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 NOT TAKEN

 

bullhead mountain from bullhead road

I drove to Justin and Crystal's house today in Glade Creek to see to the cat's food and water, spend some time with her, give her a break from lonesomeness. Thought I'd watch the race, or part of it, but could not figure out how to make the tv work. Didn't really care anyway. Read some Louise Gluck poems I'd carried along. Glad not to have a hundred commercials drilled into my head. The drive there and the drive back was the event of the day. It would have been the perfect day of the year to drive the parkway. I imagined bumper to bumper Sunday afternoon lovers in pickups and corvettes, families in SUVs, couples enjoying the parkway after church. All the cars and pickups glossy and clean. I like to gawk too, but I knew a back road, a one lane gravel road through a forest of trees and zero traffic. I could tell by the extreme colors at Air Bellows that Bullhead Road would be spectacular today. Entering the gravel section of Bullhead Road was the same as entering a tunnel of lights, yellow, orange, red and green lights.
 

bullhead road

I was in no rush, on no schedule, nothing on the radio of interest. I decided to make this a photographic tour of the road, knowing before turning onto the gravel I made the right decision. This year the reds are vibrant. The last several years the leaves of the red oaks turned brown. This year they are glowing blood red. The first frost came on exactly the right day to turn the oak leaves to their most living red. A large portion of the leaves had already fallen, which I like for it opening the woods to better see deep into the distance through the trees with a pointillist veil of colors. The first pictures I took through the windshield. The bank to the left went the equivalent of straight down, a pinball game for a car leaving the road, and many have, bouncing from tree to tree. The scenery to the left out the side window was the tops of trees that were growing down the hill. Several times I stopped the car midway between two blind curves to get pictures out the side window. I don't like leaving the car on a road. Sure as I do, a car will come along.

bullhead

I became fascinated seeing Bullhead Mountain in the distance through the trees. I was in awe from one end of the road to the other where it meets Mahogany Rock Road at the foot of Bullhead. Turned left onto the paved road, a tunnel of yellow and orange trees in full leaf for half a mile along the foot of Bullhead. Memories of other travels on Bullhead Road, one of my favorites in the county, played in my head throughout the transit. The car moved at maybe 1mph and stopped frequently. About midway in a place with trees full of yellow leaves a crow called to me and followed me for awhile calling to me. It was not a raucous command to get out of the bird's territory. It seemed more personal like it was one of the crows I feed, it recognized the car, calling to say, Hey, I recognize you. I was about 4 miles from home by road. It would be half that "by crow." Two miles is no distance at all for a crow. My feeding station has been going every day for seven years. I took it that this crow and probably all the crows of the region know the car.  

 

bullhead

 

In the time my friend Jr Maxwell was in his feebleness, using a walker and his mind fading fast, he wanted to drive his car. I believed he could do it. He only wanted to drive the back back roads. He did not drive fast enough for it to matter and he was an excellent driver of mountain roads from a lifetime of experience. We did this three times. The last time was on Bullhead Road. The road is nothing but curves. We were going the opposite of today's direction, the bank straight down out my side window. I was wondering if either one of us would make it to the bottom alive. It was too out of my control to worry self over his driving that crept a little too close to the edge from time to time. One time he kept on going straight ahead when the road curved sharply to the left. I did not want to disrespect him by telling him to turn. I waited and he was not turning. When I saw for certain he was not turning, I said, "Keep it in the road." He said, "What?" I said, "Keep it in the road." He jerked the steering wheel to the left when the right front tire was one inch from the edge. I'd already relaxed into it so much it didn't even make my heart pump fast. Relaxed was the only way I could handle riding with him.

