SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO GO HOME

Thomas Wolfe wrote that you cannot go home again. We know that he was talking about emotionally, not physically. I went home a couple of weeks ago, almost.  I attended a Fall Festival and book signing in Pulaski, Virginia, the county seat of my home county.  If I had gone home it would have been about ten miles away in the little mountain village of Belspring. I would have been limited to looking at the small white Cape Cod with the red tin roof from afar.  My father retired in 1975 and he and my mother moved back to their "home" in Bedford County.  After a few years had passed, I asked her if she were sorry they left their home of over thirty years in Belpring.  She never gave me a direct answer but hinted that she only came because Dad wanted to build a retirement home on land he had "worked" as a young man. She knew you can't go home again.  My Dad seemed to be continually searching for the home he remembered through a boy's eyes.

If I had stood across the street and observed my childhood home, it would have looked different. The large Norway maple tree would be standing tall and majestic to the left of the front porch.  I would imagine bracing myself  in the yoke of the old tree.  I was hidden from the world and I could observe many goings on outside the near-by homes and the busy street that ran by my house and through the middle of the village. I has grown and had left home when my Dad knew the beautiful old tree had to go because of decay and disease in its trunk.  I felt as if an old friend had passed away. In its place now is a huge evergreen tree, taller than the house. It is not a "climbing tree." Such a pity if there are children in that home.  I have a feeling climbing trees is a lost art today in our world where there are so many rules to protect us from ourselves.

I take another look at the house and I notice the hedge in front has been replaced with a chain link fence.  Such a fence,  has no eye appeal, but is good to keep in small children and dogs.  It keeps out dogs and other children, as well. I'm certain that when my Dad was trimming the hedge on a hot summer day he longed for a fence.  But he never put one up.  Hedges seem more neighborly and the road trash is not as obvious. 

Other than the tree and the fence the house looks pretty much the same as it did when I left on the day of my marriage, December 8, 1957. The red tin roof and the painted columns.  I remembered my Dad taking a small brush and painting the mortar white.  My Mother said that he painted things that didn't need paint.  How many women would be glad to say that?

I wonder how the inside has changed over the years.   I 'm sure that it has in many ways. That is not important to me.  I know my parents are no longer there. The aromas from Mom's Southern cooking have long disappeared.  Just a hint of the scent of Dad's pipe tobacco would bring a flood of memories but it's not there.

So Thomas, you were right, "you cannot go home again." But the memories will never be erased.

Your comments are welcomed.

 

THE VILLAGE THAT DIDN'T GROW UP

I grew up in a small mountain village in the Virginia Appalachians.  As a child I thought this an ordinary place to live, actually it seemed caught in a time warp.  Often I felt that life had passed it by.  Would I be able to escape when I became a grown-up? I wanted to leave and move to an exciting, bustling city. I just knew life was better in other places.

There is a reason Belspring never grew up.  Here is the story the best I can remember.


Belle Spring, Bell Spring, Belspring, whatever it was called was a beautiful little cluster of mostly modest houses filled with hard working people with names like Tice, MCClaugherty, Chumbly, Webb, Brown, Buckland, Ratcliff, Frazier, Gordon,Kirkwood, McCoy,Sifford, Long, Bland, Newcomb, Harris, Cloyd, Bruce and Calhoun.
  The legend goes that Belspring was named for a spring located in a hollow just as you entered the village.  The running clear, cold water had a distinct sound of a bell.  The spring has long dried up but the name remains the same.

In the late 1800s a railroad was built through the middle of the village of Belspring.(I'm not certain when the spelling was changed from Bell Spring to Belspring but the story goes that it was done by the Post Office to save time in writing it.)  The village began to prosper and new businesses were springing up  The planner of the village had laid it out in blocks as you would have in a town When my family moved there in about 1944 most of the sidewalks remained.
It was about the turn of the century (1900) when the railroad officials decided the incline into Belspring was too steep.  They changed the route of the railroad to flat land along New River.   The little village which was about to take off and become a bustling town stopped growing. At some prosperous times the village may have had several businesses but it fluctuated, never growing into a town.

As I look back I'm thankful that Belspring never grew up.  It seemed to stay  a kinder, gentler place just as it was in 1900. We were free to roam on its broom sedge covered hills and look for craw dads in the creek. The closeness of its people, the "big family" attitude enriched my childhood and molded me into a better person. The boring life I thought I lived as a child was an adventure as I "retrieve those "memoirs" in my writing.

