AppalachianFolkA Collection of Appalachian Stories

we moved from johnson co. to columbus ohio when i was about ten years old after thirty years in the city working in columbus you got up at three in the morning you was on the go full speed ahead all day . I was in lawrence co. visting met my wife of thirty four [...]

I was watching a documentary on Appalachia and one of the things they talked about was the fact that the people almost always return home when they move away and they did not know why.  They talked about how people used to go to bigger cities for work and then bring their families back to the [...]

My Realization By: Patricia Samples Workman Weâ??d just moved back to California. It was early 1959 and Iâ??d started first grade. We lived in a house with a vacant lot for a yard. It was located just a few houses over from the Harbor Freeway. You could see the signs on the freeway for the [...]

     Our family was on the move againâ??we were on another cross-country trip.  This time we were traveling on a Greyhound Bus on Rt. 66.  It was 1956. I was three years old; my brother Dusty was one and a half.  This was my third or fourth cross-country trip; and thatâ??s not counting my trip [...]

I was born in Appalachia and lived here until I was about four.  We, like many moved to Columbus, Ohio.  I grew up in Columbus, but made many weekend trips down to Beauty, where my grandparents lived.  I always loved our visits, except for the winters.  My grandparents didnâ??t have indoor plumbing.  Water was gathered [...]

This documentary was done in collaboration with one of my favorite KY authors, Thomas D. Clark, Ph.D.

The wind blows warm and soft across the Appalachian Mountains as I look down at my own grave.  Lonely and forgotten.  Abandoned really, except for the presence of others like myself, holding on to the past, afraid of the future, and pessimistic about the present.  The graves within this graveyard are long forgotten.  The weeds [...]