Monday, February 20, 2012

Wow, look at the snow

We got about 4 ½ inches of snow yesterday. It took Joe, my brother, and me almost 3 hours to get home from the Coal Fields, whichI think is a reclaimed strip mine turned industrial area. Looking out my window now, I can see our little hollow/driveway is cleared, thanks to some of my neighbors and another neighbor just drove past on his way to work. We aren't snowed-in but it does remind me of a couple times when I have been snowed-in here. There have been many other times, but these are the two that come back to me now.

I was living in Louisville and had dropped out of college—but had yet to go back. I was young; I had to be around 21-years-old because my Dad was still alive. I worked at Frisch’s in the drive-thru and I’d had a couple of days off so decided to visit home. It may have been Christmas, because I seem to remember my brothers being there too. I don’t remember any specifics about the trip except for calling in to work on the day I was supposed to return to let him know I was snowed in and wouldn’t be able to work that night. I spoke to Ted, the Manager in Training. He was just this side of livid, to say the least. It was obvious that Ted thought I was just trying to get out of work (um Ted, it would have been so much easier to play sick.) He took the number to our house and called me back to make sure I really was snowed-in—in the middle of Eastern KY and wouldn’t make it back for the evening shift. Then next morning, we got my car—a 1979 AMC Spirit, I loved that car—unburied and I drove back to Louisville.
The other time it was just me and Mom. And that’s fine; Mom and I mostly get along. We sat on the couch and watched lots of TV…until the power went out. We heated with coal then, so we had plenty of heat as long as I kept the coal bin full and the ashes empty. Coal is heavy. Ashes are heavier. We were also able to cook on the coal stove, so we didn’t starve. I wasn’t a knitter yet so we had to do something to keep ourselves sane. I have a hard time reading around my Mom, she keeps talking to me and I get frustrated. So I knew we had to do something together. We had lots of board games, and I love board games, except they were all multiplayer like Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. We also had puzzles. I like puzzles, maybe a little bit too much. I get a little bit OCD about them. First we separate the edges from the inside pieces. Then we build the frame (put the edge pieces together) and work our way in. We must have put together at least 3 1000 piece puzzles during those 5 days. Working a puzzle by candle light is near to impossible. And after the power came back on? We finished the last puzzle while watching TV.

My cats won’t let me play with puzzles now. They want to play too and I end up missing pieces.

I stole my car images from:
and Internal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1979_AMC_Spirit_GT_V8_Russet_DA.jpg photo by Christopher Ziemnowicz
I stole the puzzle image from http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ who stole it from http://www.psychologytoday.com/

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Other-ness and Blue People

I led a very suburban life in my childhood.

We lived a block from my school, a little Catholic school, and yes there were uniforms. We, myself and the people I spent most of my time with – my brothers, our friends, sometimes my little sister- rode bikes around the neighborhood, hung out at each others houses, had snowball or milkweed fights, walked to the store to buy candy and tried to have as much fun as possible and make it home before the streetlights went on. We were able to go and do without too much hassle. Most of the places we wanted were within walking distance or we knew how to use Louisville’s bus system.

Other cities I had visited had the same feel about them. We had been to Dayton, OH and Chicago, IL every couple of years to visit family. I had been other places too like to COSI with the Girl Scouts, Santa Claus Land (yes, it was still Santa Claus Land at the time) and the Wisconsin Dells.

It was sometime around my 13th birthday when we learned we would be moving to Hazard, KY (or thereabouts.) When my Dad brought us for our first visit he tried to explain that living here wouldn’t be like living in Louisville. He gave us lots of advice like “wait till the people approach you” and “if you rush off they will think you’re rude” and his favorite, “never leave Church early, someone will follow to make sure you are okay.” Apparently, the first time Dad went to our Church here, he left right after Communion (which was a commonly accepted practice in Louisville) and three doctors followed to make sure he wasn’t sick.

Dad also gave us a newspaper article he thought might interest us. It was about the “Blue People of Troublesome Creek” about a family with a blood disorder that caused them to turn blue when they got cold. I was 13, and imagined hundreds of people the color of Smurfs all over Eastern KY. In all the time I have lived here, I have never seen a blue person… because they don’t exist. Not the way I was thinking; it isn’t like a mood ring. And it is rare. Always was, but now it is much rarer than it was in the 60s when it was discovered in this area. Because the thing that was keeping the blood disorder alive was proximity.

Here in the early 1900s it wasn’t as easy to get to… well, anywhere. Your neighbors were your family and sometimes boys ended up married to the girl next door aka cousin Bess. I found and reread that article recently and it was interesting and technical. I noticed one of the family names listed in the article and asked a friend if her family was one of the descendant lines that had this blood disorder. She was kind of suspicious about my interest. I realized later she was thinking of the incest stuff and I was thinking how cool it would be to see someone turn blue.

There are a couple of misconceptions I want to address here:

  • I don’t care that your Great Grandpa married his first cousin, that was a different time. None of the people I know here now have done it.
  • The people here are basically just like the people everywhere else. Some are vegetarians, some play video games and some are morons.
  • Undereducated is not the same as ignorant. I know a couple of really smart people who finished high school and that is it.
  • Some of the smartest people I know came from here: doctors, lawyers, professors, you name it… environmental engineer, computer programmer and one genius that can’t really be pinned to one thing-so he's a substitute teacher. I’m just the librarian.

