Interview with Hubert Hollon

ANN COX: This is Ann Cox interviewing Hubert Hollon on October 27, 2003. Could you just start out by telling me a little bit about yourself?

HUBERT HOLLON: You mean you’re not gonna lead the questions.

AC: [laughing] I will eventually.

HOLLON: My name is Hubert Hollon, and I grew up in this vicinity of Breathitt County here. I’m seventy-one years old.

AC: Have you always lived here?

HOLLON: Yes. Maybe for six months at a time or so away from here.

AC: When you lived away, where did you live?

HOLLON: I lived in Dayton for a short spell. Worked at Frigidaire. Then I worked at Lexington for about 1:00five months, and I lived in Winchester.

AC: What years did you work over there?

HOLLON: When I worked in Dayton it was ‘54, the latter part of ‘54, and the latter part of ‘55 and the first part of ‘56.

AC: Can you talk a little bit about what it was like growing up here?

HOLLON: It was pretty hard growing up here. There weren’t no big I’s or little me’s, everybody had a hard time growing up in this country. They pretty much had to work for what they got 2:00and most of what they got came off of the farm. Killed their own hogs, grew their corn, canned vegetables out of the garden, milked the cows and even back in the forties we used to milk two or three cows and we’d have to hang our milk in the well to keep it cool. We got electricity in about ‘47 but life was pretty rough here at that time.

AC: Did you have many brothers and sisters?

HOLLON: Ten brothers and sisters.

AC: Did most of them stay around here?

HOLLON: About three or four of them stayed in the county. I have one sister in Oregon, one in California, one in Texas, one in Florida, one sister in Ohio, a brother in Florida, then I got a brother that lives in Louisville, and a brother and a sister that lives in this county.

AC: 3:00How did your parents make a living?

HOLLON: Off the farm.

AC: Off the farm. How did you make a living once you. . .

HOLLON: Once I started working? Well, I first worked at a funeral home a short spell then got drafted into the army and after I came back out of the army I went to, like I said, Frigidaire, worked about five months, five and a half months, then came back and worked in a Kentucky food store up here in Jackson. Basically, that was the rest of my working time and then I ran for magistrate, justice of the peace, and I was elected that twelve years 4:00and then I ran for jailor, and I was elected to that office and then I retired. But in the meantime, I stayed in the Kentucky National Guard for almost thirty years. And I also in the meantime I farmed some, we had six kids of our own and we had to shuffle around.

AC: How did you meet your wife?

HOLLON: In church one night, out there on the creek.

AC: How old were you?

HOLLON: Was I when I met her?

AC: Yeah.

HOLLON: Well, I was probably about twenty-one, twenty-two.

AC: So, you hadn’t known her growing up? 5:00HOLLON: Her family was off the creek here, but they moved to Hamilton, Ohio and her dad died up there in Hamilton and her mother moved back here. That’s when we became acquainted. Of course, I knew her mother before that because they lived here on the creek for a while before they went to Hamilton.

AC: What year did you get married?

HOLLON: In ’55. May the 13th of ’55.

AC: Did she ever work?

HOLLON: Yes, she worked in a factory down at Campton, then she was an aide at Breathitt High for a while. Then there was a little factory over here in Jackson called ( ) and she worked there for a while, after the kids all got out of school, I’d say. 6:00AC: Why do you think you chosen to work here for most of your life?

HOLLON: Well, I enjoyed living here. Times are a lot better than they were growing up here. Now we can have about as anything here that you can go away from here and have, if you’re established, you know, a young kid growing up here anymore, the jobs here are not readily available to them, but if you hang on, then sooner or later something will come along that you can get a job and make a living at. And I think that I just enjoy the people, 7:00the type of environment you have. If you don’t like the weather in Kentucky today, you can wait ’til tomorrow. It will surely change, you know? And it’s not hot all the time and it’s not cold all the time so it’s I think a good place to live.

AC: Can you remember a time when a lot of people were leaving?

HOLLON: Yes, back in the forties. A lot of people, of course work began to pick up, that was in the early forties, work began to pick up in the northern states due to war materials being manufactured. A lot of people left to get them; they called them 8:00defense jobs. And there was a lot of our neighbors that went to Dayton and Cincinnati, other places, even some of them went to work on army bases to build various things. Things began to pick up pretty good.

AC: Do you feel like when a lot of those people left that this area changed? How do you think it changed?

