Posts

A refuge under the covers

/in /by

When I was a little boy, my brother and I shared a room with two maple single beds, a maple night stand, and a maple dresser with six drawers – three on each side with a large mirror spanning its width. The beds had pineapple finials on their posts. My older brother left me behind in the room early in my life after he graduated high school headed off to the Navy. There was 15 years between us. The room was lonely once he was gone. He often had friends over that allowed me to be the annoying little brother! I reveled in all the mischief I was able to cause as a toddler.

That room became like a cavern to me. In the dark, there were definitely monsters under both beds, in the closet and walking down the hallway leading to the room. I could hear every creak and pop. Any little thing would have the handmade quilt pulled so high over my head, it was doubtful I would ever dig myself back out again.

When the fears of nightmares were too hard to bear, my parent’s bed was a refuge, and off I would run up the hall, open the door, and jump in between them in their cedar bed. After they calmed me, I would soon settle in warm and snug between them.

As I grew, my bed became also a sick bed, as my tenuous health caused me to take extended stays there. The maple night stand became a regular place for bottles of medicine, damp wash rags would remove the vanish over time as they would hang there between my fevers.

In my childhood, the room had none of those things children have today. There was only one TV in the house in the living room. Only what could fill my imagination with the toys from my closet were what I had to keep me occupied in the healthy times. I also had a candy red tricycle which allowed me some freedom in the back yard and, of course, like many I had my own cowboy outfit, with a cap pistol, so I could chase after the bad guys.

That room was my world as a kid. I knew every flaw, every loose board, and where I could hide from company if they came. Despite being alone, I filled it with lots of imagination.

As the years passed, I remained there until I was in my teens and the den was converted into a more adult bedroom for me and the childhood bedroom became a guest room.

Years later, we decided to sell the suite and it moved along to a family that had a set of twin girls who would then call it their own. I hoped they found as many happy hours there as I did and experienced a few more joint memories as siblings. The bedroom suite was second hand to my brother and I, so I imagine it has moved on a time or two more since then.

While furniture does not carry memories with it, the pieces certainly can leave a memory legacy within each of us. Today, I still sleep in that cedar bed I once jumped in as a toddler. A few feet away are the dresser drawers which served as my bed as an infant. I imagine, if it is the Lord’s will these items will be with me the rest of my journey and then will pass along in the family.

An aisle to the future

/in /by

I walked down the aisle between the rows of seats in the Dresden Elementary School cafeteria. On each side were the parents and grandparents of my classmates watching with bright faces as we walked by in our best. Kelly Carter was paired to walk beside me in the procession as we completed seven years of learning before transitioning to high school in the fall.
Within this room, I had eaten five meals a week for seven school years. After I was diagnosed allergic to milk, that was a daily trip into the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice, more times than I can count.
In that room, the Cub Scouts held their Pack Meetings and Pinewood Derbys. As I recall, Mr. Donor, our principal doubled as pack leader. My late parents also served – Mom was a den mother.
We held choral and orchestra performances from the stage of that room and a few childhood plays also made their way to the parents’ awaiting eyes.
We held parts of Halloween events, Spring Carnivals and special programs in that room. Some of my favorite moments were the special Christmas chorales that were held with such wonderful music. All of us had clear childhood voices with which to harmonize and make the music blend.
I recall at least one Peachtree Pickers performance by my youth bluegrass band from that stage, but on this day all of that was coming to a close as we were handed our certificates and bid goodbye to the teachers, we had known from ages 6 to 13.
There were many hopes and dreams that were realized for us that day and many new dreams began.
In your hometown, in your elementary and middle schools, many of the youth will gather to share songs or music during this Christmas season. I encourage you to lend your support to these efforts. Make a difference in the lives of youth who wish to share their talents. Some may be presenting special plays at Christian schools or churches that reflect the story of the season. Please attend and encourage the participants. You never know, you may find yourself uplifted by talents who will change the world in a few years.
I am sure those parents sitting out in the audience at my graduation or at one of those early performances, likely never imagined they would one day see me acting on network television or hear me from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, but that is where those early experiences led me.
You may experience the same, but while doing it be sure to encourage them along the way and support your local charities which make Christmas that much brighter for the young people in your hometown.

