This story is excerpted from a workshop conducted in Yancey County, North Carolina in September 2026 with Gena Ginand

I lived in a trailer park at the end of the mountain, where you go off and you go down, and you’re in Mars Hill. But I would go into town every day to the post office in Yancey County, and I lived there for 14 years. I’m originally from Spruce Line. I went to college at Mars Hill, and I was a teacher there in Marshall for gosh, I don’t know, 30 years. And I hung out and did things wherever I could.  I was the first art teacher they ever had. I had over 3000 kids for five years, you know, the middle school in Marshall, and now one of my grandchildren teaches the fourth grade. And my great granddaughter is a seventh grader at the middle school that I used to teach at when they finally finished it.