It had been a couple of hours since the sun had gone down on the mountainous region of Eastern Kentucky that 17-year-old Hannah called home. Hannah was joined by her parents this December evening near the fireplace that flanked the eastern wall of their modest cabin situated in a holler of Oakley Creek. The women's attention was focused on darning the socks that would be hung as stockings soon on Christmas Eve night. Hannah's father, Frank, was slowly deciphering an article in a newspaper he had picked up at the mercantile store that day, rocking back and forth in a handmade, wooden rocker, enjoying the warmth of the fire on a cold night. Past copies of the newspaper were hung on the walls surrounding the family in a make-do wallpaper designed to keep out the cold, wintry drafts from entering the home.
Hannah's older brother, Joseph, 18 and desperately wanting to leave the family home, much to his parents' chagrin, sat at the kitchen table whittling a handle out of oak for a homemade axe to be used for cutting wood for the fireplace. Hannah looked up from her handy work when she heard Albert, 6 years old and the youngest of the three Maxfield children, run into the room and quickly place both of his arms around Joseph's neck in a playful choke hold.
"I'm gon' get ye for that, you little rascal," yelled Joseph, as he stood up and grabbed Albert around the waist, pulling the youngster to the floor with a thump. Albert screamed in exaggerated anguish when his head bounced off the wooden floor.
"Joseph, y'know better than to hold yer younger brother down like that, son," exclaimed Frank, raising up from his seat to put away his newspaper in a trunk situated underneath the kitchen window.
"Yeah, you know better, Joey. I'm not as big as you are," said Albert, getting up off the floor and brushing away the dust on his pants with his hands.
"Well, you don't need to be a-comin' in here and startin' with me when I have a knife in my hand. I could've hurt me or you, both," replied Joseph. "Besides, you need to learn to defend yourself before you start school. Ye ain't healthy enough to be kept at home and help on the farm, so you need to know how to roughhouse with all them other boys."
Ever since Albert was born, he had a hard time catching his breath. As a baby and a toddler, Mary kept the boy indoors most of the Spring and Summer months because he could not breathe easily outside. In the Winter months, the Maxfields had to be cautious when starting fires in the fireplace since the smoke bothered Albert's nose and throat. As he grew, his condition was exacerbated by Albert's desire for physical activity, such as running with the other boys in the settlement; but, as much as Albert tried to keep up with his friends, games of tag and ordinary chasing of the other kids always found him out of breath, bent over, with his hands on his hips, gasping for air. After each such episode, Albert gained his mother's full attention, as she tried every mountain remedy she knew to improve his condition. One of the recipes Mary often used to open Albert's airways was boiling Basil leaves in water on the hearth and having him inhale the vapors of the mixture, his head covered with a cloth to prevent any of the fumes from escaping into the air.
Luckily, this evening, Albert was able to recover with ease, climbing onto Hannah's lap as she reminded him that Christmas was not too far away, and advised him to be kind to Joseph because Santa Claus was surely watching over all of the children of the world. The Maxfield family tree was placed on the far end of the fireplace after Frank and Joseph cut down the cedar a short distance above the cabin in a forest of the Appalachian Mountains that surrounded their small settlement of houses in the holler, as it came to be known. Frank picked out the tree himself from among red spruces, white pines and balsam firs which were common in the highest elevations of the southern mountain region. Tonight, the tree sat in a bucket of water and was adorned with many homemade ornaments, such as paper cut-outs, paper looped chains and strings of popcorn. Hannah taught Albert how to fold a piece of paper into several sections, and then cut the paper into festive designs as they spent several late November evenings at the family table getting the decorations ready for the holidays.
"Why do we celebrate Christmas, Albert? Do you remember what Mama taught you from the Bible?" asked Mary.
"We celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas," exclaimed the little boy, full of pride for remembering the important lesson his mother had shared with him one afternoon.
"That's right, boy. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem. His parents, Mary and Joseph, couldn't find no room nowhere else, so they had to settle for an outdoor livestock manger. Puts this life into perspective, sure enough, don't it?" daddy said, pensively
"What's spective mean, daddy?" Albert was trying to figure out what Frank had meant by his story.
"Not spective. PERspective, it's a point of view. How folks sees things, I reckon. God's son being born in a manger makes a feller think of what's really important in life. If His son was good enough to be borned that a way, then maybe this old, drafty cabin here is good enough for all of us, too."