HOLLON: Well, the neighbors began to move out and go north and farms began to pick up, to be put up for sale, a lot of times they’d sell their house furniture, what little they had. And sometimes they had a garden out and they’d sell their garden enough for a bus ticket north to Cincinnati, Newport, Dayton, 9:00numerous places. They’d leave here with what they was carrying in their suitcase and a bus ticket and they’d sell everything else ( ). I see farms right now ’round here sold for five, six hundred dollars and now it goes into the thousands of dollars, you know? This hollow road up through here used to have eight or ten houses on it and shortly after that there was one or two houses on it and all the places around are just like that, you know? This school used to have a big enrollment, forty or fifty. By the time the fifties came around they had ten or twelve. So it effected a lot of things.

AC: Do you feel like the region was worse off for all of those people leaving?

HOLLON: Well no, I wouldn’t say it was worse off, I think the people that left 10:00were probably better off at the time ’cause there was no money. They lived from hand to mouth, from day to day. They could go out there in the early forties, they’d get fifty, seventy-five cents a day for the work. They would work a day for five pounds of bacon, or they’d get these ration stamps during the second world war for their sugar, and they didn’t have the money to buy the sugar, you know, they’d get the stamps for the sugar, but they couldn’t, didn’t have, times was really hard at that time. So, I think the people that left made a wise decision.

AC: Is that why you went to work in Dayton?

HOLLON: That was the reason. I was looking for a greener pasture. 11:00AC: Did a lot of people come back here?

HOLLON: Not really. A lot of those people that left had a bad taste in their mouth for this area. They got up there and they got used to the modern convenience and a couple days out there they had their outdoor toilets, they had no electricity, no running water, and they looked on this as a bad place to live and a lot of them didn’t even want to come back to visit, they just got a bad taste in their mouth for this locale.

AC: So, if you’re seventy-one you were born in ‘33? Is that right?

HOLLON: Right.

AC: [laughing] Just making sure.

HOLLON: I was picking on your math. 12:00AC: Do you have any memories when you were small of this time when people were leaving in the ‘40s, what you thought about it or what. . . ?

HOLLON: What I thought about it? I don’t know, I thought everybody was the same way, everything around here was about the same and I didn’t, we didn’t have a vehicle to go nowhere in, my dad never did have a driver’s license, so we never did get to go nowhere but we, as my family goes, we was all happy. Like I said, about everything come off of the farm. You couldn’t buy it, go to the store and get a frying chicken then. 13:00About the only thing, you killed hogs you had fresh meat, then after that you had to, you’d start curing your meat and then everything after that was smoked or dried or salted down. We’d use it. We didn’t get much fresh meat at that time which, you know, was better than, we thought it was better than the salted or cured meats. It was pretty rough.

AC: When did you, when was, when did you turn this into your house?

HOLLON: It was turned into the house about ’53. 14:00I didn’t turn it into it, I bought it from a neighbor that did it and then I bought it in, no, it was probably about ’56 then I bought it in ’64 so he lived here about seven or eight years.

AC: Can you talk about what it used to look like when you used to go to school here?

HOLLON: What school was like?

AC: Mm-hmm.

HOLLON: Yep. We had, when I was going here, we had one teacher and she taught all of eight grades. One of the grades might have two or three students in it, another one might have four or five, it was all the way from, we called it 15:00the primer up until the eighth then they would call you up, they had seats in front of the teacher, your class, when it came time for your class to go up, you’d all go up there and sit in front of the teacher and she’d give you the assignments and do a little work on them like ( ) then she would send you back and call up grade two or three or four and I don’t know how it worked, but it did work, some of them done pretty good in, after they left here, you know? I guess when you sitting there while they was working with the, maybe the fourth or fifth grade and you was in the third grade, a little bit of what she was talking to them would rub off on you. And it seemed to work pretty well but by the time I got to the eighth grade I was the only student I believe going to be in the eighth grade and I was sent to Breathitt High in Jackson, and they had an 16:00eighth grade class that came in there. And I walked from here to 1812 down there which is almost four miles. Walked through my eighth grade and my three years of high school and then my senior year, between about junior and senior year they built a road up here and graveled it and a school bus came on my last year, but I walked out of here four years which is almost four miles each way, ( ) of walking to school to catch the bus, then you’d ride, you’d leave here before daylight carrying a flashlight and winter time there’d be mud to your knees. ( ) old truck ruts were all we had to walk in. 17:00AC: Do you remember when school enrollment started picking up?

