Speaker A
One fall day in 1959, a fellow from the county drove a gray car up this creek as far as the road went and walked from there to the last house at the top of the holler.
Wendell Sloan recounts how Appalachian families survived without Social Security, through shared hog meat, communal work, small cash income, family caregiving, and neighborly care for widows.
Key Takeaways
- Rural Appalachian communities survived through mutual aid and kinship networks rather than formal government programs in the mid-20th century.
- Dignity and work were central; elderly people contributed labor and were ashamed of being 'kept'.
- Informal economies, such as sharing meat and selling handmade goods, filled gaps left by early federal benefits.
- Labor unions and eventually federal black lung benefits provided important supplemental support for coal communities.
What the video covers
- Narrator recalls a 1959 county official visiting widow Mint Richie to assess her eligibility for aid, when he was seven years old.
- Social Security became law in 1935 but for its first two decades largely did not reach rural Appalachian hollers.
- Families shared meat, especially to lone elderly neighbors, delivered via children carrying meat sacks to doors.
- Elderly residents were expected to keep working, performing tasks like mending, childcare, cooking and gardening, and were never to be 'kept'.
- Small cash income such as egg money and quilt sales helped families cover taxes and needs.
- Families often had one adult child stay behind to care for parents while others left for factory jobs in northern cities and sent money home.
- Neighbors checked on isolated elderly people, fixed their fences, and tended their fires after storms.
- The county poor farm was the dreaded fallback for the elderly without family or community support.
- The United Mine Workers' pension and later black lung benefits provided some relief in the coal region.
- The narrator's father kept a ledger of hogs killed each year, and the meat was distributed to elderly neighbors first.
Chapters
- 00:00A 1959 County Visit to Mint Richie
- 00:36Introduction and Narrator Background
- 01:54The Early Years of Social Security in the Hollers
- 03:30Meat Sharing and the Smokehouse
- 05:10Work, Dignity, and Keeping Busy
- 07:23Egg Money and Quilt Sales
- 10:27Family Caregiving and Children Leaving for Cities
- 14:48Union Pensions and Black Lung Benefits
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
he carried a clipboard and he'd come to find out how an old widow named Mint Richie was staying alive with no check, no pension, and no husband. I was seven.
Speaker A
He had on a white shirt, and he carried a clipboard, and he'd come to find out how an old widow named Mint Richie was staying alive with no check, no pension, and no husband.
Speaker A
the one question on his paper she couldn't answer the way he wanted. What she told him is the whole answer to this video. And I'll give you her exact words before we're through. My name is Wendell Sloan. I'm 74 years old and I live in
Speaker A
I was seven.
Speaker A
Social Security became law in 1935. And for the first 20 years, it didn't reach most of the people up these hollers at all. A man who farmed his own ground, paid nothing in and got nothing out until the middle of the 50s. A widow
Speaker A
I was sitting on her porch steps shelling beans, and I watched the whole thing.
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And to get it, a man like the one in the white shirt came and looked at everything you owned and decided if you were poor enough to deserve it. My grandmother said she'd seen old women go up the road to sign for it with their
Speaker A
He counted her chickens.
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one of them from this creek ever went down it. So how did they live? I watched it work for 20 years from the porch steps and the smokehouse and the back of my daddy's truck. There were seven pieces to it and the seventh is what
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He looked in her smokehouse.
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number was how many families went home with meat. Now, I'll tell you who a good many of those families were. They were one old woman or one old man living alone up a branch somewhere. Nobody asked them if they needed meat. Asking
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He asked how many children she had and where every one of them lived.
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it." and come straight home without waiting to be thanked. I carried that sack a hundred times if I carried it once. And mark this, the old ones got their share first before our own smokehouse was full. My daddy said a
Speaker A
And then he asked her the one question on his paper she couldn't answer the way he wanted.
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The second piece was the work. Nobody on this creek was ever kept. That word kept was an insult. And an old person who heard it said about them would get up and go hoe a row of corn just to prove
Speaker A
What she told him is the whole answer to this video, and I'll give you her exact words before we're through.
Speaker A
kitchen. And nothing went in or out of that kitchen she didn't know about. Old men sat on their porches and fixed things. Harness, chair bottoms, ho handles, shoes, the clocks nobody else could get running. There was an old
Speaker A
My name is Wendell Sloan.
Speaker A
minded the babies while the young women worked the garden. And the oldest man on any creek was the only one who knew where the landlines ran. When two neighbors fell out over a fence, they didn't go to the courthouse. They walked
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I'm 74 years old, and I live in the house my great-granddaddy built in 1889 at the head of a holler in Eastern Kentucky.
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third piece was money that was theirs. Not much, but theirs. My grandmother's egg money is the one you've heard about.
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On this channel, I only teach what my own hands did or my own eyes watched.
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from Lexington came up our steps wanting quilts. My grandmother sold her two for $20, and that 20 went into the apron and came out a dollar at a time all that winter. Where every dollar went, I couldn't tell you. only that not one of
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Most folks don't know this.
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where she'd dug everyone so there'd be sang there for whoever came after. That sang money paid her taxes. It wasn't enough to live on. It was enough that nobody else paid her taxes. And on this creek that was all the difference
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Social Security became law in 1935.
