” Six things you need to stop caring about:
1. People who don’t care about you
2. Toxic people
3. Age
4. Your past mistakes
5. Society’s beauty standards
6. What other people think” ~ Unknown
Cousin Eunice and Johnny weren’t the only cousins I ran into last week. Kinsman Rich Kirby came to Appalshop in the afternoon to lend a hand. I met Rich at Appalshop back in the 1980s. He was working there, and he’s a well-known traditional player. We talked one day and realized we are related through our grandmothers, his being Addie Prater Graham and mine, Hazel Prater Terry. If you’ve never heard of Addie Graham, check out the link. Her recordings became central in preserving traditional Appalachian songs and singing, thanks to Rich and Appalshop. The Praters settled in the convergence of Wolfe, Morgan, and Magoffin Counties. You can take an afternoon walk from Graham’s Gilmore in Wolfe County to Terry’s Railroad Fork in Morgan. They’re that close. My grandmother Hazel sang all the time, and like Addie, she rarely had accompaniment. If Mamaw Terry named the songs she was singing, they didn’t stick in my brain, but their melodies sure did. I’d have to dig around a bit to figure out the exact Prater from which the two Prater gals sprang, but I suspect it’s the same Prater that binds me to my beloved cousin Dan Prater whom you first met back in 2014. He’s quite the hand with ancestry, and I won’t be surprised when he sends me the lineage of the lot.
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