Pilgrimage home

Sometime during my childhood summers, Granny would phone my mother. “Sadie, the garden’s in,” she’d say.

Mom promptly washed and ironed play clothes and dresses for my three sisters and me, and packed them in well-worn suitcases.

She then carried empty canning jars up from the basement’s fruit cellar to the kitchen counter. After Dad came home from his barber shop and we ate dinner, he loaded the suitcases and jars into his Chrysler’s trunk.

Mom poured piping hot coffee into Dad’s thermos, and said, “Time to go, girls.”

Thus began our annual pilgrimage home to Peter Creek, Kentucky, and the McCoy Bottom, my mother’s birthplace.

Summer upon summer, I learned the roads and routes from Detroit to Matewan, West Virginia, the little coal town where I was born.

The appearance of the town’s red-brick hospital meant the McCoy Bottom and Granny’s house in Phelps awaited within minutes to greet us.

There was no more blissful moment in my entire childhood.

My pilgrimage to my first home continued after I married Mel Underwood, a man who loved my Kentucky family and Mom’s fried chicken as much as he did long drives in his 1964 Mustang.

In summer 1974, my mother moved her household and my youngest sister from Warren to the McCoy Bottom. There, Mom built a house large enough to accommodate her entire family for holiday celebrations.

Later, Mel gladly packed our suitcases (sans canning jars) into our new Volare station wagon, and aimed our family with three girls for Nana’s house on Peter Creek.

A man who also hungered for my mother’s homemade apple pie, our girls grew up running leg races in the McCoy Bottom with their cousins, as my sisters and I did ours.

One by one, decade by decade, my mother and her four brothers left their homes in the McCoy Bottom by choice or death. Nonetheless, my stubborn affection for home remained steadfast.

I anticipated the drive by the red brick Matewan Hospital to recall Dr. Roy delivered my dearest cousin Kathy four days after me – then, the thrill of turning the last curve above Gooslin Bottom to view the McCoy Homeplace.

Thankfully, Patty, one of my younger sisters, followed my mother and youngest sister to Kentucky. Once Granny and Mom passed into Glory, Mel and I aimed for Patty’s house come July.

The summer of 2023, my California daughter joined me for my pilgrimage to Matewan and the McCoy Bottom. We took my newly released book titled Matewan Garden Club to introduce to the town.

Again, Patty and her husband opened their door to me, and this time Kelly for her first return to Peter Creek in decades.

Dear Reader, Saturday, July 5, 2025, my youngest daughter and I loaded our suitcases and her dog, Lily, into her Bronco. She drove to Patty and Mike’s house nestled against a hill.

The day after our chairlift up to Kentucky’s Natural Bridge, and walk down the mountain path, Ruth drove me into Matewan, then along Peter Creek and the McCoy Bottom, where not one McCoy now resides.

Their absence spoke of their final pilgrimage into eternity.

Again, I listened, ear to the mountainside.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com