SERVING THE MASTER

from waterfall road

 

On the first, I was planning to visit Jr Maxwell's grave with his second cousin, Melia, to remember him at his gravesite on the anniversary of his passing. Last  year our timing got messed up and we went separately on different days. This year we just never connected. I thought about going, taking an umbrella for the rain, and it came to me, "let the dead bury the dead." Why keep this sentiment going year after year? The spirit has gone out of us for it. That's ok. We did it I think four years, while the spirit was with us. I see no reason to make a ritual of it. To force it from here on will be to ritualize it. I'll stop by the cemetery one day spontaneously and say hi. That would have spirit in it. Jr was a bluegrass banjo picker on weekends with his band The Green Mountain Boys, and during the week a welder, tractor mechanic, bulldozer operator, sawmill operator, buyer and seller of cattle. In 1956 he bought a 56 Ford. He said it was the fastest car in the county. He didn't get that  statistic from the owner's manual. He beat the then fastest car in the county in a night race.

 

 

from waterfall road

 

Jr was a wildman. I respected in Jr that he allowed his inner wildman to act out. He was a wildman on a banjo. He made music first and honored the notes. His fiddler's convention winning song was Home Sweet Home. He could twist the strings on his banjo like Earl Scruggs and the crowds loved it. He was a prankster and a jokester. When you were around Jr,  you were laughing. He was drawn to people who made him laugh and he liked to make the people around him laugh. His banjo picking was his contribution to making the world a better place. He was a philosopher who said things like, "I been through it and come out the other end." He was light-hearted and had probably suffered more than anyone I've ever known in the course of his lifetime. He chose for this lifetime the fast lane in spiritual growth, suffering. He was delivered five blows from out of the blue that had stopping power, each one would have brought a rhino to its knees. He was also the only man I'd ever known I would call wise without hesitation. He called himself a fool, made a better case for himself a fool than I could for him wise. It's not like we talked about it. He just saw himself a fool in how he handled his life. I thought of him the wise fool. How could a wise man be anything but a fool in this world?

 

waterfall road

 

Whitehead mourned the passing of Jr Maxwell. The funeral had maybe twenty people. Most of his friends were dead. He was 87. Jr sawmilled the wood in my barn, I'm guessing in the late 1930s when he was in his late teens sawmilling for John Richardson at the foot of the mountain, Air Bellows Mountain. Tom cut the tree trunks, used the branches for firewood, and hauled the logs down the old backside of Waterfall Road in a wagon drawn by big work horses. Jr sawed the logs into boards and Tom hauled them back up the mountain and built himself a barn. It is one of the last standing barns in the county. I've taken care of it. Keeping  donkey hay in it will extend its life. Jr told me what kind of wood was in it. The barn was built to last. A couple of my cats in the past sunbathed on the tin roof. Both the men involved in putting up the barn have told me their entire life stories over a period of several years apiece. Both of them men I respected as what I call true human beings. I respected their character. At Tom's funeral I lost it. Two rows of people stood up in front of where I was sitting and sang, all of them people I knew, and some I went to church with. They sang three songs Tom had requested. I forget the first two, but the last was Amazing Grace, the hymns sung the old-timey slow hillbilly style, one syllable at a time, sometimes making two syllables of one.

 

from waterfall road

 

It was more than I could maintain composure under. I wept a puddle of tears on the floor between my shoes. I did that once before at a foot-washing meeting while Millard Pruitt, Tom's brother, was in the spirit preaching. He wasn't hell fire and fear. Millard only preached love. The whole place was in tears. Millard could light you up with the spirit. I'd already mourned Jr before he left the body, taking care of him going into his dementia and fully in it. He wanted to die at home and I wanted to give him that, a man I felt was truly an honorable human being in the highest sense. I mythologized my role in my mind as serving the Master. I recalled something to the effect of, what you do for the least of these you do for me, something like that. I literally believe Tom and Jr were given to me by the Master for teachers, each one in the right time. I served Jr as if he were Meher Baba or Jesus Christ, Krishna, the Dalai Lama. In my case, Meher Baba. The nurses from Hospice were repeatedly amazed at the care I was giving Jr, allowing him to make his own decisions even when he was bedfast. I never said it, because I didn't want to explain it, that in actuality, I am serving the Master, himself, in person. I knew it was Jr, but that is still how I felt about it. I attended to him with the same degree of respect. This was my opportunity to serve the Master in person. He left the body sleeping comfortably in his own bed. 

 

waterfall road

 

 

*

 

 

 



THE ROAD WATERFALL

 

waterfall road near the top

where it meets air bellows gap road

 

Waterfall Road makes a very crooked half circle that connects with Air Bellows Gap Road at both ends, it too a very crooked half circle that extends to the Parkway at one end and at the other end extends to Pine Swamp Road. One end of Waterfall Road is at the bottom of the mountain where the land levels into a valley between ridges that made rich farmland for the people of the old ways in the Whitehead Community. The upper end is at the top of the mountain just a half mile from the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Air Bellows Drive-thru Art Museum. Air Bellows Gap Road  has houses on both sides of the road at the top. In my part of Waterfall Road is a subdivision up the road to the left half a mile and a subdivision to the right half a mile, both of them out of sight. In my little valley my land is trees and donkey meadow. The horseshoe around us is Christmas trees.

the goat rock from the lower end of waterfall road

The farm down the road, only the driveway visible from the road, still leases the land to a farmer who buys and sells cattle. It is the last functioning farm in Air Bellows. The farm I worked is all Christmas trees now. Before it was paved, the road through this valley was one of the beautiful drives on earth. Now it's just another road with a grumpy old liberal hermit that lives down in the bottom and a little ways up the road a haunted house. It's not, but it makes good rumor. The house has been let go for so long, twenty-six years since old man Tom left the body, and it was imploding in his last years. He didn't care. Since then a poacher leased it for a hunting cabin several years. All of Tom's farm land is Christmas trees now. The Pruitt farm and the Caudill farm are all Christmas trees. The next farm to mine, the one continuing to function as a farm, was the old Jim Scott place. The subdivision beyond Tom's house was the old Elbert Crouse place where I used to mow and put up the hay twice every summer for several years. I used to mow the places Christmas trees grow now.

