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Farming for Rocks

It’s that time of year again. Time for me to start working on the garden. And the first crop every year is always a rock crop. For almost 50 years I’ve picked rocks out of the garden. Fifty years. I’m getting old. Better than the alternative, I suppose. I believe our garden spot may be the rockiest place in Rabun County. I’ve been filling buckets full of gravel and rocks out of that mountaintop since I was four years old. And Daddy did the same thing for several years before that.

I’ve always envied the New Englanders and the beautiful stone walls surrounding their farms. Of course there’s a reason for those stone walls. Generations and generations ago the farmers pulled these rocks from their fields as they broke the new ground. And likely kept pulling rocks for several generations after the ground was first plowed. Those old codgers were resourceful and tenacious; I’ll give them that. The reason I’m jealous? At least they got beautiful stone walls from their efforts. All I get is bucket upon bucket of basically gravel.

My Sweet Wife doesn’t believe me, but I’m trying to be a “glass half full” kind of guy. I really am. The garden is located on top of a ridge with a steep access road, so all of my yearly rock crop gets put in the roadbed to fight the never-ending battle against erosion. So there’s that. And each year there seem to be fewer rocks to pick up. Glass half full… On the downside, I’ve found hundreds of arrowheads in the garden through the decades. Those seem to be getting few and far between. Can’t win them all. At least I don’t have to deal with the freezing winter weather and the spring mud of New England. Here’s to many more years of filling buckets with Georgia rocks. Glass half full. I’m trying, Sweet Wife, I really am.

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Weekend Loaferin’ and Shopping in the 70’s and 80’s.

A little more than a year ago I decided to just ride around after attending a memorial service for my college friend Todd Rock after his unexpected death. A ride down memory lane so to speak. It was pouring rain, so it wasn’t a good day to loafer, as we called it when I was a kid. I had driven down to Demorest for the service and decided afterward to check out Baldwin and Cornelia before making my way over to Toccoa to hit Harbor Freight.

 I spent my undergraduate college years at Piedmont College, long before it became a big time, full-blown “university.” I’m happy that it has grown, but I barely recognized anything while rambling through campus. I headed on down to Baldwin. It was always almost a ghost town. It can’t even be called that now. It’s gone. Of course, a Dollar General sprouted up at the corner of Hwy 441, likely the death knell for whatever businesses remained. Luckily, the Stew and Que is still around. It looks like the owners are doing a thorough remodel. I love that place and have eaten many  meals there in the last 50 years. Heck, for a couple of years a back booth served as an unofficial satellite office for me during my representation of several employees of the nearby Fieldale plant who were going through hard times.

 Seeing the Stew and Que brought back some memories. When I was a little boy, we usually didn’t have much money. That said, we always ate well when Daddy had steady work.  During the mid-to-late 1970s, he helped build a subdivision for the Murrell family somewhere around Baldwin. I guess that was when he discovered the Stew and Que. For a year or so we made the trip to downtown Baldwin on many weekend nights to eat supper. It was a big trip for me and was the longest trip we made to eat.

Once the hot lap of Baldwin was complete I traveled back into Cornelia from the south side. Other than the iconic Steak House being long gone, everything looked about the same, although the south end was significantly run down. As always, I looked around trying to figure out the former location of the White Spot. Mama always referred to it in her stories about running around Cornelia and Clarkesville during the 1950s. I’ve never figured out its location, or exactly what the business was for that matter. I think it was located on the site where an abandoned grocery store now sits. Driving into town I remembered other great businesses that are gone and will pass from memory with my generation. I’ve always been obsessed with old movie theaters. I remember being over the moon when the theater in Cornelia was renovated back in the early 1990s. It was short-lived. Unknown to me at the time, I was there for the final showing just a short time later.

Across the street was the former location of Johnny Gunn’s Barber Shop. I had several haircuts there while I attended Piedmont. Mr. Gunn was quite the character, as was Mr. Ken Martin in Demorest. Now that I think about it, most of the old barber shops had great characters.