I think what Dad was trying to explain to us about life here is the other-ness. Now that I am sitting here trying to, I know there is no description that can capture it, but I’ll try. I can run into someone I haven’t seen since high school, (who wasn't really my friend at the time) in Wal-mart or the library and they will ask me how I’ve been then ask about all of my family by name and I know that they really want to know. For all their lives, people here live next to family, so if you live next to them, you may not be blood kin, but you are family. Any person that is my family’s kin is my family same goes with friends.

My sister, Joan and I look a lot alike: she’s a little taller, I have darker hair. I always though she was prettier. I wear a lot of black, make stuff and watch Science Fiction and Foreign stuff. She’s really busy with her kids and NA. You get the picture, we’re different. Mom and I were walking into Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago, when I see this woman waving at me. I smile and wave back at her because by this point I figured she was just saying “hi” to my sister. She says, “Oh I though you were Joanie!” We ended up talking to her for about 20 minutes. That is just the kind of place this is. Other-ness and blue people.

Interested in reading about the Blue People of Troublesome Creek? Click the blue words.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

What the hell happened?

Note- I actually wrote this over the summer. I have since been back to Cincinnati to work at the Halloween place again (Hello ladies) and have since found a job... but more about that later. This was supposed to be the beginning of a book, but I find writing in blog form less daunting and scary. Stranded in Hazard is about me (of course) living here in the Hazard, KY area. The ups and downs--things I like and the things that confuse me. That said... my intro to how I got here.


I’ve been more or less unemployed for the last 2 years. It’s the classic scenario that sometimes happens… I had a great boss; she was one of the best women I’ve ever worked with. Management wanted her someplace else, and even though she didn’t want it-she was forced to move.
Let me back up a little. Hi, my name is Alita (pronounced uh, lee, tah) and I’m a librarian. I love working with the public, there are so many interesting people with amazing questions. I was a teen librarian for just over five years. I’m a pretty affable person, I can accept/work with anybody. I don’t have to like someone to work with them. This is part of being an adult. That said, I did not like the new manager (for the sake of anonymity, I’m going to call her Stephanie.) I gave Stephanie a good three months before deciding I didn’t like her. She decided right away that she didn’t like us; she wasn’t there to get to know us, she hated if we got too loud and God forbid if we laughed.
Not long after Stephanie got there, she made it very clear that there were a few of us that she disliked even more than the rest and that we had to go. So there I am, with a target on my back trying to fix everything she decided was wrong, so I wouldn’t get fired. Let me say right now, that I am not perfect. I’m a fat, occasionally bitchy smart-ass with a strange sense of humor and little tolerance for people who are mean or ignorant on purpose. But, I’m also very patient, empathetic and give great customer service. Oh and have a hard time being on time, but I’m working on that.
Then Stephanie found the one thing I couldn’t fix. I can’t fix teenagers. I cannot make teenagers come to the library; especially those that get more allowance than I make in a year, who don’t need to come to the library because they can buy whatever book, movie or video game they want, who don’t need to come to the library because they can drive the car they got for their birthday to the local mall and hang out with their friends. No matter how often I visit their school and tell them about the fun stuff we do at the library—I cannot make teens come to the library.
So with the job market the worst it had been in a very long time, I got fired. I applied for unemployment and cursed Stephanie a lot. I cried a lot. I slept a lot. I have applied for so many jobs; I don’t remember most of them. I applied at those places that will hire anyone (or so it seems when I’m a customer)—grocery stores, big box stores, Wal-mart, Target, Starbucks. Nobody wanted to hire me. I spent time volunteering to fill some of my time and put anything on my resume.
I ended up working some temporary seasonal stuff, like the Census and a Halloween store then I got a part time job at a library. It was actually the library where I had my first librarian position, and I was so grateful when they hired me back that I cried (granted I’d been crying a lot, but this was because I was happy.)
So I spent my 20 hours per week at the library, the rest of the time, I looked for another part-time job, or a full-time job and worried about money. The money thing had caught up with me, mortgage, credit cards, home owner’s insurance, electric bills, phone bills, you name it, I was behind.
That was about five months ago, then I got the Notice of Intent to Foreclose. Holy Shit, they are going to take my house! I knew it would happen, but it is a punch to the gut when you get that letter. I knew what I was going to have to do… so I let my boss and the Human Resources Department know, and then I started packing.
…And now I am living with my mom and one of my brothers (also unemployed, but a little less educated than me) in Eastern Kentucky.
We went to the grocery store yesterday, we decided to drive the truck (it’s mom’s truck because she paid for it, but it’s still in my brother-in-law’s name and Joe uses it to get around till he fixes his car) it’s older, but not old enough to be cool, faded red with one grey door and loud. I asked for the keys, to which I’m told, there aren’t any. Turns out, the door key is hidden in the truck “In case we need to lock it” and the ignition key broke off in the ignition (I’m hoping this has been fixed by now so no one will steal the truck.) So we just start it and go. I suggested taking my car, because “what if someone steals the truck?” “Look at it, who is going to steal that truck?” “I just don’t want to get stranded in Hazard, oh wait I already am. And wouldn’t that be a good name for a book?”