You Can Lead A Horse to Water

     
      Sarah has a Family Heritage project due in school tomorrow. She and I have spent some time together over the last week looking through family photos and talking about how her family came to be in Tennessee. My goal for her with this project was that she learn something about her grandparents and great-grandparents and begin to develop an appreciation for the people she is descended from. Last night around 7 o’clock it became evident to me that her goal for this project was to have more pictures on her poster than anybody else.  Under the pressure of our creative differences, we parted ways. She headed for the kitchen to watch Full House with her brother (and it’s not for nothing that part of my frustration is that she can tell me every plot twist for a show that’s been in re-runs since the mid-1990's but she still can't remember her Great-Grandmother’s name - which is CLEO!). A little while later she sent me the following text:

So, yeah - sort of. That is a historical fact* and her text message proved that she had learned something about her ancestors, even though it wasn't necessarily the something I wanted her to learn. There’s also the fact that we at Team Vallejo need to stress the use of more politically correct terminology (even though the historical marker in the photo that may or may not be included on the poster she turns in tomorrow does not say “Native American”). Suffice it to say that my family's complicated history is important to me and I want both of my children to at least have a basic understanding of it all.  They are resisting. This makes me sad.

         Although she probably never thought of herself as such, my grandmother was a great storyteller. On the many nights I spent at her house, we would go to sleep with her telling me stories about her childhood. If I were to write a Little House version of her life I could have a book with chapter titles like A Snake in the Springhouse, My Old Homeplace, Cousins from Middlesboro, and Decoration Sunday - just to name a few. In the years that I was in college and graduate school in Knoxville, she and I would sometimes take long drives through the country. Our trips always followed the same familiar route -  up Maynardville Highway and then a left turn onto Hickory Star Road where we'd wind our way back through curve after curve before turning right onto Hickory Valley Road. If the weather was nice (which it always was if we were out for a drive) we'd make a stop at  Beeler Cemetery (where all of her family is buried) before continuing on through Malone Gap, where her old homeplace used to be before it burned. Then we'd head up through Little Valley and make our way back out to Highway 33.  If we were feeling ambitious we'd drive across the Highway 33 Bridge and take a tour through Sharps Chapel as well.  On every drive that we took together, she would always say to me "Now you remember . . . ".  My grandmother, Cleo, would have turned 93 today.  I miss celebrating a birthday with her but I'm doing my best to remember the stories that she told me.

Cleo Hurst, 2007

  

Sarah at her Great-Grandmother's House

in Union County, Tennessee.

The site where the house once stood 

is now home to Paulette Elementary School.

Standing next to my grandparents house 

looking up the Old Highway.

I learned to ride a bike and drive a car on this road

and I  used to run through this field and pretend

to be Laura Ingalls.

Detail of the back door lock and key.

I have these at my house.

The key is hanging in my guest bathroom.

If I'd known the fire department was going

to use the house for practice I would have stripped

the place clean. The chestnut floorboards in the upstairs closets,

the 100 year old windows with bubbled glass, 

the ornamental vents on the gables,

I am heartsick at the waste of it all.

_________________________________

*"Recorded History" is totally biased. I would love to read the historical account of the Native Americans who were on the other side of the 1780s skirmish that led to the death of a white settler along the banks of the Clinch River.  My guess is that if their descendants wanted to add their own marker to one of the two big boulders now located within the boundaries of Big Ridge State Park, they'd have to ship it from Oklahoma.