HOLLON: Never did pick up here at this school. I always went down from the people who were leaving here but at Breathitt High my senior class I think was right around forty-eight or fifty people and then after that they started getting bigger classes, but they started consolidating the schools and bringing them into town and really a lot of people in the early ’40s didn’t send their kids to school that much. They kept them out and made them work and you didn’t have, I don’t know if the law was in effect for that you’d have to send them to school 18:00until they was sixteen or seventeen or whatever it is, but anyway, a lot of people wouldn’t let their kids go to school. My dad, he would never take us out of school for nothing, didn’t matter how bad he needed to work, he wouldn’t take us out of school for it.

AC: So, all of you went to school?

HOLLON: Yes.

AC: Are you in the middle?

HOLLON: I’m the oldest.

AC: You’re the oldest?

HOLLON: Mm-hmm.

AC: Okay. So, how it was when you went to school was that there were little schools. . .

HOLLON: A lot of little schools.

AC: Yeah. And then eventually they consolidated.

HOLLON: They began to consolidate them, tear them down and sell the property. But right on this creek, from 1812 up to here which is the route you just came in on, there was two schools. 19:00And from where you turned off at 205 down there to come up to here, see you have Vancleve, Blanton school, Strong Fork, and Camp Christy, there was four schools at that. So, there was schools at every little, five or six miles apart there was a school.

AC: How, do you know how somebody would become a teacher?

HOLLON: Do I know what?

AC: How people became teachers back then?

HOLLON: Well, for about ’48 and ’49 when you got out of high school you could go to teaching school 20:00with a high school diploma. They would let you teach a year or two and then you had to improve as you went. You left to teach two years after high school then you’d have to school, college for a year before they would renew your contract, but they used to teach right out of high school. Even before that they could teach with an eighth-grade education. I had a couple aunts taught right here in this building. In fact, in the ’20s and they had an eighth-grade education. So, the requirements kept growing and the people kept qualifying themselves, so the teachers kept getting better and better.

AC: Do you have, so my, she’d be my great aunt Margaret. . .

HOLLON: Margaret.

AC: Yeah. 21:00She taught here.

HOLLON: Correct. She’d, she’d hire somebody to, before school started, to come in about a half hour before time for school and build fires and she gave me a nickel if I’d come over here and build a fire before school started to have the house warm in the wintertime. So that nickel was pretty good though you know, you could buy a pound of candy for a nickel.

AC: Is that what you would do, would you buy. . . ?

HOLLON: I’d go to the store with fifteen, twenty cents in my pocket you know, you could buy that grocery mixed candy for a nickel a pound.

AC: Mm-hmm. How did you meet my grandfather?

HOLLON: Meet your grandfather?

AC: Yeah.

HOLLON: Well, I grew up under him. He 22:00was, his grandpa, I mean his dad owned a place up the road here. There used to be a big farm up, just over here, but it was just something I grew up with. He was just there.

AC: Yeah [laughing]. Do you have any specific memories of him doing anything?

HOLLON: No. Other than seeing him when he’d come in, you know, come back for a visit or something, I’d see him, and he was always nice.

AC: So, he was about twenty years older than you? Is that right?

HOLLON: How old is he? 23:00He was older than Arnold and Orville, wasn’t he?

AC: Yeah.

HOLLON: So, they was probably eight or ten, they was probably ten years older than me, one of them was. And he was, I don’t know how much he would have been older than them, I’d say he’d be in his upper eighties so. . . And I’m seventy-one.

AC: Yeah, ’cause he had; they had my mom in ’41 when they were about twenty years old. They were about ten years older than you are, I guess.

HOLLON: And your mom was off of Trace Fork, down there?

AC: She was born there, but then they moved really soon after she was born.

HOLLON: What was her name?

AC: Phyllis. Phyllis Back at first and now she’s Phyllis Cox.

HOLLON: Oh, that’s your mother.

AC: Yeah, that’s my mom.

HOLLON: She’s Everett’s daughter. 24:00Then who did Everett marry? A Gevedon?

AC: No, Grace Martin.

HOLLON: Oh, Everett married Grace. Okay. Well, is she dead?

AC: Mm-hmm.

HOLLON: And Everett too?

AC: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they died when I was little.

HOLLON: Oh, okay., then Everett married Sarah Jane, didn’t he?

AC: Mm-hmm, after my grandma died.

