There’s a fire softly burning, suppers on the stove, but it’s the light in your eyes that makes me war m. I think John Denver knew about life. Ain’t it good to be back home again? I think he was a poet too. He sung country like it was supposed to be sung. I’m talking about the songs he wrote. The Booth Brothers were on Gaither a while ago and they sang some country songs. They reminded me of some things I still hold onto. John lived in the rocky mountains in Colorado. Yet he strummed many heart chords with the song, Take me home country roads, to the place where I was born, West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home. I have had the hardest time being modern. Someone will say let’s go have dinner sometime. Well dinner to me is noon or thereabouts. I don’t have trouble with lunch but dinner means lunch where I grew up. My mom would come to the back door or out the front door if I was down the hill in the creek fishing and she would yell, dinner is ready, not lunch is ready. And in the evening she would come out and yell, suppers ready not dinner is ready. Where did we get off track? There’s songs about supper time. I think something happens to folks when they move out of the country into the city, or go off to college. All of a sudden it seems in style to say, let’s have dinner sometime soon. So folks think it’s
hillbilly or something to say supper time as opposed to dinnertime. Supper is always better than dinner. John knew that. He also knew about mountain mama’s, And the farm. And heart songs. Every time I head up Interstate 40 towards the mountains, I’m saying take me home country roads to the place where I was born. My mountain mom and dad will not be there except when I stop at Walker Hinson’s place and look across the road at the house mama cooked supper in. Then they show up on the back roads of my memory ever gentle on my mind. Or on occasion when I push out from shore in my old reddish canoe that leaks a bit and float down the rivers of my memories, and they show up. I love our home but I just get homesick sometimes. Just inside my door is peace and a resting place. And outside on the swing or just sitting and looking at nothing. For those of us who had supper together as a family, we find it difficult to believe some of the events that are going on. You say Jack having a meal together has little bearing on anything. I beg to differ. For one thing, simple conversations and looking at each
other had a bonding effect. We were expected to be at the table, washed and clean. We were expected to stay or listen to Grace being said. Now I know many folks don’t live in a Christian home. And you enjoyed family meals just as much as I did. I don’t know how many times I had to get up from the supper table and go wash my dirty hands again. Mama surely loved me because I was disciplined pretty regularly. She believed in the laying on of hands at an early age. But playing in the creek, or cowboys
and Indians with Connie, or fishing made a little boy hungry and mama was such a good cook, that when I heard her yell, Jack is supper time. I would hightail it home. So today take me home country roads.
Take me to Shelton Laurel where mom ran barefoot and went to school. Or take me down the Marshall where dad grew up on the farm where he worked for the wheat thrashers every year. Take me to the cemeteries where the rock gardens have names and memories etched into the granite. Help me remember those whose, Light in their eyes have kept me warm. Just one more time. I know it’s late, but that’s supper time, isn’t it?
We had on the back porch a sawed 2 by 12 laid flat and on it was a washbasin, a bucket with clear, cold water in it, and hanging on the edge of the bucket, or on a nail was the community dipper. There was a wash rag and a towel hanging on a nail. I was expected to stop and wash up before going into Mom’s too-clean house. Enough to make a little boy sick, all that washing. My chore was keeping the wood
box filled. Mom could regulate her fire and somehow knew exactly when to put biscuits or cornbread in the oven to cook.There was a water reservoir on the stove and an ever-present teapot to sing to you. One of my favorite places in the winter was behind the stove reading funny books or just staying warm waiting on the best biscuit maker in the world to say, Let’s eat.
Oh my, I love those memories of the ’50s. Maybe it’s just thinking about a wad of cotton out of a pill jar stuck in a hole in the screen door. Maybe it’s listening to the Grand Ole Opry that caused me to love music so much. Could be watching my Dad go to work when he was sick, made a worker out of me. Or memorizing those verses that came to mind when I was grown and in a tight spot, is why I love those times. Or the smile I have when I remember Mom’s thumb cleaning of my mouth or an ear. That thumb and the ever-present comb were a thorn in my flesh back then, but I would love to experience that again. You see, we discipline our children if we love them, the Book says. So that means I was one of the most loved little fellows growing up in the wonderful mountains of the Appalachians. I thought for awhile Mom wanted me to be a lumberjack, because of all the switches I cut..
You be especially blessed this day because you know you are, you hear me?
