THOUGHTS ABOUT DADDY AND MOMA December 3, 2005
My circumstances had placed me in a moldy, cold, one-bedroom rental. It was a dark, unwelcoming house that seemed to issue a feeling of foreboding. In the mornings, the sunshine was through the window of the one bedroom which was on the back-side of the house. The back of the house was pushed right into a wet, steep bank that seemed to threaten the house's stability. To look out this window you had to crane your neck and look straight up into trees. Gaining footing to climb this bank was very difficult. The soil and stones in this bank seemed to be pushing on the house as if they resented it being in their way and one day would achieve pushing the house over. To walk between the house and the bank, you had to walk on the sides of your feet. It was that tight.
I was in a funk this particular morning and decided to sit on the floor in that little piece of sunshine that came through the bedroom window. My heart ached for a home that was mine and was full of friends and music with the sunshine coming through all the windows. I had been uprooted from a place that held friends and familiarity. I had been oriented, grounded. Now I felt like I had no connection to anything. I felt like my tethers to the earth had been snipped and I was vulnerable to the slightest wind. I was filled with fear and depression. I felt so utterly alone. And then I felt a change enter this bedroom. The feeling was familiar and comforting. I felt the presence of both my mother and daddy in the room with me. Each of them had completed their journey in this realm and gone on to brighter places filled with music we cannot hear.
I then began to think about things my parents had given me that I could give thanks for and ease my aching heart also. I would fill my mind and heart with precious memories that would bring me joy.
I said, "Welcome Daddy, I love you." I said this out loud. Daddy I thank you for always providing us with a home that was ours. It was not ever fully heated. We were cold in our beds and we very often did not have enough to eat. We stood waiting on the school bus in the winter with inadequate coats and hats. But we had a home. You did your very best with 8 children. When coming home on the school bus I remember looking ahead up the road seeing our house waiting there for me. Always there. It was a treasured sight. And when I stepped off that school bus at my house I felt protected and safe. Daddy you were never a rentor and I appreciate that. You taught us the value of owning a home.
You set the example of reading by sitting for hours at night with the Geographic, newspaper, electronic manuals. Anything in print interested you. I am that way today.
You were an excellent gardener and you taught me to love the earth. The smell of fresh-plowed ground; the feel of it falling through my fingers as I picked up handfulls. I still put my nose into fresh-plowed ground and savor the smell. The different smell the earth took on after a Spring sprinkle fell on freshly planted seed. I would walk with you up and down the rows to see what was pushing through first and wonder at how quickly these tiny green plants became wonderful things to eat. I hoed and weeded with you but I could not last as long as you could. You would work your garden until it was so black dark I didn't understand how you could see what you were doing. Then you came in and ate a bite and went to bed and got up and went to work at the hosiery mill. You always left for work at 5:30am. I would hear the truck leave but I didn't get up that early.
My love of the earth and what it can give back to you was given to me by you, Daddy. Not only will the earth give you food, it will also give you strength and a pride in seeing the results of your labors. Working the earth also gives me a wonderful, therapeutic peace. I feel like I am blended into the earth, the sky, the trees, the wind, the rain, the fragrances. I feel whole. Thank you Daddy.
"Moma, welcome. I love you so. Please stay the day with me." You taught me so many precious and practical things. You taught me to wash my underpants while in my bath and then wring them out in a towel and they would be dry for the next day. Having 6 girls in the house we were fortunate to have 2 pair of underpants each. My moma's precious sisters gave us almost all the underwear we ever had. They were married and had husbands that could buy them such things. They gave us their whole slips when they bought new ones. A whole slip was a wonderful thing to have back then. We couldn't yet wear pants.
