Marsha stayed with her sister for two days and then, afraid of being an unnecessary burden, went to visit her friends Linda and Jessie Leak. Jessie, a stocky built man with wild mane of blond curls and a shaggy beard, had fallen on hard times. Along with his wife Linda, a beautiful blue-eyed blond, the Leaks were having trouble maintaining a comfortable home with their young children Ginny and Mandy. Sensing their discontent, Marsha begged them to leave the valley to go the 'Blue Collar Riviera', Myrtle Beach. For Marsha, it seemed the only way out. But she couldn't imagine making such a dramatic move on her own. She needed her friends' support; she needed them to go with her. Knowing they had not much left to lose, Marsha convinced them that an escape to South Carolina would benefit them all.
Marsha borrowed $250 from her sister, gathered what she could from the house while her husband was out, piled the six of them into the front of the old blue 1970s Chevy pickup and headed out of the valley into an unknown future. Looking like a scene straight from the "Grapes of Wrath", they arrived in Myrtle Beach looking for hope, searching for salvation. But for these sheltered, small-town people, the teeming ocean city was a little overwhelming. Instead of settling, they traveled a bit further south, to Pawley Island - a burg known for making hammocks and supplying workers to the mills in nearby Georgetown.
The first few days were daunting. Since they barely had enough money for food, let alone lodging, the six slept in the Chevy truck. Marsha, who had worked as a waitress, would go out in the daytime to seek work so they could finally procure housing. The major obstacle, they found, was security deposits. "Down there, the electric deposit was like $300," Marsha says, wide-eyed. "See, if you could just move into a place and just start paying the monthly bill, that's not a problem. But you have to pay a big deposit to the water company. You have to pay a deposit to the electric company. So you've got to have saved the money to pay the deposits first and feed everyone and have money for gas. It was tough. Very tough." She shakes her head with the memory. "We weren't sure we were going to make it and I felt responsible for Linda and Jessie and their kids because I convinced them to come with me."
Finally, she found a sympathetic landlord on Pawley Island who allowed them to move into an old, dilapidated house. Abandoned, peeling layers of paint, the structure had not been lived in for quite some time. The yard was severely overgrown with high grass and weeds; vines hung from the trees. It had only two bedrooms for the six of them and a very small kitchen. And because they had used up all their money to get into the house, there was none left for furniture or utilities. Bare, gas and electricity-free, it nonetheless provided their first real shelter.
Like true survivalists, they built a little stove outdoors by taking lose bricks and creating enclosed fire area. On top of the bricks they placed old metal milk cartons to serve as the range. Each evening they would go into the nearby woods to collect firewood; sometimes they would bring driftwood from the beach. On top of the crate, they would place their pot to cook the evening meal which was usually, according to Marsha, "Lots and lots of different kinds of stew made from wherever we could find leftovers." Following the meal, there would, of course, be a clean-up. "There was this little old black man that lived beside us and he claimed to be 101 and I won't dispute him!" Marsha recalls. "And he was so sweet and took pity on us. He took us back in the woods to where he had a hand pump. And he told us we could that to wash our dishes and get our basic water needs met. We had to carry water to flush the commode and we would bathe under the thing (the pump) at night. Then we would go to sleep on the hard floors in the house."
Marsha eventually found a job in the Litchfield Diner which was basically a trailer with a room built out of the front with floor-to-ceiling windows. She quickly became the main and sometimes only provider for all six people, sometimes working over 18 hours a day. "And then in a couple weeks," she says, "I got another job. A couple weeks later, I got a third job. So I would go to work at six in the morning and work at the diner until three, and I took Brandi with me. She would sleep in the kitchen. They had a little pad for her on the floor under the counter. And she'd come out and eat breakfast and catch a bus right in front of the diner." After school, her daughter would meet her back at the diner. "So then we drove to Georgetown, and I worked at a bakery/service station from 4:00 until 7:00. And then we drove back to the island, and I left her with the Leaks and I went and cleaned offices at night until around midnight."
Marsha admits she was "terrified, just terrified" on a daily basis facing one obstacle after another. She was afraid of even the most minor aliments because they had no health insurance and could never go to the hospital because they weren't residents. She remembers one time when they all were sleeping on the floor and, as a treat, the children were given cookies before bedtime. By morning, all of them were covered with little red blisters. At first, Marsha feared it was diphtheria. Finally summoning the courage to ask another waitress what to do, she was told they were probably bites from red ants searching for cookie crumbs. "That ended the practice of a cookie before bedtime!" Marsha chuckles.
