Our Story

Prologue

The wind blew my hair into my face for the hundredth time in the past five minutes. I thought briefly about the new packet of ponytail holders I had in my bag at the hotel, but was quickly consumed by the memories I was surrounded by. Always this time of year made the heartache worse. The dreams of them were more frequent and the wishes for one more hug, one more phone call, or one more pimento cheese sandwich were multiplied. This pile of gravel in the middle of a forgotten job site covered in mud and frozen puddles, surrounded by overgrown and abandoned lots was where his story began. That made it the place where their story began. A story that spanned over the better part of one century and into another. A story that still shapes my life.

I had finished up my work conference in Nashville earlier that morning and since my flight didn't leave until the next morning, I decided to take a short drive north to a little place just short of the Kentucky state line. Cedar Hill, Tennessee. I spent an occasional weekend here, visiting a couple of great-great-aunts for a day or so during Christmas holidays about once every five years, and a couple of family reunions with third-cousins four times removed or others so distantly related my ten year old brain had no hope of figuring out the bloodlines. To be honest I doubt my 30 plus years older brain could process the relations now.

My Dad spent his summers and vacations here. He spent long afternoons on the porches of his aunts and uncles, and cousins that were only once removed, or even more closely related. The train trestle just outside of the city limits was full of memories for him. The story that I dimly remembered of his friend Kenny losing his wallet under those tracks when they had snuck a couple of beers from Pap-pap's store was a memory - fresh and vibrant in his mind. Cousin Phillip's barn, where the tobacco leaves hung to dry probably still holds traces of Dad's blood and sweat from the summer more than half a century ago when he helped to build it. To me I see the faded sides and rusty roof, and the stale smell of long gone tobacco leaves - it's always been that way to me, but to him it was once fresh and new. The smells of fresh pine as the walls were put up were ingrained in my Daddy's memory. The sights of the tobacco leaves being hung to dry were still visible in his mind. He could hear the hail pounding on the roof as he and his brothers took shelter from the sudden downpour that barely gave them enough warning to run from the far side of the tobacco fields to shelter.

My Granddaddy was raised here. He remembered when original old barn that stood just a hundred yards from Cousin Phillip's now weathered barn was still new. Long before Cousin Phillip was born, Granddaddy was running through the woods that outlined those tobacco fields. I could picture him in my mind sitting on the swing of the farmhouse he grew up in, amazingly still standing and occupied, but sadly by someone I've never met and probably knows nothing of the family that once lived there. In my mind though, he's not the child he was when the swing was first installed. He's the 80 year old Granddaddy I remember. He's the old man with the bad back who groaned as he would get up from kneeling on the floor.

The church down the street is the same one he was baptized in. It still looks the same as it did when we had our last family reunion there in the late eighties. That's not really surprising though since I've seen old family photos and the church looked the same in 1920s as it did in the 1980s. I'm sure the clapboard had been updated and new shingles put on the roof, but if anyone who grew up in Cedar Hill came back to visit, they'd be able to pick out the Methodist Church. That old church is one of the few structures that have survived appearingly unscathed by the time that has taken a toll on all of us.

The gravel pile I'm sitting on now used to be the train depot. Generations of my family used to run up and down those walkways. My Granddaddy would wait patiently for friends and family to come to town, anticipating a long awaited delivery, or anxiously awaiting the train that would take him south to Nashville to the rail hub before he boarded another train to begin the long ride to San Francisco where he got on a ship and headed to Hawaii a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  He was young and handsome soldier in the photograph that sat by my Grandmother's bed for more than 60 years.

My dad sat on this platform with his Dad and his Pap-pap if there was no one in the store that Pap-Pap needed to attend to. They would watch the trains go by and occasionally stop. Counting the engines and then the cars of each train became a favorite family past time. One that my kids still do today. It's bittersweet to think of the things my Granddaddy loved that I've passed on to my kids.

I would spend a few minutes sitting on the worn concrete waiting on the trains to come by and smush the pennies I had put on the tracks. Always the pennies or dimes though. Never a quarter or a silver dollar. I was convinced they would derail the train. We would sometimes have to search for what seemed like hours, but was likely only minutes for those dimes that had popped off the track as the train flattened them.

It's not really so much my own memories that drew me to this place. I can see the foundation that was once my Great-Granddaddy's store, across the tracks from where I sit. I think of his love of Juicy Fruit gum, not because I remember him always carrying some in his pocket, but because my Daddy told me about it. I never saw Granny putting poinsettias on the Christmas tree - the same ones my children still put on ours, but I remember that she did it, because of the stories I grew up hearing.

These are their memories, my grandparents, my dad, my aunts, uncles, and too many cousins to count. But they are also my memories, and someday will be my children's memories if I pass them on. They are the individual memories of so many that through time and repetition have somehow been combined into one place. This is my story, but it is also their story. It is our story.