Moma, you taught me how to cook in ways that preserved the vitamins and nutrients of foods. You taught me the various healthy properties of certain vegetables. You taught me how to eat right. You told me years before it was ever written in medical research that onions and garlic would protect your heart. You told me that if you didn't have any dairy products in the house that dark, leafy greens would provide plenty of calcium. We never had milk in the house. Occasionally Daddy would buy a box of powdered milk and I remember mixing glass after glass and going outside to sit in the sun and drink it, loving it's taste on my tongue. You seemed to always be running about the house. So much to do with 8 children. But, you would stop in your tracks and pick one of us up and hug and kiss us till we begged down. You taught me unconditional love. You taught me that all living things are to be considered a small part of God. Harm nothing, malign noone, love without bounds, trust without proof, and always, always, show kindness. This philosophy has worked against me a few times; has gotten me hurt and fooled, but I don't know how to approach mankind in any way but with trust and love. Moma you were my salvation. You prevented me from living a life of mistrust and cynicism and I thank you for that. You gave me a view of the world that causes me to find wonder and beauty in the night sky, a summer thunderstorm, a first fallen snow, a tree waltzing with the wind, a ray of sunshine on the floor, wall, ceiling. You taught me to sit on the floor in a spot of sunshine and make it mine. You found beauty in the sun dancing on the dishwater, playing off the spoons. It made little spots of light dancing on the ceiling that you could change by putting your hand in the water.
You endured so much grief watching your children go hungry and cold, but you always found ways and reasons to laugh and smile. And you always made us sure that we were dearly loved. Thank you Moma.
Clydean Stillwell Jackson
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
I CHANGED MY MIND
April 28, 2010
I CHANGED MY MIND
I changed my mind. I decided I would go to Wal-Mart for bicycle tires before going to the produce market. I needed to turn the car around. I was right in front of the county health department and other social offices with a huge parking lot and an in-and-out circular drive. So I whipped the car into the parking lot and starting crossing it cautiously to reach the exit. It is a half-moon circle. I was cautious because there are always so many people walking back and forth, going in and out of the offices. Almost always there are 1 to 3 children with each adult traversing this parking lot. The adult is almost always female. Often one of the children is still in the uterus of the mother, but pushing hard at the world making it known; I am coming soon. These are children whose parents didn't get the opportunities to gain skills and knowledge that would preclude them from having to be at these offices. Reared in homes with often screaming, fighting, frightened parents whose frustrations and angers stem from realizing that their lives have been winnowed down to 'just getting by'. These parents did not have the capacity to give their children (now these adults walking across the parking lot with their children) the necessary 'tools' for making choices and decisions that would enable them to be self-sufficient and to be smart about the world and how it works. They weren't taught how to make the world work in their favor. They weren't taught how to keep this unjust world from trampling them. They weren't encouraged to think about 'what college do you want to attend?', they weren't told they were 'smart enough' to go to college, (what is 'smart enough'?) they weren't taught how hard parenting is, they weren't taught how not to become parents until they were capable and ready, they weren't taught that they could CHOOSE not to become parents, they weren't taught how to stay healthy, they weren't taught not to smoke, they weren't taught how to manage money, they weren't taught much of anything because the parents didn't know much about these things either. The parents were too busy going to work each day and coming home exhausted due to the type of work they did which left little time for the nurturing and educating of kids. In fact, these parents weren't given much education nor taught how to effectively parent . And if you could look back a generation you would probably find that the parents of the parents lived a very similar life. Just managing to pay the bills and make it until 'next payday'. At the mercy of what the world threw at them. None of them were ever taught how to throw back.
One of the parents starting across this parking lot was a very thin, bleached blonde woman who looked to be in her late twenties. Her face was dry and colorless. It had the wrinkles of a woman twice her age. She was exiting the offices. She was weeping. She struggled to hold a small child with her left arm looped under it’s belly as it bounced on her hip, it's blanket flailing in the wind, the child uncovered . Her purse hung from her right arm in the crook of her elbow. She had a cigarette sticking to her bottom lip and a lighter in her right hand. She struggled to bring the lighter up just far enough to set fire to her cigarette and put out the fire in her brain. No doubt the time she had been in the offices was long enough for her nicotine craving to be screaming for a feeding. It refused to wait for her to get to the car (hopefully) and put the child down. She turned her back to the wind, giving the child a jolt, flicked the lighter quickly and pulled on the cigarette in relief. This mother looked like a skilled juggler while performing these tasks; hanging onto the child, carrying her purse, and lighting a cigarette. The smoke curled across the child’s face. I thought about that child being in a vehicle with cigarette smoke, a home filled with cigarette smoke and it's mother teaching it each day how to smoke and that it is acceptable. I reigned in my judgment of this precious mother as I thought about how that cigarette may be the only pleasure she finds in her everyday existence of juggling her life in a circus of uncertainty. I lifted a prayer that the child would not smoke and turned it loose.
