There was something special about growing up in rural Appalachia. It might be hard for those who lived and grew up in larger urban areas to understand this.
It is even harder for those younger folks who are growing up today with the internet, computers, cell phones and other electronics to understand.
Getting to know the kids in your neighborhood was special. We played games like hide and seek, tag and red rover. We caught lightning bugs after dark and put them in a Mason jar. (It seems like there were so many more out there back when I was growing up than there are on summer nights these days.)
We never had video games, computers or cable TV with literally hundreds of channels to watch. Our black and white television picked up three channels and you were happy to get the shows and programs you did.
Can you remember Mr. Cartoon? How about watching Saturday morning cartoons while having breakfast before going outside to play? Do you remember the TV shows like Roy Rogers, Rin Tin Tin, The Lone Ranger and Sky King?
A stick was imagined as a pistol and a longer stick was a rifle while playing army or cowboys and Indians. We didn’t have to have toys because we had our imaginations.
We didn’t need all of these electronics you have today. Now you’ll see a 5-year-old with their nose stuck in a cellphone or laptop playing games or watching YouTube videos and shows.
You were lucky if your family even had a telephone. It might have even been a party-line shared with a couple of the neighbors in your close-knit community.
Of course, as many of us got older, our interest turned to sports. So whatever season it was we were likely playing that sport. Baseball in the summer and that lapped over to the fall with the World Series and into football season. Then that led to basketball. If there were a field, school playground or just a flat piece of land somewhere in Nolan, youngsters would be playing some kind of ball.
We didn’t have a gymnasium to play hoops in the winter, so we played in the cold. I can recall my fingers being cracked and dirty from playing on a dirt court in the cold weather. But I would not trade those memories for the world.
If you were lucky enough to have a bicycle, then you likely rode with friends or a “gang.” I would like to have a quarter for every trip I made up and down the streets of Nolan or what we called the “backway.” No wonder I was so skinny back then. I had to burn off thousands of calories. We either walked to where we wanted to go or hopped on a bicycle.
I remember sitting on our long front porch and the family would have conversations with those neighbors that walked by. I spent much time in that old, green wooden porch swing on our porch.
Country singer Tracy Lawrence even wrote a song about this. His chorus goes like this:
“If the world had a front porch like we did back then,
We’d still have our problems, but we’d all be friends,
Treatin’ your neighbor like he’s your next of kin wouldn’t be gone with the wind,
If the world had a front porch like we did back then.”
I can recall stringing many a mess of green beans with Mom and my sister on hot, humid summer evenings.
If you were lucky to be near a creek, you would wade in the water and try catching crawdads without getting pinched. Maybe you had a cane pole and got to go fishing in the nearby Tug River in hopes of catching a catfish using a worm you just dug up from your yard as bait.
We roamed the hills and played for hours. When we got thirsty, we drank from a natural spring that was coming out of the mountainside and didn’t give it another thought.
Country-style or family dining, where everyone gathered around a table and ate good home-cooked food, is how we ate most meals.
Living and growing up in rural Appalachia was special and even a perk. It is something that those of us who had the privilege of growing up in this region feel; unless you experienced it, it may be hard to understand.
(Kyle Lovern is a longtime journalist in the Tug Valley. He is now a retired freelance writer and columnist for the Mountain Citizen.)