Decorations upon the heart

/in /by

I crawled up the ladder into the attic and pulled the string illuminating the surroundings.

Only a small area above the attic pull door was floored, and it was covered in cardboard boxes, as were the rafters, except for a space to move around the door.

I knew where I was going. It was my job as a boy to bring down the Christmas decorations which were all stored near the heat exhaust fan in the hall ceiling.

Generally, there were about six boxes including lights, Christmas ornaments, a faux fireplace, our artificial tree, and the exterior lights.

The first week in December was always a time that I looked forward to, because over a couple of days all these items would go up.

We would put the Bing Crosby or Elvis Presley records on the player and start working. Bill Monroe’s “Christmas Time’s A Comin’” or Jimmy Martin’s Christmas album would always be in the mix too.

Our tree went up in front of the living room windows, so the curtains could be pulled and any drivers by could see its lights. We chose the artificial tree beginning the year that I was diagnosed allergic to the trees. Despite losing the smell of the fresh tree and me eventually helping sell them with my Boy Scout troop. I still enjoyed putting the tree together. That was my job. Then mother would guide me placing the ornaments and icicles. The round ornaments included a mixture of red, green, silver and gold colors. There was a sparse number of off shaped smaller ones used in the upper areas of the tree. Most of these ornaments, my folks accumulated in the 1950s and 60s. On the top of the tree, my dad, when I was small enough would lift me up and we would place an angel with a light.

On one wall, near the front door, we would put together the faux fireplace with the electric lights behind the logs, and upon it would go our stockings and the Christmas cards that would come in.

Each window in the front of the house featured an electric candle. While every table in the house was swapped to seasonal doilies, candles, and decor.

On the exterior, that was dad’s domain with my help. All the bushes along the front of the house would be covered with lights, as was the trellis by our door. On the trellis near the door, we placed a two-foot lighted face of Santa. Plugging in one plug would light up the outside.

Once complete, the look and sounds for me meant Christmas was coming. While nobody’s life is all roses, these Christmas traditions helped me as a boy to have a blessed memory to grow upon each year.

Adulthood for me, unfortunately, didn’t bring the pleasant Christmases that were there in childhood. Instead after a certain point of not successfully finding that, I realized my way to create new traditions was by helping others have an amazing Christmas by helping meet the needs of those less fortunate.

Seeing the smiles on children’s faces when they receive a special unexpected gift. Filling a fridge and cabinets with food when a family doesn’t have money for that purpose. These were traditions that I also saw my parents quietly do when I was a child.

Those actions weren’t to make my Christmas better then. But today as I think fondly upon the decorations of old, it was the quiet service to others that I saw my parents do, that’s what really sunk into my memory and resurfaced as what Christmas is really all about.

For this Christmas, continue your family traditions, but add a new one for your young ones to see. That is, if you don’t already, why not help folks in need and let your children take part, maybe those actions will stay within their hearts for years to come.