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She knew it. The whole creek knew it. Nobody ever said it. I'll stop right here for a minute because some of you watching are worried and I know it because you write me. You're getting on and you didn't save what the magazines
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And for the first 20 years, it didn't reach most of the people up these hollers at all.
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an old man on a porch tell you something. That ain't your fault. They took it before you was ever born.
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A man who farmed his own ground paid nothing in and got nothing out until the middle of the '50s.
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people kept each other going when nobody was coming to help. And that's the book I've got linked below. The book of keeping. Every way my people kept a family safe, hidden, warm, watered.
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A widow who'd spent her life keeping a farmhouse had nothing coming to her from anybody.
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Most families had one child who never left. Usually the youngest, sometimes whichever one just couldn't stand the noise of a city. The others went off to Dayton and Detroit and Cincinnati for the factory work. And they sent money
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The county had a thing folks called the old age pension, a few dollars a month.
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"You stay. You keep the old folks. And the land is yours when it's time." Nobody wrote it on paper. The paper came later at the courthouse, and it only said what the whole creek already knew.
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And to get it, a man like the one in the white shirt came and looked at everything you owned and decided if you were poor enough to deserve it.
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him. They'd had paychecks. He'd had her. And I'll tell you something else. When those brothers came home in August, the first thing they did before they ever sat down to eat was walk Ants's fence lines with him and fix whatever was
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My grandmother said she'd seen old women go up the road to sign for it with their heads down, like they were going to a whipping.
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theirs to knock on. After an ice storm, before a man saw to his own cattle, he walked up the branch to see was there smoke coming out of a certain chimney.
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And behind all of that, at the bottom of every old person's mind, was the county poor farm, where the old went when nobody would have them.
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her fire had gone out in the night and she hadn't the strength left to get up and build it. Daddy built her fire and sent me home at a run for my mother and my mother sat with her two days and two
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Every soul on this creek knew the road to it.
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woman's porch. and she'd come out and holler at them that she didn't need it and they'd keep stacking. On Sunday afternoons, the women walked to the old folks houses carrying a plate and stayed an hour. Nobody called it a program.
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Not one of them from this creek ever went down it.
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miners union started paying a pension out of its own fund. $100 a month to a man 60 or older with 20 years underground. You cannot understand what that was up here unless you'd seen it.
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So how did they live?
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the winter of 1960 when the mines laid off and there were 11 of us living in this house. It was Eliu's money that paid the store bill for three families on this creek and he never let a soul
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I watched it work for 20 years from the porch steps and the smokehouse and the back of my daddy's truck.
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porches, the government finally paid on the black lung. And I watched old men who could hardly climb their own steps get a check for the coal dust in their chests. More than one of them spent the first one on somebody else's light bill.
Speaker A
There were seven pieces to it, and the seventh is what Mint Richie said to that man.
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The seventh piece is the check and what Mint Richie told that man. He'd counted everything. 12 hens, a cow, a hog in the pen, a smokehouse with meat in it, a whole garden put up in jars on the
Speaker A
The first piece was the hog.
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coffee cup and pointed out past him down the holler at every chimney with smoke coming out of it. and she said, "Young man, write down the creek." He laughed because he thought she was joking and he wrote down relatives. She wasn't joking.
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You've heard me tell about my daddy's ledger on the smokehouse door, the date and the weight of every hog he killed from 1949 to 1971, and a number beside each one.
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where it went. It went to the creek. Mint Richie's check bought the coffee and the sugar for every hog killing at the top of this holler for as long as she kept house and the peppermint in the church poke at Christmas. And when a
Speaker A
That number was how many families went home with meat.
Speaker A
with. Now, before I close, do me a kindness. I read every single comment myself. Tell me who the mint Richie was on your road. The old one everybody looked after who looked after everybody back. And tell me what folks called her.
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Now, I'll tell you who a good many of those families were.
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For anybody who wants all of how my people held each other up through hard times with nobody coming, the book that holds it is the first link. The book of keeping every way my people kept a family safe, hidden, warm, watered.
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They were one old woman or one old man living alone up a branch somewhere.
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Mint Richie's porch what a check is and what it ain't. A check can pay the light bill. It can't walk up a branch after an ice storm looking for smoke. So I do what she did. A piece of mine goes to
Speaker A
Nobody asked them if they needed meat.
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And every Saturday she tells me she don't need it. And I keep carrying. And there's a list in my head, the same as there was in my daddy's, of every soul on this creek that lives alone. And when
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Asking would have shamed them.
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here's what I'd tell you from everything I watched. Don't wait to be looked after. Find the thing you're good at and do it for somebody. Mending, minding, cooking, knowing things, and you'll never once be a burden. Because a burden
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A boy was just sent up the branch with a mess of tenderloin and a slab of side meat wrapped in a flour sack and told to hand it in at the door, say, "Daddy sent it," and come straight home without waiting to be thanked.
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at. Keep a little money that's yours. Keep a list of who's yours to look in on. And let your name be on somebody's.
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I carried that sack a hundred times if I carried it once.
Topics:AppalachiaSocial Security historyrural povertyEastern Kentuckyelderly caremutual aidoral historyWendell Sloancommunity survivalGreat Depression era traditions