waterfall road the upper part I drive

 

I can't say I hate to see it go. I knew while working the farm that this was the end of the old ways. I wanted to experience it before it was gone, wanted to experience farming the old ways, know people who still lived in the old ways, except for refrigerators, television, bathrooms, plumbing, lights, recliners, cars, pickups, chainsaws, have a peephole look into the old-time hillbilly way of life. The changes I've seen in my forty years tell me the direction of the changes in the future. I know a few people who have deeded their land to a nature conservancy so their land can never be used for anything in the future but let go to nature. I like the idea of it. I like better not entertaining the illusion of projecting my control onto anything beyond my demise and my will. I'd rather leave my place to flow with future needs that are totally unforeseen from today. I have fair confidence Jack and Jenny will not be separated and stand a chance of living here the rest of their lives, or for a good while.

waterfall road

The road was originally a horse trail. Then wagons came along. The back side of Waterfall Road is the old road up the mountain, running along the ridge from bottom to top. Both sides of the road run almost straight down, trees thick holding the topsoil together. The road runs parallel Waterfalls Creek below, way down there. The creek is fed by the springs of Air Bellows that run over the waterfalls to become the Little River at Whitehead that flows through Sparta on its way to the New River in the northern part of the county that runs north into the Ohio to the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. I asked Tom in my first year what the old name was for this road. Then it was 1131. He told me Waterfall Road. In the year the County gave names to all the roads people along roads suggested names. Several suggestions were up for this road. I brought up that Tom Pruitt told me it's old name was Waterfall Road. And it stuck. I do love living on a road named Waterfall. The word projects such a beatific image in the mind's eye, an image of peace, tranquility, I feel privileged.

beside waterfall road

 

 

*

 

 

 

   

WHY I WEAR A SEATBELT

the donkey hay barn

 

A friend of mine hit a tree with his Chevy pickup dead center the front bumper at 70 mph without seatbelt. The motor was pushed back almost to the seat with transmission under the seat. The air bag knocked him out. He woke lying on the seat with the gear shift lever in his hand, separate from the transmission. Totally wrecked his truck and he survived without a scratch. Ever since then, he has been an advocate for not wearing a seatbelt. The wreck occurred when he was carrying in the back of the truck a big, heavy front-end loader for a tractor. He took off racing with a friend. In the excitement of the race, he forgot about the weight. He went around a curve, the front-end loader in the back fell over and radically changed the truck's center of gravity in an instant. The shift caused the right front tire to leave the road, which pulled the rest of the truck off the road into the locust that remained in place. He has not convinced me I don't need a seatbelt.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

I grew up in the 1950s when there were no seatbelts. I remember seeing car races on television where the drivers wore seatbelts. It seemed reasonable to me that we needed seatbelts in cars. A lot of times people drove as fast as on a nascar track then, and when they wrecked, bodies were slung like shrapnel from an exploding grenade. I never wanted to fly through the windshield face first, nor fly out a door that suddenly vanished. In high school, 1959, a guy a year ahead of me had graduated and, like high school graduates, friends tend to hang together during the first summer they're out of school. One night he with a carload of his buddies went to a bar where he had an altercation with the man working the bar who pulled a shotgun on him and told him to get out. He drove his 57 Plymouth with his friends in the car back to his house to pick up his shotgun and go back to create a problem. Drunk out of his mind, of course. In Wichita, Kansas, where all the roads are straight lines.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

He crossed a river bridge going over 100mph when he lost control and the car wrapped around a huge oak tree trunk just a few feet from the bedroom window of the people sleeping in the house nearby. Killed his friends. He was thrown from the wreckage. The driver's side door wrapped around his body and kept him safe as they flew, slid, bounced and rolled down the highway. He survived, but it wrecked his life utterly. I was dating his sister at the time and she filled me in on the details of the event. I knew a guy here in Alleghany who, several years ago, left the road in Glade Valley in a curve, too drunk to even stand up. The road on the left side had a bank that went almost straight down to a meadow with cattle. He went through a power pole twelve feet above the ground, breaking it in half, and woke up lying on the hood next to his 12 year old nephew, also on the hood. No seatbelts. Both survived without a scratch, though he lost his driver's license for life, and the car was totally destroyed. It was a good car too. I hated to see it die.

 

the donkey hay barn

 

I'm recalling my friend Jean who once made fun of me using a seatbelt when I told her I was not going to start the car until she fastened her belt. She said she didn't use a seatbelt. I told her you do now or we're not going. She said, "Are you afraid of dying?" Like it's unusual to fear death. I said it's not dying that's the problem. Chances are, if something happens, death will not be the outcome. I told her of a time I had to leave the road over somebody passing a line of cars in my lane. That's happened more than once. I said when you leave the road, it's bumpy, really bumpy. I don't want to be thrown all over the inside of the car, lose control and hit a tree. A seatbelt keeps me in place when something unforeseen happens. I want to be in place to avoid losing control. I think she got it. She wore one afterwards. Old man Tom Pruitt, who, by the way, cut the trees and built the barn in these pictures, also never wore a seatbelt, drove his pickup over meadows like it was the road. I used the belt to keep my head from getting bashed over and over by the truck's roof. It was soon after NC passed a law requiring seatbelts. Tom asked, "You use your belt on account of the law?" I said, "Yes," though I was considering the vertebrae in my neck. The law never entered my mind.

 

the donkey hay barn

photos by tj worthington

 

 

*

 

 



MY TEACHER TOM PRUITT

grandma moses

 

Earlier today I sat with a notebook kept from seven months before the move to the mountains through the first five months in the mountains. I read a few pages, the first time visiting Tom Pruitt in his home, working with Bill Pruitt and getting to know him. It brought memories, but the writing was dull and boring. I have tried keeping notebooks and journals, over and over falling into the same ditch, until I see no point in writing to myself. It has never clicked for me. The writing starts boring and degenerates to brief notes and found quotations, fades out. I thought I'd try an online journal. I would be writing to myself, examining self, but some other people see it, so I can write to people besides myself to inspire writing to myself. You reading these writings give them life. I write much better for you than I do for myself, though I attempt to write to my own higher standard writing to you, more than I do for to self. I can't help but think I already know what I'm telling myself at some future date when I may see it or may not. It feels pointless down deep. When I do look back at it, I'm bored. The best the notebook does for me now is trigger memories. And that's a good thing. I like remembering my early experiences getting acquainted with people I would call my teachers in later years. The notebook helps remember forgotten details. I'd forgotten Bill told me about the hell his wife put him through over the last two years since their divorce.