Special places can connect the decades

/in /by

Have you ever stood in a particular place, scanning the horizon taking in all that is in sight?
For my exercise I stepped upon the front steps of the Ringgold Depot in Ringgold, Ga. looking northwards along the route of the U.S. Highway 41.
As you recognize all within your purview, could you imagine how many have stood exactly where you do seeing the same view through history?
The Ringgold Depot was completed in 1849, two years after the founding of the city. Upon its dedication by the Western & Atlantic Railroad, I can imagine the new city commission standing in front of it looking out upon Ringgold.
My cousins George Anderson and Michael Dickson, who were on that commission, may have stood there imagining what their community would become now.
A decade earlier, Cherokee Assistant Chief Richard Taylor stood looking out upon his former domain as 1,000 people began the long journey to the Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. Among them were some of my cousins who would marry his daughters.
Twelve years later in January 1861, two more cousins Joseph T. McConnell and Presley Yates would stand there looking out before stepping up on the train to travel to Milledgeville. Their trip in the coming years would change the vista from the Ringgold Depot. They were sent to vote in the succession convention. One would vote for and one against. The majority chose to leave.
A year later, the stationmaster would stand there watching the General, the Texas and the Catoosa speed by as part of the Great Locomotive Chase brought about by Andrews Raiders.
One more year would pass and the future President Ulysses S. Grant would stand looking out at the town of Ringgold as shots fired down upon him from White Oak Mountain behind the station as his army was trying to beat the retreating army.
In the 1898, thousands of soldiers would stand looking upon Ringgold on their way to Camp Thomas in western Catoosa County to train for the Spanish American War. Seven hundred and fifty two of those soldiers would not look out on the view again for their return trip. They perished from camp diseases.
For years to come, the soldiers would stand and look out one last time at their childhood town, as they would leave for WWI, WWII, KOREA and Vietnam. Many would hold on to that view and the partings with their mom, dad, wife or girlfriend throughout their journey hoping to see it and them again.
With the abandonment of passenger service to the area, the Depot only took on occasional cargo shipments but it soon became simply a fading memory of the past until the city businessmen turned it into a concert venue.
For me I stood there and welcomed thousands while hosting monthly gospel concerts for over a decade and as a council member I helped ease the building into its role as a community center.
One place to stand, one ever-changing view with unchanging elements, thousands of eyes, thousands of stories, 18 decades, I have reflected back upon.
Is there a similar place that you are in daily, weekly, monthly in your hometown? Do you know how it touched people’s lives or do you take it for granted. Does it need some attention, some love, some recognition, or some signage? Maybe you could help make that happen.
Even the simplest place can reach across the years and connect us.  

Echoes of a crash

/in /by

Bert and Rawel pulled along the seamlessly endless row of furrows as Granddad held the handles of the plow and the reins that guided the mules.
The year’s crops had been a success and had brought a good price and the second turning was to help provide some extra fall greens for Grandma to can, along with pumpkins to sell.
Bert and Rawel would gain a bit should the crop succeed as they always enjoyed grazing upon a few of the greens that their labor helped create. Granddad always planted a few extra rows just for that treat for the family’s constant companions in the daily work.
When the greens and pumpkins were closing in on perfection, Granddad was leaning back upon the fence looking out across the fields, when the world news wound its way through the mountains and valleys, to the farm as one of the neighbor boys Jeb rode up to tell him about the news of the stock market crash.
This financial news did not matter much in the valley but it was the unusual to hear of rich folks jumping out windows in the face of the losses that helped to carry the news wider than it would have normally went.
The last time really big news came through was during World War I, which news took many young men with it and some did not return. This news would have the similar impact but it wouldn’t come for a few years yet before many of the local farmers would find the local banks unable to finance the next crop and without the ability to make a new crop, those who had mortgages were paddling against the current and some would lose in their effort.
Many of the banks closed their doors and the farms were left unplanted. Bert and Rawel managed to keep working on Granddad’s furrows. Granddad worked to hold the valley together and thankfully, he was able to help a few folks get a new start rather than letting their farm go back to the bank, some sharecropped, some loaded up their truck and went west in search for greener grass.
It would be years though before the greener grass would grow again across the land.
Coming through those lean years would build the characters of the youth of the valley. As they came of age, their strength would fuel the call to stand up against tyranny around the world becoming the Greatest Generation.
Perhaps it was the steady strides of Bert and Rawel that kept growing the furrows of the family farm and the strong hands of Granddad that guided many of the valley youth through the upheaval. Plowing a straight furrow day after day prepared so many for what was ahead. As we face each and every day, sometimes I think back upon those walking barefooted behind the plow in hot sun feeling the dirt rise up through their toes.
As we each look towards what may be ahead in our own valley, if we keep our focus upon taking care of our neighbors, walking a straight furrow, and inspiring the youth, maybe we can inspire another great generation. 

