Recorded Books Inc. - Running on Red Dog Road: and other perils of an Appalachian childhood

Every once in a while, a voice comes along that makes you yearn for a childhood you never lived. Author Drema Hall Berkheimer invites you to skip along with her, big sis Vonnie, and best friend Sissy into the coal mining hills and hollers of West Virginia, at a time when gypsies and hobos were as common as doctors who made house calls.

KATHLEEN M. RODGERS, award-winning
author of Johnnie Come Lately

Running on Red Dog Road took me away to a time and a family that I will never forget. Drema Hall Berkheimer is a masterful, joyful, humorous storyteller who is just getting started. What a great book.

FAWN GERMER, International Speaker and
Oprah-featured bestselling author

Time and again I have been carried away by these stories, by the observations of a very shrewd little girl of her elders, both wise and the foolish. But dont let the sly humor fool you. Like the West Virginia coal country Drema Berkheimer writes about so affectionately and beautifully, there is always something going on here just beneath the surface, something grave, firmly rooted, even eternal.

BILL MARVEL, author of The Rock Island Line and
(with R. V. Burgin) Islands of the Damned

Drema Hall Berkheimer is a pure storyteller, one of the most wonderfully gifted Ive ever read. As they make their way through Running on Red Dog Road, readers will smile continually, laugh out loud occasionally, and turn misty-eyed at times of joy or sadness as this child of Appalachia shares so lovingly her growing-up experiences with her cherished family and friends. Her phrasing is so exquisite and her words so perfectly chosen that her writing is a mixture of prose and poetry. Its best read in private, so there will be no distractions as the reader travels hand in hand with the author from beginning to end.

DR. GEORGE T. ARNOLD, Professor Emeritus,
W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass
Communications, Marshall University

Running on Red Dog Road is an American treasure. Echoes of Mark Twain resonate in Ms. Berkheimers tales of life in West Virginia in the care of loving and wise grandparents while her widowed mother helps save the world as a Rosie the Riveter. This family is an icon of what we should wish to be. Truly a needed voice in our world.

JULIANNE MCCULLAGH, author of The Narrow Gate

I love this memoir. The voice is masterful. Berkheimer layers into a perceptive child narrator an understated love of her family, a sassy streak that dodges consequences, and a precocious questioning of the society that surrounds her.

ROBIN UNDERDAHL, coauthor with Anshel Brusilow of Shoot
the Conductor: Too Close to Monteux, Szell, and Ormandy

A competent historian could get the details right about mid-century Pentecostal Appalachian culture, but only Drema Hall Berkheimer could set us right in the middle of it. Through the eyes of a little girl who doesnt miss a thing, we experience spicy stew in the gypsy camp, and creative avenues to intoxication, and river baptisms. If the child Dremas observations could not always be shared with her grandparents, they are now shared with us. That will be to the delight of every reader.

DR. DOUGLAS M. GROPP, member, International
Team of Editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Academic Dean,
Redeemer Seminary

A sweet, whimsical, and often touching account of the authors childhood during a kinder, gentler era. It triggered great nostalgia during my reading.

DR. WILLIAM L. GROSE, retired NASA scientist
and Assistant Director of Atmospheric Sciences,
NASA Langley Research Center

In this gem of a book, Drema digs deep into her memory pool to bring forth images of well-developed places, characters, and things. In this highly technological age, we need this story to understand how ordinary people survived, thrived, and endured.

NJOKI MCELROY, PhD, storyteller, performance artist, and
author of 1012 Natchez: A Memoir of Grace, Hardship and Love

ZONDERVAN

Running on Red Dog Road

Copyright 2016 by Drema Hall Berkheimer

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

ePub Edition April 2016: ISBN 9780310344988

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Berkheimer, Drema Hall.

Title: Running on Red Dog Road : and other perils of an Appalachian childhood / Drema Hall Berkheimer.

Description: Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015036829| ISBN 9780310344964 (softcover) | ISBN 9780310344988 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Berkheimer, Drema Hall Childhood and youth. | Christian biography West Virginia Beckley.

Classification: LCC BR1725.B438 A3 2016 | DDC 975.4/73042092 dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036829

All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: King James Version. Public domain.

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with the Loiacono Literary Agency, LLC, 448 Lacebark Drive, Irving, TX 75063

Cover design: Faceout Studio, Charles Brock

Interior design: Denise Froehlich

Author photograph: Bill Hall

First printing February 2016

In Loving Memory
of
Grandpa, Reverend Luther Clevland Cales
Grandma, Clerrinda Adkins Cales

Father, Hursey Lee Hall
Mother, Iva Kathleen Cales Hall
Aunt, Lila Lora Cales Landwehr
Brother, Hursey Clev Hall
Sister, Yvonne Elaine Hall
and
of the little girl I once was
Drema Arlene Hall

Contents

The scales would drop from my eyes;

Id see trees like men walking;

Id run down the road against all orders, halooing and leaping.

ANNIE DILLARD, PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK

R unning on Red Dog Road is a memoir of my childhood, mostly set in 1940s East Beckley, West Virginia. It is a living history of the Appalachia I lived in and loved as a child. How it looked and sounded and tasted. How it was. I was as faithful to those places and people as memory and the passage of time would allowto do less would be a disservice to the remarkable family and place this book is meant to honor. Although names of all family members and many other characters are real, identifying characteristics of some places and people were changed to ensure their privacy. The stories in Running on Red Dog Road were recreated, not exactly as they were, for that clearly would not be possible, but as seen through my eyes as a child. As I wrote, I asked myself the same question over and overwhat would Grandma think? I think she would be pleased. Mercy me, shed say, here youve gone and set us down in a book. Yes maam, Id say. I hope I have done her and all the others proud. Their influence on my life was and is immeasurable.

Begun as a legacy to my progeny, Running on Red Dog Road ended as a tribute to their forebears, the family to whom I owe everything. It is, then, a book of atonement. Resurrecting the dead, living with them, and burying them again was profoundly moving. It took me six years to complete this book, and for several of those years I wrote nothing at allblindsided by memories that struck me dumb. They were mostly good memories, deeply rooted in family and mountains and the culture of Appalachia, so I was unprepared for the emotional physical spiritual toll this writing could and did exactand puzzled too. After all, I come from stoic stock, not given to unseemly histrionics. I took after this kin, or so I claimed. I never cried. Not at my grandpas funeral, nor my grandmas many years later. Not at my sisters or brothers or mothers. So the tears that overcame me as I relived our lives on that red dog road so long ago were an enigmathat is, until I realized every family member I wrote about is dead. Except for me. And the heartbreak is they died not knowing how I felt about them. They couldnt have. Until I began to write their stories, I didnt know myself.