Poppy Gap

My maternal grandfather was born and died withing five miles of each other.  I don't know where all they lived except for two places.  They lived on the "main" fork of Nat's Creek when I was a kid and they lived on top of a hill in a gap between the Levisa fork of the Big Sandy River and Rush Fork of Nat's Creek when my mother was born.

Places in Eastern Ky were known by the name of the people who lived there.  I don't know what other people called it but it was always the "Poppy Gap" to members of my family.  It was just down the river from the Tom Price gap. 

An old foot path ran between the two and through and old grave yard and through some dead fruit trees.  When they strip mined that area the strip mine ended just short of the Poppy Gap so it was still there.

Not a lot left to indicate habitation.  A large stone which was the front step to the house and a caved in depression behind it which was the cellar.  There was a row of dead fruit trees along the path and a huge persimmon tree there by the cellar.  I used to sit there, leaning back against the persimmon tree with my shotgun waiting for an unlucky squirrel to wander along.  That rarely happened but I did get to eat a lot of persimmons.

I always wonder where they got their water.  I know they raised gardens and it must have been there where large trees now grow.  I do know that I used to hunt up Mill Branch (across Nat's Creek from where I was born) and there were rows and rows of stacked rocks where people took rocks from their fields and stacked them out of the way.  But, when I was there those stacks of rocks were just there between large trees.  How many years ago the people farmed those hill sides I don't know.

I've heard it was common in those times when a person would be born and die within twenty miles of the same place.  That is difficult to imagine now.  I was born withing a quarter of a mile up Nat's Creek from my grandparents but I live a good four hundred plus miles away from there now and, really, have no desire to go back.  My brother loves those old places and will die withing several miles of where our grandfather was born and died.  I find nothing "home-like" there.  It is hot and humid in the summer and dark, dead and drear in the winter.  One must drive miles to get anywhere.  I am spoiled here in central SC.  I drive five minutes and have anything I want.   I live in a diverse community and cannot imagine living again in a place where everybody looks the same and thinks the same.

I know I am not able and I know I'll never see it again but I'd love to go back to the Poppy Gap and sit again under that huge persimmon tree and just imagine back to the tales I've heard from my family about how it was to live there.   But, life goes on and there are times when time passes us by and the past is something we can no longer get in touch with except in our minds. 

I wish I could take my grand children there and show them where and how their great, great grandparents lived.  I doubt they could understand.  I'm sure they could not even understand how their grandparents lived as both are about the same.  And, I don't know if that is something lost or something gained. 

I suppose my grand kids are much better off for the civilization they have been raised in.  Yet, there is a part of me that wishes they could move to the Poppy Gap and survive living on their own and foraging from the land for food and shelter.  The way things are going in this world it may soon come a day when those people who can do that will be the only people who will survive.

Poppy Gap is just a low place in the hills between the river and Nat's Creek but it means so much to me I cannot explain it.