Guest Author Robin Daniels -- The Adventures of the Little Rebel of the Gap

 

Guest Author Blog by Robin Daniels

  Adventures of the Little Rebel of the Gap

Thursday September 24, 2020

by Robin Daniels with intro by Dana Koogler

  I am going on vacation for a short while.  I spoke to Robin Daniels some weeks back about ways we could help one another.  I've helped a tad bit on her FB group Tennessee Footprints and Beyond.    It is a fun and interesting group which she created.  It is four thousand members strong and growing.

She is a mom, wife, and grandmother if you can believe that. She is so youthful its hard to believe.  She has written some of the funniest, sweetest, most moving stories about her father, Marion Laws.  He grew up in Cumberland Gap.   He was a wild child.   She has written these stories down so they will not be forgotten.  It is also a way to memorialize and honor her father.    I'd like to have known him after reading her stories about him.

    I have included three of my favorites thus far.   If you like these you should join Tennessee Footprints group where you can read more of them.  Thanks Robin for your willingness to help.

                Trapping gone wrong

(Adventures of the Little Rebel of the Gap)

Dad would try to find little odd jobs everywhere he could as a young boy in Cumberland Gap. Things like cutting wood or bringing in coal for the elderly. He also would trap muskrats and sell their hide. The traps where set late in the evening and every morning before school he would go to check them. There was one spot he usually got lucky at trapping and in order to get to it he had to crawl through a thicket of briar and over grown brush. So like every morning he set out to check his traps. As he got closer he could hear the rustling around of the animal caught in his trap. So with his little hammer he used to put the rat out of it’s misery he began to crawl into the thicket only to discover it was not a muskrat but a big skunk! It was caught in the trap and he knew he had to finish the job, so as slowly as he could he drew back the hammer to help the poor thing only for it to whip around and spray him at very close range in his face. He then said he went completely blind and immediately started throwing up all while crawling around to find the nearby creek to wash his eyes out. He then went back home and my grandmother had to burn his clothes. Needless to say I think he found a new spot to trap where he could see far ahead of time what was in it.

A Walking Juke Box

(Adventures of The Little Rebel of the Gap)

One evening dad was heading home from a day in Middlesboro, Ky and was walking up Cumberland Mountain. In the 40’s there was a pretty rough beer joint called ‘Indian Rock‘. He saw his fathers truck there and decided to hitch a ride with him home. Indian Rock was known for shootings, fights, murders, etc... Dad walked in and immediately started searching the place for his father. After finding him his dad told him to wait for a few minutes then they would leave. While waiting around a fight broke out between some of the locals and shots began firing. There was a tall jukebox that was blaring close to him so he jump under it and started walking it towards the door in order to get out of the chaos. Whew! That must had been a scary moment for him! Can you imagine seeing the juke box walking across the floor? . (Below is a photo of the original tavern and the kind of jukebox I would imagine that was used. )

Above: Robin's photo and description of the bar 

above: Robin's photo of the sort of juke box that was likely used at the time.

and later... as an adult her father worked in a coal mine.

The Day the Mountain Fell

(Adventures of The Little Rebel of the Gap)

This particular work day at the mines started out like every other day. Dad worked on the belts and kept them going. He would tell us he would see rats down there big enough to carry off your dinner bucket! He also told of strange lights he would see in the old works part of the mines when he was the only one in the area. One day he even heard odd voices down in there when again no one else was around. One day really stuck in his head tho , the day they had a rockfall. There was someone trapped and they called for dad because it looked really bad and the man was probably not going to survive. Dad told them to call a man that Could get to him faster that also worked there and was a pastor of a local Church of Christ, but he was on his way as quick as possible. When he arrived he asked the pastor did he witness to him and the man said it wouldn’t do any good because according to his denomination he would have to be baptized. Oh, how this upset my Daddy, knowing that biblically that was important but not necessary to led him to Christ. So he crawled back in there and talked to the man and calmed him down, made jokes and told him that he was talking to the biggest groundhog digger in the tri-state area! Eventually he did get to him and held his hand while the other men pulled him out. During this time, Dad led him to the Lord! I’m not telling this story to cause division of the church but as a Baptist we believe it is extremely important to follow Christ in baptism but not necessary to get to heaven. Think about the thief on the cross. Btw the man did survive .

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