Next up came Mount Airy. I’ve seen several photographs of the town back in its heyday. The grand hotels and restaurants were gorgeous. By the time I began attending Piedmont in 1990 the beautiful old hotels were gone for a couple of generations, replaced by package stores, beer joints, and pawn shops. I’m a Hopkins from Rabun County. I’ve seen my share of rough beer joints, often going into them looking for uncles to see if they were able to work with us the following day. The beer joints in Mount Airy were known to be rough on a whole different level, with even my uncles warning me to keep my ass out of them. For better or worse, it looks like even the Mount Airy places are shut down.

Next was a ride down what is now known as Dick’s Hill Parkway. I’ve climbed that “hill” too many times to count on bicycle rides back in the day. My grandparents lived close by on Rock Road. What was once a neat old, abandoned store owned by the Irvin family sat crumbling into the earth at the intersection of the two roads. At the bottom of the mountain, I headed into Toccoa. We did much of our out-of-town shopping there when I was a kid. Mama’s daddy and stepmother lived close to Toccoa and we often went down to see them on Sunday afternoons. We’d go into town and have gourmet seafood at Long John Silver’s. It was fine dining for us. I’d order the Peg Legs with “extra crinkles,” as I called them. I thought those crunchy bits tasted better than the actual chicken. Still do…

After getting our bellies full, we’d go shopping. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s Toccoa was a hopping place. Some towns still had “blue laws” and most stores were closed on Sundays, but not Toccoa. There were numerous places to go back then. JC Penney, Kmart, and Sky City; Toccoa had them all. After making the rounds, usually just looking, as Mama and Daddy were too tight to spend money, we’d visit with my grandparents a little longer and head back to Clayton. It’s sad to see how Toccoa has died off during my lifetime. So many places have gone away. I especially miss Sam Sosebee’s restaurant downtown in the plaza. He made the best hotdogs ever. A relative of his opened the joint back up for a bit fifteen or twenty years ago, but it only lasted a short time. And then there was Ed’s Barbeque on the road back towards Hollywood. We sometimes rode down there to eat on Friday nights. I can’t remember anything about the food. I do remember he had a couple of kid-sized picnic tables up front. I always sat at one of them while Mama and Daddy sat further back. Good times.

Most of the old, native-owned stores and restaurants are long gone now, replaced by trendy upscale places owned by “move-ins”. I have to admit, some of these places are pretty neat, but they always seen to come and go. The owners just aren’t invested in our community long-term and move on to the next best place within a few years. While a few dwindling places remain as they’ve always been, about all that’s left are the memories, and even those have begun to fade.

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Snows of Winters Past

Last month we received the first snowfall of the year. It was the first snow since Amy and I moved into the “Apple House.” We both act like big kids most of the time, so you can only imagine how excited we get about the possibility of snow. After twenty years, I’m finally over my disdain for snow from living in Ohio for four years. Amy’s playfulness makes it fun again.

I thought about the snows of my childhood while we watched the snow come down that Friday afternoon. When I was a really little rascal, I didn’t believe snow was real. Mama and Daddy read me stories that mentioned it, and I had seen it in television shows, but it didn’t snow at our house. The first snow we had came just before my fourth birthday. Most of the snow fell during the night. I knew it was coming, but when I woke up and actually saw the white magic I almost lost my mind. Daddy picked me up in my Spider Man footed pajamas and threw me off the front porch into the yard. Good times…

As I’ve written before, Daddy and I had lots of fun in the snow when I was a kid. Being an only child with no other kids in our neighborhood, Daddy was my partner in crime when it snowed. He loved every minute of it. After Mama made us a big breakfast, we geared up to go play. Freshly oiled boots, long johns, and toboggans on my head. We sledded down the hill in the yard until we were wet, frozen, or both. After the first couple of snows, Mama decided we couldn’t come back into the house until the end of the day. She wasn’t going to clean up after us all day. No problem for us. We have a beautiful antique Home Atlantic parlor stove in the basement. Daddy would take the decorative dome off so it functioned as a cooktop. He would haul two coffeepots to the basement. One of them he used for coffee all day, the other held plain hot water so I could have Swiss Miss hot chocolate all day. Some of my best memories are of the time Daddy and I spent posted up in our 1970’s lawn chairs with our drinks just talking in front of the Home Atlantic. He told some of the best stories during those periods.

