Life in the Old South

You have probably heard of the Old South. If you’ve not spent much time here, the term probably conjures up images from “Gone with the Wind” where women are wearing hoop skirts, men are decked out in riding breeches and panama hats, and their slaves are out in the field picking cotton.

But let me tell you, it still exists. I live in Bland County, Virginia. Its history actually traces back to the days leading up to the Civil War. Just before voting – for the third and last time - on whether to secede from the Union, the Virginia legislature passed a law in 1861 creating the county of Bland. So it goes way back.

My home was built on property that was once owned by a Captain in the Confederate army. Before the war, he was a miller. Both his mill and his home are still standing in the valley below my house.

And there are other tangible links to the Old South, if you’re willing to look for them. Raleigh Grayson Turnpike, the road that leads to my place, was carved out of the local landscape in the 1840’s. It snakes around my property and works its way up the mountain, across the ridge, and, twelve miles later, down again. An old fella in the area once told me that when he was a child (he’s in his 80’s), the turnpike was the only route from the village of Bland to the nearest town, Wytheville. He told me about the special day-long journeys his family would make over the mountain in the mule-drawn wagon in order to buy supplies. I’ve traveled this route. In places, high up on the mountain, the passage narrows. It is sometimes so narrow that if you stray off the road at all, you’re faced with a precipitate drop of hundreds of feet. I get a little nervous riding this road on my ATV. They made this trek in the old days in a mule drawn wagon.

I’m told the turnpike was built with slave labor. And oxen were used for the heavy lifting. There is evidence readily seen, all along the route, of boulders that were cleared from the roadbed and dragged to the side. Massive boulders. How the slaves must have worked at it. How many years it must have taken them.

I’ll let you in on a well-kept secret. The road was still in use until 1972 when the state of Virginia opened up the last section of I-77, an interstate highway that will take you from Cleveland to Charlotte and beyond. The last section involved a tunnel cut right through Big Walker Mountain, my mountain. Here’s the secret. When I-77 was completed, the state of Virginia abandoned that portion of the old Raleigh Grayson Turnpike that runs from my property to the mountaintop and along the ridge. It’s still there. But it hasn’t been upgraded in years. It is as it was. The roadbed is in poor condition. It’s probably not much worse than it was a century ago but it’s still a rugged ride for someone with a weak stomach. It was never paved. Truth be known, much of it is dirt. The more luxurious stretches contain a layer of rocks, most of which are the size of a dinner plate. The only vehicle traffic on the pike now involves the occasional logging truck and lots of hunters on all-terrain vehicles

It is here on the pike that the Old South comes alive. A walk up the mountain is a journey into the past. On any given day, if you keep an eye out while you labor up the old trail, you can find treasure lying in the roadway. This Spring Paula and I were walking back from a hike up the mountain when suddenly she noticed, half buried in the dirt, an old horseshoe. Paula pulled it out of the road and immediately noticed that it was too big to have come from a horse (most folks here in the mountains didn’t own large draft horses; Belgians and the like required too much forage in an area where grazing land was at a premium). It had to be a mule shoe. One’s imagination runs to thoughts of Colonel Toland’s Yankee raid that came up the pike in 1864. It could have come off of one of their pack mules. It's also possible that it simply came from a mule belonging to one of the local residents a long, long time ago. We put the mule shoe back where we found it. It is again making history.

We have found plenty of other treasure along the turnpike. Included in our cache are pieces of harness, lots of pottery shards, pieces of plates and cups (some with beautiful design patterns), a belt buckle, and a few shotgun shells from more recent times. The area where many of the artifacts can be found is right at the base of the mountain, which would lead one to believe that the remains are some of the loot confiscated from local villagers by Yankee marauders 160 years ago and discarded - in an effort to shed heavy baggage - when the soldiers involved saw the climb they were about to face. We haven’t come upon any gold coins yet but I keep looking.

The best part of the story is that it will always be as it is, as it was. I’d invite you to take a journey into history with us but first I have a warning. Be careful. There is a saying that I heard a number of years ago. If you come to our tiny corner of the Old South to walk the Raleigh Grayson Turnpike, “take but a picture; leave but a footprint.”

