The Permanently Poor

This is the road, if you can call it that, that  leads to the Pert Creek School in Letcher County, Kentucky. There are tens of thousands  of roads like this winding back along the creeks and hollows of 11 states. And beside  these roads, the shacks of tar paper and pine, which are the homes of a million permanently poor.  That cabin down there belongs to Letcher West. George and Janie and Maggie West use this  road to get to school. At this time of year, they never get there with dry feet. Down there is where Johnny Sandlin and his  wife and 11 children try to stay warm all winter. He digs coal out of a little mine  and they burn up most of the coal he digs. That's Carl Parrot's place. He too is a  hardworking man. He has to be. Up there is the Bakers. They've been divorced for 8 years,  but he's too poor to leave, and she's too kind to make him. So, he lives in that little house  in the back, and she cooks him his meals three times a day. And beyond the Bakers, up on the  hill is the Pert Creek School. And up there on this one day is the only sign anywhere in  this hollow that it is Christmas in Appalachia. (Children singing "Silent Night") Christmas in Appalachia. A CBS News  special report with Charles Kuralt. (Children continue singing "Silent Night") This is the only Christmas carol  many of Virgie Sumpter's pupils will hear this year. The one they sing themselves in their one-room  schoolhouse on the day of the Christmas program. ("Silent Night" continues) It falls the job of one of the older boys to  keep coal on the stove at the Pert Creek School, just as it is the older girls who fetch the  drinking water from the spring. Mrs. Sumpter is busy enough teaching seven grades in this one  room and trying to keep the schoolhouse clean. She also cooks the hot lunch at noontime.  The food comes from the government. Some of the children can afford the 20 cents a  day they're supposed to pay for lunch and charities in the region pay for the others. But  the charities themselves are so poor that they often raise money for the hot lunches by selling  bootleg liquor. And so by one means or another, Janet Baker, who lives in that cabin just below  the school, and the others in the room get this one hot meal a day, even if food is short at home.  The miracle is that Christmas reaches Pert Creek at all. Without songs and without Christmas  trees, and without gifts tied by ribbons, Janet Baker's mother still preserves from habit  or from memory a part of what Christmas used to be. That is Janet's good fortune and that  is a measure of the strength of Ollie Baker. We have our family home together  and we all we have been a close family and we miss each other where  they're away and we look forward to 'em comin' in. - Look at what we got today! Oh, let's see. - Bible pictures. Show me the Bible pictures, Janet. What are they? Some of them has Jesus in it. Mommy, you know that story has about Mary  and Joseph laid on the hay?. Bible school teacher learned us - you know, she had it up [all day?] Where the baby Jesus lay on the hay? - Yeah. Well, it's in that book, too. - No Mhm. Mommy, I know my spell [unintelligible] Well, all right. You put your books in there, then on up take 'em in there, lay 'em on the bed. I suppose Janet's looking  forward to Christmas, isn't she? Yes, she sure is. Well, when you were a young  girl and living on this creek, Mrs. Baker, what was Christmas like back then? Well, my father raised hogs and chickens too  on the farm and he had his cows. So, he would take a big ham. They'd cook it and have it for us  to eat through Christmas. We'd have a company. The children would come in. Sometimes our aunts and  uncles would come take Christmas with us. So, he would have this ham meat and they bake cakes.  Sometimes a lot of gingerbread for the children that'd be coming in to eat too, for them to eat  till they wouldn't be [under foot?] till they could always get dinner on the table. That's the  way we in our family always read the story to the children. You know, the baby Jesus was born in the  manger. And the best part I think it means to me, if I'm thankful if my children are all well and  can be in good health on Christmas. And then I'm thankful to the Lord for what we have. Even if we  don't have so much, I'm thankful what we do have. What the Bakers have is a son, Freddy, who  is 20 and who must take daily injections of insulin in order to stay alive. What  the Bakers have is a mule, a small one, bred to haul coal cars out of mines. There  are now far more mules in this hollow than there are mines to work in. So Freddy uses the  mule to drag timber off the hillside. What the Bakers have is their sad way of living. Divorced,  separated by law, and held together by necessity. Bob Baker couldn't eat if Ollie Baker didn't  feed him. And so she does. And what they eat, what Janet and Freddy eat, and what the mule eats  the scraps of, comes from a government warehouse. There's nothing unusual about  that. Not here in Eastern Kentucky, where nearly half a million people  this month [have the] ingredients of their Christmas dinner called out  to them on the surplus food line. One box of cheese, two pound of butter, and - Four [beans?], two bags of meal, and one bag of flour, two pound of lard,  two cans of eggs, two cans of beef, and one roll of wheat. Sign right there. This food comes from the United States of America,  which has too much of it. It goes in old feed bags back into the hollows of the Cumberlands, where  there is never enough. It keeps people alive. That is all. You can't make Christmas  cookies out of government commodities. 