Support for StoryCorps comes from AT&T, proudly bringing STORYCORPS listeners' America's past, present and future. The new AT&T, Your World delivered.

Welcome to the STORYCORPS podcast, I'm Katie Simon. In this episode, a story from Appalachia. That's where Cynthia Rahn grew up in the early 1960s.

I lived very far out in the country, so I went to kindergarten with a lot of kids from town that I didn't know. And I looked poor to everybody else and certainly everybody else looked rich to me. And so I felt a little intimidated.

One kindergarten memory stands out for Cynthia, her class was designing a diorama of life on a farm. And for homework, the students had to bring something in they could use for the subject. When I got home, I took off my school clothes and ran outside to play. And then we came in and ate and preparing to go to bed and I realized I had forgotten to do anything to prepare for this assignment, and here was Mama, you know, just got home from work, tired. And I said oh, my gosh, I've got to get something represents the farm. And we looked, we had nothing, I started to cry, and I said I can't go to school tomorrow not having anything. And Mama said:" It's too late.” I mean this was what 1962, and we were in Appalachia, I mean there was no Walmart, you couldn’t just ran out and get something. So she said" you should’ve thought about this when you got home". Then next morning, I went downstairs and Mama left before we got up, and she would leave breakfast so I came down to the kitchen and sitting on a kitchen table was a barn that was made out of notebook paper. She had taken just plain notebook paper and folded it. She folded the walls, she folded the roof, and she folded doors that open so horses can go in and out. I was like magic, I would find staple in it, there was no tape, she had just sort of like origami or something, and she had folded a barn. I had no idea where she learnt to do that and how she knew how to do it. And when I came in to school, there were other kids you know had bags of store barn plastic animals, but everybody was so amazed at my barn. I just felt like I was the queen of the day and knew that she cared.

Cynthia Rahn, in Durham, North Carolina, you can read Cynthia's story and more in the new STORYCORPS book- Listening as an active love, available now at your local book store.

Major support for STORYCOPRS is provided by AT&T and by the corporation for public broadcasting. The STORYCOPRS archive is housed at the American folk life center at the Library of Congress. Tune in to STORYCORPS broadcast, Tuesdays on NPR's news and notes and Fridays on NPR's morning edition. I'm Katie Simon, thanks for listening.