Capitalism on Display

I come to you this morning from an exhibitor's booth at The Summer Green Show being held at the Coliseum in Greensboro, NC. To give you an idea of what is happening, try to picture a convention center chock full of trees, plants, and flowers, along with tractors, mowers, cultivators, and spreaders, as well as every imaginable form of mulch, fertilizer, gardening accessory, fountain, and the like. You have the picture. In all, there are a few hundred companies plying their wares here.

At the last trade show I attended in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, I struck up a conversation with a woman from Arlington, Virginia (across the river from Washington D.C.) who described the area she lived in as a liberal enclave in an otherwise backward Republican state. I had known her for all of two minutes and we were having a discussion about President Bush. She seemed to have this need to determine the depth of my intellect on the basis of where I stood on her sliding scale of political awareness. At a nursery and landscaping trade show.

That is the sort of thing that goes on at these events. A few minutes ago I was listening to a group of four men with their special North Carolina accent in the next booth telling trout fishing stories. And a young man just left here after telling me all about his mother’s stained glass artwork and his father’s wood burning hobby. You want to use sandalwood if you’re going to burn designs into wood. The grain is closer. I’m going to probably remember that.

Folks here also renew friendships. Many of the exhibitors will attend all the shows in the area throughout the year and most will see their regular customers walk up throughout the day. We are all trying to sell our goods and we are, in many cases, competing with one another. But here we are all friends. And some of the friendships go way back.

If you remember the stories from a hundred years ago about the good ol’ boys getting together in the small town square on a summer afternoon to talk about the weather and the quality of the hay harvest, that same thing goes on here. There is a whole lot of discussion about the important things in life – and there is a little business conducted as well.

I mentioned the liberal woman from Northern Virginia for another reason. She proceeded to tell me that the United States of America was going to go to hell in a hand basket if George W. Bush got reelected. And she was visibly disturbed by the idea. I wanted to tell her, “Go away, you batty old woman.”

But what I told her was, “America is doing just fine. And will continue to do well regardless of who gets elected. I prefer Bush over Kerry, but I know that life as we know it is not going to end if the people in this country choose John Kerry.”

“Look around you,” I said. The place was jammed with hundreds and hundreds of exhibitors and customers. “This is what America is all about. All these people are trying their best, in their own individual ways, to get ahead; to thrive; to provide, at the end of the day, food for the table and a roof over the kids’ heads.” Capitalism at its essence.

The look on her face told me that I had, by taking a departure from the normal political discussion, thrown her off guard. And she knew I was right. I could have gotten into a discussion about budget deficits and the war in Iraq, but the alarm she expressed about Bush told me that (in addition to wasting my time knowing that she is one of those Bush-haters we hear so much about) she needed a good dose of reality. She was an exhibitor there too and was selling her wares. I found out afterward that she is actually quite successful and brings in a handsome annual income from her commission sales business. Go figure.

Anyway, I’m going to get back to doing what I came here to do. Before the end of the day, I’m hoping to come upon someone who can help me with rebuilding a 52 year old carburetor.

Jarrod Becomes a Firefighter

I'm the Good Looking One...

Life on the Horse Farm

Happiness is a field of tall grass and all the time in the world...

The Joy of Grandparenting

My three grandchildren have become the core of my being. They are pleasure beyond words, and I have such profound feelings of pride when I'm with them. It is with great eagerness that I watch them begin to make their way in this world, and with a certain trepidation as well that is unusual for me. 

I must confess the fact that these feelings are a rather recent occurrence. I am sure I was there for the rearing of my two children but I look back now and can remember so little about those years. I have a reasonably good excuse. I have for many years been in outside sales and have been away from home literally thousands of nights.

But using my career endeavors as an excuse doesn't explain all of it. There were also many nights that I could have been home with the family but, instead, found myself "out with the boys," debating the general advantages of Kentucky bourbon whiskey over Tennessee sour mash whiskey (if you've never detected a difference, you haven't devoted enough time to research). I should someday thank my wife for being there - always - for the children and for me. Paula is the kindest person I have ever met. And the most devoted mother I've ever known. She did a remarkable job of raising our children without much help, and can look on their adult successes with tremendous pride. 

