Recollections
These
are Karen's recollections of her grandparents:
Lavina (Bayes) Kidd ..b. 5-4-1912 ..d. 3-26-1992 (My grandma)
Grandma was a quiet woman. She had very long hair that she braided and wore up on her head. We'd beg her to undo her hair so we could brush it! Better than any Barbie doll! She also played a guitar and we'd nag her until she'd play us some songs. They were religious in nature, usually. She had a beautiful voice. Grandma always seemed to be cooking, which was a joy to us kids, because we loved to help.
She was such a great country cook! Our favorite food was Grandma's
cornbread, spread with the butter that had the black specks in it. In an interview that
my youngest sister did with Grandma, in the last year of her life, she said that she used to watch the local kids playing baseball, when she was a young girl. That's where she met Charley.
Charley Kidd ..b.10-15-1910 ..d.10-4-1978 (My grandpa)
Grandpa was the youngest son of Elias and Ellen. He was quiet, but loved to
smile and laugh. We liked to climb on him. He was a small man. Probably no more than 5'6" and thin. Later in life, he was slow and bent over from working in the mines. He coughed a lot. Eventually he'd pass on from complications of black lung disease. He took pride in his garden and his animals.
He was much loved by his Ohio neighbors, later in life, as he was a kind and
generous man. Grandpa also loved to drink beer. Grandma didn't approve of it. One of the funniest stories about Grandpa... in the mid 1970's, my sisters were helping him in his garden. He stopped to dig something up out of the ground. Darned if it wasn't a bottle of beer. "Don't tell your Grandmaw", he told them. Seems he buried them so Grandma wouldn't know. When he wanted a drink, he just dug one
up. He was a man who was devoted to his mother and didn't get along with his father. Even after he and his family moved to Virginia, he'd come back to Boyd's Branch often to help with the land and bring medicine to his mother. (Stories of a "lit" Charley coming over the hill still pop up when talking to cousins.) A proud and stubborn man (like most Kidd folk). When his siblings didn't want to get a fancy headstone for their mother, Charley went and did it all alone. And his response? "I'll be damned if they get credit for it." Therefore, at the base of Martha Ellen Akers Kidd's headstone, is carved.. "Baught by
C.L. Kidd".
Our summer trips to visit our grandparents was always an
adventure for us girls. Piling four young children in the car with
pillows, sandwiches and blankets was fun (for us... maybe not for our parents). After driving through the
mountains, the sandwiches would usually "come right back up".
(car sickness) Dad would sometimes stop at an old doughnut shop that was
in town, to get fresh, hot glazed doughnuts that were just HUGE. We
loved that! Once we got settled in at the grandparent's house, we'd go to the garden to pick our food. Then we'd shuck the corn and the peas and snap the green beans. Digging out potatoes and yams was fun too. We'd chase the cats in the barn and go down the road to pet the horse.
Our biggest joy?.. sleeping in their four-poster bed with the huge feather comforter, next to the fireplace that heated the rooms. Lots of fun for us city girls in the 1960's!
My memories of the mountain homestead are vivid still. The mist on the mountain in the morning. The smells in the
air (so fresh in the morning, but changing to smells of coal and trucks). The dew on the ground that made your feet sopping wet. How quiet everything was in the early morning... only the sounds of birds and critters...and Grandma frying bacon in the kitchen. The rushing brook that ran over rocks next to the house. The rumbling of coal trucks as they drove up the road next to their house. We kids running around while the grown-ups sat on the front porch. It was a precious time.
The following recollections were compiled by Bronda (Everett) Colegrove from a 1981 interview with Dorotha (Bayes) Colegrove, Lavina's sister.
Lavina (Bayes) Kidd's parents:
William Edmond Bayes..b. January 8, 1870 ..d. 1928 Floyd County, KY
"He was thin, with black hair and blue eyes. He was from a family of 8. Dutch Methodist. He is buried in Tram, KY. Was a blacksmith in the coal mines."
Amanda (Johnson) Bayes..b. March 7, 1875 ..d. May 30, 1967 Johnson County, KY
Married to Edmond on September 2, 1894
"Lived in George Hollow when a girl and went to school in Hager's Hill. From a family of six. Was Irish, Baptist. Housewife. She had dark hair and eyes. She was tall and large. She knew a lot of poems by heart from McGuffy's Reader from her childhood, which she repeated to her grandchildren. She had a perfect memory right up to her death at 92. She had long thick hair with a widows peak.
She brushed it back, "bloused" it and made a big bun. When she lost her hair, she took to making dust bonnets to wear 'cause she felt naked without it. Before she died she made one out of satin for her funeral. Amanda came to lived with her daughter, Dorotha, around 1942 (alternating with other daughters) in Tram, KY. She is buried in Tram, KY next to Edmond."
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