A year later Dad learned about a home for sale ten miles away, located on a ridge in the former mining community of Haldeman, population two hundred. The deceased town founder, L. P. Haldeman, had built a pair of fine homes and used the smaller house to entertain while living in the big one. His primary residence was for sale. It was a large house, solidly built fifty years before. The asking price was low due to a significant drawback. Situated at the bottom of the hill directly below the house was a factory that manufactured charcoal. The kilns produced a toxic smoke.
Dad drove the family out of town, following a creek fed by rain gullies clawed into the hillside. Gleaming railroad tracks ran on a raised bed of fist-sized gravel. There were no road signs. We crossed railroad tracks and immediately smelled smoke. In the sole wide spot available, lodged tight to the base of the main hill, was the enormous charcoal factory, pumping black smoke into the sky. Dad left the blacktop for a steep dirt road that ascended a hill beneath a canopy of trees. Rocks bounced against the car. At the top of the hill, Dad stopped in a flat spot where six ridges merged like spokes to a wagon wheel. Surrounding the crossroads were more trees, their bottom leaves coated with charcoal dust. My parents consulted directions and followed a dirt road that faded to a set of ruts with grass growing in the center. At the end of the road stood the house, surrounded by the Daniel Boone National Forest.
The windows lacked curtains and the interior was dim. Without furnishings, the house reverberated from our footsteps and echoing voices. There were three rooms downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs. It had been built with indoor plumbing, rare for the early 1900s in the hills, and had a bathroom on each floor.
Mom wandered as if in a trance, her belly swollen with child, exclaiming again and again how much space there was in the house. Dad strode with purpose. The house was just what a young man needed for a growing family. He was not concerned that his wife had lived all her life in Lexington and had no idea how to raise children in a rural setting. He didn’t mind not knowing anyone in the community. He ignored the empty mines, old train tracks, trash-filled creeks, and charcoal smoke. He didn’t know Haldeman had the highest rate of unemployment and illiteracy in the county, among the highest in the state. Less than a mile away was a bootlegger, which spawned gunplay, arson, and drag races that often ended in spectacular wrecks. None of it mattered to Dad. The large house was a long way from the log cabin of his youth. He bought Mr. Haldeman’s home and lived there for fifty years.
Late at night after everyone else went to bed, my father listened for evidence of Mr. Haldeman’s ghost. At the slightest creak, Dad spoke aloud: Hello, is that you? He believed that directly addressing a spirit would provoke a response. Even as a child, I found it odd that he put forth such effort to communicate with the ethereal world but not his kids. He was always disappointed that the house remained silent, that the ghost ignored him.
During the 1960s, Appalachia experienced the biggest out-migration in its history due to economics. Hundreds of families moved to Michigan and Ohio for work. This diaspora made room for people such as my father, who needed a great deal of psychic space. We were the first new family to arrive in Haldeman in more than thirty years. Many of our neighbors lacked conventional plumbing. They grew subsistence gardens, raised hogs and chickens, and hunted for food. Some families grew a small tobacco crop for cash and gathered ginseng from the woods to sell. Many received welfare assistance. No one went to college, and very few finished high school. It was not uncommon for men to go about armed. The sound of gunfire became as normal to my ears as that of barking dogs. I learned to discern the differences in pitch among shotgun, pistol, and rifle.