A Real Mountain Homecoming
Unique collaboration and attention to detail breathe life into homestead

According to Paintsville’s mayor, Robin Cooper, Paintsville Lake is “almost pristine, with fresh water jellyfish. It’s a beautiful mountain lake,” he says, “narrow and winding, stretching for 34 miles through Johnson County into Morgan County, with mountain laurel and rock cliffs.”

The cool October morning I turned off Route 2275 into Mountain HomePlace, a reconstructed 1800s Eastern Kentucky farmstead right on the lake, fog hung so thick that I couldn’t even see its waters. The haze made it easy to imagine that I was traveling back in time, to an era when spinning, weaving, dipping candles, making lye soap and cooking on a cast iron stove or open fire was the norm.

Shortly, as I walked through a split rail gate onto the property, five original 19th and 20th century structures – an 1859 double-pen log cabin, an 1889 one-room schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, double crib barn and the old Fish Trap Baptist Church – took shape in the mist, as vivid red and yellow autumn hillsides and pockets of blue sky began to emerge.

From April through October, period-costumed interpreters lead visitors through this scenic jewel of a living museum, explaining and demonstrating old Appalachian folkways and practical crafts. In the cabin Kay Hughes’ long skirts swish as she spins and cooks, ever fending off Lulu, the trickster goat, who’ll pick your pocket, then grab the hearth rug and scoot out the door.

“People like the personal aspect of the HomePlace,” she explains. “They don’t hit a button on a machine and hear a taped explanation. They like the fact that we answer questions, walk them around and try to help them.”

Chief interpreter and Appalachian native Scott Ratliff, who handles the barn chores, says that the farm appeals to all ages. “Older people remember their mom and dad doing this work when they were younger,” he explains. “They might’ve lived in a log cabin and can picture their parents out in the fields. Even though times and the way people dress have changed and mountain farms now have modern things, a lot of the work we do is the same.

“The younger generation has never seen anything like this,” he says. “Like for me, you can read about it in a book but until you come here and get behind oxen and work them, and grab a broad axe and hewn a log, and actually do the work and get blisters on your hands and get tired and sweaty...a book just can’t explain everything. Sometimes, you’ve got to learn by doing.”

I followed Ratliff and a busload of junior high students across a wooden bridge to the schoolhouse. Once schoolmarm Beverly Prewitt had shown them the room where children from six to twenty years old once studied McGuffey’s Reader, she led the modern youngsters in a lively game of tug o’ war in the now-bright fall sunshine.

“The ‘old ways,’ like telling weather from signs in nature, were passed from generation to generation,” she says. “Much of that has been lost in today’s technological generation. It’s important for them to learn about things like farming, household and life skills. Mountain slang is a treasure. We have a different culture, a slower culture.”

A former nuclear welder, brawny Carl Layton wields a heft hammer as sparks fly in the blacksmith shop, making and maintaining many of the farm’s tools.

During the off season, the interpreters continue to work at the farm, donning their costumes for trips to schools to demonstrate their crafts, all the while promoting Appalachian heritage.

“We’re trying to dispel the myth that all Eastern Kentuckians are hillbillies,” says Ratliff. “The ancestors of most of the people who live out West had to come through Kentucky, and like it or not, their roots may flow from this area. The only way to clarify those stereotypes is to explain and show the truth, the way it really is. We try to do that here.”

As proof that these interpreters know their stuff, the site has won a U.S. Corps of Engineers Excellence in Interpretive Partnership Award. So be prepared to be immersed in the day-to-day’s of running a 19th century farm. “We won’t make up an answer,” Ratliff explains. “We try to interpret the old lifestyle by living it and working it. But we sure don’t know everything!”

He could’ve fooled me, for every question I asked, from what oxen are to how sorghum is made to what linsey-woolsey is, was answered fully. Visitors are fascinated by the huge, friendly team of oxen, named Jeff and Abe, short for Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln. Slick black- and-white Holsteins, these four-year-olds pull a plough, wagon or sled, cart manure, haul rocks, wood and grain, and bring in logs “to hewn” (to be made flat with a broad axe).