A leaf falls in time

/in /by

The sun’s rays offered a great warmth to my cheek as I began my walk along frog leg creek. It had been many years since I eased my feet along the path I had run along so swiftly as a boy. The water in the creek churned up a froth as it swirled over the rocks aiming its strength at forcing the water south ward. A large brown leaf fell with a thump upon my head. Perhaps it wasn’t quite a thump, more like quick poke.

Read more

Getting ahead of the snores

/in /by

It had been a busy day or roaming for me around my grandparent’s place.
I am sure much of my adventures had not amounted to much but to me they seemed like I was Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone rolled up into one.
As the evening sun went down and the family gathered on the porch, the evening meal of pinto beans, turnip greens with fatback, fried chicken, and cornbread, was being set on the table and soon we would gather around it, bow our heads and hear grace emanate from my grandfather’s booming tones.
As we gathered in the living room, the black and white Zenith was turned on in anticipation of an episode of “The Porter Wagoner Show.” Grandma loved Porter and never missed his show. Plus, an added benefit, he had one of her mountain kin singing on the show too, a blonde named Dolly.
As the designated antenna holder, I would often spend my time hanging with one hand on the rabbit ears, as I hung around to see a bit of the screen being chided to get out of the way should I ever lose my balance.
As the evening progressed, the family would eventually veer from the screen to talking amongst each other. After finishing my acrobatics around the TV, I would excuse myself and head to bed.
The old farmhouse had two bedrooms each with a double bed adorned in a chenille bedspread, one for my grandparents and one for my folks and I.
You might wonder why a youth would wish to get to bed early. Well, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t sleep a wink.
Between my grandfather and my father sawing logs throughout the night, I have no idea how my mother or grandmother rested at all.
If I had not went to bed early in an attempt to beat their snores, I would have spent the night tossing and turning simply hoping to find rest.
On a couple of occasions when I awoke unexpectedly, those were nights of misery.
As I have now years between me and those memories, and they are all gone, I do wish I could go back and endure it once again. I am sure that if anyone is within ear shot of my sleeping, they probably are now finding the same misery, although I have never stayed up to find out myself. Sweet dreams!

Carefree days of youth

/in /by

I opened the door and the thickly painted white screen door slammed behind me. I seldom noticed the sound it made as I bounded down the three steps from our front stoop. Once down on the sidewalk, I was hidden from the street behind the huge green box hedges fronted by azaleas.

Once I was big enough to roam outside on my own, this is how most summer days began. Once I hit the sidewalk, I was making my way around to the utility room to pull out my green bike to open up the doors of freedom. Sometimes, my mom would be standing there by the washing machine loading in clothes she would later take out and hang on the line for drying.

As I stepped up on the pedals and rested myself on the banana seat, from behind me, I would hear, “Be back by lunch. We are going to town for ‘looking and feeling’ this afternoon.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied as I gained speed going down the driveway and turned to the left headed for adventure.

You might ask what is ‘looking and feeling?’ That is what ladies from our area called shopping when they were aiming to get out and not buy but enjoy the air conditioning in the stores in the hot summer months.

We did a lot of that which could seem to be a terminal situation when you had something else on your mind to do as a kid.

But for the morning, I was off to create some adventure, so, my first stop would be banging on a couple of doors to raise some other kids to play. Before you could say Hank Aaron, there would be about five or six of us on our bikes riding down suicide hill.

Soon we would move on to the woods where we had built a series of forts fully stocked with pinecones.

We would pick sides, and we were battling the other team to ensure the survival of our clan over the other. Sometimes we were Yankees and Confederates, sometimes Cowboys and Indians, sometimes Germans and Americans, British and Colonists, it really depended upon what movie we recently saw or what history lesson was near at hand.

