Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Possum Hollar (3) The Writer


The picture to the right shows the writer of Possum Hollar, my Granddad Ewen. At least he recorded the stories in his own handwriting, and I suspect that Granny Ewen had something to do with the telling. The picture shows my Granddad holding the very picture of his dad that now hangs over the mantel of my home. Sidney Brent Ewen was born at Slade, KY, 28 Feb 1899. He died 24 July 1980 Winchester, KY and is buried in Clark Co., KY. The picture he holds is of his father George Washington Ewen who died in 1906. Granddad would have known very little of his father since he died when Granddad was around seven years old. Sidney Brent was the baby of eleven (11) children, 8 boys and 4 girls. What a family. The story of George Washington Ewen is told in an earlier blog titled the "The Sod Rest Lightly".

Possum Hollar (3):

"We lived these about three months before school started, and by that time many more had moved into our camp home from other states. Of course where there are so many children all in one small school house and from different states it was not any trouble to get a fight started, and when some boy from W.Va said someting a Kentucky boy fists began to fly. And all over the school grounds by some way I was knocked down in the fight. The next thing I knew strong arms carried me out of the fight and danger, setting me down and running back to stop the fight. There where I meet my fate. This boy became my idel God though he was several years older than me. Did not make any difference to me. It did not keep me from thinking of him night and day. And to him I was just a little black headed school girl, with pig tails hanging down my back. Nothing else happened to make him look at me any more and he quit school that fall to take a job with the Rail Road Co. that run by our house. Passing by our house on the hand car he did not look at the little girl looking out the window just to get a glance of her man as he went by."

2 comments:

  1. This is just great! I love reading such stories!

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  2. Amazing stuff. I did not know that Granny Ewen lived in a log cabin until she was nine. She was born 10 March 1899, so this would have been between 1899 - 1908. A house with no windows under a rock ledge. Wow!

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