Running on Red Dog Road Read online

  Every once in a while, a voice comes along that makes you yearn for a childhood you never lived. Author Drema Hall Berkheimer invites you to skip along with her, big sis Vonnie, and best friend Sissy into the coal mining hills and hollers of West Virginia, at a time when gypsies and hobos were as common as doctors who made house calls.

  KATHLEEN M. RODGERS, award-winning

  author of Johnnie Come Lately

  Running on Red Dog Road took me away to a time and a family that I will never forget. Drema Hall Berkheimer is a masterful, joyful, humorous storyteller who is just getting started. What a great book.

  FAWN GERMER, International Speaker and

  Oprah-featured bestselling author

  Time and again I have been carried away by these stories, by the observations of a very shrewd little girl of her elders, both wise and the foolish. But don’t let the sly humor fool you. Like the West Virginia coal country Drema Berkheimer writes about so affectionately and beautifully, there is always something going on here just beneath the surface, something grave, firmly rooted, even eternal.

  BILL MARVEL, author of The Rock Island Line and

  (with R. V. Burgin) Islands of the Damned

  Drema Hall Berkheimer is a pure storyteller, one of the most wonderfully gifted I’ve ever read. As they make their way through Running on Red Dog Road, readers will smile continually, laugh out loud occasionally, and turn misty-eyed at times of joy or sadness as this child of Appalachia shares so lovingly her growing-up experiences with her cherished family and friends. Her phrasing is so exquisite and her words so perfectly chosen that her writing is a mixture of prose and poetry. It’s best read in private, so there will be no distractions as the reader travels hand in hand with the author from beginning to end.

  DR. GEORGE T. ARNOLD, Professor Emeritus,

  W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass

  Communications, Marshall University

  Running on Red Dog Road is an American treasure. Echoes of Mark Twain resonate in Ms. Berkheimer’s tales of life in West Virginia in the care of loving and wise grandparents while her widowed mother helps save the world as a Rosie the Riveter. This family is an icon of what we should wish to be. Truly a needed voice in our world.

  JULIANNE MCCULLAGH, author of The Narrow Gate

  I love this memoir. The voice is masterful. Berkheimer layers into a perceptive child narrator an understated love of her family, a sassy streak that dodges consequences, and a precocious questioning of the society that surrounds her.

  ROBIN UNDERDAHL, coauthor with Anshel Brusilow of Shoot

  the Conductor: Too Close to Monteux, Szell, and Ormandy

  A competent historian could get the details right about mid-century Pentecostal Appalachian culture, but only Drema Hall Berkheimer could set us right in the middle of it. Through the eyes of a little girl who doesn’t miss a thing, we experience spicy stew in the gypsy camp, and creative avenues to intoxication, and river baptisms. If the child Drema’s observations could not always be shared with her grandparents, they are now shared with us. That will be to the delight of every reader.

  DR. DOUGLAS M. GROPP, member, International

  Team of Editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Academic Dean,

  Redeemer Seminary

  A sweet, whimsical, and often touching account of the author’s childhood during a kinder, gentler era. It triggered great nostalgia during my reading.

  DR. WILLIAM L. GROSE, retired NASA scientist

  and Assistant Director of Atmospheric Sciences,

  NASA Langley Research Center

  In this gem of a book, Drema digs deep into her memory pool to bring forth images of well-developed places, characters, and things. In this highly technological age, we need this story to understand how ordinary people survived, thrived, and endured.

  NJOKI MCELROY, PhD, storyteller, performance artist, and

  author of 1012 Natchez: A Memoir of Grace, Hardship and Love

  ZONDERVAN

  Running on Red Dog Road

  Copyright © 2016 by Drema Hall Berkheimer

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  ePub Edition April 2016: ISBN 9780310344988

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Berkheimer, Drema Hall.

  Title: Running on Red Dog Road : and other perils of an Appalachian childhood / Drema Hall Berkheimer.

  Description: Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015036829| ISBN 9780310344964 (softcover) | ISBN 9780310344988 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Berkheimer, Drema Hall — Childhood and youth. | Christian biography — West Virginia — Beckley.

  Classification: LCC BR1725.B438 A3 2016 | DDC 975.4/73042092 — dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036829

  All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: King James Version. Public domain.

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published in association with the Loiacono Literary Agency, LLC, 448 Lacebark Drive, Irving, TX 75063

  Cover design: Faceout Studio, Charles Brock

  Interior design: Denise Froehlich

  Author photograph: Bill Hall

  First printing February 2016

  In Loving Memory

  of

  Grandpa, Reverend Luther Clevland Cales

  Grandma, Clerrinda Adkins Cales

  Father, Hursey Lee Hall

  Mother, Iva Kathleen Cales Hall

  Aunt, Lila Lora Cales Landwehr

  Brother, Hursey Clev Hall

  Sister, Yvonne Elaine Hall

  and

  of the little girl I once was

  Drema Arlene Hall

  Contents

  A Note from the Author

  Prologue: In the Beginning . . .

