THE TOO DURABLE BLUE ROBE
　
I was in my spare room, opened the closet to hang up a shirt that was out of season. This room and it’s closet was for seasonal clothing, Christmas decorations, family mementos such as kid’s school report cards, cards to me from them; Mother’s Day gifts made by little hands under the supervision of first and second grade teachers. These were the things of this closet.
I pushed some things back in order to hang the shirt and noticed that my hand brushed against something familiar. The feel of it caused an uncomfortable stirring in my heart. I had to know what garment sent that feeling through me. I pushed further and saw that it was Daddy’s blue velour robe. Royal blue trimmed in teal; a small man’s robe. An L.L. Bean even. I had bought it on a raw, cold, snow-spitting January day in these North Carolina mountains of Avery County at our Crossnore Sales Store.
A thrift store established by Dr. & Mrs. Mary Martin Sloop. Mary was also a physician. They issued from Davidson, NC from families that were among the wealthy in that private college town north of Charlotte, N.C. The story of their arrival in Avery County to stay at the famed Eseeola Lodge in Linville, North Carolina for their honeymoon and their subsequent decision to establish a life in those mountains in order to help those inhabitants of Avery County who had no access to health care or schooling is chronicled in the little book written by Mary Martin Sloop, M. D. entitled, “Miracle in the Hills”. This couple built the only hospital in the county at the time and the beginning of the funding for this hospital was the opening of this little thrift store in the town of Crossnore. The Sloops’ wealthy friends sent a continual stream of clothes and shoes in boxes that were opened by the local help year-round with the continual look of ‘Christmas morning’ in their eyes, excited to pull the items out and see what ‘came in’ this time. Word of mouth about what ‘came in’ this time ran through those mountain hamlets like the electricity that wasn’t there yet. Everybody had a need for certain items and they wanted to ‘get there first’. Many a local man, woman and child was kept warm in the mountains’ bitter winters by the coats and shoes sent up from Davidson. Dr. Sloop established electrical power for the hospital (no REA there yet) by building a dam across the Linville River that runs through Crossnore. He himself ordered, assembled (he bought books to teach himself) and with some local help placed a generator on the river. The dam is still there and I have walked across it many a time and sat on it absorbing the wonderful fragrances of the Linville River and those mountains in all their seasons. I have had some very good native trout that I fried after pulling them out of the Linville in the area of this dam.
But the thrift store was the seed from which sprang a hospital, a school with a campus for disadvantaged children, children who were orphaned and children whose parents simply could not afford to feed them. Most of the ’campus children’ that went to school at Crossnore were from far away places to the locals. Shelby, Charlotte, Durham, Lincolnton, Wilmington, places that seemed to be worlds away and days of travel. My dad was just a boy when this store was being established.
The ‘Crossnore Sales Store’ is open and thriving today.
Back to the Blue Robe.
Daddy was in the hospital. One of three stays within the last 14 months of his life. He had complained of being cold. When at home and fully dressed and wearing heavy sweaters, he still complained of being cold. He took to the blue robe and began putting it on every morning over his clothes. He kept the house so hot I was uncomfortable each time I went to see about him, cook for him, change his bed, etc. It was wonderful to break out into the winter temperatures of the outdoors when I was ready to go home.
He spent the last 3 years of his life sitting in his chair staring out a huge window into something that seemed to keep him constantly in deep thought, though the scene was the same day in and day out. The meadow, the creek, the Christmas tree fields, the little dirt road where I used to eat the chinquapins I kept a secret. I often heard him conversing with an unseen entity and many times he would be chuckling audibly. But, he was always alert, oriented and rational.
He began wearing the blue robe everyday while he sat in his chair in the window. This robe wrapped his legs and knees while in his chair which is where he stayed the last 12 months or so of his life.
He still complained of his legs and feet being cold.
His heart had set it’s priorities. The legs and feet had to be ignored in order to keep the lungs, liver, brain and kidneys functioning, although at a decreased capacity.
I stroked the sleeve of the robe and thought about Daddy’s rough, 88 years old hands coming out the openings as we helped him into the robe. The hands that had wound motors for hours deep into the night, fixed washers and dryers, refrigerators, freezers, electric stoves, radios and televisions. If it ran on electricity, Daddy could usually fix it.
Also, those rough hands had nurtured some of the prettiest half-runner beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, okra, squash, cucumbers, shellie beans, pole beans and potatoes that many exclaimed they had ‘ever seen’. People from all over the community would make a stop to see Carl’s garden. But Daddy also nurtured his beautiful, beloved Dahlias. He picked the insect predators off them by hand. He had 5 different colors of Dahlia and he was as proud of them as he was his garden. They had been dug from his old homeplace on Henson’s Creek. At one time, they were his mother’s.
We gathered those Dahlias every Labor Day Sunday morning to put on family graves at the ‘Decoration’ at Burleson Cemetery on Henson’s Creek. Daddy would have nothing but live flowers put on the graves. He always picked up cardboard boxes from Joe Howell’s General Store on Saturday. We piled those boxes full of freshly cut, glorious Dahlias. It was a happy, dew-covered ritual cutting those Dahlias in the early September morning while katydids whirred constantly telling us the flowers were in danger. The warm days were leaving soon. Daddy would cut just a few of his precious roses for his Mom and Dad’s graves.
Decoration was always a very special day for Daddy. He would ask us early in the week to be sure that his white shirt for his suit was clean and ironed. He dressed in his finest for Decoration. He took on a quiet reverence when he got the flowers and us in the truck and started driving towards Henson’s Creek and the cemetery. The narrow, gravel road that led to the cemetery was straight up and Daddy usually had to back down a few times to get a ’runnygo’ because his back wheels would start spitting out gravel and losing their hold. When we got on the cemetery hill, we ‘youngens’ could start placing Dahlias. Daddy was always the one to place the roses on his parents’ graves, the rest of the family, we could do.
We were high up in the middle of all those beautiful blue peaks strafed with early morning fog and clouds. Daddy would look down into the valley where he was born and then he would look up at those blue mountains spreading into Tennessee. He had a look of longing in his eyes. Daddy never spoke emotionally or mentioned missing anyone who had gone on. Daddy didn’t reveal his ‘heart thoughts’. He was alone now. Everyone else had gone on. I often wondered if he were wishing he could be lifted from that hill and carried into that brilliant blue sky and sit down to supper with family and friends. He always drove home in silence just as he did on the way there.
I caressed the collar of the robe and thought of how it had kept his neck and head warm. This garment had swaddled my Dad; touched him for hours, weeks, months. I reached down in my memory and saw him sitting in his chair in this robe staring out the window for hours as he watched darkness swallow the out and the in. He sometimes got up and went to bed without turning on a light. Could he see all he needed and wanted to see without light?
Why is it that this robe, inanimate, mute, without a soul, can be more durable than he? What gives it the privilege of hanging in this, my closet? Feeling and smelling and hearing the life of my house for these years after he has gone? What or who gives this robe the power to elicit such thoughts and feelings from deep within me and provoke these tears down my face?

Clydia Stillwell Jackson