As the years passed, we began pulling sleds around the yard behind the four-wheeler, went sledding down the giant hillside at Uncle Rip’s house, often on an old car hood, and even sneaked onto the county golf course with Big John and Little John Dixon. By the age of twelve or thirteen, I was raising hell around in the snow riding the four-wheeler with Kerry Garland and Cecil Fountain. We’d ride all over Clayton and Warwoman, sometimes hitting the 20 Penny drive-thru maybe while pulling a sled. As the years went on, Daddy and I just rode the back roads taking pictures.

The allure of the recent snow was too much to pass up. I took the dog out right at dusk the day after the snowfall and the snow-covered hillside was irresistible. I found my childhood plastic sled buried under some junk in the basement. After digging it out of the pile, I went upstairs and fortified myself with a couple of adult beverages.  It took a few minutes, but I dared Amy into going into the dusk with me. It was just before dark; the old-timers called it the “gloaming.” We took turns hauling the sled up the hill and riding down. Much of our stuff is still in storage while the remodel continues, so we made do with our outerwear. My Sweet Girl flew down the hill wearing a fleece onesie and a pair of Muck boots. It was perfect.  Neither of us injured ourselves and we got our sledding fix for a while.

I’m not going to weigh in on global warming. All I know is every year I start the garden a little sooner and harvest veggies a little later into the fall. And the snows are few and far between. I miss them, along with many things of years gone by. I ran into Cecil Fountain right before the snow and tried to talk him into some mischief once the snow fell. No luck, but maybe next time. We’re still young…

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Wisdom Lost

Today would have been Daddy’s 81st birthday. He’s been gone for four and a half years already. I think about him a hundred times a day. It’s still hard to believe that he’s gone. Not a day goes by that I don’t get sad thinking about all the things we never got to do together, all the places we never got to go… The fly fishing trips we wanted to take. The backpacking and other camping trips we dreamed of taking together.

            I think of all the stories about his life that he still had to tell. During the final couple of weeks he lived he was still telling me new stories that I had never heard of his younger years, his exploits making liquor and mischief while running around in his hot rod 1956 Fords.

            Every day I need to ask him something. Whether it’s general life advice or how to do something, there’s always something.  Like most rural Appalachian folks of his generation, he knew how to do pretty much everything. An expert at cobbling things together to keep machinery and tools together without replacing them, I have no doubt that he saved thousands of dollars in repairs. When Amy and I cleaned up his house to sell after his death, she was amazed at his ingenuity. He had hand carved doorknobs, latches, and even hinges at his house.  

            I’ve been a woodworker for 40 years, and still need his knowledge daily. I wish I had another 20 years with him to learn more woodworking skills from his vast store of knowledge. I make Appalachian ladderback chairs, but Daddy never got around to teaching me how to weave the hickory or oak bottoms. I have to farm that out to someone. Daddy could weave a beautiful herringbone pattern in an hour. I’m sure I will learn the technique, but I wish he had taught it to me.

            And then there are the tools. We have countless specialty tools in the shop for making musical instruments. I’ve made instruments since I was a little boy, but I have no idea what some of the templates and jigs are used for. Daddy had jigs, templates, and patterns for everything. He had all of the stuff to sharpen and set teeth on crosscut hand saws. I wish he was here to show me the proper way to do it.

            I’m sure he’ll be smiling down on me (or laughing at me) in the next few weeks. Amy and I moved back into my childhood home last year. The remodeling project is ongoing, but it’s getting there. Daddy would be a great help as I muddle through it. We are making a huge garden this year. He would be right there with us, riding the Cub tractor and telling us what we were doing wrong. I guess he is still here in many ways. And I’ll be starting a new batch of chairs at the end of the summer, splitting out the wood for them by hand with Paw Paw’s hundred-year-old froe and an ancient wooden maul. I can envision Daddy sitting on his stool drinking coffee and telling me stories of doing it when he was young. He taught me how to make the chairs and how to use a froe. He showed me the ways to read the grain of the log in order to get the easiest splits and the best pieces. He managed to use almost every inch of the wood. The processing of the logs was too labor intensive to waste anything.

