OT: I Remember

[Guest guest]

Hi Jan .. the rest of y'all,

 

For you kuntry folks .. this might bring back some fond memories.

 

Back on New Year Eve 1999 .. when the beginning of the next century was

about to kick off .. I wrote this to the Idma List. I still believe we

need to record on paper and in the ears of our younguns what we saw as

we followed our paths through life. I wish I had known this long ago

but nobody told me .. but maybe we oughta give it a lotta thought.

----

Rosanne's trip back in time awakened some feelings I had been putting

aside for a long time - feelings of how good things were back when I

didn't realize it and feelings of how much I miss the things I remember.

 

I remember the century that's about to pass - it was my century and it

was a good one. The happiest times of my life were spent in those days

growing up not really poor but with no expectations of gaining wealth,

and carefree and relatively innocent and ignorant and secure and totally

comfortable in a fairly unspoiled environment that I miss too much now.

 

I remember Labor Day family reunions at Aunt Nanny's house, and the good

food, and us kids and the dogs exploring caves we'd been in many times

but knowing this time we'd find some Confederate gold, and going fishing

with Uncle Jack when he came back from the big war, and ol' Black Annie

who we kids called Aunt Annie and who we believed was at least a hundred

years old, when she'd walk three miles or so from her cabin to Herman

Store on Saturdays, and she'd stop by for a drink of water and some tale

telling, and later hauling wood for her to chop after Uncle Jake died

and soon after going to Aunt Annie's funeral, and missing her and her

tale telling and the crackling bread and buttermilk she always gave us.

 

And I remember seeing the first steam engine in the county run a sawmill

and steam tobacco plant beds, and churning butter for Aunt Nannie for 50

cents to go to the fair and then seeing that two-headed calf at the Todd

County Fair and peeking in under a Hoochie Koochie show tent and running

when the ticket feller got after us, and wondering why anybody would pay

so much for a hot dog and a coke, and later, after Aunt Nanny sold her

old cow, buying solid white margarine in a plastic bag with a capsule

for coloring, and puncturing the capsule and massaging that margarine

until it changed color, and cutting sassafras saplings so she'd have

enough bean poles come spring, and chopping weeds that never stopped

growing in her garden but taking a little break now and then to chase a

snake or a mouse or some other critter, and then at night listening to

Uncle Phil tell the world's best ghost stories and Bell Witch stories

and I always knew they were true, and sleeping in a monstrous feather

bed that was always too warm in a room that was always too cold.

 

And I remember Grandma praising me like the mighty hunter I truly was

when I brought home some rabbit and quail to add to the smokehouse ham

she was fixing for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, and the excitement

when I found a bee tree and my Grandfather and uncle would pack up their

gear, go with me to the tree and tell me, " You done good son! " And we'd

all get real sticky and sometimes stung a bit but we'd laugh about it.

 

And I remember using a patched, leaky old boat to cross Elk Fork Creek

and take food to some real old folks whose name I can't remember when

the water was too high for a car to pass, and picking sourgrass and poke

salad and dandelion greens which I loved smothered with onions and bacon

grease and collecting ginseng and yellow root and snake root and burdock

and lots of other medicines Grandma used 'cause she was a witch woman of

some kind, and climbing under the house to drag out a snakebit dog so

she could treat him, and once getting snakebit by one that wasn't poison

but still thinking I was gonna die for sure, and noodling in hollow logs

and muskrat dens for the channel catfish and alligator snapping turtles

which Grandma made into some mighty fine eating, all the time knowing if

a snapping turtle bit you he wouldn't let go until it thundered or else

somebody started beating on a wash tub to fool him.

 

And I remember playing mumbley peg, and jumping outa barn lofts into hay

piles, and digging tunnels under red clay banks and then having to fill

them in again 'cause Grandpa said somebody was bound to fall in and get

hurt and smoking cigars from some kind of bean tree that took a box of

matches just to keep lit till we discovered how to wrap barn tobacco in

newspapers and build the world's biggest and strongest cigars which we

generally got sick from smoking, and digging taters and putting them in

the ground celler and picking bushels of okra and cucumbers for pickling

and picking turnip greens, and gathering persimmons before the deer and

possums ate'em all and the excitement of searching over the country side

to find that perfect little cedar to bring home for a Christmas tree.

 

And I remember kerosine lanterns and coal scuttles and well houses and

single trees/double trees and mules, and swapping corn and wheat at the

mill for meal and flour, and hand crank corn shellers that made life

easier at chicken feeding time, and slopping hogs, and chasing flying

grasshoppers to catch bluegill with a cane pole from the creek with a

stick for a float, and exploring mysterious sinkholes 'cause we knew

there was Confederate gold buried there too, and feeding a motherless

fawn with a RC bottle and nipple, and a baby coon riding on my shoulder

and nibbling my ear, and cutting mice into little pieces to feed a sick

baby hawk that later got well and we let him go but didn't forget him.

