The old man and me met on a dirt road. He got out of his old Chevy truck slowly and deliberately. He sized me up without seeming to – the mountain way. He nodded, and I explained who I was and who I knew and where I was heading. I knew if we were going to talk he had to know those things. He lived there, so he had no need to tell me anything. I was an outsider to him; that is one thing I love about mountain folk.
He said it takes all kind of folk to make up this world and some we could do without. I knew then and there we were going to be friends. He said too many changes heading south. Too much government. He said, “When I growed up, you did stuff for yoreself or you did without…and at suppertime, you had two choices: take it, or leave it. Used to be everybody helped everybody else”…to build their houses, to raise their barns, shuck their corn, split their rails, build their fences, string their beans, kill their hogs, make molasses, or just get together with a friend or two and go hunt some sang. Nowadays, if you run out of gas, you best start walking.
The old man and me, we set the echoes flying from out of the past and really stirred up the whispers of yesteryear. He shivered and pulled his coat a bit tighter and said, “Ma used to say winter thinned yore blood, and it does; but no one makes sulfur and molasses for a spring tonic to lift the spirits and cure the blood anymore.” They used to make cherry bark and whiskey mix for a tonic – now, the menfolk liked that one. He said, “I could use one of them now.” He said, “Now, who’d you say you was kin to?” I knew he heard me but it was my time to talk…
I mentioned that I missed the slow ticking clocks and the cry of the whippoorwill, the long lazy days of summer, of bare feet and the woods and creeks of a time gone away, where dirt roads and paths meandered into hidden coves and valleys and homes hidden in the woods. He said, “Hear that?” A chainsaw was running in the distance… Used to be a silence, a brooding kind of quietness in these hills, and the ring of an ax or the yelling at a stubborn old mule to “gee” or “haw,” along with the bray of the mule was common sounds. Now, it’s tractors and four-wheelers and chainsaws, and a good, peaceful, quiet time on the front porch is hard to come by. He said, “Do you like porches?” Boy, that was right up my road. I said, “I love porches. I love to drive along and see folk sitting out on their porches.” I said, “But I really love to see a light on a porch at nighttime. I really like just a single naked bulb hanging down with a string attached to turn it off and on.” It says things to me, like “You’re welcome here,” or a light for the prodigal to come home… Now in the summer, they draw bugs to the porch, but nevertheless, someone turned the light on, on purpose, and someone has to go out with the bugs or cold and turn it off. I loves porches and lights, I shorely do.
Then, he paid me one of the best compliments I have ever received. He said, “I live just up the holler and I got a nice, wide porch. Next time you come this way, stop and sit a spell.” He said, “I’ll show you some spoons and buttons made from cow horns that my dad made and we used.” He said, “I’ve also got a beegum made from a hollow white oak that he made – that’s why I said you made do or you did without.” I haven’t been back yet to sit on the porch, and I hope I make it in his time, but it took me back to laying in the hayfield and looking up at the Carolina blue sky and the peaceful silence and the slow ticking clock… Maybe the mournful bay of a hound off in the distance, sixty-plus years ago when I was going to live forever, with not a care in the world. I love these old-time mountain folk, ain’t nobody no better…