June 4 , 2009

Kentuckians for Ellis How many of us crossed the Ohio for jobs and education, ate in diners and beer joints while searching for our own people; making little Kentucky communities wherever we could? Always living in South something, West End something, Lower something. How many of us sat and told stories about home after working double shifts at the shoe factories, or sweated on assembly lines; used our last dollars for gas so we could spend a few hours smelling honeysuckle and visiting around the Sunday table, before heading back north? How many of us died in coal mines or driving gravel trucks down snake-back roads so we could hang onto a small piece of sacred mountain land that our kin had fought to keep, after riding flat boats down a river into the unknown? How many of us would push the dirt off our faces, stand up out of our graves, put on our boots and do it all over again? All of us who call ourselves Kentuckians would. Robert W. Kimsey McCaysville, GA   Oh, Kentucky You took a chance, gambling with my life pulling me from the heat one stifling day in summer during the last hurrahs of Hoover. You exposed me to poverty saturating my being with unfilled promises. Was that cruel or the humane thing to do? You left me to the mercy of unforgiving years. What a Blessing! It supplemented my life for years with wildest dreams that have come true. Land of winding streams, lonely hills and forests how do I thank you for the beauty you have given? The opportunities you presented? I have traveled far from your borders and never found the strings to hold me there. The Voice of the hills keeps calling and I listen, for it knows my name. I can never leave. I am doomed to live and die in the resting place of my kin and the home of all my friends. Oh, Kentucky! Paul Salwers Olive Hill, KY From: Oh, Kentucky Credit to: Kentucky Monthly