HOLLON: Yeah, Everett came to see me one time. It was after his wife died and before he married Sarah Jane down there. But we sat out here and talked about that. His dad, from right here on up to there was his dad’s home place. But back about that time there’s an awful lot of people who lost their property to, you know, because they bought it, and they couldn’t pay for it. And a lot of people has property changed hands in here at that time. 25:00I don’t know, up the road here the companies, a lot of companies went through and bought them up. They paid their taxes on the farm where they’d be in debt with their taxes and couldn’t pay, would pay their taxes on the farm for the real estate, I mean for the mineral rights and they, ( ) a lot of mineral rights on property and the landowners couldn’t keep them from mining it out or nothing you know. But Barney owned this property here and he sold it, I guess and went up this way. Built a big two-story house up there he lived in.

AC: When, when did that start happening, when people were losing 26:00their property?

HOLLON: In the ’30s.

AC: In the ’30s?

HOLLON: Mm-hmm. Back in the Depression days. You could buy property in here for just about your price. My dad owned about a thousand acres over there and it was bought back in the ’30s for three dollars an acre.

AC: Would the companies that bought the property, were those like mining companies?

HOLLON: Mining companies and timber companies. This boundary right in here, and it might have been part of Everett’s dad’s place, it might have been part of it, it was owned by Camp Christy lumber company. I’m sure it was. It wasn’t company owned at all. That fork over here where you turned right instead of going left, that’s where my family owned, but Camp Christy lumber company owned it all in here when the Camp Christy lumber company was owned by K L and B land company 27:00which Kentucky Land and ( ) company. And when they decided that they had all they needed, they extracted all that they could off of this land here, they put it up for sale for three dollars an acre.

END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE A BEGINNING OF TAPE ONE, SIDE B HOLLON: They came down to where it’s at now.

AC: Can you tell me how, when you were growing up here, how, describe like the community? Like how big was a community? Was it these little. . .

HOLLON: Now the community sort of developed around the school or the church. This school 28:00right here at one time had two hundred and some kids going to school here, but it was bigger, it ran out that way farther. It was like another eighty or ninety foot longer than it is now. That’s when it was owned, that’s when the Camp Christy lumber company was in here. All these hollows was full of people, and can you imagine 200 kids now, how far you’d have to go to round up that many? And that was just the ones that was going to school here. There was a, over there where my daughter lives now which is across the street there, there was a doctor’s office there, his name was Doctor Hogue and after the lumber company was over with, he moved his office 29:00to Jackson. They had a convesary over there, a little dinky railroad track came up through there, went up that other fork went into Black Bridge fork. It was owned by the lumber company. Now when that left, a lot of the people left out of here ‘cause there was just too many people. They left the land, no work, they had to leave. But they had a water, water tires on top of that hill over behind us there and they had six inch water lines coming off of it see, they’d puncture water up there and they’d wash them logs and they had steam engines and they dug the footers down, let them engines sit onto the bedrock and built big 30:00rock peers up to set the engines up and it was a big job. That was up there in ( ) hollow and then the community changed very fast after that and then the tracks of land that was sold out, it was large tracks and it didn’t leave room for many other people other than renters, you know, ‘cause one fellow’s buy a thousand acres and you’d have two or three renters on his property, the next would be the same way. So, it was a few land owners and a lot of renters.

AC: How is the community now?

HOLLON: The community now is a lot different ‘cause used to everybody knew everybody. You’s riding a mule down the road, you’d ride up and stop and talk to the neighbor, now you pass their house 31:00at forty or fifty miles an hour. I’ve got neighbors here on the creek now within two miles of me that I’ve never saw. I’ve never been in their house, and it used to not be like that. A lot of people would spend Sundays visiting, eating dinner with people, visiting overnight. One or two in the neighborhood would have a radio and several of them would go and listen to the news every night on the radio. There was something to keep the people pulled together then that’s not there now. Everybody’s independent now, they don’t need help. They do, they need to keep their neighbor, but they don’t be neighbors like they used to.

AC: That’s sort of something that’s gone everywhere.

HOLLON: It’s gone. Yep. ‘Cause people used to, would depend on people 32:00if they lost their barn, or if it blew down, they’d come in and have them working and building another barn back the next day or two. If their house got burned up, they’d come in and have a house raising. If their neighbor got sick and couldn’t work his crops they would come in and work his crop in two or three days. Fifteen or twenty people’d come in. The ladies would all come and bring food and have a big dinner and they’d all work this man’s crop out in a day or two. It ain’t that way anymore, see. If you were to get sick now and you had a crop, you might as well forget about it because you ain’t gonna get no help. So, it’s a lot different than it used to be. I can remember seeing fifteen or twenty people come into corn fields around here, five or six mules to plow their corn, cultivate it, and the others were hoeing it. And they cleaned a cornfield out in two or three hours, you know. And it ain’t that way anymore. Of course, people don’t farm like they used to either, you know. 33:00AC: How do people farm now?

