Someone once noted that, "Watching autumn unfold in the mountains is like standing at the gates of Heaven."

Ahhh, memories pressed between the pages of my mind...

In my mind's eye, I can still see the old house and the small farm the way it looked some fifty plus years ago. My parents bought the house from my mother's family back in the late 1940's when it was about twenty years old.

My grandfather built the house around 1930 very near the same spot where my great-grandparent's house had stood. My grandfather used some of the same wood from the original house when he built the new house.

When we moved into the house in 1949 it had no indoor plumbing and the only source of heat was a fire place in the living room and an old wood cook stove in the kitchen . My mother carried water from the springhouse and a water bucket sat in the kitchen with a dipper for drinking. On Saturday nights, when we took our tub baths it was in an old galvanized zinc tub which was also used on Monday for washing the clothes. Through the years, many changes were made to the house to modernize it, but the basic structure of the house remains the same today.

As a youngster, I played and frolicked in the creek that was several hundred yards from the front of the house and searched for the crayfish that hid beneath the slippery rocks. Each spring my older brother and I would follow behind a horse drawn plow in the tobacco field keeping a sharp eye out for arrowheads that would often appear in the furrows left by the plow. My imaginary mind would conjure up visions of the Cherokee as they camped and hunted along the creek.

And many is the time that I ran barefoot through the barn yard where a mother hen and her baby chicks had meandered aimlessly and ended up with the remains of their droppings squished between my toes.

I grew up knowing what grits, fried fatback, cat-head biscuits and cracklin cornbread are, and that store bought milk, butter and loaf bread were a luxury (or so I thought back then). I was 18 years old before I realized "arsh" potato meant "Irish" when referring to white potatoes.

I can still see Mama's flowers growing all over the place and the vegetable garden in the field along side the house that she would faithfully plant each spring. She was a stickler when it came to her garden. She had her own way of doing things and not just anyone was allowed there, least of all us younguns. But we really didn't mind since we had our fair share of time working in the tobacco patch. But I recall many times heading to the garden with the salt shaker to puck a ripe tommy-toe tomato and sitting on the grass enjoying it's luscious flavor.

Then there were the days that it would snow and school would be canceled. My brother and I would grab a old peice of tin left over from patching the roof and head up behind the house and we'd have a rip roaring time sliding down the side of the mountain. At that time, we had never seen a pair of snow skis.

But that was a long time ago and a lot of things have changed since then. The old house is vacant now and the days of Mama's lovely flowers and the vegetable garden are things of the past.

Still, every third Sunday in June, I can see tables piled high with food and all the aunts, uncles and cousins gathered outside in the front yard for the family reunion. Or on a crisp autumn morning, I can see the makings of apple butter bubbling in the old copper kettle over a fire outside. Or on a hot summer's night, I can hear the creek babbling outside my bedroom window or see a small boy and his younger sister merrily chasing lighting bugs in the moonlight. Or hear the old screen door give a slow screech and see Mama coming in the house with an arm load of clothes that she had just taken off the clothes line.

Yes, things may have changed a lot since then...but the memories will always remain.

      

      

CREDITS Image of woman and quilt Paula Vaughan "Summerbreeze" print. Image of house Anna Zarina "Childhood Memories" print.

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Miz Dixie Belle
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