 

grandma moses

 

I'd forgotten how radically different Tom Pruitt was from anyone I'd ever known or met. Maybe my grandfather's brother, Uncle Frank, was something like Tom, though I only knew Frank in childhood thinking he was an interesting character, but far, far away, another Age, another Time. I wanted to know him, but couldn't. People of his generation didn't talk to kids but to tell them what to do. And this kid, age ten, did not know how to talk to an eighty year old farmer. Whenever I was around him, which wasn't much, I watched him in curiosity from afar. Bib overalls and white hair. I never knew my grandfather Brink's family very well. They were Germans and his wife, my grandmother, did not like them. She said of grandpa's older brother, Herman, he was one of them mean Germans. I was afraid of them. They talked hard to kids, threatening, and the kids my age were feisty and mean. I just wanted to float down the river, like Hiawatha, supine in my canoe. I did not want to fight a bunch of third and fourth cousins I knew could kick my ass and laugh at me doing it. Tom Pruitt was as different as grandpa's brother, Frank, not as distant, though from a place as distant in time from the world I knew as Frank.

 

grandma moses

 

Tom could talk, liked having somebody to talk to who listened to him. Tom was not threatening in any way. He was more like a monk than anything else I can think of. He lived in solitude, could sit in his house days in a row all winter long looking at the wall, keeping the fire going, spitting into a Maxwell House instant coffee jar on the floor beside his chair. In my note about him, I mentioned he looked like he never washed. He wore khaki pants and long-sleeved shirt, and was in his stocking feet. They had holes in the toes. The room he lived in smelled of wood smoke and dried snuff powder. It was not an unpleasant aroma. Three calendars on different walls. None were the same year and none the same month. The most recent one had been there several years. He kept his .38 handgun in a shoulder holster hanging over his bedpost. He tucked it in his belt when he took it into the field after the bull reached a certain age. He said you can have a young bull that's tame and friendly, but after a certain age, you can never be sure about a bull. He told me several bull stories of his experience and people he's known. He carried his gun because no bull was going to run him down. He knew he did not have a chance against a bull without a weapon. His telling was instruction as well as recounting experience. He never steered me wrong in his instruction. Tom was a teacher I could count on.

 

grandma moses

 

He took me to a Regular Baptist church meeting one Saturday night after I'd been here a year, they meet Saturday night and Sunday morning once a month, to hear a preacher from West Virginia to be preaching that night. Over the course of a year he'd told me quite a lot about the church, their beliefs. He'd told me that when the Spirit enters the preacher, the whole house feels it. He said you feel a rush up your spine, you look around and you'll see everybody else felt it. That night, the West Virginia preacher couldn't make it. Four Union Baptist preachers were there, evidently to hear him. It was Tom's brother Millard's church,  Laurel Glenn. Two n's. A mistake that stuck. Four preachers got up, one at a time, talked, hopped about, pretending to be in the spirit, but not there. At the end, Millard stood up to dismiss everybody, talked some and the Spirit hit him. He took off like a rocket. I felt the rush up my spine, looked around and everybody else was feeling it. I noticed while the other preachers were talking, people all over the house were talking to each other in whispers. After the Spirit hit Millard, not a word was spoken by anyone else. Everyone's undivided attention was on what he was saying. The people in the church listen especially close when a preacher is in the Spirit. I went back the next morning, and continued to go back for the next fourteen years.

 

grandma moses herself

 

 

*

 

 



MEETING OLD MAN TOM PRUITT

winslow homer

Appreciation for my friends of these mountains, and the many people I know casually, has been with me mightily this week. It has been a slide show of the mind, people I have known and appreciated in the second half of my life. The first half of the life was my education, the time I learned  what I needed to appreciate the people and the culture of the mountains. About a year before I left the city for the country, I rendered a prayer from the heart that I wanted to live in a completely different culture where they speak English. Within weeks, the opportunity to go to the mountains came available. I suspected it answer to prayer, but it hadn't happened yet, and I'm not one to celebrate the light at the end of the tunnel until I'm out of the tunnel. The light might be an oncoming train. I was looking for something "real" that I never found in the city, but among a few people I knew. It wasn't until settled into my new life that I learned I'd been put into a culture very different from the one I left behind. And I said, Thank you.

 

winslow homer

 

As soon as my parachute landed me on Waterfall Road, I knew there would be no turning back. Moved in on the first of November, 1976. Some people I knew said, "You'll be back in January." Those were the ones I did not keep in touch with later. I kept in touch with the ones who said, "What a great opportunity." They were the ones that knew me. The others told me they didn't know me at all when they said I couldn't handle it. Old man Tom Pruitt, who was then exactly the age I am now, was the first person I met. Upon meeting Tom, talking with him the first time, I knew I was on my track. Sitting in his pickup, arm resting on the door, Tom in his hat, brown lines of tobacco juice ran from the corners of his lips to under the chin. He favored a ventriloquist's talking doll with those lines. He told me he'd been down at Whitehead store where somebody said they could put an A-bomb on the moon. Tom's reply, "What they want to do that for? Th'aint nothin up there. The Bible said the moon was just a light. Ye cain't land nothin on no light." That moment, I knew Tom was a God-send. I'd been looking for real people a long time. And there he was, before my eyes, a real live, true human being, somebody who thinks about things he's told and makes up his own mind.  