HOLLON: It’s all with equipment now. You can, one man can take care of his hay crop. Used to, you’d have to have a people could come in when you’d bail it, four or five people would hull it in the barn for you or store it. Now you can roll it. You can cut it, bail it, roll it, and do it all for yourself. Same way with corn. You plow corn with equipment to plant it, one man, you can come in and pick it, you just don’t need help like you used to. Farming’s so much different.

AC: Are lots of people farmers around here now?

HOLLON: No. Most people aren’t farmers 34:00here. We got one or two people on this creek that farms for a living, the other are farming because it’s a, either a hobby or wanting to make work for somebody. Some of the renters live on the property, give them something to do.

AC: Do you farm for a hobby?

HOLLON: No.

AC: Are those your chickens out there?

HOLLON: Yep. I got chickens and geese and guineas and peacocks.

AC: Back to the time when people were leaving, 35:00how did people keep in touch with their family’s who’d left?

HOLLON: Write letters.

AC: Write letters?

HOLLON: Yeah, they’d check their mailbox every day. Rain or shine, they’d go to get them letters. It was really important. Used to the mail was carried through here on mules and they, the post office down at the end of the road here was named Keck and the post office where the mail started, originated from was called Mays and a fellow would pick up the mail bails at Mays post office. Right through here, rain or shine, sleet or snow, to Keck and pick up the mail there and ride right on to Jackson on a mule. It’d take him about, he’d come through here about eight o’clock in the morning, he’d come back through here about 3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon, time he went to town 36:00and when he got here, he still had seven or eight miles to ride, or nine. So, people from the farm, the farm people here would then, they’d have cream separators and they’d, they’d separate their extra milk and cream and ship it out in five-gallon cans. I’ve seen a mailman with three five-gallon cans of milk on his horse, plus him and all of his mail bags, a five gallon can on each side and one laying on the side of the horse, and plus all of the mail bags. And that was pretty well all year long. Now in the summertime when there was chickens, baby chicks would start being shipped in. They’d come through here riding with four or five hundred chicks, baby chicks in boxes on their horses. Everything came by horse. 37:00And if you had a big freight coming, it usually came to the railroad station over there. The depot in Jackson. Railway express. But that was the two sources of it. And when they’d get themselves a Roebuck catalogue or Montgomery Ward’s, the horses, mules just break down when they came, they’d be so thick and everybody would get one, you know, but it was real heavy and they’d just load their mules down with them catalogues. Sometimes they’d be leading, riding a horse with it loaded and leading a mule and he’d be loaded to try to get all the mail through, you know.

AC: During that time how did, how were people making a living, I mean, I know a lot of people 38:00couldn’t, so they left, but those people who stayed here, how did they, did they do it?

HOLLON: Well, they made Moonshine. [laughter] AC: That’s what I’ve heard.

HOLLON: Yeah, they, there was a lot of Moonshiners in here then. They, they’d make brown whiskey and they’d, probably five or ten dollars a gallon at that time, I don’t know. But I, I’ve stayed with Moonshine. Stay up all night making whiskey. But they, they don’t ( ) AC: Yeah. We came up to visit my mom’s cousins a few weeks ago, my mom came with me, and I was asking her how they survived if they were so poor 39:00during that time because her, her mother’s brother, he had, there were eleven of them, eleven children and so she’s like, “I don’t know how they survived. I think they just maybe could have farmed tobacco.” But when we talked to her cousins they said no, it was Moonshine.

HOLLON: It was Moonshine, it was a lot of different ways. A lot, you’d have some people could make a living at trading. I left here when I was eight, ten years old riding behind my dad on a horse, going through the country and buying calves. Now he’d buy a calf for three or four dollars. Bring it over here and keep it for, maybe in the spring, sell it that fall and he might get twenty-five dollars out of that calf, you know, they would have made 40:00it by trading, they’d make it by timber, they’d take up small timber, what, what, big enough to saw logs and stuff and they’d, they’d ( ) it down to make cross-ties and sell it to the railroad company. They had a yard over here at Jackson and they would hull them ties from here to Jackson’s, a lot of people would on wagons. They’d hall eight or ten ties over on the wagon and dump ‘em off and maybe get two or three dollars a tie which is pretty good, you know. Some people have little, what they call, they call truck mines then, which they wasn’t truck. They’d go under the ground and mine the coal and bring it out and deliver it for five dollars a ton on a wagon with a pair of mules 41:00on a road wagon. Five hours a ton delivery to make it put out on five, maybe a ton or two tons a day. They could make ten dollars. That’s what’s better than working for two or three dollars a day, you know. So, there was a lot of little jobs available, service jobs for people to do. I knew one man and all he done, about all he ever done to get his money was to shoe horses. Everybody in the country would take their horse to him, shoe him, he’d shoe the horse for fifty cents a horse. Some people had corn mills, mills. They’d grind the meal there a day or two a week. Then maybe another day or two they’d do something else but, but it was a lot of the service jobs that they could make a kind of scratch out a living out of it.

