Victoria-A Woman of Many Bonnets

Victoria is a knowledgeable woman that lives in a small cabin in the outskirts of Winchester, Kentucky. Victoria is an eighty-eight year old woman, who some say is stubborn. Her friends call her Victory. Victory has never been married and has been self sufficient all her adult life.

Winchester, Kentucky is a small town near the Daniel Boone National Forest. Both of these places are found in eastern Kentucky along the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Winchester, Kentucky became a town in the late 1700s. It is linked to the Civil War. Daniel Boone also traveled through this area.

The Daniel Boone National Forest covers many acres of land. This recrational area provides hiking and riding trails along with many water resources used as recreational entertainment.

Victory and her lifelong friend Billie built the cabin she lives in when she was sixty years old. Billie is a lumberjack. He showed Victory how to cut the trees and plain the logs for the cabin. This is the second cabin she has lived in during her lifetime.

Her cabin is decorated in a humble way. A front porch has a swing and a wooden bench on it. A rocking chair sets in the left corner of the porch. Inside the cabin is a fireplace in the sitting room and a wood burning stove in the kitchen.

There are also two small bedrooms and a bathroom. A coat rack that her bonnets and her coon skin cap hangs on sets beside her bedroom door. Above her mantle are pictures of the bear she shot when she was eighty-four years old. The cabin also has a back porch. Victoria stacks her firewood on the back porch. Her ax sets by the back door.
Sunday is Victoria's favorite day of the week. She wears her white bonnet and her best dress. She worships at a small Methodist Church and still sings alto in the choir. With coon skin caps on their heads, Billie and Victory spend Sunday afternoons reminiscing and playing Appalachian music on their banjo and fiddle.

Billie and Victory won the Kentucky Coon Hunting Competition twelve years in a row. Victory and Billie trained their coonhounds Cooper and Maggie together when they were just puppies. Cooper was a tan and white coonhound while Maggie was marked with both black and tan.

The foothills of the Appalachian Mountains are ideal ground for raccoon hunting. The area is wet and has lots of forests which are two things raccoons love. During a coon hunting competition, the teams of coon hunters and a judge release the dogs. The dogs sniff until they find the scent of a coon and then bawl once the coon has been treed.

The dogs are leashed until the scorecard is tallied. Then the dogs ae released to start the process all over again. At the end of two hours, the dogs and the teams return to the clubhouse to have the scorecards tallied. The team with the most scores win.

Although Billie and Victory don't hunt anymore, the second part of their Sunday afternoons is spent retelling old hunting stories. Billie now has a coonhound named Mo and Victory has one she calls Fearless.

During the rest of the Sunday afternoons, 'the ole hillbillies', let their banjo and fiddle speak for them. Their favorite songs are 'Leather Britches and Foggy Mountain Breakdown'. Of course, Mo and Fearless accompany them. Once a month, Billie's cousin plays his spoons with them.

Monday is Vicoria's blue bonnet day. She has an old wahser with a wringer. It sets on her back porch. Victoria enjoys her old washer because she can watch the clothes getting clean. She also likes pushing the clothes through the wringer and watching them come out the other end.

She has a barrel that she uses as a rain catcher. The spouting from her roof drains into the barrel. In the winter, Victoria melts the sno in the barrel for water for her washer. In the summer, a clothesline is attached to two oak trees in her backyard. During the winter, Victoria wheels her washer into her kitchen. A clothes line is hung in her sitting room.

She washes her bonnets first and then her dresses. The last thing she washes on Monday are her bed linens. As the last of her laundry is drying, Victoria fixes herself a cup of mint tea and reads her Bible. Before gong to bed, Victoria works on a set of quilting squares. She is in bed every night by 8:00 p.m.

Thursday is Victoria's quilting day. She still pieces each square of the quilt by hand instead of using a sewing machine. Her winter days are spent by the fireplace, sitting at her quilting blocks. Each one of Victoria's quilts have pieces from her old dresses in them.

On Fridays, Victory grabs her fly rod, her homemade ties and her coon skin cap and heads for Laurel River Lake. Friday mornings are set aside for snagging trout and enjoying what she considers God's greatest gift-nature and the simplicities of life. Victory spends Friday afternoons with her horse Brock on challenging trails in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Victoria cleans her cabin and barn on Saturdays. This is her green bonnet day. On Saturday afternoons, Victoria takes a long nap and in the evenings brushes Brock and braids his black mane for Sunday mornings.
This is Victoria, a woman of many bonnets.