  1. I Come from Coal

  2. Washed in the Blood

  3. The Color of India Ink

  4. Strung on Fine Wire

  5. Forcing the Forsythia

  6. A Hobo’s Prayer

  7. The Spirit is Willing

  8. Only the Essence Remained

  9. Mistook for a Haint

  10. Most Call Me Tolly

  11. Survivors Will Be Shot

  12. A Handful of the Mountain

  13. Lead a Horse to Water

  14. A Gizzard on My Fork

  15. Suffer the Little Children

  16. The Flesh is Weak

  17. Ladies Don’t Sweat

  18. Gypsy Skirt

  19. Birds of a Feather

  20. The Living and the Deaf

  21. Lonely Hearts Club Man

  22. There Be Dragons

  23. Mr. Pursley’s World

  24. The River Ran Cold

  25. The Mountain Fell Away

  26. All the Bells Were Ringing

  Epilogue: We Are Going Home . . .

  Acknowledgments

  The scales would drop from my eyes;

  I’d see trees like men walking;

  I’d run down the road against all orders, halooing and leaping.

  ANNIE DILLARD, PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK


  A Note from the Author

  Running on Red Dog Road is a memoir of my childhood, mostly set in 1940s East Beckley, West Virginia. It is a living history of the Appalachia I lived in and loved as a child. How it looked and sounded and tasted. How it was. I was as faithful to those places and people as memory and the passage of time would allow—to do less would be a disservice to the remarkable family and place this book is meant to honor. Although names of all family members and many other characters are real, identifying characteristics of some places and people were changed to ensure their privacy. The stories in Running on Red Dog Road were recreated, not exactly as they were, for that clearly would not be possible, but as seen through my eyes as a child. As I wrote, I asked myself the same question over and over—what would Grandma think? I think she would be pleased. Mercy me, she’d say, here you’ve gone and set us down in a book. Yes ma’am, I’d say. I hope I have done her and all the others proud. Their influence on my life was and is immeasurable.

  Begun as a legacy to my progeny, Running on Red Dog Road ended as a tribute to their forebears, the family to whom I owe everything. It is, then, a book of atonement. Resurrecting the dead, living with them, and burying them again was profoundly moving. It took me six years to complete this book, and for several of those years I wrote nothing at all—blindsided by memories that struck me dumb. They were mostly good memories, deeply rooted in family and mountains and the culture of Appalachia, so I was unprepared for the emotional physical spiritual toll this writing could and did exact—and puzzled too. After all, I come from stoic stock, not given to unseemly histrionics. I took after this kin, or so I claimed. I never cried. Not at my grandpa’s funeral, nor my grandma’s many years later. Not at my sister’s or brother’s or mother’s. So the tears that overcame me as I relived our lives on that red dog road so long ago were an enigma—that is, until I realized every family member I wrote about is dead. Except for me. And the heartbreak is they died not knowing how I felt about them. They couldn’t have. Until I began to write their stories, I didn’t know myself.

  RUNNING ON

  RED DOG ROAD

  Prologue: in the beginning . . .

  Her life traces a thin red line across a monitor in the intensive care unit. Tangled wires and tubes curl around baby arms and nose and foot. The widow’s peak of dark hair that shapes her face into a valentine is shaved to make room for yet another needle. Each determined gasp heaves her ribcage up and down, forcing oxygen through lungs not yet ready to breathe.

  She fights hard, this first grandchild of mine, and gradually recovers from the hyaline-membrane disease afflicting her at birth, earning her stripes early as the fifth living generation of strong women in her family. She is given her great-great-grandma’s name, my grandmother’s—Clerrinda—and like that grandma, she is called Rindy.

  One year later, when Rindy is not only breathing but thriving, we have a picture taken for Grandma Clerrinda’s one hundredth birthday. Five generations line up in front of the camera—Grandma, my mother, me, my daughter, and Rindy, on her great-great-grandmother’s lap.

  Still the strongest link in the chain, Grandma directs the photographer and us as well. He’s from the newspaper and is gathering information for the feature article he’s writing about her. She remembers everything, prompting us when we need help with a name or date.

  Like a movie star, she talks and laughs and sings hymns into the video camera recording the event. She wears the dress I bought for her at Neiman’s, a silk jersey print of mauve flowers with Irish lace trim. I overspend because I believe it might be her last new dress, her last birthday. I watch as she smooths the skirt over her lap. She thinks she looks beautiful, and she is right. She tells me she wants to be buried in that dress. Three and a half years later, her wish is granted.

  But now, Rindy is a young woman, dandling her own baby on her lap. This great-granddaughter, called Drema after me, will carry the Appalachian name my father gave me deeper into the future than I can see. Rindy holds the old picture of the five generations in one hand, turning it this way and that, trying to recognize something of herself in her great-great-grandma’s century-old face.

  “Am I anything like the grandma I’m named after? Did you know my grandpa? Do you remember them?”

  “Yes,” I say, “I remember them.”