    Your comments are welcomed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Caldwell,                                                                                             kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE

     It could have come out of the story "Hansel and Gretel" with its many colors on the gingerbread trim.  Sometimes the colors changed as if by magic.
     When I was a child we made the ninety mile trip from Belspring, to Bedford, Virginia, my Dad's boyhood home, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  There were no interstate highways back then and most of  the roads were two lanes.  When we went to our grandparents we traveled Route 11 a good portion of the way.  Those ninety miles seemed almost endless to a small child.  To anticipate certain sights along the way helped to pass the time.  One of my favorites was the Gingerbread House.  I wanted to ask my Dad to stop on the side of the road so I could look at it closer.  I never did.  I turned my head and looked as long as the house was in sight.  Every time we passed it, which was about every two months, I made up a different story about the little house.  The stories always seemed to end up with me as a character. I wondered about the family who resided there.  Once in awhile I would catch a glimpse of a person on the tiny porch or in the yard.  What fun it must have been living in the little fairy tale cottage.
     In a few years the interstate came along and we didn't go by the Gingerbread House on the mountain on our trip to see our grandparents.
     Asa the years passed it's memory faded.  Just recently I thought of the colorful house and wondered it it was still standing.  I did what most of us do today;  I googled it and lo and behold sources came up giving information on the house and its former owners.  As far as I could determine the house is still standing, but not as in its colorful past.  I learned, also, that the reason it changed colors so often was that a local paint company used it to advertise their product.
     I carry only a picture in my mind but the little Gingerbread House along the side of the road remains one of my favorite childhood memories.

TALES FROM CHILDHOOD

    Memories....the stuff of novels, dreams, reunions and love affairs.  They are woven into our lives in so many ways that at times we live with our minds holding onto part of one memory while we take a piece of another and meld them to make the we "remember." Do you recall overhearing a family story at a reunion and thinking, "that's not how it happened?" Your Mother tells a childhood story and everyone says, "I remember that!"  As their laughter fills the room you begin to seethe because you know it didn't happen that way. Then you start to recall a thing here and one there; maybe it did happen almost that way!

    A few years back, I wrote a collection of short Memoirs from my childhood.  I called them "Because I Said So, Tales From Childhood." They come from my growing up in the little Virginia mountain village of Belspring in the 1940s and 1950s. It is my hope they will depict the joys, sorrows, humor, mistakes, goodness, fortitude and tenacity of the mountain people who lived in this little village of about 350 persons.

    Let me set the "stage" so you will be able to "see' in your mind where the action takes place. Belspring is nestled in a small valley bordered by hills and mountains on three sides and the New River along its eastern boundary.  Standing on the hill above the Kirkwood house, your eyes would soon make out an "under the tree Christmas village.  A ribbon of a creek covered in watercress, meanders below the hill. Turn slightly to your left and see the asphalt highway which bisects the village.  The majority of the houses on the left of the road seem to have been carefully placed there in neat blocks. This is no illusion because when Belspring was called Churchwood it was laid out in grids in anticipation of its becoming a boom town.  At that time the railroad ran through the middle of town. Its course was changed by the railroad owner to avoid a steep grade, sending it along the river.  That did in the plans for a bustling town. 

The name was changed from Churchwood to Belspring after the sound of a spring in the hollow near the edge of town.  The spring has long since dried up and the sleepy little village remains as if caught in a time warp.

    Looking down from the hill again one can see three church steeples..... the Methodist on the road to the train station, the Baptist on a rise behind the houses set neatly in blocks, and the red brick Presbyterian on the left as one enters the village. There was always a post office, usually sharing a building with a grocery store and one time an appliance store.  There were two service stations,the train station, barber shop and for a few years a beauty shop in one side of a service station. The largest and most imposing building was the large red brick school which housed grades one through seven.  Next to it stood the "teacherage" where unmarried teachers lived.

    This was not a perfect place but it was a good place to grow up. As children we ran and played on the hills and in the creek. We caught "craw dads" and ran from snakes.  We built forts in the broom sedge and climbed the apple trees.  We rode our bikes in the summer and slid down the hills in the snow in winter.  We did chores; raking the colorful leaves of autumn, helping to harvest the garden crops, and looking after the younger children. The war came and we felt the rumble of the explosions from ammunition tests at the Arsenal.  We learned to use less sugar and butter. The family car did not move as often--gas was scarce and rationed and new tires were a rarity.  We did not complain about the darkening shades and 'all lights out."  For in our little world, life was good.

     This post is getting long.  I will write another soon about life in the village of Belspring.

Comments are invited.