A dateline in the Post-Dispatch, Beattyville, Kentucky, caught my eye over the weekend. I had been there twice. This small town in the heart of Appalachia has a dilemma for the beginning of the school year because of limited internet service. Even if that was not a problem, many of the people in the attendance area can not afford to pay for the service even where it is available. Rural areas all over the United States are facing the same difficulty.
I read the article with much interest because of my participation in two St. Mark mission trips to the area at least twenty years ago. The mission committee at that time planned the trips there for the group to work on houses that Habitat for Humanity was constructing with volunteer labor. We also were told that there would be repair projects on existing houses. The week before we set off, volunteers from St. Mark made food for us to take with us and the head of the kitchen crew put together a menu and purchased food to take along. We understood that although Beattyville had a grocery store there would be a better selection if the food was purchased in Ballwin. Also, the several small cafes in town just did not have the seating capacity for twenty so we knew we would have to feed ourselves. Carpools were formed and everyone brought along work clothes and tools.
The trip was an all-day journey on Interstate 64 southeast across southern Illinois and Indiana and entering Kentucky at Louisville. We continued past Frankfort, Lexington and then turned off 64 to drive to our destination in the southeastern part of the state. When the team arrived, we were met by the Habitat for Humanity coordinator for the area, a minister of a small non-denominational church. Our accommodations were most interesting. The town municipal building had been replaced and the original was vacant, so Habitat had leased it. Some renovations were made to create male and female dormitories with bunk beds. Some of the smaller rooms were used by two people. Some of those had originally been jail cells. There was a kitchen and a large common room with tables and chairs where we ate our meals. The building was on the main street in the middle of Beattyville and had parking spaces enough to accommodate all our cars. Also, it was in the same block as one of the more important retails stores in town, Dollar General.
The first evening after we arrived the coordinator asked us to come to his church for a short worship service so he could ask blessing on our endeavors. We met several of the church members and got a feel for the town and its people. The workdays were all the same. Each day most of the crew went to the Habitat home that was under construction and worked on the next part of the project. We did not get to see the finished house either year. In an area where a doublewide trailer was one of the nicer homes, the Habitat houses were especially desirable. We got to meet the owners who were working with the volunteers. Each day a few people went to existing houses that had been selected for repair. At noon we returned to home base to eat lunch, freshen up, and then back to work. Late in the day after supper we had a short vesper service and then a planning session for the next day.
Our recreation was to go outside to watch the evening show. The local people drove their cars up and down the main street for several hours each evening. At one end of the street the turnaround was the Dollar General parking lot. I am not sure where the other turning spot was. There were stops along the way where ice cream and sodas could be purchased. The object of this activity was apparently to see and be seen. One year the added attraction was the Wooly Worm festival. This was a street fair where the local clubs could sell food, local crafts and homemade items. The wooly worm is a common caterpillar whose body is part black and part brown. There is folk wisdom that in early fall if the wooly worms coloring is largely black there will be a severe winter. That is probably as accurate as the Farmer’s Almanac.
A trip to repair an existing home gave us an opportunity to meet Geneva. Geneva is one of the memorable characters from the trip. She was a friendly, cheerful, gossipy widow whose home was in serious disrepair. It was located on the outskirts of town on the road to the next village. If you didn’t know where it was, you could identify the spot by the old car in the front yard that had not been moved in years if the size of the plants and little trees growing around it was an indication. Geneva’s house was on a hillside lot. The front door was on the same level as the road and the back door of the house was at the top of a stair to the ground level. Termites had eaten into the timbers under the house to the extent that the base of the house had collapsed, and one corner of the house was significantly lower than the rest. The back door could no longer be opened. It was a challenging repair project. The men who looked at the situation used tape measures, levels and eventually came up with a solution.
They used carjacks to lift the corner of the house enough that replacement lumber could be put in place. They knew they had lifted the building corner enough when the back door could swing. The project was finished up with repairs to the back stairs and a fresh coat of paint on the house. Geneva was supervising all this activity with many stories about neighbors, local history and details on her husband’s death. She was a stringer for the local weekly newspaper so of course we were all in her column the next week. She also shared some of her best recipes with the St. Mark ladies.
The mission trips to Beattyville were special to the people who went. We touched the lives of people of the town and those who went had lives that were touched by this unforgettable time.
Alice Crippen
Wonderful memories, Alice!
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