 

And I remember picking up Cherokee and Creek arrowheads and sometimes

even a spear or warclub head, and taking'em to Sam who lived in a cabin

on Elk Fork Creek and listening to stories of his ancestors who fought

to keep their land and way of life - but lost, and later going to Sam's

funeral where the red, black and white folks cried a lot, and being too

young to know there were lots of questions I should have asked him and

Aunt Annie and Uncle Jake but it just wasn't so important then.

 

And I remember swinging over the gullies on wild grape vines to bravely

attack fortresses on the other side, but we didn't allow fair damsels in

the game because we were after gold, and sometimes we'd go on an African

safari and capture wild critters and Grandma would start hollering and

chase us mighty hunters with a switch and she would turn loose all the

dogs and cats and pigs we had captured. Funny thing though, not one of

us kids ever gave a moments thought to playing cowboys and Indians ...

 

And I remember hauling black walnuts home and laying them out on the

gravel road so the cars would run over them and smash the outer shells -

then later cracking them with a hammer so Mama could make chocolate

fudge with walnuts, and fighting chiggers and briars and snakes to get

to the wild blackberry bushes, and picking up corn left by cornpicking

machines and selling the bushel or so you could pick up in a day for 50

cents which bought a lot of Nik A Lip candy and RC Colas and Moon Pies,

and riding bikes down the road picking up coke bottles and selling them

for 2 cents each at the service station and getting pretty darned rich.

 

And I remember helping Grandma split wood to fire up the water in the

cast iron kettle so the water could be hand-carried to the washhouse and

dumped into the agitating ringer washer which I'd heard some terrible

tales about so it always frightened me, but that was machinery so I had

a reason for my fear, but other things didn't frighten us crazy kids;

like sneaking out to ancient graveyards at night and looking for lights

over the graves and telling the other kids that wouldn't go that we saw

them whether we did or not, and sneaking into the many ramshackled ghost

cabins that were abandoned and posted against trespassers but as we saw

it we weren't trespassing, we were gold hunting, and climbing up narrow

stairs to the loft where we knew that Confederate gold was waiting for

somebody to find but we never found it and I think it's still there now.

 

And I remember catfishing at night on the Red River with my dog and when

it would rain, we'd climb up the hill and get into what's now called the

Bell Witch Cave, a Tennessee State Historical area, in Adams, Tennessee

but then it didn't have a name though we knew that was where Kate stayed

when she wasn't out harrassing folks that deserved harrassing and I was

not one of them so me and Kate got along real good all those many years

and she's still out there and still an important part of my memories.

 

And I remember setting tobacco with a hand carved wooden peg till the

blisters on my hand turned to callus, and hauling sawdust to the tobacco

barn, and loading hay and feeling real proud when the men said I did a

day's work like a man, but I wasn't a man 'cause when we'd go swimming

naked in the creek we'd get scared if some dude hollered, " Yonder comes

some girls, " and we'd all grab him and throw his butt in the creek while

knowing somebody else was gonna holler the same thing after a while.

 

And times got better and I remember when my Grandpa bought a television

with a round screen and one channel with three programs, the Nightly

News with John Cameron Swayze, the Texaco Hour with Milton Berle and

Western Corral with the Old Ranger, and later on came Howdy Doody and

Buffalo Bob and Saturday Night Wrestling. And I remember folks coming

by after church on Sunday and bringing food and we would eat off a table

made of planks over wooden saw horses covered with cloth somebody had

embroidered, and it was just about then I started noticing girls weren't

really all that bad and I found another interest in life that occupied a

good bit of my time and one that has stayed with me to this day.

 

And I remember all us kids growing up and some of us getting married too

soon and the county getting a bit crowded and the old folks passing over

to the Other Side and me starting to seriously think about having some

kind of a future. And I remember graduating from High School when I was

17 years old with 37 folks and being the only one in the class photo who

wasn't wearing a suit but I had a nice borrowed sport coat that was a

tad too big. And I remember thinking that the tobacco patches didn't

turn me on but Uncle Sam's Army did and I was still 17 when I joined up.

 

And I remember years later coming back home and finding that I had done

considerably better than most of my friends who had worn suits in that

class photo but the 33 of us left alive are still friends today because

folks change with time ... but I remember those old times and I believe

they were the best of times ... and though the century is passing, those

old times will always stay alive in my heart and my mind.

 

I wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Century and I ask

you to think about writing down a bit of what went down in your lives

this century so your children and their children's children can look

back and remember when times were as they will never be again.

 

As I prepare to say goodbye to old times and greet tomorrow, I pray that

we don't have to sacrifice too much of the old to make room for the new.

I've only lived a bit past 56 years but in that relatively short period,

we've given up some good things for what we call progress and modernity,

things that I would have preferred to hang onto, but even though they're

gone, I can still hang onto them when I remember.

 

In this coming century, I plan to go back home and find that Confederate

gold that's been waiting for me all these years.

 

Y'all keep smiling, Butch http://www.AV-AT.com