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

*

 

 

 

MY FRIEND HAROLD HAYES

john singer sargent

 

My old buddy, Harold Hayes, continues in my mind after hearing him mocked for his failure at political correctness. The old boy is of a generation that doesn't even know what it is. His mind has been gone for at least ten years. He still has enough mind to drive his pickup and go to town every once in awhile to get out of the house and see some people. He's very difficult to talk with. Talking to him, he misses almost everything. When he talks, it's the same thing every time I see him. This does not bother me, I've known Harold a long time, since before his mind went away. Several times in the coffee shop, Harold has come in for a cup of coffee and to see if anyone was in there he could talk to. His head wobbles and his eyes are kind of far away, but Harold is there. Mind out of control, about all that is left is the fine human being that he is all the way to the soul. He was always welcome in the time Selma had the shop. It was in Selma's time I would see him in there. He always embarrasses me when I see him, wherever it is, Farmer's Hardware, any of the places he drops by to visit. He feels compelled to tell everyone in the place, calling their attention, to tell them what a great friend I am. He wants to tell that I took care of his closest friend in his life, Jr Maxwell, in his dying. He stumbles around with words and few know what he's talking about but me.

 

john singer sargent

 

Harold used to be a bluegrass bass player, and a guitar player. I say "used to" because he sold his bass. No point keeping it when he couldn't play it any more. For much of his adult life he made music every weekend for dances. He played bass with Jr Maxwell's band, The Green Mountain Boys, with fiddlers Art Wooten, Johnny Miller, Ernest Johnson, and some others. He learned the bass from Jr's wife, Lois, who was the band's bass player, and took her place. She taught Harold in order for him to take her place. He and Jr were probably each other's closest friends throughout the rest of their lives. In my time of taking care of Jr, which lasted about six months intensive, and a year of looking in on him twice a day and spending time with him. He was lonesome and simply needed some company. His home with nobody else in it was a void for him. Lois died of cancer, and his wife after Lois was a woman from Away who took him for having money, a farm, and left him when he didn't die soon enough. To take Jr for having money, her sights were not set very high. She ran through everything he had in twelve years and left him when he had nothing left and in debt to a degree he'd never been in his life. Then she left him and tried to take his house and his business, which, fortunately, the judge saw through. Everybody in the county abandoned her and she had to leave the county. Nobody would have to do with her. She'd speak to people she knew before, and they'd look away.

 

john singer sargent

 

Jr Maxwell was one of the better respected men in the county. Not that the people who call themselves society had anything to do with him. The people of the county, outside a closed circle of climbers in Sparta, all respected Jr for legitimate reasons, for his character. Outside Sparta, the people of the county have their own culture that interacts not at all with Sparta, but for hardware stores, groceries, gas and bank. In the world of the people of the county, everyone of his generation knew each other. Among the mountain people, they know each other for who they are, not their assets or stylish appearance. Among the mountain people, humility is regarded a virtue. Among the white suburbanites coming into the mountains and taking over, arrogance is a virtue, humility regarded stupid. Mountain people do not take to arrogance in any form or from anybody, and do not tolerate it among their own. I have a bad case of it too. Somebody comes at me from an arrogant place, I absent myself. I've found the best way to get rid of them is to drop some hillbilly grammar. The one I like best is saying them for those. Once is all it takes. They look at me askance and they're gone. I don't even have to go for a walk. Every year, Jr Maxwell would take a day and go around with his tractor to plow the gardens for the widows of Whitehead and the old people past able to do for themselves. Every snow, he took his tractor and blade around to the people of Whitehead who could not do for themselves and scraped their driveways. When Jr became unable, himself, somebody cleared his driveway.

 

john singer sargent

 

Harold Hayes was one of Jr's friends who dropped in on him periodically, sat and talked with him awhile about whatever they talked about. It wasn't a matter of what they talked as much as that they talked. Jr was Harold's closest friend. He looked up to Jr actually as if on a pedestal, regarded that well. I knew Harold before the time of Jr's inability to take care of himself. Every time he visited Jr in the time I was staying there, he made it a point to be sure I understood how much he appreciated what I was doing for Jr. A deep love ran between them, the love between friends of many years. All of Jr's friends became my friends in that time. The day his spirit left the body, one said to me, "Now Whitehead knows who you are," and another, "You get into any kind of trouble, all of Whitehead will back you up." Those were the most valuable sentences ever spoken to me in my life. I value those sentences, the people of Whitehead, the ones who said them in the core of my heart. Harold Hayes would embarrass me when he came into the coffee shop with all the praise from his heart that I'd helped his friend. It never ended when it started. His mind was gone, though his heart wide awake. I am Harold's connection with Jr now that he's gone. And likewise, when I see Harold, I see Jr. We have a bond we both value. My face automatically lights up in a big smile when I see Harold. I don't take kindly to my friend being dismissed by the people who value arrogance. It reminds me why I love the mountain people so deeply.