And then I thought about the 'circus' going on in Congress as I write these words. The hearings which are probing the practices of Goldman-Sachs. Despicable, deliberately unethical practices which put many others in the same plight as this young struggling, juggling mother. They arrogantly deny their wrongdoing as they defy our Congress of These United States. "How dare you ask us for accountability? We are rich! We made ourselves rich by making many others poor. We put people out of work and out of their beloved homes. We put a horse in the race that we bet against! How smart are we to think of that! And before goldman-sachs there was bear-stearns, lehman brothers, aig , washington mutual, countrywide, wachovia found to be laundering drug money (which they admitted to and paid $160 million in fines) (1.). Sub-prime mortgages granted to thousands as the mortgagors knew these thousands could not pay back their loans. All of them practiced deceit in order to make the poor poorer and themselves richer. I use lower caps because these entities do not deserve to be recognized with capital letters. They are little, lowly, lying crooks.
Many of those who are in the circumstances that brought this young mother to these offices and to her tears are the Men who fathered the infants and children. The men who are now out of work and out of options. Men define themselves through their work. These men no longer view themselves as providers. They feel helpless and out of control and in a despair that they cannot voice to anyone because of (ironically) what they were taught by their parents; "You are a man. Be strong. Never admit defeat. Never show weakness." This despair leads to an anger that cannot see a way out. Since the 2008 beginning of the sharp rise in unemployment and loss of homes and jobs, (directly related to the crooks at the banks and the ‘Snydley Whiplash’ mortgage brokers), domestic violence has spiked nationwide. This blinded anger (which is masking fear), takes on a physical life which strikes out at those closest to these men: the women and the children.
He reaches for the one pleasure he has left. She holds the baby on her hip and lights her cigarette through tears. He goes outside, squats out of sight and weeps in regret as the smoke from his cigarette curls across his face.
Clydia Stillwell Jackson
1. cbs4.com/business/wachovia.money.laundering
I CHANGED MY MIND
I changed my mind. I decided I would go to Wal-Mart for bicycle tires before going to the produce market. I needed to turn the car around. I was right in front of the county health department and other social offices with a huge parking lot and an in-and-out circular drive. So I whipped the car into the parking lot and starting crossing it cautiously to reach the exit. It is a half-moon circle. I was cautious because there are always so many people walking back and forth, going in and out of the offices. Almost always there are 1 to 3 children with each adult traversing this parking lot. The adult is almost always female. Often one of the children is still in the uterus of the mother, but pushing hard at the world making it known; I am coming soon. These are children whose parents didn't get the opportunities to gain skills and knowledge that would preclude them from having to be at these offices. Reared in homes with often screaming, fighting, frightened parents whose frustrations and angers stem from realizing that their lives have been winnowed down to 'just getting by'. These parents did not have the capacity to give their children (now these adults walking across the parking lot with their children) the necessary 'tools' for making choices and decisions that would enable them to be self-sufficient and to be smart about the world and how it works. They weren't taught how to make the world work in their favor. They weren't taught how to keep this unjust world from trampling them. They weren't encouraged to think about 'what college do you want to attend?', they weren't told they were 'smart enough' to go to college, (what is 'smart enough'?) they weren't taught how hard parenting is, they weren't taught how not to become parents until they were capable and ready, they weren't taught that they could CHOOSE not to become parents, they weren't taught how to stay healthy, they weren't taught not to smoke, they weren't taught how to manage money, they weren't taught much of anything because the parents didn't know much about these things either. The parents were too busy going to work each day and coming home exhausted due to the type of work they did which left little time for the nurturing and educating of kids. In fact, these parents weren't given much education nor taught how to effectively parent . And if you could look back a generation you would probably find that the parents of the parents lived a very similar life. Just managing to pay the bills and make it until 'next payday'. At the mercy of what the world threw at them. None of them were ever taught how to throw back.
