GIVEN: "It had been sixteen years since she/he had been home for Thanksgiving and this year she/he was going."
He was not a real tall man, only a tad over six feet, and of course it was obvious to anyone who saw, he had not missed many meals. Thinning hair and short trimmed beard, salt and pepper with salt dominating all, this man in a simple pair of patched jeans, heavy denim coat and a wide brimmed hat which had been through the wars pulled down low pushing against the thick glasses he wore.
�Thanks, thanks for the lift,� he said to the lady who was driving the Toyota Camry, the lady who had picked him up as she thought he looked like someone from the past. As the car pulled back on the highway, he stood in the middle of the narrow gravel road, the road which would lead him over the mountain, over the ridge to the valley of his home.
Walking quite erect, walking nearly as if in a parade he was. Coming home, again he was, coming back to where he had been born, Coming back to the small mountain valley, the valley where he had roamed, roamed for many years before he cut the cord and went out into ht e world, out into the world of today, leaving the world of yesteryear which was all he had known. He carried a small canvas bag, a bag that held his most prized possessions in this world.
The works of three authors and two spiral notebooks, which contained most of his little quips and writings. Plus, yes he was a modern day man, for a laptop, with a spare battery pack and a charger plus a change of clothes he carried in the green canvas bag. A plain bag with two handles and a shoulder strap, with a zipper, nothing else.
He stepped off the road, and then stopped and looked about, looking around, looking to see what had changed what was different, what was alien. He looked up at the mountain, blue, blue because it was mostly Harwood tress, hardwood tress which had lost their foliage, a month or so agom had lost their color after being do spectacular in their fall suit of multicolored leaves, leaves which wafted and fluttered in the light breeze which usually blew in this area,. But now, now it had that blue haze, a light blue haze, but you could see a few wisps of smoke, wisps of smoke from houses up on the side of the mountains, up on the ridges, and all of which burned good hardwood, good Virginia hardwood to keep them selves warm , warm in the moderate winters which were endured around these parts. Not all the now of over in West Virginia, and not as much dank and humidity of further east down in the flatlands, the Tidewater, no not that, and surely not the extreme cold of the high plateau of Wyoming where the durned thermometers sometimes froze up. No this was his home, the temperate home and his mountain, mountains where as a boy hw had roamed, and explored, An area rich in history, and filled with history , history mostly of the British folks who settled this land long before the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, and before the Articles of Confederation for that part. But it was his home, his roots and although he no longer lived here he did love the place, and he had reveled in nostalgia of the area since he was knee high to a grasshopper. He shook his head, reached into the right hand coat pocket of his coat and pulled out a brown one-pound paper sack, a one-pound paper sack of cinnamon sticks. He bit one in half, stuck the bag back into his pocket, through his bag over his shoulder and started slowly walking up that narrow gravel road, walking up the mountain, into the past, his past, walking back in time.
�Hey there need a ride,� a young man in a pickup truck , a pickup truck all spattered with mud and a thick layer of dust on the window asked. �Heading up the mountain?�
The man looked at the young man, �Hi there, thanks, but it is such a pretty day I think I will walk.� He replied with a smile. �By the time I get up to the church, I most likely will wish I had taken you up on the offer, but thanks, thanks a lot and you have a nice day.� The young man, threw him a salute and slowly started off, as if he didn�t want to throw loose gravel on the man. Soon all you saw of the muddy pickup was a small swirl of dust following it as the truck disappeared around the curve down just past the creek, down just past the old iron bridge, a bridge where lovers used to park to make whoopee, and where kids would park to drink illegally obtained beer and listen to the latest in their music, music which was a part of this country, this area, normally country music. Actually just plain old hillbilly music, the music, which had it roots in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. He had just about reached the bridge when he saw one coming, a bright yellow Camero, coming like the dickens. He stepped down in the barrow pit till it went by, the music so loud it hurt his ears and he was outside; how could they understand it, or for the matter of fact how could they hear it, since it was so loud?
Back on the road he just ambled along, looking at certain spots on the mountain, certain, draws and hollers, and reminiscing of things that had taken place in those spots, like the still he and Bill B found. A still which had just recently been shut down, and then he followed Bill b as he played bloodhound and walked back and forth , and finally after about a half hour, Bill B had knelt down dug the loose soil with his hands and then raised up a quart mason jar of shine, good Blue Ridge mountain moonshine. They had smoothed over the ground and Bill B had taken the quart home to his dad; but not before they both had a big belt of it. �Lord O�mercy Bill, that stuff will kill you!� I had yelled for it was my first taste of real moonshine, and to be quite frank, the only drink of moonshine I had ever had in my life.
