When I was Young in the Mountains By: Cynthia Rylant

When she was young in the mountains: Her grandfather would come home in the evenings covered with black dust from a coal mine-only his lips were clean and he would kiss the top of her head. Her grandmother would spread the table with delicious food Later in the middle of the night her grandmother would walk outside with her to the johnny-house and she promised to never eat more than one serving again She walked across the cow pasture carrying towels and would swim in the swimming hole which was dark and muddy and sometimes had snakes On the way home they would stop at Mr. Crawford’s for a mound of white butter. She pumped pails of water from the well at the bottom of the hill and would hit the water to fill the tubs for their baths. After the baths they stood in front of the black stove shivering and their grandmother would make hot cocoa. She went to church in the school house on Sundays and sometimes walked with the congregation through the cow pasture to the swimming hole for baptisms Her cousin Peter was laid back down into the water, and his white shirt stuck to him, her grandmother cried. She listened to the frogs sing at dusk and awoke to cowbells outside her window-sometimes a black snake would come into the yard and her grandmother would threaten it with a hoe. If the snake did not leaver, Grandmother would kill it and the four children would drape the dead snake across them for a picture.  They sat on the porch swing in the evenings, grandfather sharpened her pencils. Grandmother sometimes shelled beans and sometimes braided her hair. The dogs would lay around them. And a bobwhite would whistle in the forest.  When she was young in the mountains, she never wanted to visit the ocean, or the desert. The mountains were always good enough for her.