One of the parents starting across this parking lot was a very thin, bleached blonde woman who looked to be in her late twenties. Her face was dry and colorless. It had the wrinkles of a woman twice her age. She was exiting the offices. She was weeping. She struggled to hold a small child with her left arm looped under it’s belly as it bounced on her hip, it's blanket flailing in the wind, the child uncovered . Her purse hung from her right arm in the crook of her elbow. She had a cigarette sticking to her bottom lip and a lighter in her right hand. She struggled to bring the lighter up just far enough to set fire to her cigarette and put out the fire in her brain. No doubt the time she had been in the offices was long enough for her nicotine craving to be screaming for a feeding. It refused to wait for her to get to the car (hopefully) and put the child down. She turned her back to the wind, giving the child a jolt, flicked the lighter quickly and pulled on the cigarette in relief. This mother looked like a skilled juggler while performing these tasks; hanging onto the child, carrying her purse, and lighting a cigarette. The smoke curled across the child’s face. I thought about that child being in a vehicle with cigarette smoke, a home filled with cigarette smoke and it's mother teaching it each day how to smoke and that it is acceptable. I reigned in my judgment of this precious mother as I thought about how that cigarette may be the only pleasure she finds in her everyday existence of juggling her life in a circus of uncertainty. I lifted a prayer that the child would not smoke and turned it loose.
And then I thought about the 'circus' going on in Congress as I write these words. The hearings which are probing the practices of Goldman-Sachs. Despicable, deliberately unethical practices which put many others in the same plight as this young struggling, juggling mother. They arrogantly deny their wrongdoing as they defy our Congress of These United States. "How dare you ask us for accountability? We are rich! We made ourselves rich by making many others poor. We put people out of work and out of their beloved homes. We put a horse in the race that we bet against! How smart are we to think of that! And before goldman-sachs there was bear-stearns, lehman brothers, aig , washington mutual, countrywide, wachovia found to be laundering drug money (which they admitted to and paid $160 million in fines) (1.). Sub-prime mortgages granted to thousands as the mortgagors knew these thousands could not pay back their loans. All of them practiced deceit in order to make the poor poorer and themselves richer. I use lower caps because these entities do not deserve to be recognized with capital letters. They are little, lowly, lying crooks.
Many of those who are in the circumstances that brought this young mother to these offices and to her tears are the Men who fathered the infants and children. The men who are now out of work and out of options. Men define themselves through their work. These men no longer view themselves as providers. They feel helpless and out of control and in a despair that they cannot voice to anyone because of (ironically) what they were taught by their parents; "You are a man. Be strong. Never admit defeat. Never show weakness." This despair leads to an anger that cannot see a way out. Since the 2008 beginning of the sharp rise in unemployment and loss of homes and jobs, (directly related to the crooks at the banks and the ‘Snydley Whiplash’ mortgage brokers), domestic violence has spiked nationwide. This blinded anger (which is masking fear), takes on a physical life which strikes out at those closest to these men: the women and the children.
He reaches for the one pleasure he has left. She holds the baby on her hip and lights her cigarette through tears. He goes outside, squats out of sight and weeps in regret as the smoke from his cigarette curls across his face.