 

winslow homer

 

Tom also believed the earth flat and the sun went around it. It's obvious. The sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west, circles around and comes back up in the east. He said in school, he finished the 7th grade, the teacher one day explained about the world being round like a baseball. Little man Tom said, "I aint never seen narry mountain on no baseball." This was his reasoning for the rest of his life. I felt compelled, but stopped myself, to explain if the earth were shrunk to the size of a baseball it would be smoother and slicker than any ball-bearing made by the most exacting machine. On a baseball magnified to the size of the earth, the line of threads would make mountains so high they'd stick way up beyond the atmosphere. The leather wrapping on the ball would be major mountains and deep valleys. I already intuited his mind could not stretch to visualizing something he could not conceive. I never tried to explain, because I don't believe it makes a bit of difference in our everyday lives if we believe the earth flat or round. To send a small tractor to Mars requires an understanding of earth's roundness, but driving a pickup to town and back, it doesn't matter. I was enchanted, a pre-Copernican man in 1976.

 

winslow homer

 

I realized Tom's religious belief system went back to Seventeenth Century, Sixteenth, Fifteenth, back to Medieval. I felt like I was in touch with a belief system that went all the way back. He had missed the cosmology of round earth and the cosmology of evolution. That put him from two cosmologies in  Western civilization's past. My role in coming to the mountains was to learn from the mountain people. I realized after some months of working with and running with Tom's nephews on the weekends that I've got nothing on these people. Their intelligence was beyond mine. Theirs was first-hand experience intelligence. Mine was second- and third-hand by way of reading and lectures. Their knowledge was practical. Mine wasn't worth a damn out here in the world among people who live by first-hand experience. Tom had his own form of the scientific method. He never believed any of the stories about spooks and haints. He said if a man looks at a thing enough, he'll find what really happened. No acceptance, at all, of the supernatural. Tom and his nephews taught me where I am in the first year. Tom came from the world going away, whereas the nephews, my age, were from that world though influenced by new trends sweeping over the land, television, radio, cars, beer. I knew Tom the last fourteen years of his life. I listened to Tom's stories as if at the feet of the Master, learning the customs and about the people he knew, the old ways. Tom was an embodiment of the old ways. I think of him as my first teacher in the ways of these mountains.

 

winslow homer himself

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

CONFESSION

meret oppenheim

I sit here gaping at the white page on the monitor, no words, nothing to go by for the next sentence, red-faced with shame, held in stasis by a major embarrassment, standing on the edge of the high-diving board, relaxing my nerves to step into the flow of the dive, like a singer stepping into the song when the band has set the rhythm in motion, praying it's not a belly-flop. I found the geode. Walking to the mailbox yesterday, I detoured to the place the geode went missing, continuing the search, despite believing it was gone. Before going out the door, I spoke to the geode in my mind and asked it to reveal itself to me if it's still here, if not, please find a way home if you're able. Walked over to the rock it stood on, looked at the ground, thinking, What are you looking here for? You've looked at this exact spot at least fifty times. I saw it. Daffodil leaves had fallen over, as they do this time of year, making a little cave the right size for the geode to roll into. I saw a potion of it like the crown of a baby's head about to be born, after sifting through the immediate area multiple times, lifting up daffodil leaves to see if the geode might have rolled into one of the little toad caves they make. Not there. I apologize to the white teenage boys of America for my presumption.  

meret oppenheim

How did I miss this particular cluster? The most obvious place, the very spot I imagined it might have hit the ground, going by where I most often find it. Birds kick it taking off after standing on it, kick it in the way their feet automatically fold behind when they lift off. I've thought about a touch of glue, but glue does not feel right. Why would it be that seven times seven times looking closely at the exact spot, I'd see it the fiftieth? Approximation, not an exact count. I've no choice but to believe it was there the whole time, that I saw it without seeing it. I had been there on hands and knees searching, and found it from standing up, from just a glance. Can't help but see it a measure of my unconsciousness. One of them palm-to-forehead moments. I dare not ever laugh at somebody else's unconsciousness again. I've been aware of my ability, to the point of it being a talent, to look directly at something and not see it. I don't understand it, but it happens from time to time. Recalling a time looking for car keys I'd set on the desk. Searched all over the desk, even places I knew it could not be, on the floor, in the drawers. Found them in plain sight beside the laptop where I'd set them, where they'd been throughout the search. Before concluding the geode was gone, I reminded self of this propensity to overlook something I'm looking for. I reminded self until I'd become convinced there was not a pixel of ground left unsearched. I did not want to believe it was gone, even after concluding it. It didn't seem right, it didn't feel right for the geode to be gone. It's not that I think I'm psychic. It was simply unwillingness to accept the geode had been usurped surreptitiously, something like willing the dead to return.

meret oppenheim

The decision to set boundaries about allowing my home to be used for a State Park parking lot continues. If it were the only way into the falls, I'd consider further. There are many. The falls are not on my land. It's time for the one whose property they're on, who owns them, to deal with it. They're more his people than mine. I've done my part. The missing geode was a catalyst that kicked off a decision I'd intended for some years. It's already a welcome relief from concern about leaving the house on weekends, or any day. In the time I had three kittens to raise, I trained them to stay away from humans they didn't know. Could not stand the thought of a nine year old saying, "Mommy, look at the pretty kitty, she's so friendly. Nobody lives in that old house. Can I have her, Mommy? I'll take good care of her. See, she's purring, she likes me." I've only once come home to somebody parked in my parking space. Left a note under the wiper blade, not a parking lot. No need to get mad, just somebody else thinking nobody lives in that old house where ever-thing's growed up, weeds is ever-place, no mowed lawn.

meret oppenheim

People have been ripping boards from the side of the barn I've been preserving, one of the last barns in the county. To bring it back to life, I store donkey hay there. It is covered in beautiful old oak boards weathered by direct sunlight over eighty years. One of my friends, Tom Pruitt, cut the timber and built the barn. He took the tree trunks by wagon to John Richardson's sawmill at the foot of the mountain in Whitehead, operated at the time by my friend Jr Maxwell in his late teens, who sawed the logs into boards that Tom then carried back up the mountain in a wagon drawn by two big horses, stacked them to let them dry before construction. I could put a want-ad in the Charlotte paper and sell it to a buyer and seller of old wood, who would come here, dismantle it, take the wood and pay a good price. But it is the barn I want, not the money. The barn has heart meaning for me. I appreciate its beauty to the point of preserving it. I'm tired of boards being ripped from the sides by waterfall hikers. After the no-hunting sign was taken from the woodshed, I was thinking the Coca-cola sign would be next, or would already be gone were it not nailed so securely to the wood. Eula Houser at the Kennedy Store in Stratford gave it to me thirty-eight years ago in good faith that I was not going to sell it. Every return from a trip to town I see it and thank Eula. 