 

john singer sargent himself

 

 

*

 



THE OUTSIDER

tom wesselmann

 

I've been thinking about my affection for the wrong people that I've had all my life. The other day I defined the right people as the people with more money than needed for comfort, and status. I mentioned the mountain people are the wrong people, and then there are the people that don't fit in anywhere, outsiders, some by a nerdiness they can't pretend out of, or by intent, not wanting to play the hierarchy game of money and status. I think both apply in my case, morally unable, and unwilling to play the game. I think of Colin Wilson's book, the Outsider, written when he was eighteen. It rang a chord inside at a young age. I read it again some years later and loved it more than before. Now is a good time to read it again. It is one of the books of my life, like Camus, The Stranger, that coincided with a turning point, the poems of Robinson Jeffers another. I came out of high school wanting to be an insider, climb the ladder, wear expensive clothes. I wasn't long learning I wanted nothing to do with it, took to reading and found an interest in good writing, worked in a bookstore in the time before mall bookstores.

 

tom wesselmann

 

In American television society, just the act of reading a book makes one an outsider. If not because other people take one for an outsider, but minds of readers develop quite differently from how the minds develop of people who watch tv. There comes a time the bridge is out between the two. Hence, the outsider. To take an interest in an art form, visual, music, words, automatically makes one an outsider. To pursue an interest beyond hobby is outsider behavior. Plenty of people live outside the game of honoring status and the show of money. Remembering one of the guidelines of my life from the only man I've known I call wise without hesitation, Jr Maxwell, "Stay away from important people." It is a good code to live by. I already practiced it in my own way without having it condensed into so concise a maxim. It stuck with me like another of his sayings, "Don't believe what you think." Jr, too, was an outsider, a bluegrass banjo picker, farmer, welder, sawmill operator, bulldozer operator, pronounced bull-noser, tractor mechanic. He would preface one of these sayings and others, "Like the old feller said...."

 

tom wesselmann

 

One of my favorite outsider friends comes to mind strongly, Sarah. I've known her since she was not long out of high school, a wide-awake young woman, alive, living from the heart like Sara Carter sang from the heart. She was too complex a soul to lock down in any one way of life. She needed experiences of a great variety. She dove into everything she was involved in head first and learned to swim.  Like in a Bob Marley song, all her cards are on the table. In that time she drove a powerful Chevy race car and knew how to drive it. I was struck by her wits,  her sense of humor, her intelligence, especially her ability to have her own thoughts and honor them as such. In her group of peers, she ran with the outsiders, she appeared to me a light. Every time I see Sarah, I see a light. Even when she's down and out, her light sustains her and returns. I recall seeing her a time or two when her light was dim, exhausted, though I intuited the Sarah I knew would return in her own time, on her own terms.

 

tom wesselmann

 

She seems to me a woman of a powerful soul. She doesn't receive defeat. It's not in her dictionary. She's been broken and shattered, pulled the pieces together, reconstructed herself with porcelain glue and carried on. She's been put out with the trash, walked over, used, abused, abandoned, scorned. Sarah has kept going with the healing power of love. Sarah knows what real love is, doesn't settle for half-love or three-quarters love. She's wide-open who she is, a Twin Oaks Sexton-Higgins on the physical plane. Sarah has seemed to me the whole time I've known her, at least thirty years, an advanced soul who chose the fast lane of spiritual progress, the path of suffering. Like Jr Maxwell once said of himself, "I been through it and come out the other end." This is how I feel about Sarah in this phase of her life. She's been through it and come out the other end. It seemed to me her relationships, before, drained her energy. She has a nourishing relationship now, someone she can live in love with who knows her, honors who she is, is gentle with her doll parts, loves her the only way she wants to be loved, for herself, for who she is. Last time I saw Sarah was in the Food Lion parking lot.  She's another of my hillbilly friends I value the highest, grateful she's in my world.

