but shortly thereafter the dew point increased and tobacco came into case, dozens of parents would arrive at the school with pickup trucks and every child of theirs, their nieces and nephews, and cousins and aunts and uncles from every age group would all jump into the back of a pickup truck and head straight to the tobacco barns.
Often during the month of November until the start of our December Christmas vacation, we teachers were lucky if we got in one full day of instruction per week. However, we were adamantly instructed by the school superintendent to look away. No child that had to stay home and work in tobacco to ensure the financial survival of a family was to be counted absent.What few students, who were not from a farming family, would actually come to school. If a teacher had two present students out of a classroom of twenty, what could they accomplish by having instruction given to the few that were there at the expense of those who were not. So every teacher in the school often brought their few attending students to the gym and we let them play basketball all day while we set at tables in the gym and played checkers, chess, Uno, and Yahtzee, just to name a few.
However, my favorite pastime on a day which we had too few students to do instruction was to visit with Beulah Whitaker, the home economics teacher. Beulah was one of the oldest teachers in the school system. She had been in education for more than 40 years when I began teaching. She was a product of the one-room schools in the Forge Ridge and cave springs communities of Claiborne County and she had began her teaching career teaching in a one-room mountain school chool. She knew everybody and if she didn't know somebody she made it her business to learn everything about them. I so enjoyed my time with Beulah. After spending an hour or two with her and recieving the latest and greatest news update concerning the residence of Forge Ridge, I had a whole new respect for the Harper Valley PTA and Peyton place.
On many occasions, while I was in the middle of classroom instruction, I would hear this faint little tap on my classroom door and I would know it was Beulah coming with the latest Forge Ridge gossip hot off the press. I would go to the door and she would whisper, "You got a minute." If I replied to her, "I'm in the middle of doing something right now." She would respond by saying, "Oh hell. It'll be there when you get back." So I would close my door and we would stand in the hall as she updated me with all the news that she had pulled out of the girls in her home economics class. Even the students knew of Beulah's love of gossip. One day as I stepped back into the classroom, from one of my informative meetings with Beulah in the hallway, one of the female students in my class spoke up inquisitively, "Who's pregnant?" That question was met with an immediate response from one of the male students when he concerningly spoke up and said, "Did she say it was mine?"
I know that everyone who is reading this is waiting with much anticipation to hear another Olie Pace story. So I will not keep you in suspense any longer.
In 1990 the state of Tennessee initiated and aggressive adult education program in the attempt to lessen the number of students who had not graduated from high school. Through their research they had learned that many students, even as far back as those who dropped out of school to join the army in World War II, had a desire to go back to school but they didn't want to go and sit in a classroom with fourteen year olds nor did they want to get a GED. So often they opted to do nothing. The adult education component that the state wished to initiate was to develop an adult high school in which non-graduated adults could go back to school in an adult self-paced setting and work on the credits that they had not completed in order to earn, not a GED, but their actual high school diploma.
Once the State Department of education decided on the objectives they wanted to initiate in this program, they chose Claiborne County Adult Education Program to be the county that would develop and initiate this statewide curriculum and make it accessible for every county in the state. So when the county was tasked to undertake this monumental project the superintendent of schools asked me and asked if I would leave the classroom to be the lead teacher in the development of this state wide 21- credit curriculum and helped create the Claiborne County Adult High School. Of course I was flattered and said yes.
The creation of this adult high school curriculum was a three-year project. The first year consisted of writing the 21- credit curriculum consisting in part of four credits in mathematics, four credits in English, US history, 3 credits of science, economics, US and world geography, and computer keyboarding.
The second year 13 counties from across the state of Tennessee were chosen to use the curriculum as a pilot program during their next school year. At the end of that year the 13 counties met for a week with us to critique the curriculum and make suggestions for changes. We immediately rewrote the curriculums taking the suggestions from the 13 original counties. During the third year, 55 counties from across the state used the revised curriculum during their school year. At the end of that year, once again the 55 counties met to critique any changes before the final curriculum was written. By the end of that summer the final version of the Tennessee Adult High School curriculum was made available to every county in the state of Tennessee.