 

meret oppenheim herself

*

BELIEF IS MY GUIDE

It is not easy to look back at how I used to think at any time in the life, even a week ago. The way I think now is related to how I thought twenty years ago, but not the same. To go all the way back to childhood in church hearing the preacher excited about hell and damnation and you-better-not and atheism is evil, I believed it. I remember at age nineteen being talked to by a serious Southern California John Bircher, a convicted missionary. I thought he made sense, while having no idea what he was talking about. This was in Wichita, home of the Koch Bros. In that time, around 1960, the name meant rich people, the kind that impress other rich people, lived in the most expensive house in the most expensive part of the city, hotdogs in the rich people's country club. I worked with the groundskeepers at their country club the last summer of high school, mowing, weeding and watering greens. Probably saw them several times and didn't know it, didn't care, still don't. Though, then, still in my time of indoctrination into a world I could not live in, I would have been impressed. 

the hillbillies

I did not know what I wanted, only knew a great long list of what I did not want. The only motivation for self was education and healing, needed both desperately, and to live an authentic life, authentic by my own standard. I never intended to use my education for job training or use the transcript for credentials. I didn't care about making a C in Milton or a WF in Chemistry. I never had a job that required a degree. I've worked with chainsaws, shovels, axes, hammers, power tools, paintbrushes, ladders. Working an axe is fun and a fine skill. Old man Tom Pruitt could lay an axe down in the very line he made the first swing. I could do it sometimes, but his skill took a lifetime of practice. I wanted to live at the bottom of the working class. My motivation was inability to live a fake life of pretend appearance and kissing ass up the status ladder. This is why I'm unable to run my art through a gallery. Sucking up to the rich at openings and Christmas parties is something I'm unable to do, the same as a duck is unable to meow. Much of living what I believe involves staying out of what I don't want to do. 

roscoe holcomb

Recalling a woman in the coffee shop a year or more ago. As she was leaving, she stopped to speak with a big smile, interrupting, of course, "TJ, it would be to your benefit to pay more attention to the new people moving here." She strutted off, wiggling her ass out the door like she'd done something big. My impulse was to call to her, "How do you know? What benefit?" Automatic editor jumped in like a referee and said, If you don't want it started, don't start it. Back to conversation with friend who was, coincidentally, once new here. Inside, I laughed, like how did she know? She didn't even know me. I only slightly knew her name, had to remind self when she started talking. She sure as hell did not know the people I'd be turning my back to for the opportunity to meet more commercials incarnate like her. I'd be turning my back to my people for the thrill of knowing her people. They need to, and will, continue as her people. If I were to waste my time with the people of her choice for me, I'd be telling Justin, Crystal and Melvin about them on Sunday afternoons watching the race, and we would laugh. Thirty years ago, I'd have thought there might be something to what she said. By now, whatever the benefit might be, I know from a lifetime of experience, anything it could be, I don't want it. It's somebody else's idea of benefit, not mine. 

tommy jarrell and fred cockerham

I dove into the world of the hillbilly, because I like the human beings they are. I like living among the people of the mountains. I appreciate them as friends. In hillbilly friendships, watching your back is part of it. A fickle hillbilly is somebody who has no friends, no backup. Backup is important in a rural community. Backup is friends who watch your back. Like somebody wants to pull some shit on you, if he knows you, he knows your backup. He will decide whether he wants to face your backup before he says or does something stupid. Like when somebody starts talking about one of my friends, I'll step in and say, "Before you go too far, I need to tell you, this is my friend." It means, I'm not mad yet, but keep it up and a landmine might go off right there where you're standing. The hillbilly code is a rough code, and it's hard. It comes from several generations of a hard life, working all the time for very little return, poverty, a culture of poverty. Living in poverty, pretense and shallow thinking have no place on the list of options. The hillbilly code evolved from generations of working in solitude on one's own farm, hunting in solitude, plenty of time to think, so much time it leads to deep thinking and clear mind. Old farmers and their women have a very well-educated intelligence from studying the Bible deeply, their knowledge only known amongst themselves. No one outside their world has a clue about them. They're mostly silent and out of sight, philosophers with little experience talking. It would take a force more powerful than a stranger's notion of a benefit to pull me away from these people.    

morgan sexton

*

YES TO DIVERSITY

diego rivera

I'm having a drink of half Canada Dry, half Jumex mango nectar and a squirt of lemon juice. The mango nectar is a bit flat; the Canada Dry spritzes it with carbonation, the nectar flavors the ginger ale, and the lemon juice adds a zip. Good drink. I'm glad we have a Mexican aisle in the grocery store. I like black beans and everything else along the aisle. I like seeing Mexicans in the grocery store and around town. I grew up with Mexicans and found them to be as good a people as the Anglo kids. Only the Mexicans did not have in them the arrogance of whiteness; thus, I preferred them. We were segregated then. Anglo kids were afraid of the Mexicans and the Mexicans were afraid of the Anglos. It was commonly understood the Anglo kids were superior in numbers, if no other way. I think I identified with the oppressed races because I was oppressed at home by white man. I knew that the white world would be willing to give me a chance for my whiteness, and if I, the same person, were in Mexican skin, it would not be the same. I did not feel right with the privilege that went with white skin. Never have. By this time in the life, a lifetime of experience seeing how arrogant white people automatically present themselves to black or tan people, I'm embarrassed in the company of someone black or tan. I want to say, "I'm not like that," but know how empty it sounds before saying it. And am not so sure I'm not like that. I only know it from my mind, not from my behavior as seen by someone black or tan. If I'm really not like that, let it show in my actions, the only place it counts.    