            When I do all of these things Daddy is still here with me. While there is so much more that I could have learned from him, the skills he taught me and the life lessons are priceless.

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Farewell to Andy’s

How do you say goodbye to a landmark, an institution, an icon? The news broke on Facebook a few weeks ago that Andy and Deborah Hunter are closing Andy’s Market at the end of this month and are retiring. No two people deserve to retire more than them. Their work ethic likely won’t be seen again. The only other store owner whom I had the pleasure to know with a work ethic like that was the late Charlie Mac Dickerson. As Andy was quoted, “After coming through these doors six days a week for 54 years, it’s time.” Wow… 54 years…

 I still remember going there as a kid back when Andy worked there for Rick Mason, several years before he bought the place…  I have literally been going to the store since I was born. Mama grew up next door to the store site, and I grew up a half mile away. Daddy and his best friend Charles refused to shop anywhere else and were in there three or four times a week. The store is the last tie to my childhood left in Rabun County. Everything else is long gone. Reeves is still around, and arguably better than ever with the younger generation running the business, but it’s not the same anymore. It’s become a conglomerate of stores, with the “hardware” store on Main Street not even really selling hardware anymore. It has lost the small town feel of my youth.

But Andy’s has always stayed the same. It even smells the same. I could be blindfolded and transported there, and I’d know where I was. Every single time I walk through the doors a flood of memories washes over me. Not a few, or even a few dozen, but probably hundreds of them. I’d stop there with Mama for weekly groceries when I was a little boy and usually begged for ice cream or candy while there. Bomb Pops, brown cows, the little bags of maple log candies. Maybe that helps explain my Type 2 diabetes diagnosis… One time our German Shorthaired Pointer sneaked around and ate a whole bag of unattended Brach’s chocolate covered peanuts from there and liked to have died.  Other times, I’d jump in the truck with Daddy to go grab something that Mama had forgotten, and she was already in the middle of cooking supper.  Sometimes when Daddy forgot to stop on his way home from work Mama would make me walk back down there and pick up the forgotten items. I told her she should make Daddy walk back down and the next time he wouldn’t forget.

I remember way back in the day when people still used lard to cook with. Not canola oil, not extra virgin olive oil. Lard. Mason’s, and Andy’s in the early days, had orange and white one-gallon buckets of lard stacked against the back wall near the meat counter. I used to beg Mama to buy one so I could have the empty bucket for a drum. She never did, and I was stuck with my drum set of Quaker Oats containers.

And then there was the candy at Christmas. I wished I’d have known that last year would be my final chance to get old fashioned hard candy and stick candy at the holidays. When I was really little, Paw Paw would have Aunt Virginia go to Mason’s and get me a box of stick candy for a Christmas present from him. I looked forward to it every year. Paw Paw has been gone for almost thirty tears and Aunt Virginia passed away a few weeks ago. Once I grew up, Daddy carried on the tradition of giving me a box of stick candy from Andy’s at Christmastime. Once Daddy passed away four years ago, I started buying myself one each year a couple of weeks before Christmas. Another memory and tradition gone…

And now a dilemma is before me. I guess I’ll have to become a vegetarian. Everyone knows that Andy’s has the best beef around. My family has bought their meat at Mason’s and Andy’s since the day the doors opened. Heck, they probably bought it at Talmadge and Margie York’s old store at the same location before Rick Mason purchased it. I hate change. I’ve said since the day I moved back to Clayton from law school that the day Andy’s closed would be the day I move away. I can’t get Amy to move. I suppose I’ll just eat vegetables and just mope around being maudlin for a neighborhood landmark fading away.