"That's right. Always remember that the Son of God was borned dirt poor; but, in the end, He was the One who saved all us sinners. We may not have much to speak of; but that don't matter. What matters is what's on the inside of a person and not what he's a-wearin' or what he got, what matters is that we got each other." Mary was an avid Bible reader whose Good Book was old and tattered and the pages had yellowed and creased from years of being read and re-read in the evenings at the kitchen table, which also doubled as a schoolhouse desk for all three of her children who attended school for only a few months during the Winter, reserving the rest of the year for planting and harvesting crops. That antique, intimate Book was passed down to Mary from her own parents, on her wedding day twenty years ago, in 1870. Mary was the oldest Oliver daughter and the first to leave the household, so the gifting of the heirloom was professed as fitting. She treasured and guarded that volume with her life, even more than the quilts her mother and grandmother had made for her as gifts along the years. Mary used that ancient script as a law book of the family. In tough times and in the grandest of times, the Bible and its stories were taught as life lessons and all advice for life's problems was sought from it. The Maxfields relied upon God's word and His example to get through any obstacle and challenge life presented.
Mary's husband, Frank Maxfield, was one of the more astute farmers in Oakley Creek, not only possessing one of the largest planting fields in the area, but also having goats, pigs, cows and several horses. The majority of the family's income came from selling livestock, such as cows, pigs and goats, goat and cow milk, and corn. By the standards of 1890, the Maxfield friends and neighbors considered them to be a well taken care of family, growing and raising what they ate and making do without whatever could not be cultivated on the farm. The only things the Maxfields, and most other Eastern Kentucky inhabitants bought at the dry goods store in Oakley was coffee, soda and salt. Should Mary be in need of flour for baking, Frank used the barter system at the local mill, trading a head of livestock for bags of flour. Even though the number of livestock in their possession gave the family an upper hand in the goods trading world of the time, nothing was wasted by them, down to the sacks in which the flour came, as Mary made all of her and the children's clothes and Frank's shirts from the leftover sacks.
Despite her title of a housewife, Mary did her part in helping to care financially for the family by tending chickens and selling or trading their eggs at the farmers market in town and crafting herbal potions from the herbs she found in the forest for all sorts of ailments, from a sore throat to the inability to conceive a child. She was known as a Mountain Healing Woman or a Granny Woman and helped many other females from the holler deliver their babies, breathe away thrush and get rid of warts. Families came from miles around to get Mary's advice on which teas to drink or which earthy ingredients to mix together so they could begin to feel better.
"Mama, if it ain't too much trouble, could ye grab your banjer and I'll grab my fiddle and we can play a little Christmas music for these kids, want to? Maybe that'll make them tired enough to finally go to sleep and quit makin' a racket."
Frank was a masterful fiddle player who gathered locals on his front porch on Summer evenings to play some good, knee slapping bluegrass music. He learned the love of music from his father, Big Joe, who came to be known as "Big" after his grandson Joseph Maxfield's birth, to avoid confusion. Big Joe played the guitar so Frank picked up the fiddle in order for the twosome to create differing sounds for songs that had been around Oakley Creek for years. Until Frank built his own cabin four houses down from his family home, the Maxfield place was the gathering venue for any and all men, women and children who knew anything about music and singing. Since the early 1870s, Frank's front porch is where the hoe downs happened every Friday night beginning in March, when the weather began to break. An array of guitars, fiddles, spoons and banjos could be heard for miles around, along with the sweet voices of young girls and women whose talents did not include just a good singing voice. The women folk jumped around in place and stomped their heels against the wood floor of the porch, producing a beat that accompanied the sounds coming from the instruments. Before long, everyone was up singing and dancing to the tunes.
"What do you children want to hear, then?' asked Mary who was retrieving her handmade banjo from a wooden lidded chest located close to the front door. Big Joe made the banjo for Mary when she was Hannah's age, which is how Frank got the chance to meet her.
"How about 'One Horse Open Sleigh,' and I can grab the bells from the barn and play along with y'all," said Hannah excitedly, already out of her chair and almost out the door.
"Ugh, every time you ask what Christmas song we want to hear, Hannah always says 'One Horse Open Sleigh!'" exclaimed an exasperated Albert, who could only join this particular carol with his voice and not with the harmonica he has been feverishly practicing since receiving it last year for Christmas.
"She likes 'em bells from the bob tails of the horses and thinks it's nifty she's a-doin' just like the song words say to. You know, 'bells on bob tails ring?' But, the bells ain't a real instrument, anyhow, so you're right," Frank attempted to make Albert feel better, his voice hushed as Hannah ran back in from the barn, a leather strap with bells attached to it, in her hands.
"I'm ready," she said as everyone seated themselves back in their original positions: Mary holding on to her banjo in the rocker, daddy with his fiddle on the left shoulder, and Hannah standing behind her mama with the bells, ready to shake them in rhythm with the song. The boys sat on the rag rug in front of the fire whose crackling filled the cabin with comfort and love of family on this cold winter's night.