I didn’t know we were poor.
      I was born in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky to a coal miner and a house wife. The county was poor to say the least and my first sight of anyone that was deemed very important was the president of the United States of America. President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived at our county seat to start a new program and it was from this small county that he declared his war on poverty.
      Things were no doubt hard, but we as kids never knew it. We had as much as any of our neighbors, and more than some. I never went to bed hungry, and always had a place to sleep. Everyone had a garden to raise vegetables and most had trees to gather fruit. There were chickens for eggs, chicken for frying or for cooking to make dumplings over. I still to this day think that chicken is one of the best animals God created.
There was not much flat or bottom ground in the area that I grew up in. Most of the land was hill side with a lot of rocks. To increase the size of the garden we had to cut the brush out of the way and dig the roots out by hand using a mattock. No one I knew had a tractor so a horse or mule was used to plow the ground. The first crop planted in what we referred to as â??new groundâ?? was potatoes.
      In the summers I spent most of my time with my paternal grandparents and a lot of the values I have came from that time. My grandmother was a strong woman in more ways than one. Her devotion to Christ and being a Christian was unmistakable. She was a great cook, and cooked three meals a day. There were not soup and sandwich meals but were full table meals. We had breakfast, dinner, and supper. I was not sure when lunch occurred growing up, I thought it must have been another meal that other people had during the day. These meals were cooked on a wood stove and the bread was baked in a wood oven. I do not know why food that is cooked this way tasted so much better but it did. My job was to chop and split this wood into pieces that would fit inside the cook stove and make sure the wood box was full. I learned at an early age that if you wanted to eat you were expected to work and do your part in the process of getting the food on the table.
      My grandmother taught me the value of looking ahead, self control, and moderation. She did not make all of my decisions for me and did not help me out of the bad ones. She did this by a very simple task. My cousin and I were given the money to go to the store and pick up three cartons of soda pop. This was one weeks supply for the three of us. We could get any brand we wanted for ourselves and a carton of tab for her. She was a diabetic and this was the only type she could drink. She would tell us that we could sit down and drink all of ours at once if we wanted to but there was enough for one bottle a day if we chose that route. The one thing for certain is that if you ran out you were not getting any of hers. I drank all of mine in two days that first week and the next five days watched her drink hers. That was the last time I let that happen as I learned to conserve my resources.
    A lot of people walked on the dirt road going by the house. There were no strangers to her and I have seen her on many occasions run out on the front porch to stop someone walking by. She would invite them in to rest and always gave them food and drink if they would accept it. Hardly anyone could get away with out staying and eating if it was close to supper time. She always believed that we never know when one of Godâ??s angels may be passing by or that God may have sent someone your way for help or to help you.ÂÂ
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October 22nd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I did not get the pleasure of meeting my Great Grandma Howell, but from what I am told she was quite a lady of faith. If I’m not mistaken, it is she who refused to watch the tv because she saw it as a “devil box”, but she would turn her back and listen. You see, a future lawyer (me) was coming soon, finding loopholes is in my blood. I come by it honestly, you might say.
It has been told that if you were in trouble, she would not usually deal with it when she was mad. My dad says that she would dole out punishment after she had cooled off. Best not to deal with things while hot headed. As he says, “She would let you think she forgot about it and then say, ‘come here, I believe I owe you something”. I’m sure that she would have been a lot of fun and I have heard my dad tell many stories about he and his cousins and other family members spending the night at her house and having a huge breakfast in the mornings complete with fried chicken. I do not know who killed the chicken as I had not been born yet, but perhaps I inhereted the chicken killing gene too.
I have a feeling she would probably have spanked me for getting into her garden, not like Maw. From the stories I here, she expected her kids to mind and that meant her grandkids too. She wasn’t one to put up with foolishness and bad behavior. I don’t think she would have let me take the upper hand. But, you never know, I might have been able to wrap her around my finger too. At any rate, I look forward to meeting her in the afterlife and hearing all the wonderful tales that I’m sure she has been waiting to tell me. I want to hear all of the boyhood stories of my dad. I would like to think that she looks down on us all and sees that her hard work and dedication to her faith and family has sustained many generations. That’s a lot to say for a woman who untimately and unknowingly spawned a lawyer, even if I am a few generations removed.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
My name is Iva Daugherty. My birth certificate says Iva Dean Howell. Gary Howell and I have the same Grandmother. Her name was Johanna Howell, but everyone called her Juanner. She has always been a driving force in my life and I do everything I can think of to instill the memories I have of her into my grandchildren. Memories such as chocolate gravy, fried chicken for breakfast, 3 meals aday, sittin’ on the front porch and conversing with everyone that walked or drove by, rain and the sounds of thunder under a metal roof, and swingin’ on a porch swing in the cool of the day. I remember her stringing beans (half runners of course that they had raised) in her apron and sittin’ on that porch swing and smilin’ that smile. The feel of worn wood underneath my bare feet while I was swingin’ along side her, and helpin’ her string those beans.
Mom Maw was a Godly woman & I hope she knows that my first thought of Jesus came from her. She always insisted on all of us attending May Meeting every year up on Pigeonroost. That meant Old Regular Baptist preaching first and then dinner on the graveyard for everyone there. She always took chicken and dumplings, cornbread, half runners, and homemade stacked apple pies. My mom always made the apple pies. Everyone rode the back of the pickup truck to get there.
My mother passed away in January of this this year joining my grandmother in heaven and now the pie maker is my cousin Kathy Stacey. The dumplin’ maker is my cousin Denise.
Gary was right when he said we didn’t know we were poor. I thought we were rich! I probably even bragged about how good it was being born into the Howell family. I really thought we were a special breed. We were a proud family, maybe even a little uppity. Our mothers and fathers were very hard workers and took pride in that fact.
The most important thing that my grandmother instilled in her family was a deep love for each other. We are all still close in heart no matter the distance between us. She taught us the meaning of real love.
Only God knows how much I miss her!