A Dime in His Pocket

My Grandfather’s Life in Rural Appalachia

(This article was originally published January 28, 2023, in the Southern Spice section of the Times-Georgian)

Clifford Farley (left) + Alice Farley circa 1980. Photo/Judy Bice

My grandfather was a man unlike other men, born in an era that was both simpler and more difficult, born a child of poverty. I remember the stories my mom told me about him, and they all centered on his devotion to the land and his large family: his nine siblings; his mother, Ada; and his father, James.

His long, silent life of travail did not impress its mark upon me until I was much older, many years after his passing. His attachment to the West Virginia plot of land he owned and cultivated meant nothing to me as a child. My appreciation for his unique claim on that particular ridge did not grow until I experienced enough loss to know what it meant to hold fiercely onto something so precious.

The Farm

My grandparents’ farm appeared frozen in time, an anachronistic reminder of humble days. The warm, fetid smell of cow manure and the cool, earthy scent of the blue-green grass greeted me as soon as I opened my car door and stepped out onto the gravel road.

It was hard to imagine my grandfather not being at the old wooden gate to greet us and then bang on the car tires with his walking stick to see if they were still good, his unique way of showing love for us.

In spite of his absence, we trudged up the worn grass path.

On our way to the small, white clapboard farmhouse that my grandfather built by hand, we passed the “air conditioning” — a grove of pine trees that provided shade and a cool breeze during the heat of an August day where my grandfather invariably kept a circle of old fabric and metal lawn chairs where everyone could “chew the fat.”

The “Bank”

The gray, weathered detached garage stood motionless as a sentinel, surveying the ridge and protecting my grandparents’ financial assets.

As survivors of the Depression, they held onto their money with a determined tenacity. Their savings and withdrawal system was based on cold hard cash buried underneath the garage in rusty old blue Maxwell House coffee cans.

Even though the cash containers themselves were meager, their contents were not, nor was my grandfather’s attention to the bottom line. He knew to the penny exactly how much money he had.

The general mistrust of the banks and stocks and credit cards was not unusual in people of their generation, but their “banking” habits still boggled my mind. Equally unusual was how my grandfather, a former coal miner, veteran, moonshiner, and farmer could have amassed any amount of money whatsoever.

A Life of Travail

For my granddad, his frugality may have stemmed in part from an incident in his childhood. At ten years old, the end of fifth grade, Grandpa dropped out of school to get a job and contribute to the support of the family.

He and his buddy Mack cut timber and worked at a local sawmill, walking several miles to and from work each day. The manual labor must have been grueling and exhausting — unconscionable for a child. But this was a different time and necessity and hunger always won out. So he did what he had to and turned his earnings over to my great-grandmother Ada every Friday.

He did, however, feel the need to hang onto some of his hard-earned wages, so he asked her to stitch a dime in the pocket of his overalls so he could start saving.

The Coal Mining Blues

In adulthood job opportunities were limited so he did what many young men of the area did: coal mining.

It did not agree with him. Going below ground in claustrophobic conditions, breathing in black dust that coated his lungs, and feeling completely trapped were things the mountain boy could not tolerate, so he escaped above ground and found his life’s work in farming (and making moonshine — that’s a story for another day), an original homesteader.

There’s No Place Like Home

A grueling tour of duty in World War II solidified my grandfather’s attachment to his farm. Who could blame him? A Purple Heart injury followed by a hospital stay of several months made him vow that if he ever got home he would never leave again. And he mostly lived by that mantra. With the exceptions of a few short church trips to Virginia and trips to visit us and my aunt, he never left West Virginia again.

Signs of change were few and far between then: a new Ford truck my grandfather bought every twelve years or so and the closure of the hen house after we finally convinced my grandparents that Elliott’s grocery store would supply them with the required number of eggs they needed were about it. Other than that, the ridge had remained virtually untouched for the thirty plus years I visited.

Laundry still went through the wringer and dried on the clothesline. Water came into the house through the lone spigot that rose out of the floor in the kitchen like a long necked iron crane.

The very dry bathtub’s sole purpose was to hold the Christmas presents for next year’s Advent season. Washing bodies and hair, a luxury, came from water heated in batches from a tea kettle on the potbelly stove in the living room.

Before meals, we “washed” in the kitchen in a large aluminum bowl filled with sulfur-infused water from the well.

Sitting on top of the bureau in the living room was the small black and white rabbit-eared TV that hadn’t worked since George Bush was in office — George Bush, the père. All offers to purchase a new one had been kindly, but firmly, rebuffed.

A funny sidebar: my parents used to lug their small TV set in for Thanksgiving holidays so they wouldn’t miss out on the big football games.

And many, many years ago, my grandmother used to watch her “stories” on that tiny TV. My grandfather, too, watched TV on occasion to stay current with world events and politics until he saw the world deteriorate before his eyes. Just before his death, he believed he had been dealt the final blow: a Democratic party that had swung too liberal and abandoned the common man, the salt of the Earth, the farmer. Him.

He had survived a World War only to be forsaken, in his mind, by the very party that had promised to protect him and those like him. He even considered voting for a Republican before he died. It would have been the first time in his life he had done so.

But in the end, neither he nor my grandma seemed to mourn the loss of news, soaps, or connections to a world they no longer felt a part of.

Country Roads

As we looked around the four room house for the final time, collecting the last of my grandfather’s possessions and mementos, my mom found precious few: letters from my grandfather to my grandmother written in the hospital after WWII, army discharge papers, yellowed and crinkled family photos, the family Bible. A rich life reduced to so few tangible reminders, but how appropriate for a man who lived and measured his worth not by things but by ideas, strength, faith, and will.

We had to share one final story while we stood in the kitchen. Turns out that farming suited my grandfather far better than any of the other professions he had experienced. Grandpa produced the most beautiful Better Boy tomatoes you’ve ever seen and the earthiest, most fragrant potatoes I’ve ever tasted. But it was his corn that was legendary. He would regularly load us down with paper bags filled with it when we came to visit in the summertime. His Silver Queen corn was so sweet you could almost eat it uncooked. I once saw the man polish off five ears for dinner.

Satisfied with our memories and informal tribute, we shut the old wooden screen door behind us as we left, arms loaded down with everything we could carry to help keep him alive in our memories. He had lived his life on his terms. How lucky we would be to do the same.

We shut the old wooden screen door to the kitchen behind us as we left, arms loaded down with everything we could carry to help keep him alive in our memories. He had lived his life on his terms. How lucky we would be to do the same.

I took one last look out the window as we turned the car around and headed home.