Early Morning in Beloved

Cousins,
It is not quite 5:00 a.m. here in my hometown of Beloved, Kentucky. Unlike many cities up north, there is much activity going on already. As I look out over the town that is just a short distance from my front drive, I see the lights of several businesses on and commerce already underway.

It is not the commerce of a city or even a big town. We don't have no all night drug stores - only the Goins Rexall downtown. They still have a soda fountain, believe it or not and their blue plate special is the same as it always has been - BLT with chips and a pickle. You can also get a tuna melt or a tuna salad plate. I get a cravin' flung on me ever' now and agin for Sadie Goins' tuna fish. She adds things that make it more than a can of fish, I'll tell ya that much.

No sir, our commerce is related to the farmin' and coal minin' that keeps little ol' mountain towns alive. The Atta Boy gas station is already open. Coal truckers are there fillin' tanks with diesel for their constant runs up and down the hollers to the few mines left in Clay County. Farmers stop for a fill up and a few fellers who don't take time for a full breakfast will swaller down a ham and biscuit with a cup of coffee inside as they pay for their gas.

The Farm & Hardware is open and already busy. Farmers stop early for feed, fertilizer and supplies. They still have charges done by hand on paper receipts. The receipts are all entered into a computer, but the folks that run the place prefer to work on paper still.

You want to see a wonderful sight, come when chicks is bein' picked up. Boxes and boxes of chicks, all hollerin' for mama at the same time. Farmers and 4Hers pullin' up , one after another pickin' up their load of pullets. It is plumb crazy them days. They keep a couple big ol' water troughs in the back - sawdust in the bottom and full of chicks for the small farmer what needs just a couple dozen to raise. Chicks are separated into fryer chicks and layers. 'Course, unsexed mixed costs way less than sexed chicks. They are all separated too.

Over yonder at the Henny Penny there is a full house. Breakfast there is a busy time for the farmers all meet to talk about their tobaccer crop, how it has been so wet that they still have 27 rows to get out. Fred Collins said he wasn't able to get his corn out with all the rain so he had to go to soybeans. Several fellers are sayin' the same type of thing about not gettin' the corn crop out and switchin' to soybeans. Folks are hopin' the bottom don't drop out of soy.

Bessie Bowling is busy as anythin', waitin' on all the tables. She is workin' alone this mornin' cause it is the last day up at the high school and all the girls what usually serve wanted to be at school early to get their yearbooks signed and to take pictures an' all.

Bessie is like one of them whirlwinds this mornin', droppin' a basket of big ol' cat head biscuits at one table, fillin' coffee cups at another and callin' orders over the counter like a general commandin' the troops.

The special is the Beloved Breakfast. It is 2 eggs, any style, choice of sausage or bacon, fried potatoes, grits if ya want 'em, a cup of sausage gravy and 2 of the big ol' biscuits that make Henny Penny famous in them parts. Coffee is still a quarter at the Henny Penny and your ol' cup is always bottomless. The Beloved Breakfast is $4.50 and is more than most folks can eat. For a dollar more y'all can substitute a slice of Precious Meats fried Country Ham. I'd recommend the fried Country Ham. Sophie Precious has a way with smokin' meats.

Some of the fellers kinda complained when the Henny Penny went "no smokin'". Too many of the old fellers are home and unable to do nothin' these days 'cause of the emphysema. Bessie went to the owners and carried on till they did it for the good health of ever' one concerned. Tobaccer is the blessin' and the curse of hill folks. They work it all their lives and smoke from the time they are young, only to find their very breath stolen by their very livlihood.

Now they is a smokin' circle out by the big ol' ash bucket. Fellers get up every now and again to go out for a smoke. It ain't so bad most of 'em say...and the food does taste better these days without the smoke in the Henny Penny.

Come daylight, the dozens of trucks in the parkin' lot will start up like it was a race or somethin'. Headlamps will come on and they will be a mad dash outta town to the fields and farms all over and around Beloved.

Men with farmer tans, workboots and well worn workshirts will step into barns to work, will mount tractors and move into fertile fields. The morning stillness will be broken with the sound of bush hogs, mowers, plows and planters as the men of Beloved do what they love.

This is the lifeblood of Beloved. It is the muscle and sinew and the good earth is the bone on which it builds. These are the children of our forefathers, honest, good and simple.

How Cousin Peanut got his name

Actually that is an interesting...and factual story.