Either way, and no matter who we were representing, the battles took form until we ran out of ammunition and the other team overran our stronghold. We would then restock the forts for the next battle day. Then we would be off for maybe wading in the creek and then back home in time for lunch.

Usually, a bologna sandwich with a slice of tomato from the garden, a wedge of cucumber, some barbeque Charlie’s Chips and a big glass of cherry Kool-Aid. Then I would go wash off, change from my play clothes and be ready to climb into the passenger side of our Chevy Malibu to head to the stores.

Often, I would be moved to the back seat if we picked up another mom and kids. The children were sent to the back seat, and we made our way to Woolworths, J.C. Penney, Sears or even Rich’s. Of course, in those days there were no special youth seats. We didn’t even use the seat belts. We sat still though, or we would feel the long arm of the law from the ladies in the front seat.

We were expected to behave no matter how many hours the excursion was. Especially when we were in public — in the stores. If we ever forgot ourselves (which I did on a couple of occasions and turned the women’s and men’s department into a playground and the underneath areas of the hanging clothes and good places with hide and seek with whichever other kids were on the outing), we soon felt the sting of our mistakes upon our posteriors, and it would come sooner than later if we disturbed other folks.

As I hear kids screaming at their parents and see them acting out in public today, I fondly remember the tough lessons my parents gave me. I remember those days of imagination, and the hours of fun, and I wish that children today could have those experiences, rather than a childhood attached to screens of various types and parents who look the other way when they act out.

A Shell, the Porch Swing and a Screen Door

/in /by

 I reached down and pulled out a freshwater oyster shell from the branch next to Washington Road and ran up to my grandma who was leaning on a fence post nearby. “Is there a chance I can find a pearl?” She looked at it and said, “You already got one, and she’s your mother.”
     As I occupied my time exploring what types of rocks I could find, she was getting the mail from the box. After she closed the gate behind us, we walked back up the gravel drive to the worn whitewashed four-room farmhouse to which Grandma Kitty Bruce retired after selling the farm at the head of Sequatchie Valley. The little 18-acre place was near Dayton, Tennessee, and my grandma’s siblings and their farms. The area was where her Mama Rachel and Daddy Phil moved when they migrated from Tellico Plains, Tennessee, in the 1800s.
     She stepped up onto the front porch that ran the length of the front of the house. She leaned against the second porch post and looked back down towards Washington Road, almost retracing the steps that she had made in her mind.
     My Aunt “Duck” (Norma Jean) came through the screen door. It banged loudly in her wake. She was fanning herself with a folded Dayton Herald saying, “It sure is hot today … it sure is hot… What did we get in the mail? Is there anything in the mail for me?”
     She sat down on the porch swing. I crawled up next to her, and grandma continued staring off into the distance.
     It wasn’t long before my mother Pearl came through the house wiping her hands with a dish rag saying, “Well, I’ve got the dishes washed. Now we got to see about getting this boy of mine a bath.”
     “Aw, Mom, I took one before we left home,” I said.
     “Yeah, and you are going to take one before we go to town too,” she said.
     The plan was already in the works, and I didn’t even know they were a-plottin’ agin me… I had been running, jumping, and enjoying the morning. It wasn’t even dinnertime, and I had already covered every inch of the place from post to post. While Mama was washing the dishes, she had been heating extra water to fill the wash barrel on the back porch.
     She had pulled out a bar of grandma’s lye soap and a bristle brush, and before I could say, “scat” I was belly deep in water feeling like that brush or the soap was ripping the skin right off with every stroke.
     I can still hear her a saying, “This ought to run off any chiggers you might have picked up.” ‘Course, I had chiggers too a few times, and I believe the bath was worse.
     That is one thing about bath day and clothes worshing day. They were sights to behold. When you got several folks in one house all needing a good worshing and only one bath barrel on the back porch and you had to heat the water to fill her up, it took a lot of effort to keep the water replenished. Course, on real busy days that water didn’t get much changin’.
     When the clothes worshing was being done, it was soap, rub boards and worshtubs. ‘Course, I do remember when Grandma got her an agitating worsher with a wringer on the top of it that you turned with a crank, and then you’d hang the clothes out to dry.
     Eventually, everybody was ready, and we’d all climb into the blue and white pickup truck — mother, grandma and my aunt in the front and me in the back if I promised to be good and head to town, sometimes to the grocery, sometimes to the dime store.
     I’d usually talk my grandma into gettin’ a strawberry or grape Crush at the fillin’ station. They sure did taste good on a hot July afternoon.
     Occasionally, we’d just take off an’ go a-visitin’. Folks don’t do that much these days. That’s going to some kin’s house without being invited, sitting and gabbin’ for hours. Maybe helping them pick apples or tomatoes, cut okra. Sometimes the women folks would turn in and help with the cannin’ while the kids found adventures of their own or were put to work breakin’ beans.
     I remember what seemed like long walks to the outhouse, especially at night when you’d drather not make that journey unless you just had no other choice.
     I can see my breath rising above the handmade quilts as I lay in the old metal post bed on cold mornings. I dreaded putting my bare feet on the cold wood floor. The only advantage to getting up was in knowing when I passed through the bedroom doorway, the kitchen would be warm. I could already smell the bacon fryin’, the cathead biscuits in the stove and know that breakfast would soon warm my insides even though the outside was chilly.
     This walk up that old gravel drive for me is a fond reminder of some childhood visits to Grandma Kitty’s farm in Rhea County. The time there was sometimes slow, sometimes sad, sometimes filled with joy or pain, and other times filled with angst; but no matter what the experience, it was a place that evokes a feeling of a rural South that used to be — when you wore your best to town, when you helped your neighbor, when though you may have disagreements among your kin, you came together in one accord when facing the outside world and you took care of your own.