The closing of the store is made even sadder as there will be no passing of the torch as when Andy bought the grocery from Rick. It was only fitting that Andy took over from Rick since he grew up practically next door and worked there since he was a boy. This coming week the rugs will be beaten out on the handrail for the last time, Andy and Deborah will likely have a last walkthrough, turn off the lights, and lock the doors for the final time. That day the traditions will end and only the memories will remain.

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A Lantern With Stories to Tell

I know that I’ve had at least one person who always looked forward to my stories. Every time I posted a new essay, he made a point to thank me when I ran into him at Andy’s or Walmart. Then he’d look at me and tell me that I needed to start telling the good ones. He meant the stories about the liquor men. He knew I had collected hundreds of them through the years. Sadly, he didn’t live to see this one. It’s time to start telling them while there are still some folks out there who can appreciate them. Godspeed, Richard Bleckley. This one is for you.

The liquor business in Rabun County had become tough by the early 1960s. Daddy had tried a stint at the carpet mill, but ninety cents an hour wasn’t a great living, so he continued to make liquor. Every still Daddy and his brothers set up was cut down by the revenuers before they could run enough moonshine to turn a profit. Daddy was so broke that he had to “leave the country” as he phrased it. When he told this story to me when I was a little boy, I asked him if he went to England or Canada. His reply: “Hell no, Boy. I went to Blue Ridge.” He was going to work for my Uncle Frank Sisson logging and sawmilling in Fannin County.

At the time Daddy made his decision to head to Fannin he had no cash money. He sold his last liquor car for some travel money and left hitchhiking from Uncle Delo’s and Aunt Dorothy’s house on Persimmon.

Uncle Frank started working Daddy like a dog as soon as he arrived. At least Daddy was making an honest living. That didn’t last long. Frank loved to make money. He and Daddy decided that the area where he was logging was a perfect still site. There was good water. The logging operation would hide the trails into the woods where materials were transported to the liquor still while the noise from the skidders and saws would mask any sounds from the liquor operation. The only downside was that Daddy couldn’t hear the revenuers coming if they learned of the operation and raided him.

Frank took Daddy into Blue Ridge and outfitted him for a long stay in the woods. Mr. Claude Call, an old buddy of Frank’s, bankrolled part of the operation. Sugar and steel were expensive and Mr. Call was as tight as Frank. They decided to not hire any still hands. Daddy would do everything by himself. A Lovell man who was kin to Jim Lovell from Rabun County had a store in Blue Ridge. Daddy bought a fancy sleeping bag, a skillet, coffee pot, and a red Coleman lantern for his stay at the still. That stay turned into eighteen months staying at the still around the clock. Either Frank or Mr. Call would bring Daddy supplies and groceries. Daddy cooked his food on the furnace for the still and always said that he spent eighteen months sleeping behind a chestnut log.

The still wasn’t a traditional copper pot set up. It was a fairly sophisticated steamer capable of turning out a lot of moonshine. Frank and Mr. Call made all the money. Daddy was paid a percentage. After eighteen months of getting by without detection, the site was raided by Federal agents. Frank had paid off the local sheriff and was warned that the revenuers were on the way to the still. Daddy barely escaped, leaving the lantern and other gear behind.

The Blue Ridge operation was done. Daddy had Frank drive him into town where he bought a brand-new Chrysler to drive back to Rabun County. As soon as he returned, Daddy spent a few days paying off all the debts he had left behind when he “went west.” He would continue to make liquor for several years, but the era was ending.

Years later Daddy went to Blue Ridge to visit Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary Ann. Frank told him he had something for him. They walked out to an old shed behind the house and Frank handed Daddy the old red lantern. When the revenuers destroyed the operation, they had thrown the lantern into a barrel of mash where it stayed until Frank went to salvage the valves from the steamer. It was none the worse for wear other than a dent and broken globe.