'See you next month.' You can make biscuits, to grow cold and hard on the stove. Ask Elzie Hall what he liked best about going  to school last year and he will answer you: Lunch. This year, he doesn't have enough clothes to go  to school. Elzie is one of six children. Their mother says she has enough to think about today  without thinking about Christmas. Norman knows not to speak of Christmas. An older boy was killed one  night by a shotgun blast. His grave is just behind the house with that of an infant sister. And just  across the road is the place where now between the graveyard and the dead mine in the one room  of his shack, Lewis Hall waits out the winter. You sit here, Mr. Hall and see your children, all but one of them unable to go to school.  What kind of feelings do you have about that? I feel like they all ought to be in  school, but there ain't nothing that I can do about it I just move as I can  move - and that's slow. I think it's better for them to be in school than it would  be just stepping down the road here. Would they like to go to school? Yeah, I think my kids likes to go to school.  [Unintelligible] situation that they were in. I think if they had clothes and had the way  like other kids that they would learn good, but they feel embarrassed to go in front  of other kids in the conditions they're in. So they wouldn't learn nothing just be  no cause to send em the way I'd see it. Lewis Hall's house is a dark and silent  place. It is commonly said in these mountains that when hard times come, love goes out the  window. And the Christmas spirit, of course, cannot change those it does not reach. That  is not to say that the spirit of Christmas reaches nobody in Eastern Kentucky.  Hiram Mitchell does love his neighbors, and it seems to him that some months  he gives them more than he sells them. Whatcha need young lady? - Coke Big one or little one? - Small one. Well now we thank you, come back and see us. I don't think I've seen you sell anything  that's worth more than a dime or 20 cents. Penny to a dime. Hard to ever get in a quarter  bracket. Cigarettes every once in a while. You think you'll be able to stay in business? Well, I don't - I have to stay until I  can get out. For a man that's got any kind of a heart in him at all, you can't sell something to  eat and people are starving and them are coming in begging you for it every day and tell them not  got nothing to eat. Well, got something or another keep them going and when they come up can't pay  you, why that hurts a fellow like me. But then their little families come back and say "I ain't  had a bite for 2-3 days." I can't do like some of these big markets say "no we don't do no credit  here." So... well, what about your own family? Uh, Mr. Mitchell, where have  your children scattered to? Well, my children scattered around. I got six  lives up in Indianapolis - give me a big loaf of bread? Yessir. Then what else? That's it. How'd  the rabbits go this morning? How many you kill? None. How many you  shoot? How many you miss then? Never seen one. Never seen none. Now  we thank you come back and see us. I have six lives up in La Porte, Indiana. Have one  lives in Detroit, Michigan. One lives in Peoria, Illinois. One lives in Middletown, Ohio. All  had to leave here to hunt work when they got... Mr. Mitchell, how long have you run this store? Well, I opened this store about '52. How was business then? Well, business was pretty fair here at that time. What's made the difference? Automation made the difference. At that time, why we had a lot of little coal mines running here. All of them down all of them down these hollers  were little coal mines. And these all operated by hands. And for the machine, the biggest machine  we had in was a pony to haul it out, you know, mine the coal and haul it out, you know, dump  it over. Then me and they took a breast auger, you know, and they got in there and  they drilled out this coal, you know, shot it and tamped it by hand and everything.  So now that's all gone. The pony's all gone. Modern machineries went in, took out, run  these little mines out and they no more. They can't work no more. These hand  men, they can't [beat] the price of machine people can do you know? So all mine  that's running now they have Joys and they have loading machines and they have electric  drills and they have... it's all automation. Imagine kneeling or lying down in 3 or  4 inches of water in a black hole in a mountain and swinging a pick 10 hours a day  to mine two tons of coal and then shoveling it into a wheelbarrow and wheeling it all  out and collecting $6 for your work. And you will know what it is like to be a truck  miner. But I.B. Johnson has not been able to find even that kind of steady job for 11 months.  