Vergie and Mz. Chappell had several children, five to be exact. They were simple folks without a lot of education. That is not to say that they were dumb. No sir, they were smart and inventive folks.

Back when Vergie was younger he invented the cotton gin. Not the machine for combing cotton, it was a drink made with cheap washtub gin that made you feel all fuzzy and bleached your mouth white. He also invented a substitute for margarine. Actually it was petroleum jelly with a little salt and flour and sawdust mixed in, but it was filling on store bought white bread.

Well anyway, back when Ms. Chappell was rearin' youngin's they weren't real creative and didn't have much book learnin'. Vergie's brother, Constantinople Chappell had his youngin's before Vergie and Ms. Chappell started and had taken all the good Bible names, like Baltheshazar, Abednigo and Selah. Why, he even named his mule Isme. That mule was a worker. It wouldn't want to stop onct it started plowing. You could hear Connie (that's what we called Constantinople) in the field, trying to get that mule to stop plowin', hollerin' "Whoa Isme!"

So when Ms. Chappell started having youngin's, she didn't have a stack of names for 'em. That's where Beulah comes into the story. Beulah was the local midwife and granny woman. She birthed babies, made healin' potions and sometimes hexed folks for the right cause and a little pocket change or some fresh vegetables from your truck garden.

When she delivered the first Chappell baby, Ms. Chappell didn't know what to name it, so Beulah helped and named him Chester N. Chappell. Even went to town...my home town of Beloved, Kentucky and registered the birth at the courthouse. Did the same for the other kids; Walter N. Chappell, Hazel N. Chappell, Brazil N. Chappell and Phineas N.Chappell.

For years no one thought much about it till some Collinses started beatin' Phineas up cause a' his name. He had enough and high-tailed it to Beloved and asked the clerk to look up his birth certificate and see what his middle name was. He figured he'd rather use that than Phineas.

The clerk, another cousin of mine on the other side of the family, Lucinda Carpenter, checked and told him his middle name was Nutt. Yep, he was a Nutt from birth.

He couldn't believe what his earbones was hearing. Nutt. Nutt! Nutt? What kind of name was Nutt?

Lucinda laughed and asked him if anyone round Little Jabez Holler, where the Chappell clan had lived since the 1840's, had ever asked Beulah what her last name was. 'Course no one did. They just called her Mz Beulah for respect.

Come to find out her last name was Nutt. Her late and much beloved husband was Ephriam Jubal Nutt, famed moonshiner and ne'r-do-well that got the attention of the local media (the Manchester Enterprise and WWXL radio) when he shot it out with the Revenuers there in the old abandoned outhouse behind the Henny Penny Broasted Chicken Restaurant and Pool Hall. Bessie Bowling saw the whole thing.

She was so shocked she tripped as she was skating an order out to Jim Bob Sizemore. Broasted Chicken flew everywhere and she went a slidin' under a 1957 Chevy Bel-Aire convertible. She slid so far under all you could see was her roller skates. She laid under that Chevy and watched the whole thing.

It took 859 shots to get Ephriam Jubal Nutt. The law was aimin' at the top part of the outhouse. Little did they know Nutt had snuck down to the bottom of the old abandoned outhouse and was just stickin' his head up through the seat to fire a shot every now an' then. They finally got wise and commenced to shootin' low and got him.

No one wanted to go down an' get him so they buried him right there.

So when Beulah's man was buried, she swore the world would remember him. She then proceeded to give every child she birthed the middle name of Nutt when she registered the birth at the courthouse.

So, Cousin Phineas Nutt Chappell decided to use his first initial and middle name. P. Nutt Chappell. Sounded kinda hi-falootin'.

And his brothers and sister? Yessir, you got it, Walter is known as Wal Nutt. Then there's sister Hazel Nutt and brother Brazil Nutt Chappell. 'Course Hazel don't get razzed as much since she married the preacher of the Booger Holler Holiness Church, Brother Woodrow Wilfred Budder. Yep, folks round Booger Holler show respect for Sister Hazel Nutt Budder.

Thanks to the legacy of Ephriam Jubal Nutt and his loyal wife Beulah, there are Nutts all over my home town of Beloved, Kentucky. Every time you turn around you'll see a Nutt. Why, some of my best friends are Nutts.

Over the years, P. Nutt was changed to Peanut by folks who didn't know the rich legacy left all the Nutts 'round Beloved by Beulah. Of course, as town historian, I do remember and will keep these precious memories alive for another generation of Nutts.