  1

  I Come from Coal

  We were in the middle of a war. Grandma came right out and told me, but I knew it anyway. Grandpa couldn’t turn on the radio without us hearing how Uncle Sam needed everybody to buy War bonds, and ever last one of us had a brother or uncle or neighbor over there fighting, as everybody said, the Japs. Grandma told me it did not matter one iota to her what everybody said, I was to say Japanese.

  And I did. At least when she was listening.

  Grandma was busy fashioning an apron to cover up the shiny bronze bosoms on the Venus de Milo lamp Mother had mailed home in a big box from New York where she worked making airplanes for the War.

  “Is my father off fighting in the War?” I asked.

  “No, your daddy was a coal miner, but he wasn’t lucky enough to get out of there alive.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Grandma looked up from the pink-flowered scrap in her hand and studied me before she answered. “I reckon if you have a curiosity about him, you’re old enough to know.” I reckoned so too—after all, I had just turned four years old.

  Grandma folded her hands on the table to show I had her full attention.

  “A loose coal car ran over him down in the mines and killed him,” she began. “You weren’t but five months old and don’t remember it, but make no mistake, you come from coal. Scratch any West Virginian a few layers down and you’re bound to find a vein of coal. Yours runs deep. You were born in a coal camp at Penman, West Virginia, on November 17, 1939. I helped you into this world. Good thing. By the time the doctor came you’d been looking around all big-eyed for more than an hour. He weighed the heft of you with both hands, judging you to be better than eight pounds.”

  She turned to rifle through a drawer of old pictures, handing one to me.

  “This is your daddy in his mining garb. His name was Hursey Lee Hall.”

  In the picture she shows me, my father has platinum-blond hair and a hint of a smile. There’s something familiar about him, but I can’t place what it is. His belt buckle skews off to the side. He wears a carbide lantern helmet, carries a dinner bucket in his hand. Maybe somebody took that picture on the very day he died, but there’s no way for me to know.

  Grandma said a big shot from the coal company came the morning of the funeral and gave my mother one thousand dollars for my father’s twenty-nine-year-old life.

  Then he gave her two days to move out of the sorry little company house we rented.

  On the third day another miner would move his family in and take over my father’s life, every morning riding a coal car over the soon-forgotten bits of him left splattered along rails down in the mines.

  Mother used the money as a down payment on a house at 211 Fourth Avenue, East Beckley, West Virginia. Fourth Avenue was a red dog road. Red dog is burned out trash coal. If the coal had too much slate, it was piled in a slag heap and burned. The coal burned up, but the slate didn’t. The heat turned it every shade of red and orange and lavender you could imagine. When the red dog on our road got buried under rutted dirt or mud, dump trucks poured new loads of the sharp-edged rock. My best friend Sissy and I followed along after the truck, looking for fossils. We found ferns and shells and snails, and once I found a perfect imprint of a four-leaf clover.

  “Don’t you be running on that red dog road,” Grandma hollered as I ran off to play.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said over my shoulder.

  And I’d mean it, but I could never slow my feet to a walk for very long. The scars on my knees are worn as permanent penance.

  After the War ended, some of our streets were renamed in honor of men killed in battle, an
d Fourth was changed to Bibb. East Beckley was the divide between the doctor-lawyer-merchant-chiefs who lived in big houses in Beckley proper on streets like Woodlawn or North Kanawha, and the others who lived along the dirt road of the Gray Flats in scattered houses grimed by coal dust. From my house it was only down the road a few houses to Sissy’s, then across the field to the 19-21 Bypass, the paved road that separated East Beckley from the Flats, where the road wasn’t even covered with red dog.

  There was a class system of sorts. We were somewhere in the middle.

  Most everybody had a vegetable garden, called a Victory Garden during the War, and we did too. And we had a grape arbor and fruit trees. Like many of our neighbors, we had our cow Bossy for milk and butter, and a dozen or so chickens for eggs. The three pigs Grandpa fattened up and butchered every fall provided ham and bacon and pork chops. And we had pets too—a border collie named Queenie and an assortment of cats, my favorite a tomcat named Buttermilk. Sissy’s grandma had a goat and ducks, and Mr. Lilly had honeybees. But we weren’t out in the country. We were in a real neighborhood, with houses lined up on both sides of the road.

  Built in the Craftsman style, our white two-story house had a blue roof and blue shutters, a front porch with a swing, and a scalloped, white picket fence all around. My grandma and grandpa moved to Beckley to live with us after my father got killed in the mines when I was five months old. They were left to take care of four-year-old me, my sister Vonnie, two years older, and Hursey, my eleven-year-old brother who was deaf, for a year and a half while my mother and Aunt Lila went off to build airplanes at a war plant in Buffalo, New York. I wondered how they got there. Maybe they rode the bus. Maybe they rode the train.

  I couldn’t remember when they left.

  Every night before I went to sleep I tried to remember, but I never could.

  2

  Washed in the Blood

  Best put in a jug of coffee and a quilt or two,” Grandpa said. “Water’s likely to be right chilly.”