diego rivera

I am so tired of racial tension after a lifetime of living with it, in it, aware of it, not in denial, it's become one more of the reasons I left "the world" and came here to Air Bellows Mountain where racial tensions don't apply. Nor does any other sort of tension, except drama for the sake of drama. Plenty of that goes around. I prefer not to think so, but plenty of drama for drama sake goes on inside my head. It's what gossip is about. Even continuous drama on television does not supplant gossip. It seems like gossip is a way of making celebrity of the familiar. I'm recalling my first years in the mountains, listening to old man Tom Pruitt talk about different people, who, in our way of seeing, are just ordinary people, talk about them the same way people who watch movies and television talk about the stars, the celebrities. It struck me curious why, when he talked about a preacher who once lied about something Tom said, his reason he left his church, he talked like he expected me to know who he was talking about. He lost respect. He spoke of the preacher the same way people like Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher talk about lying Republicans. Louie Gohmert said, Joni Ernst said, Ted Cruz said. A celebrity said. Tom's brother, Millard, too, when he talked about the people of his life, I had the same feeling of listening to a celebrity talk about a celebrity I never heard of, but should have. The only television Tom watched was baseball and the news. He didn't get a tv until he was seventy, given to him by a neighbor from Away who believed everybody must have at least one. It's a sight how many used tvs I've been offered, even told in no uncertain terms to take.

It wasn't right, no tv in the house. I need to be connected to what is popularly called the real world, the world I turned my back to as too unreal to sustain life. A human without a tv was unexpected and weird as a rock on a fence post. It's even more now, but I have good camouflage. I bought a tv to watch movies with when so many movies became available on VCR. Netflix sends three movies a week of my choice from a selection of almost everything. One of my major sacrifices coming to the mountain was giving up movies. Had to drive seventy miles for an America movie, a hundred miles to see a foreign film. Now I can have film festivals from almost any country. The tv is not connected to cable, antenna or satellite. The people that freaked out because I don't have a tv in the house are ok about it now. He conformed at least a little bit. He's toeing in. He's slow, but he'll get there. When they put him in a nursing home, he will have no choice but to watch tv, like when he's in a hospital. I suspect the reason I noted how the old people of the old ways talked about each other, is taking it for granted I knew who they were talking about, the way Dick Cheney is mentioned on the evening news, assuming the name needs no introduction. Evidently, before television, people talked about each other the way we talk about celebrities now. We talk about each other and we're talking about people who don't figure as celebrities, what they call on the news, ordinary people. All who are not celebrities, whose names it is taken for granted we do not know, are the ordinary people. We used to be the common people. Now we're the ordinary.

diego rivera

Becoming aware that the people pre-television talked of each other as stars everyone knows, I began to take exception to we who live in the world of non-celebrities, nearly everybody, being reduced to a non-person, a statistic, the viewing audience, ordinary, finding it socially troubling. I watch the people of the world I live in accepting themselves as the ordinary to the point of not even noticing. And I withdraw to home, reminding self I'm not here to change anybody, only self. I want to flow with the living flow of the world I live in. Without wanting to be of it, I have no choice but to be in it. Since I'm in it, I live best flowing with it. My world is three-quarters right-wing statistically. but it doesn't mean a wall is between me and the rest of them. Everyone I know thinks different from how I think. All have opinions different from mine, and very few intersect with my opinions. I don't care, because I assess opinions the same as nothing. Some of my best friends want to bomb Iran and say Obama is a monkey. I don't care. It only tells me what they think about one subject neither of us knows anything about, but what we get from different propaganda sources. No matter where I live in America, I live among people with no interest in art, reading, poetry or foreign films. I talk with people of similar interests, and we never agree where opinions are concerned. One may say Picasso is the great artist of the 20th century, while another says Duchamp. Both for valid reasons. I'm uncomfortable with this time wherein we are expected to be in full check-list agreement with somebody or they don't like you, you get labelled. Whenever I hear somebody describe themselves, very liberal, it puts me on alert to watch everything I say.

diego rivera himself

*

   

WINTERS PAST

vada

Another good day above freezing. In the weather patterns of the past, mid February was apple tree pruning time. Mid February was the reprieve from winter, the eye of the cold storm that winter is. This winter has been characterized by ebb and flow like winters in the pattern before weather patterns changed. We'd get a wave of cold followed by not quite as warm as before, but warm, then a wave of colder than before, followed by warm not quite as warm as before. The cold came in waves. The most miserable winter in my memory gradually turned colder unto cold and stayed there for weeks, then gradually turned warmer. That winter started late and spring came late. It stayed cold for a long time. The steady cold never let up. This winter is like the winters of several years ago only in the way it comes and goes in waves. Then, snow would be eight, twelve, sixteen inches, snow on top of snow. Now the snow is a half inch, a quarter inch, three inches, two inches. A coat hangs in my closet I've not worn in so many years I've just about forgot it was hanging there. It was a good coat for the winters, a hood for wind. Now I wear a heavy shirt lined with something that holds heat. It is good enough to feed donkeys in and go to the mailbox, a trip to town, It would not be a good one to take a long walk in below freezing. In a way, I miss the winters of my early years in the mountains. I took long walks with dog through forests, over meadows, the waterfalls covered in ice and the water flowing behind the ice cover, the ice a still reproduction of the water flow splashing over rock, glass the water behind could be seen through. 

vada

Those places are now memories. I suspected the waterfalls might be frozen over a few weeks ago, but thought I'd see it in memory rather than go into bear, coyote and wolf country. I don't go into the woods anymore. I would want a .45 handgun. I don't want to shoot anything. I don't want to walk along prepared to shoot whatever might take exception to me being in the wrong neighborhood. Actually, I believe I'd be safer without a gun. That's one on one. I believe I could back away from a bear encounter safely. But a pack of killer dogs. I don't want to even think about facing such a situation without stopping power. I don't want to kill any of them. Don't want to encounter any of them. I'd rather see them from the car passing by, or in photos. I don't like killing anything, don't believe I have a right. The culture I live in tells me I do, but I don't believe everything that comes my way. Too, I'm not interested in getting scared out of my wits. Chances are, I'd never see a thing. And I don't like walking without a dog. Don't have a dog now and it's not practical to have one. Caterpillar would go into fury. The donkeys would hate it. Not a good time for a dog. Martha, next door, is not a good dog to walk with. First thing, she imagines she hears something, takes off running, disappears and that's the last I see of her until I return home. She sits by the door waiting for me. She's not a dog that learns. I can't teach her to stay with me. I'd need a leash, and don't care that much. Though I know what warmer winters mean, I still like winters not being as severe as they used to be. I like snow when it happens, without craving it. We have ice more now than when temperatures went way down below freezing. The air is not cold enough to make snow, so it rains drops that freeze on contact with the ice cold roads and tree limbs. Not a good time for walking or driving. 