So as we opened our adult high school in Claiborne County many students that were now adults in their 20s, 30s, and 40s enrolled to complete their high school diploma. Many of them only needed one or two credit perhaps in English or a credit in history or a credit in economics. However, others lacked perhaps several credits. As fate would have it, one of our first enrollees was the daughter of Olie Pace. The who had gone home that fateful day from school eighteen years earlier informing her mother that Carl Nichols was her new math teacher at Forge Ridge.
In order to complete one high school credit a student was required to put in a minimum of 133 clasdroom hours of self-paced learning objectives. Olie's daughter was going to be with us for at least a thousand classroom hours. As we got to know her, now daughter better, we realized that fruit normally doesn't fall far from the tree. In other words, she was a handful.
She had an outgoing personality and got along well with other students. She formed a close friendship with one of the other female adults in the class who's name was Christine. One day the two ladies were working together on a learning objective. Miss Pace mentioned that the next day her mother was going to be butchering a hog and she was looking forward to her mother make some souse meat.
Now, for those of you who are not familiar with country living, when farmers kill an animal for food their intention is not to waste any part of the animal's meat. Souse meat is made mainly from all of the unused parts of a hogs head which would include its jowls, the tongue, the face, and the ears....Oh, let's not forget to throw in that curly little tail. That meat is then ground and added to certain spices that would form a pate.... Stop making that face. It really isn't all that bad.
As Miss Pace was telling the other lady about the impending availability of fresh souce meat the other lady expressed how much she would like to have some for a sandwich. Miss pace assured her that she would be sure and tell her mother to send her some souse meat when it was ready.
The next day our GED testing coordinator, Kathy Bunch, was at another site administering the GED test. The rest of the faculty and staff were on site at the adult learning center which was located on Main Street in downtown Tazewell. About 11 a.m. we observed Olie coming up the street with a fully assembled dead bloody hogshead that she was holding by both ears. Blood was dripping all over the sidewalk. She sticks that hogs bloody nose against the glass door coming into the adult learning center and pushs the door open by using the hogs nose. Once she was inside the center and all the faculty and staff was going ballistic she looks at me and says, "Where do you want me to put this hogshead? I was told that Christibe wanted some fresh souse meat. So I brought her this hogshead so she could make her some."
What I intended to be a joke, I responded to her by saying, "Olie, why don't you just said it there on Sheila's desk." Without missing a beat she slapped that bloody hogshead down on top of the secretary's desk who ensued to screaming which had all the other faculty staff and students ready to vacate the building. I started yelling, "Olie! Olie! Olie! I was kidding. Get that bloody hogshead out of here." So she takes it back out to her car. She gets a cardboard box from her back seat and puts it in the cardboard box and brings it back into the reception area of the learning center. As Olie went into the classroom to explain to Christine how to make souse meat, Kathy Bunch, the GED testing coordinator that has been testing at another site pulls her car in front of the learning center to bring in her testing materials. While getting out of her car, she sees all that blood on the sidewalk outside the door of the learning center and smeared all over the glass door she begins to panic and thinks there has been a murder inside the learning center. So here she comes running into the center in hysterics and hyperventilating screaming wanting to know who's being killed.
After calming Kathy we finally made Olie understand that the girl didn't want to make her own souse meat she just wanted enough of the finished product to make a sandwich. After much persuasion we finally convinced Olie to load the bloody hogshead, that has been patiently sitting in a cardboard box at the front door, into her car and take it back home.
As she drove past the learning center headed out of town we finally found the humor in what we had just witnessed. We all began laughing hysterically as we watched those two pink ears sticking up out of the cardboard box in the front passenger seat of her car slowly fade into the distance. It was at that moment we realized that we had been part of an incredible Appalachian moment that few people will ever have the opportunity to experience.