The path was steep : a memoir of Appalachian coal camps during the great depression / Suzanne Pickett ; foreword by Norman McMillan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pickett, Suzanne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pickett, Suzanne--Homes and haunts.

Pickett, Suzanne.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 210 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montgomery, Alabama : NewSouth Books, [2013]

Summary:

Sue Pickett was a coal miner's daughter who became a coal miner's wife and witnessed and lived through the turbulent years of the Great Depression and the sometimes violent struggles between labor unions and coal mine bosses throughout the Appalachian South - especially her native Alabama. The dramatic central episode in her account is a March 1934 standoff between striking miners and the mine owners. She writes of that "wild night when an armed mob gathered at Coleanor, ready to fight and, if necessary, die for the rights to which they had newly awakened. . . . One black man wept as he ran, afraid that someone else would kill the dangerous and feared coal company enforcer] Mike Self, whom he believed it was his right to kill. . . ." Pickett's story is peopled with memorable characters, including her irrepressible husband David and an almost Biblical cast of other family members; a roaring, fire-belching automobile nicknamed Thunderbolt; Irene, a fiercely proud ten-year-old mountain girl left homeless by the hard times; and many others. The memoir is a saga of determined working-class people making do and getting by, but equally of their love of family and land.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Sue Pickett's Appalachian World

Foreword

1 - You Could Almost Smell the Depression

2 - What October Would Bring

3 - As Long as I've Got a Biscuit, You Won't Starve

4 - Despite All, Well-fed and Loved

5 - The Community Barber

6 - The Value of Papa's Teaching

7 - A New Hope

8 - We Never Knew Our Cruelty

9 - Thunderbolt

10 - Here We Rest

11 - Hottest Day I Ever Saw

12 - Such Good People

13 - The Worst Road in the United States

14 - Score One for West Virginia!

15 - Hot Dogs for Thanksgiving

16 - So Dad-Burned Purty

17 - Every River Leads to Piper

18 - Best Medicine in the World

19 - 'Sleeping Sickness'

20 - A Burglar Wouldn't Try to Break In

21 - Wild Over Roosevelt

22 - Is This a Deathwatch?

23 - All Men Brothers

Epilogue

Terms and Expressions

About the Author.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-60306-334-X