AC: Well with the coming of modern conveniences, those old jobs ( )?

HOLLON: They all, they all 42:00went down the drain. Don’t need horses to shout anymore at that bargain and not many peoples burn coal anymore, everything’s gone electric or gas. A few people has wood stoves but that’s more or less ‘cause they want one. Not because they have to because they can ( ) cut their wood and buy their stove and everything, they’ve put about as much in as they could buy their gas or electric for, you know.

AC: Have these roads out there always been here?

HOLLON: No. Not the way they are now.

AC: Yeah.

HOLLON: The roads is pretty well where they were back in those times, 43:00but the improvement is one hundred percent better now.

AC: When were they paved?

HOLLON: When?

AC; Mm-hmm.

HOLLON: 540 was paved in about ‘65 or ‘66. Up until that, from ‘47 to about ‘48 and ‘49 until about ‘66 it was a gravel road. And of course, before the forties, we didn’t have no road out here at all. It was in out of the creek. In and out of the creek and just pure old truck ruts. One or two people on the creek had a vehicle. Courtney Holbrook’s had a big truck down there. When they’d go to town every Saturday morning it’d be loaded down with people going to do their grocery shopping and everything. 44:00Bob Ballard had one down there. They done most of the hollow, most of the going and getting for people and it pretty well kept them busy too, you know.

AC: How did, when the roads got better how did that change. . . ?

HOLLON: Well, people got to getting an old vehicle of some kind and they could go to town in Jackson and get them a job. If they had too many eggs or too much milk, too much butter, they’d take it over there and sell it. It changed it a lot. You could, you could get your stuff to market and whatever you bought at the market or wherever, you could get it back home without a big problem, 45:00you know. The more convenient it is to do things, the more that gets done.

AC: Do you think that, how long when people were leaving during that time you were talking about, how, how long were they leaving, I mean, like, did lots of people keep leaving until like a certain time period? Or was there a time people stopped leaving?

HOLLON: People has left in the ’40s, in the early 40s up until the ’80s and ’90s I guess was the period they left in. It don’t seem like people leave now like they used to. I don’t know if the people who don’t have enough, as many people or whatever, but it seem 46:00like all the people here are going out and getting, most of them is going on to college now, like young people. Used to, instead of thinking about college, the first thing they thought about was a job. Dayton or somewhere. But now most of the kids are taking college.

AC: Is the population pretty equal regarding the ages, you think? Is there a higher percentage of older people or younger people that you‘ve noticed?

HOLLON: I’d say around here the biggest portion of the people are younger people. I’m talking about right in my little neighborhood, you know.

AC: Okay.

HOLLON: Because 47:00there not that many older people here. The biggest portion of it are younger people.

AC: Were most of the people who left in the forties and fifties, were they a certain age?

HOLLON: Working age.

AC: Working age.

HOLLON: Yeah, raising their family age, you know. You’re talking about forties down. They, well just about every family I knew left here, raised a big family and left here, you know?

AC: Do you have any relatives who have, I know you said you 48:00did. . .

HOLLON: Have what?

AC: Relatives who’ve always stayed here.

HOLLON: Stayed here?

AC: Mm-hmm.

HOLLON: I had a, I’ve got a brother and a sister that are still here.

AC: Did they ever go and have jobs in other places?

HOLLON: Well, my sister didn’t, but my brother went and worked in Louisville then he got drafted into the army and when he came back from the army, he went to college then he got a job at the coal company and stayed here. He got his degree in teaching but then he went to work with the coal company as a land management and stayed here and his wife, she taught. And I’ve got a sister, and her husband teaches up in Franklin, in Carlisle, 49:00my brother teaches in Carlisle, my sister teaches in Lebanon, Ohio and they’re retired. They’ve already got their home built to come back here.

AC: Is there anything about this area that has stayed the same since you were younger?