Dismissed by his employer, deserted by his union, unneeded by his community, ignored by his  country, except for $56 a month in food stamps, I.B. Johnson mines only enough coal now to keep  his own family warm. And nobody pays him for that. When he was 21, eight years ago, he tried to get out of these hills. He went to  Florida. He went to Georgia. And in the end, he came back to the hollow where he was born,  penniless and jobless, and married Lucille, thinking things might be better that way.  He's glad he did, but things are no better. Now, like so many, I.B. Johnson is waiting  for an opening in one of the scattered Job Corps camps or vocational schools the government  is talking so much about. He applied last June, and he's growing desperate because there is  Rita, whom Lucille named for Rita Hayworth, and Mickey, whom I.B. named for Mickey Mantle,  and Norman and Jimmy. And by New Year's Day, there will be another baby  and the hospital bills to pay. And I.B. Johnson's abiding fear is that his  children's lives will turn out like his. How many children were there in your family? There was 15. There's 10 boys and  five girls. Now there's 10 living at all. And how much education did  your brothers and sisters get? Well, I went through the fourth grade  and I think that was the highest even one that went. The rest of them stopped  along the second and third longer. Do you hope for more for your children? I certainly do. That's the reason I'm trying. I  know if we go on day by day just working now and then in these truck mines... well, they going to  grow up and not get education. That's one reason I'm so interested in this vocational thing. If I  can get that and get a skill and get them get a good job, well, then I'll know they're going  to get a good education. And if they get a good education, I figure they can do a lot better  than we did because they'll be able to get a job. What will you do on Christmas Day? Well, I'll probably just sit around the house  with the kids, make them as happy as possible, but that might not be too happy for a Christmas  day. They'll have probably—well I don't know just what to eat but it'll mostly be hard  food because on $56 worth of food stamp you got to eat, you know, after Christmas same  as before. You got to always remember that. Will Rita have a Christmas at school? No. She was telling me yesterday evening  that they would... was gone to draw names, but when they come to find out about  10 of the kids in her classroom, which is about 30, wouldn't even  have money to buy presents. So, we're not even going to draw names. Not  going to exchange no presents at all. Mickey's old enough to be expecting  a Christmas, I guess, isn't he? Well, he keeps asking me. He'll say,  "Am I going to get a wagon?" I'll say, "Yes, if Daddy gets to work, you'll get a  wagon." But he's beginning to understand now that time's running out. I'm not going  to get to work in time to get him a wagon. I.B. Johnson and his brothers growing  up on the Beaver Creek remember the good times which came before the bad. Once the  mining camp they live in was the trading center for this whole valley. Now the business  section of Weeksbury, Kentucky is abandoned. I.B.'s brother, Calvin Johnson, calls it a  ghost town with only the people still in it. What was this old building here? Well, it was our theater, which why, people would  come for and we'd have dances and boxing and music and all kinds of big times in it. Really was  nice and it would really be full and we had somewhere to go and people had somewhere to come  to. You see, at them times we had plenty here. And what about this building  up here? What was that? Well, that was our... that was our soda fountain.  We had plenty in there. We had all kinds of soft drinks. Stayed full at all time. Stayed open  sometimes 12:00 in the night, day and night just about service. And it was really beautiful  around Christmas. It would be decorated up, window was all decorated up, Christmas  tree and lights and it's really beautiful. And I guess this was the store here, huh? Yeah, this was a store up here. They had  plenty in it and people really coming back and forward shopping and presents and  so forth. You get about anything wanted there and they kept about anything  you wanted. Now there's not anything. Calvin Johnson lives on the Caleb Fork of Beaver  Creek just down the hill from his brother. He is nearly blind from his 14 years in the mines  and lucky to be in a way for it increases his social security benefits and puts food on  his table. Goldie Johnson cooks for seven, her three children, her daughter's husband,  and her granddaughter of two and a half besides herself and Calvin Johnson. In the yard, there are the dead outlines of a flower garden Goldie Johnson tried to keep one forgotten spring and then gave up on.  