Other farm critters include goats, sheep, pigs, cats, a dog named Blue and Kate the mule, who powers the sorghum mill and carries Mary in the Christmas program.

When creating Paintsville Lake in 1978, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved the cabin, school and church from the Flat Gap area, which was to be flooded. All stayed in use. In the early ‘90s, the Paintsville Tourism Commission decided to create a working farm to bring the area’s mountain culture to life, and leased 40 acres from the Corps, the only such collaboration in the nation. The Corps donated the three buildings; the barn and shop followed from other sources.

With funding from an initial city bond, Mountain HomePlace which actually is the Paintsville Lake Historical Society opened in 1995. Today, a grant, ticket and gift shop sales, and donations keep the attraction going and growing. Its director, area native Cassie Preston, says that plans call for a large, working organic herb and vegetable garden, a pick-your-own pumpkin patch, and the ability to grow more of its own needs, such as hay.

Though the farm already hosts senior groups and large numbers of school bus tours (150 children a day at high season), she’d like to expand its educational capacities to include age and grade specific pioneer studies. And because of its tranquility, she’d like to create a corporate retreat program.

Rest assured its period authenticity and beauty won’t change a whit. “Mountain HomePlace will be kept just as pristine as possible,” says Preston. “This history is important to us because we need to learn from what we did before. This may seem a simple, crude way of life, but it’s how we got to where we are now. I think we take for granted how easy our lives are. It wasn’t easy then, and I don’t know if a lot of us could live this way if we had to.”

At the new visitor center, I instead pursued the contemporary vocation of shopping, perusing handmade mountain crafts created right at the HomePlace, then watched “The Land of Tomorrow,” a video voted the best of ‘98 and ‘99 by the Kentucky Department of Tourism. The 15-minute film, which offers Eastern Kentucky history, is beautifully narrated by former star of “The Waltons” Richard Thomas, whose roots are in the “hills and hollers” of Johnson County.

Having worked up an appetite with all that time traveling, I hit the Big Sandy Pharmacy in downtown Paintsville for a homemade pimiento cheese sandwich and, at Mayor Cooper’s suggestion, topped it off at Wilma’s Restaurant with a rich piece of buttermilk pie, which at a dollar, has to be the best culinary bargain in town.

The Paintsville area can keep you busy for a few days. Stop by the Tourism Office and get directions to Herman Webb’s No.5 General Store, originally a coal company store at nearby Van Lear (that’s pronounced “VAN Lear”). Herman is the brother of Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle, and he’ll take you on a colorful tour of Butcher Hollow and the family home.

If you go the first weekend in October when fall leaves are usually near peak, the Paintsville Apple Festival will sate your fall fruit cravings with “apple butter, apple pie, apple cider, apple turnovers, apple stack cakes...if it’s made from apples, we’ll be serving it,” Cooper says.

And on the 18-hole Paintsville Golf Course, the mayor continues, you have to hit across the Big Sandy River and traverse it in your cart on a suspension swinging bridge.

For overnight accommodations, the outdoorsy can reserve a site at the new Paintsville Lake Campground, opening Spring 2001, or the fireside crowd can choose cozy indoor comfort 20 miles away at Gambill Bed & Breakfast in Blaine.

Ratliff sometimes gets comfortable in a rocking chair on the McKenzie cabin porch at the HomePlace. Turns out the brother of one of his ancestors helped build it. “I can sit on the porch in the exact spot that my third great grandpappy did.” He smiles. “You’re getting in touch with about 150 years of history. It’s really interesting when you’re connected to it.”

Visit the HomePlace’s picture-laden website at http://pros.eastky.net/paintsville/chamber/home.htm or call 800-542-5790 for more information.

Katherine Tandy Brown (kathybrown@lanereport.com) is a staff writer for The Lane Report.

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