The group also soon discovered that the sense of community that they all had carried with them from the mountains - neighbor helping neighbor - was alive and well in other parts of America, too. Because the house they rented had been empty for so long, the grass surrounding it was nearly above their heads. "All we had was a little path through it back to where the pump was." Taking matters into her own hands, Marsha, wielding a blunt kitchen knife, started, bit by bit, to cut little paths through the grass to make it easier for everyone to get around. But not only was the make-do landscaping back-breaking, her efforts yielded little progress. Then, one Saturday morning about two weeks after they arrived, "We heard the awfullest racket! I thought, my gosh, what's going on? We got up, ran out, and there must have been 20 black people in my yard of all ages and they were cutting our grass! They brought lawn mowers!" Terribly moved by the gesture, and wanting to return the kindness, "We went up and bought hot dogs. After we got the grass cut, we built a fire out in the yard and we had a hot dog cookout." Marsha smiles broadly, hand to her heart. "It was great, just great."
Eventually, the two families were making enough money to go their separate ways. The Leaks stayed in the house in Pawley Island and Marsha and Brandi moved to a less than 400 square foot tan and white trailer nearby. It was cramped for the two of them, but not nearly as crowded as when Jessie, Linda and their girls, unable to sustain themselves, were forced to move in with them. Marsha and Brandi slept in the bedroom; the other four on the pull-out sofa in the small living room. The claustrophobic quarters proved too much for Marsha, who moved once again with Brandi, this time to a small house in near-by Georgetown. It was to be just another of the eventual 42 times in her life that Marsha moved into new living space.
After several years in South Carolina, Marsha's moribund personal life took a decided turn when John Timpson, who was doing construction work in the area, walked into the Litchfield Diner. John was 6'1" and very slender with dark thinning hair and a hawk bill nose. His sense of humor made Marsha laugh all the time. The two of them flirted for awhile and then one day when Marsha was in trouble, John was there to help her and they eventually married. Marsha gave birth to her second daughter and named her Kathy.
Because John had to go wherever the construction work took him, the Timpsons were constantly on the road. Marsha and her two children found themselves left alone in strange Southern towns while John put in long hours on a job site. Most of the places, to varying degrees, were bearable, until they landed in Dawson, Georgia. There, Marsha befriended an African-American woman in the sewing factory where they both were working and invited her home one day for lunch. As soon as her black friend left following the meal, the phone began to ring. "All this time I had lived there, none of my neighbors had spoke or called or anything. And now they wanted to know what that..." she lowers her voice, "...well, they didn't say 'black woman' ---was doing at my house. They said they hoped she was there to clean. I said, 'excuse me?' And so they repeated it. And I said she was a guest in my home for dinner. They said if you want to have friends here, you don't do that." Marsha's face reddens with anger at the memory. "I said, 'I don't want you for a friend and I will invite whoever I want to my house!' I said, 'And you don't have to worry about it because you won't ever be invited to my house!"
This was one of the first times in her life that Marsha had really encountered racial prejudice and it sent her spinning. Later, when she recounted the episode to her father and inquired why there wasn't more prejudice in McDowell County he told her, "Marsha, in a coal camp, you have everybody. It's a melting pot. When you go down in those mines, you have an Italian, a German, a black. It don't matter what color you are when you go down there, you're all coming out black!" Her father thought a minute, then continued. "It's just like when I was in World War II. That man beside you is responsible for your life; you're looking out for each other. I'm looking out for his life, and he's looking out for my life. And you form a very special bond. They're like almost as close to you as your brother. So why would I come out of that mine the next day and teach my children to hate his children?" The father's explanation rang true with the daughter as well.
When Marsha gave birth to Tyler, things took a turn for the worse in the Timpton marriage. John could not handle having a son with a disability and soon become physically abusive to Marsha and verbally abusive to Tyler. While living in Murphy, North Carolina, a despondent Marsha finally had enough and sought refuge in a battered women's shelter housed in an old Victorian house. It was there, hearing the stories of women and their children experiencing the same plight, that Marsha first experienced the healing power of a communal center.
Still, an overwhelming sense of shame nearly paralyzed her. "I felt like such a failure." Trying to see past the self-recriminations, she went on a rollercoaster accounting of her life. "How am I going to start over again? I am getting old. I am not a slow person or anything. I'm tough and stuff but I am not well educated. And I'm a hard worker. I will give any job I do well above and beyond what it calls for. But I have to do that, see, to make up for other things." What she really yearned to do was go back home to the mountains and feel safe and secure; yet doing so might demonstrate that she had become a disappointment not only to herself, but also to her family.
Upon hearing her dilemma, Marsha's family only wanted one thing and that was her safely home. They came immediately to North Carolina. To assure protection from her violent husband, the shelter arranged a police escort for Marsha and her children to a McDonald's parking lot where they were greeted in an emotionally-charged reunion with her family. She returned to West Virginia with just $700 in her pocket which was slightly more than the $250 that she originally had when she left.