APPALACHIAN-LIFE-L Archives

Archiver > APPALACHIAN-LIFE > 2003-03 > 1046507337


From: Jeannie A Travis <>
Subject: [AppalLife] I'm a going' home' tomorrow !
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 02:30:58 -0600


I am sending this in again...When it came back to me this part was eons
below the part about the computers...Maybe I SHOULD have installed this
new keyboard using the disc that came with it ! ! ! Jeannie T

I am going ' home' tomorrow....back to where I grew up over in the
Western end of Tennessee..{Live in Middle TN now..}I have been SO
frustrated by all this snow, rain, and most of all , GLOOM ! We have set
a record this month for dreary days...My sister in MO and I have been
impatiently waiting for word that the buttercups{ Daffodils } are
blooming...We plan to make a trek up to the old home place where my Mama
was born and where I spent many happy hours being spoiled by the
Grandmother we called Ma...It's been way yonder too long since I was
there.......

I'll never forget the first time I went back up that little lane after
many years of living all across this big country...No one lived in the
big log house any more,and the home place had been sold to a neighbor
'boy'...who was farming it. My two sisters and I picked our way carefully
up the muddy lane , all our attention on keeping our feet dry. We really
enjoyed the curious birds flitting from bush to bush ahead of us,
wondering who was disturbing their peaceful world...Mossy banks rose on
both sides of this lane, and budding trees branches met over the
top...Ancient old gnarly trees on the banks had mossy nooks and crannies
under their roots that looked like wonderful locations for fairy
houses...Ferns spilled down over mossy banks and here and there a deep
purple violet dared to peep above the old leaves...

We were laughing and talking and not looking too far ahead of us , but
when we got to where we could see the house we stopped for a breather and
looked up that way...There sat the old log house in a field of deep
green winter wheat...What was even more beautiful were the thousands of
daffodils scattered over the entire hillside ! We couldn't believe our
eyes as we walked among the sweet smelling yellow flowers....Amazingly
enough, all those flowers came from a few small clumps of flowers out by
the garden fence that my Mother planted when she was a little girl
..about 1918 , near as I can figure...!

Here and there we found an old timey purple hyacinth...scattered from a
single large clump on one side of the brick sidewalk that went from the
house to the road....Uncle Louis' flowers...More rarely we found a
delicately pink one, from the cluster on the OTHER side of that
sidewalk...Set out so many years ago by Mama's favorite sister who died
young {about 1930...}We call them Fara's flowers...Hyacinths aren't such
long lived flowers, you know, but these two clumps were like bouquets
every Spring, till Charley Culver's plow "reset" the bulbs !

We also found clumps of the delicate little sweet smelling jonquils with
their grasslike leaves...Blooming 2 or 3 on a stem, their perfume is
powerful for their size...They aren't too common, I don't believe...Have
only seen them in two other places...Augusta , GA, and in an enormous
bouquet of Spring flowers in the Custis -{Robert E }Lee Mansion on the
big bluff overlooking John F Kennedy's grave in Arlington cemetery...{ It
was like seeing a piece of home to see those perky little sweet smelling
blooms , hundreds of miles from Ma's log house in Tennessee.}

As we walked around Ma's yard, we found big clumps of jonquils known as
Pheasant's eye, or Old man /Old woman,{ Because they usually have a pair
of blooms...}and we saw the double ones called "Butter and eggs " for the
two toned petals...Over to the side of a little stream that had meandered
across the road we saw a great bank of day lilies, growing lush and green
in the fertile soil washed down from Ma's garden spot...Which brings back
another memory...

Yep, that garden spot had some of the finest dirt you ever saw...Nothing
like the rocks held together with clay we have up here on the ridge...The
tall wire fence put there to keep the critters out is long gone now , but
I remembered that in the corner closest to the house there was a little
plant bed, made of weathered old boards , mossy and sinking into the
ground .When it was getting on towards Spring Ma would sow tomato seeds
saved the summer before, and maybe some peppers, the 'pointy' Jersey
Wakefield cabbage she loved , radishes , and a bed of leaf lettuce to
'wilt' with bacon grease later on...A Horseradish plant flourished in one
corner , the only one I ever saw growing till I planted one of my own..

Ma had set winter onions along the side of the fence where the plow never
touched , and the ground was so rich they grew tall and lush in the early
Spring...She gave me the paring knife one time and told me to go get her
a onion, and to cut it off above the root so another onion would
grow...Well, I worried all the way down there, and when I got there I
still hadn't figured out just how far down to cut without killing that
onion ! I finally got up enough nerve to do it though, and took it back
to the kitchen ...Ma and Mama were laughing as I got out of there fast
before Ma could ask me if I had killed her onion, so I don't know if I
cut it too high or too low to this day ! I was afraid to ask her about it
later on ...I'm sure it wasn't important to her, and she would never have
noticed, but to a little kid that could be nerve wracking. Probably the
first time I ever held a sharp knife, too...

Well, I think it is someone else's turn to talk now...and I will catch up
with it when I get back home...about Tuesday, probably...Pray me safe ,
please ? Jeannie T
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