Clydia Stillwell Jackson
1. cbs4.com/business/wachovia.money.laundering
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
YOGURT INCIDENT AT FOOD LION
April 10, 2010
YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP
YOGURT INCIDENT AT FOOD LION
All I needed was that wonderful Silk soy milk and that sweet thing I've substituted for ice cream, Kozy Shack Rice Pudding. It more than suffices my urge for ice cream. Actually,..if you read the stats on the Kozy Shack container, you will find that the fat calories are really low; 30 per serving. And...the sugar is only 14 grams per serving (.5cup). But anyway, I was moving quickly. I knew what I wanted and where to get it. One aisle, both items. I came through the door at a good clip; I continued clipping towards the 'Kozy Shack and Silk' aisle and as soon as I made the 90* turn into the aisle, I was blocked by a large woman with a ruddy complexion, red-blonde hair and a few of her teeth. She was taking up (I'm serious about this) the entire yogurt section and holding 'a' container of Dannon yogurt in her hand. She looked at me wide-eyed as if I was someone she knew but had not seen in ages. She exclaimed in a loud voice, "Did you know this stuff is good on a biiiaskit?" I (or my shoes) was/were so flabbergasted by what they heard that my shoes screeched as they brought me to a halt. My blown mind was saying "keep moving", but my shoes said, "Oh hell no; we're gonna hear this." On a biscuit? My brain (and my shoes) were trying to wrap themselves around the image of yogurt on a biscuit. My shoes were first to get it. They always keep their feet on the ground. I asked myself, "Isn't yogurt a health food? Doesn't it help those who try to eat less fats and be more sensible about what they put in their mouths? Get that calcium and that lack of calories and all that good stuff they tell us about yogurt?" While I was trying to absorb what she had just said, she continued, "I was at McDonald's the other day and got one of those parfaaays and I decided I wanted a biiiaskit too, so I ordered me a biiaskit and poured that parfaaay all over it and it was jus' like strawburry shortcake! So I figured strawburry yogurt should be good on a biiaskit too and I tried it and it wuz goood. You should try it." As my mind careened into the front porch, finally coming home , I pulled my mouth shut and tried to make some words. (Bear in mind that my mind had not yet gotten through the front door.) My lips were still wanting to stay away from each other, but I managed a "I've never thought of that." "Yea, she said, my husband loves it too." I thanked her for the idea and I thought as I eased away and she continued praising her husband and yogurt on a biscuit, "Yep, I'll try that just as soon as my 17th. cousin, 9 times removed comes back from the dead and tells me just that......but he/she (?) will have to be wearing a French Maid outfit with logging boots for me to believe her/him......no outfit, no biscuit. That's it.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Cloudy
YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP
YOGURT INCIDENT AT FOOD LION
All I needed was that wonderful Silk soy milk and that sweet thing I've substituted for ice cream, Kozy Shack Rice Pudding. It more than suffices my urge for ice cream. Actually,..if you read the stats on the Kozy Shack container, you will find that the fat calories are really low; 30 per serving. And...the sugar is only 14 grams per serving (.5cup). But anyway, I was moving quickly. I knew what I wanted and where to get it. One aisle, both items. I came through the door at a good clip; I continued clipping towards the 'Kozy Shack and Silk' aisle and as soon as I made the 90* turn into the aisle, I was blocked by a large woman with a ruddy complexion, red-blonde hair and a few of her teeth. She was taking up (I'm serious about this) the entire yogurt section and holding 'a' container of Dannon yogurt in her hand. She looked at me wide-eyed as if I was someone she knew but had not seen in ages. She exclaimed in a loud voice, "Did you know this stuff is good on a biiiaskit?" I (or my shoes) was/were so flabbergasted by what they heard that my shoes screeched as they brought me to a halt. My blown mind was saying "keep moving", but my shoes said, "Oh hell no; we're gonna hear this." On a biscuit? My brain (and my shoes) were trying to wrap themselves around the image of yogurt on a biscuit. My shoes were first to get it. They always keep their feet on the ground. I asked myself, "Isn't yogurt a health food? Doesn't it help those who try to eat less fats and be more sensible about what they put in their mouths? Get that calcium and that lack of calories and all that good stuff they tell us about yogurt?" While I was trying to absorb what she had just said, she continued, "I was at McDonald's the other day and got one of those parfaaays and I decided I wanted a biiiaskit too, so I ordered me a biiaskit and poured that parfaaay all over it and it was jus' like strawburry shortcake! So I figured strawburry yogurt should be good on a biiaskit too and I tried it and it wuz goood. You should try it." As my mind careened into the front porch, finally coming home , I pulled my mouth shut and tried to make some words. (Bear in mind that my mind had not yet gotten through the front door.) My lips were still wanting to stay away from each other, but I managed a "I've never thought of that." "Yea, she said, my husband loves it too." I thanked her for the idea and I thought as I eased away and she continued praising her husband and yogurt on a biscuit, "Yep, I'll try that just as soon as my 17th. cousin, 9 times removed comes back from the dead and tells me just that......but he/she (?) will have to be wearing a French Maid outfit with logging boots for me to believe her/him......no outfit, no biscuit. That's it.