 

tom wesselmann himself

 

 

 

*

 

 



GROUNDED

jenny nibbles afternoon grain

                                       Now that my ladder's gone,
          I must lie down where all the ladders start
          in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. 

                                                            ~WB Yeats
                           from Circus Animals Desertion

Saw a news headline today, a flood in the capital of Georgia. I hadn't heard of a flood in Atlanta, then realized it was Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, the country between Russia to the north and Turkey to the south, the Black Sea to the west and Azerbaijan to the east. It is one of the poorest countries in the Western world, a consequence of its history and geography. The Tbilisi flood set loose the animals from the zoo, and they needed rounding up. How do you catch zoo animals in a flooded city? I saw a Georgian film last month, In Bloom, a beautifully made film, a peep-hole view into post-Soviet life, a picture of how a couple of families live their everyday lives, two teenage girls in school. It is my only experience of Georgia, other than seeing it on a map. Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, a city about forty miles by highway from Tbilisi. He gave Georgia a kind of status in Soviet times, though post-Soviet, he's not much of a tourist draw. 

jack nibbles afternoon grain

I read the brief article about the zoo animals in Tbilisi and WB Yeat's poem, Circus Animals Desertion, came to mind, one of my top favorite poems of all time, all places. I googled the title, found the poem and read it. Came to the end and there it was, a purpose in my destiny, the place I set to start my new life in the mountains, the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, my own interior stuff, the bottom of the ladder, on the ground. At the beginning of my new life, I worked a farm with 22 head of beef cows and one bull. Sent the calves to market every fall. Cleared some land with a bush axe of saplings and young trees grown up the first several weeks, working self into shape. Hard labor and solitude. Tom gave me the job to see if I could take it. If I couldn't do it, he'd be rid of me from the start and not have to fool with a simpleton on the farm. I took it for boot camp, focused working the body into shape. I wanted to come down out of mind, self-image, everything false about my motivations and wants. Hypothesized hard labor and standing on the ground the best place to start, living simply on the edge of the woods, farm on three sides, a gravel road and one neighbor on it. 

jack and butterfly

I'd separated self from a host of habit patterns like on a chopping block. It was an extreme move. I knew, making the decision, there would be no turning back. This is it. Figure it out. My prayer had been that I would like to go someplace with a living culture where English is spoken. Appalachian culture came up with an opening. I thought, if this isn't answer to prayer, it's awfully coincidental. It was difficult in the early years, coming from an absence of culture, initially, then a decade in Southern culture, enough to see it going away, being swallowed by the anti-culture, anti-community wave sweeping the land with set determination. Mountain culture continued. It would last at least long enough to provide a taste of a way of life, albeit one on its way out. I have not totally adopted mountain culture for my own, because then I'd be conforming to codes not my own. I came here to find my own codes. I have adopted many of the mountain codes for my own for their practical application to everyday life, like Confucianisms. I never play education one-upmanship with any of the hillbilly people I know. And they know it. It's part of my name. Also, I don't make apologies for my education. I did it because I wanted it for my own self, for my own development. You're not apologizing for quitting after the seventh grade and I'm not apologizing for sticking with it. I had to prove to the people around me I was not looking down on them by not looking down on them. It was easy. I never looked down on any of them from the beginning. 

jenny

I can't talk down to anybody. One of the first things I learned in my first year is I aint got nothin on no hillbilly in the entire Appalachian chain. I found them such intelligent people they humbled me. First maxim I gave self was never attempt to fool anybody of these mountains for any reason. It will not work. It may for a minute or two, but when it stops working, you'll never see a sign of it. They just pay less attention to what you say. Ralph Stanley, speaking of the mountains was also speaking of mountain culture when he said, "They keep you humble, they put you in your place." I had found my place among a people I respected. I learned respect from hillbillies. I asked my friend Jr Maxwell when he was into his late seventies, who he had looked up to along the way. He said he looked up to everybody. It was all he said. It needed no amending. At the moment, I took it for somewhat self-serving, but learned as years went by it was a concise statement of fact. I understood why so many people looked up to Jr. He looked up to them first. He was decidedly the most humble man I'd ever known. He was so deeply humble within himself that he never needed to show it the way people do pretending. It was simply who he was. I threw my ladder away when I left the world of commerce. I have preferred to remain on the ground throughout my stay. I like what Joseph Campbell said about ladders. We spend our lives climbing a ladder and when we reach the top, alas, it was the wrong ladder. I'll stay on the ground, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, and not concern myself with ladders. Ladders deceive. I could not have donkeys on a ladder. 