�Shucks, it tastes good,� Bill B had said, as he grinned and his eyes watered. When we got a drink from the creek, he had drunk as much as I had.
As I walked around the Ess curve there just above the bridge, I stopped and remembered one time years ago when we were what maybe fourteen or fifteen, there had been a big flock of crows, and we got a shotgun and were going to kill them. They had set down right here and I slowly snuck close enough to get a shot with that old Damascus barreled JC Higgins twelve gauge. And every time I would get close enough to take a shot, that flock of crows would fly off maybe a hundred yards away and set down and wait for me and George K. George had his granddads 410 and he had to get closer than I did, but George K swore that 410 would shoot harder and further than the old JC Higgins I was a carrying. Anyway we must have covered half the county that day, used up two boxes of shells sand never did touch a one of those daggone crows.
As I walked along things kept coming back and finally I got to the point when I heard a cart behind me, I would just wave them on by, and nine out of ten would roll down the window and yell, �howdy� to me as I walked along. Finally I got to the old spring, I stopped and took off my hat and got me a good long drink of cold water, water, which today tasted horrible for it was so high in iron, but water that as a youngster I had thought to be the sweetest water in the world. Funny what city water does for a man.
The road from the spring to the top of the mountain was one continual series of esses, so I just looked a lot as I stopped and caught my breath; lordy , lordy, I remember as a youngster, I could walk the eight miles from the village over to the house in an hour and a half and do it twice or more a day, but father time had slowed me down, slowed mw down not a little but quite a considerable bit.
My face broke into a grin as I got to the top and looked down to see the old Bramlett house still there, still there but with two trailer houses and an assortment of cars and trucks all around. I stopped and went back, back in time to just about the start of WW II, when I was a year or so from starting school. Anyhow we went down there to visit, and my ma went inside and I went out to play, and as I was playing, I saw a man on crutches, a man with one leg missing above his left knee, coming down the road. The man was typical of the mountain folk, thin, but all sinew and muscle. Wearing bib overhalls, as they called them, and high top work shoes and wearing a black felt hat, a hat that had seen many years of usage. �Howdy there young feller, lookie what I got?� he said as he stopped and lifted his right hand, showing me six squirrels.
�Howdy sir,� I replied, for we were taught you addressed any man as sir and any woman as maam. My eyes got large as I noticed he had a shotgun tied to the left crutch. �You shoot them squirrels?� I asked.
�Sonny boy, ain�t you ever seen no man with one leg afore. Shucks I can pert nigh do on these sticks what most folks can do with two legs.� He spat a speam of amber, and looked at me. �Durn Bosch got this leg in 1918 in the Ardennes, over in Germany.� Then he went to the well. �Boy, you big enough to draw me a bucket of water, I am mighty thirsty?�
�Yes sir, I can,� and I did. That old man lived to be 92 and he wandered those woods on his two crutches hunting rabbit and squirrel till he was in his eighties.
I felt a little squeamish as I looked down there and you know I don�t remember his name, and don�t know if I ever did, but I suppose I did, for I used to know everybody�s name back then. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bag of peppermint sticks and put another half stick into my mouth, and then turned down the road to see the old church. I will spare you the tales and a story about that old clapboard church which had been here on the mountain since before the War Between the States, a church built . . . .. . .well, I will tell you about it another day if you want to hear the story, just remember it is the Mountain View Baptist Church.
I walk across the road to where the path was, the short cut down to the store, but there just over the edge of the bank was a trailer house. I stopped and looked down through the little valley, the valley my family had owned and had farmed since 1782, when my great grand pa had bought the whole valley, from the Vinton cutoff down to the Stewartsville road, and it had been settled and farmed until the 1950�s when modernization had killed everything. But I still owned 1,233.27 acres of land in this valley, When I hit it big, years ago, I set up a trust fund to pay the taxes on the land, and make sure I would always have a place to come back to.
I wandered on down the hill and saw the e store, still there, but the road didn�t go by it anymore, but it was still there, larger than I remembered it, but there and all coated in a modern spiffy coat of white. I was getting closer now and my pace picked up as I saw the old school, the school I had attended, grade one through six. Back then if you wanted to go to the seventh or to high school, you had to go to town and board with someone. I looked at the small one roomed school, it now had electricity, and there was a large Propane tank outside, and there was now indoor plumbing. �God�s Assembly Hall� the neat hand painted sign said.
Half a mile down the road, I turned north up the hill and then as I reached the knob, I saw it, saw the old house, the house where I had been born and raised. And then I heard the gobble of a wild turkey, and saw a Tom and three hens in the opening there next to the big apple tree. I was home, I was home for Thanksgiving, home from far away, home to where my roots were.