Kicking the can down the road

/in /by

I reached over and picked up the can I found along the roadside and looked at it before I tossed it into a nearby trashcan. It carried me back to the carefree days when such a find would result in me kicking the can down the road for a ways.
Summer always was filled with the endless opportunity of adventures that emanated from within my head.
The can would eventually land in the edge of the woods lying by an oak stick. I would pick it up, take out my pocketknife and peel off the bark. That stick became my musket as I set out towards the fort that my friends and I had built earlier in the summer.
The stack of limbs on three sides hid a huge pile of pinecones that were collected and stored away for the next battle.
It was a weekly occurrence; my friends and I set out to re-create the frontier battles of our ancestors as they faced off with the indigenous people in the Appalachian Mountains and along the frontiers.
I always fancied myself in the roles of my cousins Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett but sometimes I also got to take on the roles of my Native American ancestors as well.
The adventures would shift as my friends and I would swap roles at times and switch to Civil War battles with some of us being Yankees and some Confederates.
No matter who we were in our play, we always got pelted with pinecones until one group out maneuvered the other, captured the fort, or ran out of ammo.
Ultimately our adventures filled our afternoons, exhausting our rambunctious natures in brief until we refocused our energies or one of us heard a motherly call to come home.
There were no personal computers and no phones that were not attached to a wall. Bicycles got us where we wanted to go, unless that motherly call meant we were headed that afternoon to town for a looking or feeling trip in an air-conditioned store or maybe to see a matinee.
Either way, we would be back in time so dinner would be on the table by six, and there would still be time for an evening baseball game on the street before the streetlights came on and we had to be in to clean up for bed.
I would kneel down by my maple twin bed and thank the Lord for the day, and ask Him to keep my parents, my friends and I safe through until another day dawned.
Those memories are still a blessing to me. I hope you have ones that bring a smile to your face and place a song in your heart.