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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
I got back from Nashville around 7:30 this evening. All five of us surviving first cousins had come for the funeral; I guess when you get down to so few, the more precious they become. And we were only seven to start with. I didn't go to the house after the interment; it would have been more than eighty miles out of my way, and I wanted to stop at my parents' graves in Goodlettsville, which I did. I certainly recognized the main street through town, but among other things, the feed store had gone, and Bill Crook's Food Town (what a name) has become a modern grocery. To say nothing of all the build-up on the bypasses leading out to the Interstate.
Then I drove down the road to where the old farm had been; where I had such wonderful times as a child. Uncle Bennett's tobacco barn is still there, but nothing else remains of any of the buildings including the farmhouse itself. It is just a kind of neighborhood, now. Sigh. But I saw the bridge over the creek where I almost stepped on a water moccasin that time, and remembered how my mother would organize picnics, something Aunt Mary probably didn't really have time for, being a farm wife, but she went uncomplainingly. I also went by the subdivision that was actually named for my father's family out of part of the farm when it was sold; the streets are named for my relatives! None for me, though. So much for fame! :-)
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 389
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 389 |
Welcome back.
I think that it’s an outrage that there is no Jackie Rd. in your hometown, Goodlettsville. Should we start a write-in campaign?
Your post has a very familiar ring. The topic is a popular one in my town these days, farms turning into plats, dirt roads to freeways. We all have our melancholy stories relating to changes, or outright destruction of our youthful stomping grounds. But I bet those picnics were great fun.
BTW, were Bill’s prices fair?
Reading your post put this song in my head:
Our Town
by Iris DeMent
And you know the sun's settin' fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
'cause your heart's bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can't you see the sun's settin' down on our town, on our town
goodnight
Up the street beside that red neon light
that's where I met my baby on one hot summer night
He was the tender and I ordered a beer
It's been forty years and I'm still sitting here
But you know the sun's settin' fast …
It's here I had my baby's and I had my first kiss
I've walked down Main Street in the cold morning mist
Over there is where I bought my first car
it turned over once but then it never went far
And I can see the sun settin' fast …
I buried my Mama and I buried my Pa
They sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall
I bring them flowers about every day
but I just gotta cry when I think what they'd say
Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly
but I can't see too good, I got tears in my eyes
I'm leaving tomorrow but I don't wanna go
I love you my town, you'll always live in my soul
But I can see the sun's settin' fast …
Goodnight
Goodnight
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
When my father last visited, we went to the lake around which he grew up, and he got it into his head to tromp through the swamp at one end, because he wanted to see the horse pasture and apple trees located between the undeveloped side of the lake and the back end of a farm. Apparently, the neighborhood kids spent many fine hours in those apple trees, watching the horses and eating the fruit. The path they used to follow is gone, and we slogged through overgrown swamp, trying to walk on rushes we crushed, in order to avoid sinking in the muck. It was an adventure, memorialized by the blackish brown stains on the hems of everybody's pant legs. The horses are gone now, and the trees. And yet, I was glad that my sons had the chance at a peek into their grandfather's boyhood.
At the other end of the development scale, what used to be a farm field now has a road named after my father-in-law. That happens when you build the road.
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