The old red lantern went on every camping trip of my youth. It was with us from my first trip as a toddler up Wildcat Creek where we fled from a skunk, on deer hunting trips with my Uncle Rip, Jack Prince, Mike Cannon and my cousins, and on my trip a few weeks ago in Daddy’s refurbished camping rig. The lantern went on all of them. The stories it could tell…

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Remembering Christmas Past

There weren’t many holiday traditions in my family during my childhood. No big holiday dinners or parties. My parents did always see to it that Santa was good to me as a child, and looking back, I can only imagine the financial sacrifices they made to get me the presents I wanted. It was a big event in my childhood when the Sears Wishbook came in the mail. I’d go through it from cover to cover, dog-earing pages with things I wanted. Mama and Daddy almost never spent a dime on themselves throughout the year, no doubt hoarding every penny so I could be spoiled at Christmas. I know they were self-conscious about our lack of money, but they made sure that Christmas morning a huge deal for me. Often Nanny and my cousin Lysa came over to watch me tear open all of my gifts while Mama looked on in her baby blue house coat. Daddy was always running the Super 8 movie camera saving the mornings for posterity. I was well into middle age before I began to appreciate what they did without to provide for me.

As an only child without much close family, many of the events I now remember as holiday traditions wouldn’t be important to most people, but I relive them every year. We always used to go visit my Uncle Buck and Aunt Rose on Christmas Eve after they moved back to Rabun County. We always went up to “the store” as we referred to Dickerson Hardware and I would get Daddy a small gift that Charles would help me pick out for him as Daddy pretended to not notice what I was up to. Charles was Daddy’s best friend and the ritual continued until Charles’ untimely passing.

When I was really young we always went to see Daddy’s daddy. Paw Paw, as I always knew him, always had a box of Red Band stick candy for me to take home for the holidays. He didn’t drive, rarely leaving the family farm, so I imagine my Aunt Virginia went to Mason’s for him to pick up the yearly treat.

The Red Band candy ritual continued until Daddy’s death last year. Mason’s became Andy’s, but Andy kept continuity with his stock, with shelves and tables stocked with candy as the holidays approached. This year was different, and without Daddy here to buy my present of Christmas candy, I had to get it for myself.

The memories remain. Yesterday I sat in Mama’s old rocker in front of the fireplace that Daddy built in 1976. I was eating my Christmas candy while wearing a Carhartt coat Daddy bought me for Christmas almost thirty years ago. 

            Merry Christmas, everyone.

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1980 Winter Olympics Came to Rabun County

It seems like I vaguely remember seeing bits of the 1976 Winter Olympic Games on television. I was only three years old, and Mama said there was no way I could have remembered it. At any rate, I was fired up and ready for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid. Not just fired up, but completely obsessed.

            Things were much different then, at least at my house in rural North Georgia. We got all three, yes three, major television channels, plus Superstation, which was a network owned by Ted Turner. Of course, these stations were “streaming” through our black and white 19 inch set, so it definitely was NOT like being there. I’m pretty sure that we were the last family in America to purchase a color television. I think it was around 1988 when my dad, The Biggest Tightwad in America, finally broke down and made the purchase. Thankfully, we at least had cable by 1980 and I wasn’t having to hold the rabbit ears so Daddy could watch wrasslin’ and Star Track (yes, in our house it was never Trek.)

            We had a fair amount of snow during the winter of 1979-80, and in keeping with the Olympic theme, I carved a pair of miniature bobsleds for my three-inch action figures. Once it snowed, I made a mini-scale bobsled run on a small hill in our front yard. I even made a flag for the finish. Daddy later cut me out a goalie mask from cardboard in homage to Jim Craig, the star goalie of the 1980 U.S. Team. I would set up a TV tray in the doorway between the living room and kitchen, put on the mask and let Daddy fire Nerf balls at me while he was sitting in his old brown chair, drinking beer and watching wrasslin’ as I defended the goal.

