With firewood for heat and water in the well, couple lives country life

Kinkle and Grace Campbell’s modest white house is still heated from a wooden furnace in their bedroom.

The Campbells still get their water from a backyard well, despite their proximity to a public water line.

They even still grow much of their food in a large garden just footsteps from the roar of U.S. 460 near Jumbo Family Restaurant.

While they have a few modern conveniences such as electricity, the Campbells still mostly live like they were raised.

“I’m a country man living in the city,” Kinkle Campbell said.

Campbell, 85, was born and raised in the mountains of Piney River, where his parents farmed for sustenance and bootlegged moonshine for money. His wife Grace, 83, grew up in the hills of Appomattox, where her water came from a nearby spring.

The Campbells have lived in their white house on U.S. 460 near the city limits since 1950. The house once sat where the four highway lanes are now. The former owners had to move it back to its current spot.

Every morning when it’s cold, Kinkle Campbell pulls himself out of bed, walks to the kitchen to turn the coffee pot on and then begins stoking the wood-burning furnace in their bedroom for the day’s heat. He chops wood about every three days and keeps plenty in the small plywood shed behind the house. The furnace burns large hunks of dried wood and the cook stove in the next room burns thick sticks. They let the fire burn out at night while they huddle under the covers.

The house wasn’t always heated by wood. For years, Campbell used coal for warmth, but as the price increased, he began adding wood to the fire. “Last few years, you can’t buy coal now,” he said. “Only place you can get it is West Virginia. I can’t get a load of coal to bring back.”

Campbell has been busting wood for fires since he was big enough to swing an ax. “My job at home on Sundays was to get the wood for the whole week,” he said. He, along with one of his sisters, would walk into the woods, chop down a dead tree, tie a rope around it and haul it back to their house where they would chop it up.

Life in the country back in those days wasn’t easy, but it was straightforward. “There was no such thing as getting a job,” he said. Families grew their food and sometimes sold various items for a small amount of money to purchase coffee, sugar, clothes and shoes.

Campbell’s family made money by selling moonshine, which his daddy made in copper stills. “We used to make some good stuff,” he said. “It was white, not brown like that other stuff.”

His father also made apple brandy, which he sold for $1.25 a gallon. The money went to buy clothing and shoes, though Campbell said his britches still had plenty of patches.

Food was grown on their land, including vegetables from the ground, fruit from the trees and various animals for meat, eggs, milk and butter. Whatever produce that wasn’t eaten during the peak of ripeness was canned for food in the winter, Campbell said.

Even today, Grace Campbell preserves vegetables and fruits in large Mason jars. Their pantry is lined with jars of summer squash, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, pears, applesauce and pear preserves — all made from produce grown in their garden.

“I like to can, but I didn’t do as much this year because I wasn’t feeling up for it,” she said.

Kinkle Campbell was one of 11 children. Only one, a sister, graduated from high school. Despite the lack of a formal education, Campbell taught himself to be good with his hands. Over the years, he worked as a mechanic, foundry worker during World War II and as a well driller for 40 years.

Sitting in their bedroom is a small table made from a wagon wheel that’s been in the family for decades. Campbell himself remembers driving a one-horse wagon around the hills of Amherst County. He once had a horse named Billy that he trained to back the wagon up at the mill where his family ground their corn. When Campbell dies, the table will be passed to one of his sisters, he said.

“I’ve been through some rough days but I’ve had a long life,” he said. “I’m 85 years old and I don’t take a single pill. I was raised in the country and I still like country living.”