This is the first print of the Appalachian Heritage Series. My grandmother Susie lived in a house on Sookey’s Creek, Pike County, Kentucky all of her married life. The house was in existence for nearly 100 years and had seen the birth and death of nearly four generations within its 3 small rooms. The most used room and the place that personified HOME was the kitchen. A back door led to the well where water was drawn, 2 windows looked out upon the garden plots and a rock fireplace where what occupied each of the four walls of that small intimate room. The room was filled with a cook stove, wood and coal box, wash stand, work table, pantry, “press’, ice box (later refrigerator), and in the center of it all an oak dining table and chairs making a complete world unto itself. The family in that house had several members who “laid a corpse” in the front room, the parlor, but family, friends, neighbors, and others gathered in the kitchen to eat the food everyone brought for the grieving family. It was the room where Christmas came, Thanksgiving was celebrated, birthday cakes baked, and food was “put up” for the cold winter months. It was also
the place where one or more cats called home and no matter what color they really were they always ended up charcoal gray from sleeping in a warm spot which was also occupied by the ash box near the cook stove. A coal oil lamp lit the darkness of evenings until “ ‘lectric juice” provided the light from a single bulb that hung from the ceiling. Regardless of the wood stove, fireplace, lamp, or light it was warmed and lighted by boundless amounts of Love from Grandma.
It’s all gone now but lives on in this painting and in the hearts of all who sat under that table, or snacked on cold biscuits and gravy left on the cook stove from some mornings breakfast, washed garden patch work grime and sweat from their face in the cool water from the bucket fresh from the well in the old dented wash bowl, drank a cold glass of buttermilk from out of the ice box, who found a slice of dried apple pie on a shelf in the pantry, or cut a chew of tobacco from the twist that lay on the mantel above the fireplace, while they warmed themselves after a spell of outdoor mid-winter chores.
the place where one or more cats called home and no matter what color they really were they always ended up charcoal gray from sleeping in a warm spot which was also occupied by the ash box near the cook stove. A coal oil lamp lit the darkness of evenings until “ ‘lectric juice” provided the light from a single bulb that hung from the ceiling. Regardless of the wood stove, fireplace, lamp, or light it was warmed and lighted by boundless amounts of Love from Grandma.
It’s all gone now but lives on in this painting and in the hearts of all who sat under that table, or snacked on cold biscuits and gravy left on the cook stove from some mornings breakfast, washed garden patch work grime and sweat from their face in the cool water from the bucket fresh from the well in the old dented wash bowl, drank a cold glass of buttermilk from out of the ice box, who found a slice of dried apple pie on a shelf in the pantry, or cut a chew of tobacco from the twist that lay on the mantel above the fireplace, while they warmed themselves after a spell of outdoor mid-winter chores.