INTERVIEW WITH EMILY BORDERS
COX’S CREEK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
September 27, 2006

Emily Borders is a fifth grade teacher at Cox’s Creek Elementary School where I can tell by first-hand observation that she is held in very high esteem by her students.  As a matter of fact, her students assisted me with this interview, eagerly raising their hands to ask their teacher what it was like to grow up in the mountains of Harlan, KY.  Because of the tight schedules for fifth grade and for me as a visiting author, we only had about twelve minutes together. But sometimes twelve minutes is enough time for a mountain girl to share with her students that “Mountain people are some of the most honest people you will ever meet.” 

Cox’s Creek, KY is a far piece from Harlan, KY where Emily Borders grew up with the woods right outside her back door.  She enjoyed hiking and camping with her father and she shared with us that the great outdoors was like another room added on to their house because children played outside all day.  There were blackberries to be picked in those wonderful woods outside her door and blackberry pie to be baked.   When Ms. Borders found the time to come inside from playing and blackberry-picking, her mother taught her to cook and sew.

Ms. Borders spent a great deal of her childhood at her grandmother’s house, which was within walking distance from her own. It was considered very safe at that time for a child to walk around the town of Harlan because neighbors looked out for each other’s children.  Naturally, Ms. Borders felt very safe to not only walk to her grandmother's house, but to explore the woods and the small mountain town in which she lived.

Sundays were a real treat for Ms. Borders.  She can remember riding in the car with her family to get a Nehi orange or grape soda.  And if she was really good, she got a brown cow, too!  Now for those of you who don’t know… a brown cow is a long, rectangular, all-day, chocolate sucker.

When asked about coal ming by her students, Ms. Borders shared that there were coalmines in Harlan when she was growing up and she had uncles who worked in those mines.  She had opportunities to go into the entrance of the mines just to view what the mining was like but she didn’t have time to share with her student’s during our interview what mining was like during that time in Kentucky’s history. It's my guess that her young interviewers continued on with that line of questioning when they returned from their scheduled lunch.

Ms. Borders grew up feeling protected, safe, and pretty much normal … until she came out of her mountains and went to college.  Her innocent naivety was shattered when students from New York (who chose to enroll in a Kentucky university) called her hillbilly and pumpkin bumpkin.  The antique language that she spoke was ridiculed, her dialect was considered cartoonish, and her northern roommates found it hard to believe that she had ever been to a movie, knew how to order food at a restaurant, or do pretty much anything that a normal, civilized human being was able to do.

But here she is today: changing lives, opening doors to young minds, smiling, winking, and moving within the wonder that is childhood to share herself with her students.  And what about the childhood that was her own?  “I had a lot of love and trust,” she shares.