vada

I cut firewood in the fall for twenty years, sawing trees into logs to be split. I cut down mostly dead trees. Rarely did I cut a living tree, and then only from necessity. Trees die on their own, standing. They make the best firewood. I learned how to cut firewood from old man Tom Pruitt and his nephews, Bill and Don. It includes sharpening the chain, Every tooth needs sharpening, one at a time. I handled the chainsaw safely, consciously, awake. I felt like operating a chainsaw was the most dangerous thing I did, besides drive a vehicle. I realized from the beginning that I must be in charge of the saw at all times. Once the chainsaw takes charge, it's too late. I thought of it like a motorcycle, one moment's lapse of attention and anything can happen. Tom taught me how to fall a tree exactly where I want it to land. He taught me to fall a tree in a different direction from the way it was leaning. He also taught me, first thing, to cut them off at the ground, don't leave a stump. Whenever I see a stump, I see a good log that could be split into at least eight sticks of firewood, a day or night's heat. Cut the branches and limbs into stove-length sticks, stack everything in the back of the pickup in rows. Packing it tight in rows will carry a great deal more wood than it thrown into the back of the truck in a pile. Much space squandered. At the house, unload the truck, one stick at a time, then stack the wood for storage. Go back and load the truck again, as many times as needed. It was good movement exercise. No big weights to deal with, except sometimes. 

vada

Learn how to sling an axe and a sledge hammer, and it's no effort at all. Set the axe in motion and let its momentum carry it, using hands to guide it. I'd get bored with an axe or sledge hammer, the sledge hammer for driving steel wedges. The axe to establish a crack for the wedge take from there. Sometimes the axe would be all it took. Locust is good for an axe, one lick. Red oak, split right, can be done with an axe even easier than locust. The rest of them require a wedge. Old locust needs a wedge too. Driving a wedge with a sledge hammer I felt was a good exercise in hand-eye coordination. Don't hit the wedge just right, and it may fly off in any direction spinning like a ninja weapon fast as a baseball. You don't want to catch it. I learned the wedge only flies out in one of four directions. I would place the wedge so I'd be standing in one of the directions it would not fly. I learned skill with both axe and sledge hammer, good enough for my needs. Old man Tom could do something that amazed me every time I saw it. He would set the first crack in the log. The next lick with the axe went precisely in the same slot. His aim with an axe was an amazement for me to behold. He was in his mid seventies meaning a lifetime of working with an axe. He was known around for his skill with an axe. He was also known for the simplest moves to accomplish something when he was working. He did not waste movement. He flowed when he worked. He loved working. I learned from working with Tom his economy of making every move count for something. I never reached a place where I could lay the axe down exactly on the spot I wanted it every time. Have not carried wood in several years. To have done something, I believe, is the same as doing it now. I don't need it anymore. 

vada

*

HAY IN THE TRUNK FOR DONKEYS

jack and jenny

Bitter cold outside with enough wind to make the wind chimes ting. Both thermometers are dead,  both stuck at 42. I took them down so I won't see them, tired of looking at 42. Sunday morning was out of hay. I wanted to wait until early morning to drive down into the low place the barn sits while the ground was frozen. The ground has been wet for several days after rain, snow and ice, I did not want to mire up and need a 4-wheel drive pickup and a chain to pull the car out of the mud hole. As I had feared, the cold only froze the surface of the mud, making it even worse to drive on. It gave me a little bit of crust, anyway. The day before, Saturday, was above freezing, and I did not dare drive into the mud pit without at least a little crust. I backed down into the hold, a trick in itself, as the driveway turns to the right backing down the slope at a big dead red oak tree. I don't want to cave in the right side of the car with the tree. If I continue in that curve too far, it will put me into the worst mud of all. I have to stay in a certain track to stay out of the mud I'd get stuck in for certain, going backward. Ride the brake to keep control. Back up to the barn door, take key around to open the trunk lid. I stepped inside the old barn, which, to me, is a hallowed spot. The trees were cut by old man Tom Pruitt in the late 1930s. He hauled the trees down the mountain on a horse-drawn wagon to John Richardson's sawmill at Whitehead operated by my friend Jr Maxwell, who then was in his late teens. Jr sawed the wood into boards Tom hauled back up the mountain to this site and built the barn the old-time way beginning with four corner posts set in the ground like fence posts. Tom used two layers of wood. First, he put the boards at a 45 degree angle, then a layer on top of them vertical. The barn is made of oak and chestnut, chestnut on the northern side. The barn has two floors. Originally, the upper floor was for storing hay and the ground floor a place to keep cattle. The old trough is still there. I've changed nothing in the barn. I store hay in the ground floor and leave the upper floor empty. The wood is old and colorful. People visiting the waterfalls help themselves to a board off the side of the barn from time to time.