            Yesterday was February 22, 2020. The Game was 40 years ago yesterday. Wow 40 years…  How time flies. The Miracle on Ice. Likely the best sporting moment in our history. The U.S. Hockey team beat the Soviets 4-3 on home ice at Lake Placid. I watched the game on pins and needles as only a seven-year-old boy could, inches away from the 13” black and white television in my room. No one believed it was possible except Coach Herb Brooks and his boys on the ice. The best way to put the matchup into perspective would be to field a D2 college basketball team against the original Dream Team. It was that lopsided. With Mike Eruzione’s goal well into the final period, the American crowd went wild. The college boys had pulled ahead of the Russian juggernaut with only minutes left in the game.

            Of course, every red-blooded American sports fan has Al Michaels’ call during the final seconds committed to memory. I still get chills when I hear it. Now the Miracle on Ice team has AARP cards and I’m getting closer to it myself.  Forty years… wow. But I still have the bobsleds and the mask. I wish Daddy was still here to throw some Nerf balls.

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Fun in the Snow

Daddy always loved a good snow. He was child-like pacing the kitchen floor, constantly flipping on the back porch light during the night to see if it had begun. Of course, boots had been oiled and sat ready to put on for sledding and snowball fights. If the snow came during the night the two of us would be up at first light. Mama was in the kitchen making breakfast for us before the foolishness began. Later in the day she’d always have coffee and hot chocolate ready for us.

I was four years old the first time that I saw snow in real life. I saw it on television, but we didn’t get any snowfall for a few years. I was so excited for that first snow. Daddy took me outside and pitched me into it, pajamas and all.

For some reason Daddy always built up a fire when it snowed in the antique wood stove we had in the basement. It was an antique Home Atlantic parlor stove with a flat top which we could keep water and coffee warm on for when we didn’t want to undress and go back into the house. He made my first sled from scrap lumber in his shop and used roof flashing on the runners to make them slide. It weighed more than I did, but wow, did it haul down the hillside. Later I would get a store-bought wood and metal sled, but that home-made job was always the fastest.

My first store-bought sled

On one occasion we went to the old homeplace on Bridge Creek to sled. Between the orchard and the home of my Uncle Rip was an epic hill for sledding. We spent most of the day over there sledding with my cousins Doug and Ricky.

Every time we got a good snow, we took off riding around in whatever old Jeep we had sitting in the yard at the time. Forget all the “roads are unsafe so stay at home stuff.”  We must have hit every back road in the county just being nosey and taking pictures. Sometimes Mama went, other times she stayed at home to “send out the search party” if we didn’t make it back. Good times indeed.

As the years passed, we spent more time riding and exploring and less time with sledding and having snowball fights. Charles Dickerson, our family’s best friend, was almost always with us. When it snowed Charles always brought out his Browning down jacket, Daddy grabbed his cowboy hat, and we would pile into his old blue Chevy Blazer and headed out. If Daddy was child-like with his love of snow, him and Charles together were a hoot. Charles was one of the most fun-loving people I ever knew, and the two of them were a hoot. We never really had destinations; we just went on whatever roads we could get through. Through all the years and all the adventures, we never were never stranded in the snow.

Charles rocking the vintage Browning puff jacket

It’s dumping snow right now. The last forecast I heard before bedtime last night called for somewhere between a dusting and four inches. We have six inches of the white stuff now and it’s just tapering off.

I wish Daddy and Charles were still here to go play. They’d have a blast today. I’m sure they’re together watching it from Heaven. Maybe they had God send it so I would remember… They don’t need to worry; I’ll never forget. I miss you, Guys.

Daddy’s final Jeep trip in the snow…

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When Camping Became Work

Early Spring 1985… It was supposed to be an unseasonably warm and beautiful weekend. My buddy Alan and I, along with another friend John, decided to go on a camping trip on our dirt bikes. The predicted weather was just too good to pass up. We loaded up our random bikes. I was on my fairly current Suzuki DR125. Alan, owner of a shed full of eclectic bikes picked up by his dad, was on an old Kawasaki 185 Enduro. John showed up with his trusty Suzuki TS185. We strapped our junk onto the bikes as best we could. Our camp site was, as usual, on Popcorn Creek. That time we camped close to the old homeplace of Alan’s family. His Uncle Juke still lived there, but otherwise there wasn’t a neighbor or house for miles in any direction.