jack

*

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

*

DECIPHERING DESTINY

karl horst hodicke

Looking back at how and why I came to where I am, living in solitude in Blue Ridge Mountains, specifically the central Blue Ridge, it looks like divine destiny from forty years after. Yet, at the time, I only knew place as rural. It felt more like stepping into the unknown than some high sounding word like destiny, like I know what destiny means. Bob Dylan defined destiny as, briefly, what one already knows about oneself. Whatever that means. I feel like it gives me something to go by, a place to start looking. From my own point of view it was arbitrary as spinning a quarter on a tabletop and betting on which side turns up. I knew woods were plentiful and the people were old-timey. Purpose, manual labor on a farm as caretaker, somebody who had never cut down a tree or driven a tractor. I learned fast. Every fall I had to cut firewood for four houses through the winter. That's a lot of wood. I only cut dead trees, of which there are plenty. We seldom think about trees growing old and dying, but they do. Fallen tree trunks lie everywhere in the forest in varied phases of decay. Some will stand for decades before they fall. I have actually witnessed two locust trees fall over. Each one I just happened to glance at movement that caught my eye in the near distance and it turned out to be a locust tree on its way down. I say, "actually," for it being so rare a thing to see, like witnessing a deer give birth, which I've seen once.

karl horst hodicke

The top of the list of the unforeseen is that I choose to stay here unto my last day. To have been told any time during the first ten years that I'd be here for life, I'd have felt like it was a prison sentence. Right away, it felt like home, familiar in ways I could not make out why. The first familiar was everyone talked like my grandmother Worthington, who grew up in Kansas. I wrote it off to a universally American rural accent. That was as far as I could get making out how it was familiar. The people I met along the way were natured like my grandmother, philosophically minded. I don't mean philosophical like resignation, but thought about questions they had, worked things out reasonably and morally in their minds. My friend Justin is a good example of the old-time mountain way of thinking. He has a conundrum, he goes fishing, works it out in his mind. Last year he had such a conundrum he asked Crystal to allow him to be off to himself a couple of days. He slept in his sleeping bag in the deer blind, stayed to himself, went fishing. By the third day, decision made, he was fresh and ready to go, the burden that had grown onto his back fallen away. Justin's practical sense of morality blows my mind the times I've seen it in action. In this I see him carrying the heart of the mountain way of life as it's fading fast by generations. It was not intimidated into him by church, but worked out in practical everyday life with a philosophical mind. I've seen the same reasoning in the people gone now of the old culture, Jr Maxwell in particular. They had active philosophical minds. I don't mean they read Kant and Heidegger. Their reading amounted to the Bible, philosophy from front to back. 

karl horst hodicke

I got my philosophical-minded ways from grandmother. By the time of my parents' generation, the Bible was reduced to a book of rules you dare not question. My generation of people brought up by religionists value questioning. Many of us questioned our ways out of religion. I reached a place where I saw religion is fake, though was unable to see beyond religion, a projection of the human mind, associating religion with God. I had to let go of God. Soon after, I found that God indeed is, but not much like I got from religion, besides verses the preacher never interpreted to my satisfaction, like, God is love. In the church I came up in, God hated an awful lot and was the Supreme Judge. Of course, the white people were God's chosen, specifically American with English names. For many years I disliked my name because it was too much like a name on an office door. I had a problem with that until one day I realized my name does not make me, I make my name. My name means who I am. To some it means an arrogant asshole, to some it means a jackass whisperer, to some somewhat likable, to some a friend. The name appears to be destined for an office door, but not necessarily. I never had an inner need for my name on a door. What I wanted for myself, without knowing it, was to be where I am now. In childhood, my grandmother was my comfort. Also, with extensive woods nearby, the canopy of trees were my other comfort. With her and in the woods were the places I could be who I am.