She has worked hard every day of her marriage, and there is nothing conceivable that can stop  her work as long as she lives. And she knows now it will have to be a life without flowers. She is a strong woman, surrounded by exhausted men. Well, up until '53, Christmas was the  day that children look forward to. And today, Christmas is will be just like today for them.  This holler in that other holler and 'nother one. And well, Christmas won't be no more  than today 'cause they've got nothing to look for. They've got no way of getting it. Their  daddies, mothers got no way of getting it. And since then they have been teached that they  can't have these things. They've been disappointed so many times. It just be a dark night, something  like tonight for them. There won't be much for them to look forward to. But used to they had more  to look to for they had joy and they felt peace at Christmas time. Everybody you met was in the  Christmas spirit. 'Cause I know if I was to go in there and tell mine - of course mine is grown - I have  granddaughter in there. If I was say, I'll get you something cost $10 Christmas, I couldn't get it. I  couldn't promise them. For that reason, us mothers and fathers, we just about quit promising that  to our children 'cause we know we can't get it. Does Christmas still have any  religious meaning to people? Well, I don't know. They just live from day to  day in hopes. But Christmas, some homes will have a dinner and the table will be blessed and  some won't. But they go to church and they pray as hard as they ever did, but don't seem like  it. They hardly ever that you can't go to church someplace or other here. It's going to have to get  better 'cause it can't get no worser. If it don't get better, there just ain't going to be much in  here for nobody. And it's not only this place, there plenty more like it. And children, I  hope and wish that children could have what they used to have. And if not all, they used  to have part anyway, 'cause little children, when it comes to children, I always could stand  a grown-up's disappointment and downfalls, but children... they do in the world  of plenty and us with nothingness. Looking through a Christmas catalog. The coal cars roll on through Christmas week,  carrying the wealth of Appalachia away. The trains carry coal, never people. The people  wait, most of them just off the right-of-way and back off the road and farther back  in the hollows. A million people wait. Lewis Hall's family waits. And Norman Hall  does not dare ask which day is Christmas. Hiram Mitchell waits. I.B. Johnson waits, hoping  to make the children as happy as he can. But that, as he says, might not be too happy for  a Christmas day. And up on the hill at the head of Pert Creek, Ollie Baker reads to  her daughter from a book of ancient stories. Little Bethlehem was full of people. There were no  room for Mary and Joseph in the inn. So they slept that night in his stable. And there in the quiet  dark while the friendly animals were sleeping and the golden stars shone in the sky. God sent his  son to be Mary's baby boy. Mary wrapped him in soft clothes. Then she made a bed of straw and  laid her baby in the manger. It was very quiet. Then a shepherd spoke, "Let us go to little  Bethlehem. Let us find the child, for the Lord has sent us good news of him." The other shepherds  nodded, "Step, step, step." They started down the road. Then faster and faster they walked until  they came at last to Little Bethlehem. And there they found Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus  lying in a manger bed. And the shepherds knelt down and worshiped him. The news of the baby Jesus  was too wonderful to keep. The shepherds told everyone they met about the savior of the world.  "We have seen the baby Jesus," the shepherds said, "He is lying in a manger bed in the little town  of Bethlehem. Just as the angel of the Lord said." The people wondered at this story of the angel  and the shining light and his message to them. Mary thought about what the shepherds told  and remembered every word. These shepherds went back to their fields, and as they went,  they praised God for all the things they had heard and seen. Mary and Joseph loved the little  baby God had sent. They named him Jesus, just as the angels had told them to do, and that was the  first Christmas. Isn't that a wonderful story? Yeah. When the baby who was born that night  grew up to be a man, he went into the mountains. And the first words he said to his  disciples there were, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It  is a promise that will be cherished on the anniversary of his birth in these mountains by  these poor. It is all they have. Good night. This has been a CBS News special report.  Christmas in Appalachia with Charles Kuralt.