You cannot make this stuff up.
Cloudy
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
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
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
Thursday, March 11, 2010
'I REMEMBER' POST # 3
I REMEMBER: RATS IN OUR SWIMMING HOLE
I was born at home in a little hamlet called Warriormine, W. VA. I was the third born of eight. Mother breast fed every one of us and loved us unconditionally. She could find joy in the slightest of things. The smell of the wind, the blue sky, the thunder sky, a cardinal. She had to; she reared us under destitute conditions. She always reminded us that we could be much worse off. Our little 'town' was called War. It was a mile down the road. We always walked to town.
We as children, had to entertain ourselves with the outdoors. And in summer we had our 'swimming hole'. All the neighborhood kids went to this body of murky water. Everybody's sewage was flushed directly into the creek behind our house. Mother forbid us to play in that creek. We kept the swimming hole a secret from her.
The swimming hole was up at the end of the road above our house. We walked until the pavement ran out and it turned to gravel. We rarely had shoes in the summer and I remember that the first several trips to the swimming hole hurt my feet. The walk was about 1.5 miles and took us 25 minutes or so.
This 'swimming hole' was simply an abandoned hole created by drain off from coal mining operations. But we didn't care, it was water to us. And in Warriormine, a place in McDowell County which was literally squeezed between two mountains, with horrible roads, we were forgotten. No summer facilities for us. Not even a carnival ever came to town.
I'm sure our immune systems got a workout playing in this water. The first day of summer that it was warm enough to go to the 'swimming hole' we all took off on our joyful walk, singing and talking. My favorite song was 'The Wayward Wind'. I learned to play it on the 'mouth harp' as it was called then. We arrived excited and so ready to jump in when we spotted something grey-black and furry floating on the water. As we looked harder we realized that there was several of these floating things in our swimming hole. My oldest sister Janet was the first to realize what had usurped our 'water park', rats! Big rats! They were drowned of course and inert. Janet being the oldest seemed to feel an obligation to make our water fit to play in and so she waded in and began taking each rat (wharf rats) by the tail and slinging them out into the woods around the pool. She was so pleased with herself for 'cleaning' the pool and yelled, "Come on in. It's okay now."...........we gleefully jumped in and began our usual routine; splashing each other, seeing how far we could go before it began to get over our heads and jumping off the crude diving board; a plank some of the neighborhood boys had managed to drive into the bank far enough to be strong enough to dive from. I had a bad experience on that board once and cried all the way home in the hot sun, but that is another 'I Remember'.
We stayed for hours in that water. Hunger is what drove us home, but more often than not there was not much to eat at home. Mother was always cooking a pot of pinto beans, but they were not done until evening. Food was scarce, but none of us ever got sick or overweight. All eight of us have remained rather healthy into our adulthoods. I credit the rats. Salute!
Gratefully, Cloudy
I was born at home in a little hamlet called Warriormine, W. VA. I was the third born of eight. Mother breast fed every one of us and loved us unconditionally. She could find joy in the slightest of things. The smell of the wind, the blue sky, the thunder sky, a cardinal. She had to; she reared us under destitute conditions. She always reminded us that we could be much worse off. Our little 'town' was called War. It was a mile down the road. We always walked to town.
We as children, had to entertain ourselves with the outdoors. And in summer we had our 'swimming hole'. All the neighborhood kids went to this body of murky water. Everybody's sewage was flushed directly into the creek behind our house. Mother forbid us to play in that creek. We kept the swimming hole a secret from her.