karl horst hodicke

My relationships with adults amounted to obedience. With grandmother, it mattered that I was a sentient being who thought about things and wanted to learn. In the woods, I felt the closeness of the world of nature. I knew the renewing quality of a canopy of trees. I learned after about thirty years in the mountains that my grandmother's parents moved to Kansas from Pulaski County, Kentucky, southeastern Kentucky, explaining her accent and her philosophical mind. Even before realizing she was a transplanted hillbilly, I had referred to these mountains as grandmother's arms. The woods, the trees, I need like a bird needs feathers. This is my destiny, the place my parachute landed me, in a little empty house on a back road, a place I can walk among trees all day long and never be far from home. In my early years, people from Away would want me to drive a couple hours to someplace to go hiking in the mountains. I only went once out of curiosity and found the same as I have here someplace else. Never felt the need to go hiking. I step out the door, cross the road and I'm on a path in the woods beside a mountain stream. I've walked all over the woods of Air Bellows and some beyond with the dog of my life, Sadie. She came to me already named or I would have called her Louise. So she was Sadie Louise. My destiny turned out to be the places of my childhood I felt safe, the places I felt were real in an unreal world. How I found the place that is just right for who I am by a seeming throw of the die is beyond my ability to see.

karl horst hodicke

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SEEING CAROLE

angel over whitehead

landmark church

Pleasant day today, good day to get out and go for a drive through the mountains on backroads and highway, curves in the roads this way and that, curves that turn into a nuisance overdriven, hit the brakes, swerve across the yellow lines, back, give it some gas, turn the steering wheel, hit the brakes, give it some gas. Find the speed for a smooth flow up and down, back and forth, the car flows like a boat on ocean waves, land waves, and the curves become a joy to drive. When I find the groove and somebody comes up behind me, they're on their own. I'm not going to speed up, crank the steering wheel, hit the brakes, give it gas, hit the brakes over some guy in a pickup and a ballcap wanting to struggle his way over the mountain, likes the physical activity of it, likes the tension, wants to ride my rear end like he wants to push me. As happened today on a long stretch of curves, a guy came up behind me in a black pickup and I stepped on the gas to get away from him. I can drive the curves faster than is sensible, but don't like to. Sometimes I will for practice. Today was practice. Sometimes I drive with right side tires on the white line for practice. I like an automatic awareness of where my tires are, a cautious driver, who's been told I'm hyper-vigilant, it's ok with me whatever it's called. I've not had any wrecks. Driving is the most dangerous thing I ever do. I don't need a law to wear a seatbelt. Driving is hyper-dangerous. I need to know what is going on in the rearview mirror as well as the windshield. Somebody riding grabs my steering wheel once, never does it again. I'm not violent or threatening, but I'm clear. I can talk and listen while driving, but attention is on the road.

carole

The occasion to get out and ride some backroads was inspired by the morning's phone conversation with my friend, Carole, whose car was in the shop for an unknown number of days, she was down to two cigarettes and out of Coffee Mate. Familiar with fear of running out of an inebriate, I said I'd go to town and get her some. No. Don't do that. I can make it. I said, No point in making it when I can easily find some Coffee Mate and the cigarettes and bring them to you. Oh no, too much trouble, I have two cigarettes left, I can make them last the day, maybe have one a day. What are friends for if not to make a cigarette run? I said it is so much easier for me to drive to town and bring you some cigarettes than it is for you to sit there and stare out the window wishing you had a cigarette for the next three days. It's not like I don't want to see you. When we finished our conversation, I headed Catfish up the road, a good day to ride the land waves. Overcast some and cloudy some, on the verge of rain some. Three times I needed to run the wipers one beat. That's not even trying to rain. It's barely trying to sprinkle. The roads were still wet from the night rain. Almost no traffic on the paved roads, none on the gravel roads. The landscape of fresh leaves recently opened, the early green of spring everywhere in the trees, in the meadows, rhododendron and mountain azalea in bloom, deep blue sky, big cotton puffs of clouds with gray undersides drift on slow-moving air, a fish's view of boats in a fishing tournament. 

