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Part 8
Mountain Folk Can Survive
Steve Dennie
March 1987
Rhoda Couch lives about as far from the Little Laurel church as anyone who attends there--a half mile or so past the snake church.
Rhoda drove the van for about four years. But then Multiple Sclerosis struck. Now, she is confined to a wheelchair.
"There's nothing you can do, except lean more heavily on the Lord," Rhoda told me. "But even if all you had was an ingrown toenail, you'd be in trouble if you didn't lean on Him, because all healing comes from the Lord. That's the way I believe it."
When Rhoda was about five years old, a woman showed her a picture of Jesus and asked, "Do you know who this is?'
"I got interested in Him then and wanted to know more about Him," Rhoda says. "I never wanted to drink, cuss, or do the things nonChristians normally do, so I know He influenced my life. I just wish I had lived for Him all that time. But now I'm His."
Rhoda starting attending Little Laurel seven years ago. "I just decided I wanted to go to church and become a Christian. And I have not regretted it." She was saved during a revival at Little Laurel. Now, she rides to every service in the van she used to drive, but as a passenger.
"I love the Bible studies there," she says. "That was such a good Bible study Sunday night. I've been in a lot of churches where it's really dead--nobody talks. I attended services at the hospital when I was there three months, but it wasn't like going to the UB."
For several years, Rhoda has been doing "Kids Corner," in which she gives a short object lesson during the morning service. The one I heard sounded very well-prepared, with carefully chosen words, but Rhoda insists that's not the case--"The words just flow."
When she could walk, Rhoda loved to hunt for ginseng, a herb used in medicine which grows wild throughout the mountains. It's a good money-maker, too, selling for up to $160 a pound. About everybody digs it up for a hobby; some live off it. But Rhoda just enjoyed the fun of looking for ginseng.
Rhoda's husband died September 3, which makes her a very recent widow. But she's not alone. Her two sons and daughter still live with her. "My 22-year-old son is up in the mountains right now hunting dear."
Is that what you eat around here?
"If you're lucky. He's hunted several years, but got just one deer. That was last year. There are plenty of deer around, but they know how to take care of themselves."
Rhoda, one of the area's few high school graduates, has always loved books. "We didn't have TV when I was a child, and I'm glad. Anybody who doesn't read is missing out on a lot of life." She likes Hal Lindsay's books on Bible prophecy, Harley Mowatt's books about nature, detective stories.
"And," she adds with a mischievous twinkle, "I always enjoy a good ghost story."
"Got any garbage?" someone calls from outside.
"Yes," Rhoda calls back.
I hear someone walk up the wooden porch steps, and then a young man walks into the house. He goes straight to the kitchen and returns with Rhoda's trash.
"This is Steve Whitehead," Rhoda says. "He married my niece two years ago. He's one of the lucky people around here: he has a job."
Steve sits down on a stool. "Everybody who's working usually lives out of here. The big companies, like Shamrock Oil, they bring in people from Tennessee and other places, let them live in rent-free houses. Everyone from around here gets laid off."
"You couldn't buy enough coal from one of those companies to make a fire. It goes elsewhere," Rhoda says.
"The mountains are getting tore all to pieces, the roads aren't worth nothing, and we're not getting a thing back for it. We're sitting here with dog food. You talk to big people about it, and they just nod their heads and walk off."
"To get a job, you have to know somebody," Rhoda says.
"Poor boy's sitting on his porch watching all his money go down the highway. Used to be a lot of jobs. Now, a lot of fellows are bankrupt. I'm still going, but everybody else is laid off."
Steve speaks with calm matter-of-factness, but it's obvious that deep anger lies not too far beneath the surface-anger at the injustice being inflicted on the mountain people.
"We're all happy in a way, but the love has left. People are scared."
"Buck Ward is worried about his job closing up the first of the year," Rhoda tells me, referring to the only person at Little Laurel church who has a job.
"You ever hear that song by Hank Williams Jr., A Country Boy can Survive?" Steve asks. "He's telling what we are. We can take two dollars and live better on it than what city people can on $300. We dig it up, eat it, raise it, hunt it, fish for it whatever it takes. If things get bad, I can handle it. IÕll get me an old mule, start covering some land, build a house with these poplars, raise corn, and start breeding and trading hogs.
"We're the ones that made the United States. You go up to Chicago and Detroit and ask everybody where they're from, they'll say they're from the south--Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee. Now that everything's broke up in the cities, they're coming back here to survive."
Steve is one of three garbage contractors in Harlan County. But he isn't your typical garbage man. He'll go right to your door--or even inside, like he does with Rhoda--to get your garbage. That's going above and beyond the call of duty.
"There's this one 80-year-old woman--she's stronger than I am. She filled one bag so heavy, I about fell down her stairs."
Steve plans to expand his business, but takes a common-sense, realistic approach to it. "This is like schooling. I've been working and watching. I'm learning how to take my money, make a dollar, and still pay my bills. I'm the lowest paid man right now, but I still end up with more than other guys. They can't understand that."
I go out to see Steve's truck; it's noon, and he's only got an hour's work left before he can quit for the day.
Do you go to church? I ask him.
"No, I don't go to church anywhere. I'm a sinner." Again, he's straightforward. "Maybe I'll go someday, but! don't now."
If he did, it would be a holiness church "with a lot of life. The Baptists can be too cold. I like a church where you can feel chills running up and down your spine."
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