The swimming hole was up at the end of the road above our house. We walked until the pavement ran out and it turned to gravel. We rarely had shoes in the summer and I remember that the first several trips to the swimming hole hurt my feet. The walk was about 1.5 miles and took us 25 minutes or so.
This 'swimming hole' was simply an abandoned hole created by drain off from coal mining operations. But we didn't care, it was water to us. And in Warriormine, a place in McDowell County which was literally squeezed between two mountains, with horrible roads, we were forgotten. No summer facilities for us. Not even a carnival ever came to town.
I'm sure our immune systems got a workout playing in this water. The first day of summer that it was warm enough to go to the 'swimming hole' we all took off on our joyful walk, singing and talking. My favorite song was 'The Wayward Wind'. I learned to play it on the 'mouth harp' as it was called then. We arrived excited and so ready to jump in when we spotted something grey-black and furry floating on the water. As we looked harder we realized that there was several of these floating things in our swimming hole. My oldest sister Janet was the first to realize what had usurped our 'water park', rats! Big rats! They were drowned of course and inert. Janet being the oldest seemed to feel an obligation to make our water fit to play in and so she waded in and began taking each rat (wharf rats) by the tail and slinging them out into the woods around the pool. She was so pleased with herself for 'cleaning' the pool and yelled, "Come on in. It's okay now."...........we gleefully jumped in and began our usual routine; splashing each other, seeing how far we could go before it began to get over our heads and jumping off the crude diving board; a plank some of the neighborhood boys had managed to drive into the bank far enough to be strong enough to dive from. I had a bad experience on that board once and cried all the way home in the hot sun, but that is another 'I Remember'.
We stayed for hours in that water. Hunger is what drove us home, but more often than not there was not much to eat at home. Mother was always cooking a pot of pinto beans, but they were not done until evening. Food was scarce, but none of us ever got sick or overweight. All eight of us have remained rather healthy into our adulthoods. I credit the rats. Salute!
Gratefully, Cloudy
I REMEMBER POST # 2
I remember when Elvis' song 'Hound Dog' was all the rage. I was in the 4th. grade in an elementary school located in the one of the most isolated, forgotten areas of the Applachian Mtns. The roads had curves that required you to stop before entering and blow your horn to see if anyone was approaching from other side because two cars dare not go into that curve at same time. A few of the curves had mirrors but everybody still stopped to blow their horns. It was an everyday occurrence. Well now that you know just how 'backwoods' a place I lived in, get this. You can't make this stuff up.....the principal of my elementary school must have been a very resourceful (not to mention fearless considering the apolostic churches that peppered the hillsides) man. He opened up the gym floor for dancing during lunchtime. (He must have caught some grief from the highly religious parents of that hamlet.) If you had a spare nickel, you could come in and dance to Elvis! And others I'm sure, it's just that the only song I remember dancing to was 'Hound Dog. I loved it and I still love to dance. My dear Mother was a good dancer and she would cut loose at any time in the house to music on the radio. She could swing with Frank and Benny and Glenn like noone I ever saw on TV.
I don't know what the principal did with that little bit of change he collected, but I would hope that he used it to buy things the teachers needed. We were in a very impoverished area. God Bless him anyway. I got to dance.
I don't know what the principal did with that little bit of change he collected, but I would hope that he used it to buy things the teachers needed. We were in a very impoverished area. God Bless him anyway. I got to dance.
I REMEMBER POST # 1
I remember my first paddling in school; I was in First Grade (I started out with a bang..) and our teacher, get this, Miss Hurt (for real) was going out of classroom for some reason and told us to stay in our seats and be quiet. Well....when she popped back in the door, I and a boy classmate were up at the blackboard drawing pictures and falling down laughing at each other's 'artwork'. I remember loving how the chalk felt in my hand and how I could bring things out of the blackboard simply by pushing the chalk around, up, down, over, under and in circles. So, me and this little boy got a good paddling with a ping-pong paddle. In front of the whole class. I still remember the sting of that paddle against my bony buttocks. I was embarrassed, but also the first one up at the blackboard the next time she left the room.
Salute!
Salute!
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