carole

Drove out 221 to Stratford, a road with the name of being crookeder'n the back of a runnin snake. Then up at least a half mile of crooked driveway with holes and ruts, straight down on one side for awhile. From the road, it goes straight uphill for a long ways like that first hill on a rollercoaster. At the top it curves around to the right and to the left and to the right and left and down the hill and up the hill, to the left to the right, up the hill, to the left, up the hill and land on the pad at the top. The house, built into the side of the mountain, has almost disappeared in the growth around it. From the parking space to the entrance/exit door the ground is covered with moss. Inside, a modest, modern house. Out the sliding glass door of a living room wall, a mountain vista. A small porch close to the ground. A young groundhog took up under the porch last year. This year, she or he has a mate. It won't be long til baby groundhogs will be wiggling around the postage stamp lawn where deer sometimes graze, rabbits nibble, turkeys peck, a coyote passes through, a blacksnake. She never goes out there, the only human activity and scent would be the guy who mows and weedeats a few times a summer. Occasionally, a squirrel, a groundhog, and a few others have come up to the glass and looked at her like she was in a zoo. And she's watching them like in a wall-sized terrarium. We sat and talked, had a couple cups of tea, smoked some cigarettes, her uncertainty settled. We talk every day on the phone, so it's not like we have problems talking. We can talk as long as we feel like it. We flow well together like a mountain road and a car at moderate speed rolling with the waves. We have no limits to where we go conversationally, wide open and free. 

carole

I have said that Jr Maxwell is the one man I have known I call wise without hesitation, besides another who lives in a monastery. Carole is the one woman I have known I call wise without hesitation, besides another who lived in comparable to a monastery. I feel divinely blessed in that I have had the opportunity to know well a man and a woman I take for wise as assuredly as I take Caterpillar for a cat. Younger, and actually all my life, I have sought and wondered if I'd ever find someone wise. I thought I'd have a better chance finding somebody with wisdom in the mountains more readily than in a city. Jr was already here. Carole came here around twenty years ago. It was like as soon as we met we needed to know each other, it had to be. She  lives where she lives, I live where I live, we're here for ourselves and at the same time here for each other. Like in AA having a friend to call and talk with to quell the need for a drink. She is on her path, I am on mine. Our paths run side by side through this time of our lives. We believe we were given each other to walk our paths with, friends who understand one another without emotional tensions. She is my feminine representative of the Master. Of course, I would drive to town to buy her some cigarettes, and deliver them, sit and visit for awhile, face to face. Suffering? Sacrifice? I don't think so. We often forget our friends like to do something to help us out when help is needed. It is a gift to give a friend a chance to lend a hand. I'm quick to jump to lend a friend a hand, forgetting, or just not thinking that my friends would like to jump with the same intent to lend me a hand when needed. Carole forgets that too. So we remind one another from time to time. 

carole

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SAYING GOODBYE

giacometti

A few hours ago it came to me for the first time, of all my friends who have died, I've not had a conversation with any them at the end of their lives about glad-to-know-ya, or anything. It has stayed in my mind to the point I've almost come to tears a few times thinking about missed opportunities. At the same time, I can remember thinking about it, but feeling it presumptuous, or seeming so. I was with friend Jr Maxwell in his dying months. Even toward the end giving him tootsie-pop sponges on a stick soaked in water several times a day to keep his mouth wet and provide a bit of water. The times I thought about saying something like, I've held you the highest of anyone I've ever known, rationally more than emotionally, it felt presumptuous. It was saying, You're gonna die. I did not feel like he needed to be reminded. He knew it better than I did. He went with every day like this is what we're doing today. He had his own thoughts on his demise and needed no more. He didn't like anybody invading his mind. I never did with him like Hospice recommends, talk about death and God and Jesus, like nobody gets it about dying. The man was 87 years old. None of however many days he lived was spent in front of a television. He was baptized when he was 11. Grew up in Liberty church in Whitehead. We'd already talked about his belief. He said once he believed the Ten Commandments covered it all. Another time he said he prayed every day. Another time he said he prayed every day to be lifted out of this lifetime. 