HOLLON: There’s not much. Time you know, changes all things and it’s took its change here. We’ve had a lot, the roads have improved, they’re not even like they were, 50:00the mountains have been mined and have been changed a lot, the people has moved in and moved out and died so there’s been a big change ( ). People stayed away from here twenty-five or thirty years, and they come back in here, they don’t even know where they’re at, you know? It’s changed so much.

AC: Do most of the people who live here, do they have roots here?

HOLLON: Here? Yes. Yes. I married someone, you know, that was, had roots here.

AC: 51:00When people were leaving back in the forties and fifties, did that, for farmers, did it make it harder for them because they had less people to help farm?

HOLLON: There wasn’t that much change in it because most of the people lived back there had big families. And I think some of them had the kids just so they could have the work hands, you know? But a lot of the renters left and that might have effected them some because I can remember when it was better if I had two or three renters on the property, you know, they’d, they’d some of them even do their feeding for it and milking them and everything, 52:00you know. And others would just farm for it. But they depended on the renters.

AC: Do you keep in touch with your relatives who are living in Oregon and. . . ?

HOLLON: Yes.

AC: Do they ever come back to visit?

HOLLON: Occasionally. We have a family reunion every year or so and most of the time there are, there, sometimes there’ll be one that can’t come, maybe do to sickness or something, but we all stay in contact with each other.

AC: Do you 53:00recall any sorts of organizations that came into the area to help out? Like, other people I’ve interviewed talk about missionaries.

HOLLON: ( ) and missionaries.

AC: You have any memories of them?

HOLLON: Yeah, yeah. We had a church, we still got a church down here it’s Grace Bible church, they’ve been missionaries there ever since I can remember. The first two that I remember was ( ) and Florence ( ). [knock at door] Come in! Come in Dave! Casey, see what Dave wants. I motioned to him, and he didn’t see me. Come in. 54:00The door must have had a glare on it. [laughter] [side conversation] [tape goes off and on] END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE B BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO, SIDE A [starts off with side conversation between Hollon and visitor to his house] 55:00HOLLON: Okay. [laughter] [grandson offers a drink] AC: I’m okay.

HOLLON: No.

AC: So, were there any other types of people who came in trying to. . . ?

HOLLON: Where was we at?

AC: The missionaries.

HOLLON: Oh, the missionaries [laughing]. Well, I can remember, have you got it on?

AC: Yeah [laughing].

HOLLON: One time during the forties they was, they had a mattress factory come in over here in Jackson. It was run by the government, and you could, a man and his wife or child could go over there and they’d show them how to make a mattress and furnish the materials and 56:00they had the machine to sew it with and it, it’d let them make two or three mattresses over there for them and they had a little canning factory over there. You could take your vegetables over there and, and they furnished the equipment to pressure can it in, in metal cans, just like we buy at the store right now. I remember daddy used to take the beans and pumpkins and everything over there and can it. And they’d, they’d show you how to use their equipment and you’d pay a little something for the cans was all that you paid for. Then we had these, the missionaries came in, they was always giving a helpful hand to the needy. They’d visit the school every, 57:00once a week, have their little bible studies. Anytime somebody got sick, they always had a car. And if they could get the car to their house they would and take them to the doctor or to the hospital in Lexington, or wherever. But they was always helpful to the community. But, like I say, everybody’s got their own cars now and pretty well, most people are independent, you know? You hardly ever see a missionary or something now without you going to church and they used to come and spend all, spend the day with you, eat dinner with you or whatever and now you never see them.

AC: How long did they do that; come in and eat dinner with people and really get to know people? 58:00When did they stop doing that?

HOLLON: Probably in the sixties. Sixties or early seventies. People were just didn’t. Well, people got on a faster gate in life. They got their vehicles, they got their jobs, they just got independent, and they didn’t have time, I guess for the neighbors, you know. The visitation has just went down to nothing anymore.

AC: Are people, do people go to church as much as they did then? Like, were churches a big part of the life back then, than they are now?