            We set up camp after school on Friday evening and spent the evening lying around the biggest campfire imaginable. I’ve seen school pep rally bonfires of less magnitude. We talked away the night, eating Cheetos and guzzling Mountain Dew while solving the word’s problems. That’s what thirteen-year-old boys did back then. I don’t think we’d quite discovered girls yet. The night was warm; the weather stayed tolerable, and we awoke on Saturday morning without frostbite.

            About the time we finished cleaning up from breakfast we heard a vehicle coming down the old logging road to our camp. It was Joe Thompson. Alan’s daddy. I’ve said many times that he was a spectacular hunter and fisherman. Unfortunately, Joe had another extraordinary skill. He had an unbelievable knack for getting men to work. Furman Kilby also had this trait. They could get men to work like absolute dogs for them without the men even realizing it was happening. I mean, seriously, at the end of the day, men would actually thank Joe and Furman for the opportunity. It would always start with a casual comment… “Let’s see how this new axe handle feels on this oak firewood…” Next thing you knew, it was dusk and you’d just split a cord of wood while Joe or Furman sat in a lawn chair with a cold drink.

            Looking back, had us boys been camping under the pretense of hunting or fishing, the Weekend of Blisters would have never happened. But in Joe’s eyes we were just being lazy. He got out of the truck and looked us over. He shook his head at our laziness, cocked his cap back on his head, hiked up his britches and said, “Boys, I have an opportunity for y’all today.”

            He instructed us to mount our dirt bikes and follow him back to their house a few miles away after a short span on the highway. Yep, thirteen-year-olds on the highway on dirt bikes. Things were different then. Once we turned down the driveway we veered right to the home of Mr. Melton, known to everyone as just “Melt.” Melt wasn’t there, but three or four fruit trees with their root balls wrapped in burlap were. After we got our helmets off and walked over to Joe, we noticed a few stakes driven into the ground at precise intervals.

            “Melt’s gone to town. We need to help get these trees planted before he gets back,” Joe said.

            I looked around. My uncle had a commercial apple orchard on our old family homeplace, so I knew a little about setting out fruit trees

            “Who’s gonna run the tractor and auger?” I asked.

            “Y’all are big strapping men. Y’all don’t need no auger to dig ‘em,” Joe countered as he threw three shovels on the ground.

            Alan, John, and I thought it would be nice to surprise Melt when he got home with the trees planted for him and figured if we worked wide open, we could be out riding our dirt bikes within an hour. We dug like crazy and cut the burlap from the root balls with our pocketknives. Every boy always had a pocketknife handy back then. We finished just before Melt turned down the gravel driveway. Pulling a trailer. With a lot of fruit trees bundled on it. Really a lot, like thirty or forty. It was then that us boys noticed that the whole yard and surrounding area was dotted with stakes in the ground.

            We looked around for an escape route.

            “You mean there’s more?” one of us asked.

            “Yeah, I just needed to make sure you could do it without screwing up before we let you do all of them,” Joe responded.

            The word ‘let’ wasn’t lost on me. We spent the entire rest of the weekend under the beautiful blue sky on the warmest weekend of the year digging until our hands actually bled. At some point Melt or Joe dropped us off some Lance crackers, Vienna Sausage and Mountain Dew, but otherwise we worked until Joe decided that we should call it a day so we could get back to camp before dark. We then worked all day Sunday until it was time to head home. I was never so ready for the school week to begin in my life.

            Many of the snowflakes and younger people in general probably think we experienced child cruelty on that perfect weekend back in 1985, but I’m thankful for it, just as I’m thankful for many things our parents subjected us to. We didn’t once think of saying “no” and pitching a big fit like kids now would do. Never once did we think about quitting. We didn’t want Joe or Melt to think bad of us. We did the work because Alan’s daddy told us to. Times like that helped shape the work ethic I grew up to have. Thirty five years have passed and I’m not sure if any of those trees survived, but we planted every single tree on the trailer that weekend.

            Joe, thanks for the opportunity.