donkey jen

It feels good to me inside the little barn, built by my friend Tom and the wood sawmilled by my friend Jr, both important souls in the second half of my life. I know the barn's history and how it was built. It is a basic rectangle, maybe ten by twenty feet, with a tin roof that slants from north to south. The wood by now is delicate and needs repair from time to time. It was empty until I put hay in there for the donkeys. Anything portable kept in there would be carried off by tourists who think they're in the boonies and everything is free. Nobody steals hay bales. Some do, but that's another situation. Only other people around here with cattle who ran out of hay would steal hay. It happens. This is a bad spot to steal from with the mud pits that get everybody who drives down in there to see how far they can go. They don't get far. Finally had to put a no trespassing sign up. A game warden told me nobody pays attention to a store-bought sign. A hand-painted sign scares the hell out of everybody. I put up a hand-painted sign and put a stop to the pilfering. I hated to cut off the trail to the waterfalls, but the Chamber of Commerce was advertising them as something wonderful to do in Alleghany County. The road in front of my house became a state park parking lot. Something turned up missing from time to time. I trained the cats to stay away from people they didn't know. "Mommy, what a pretty cat. It's so friendly. Nobody lives in that old house. Can we take it?" "Sure, honey, I don't see why not. If you promise to take care of feeding it and the litter box." "I will, mommy." I liked the idea of people getting to see the waterfalls, but when it got out of hand, I talked with some people who had beach-front property at Jacksonville. They told me to stop it now, because I won't be able to stop it later. The hand-painted sign took care of everything. It continues a few cars a weekend, which is not a bother. The people that visit the falls now are somewhat respectful. I emailed the Chamber some photos taken across the road of bears and coyotes. I used to advise people about the bears, but everybody thought they could handle a bear encounter. Whatever. I don't bother anymore. 

donkey jack

Inside the barn, I counted the bales of hay I have left for the donkeys. Twenty-two. At a rate of about three a week, that's about seven weeks. That's close to the end of March. It's still winter. End of March is when we have surprise blizzards. Last year's hay from then on. I don't know what I'll do. They will not eat last year's hay. I use it to spread on the floor in their den every week. I'm told, "They get hungry enough, they'll eat it." And they probably will. May not have a choice. That's a bridge to cross when I get there, not today. I threw three of the bales out the door, then put them in the trunk with lid up. I encountered on the way out the very problem I had been wary of. The ground was a little too soggy to get some momentum going before the uphill grade on grass with ice mixed in with it. One little spot of gravel about half way up to help with traction. I made a run for it and made no progress up the hill. Had to back up and go again. Needed to back all the way to the barn to get some momentum going. Made it a little further next time. By this time, I've made some ruts in the mud to render it all the more difficult to wind up some momentum. Third time, almost. Fourth time, I said,"I'm coming out of here." Backed up to the barn and bore down on it in Dr-1, low gear. I knew I had to go through the mud like it's not there for the momentum necessary to make it all the way to the top. Got a good start, the spot of gravel half way up the incline came in for an assist when I needed it, smoked the left front tire a little bit. As long as I was creeping forward I gave it the gas. When forward momentum ends, it's over. It kept on creeping like an inch at a time, tires spinning, and finally caught on some gravel under the grass and pulled me the rest of the way. Another test in what I've learned living in these mountains the latter half of my life. I would not have backed down there without new tires on the front, nor without knowing the spot of ground as I do. The new tires made it possible. They brought me out of there.

jack and jenny

I learned first-hand why to stay out of there when the ground is wet. If it doesn't dry soon, I may have to ask Justin or Melvin for help in a pickup with four-wheel for next haul. I've found the limit of front-wheel drive. Rear wheel drive would not have had a chance coming out of there; it would have mired up in the mud. It felt good driving onto the pavement. Had to leave the pavement again to off-load the hay bales. The grass was covered with ice, though not a problem. I only had to drive forward on the uphill grade enough for the car to be off the road. I can back onto the road from there, which is easy on ice. You might say it was superficial ice; it was only on the grass, not on the ground below. OK to drive on, but not uphill. The donkeys wait at the fence, side by side, ears up. They know new hay. They like this hay. They watch me roll the bales down the hill, one after the other. It appears to me, anthropomorphizing, they want to play with the rolling hay bales the way a child likes to play with a rolling ball. I have thrown some over the fence in the past for them to roll down the hill in the meadow. The donkeys jump and play. Toys. They know it is their hay I keep it under the tarp. They watch me toss the tarp aside and place the hay bales on a platform of old pine branches put there to keep the hay off the damp ground. Hay in place, I unfastened the gate, picked up about a third of a bale, carried it out into the meadow, a place in the sun where donkeys can stay warm while they eat. I walk across the soggy, icy, muddy ground inside the gate where they keep the ground walked the most, around a spread of donkey biscuits, walking beside the donkey trail so Jenny, walking beside me, can walk in her trail. It is a joyous experience first thing in the morning after waking up to interact with donkey friends I've learned to love, and they love me.

donkey jack

I feel good, at-home good, the feeling that this is my place, the spot on earth I belong to, the spot on earth I have loved enough never to allow it to be used for anything commercial, like Christmas trees or pumpkins. I feel like this spot of ground, these few acres are mine to have dominion over. I've heard dominion defined as the right to kill, but I think that's a tyrant's perspective. I want my dominion to be in peace, like King Samuel, my favorite of the Hebrew kings. I love it about him that he retired himself so far into the desert the camels could not hold enough water for the journey. Samuel was out of reach. King Saul used the witch of Endor to get in touch with Samuel in a psychic way to ask him a question. It was an awkward moment for Saul who had been responsible for the purge of the psychic women. The witch of Endor lived so remotely she was one of few psychics left, and legitimately afraid for her life with him in her house. Samuel's belief about dominion was peace. The people grew weary of boring peace and wanted the drama of war. Samuel turned them over to a tyrant and left them to what they wanted. I want the ground I have dominion over to live and breathe. Before donkeys, I let the deer graze it. Donkeys bring the meadow to life in such a way it's become my yard. This morning we had a quarter inch of dry snow with enough wet to hold it in place. I spread the hay on the ground under the dogwood tree. The limbs were covered with snow almost like spray paint. The ground white and the dogwood with buds at the tips of twigs all in white, the underside of the branches like pencil lines, it was like a bouquet in the center of a table. It felt like a good place to let the donkeys graze for the day. It snowing, I did not want to give them more than they could eat in a day. Gave them enough for half the day. At two, the braying began. Jack bellowed a long bray and Jenny followed. She has found it. All she needs to do from here on is learn how to play it. She has a good bray; she plays alto to Jack's tenor. Donkeys had finished the morning hay. They were standing at the fence looking at me in the window. Jenny called to Ice Cream Man like Billy Idol's song, with a rebel yell, she wants more, more, more. Time to put on coat and hat and take them more. The snow had melted from all but the shaded places.

jenny and jack

*