Our daughter has found the perfect husband and, along with beginning the process of raising one of my grandsons, is a Republican activist and local volunteer coordinator for the Bush/Cheney campaign. I think she gets her passion for politics from me. Our son has become a fireman and emergency medical technician, and is, I'm told, well respected in his department. I think he gets his devotion to duty from his mother. He's married to a beautiful woman and they somehow have been able, through much hard work I'll bet, to bring two beautiful children into the world - twins no less.

As it turns out, my three grandchildren are all (virtually) the same age - just over two. And I am blessed to have them living relatively close by.

Jayla has her mother's beauty. And, if it is possible at the age of two, she has a stubborn, sometimes impish, streak that can only come from her mother as well. Her vocabulary is expanding to the point where she calls me by name. It was decided, without a great deal of planning, that I would no longer be referred to as Jerry or Dad. As of two years ago, I became Gramps. Somehow, as we were trying to teach Jayla how to pronounce my new name, Gramps was just not quite possible. So for now, my name is Jeramps. I like that all the more. Because it's Jayla's special name for her grandfather.
We share our joy when we get together. When their car pulls up in our driveway, I can count on there being a huge smile on Jayla's face. And when she is unharnessed from the child safety seat and is turned loose, she comes running up to me and hugs my leg. That's how big she is. She hugs my leg.
When the day comes years from now that she hugs me and we are at eye level, I hope she still feels the same joy as she seems to today. 

Her twin brother, Kaid, is solid, if I can put it that way. Though they were tiny at birth, having been born a few months premature, it didn't take Kaid long to catch up - and to grow. And grow. And I think he is going to be a lefty - just like his grandfather. There is a good bit of pride even in that. My son, who has tremendous talent as a baseball player himself, tells me that Kaid can already hit a ball with a vengeance.

His personality and Jayla's are very different. Kaid is more cerebral, sometimes more pondering. Even at the age of two, he will sometimes stare at you with this fixed look of contemplation, analysis, evaluation. And he has a laugh that is unforgettable. It can best be described as a sort of rapid-fire giggle. And he uses it freely. In his two years he has found much to be happy about. He loves to feed our horses. And he calls me Jeramps. 

We only wish that Kaid and Jayla, or as they refer to each other, Bubba and Sissy, were able to visit Jeramps and Nana more often. Such is life...

Chase is a few months younger but in many ways, is older than the other two. He has a considerable and rapidly expanding vocabulary. With Chase, I can now have a conversation. And if I'm allowed to gloat, his syntax and grammar are pretty darn remarkable too. He gets his intelligence from his mother, I'd say. To Chase, I'm Gramps. He'll say, "Gramps, want to play cars with Chase?" Naturally, Gramps plays cars. And Nana taught him how to use a water pistol the other day. What a treat that is as he takes target practice on his Gramps and reloads and shoots and reloads and ... And he is quick , and loves to run. He gets that from his father. 

Of course we spoil him. He particularly likes Dairy Queen ice cream and will shout out that fact no matter where we are or how crowded the area is with strangers. "Dairy Queen ice cream!" And he loves to explore. We have a creek that runs through our property. He enjoys throwing rocks into the creek. Gramps fills up a bucket with rocks. Chase empties the contents into the creek, taking pleasure in splashing water. Once while throwing rocks into the creek, he scared up a black snake. It dropped into the water and proceeded to slither down the stream. Chase was fascinated - and unafraid. It was Nana that freaked. 

Both of my children have been told in no uncertain terms that Gramps can be counted on to break all their rules when it comes to nutrition and treats. They are prone to feed Jayla, Kaid, and Chase what amounts to leaves and twigs and the like. Healthy stuff. They read somewhere that children require a special regimen. Gramps focuses on the three basic food groups - Coke, desserts, and candies. A certain amount of displeasure has been directed my way about this but - I'm Gramps. 

With joy comes wonder. I wonder how Paula and I have been so blessed. I wonder how these little people will fare in life. I wonder how my father would have loved to have known them. After all he - along with my mother and parents-in-law - had a lot to do with their being here and being who they are. 

And there are worries. I worry about public schools. I worry about the many people in the Middle East who intend to harm them. And I worry about all the many bad influences out there, most of them reflected in what's on the television.
I never worried about such things in the past.

Now I'm a grandfather.