HOLLON: Yeah, church was a bigger part of life than it is now. 59:00There was a lot of preachers in here that would go and preach funerals, preach on graveyards but didn’t have a church, but they was a preacher. They’d go preach in their home. Used to when somebody died, you didn’t take them to the funeral home, they’d lay them out in one room in their house. They’d call the preacher and he’d come and have a service in there that night and the next morning they’d have a service, and they’d take them to the cemetery and bury them. And they didn’t move them off this creek here. They didn’t embalm them, and everybody kept most of the pillars of the community kept a stack of lumber in their barn. They called it casket lumber. It was poplar boards, big, wide and it’d take two or three of them big boards to make a casket. They’d go to one of the department stores and buy the material and padding 60:00to put in it and they’d line that casket with a silk looking cloth. Underneath that they put cotton, then they’d wrap that casket in that gray material, or blue, or cream colored and they’d bury somebody for twenty-five dollars, you know? And, and the work was all donated. All the neighbors would come in and dig the grave. They’d dig, they dug the grave in a way that they dug the vault, they dug the vault in the grave in the bottom of it and they’d lay boards on top of the casket, so the vault was torn right in the grave and then they’d put the casket down in there and put the boards on it then throw the dirt in it. But all the work was donated and even most of the time the casket was donated. The neighbors would chip in and buy the material to cover the casket and, 61:00and the hinges for it and the handles. So that the expense wasn’t great. But now it cost you six, seven thousand dollars to bury somebody.

AC: And were people buried around where they lived? Is that right?

HOLLON: Yes.

AC: On a family plot?

HOLLON: Most of them had family plots and there was some of the cemeteries. It was kind of a community. We’ve got two or three community cemeteries down through here that sometimes somebody will die that doesn’t have a connection to anybody or that don’t own no property. And they’ve always had some of them around. Or sometimes the church will have a cemetery that, if it’s a member of the church died--they, they’d bury them in that one, that cemetery.

AC: Do your children live around here? 62:00HOLLON: Yes.

AC: All of them?

HOLLON: Yeah, we had six. We lost one boy about two years ago. He got killed in a four-wheeler accident. Harvey. He got hurt in July of 2000 and he died in June of 2001, stayed in a coma for eleven months. And then my wife died in ‘99. Then he got hurt in the following, she died in March of ‘99, he got hurt on July 20th of 2000.

AC: How old was he?

HOLLON: He was 42 when he, 41 when he got hurt. And I have two girls and three boys that still live here.

AC: 63:00So, have they always lived here too?

HOLLON: Yes, mm-hmm.

AC: And they were born in the, in the fifties? Most of them?

HOLLON: Yeah. I have one. Oldest one was born in ‘56 and the youngest one was born in ‘63. One of them’s, one of my daughters worked at the Citizen’s Bank and one of them is out on sick leave from the hospital and one of them is a state road worker and one is a disability and I guess that’s all of them.

AC: And this is your grandson? 64:00HOLLON: This is my grandson Casey Noble.

AC: Okay.

HOLLON: He was Breathitt High’s big guns; football player.

AC: Oh! [laughing] HOLLON: Yeah, he’s going to college this fall. He works at Kentucky Fried Chicken and he’s a security guard up there for the coal company up there on ( ) property up there. Done some ( ) work.

AC: Where is he going to college?

HOLLON: Lees.

AC: Oh, o.k. Well, I don’t really have any other questions for you unless you want to tell me anything else.

HOLLON: Well, I’ve hit and missed events much ( ).

AC: 65:00Really what I’m trying to focus on, is on, ‘cause a lot of research is done on people who left the counties of eastern Kentucky and went to work, like you in Dayton and up in Hamilton, but not much is done on people who have stayed. Who were alive and stayed during that time. And it’s actually kind of hard to find, I’ve been having trouble finding people who have stayed here and never left. Lots of people have left and come back it seems like.

HOLLON: Yeah.

AC: But I know there are people who’ve. . .

HOLLON: Stayed.

AC: Mm-hmm. Like my mom’s cousins who’ve lived here, they stayed. But I haven’t been able to interview a lot of them because 66:00a lot of them are actually sick right now.

HOLLON: Well, I’ve always heard that good things happen to those who’ve got the passion to wait and that’s what we did. But I’m glad that I’ve stayed, you know. I’ve seen all these changes. I think I’ve been in one of the most interesting areas of , of anybody, that’s the way I feel about it. I saw, when you’d be scared to death that your brothers or sisters are going to come down with diphtheria or whooping cough or something bad, there was no, there was no antibiotics or anything for them. My dad almost died of Gang Green. That was before penicillin came out. I’ve seen it when you couldn’t, it would take you half a day to walk from here to Jackson, now you can go to the moon, they’ve gone to the moon and back. We’ve got all these modern conveniences and the modern medicines and the modern technologies 67:00such as space, even television. I used to have to run over a mile ( ) here to get a T.V. picture that you could watch and now you stick up something beside your porch and you got the whole world there. Even internet on it.

END OF INTERVIEW