giacometti

He didn't need a conversation about him dying. I went with the attitude that my behavior tells my meaning more clearly than talking. I felt like he spoke his version of the deathbed chat the day he said to me a few weeks before his mind went away, "We're more than friends. We're more like brothers." I felt his meaning. There was something to it. In one way of looking at it, close to his way at the time, all of his friends had betrayed him in one way or another in his last years. A niece shouted in his face one day, like louder is better, "Yer loosin yer MIND, Uncle Junior!" There wasn't much he could say. I said, "He doesn't need reminding." She was the same as the one who asked me on the day he died, "Where did Uncle Junior hide his money?" She'd already stolen so much from him, hidden money was all that was left of what she wanted. She wasn't the only one who believed he had hidden money. He had no money at all, lived as cheaply as I do. Every time she was in the house and he wasn't there, she'd find his liquor and pour it out. She thought she was stopping him from drinking, when she was only costing him a lot of money he didn't have much of. She, who lectured him about drinking as if from on high, was a pain-pill and "oxy-codeine" junkie. The ones who wanted money they believed he had hidden were suspecting me of being there to take advantage of him and get his money. They didn't notice their obvious motives were transparent. 

giacometti

Two half-great-nieces were the worst. Neither one of them knew him at all. I called them the Absentee Police. They dropped in for three minutes every month to inspect the house. One day they called Social Services and said there was shit in the bed. SS came to inspect. No shit in the bed. He knew they were there by, "Hello Uncle Junior," and, "Goodbye Uncle Junior." I'd see them drive up the driveway, go to my reading seat and pick up the book I was reading. They came in with such arrogant attitudes I learned to ignore them. They'd go all over the place inspecting while I sat and read. Going out the door, it was, "Don't work too hard TJ!" And I'd reply, "Don't worry about it." Calling them the Absentee Police was my PC way of calling them bitches. I saw one of them around five years later and was still so enraged I couldn't speak. I looked at the ground to say leave me alone, I don't have to put up with you anymore, and will not. Didn't have to put up with them then, though assessed it easier to let it go by than get more bitch-games going. I often remember what an aunt told me years ago, If you don't want it started, don't start it. In the time his mind was fading, a social worker said he seemed down that day. I told her he'd learned too many times who of his friends are not his friends. She looked at him for his assessment of what I'd said. He affirmed it with a nod. Then she turned sad. Every one of them had abandoned him or betrayed him. And then there were the surprises, the ones who showed they really cared about him, ones he had not known cared so much. 

giacometti

Toward the end, these were the ones I called to say if you want to see him one more time, come on today. One of the most moving moments for me was when I called his cousin, Richard Joines, the day before Jr's spirit left the body and told him today is your last chance to see Jr. He was there right away. He lived just over the hill, but two miles by road. They'd made music together, worked bulldozers on big projects together, known each other all the way along. That day, Jr was lying on the side of his bed farthest from the door, where he never slept. Jr was lying there, mind completely gone, body too weak to sit up, like a newborn baby aware of light and dark and not much else. Richard walked around the bed and Jr watched, puzzled by who this could be. He recognized him when Richard approached. Jr's arms went straight up toward Richard and I saw with my eyes two beams of light go from Jr's eyes to Richard's when Jr said, "Richard." The beams were like from a pocket flashlight. I left the room saying to self, this is for them, not me. Richard was moved deeply and thanked me from his heart later for calling. When Jr still had his mind and I had the radio show, I'd play his music from time to time and ask everyone who remembered him to give him a call or drop by. Those weekends he had phone calls all day and sometimes somebody from the past would drop in. Though I never spoke with him about how much I appreciated who he was/is, I was aware at the time of letting my behavior tell it. I asked people in the grocery store who knew him to call or stop by. Every call and visit gave a little light to every boring day waiting to die. He understood better than I did that dying is what we do.       

giacometti himself

*

AN EVENING OF MUSIC FROM HOME

joe willey

jerel willey

Last night a good round of music, bluegrass played by pickers from Whitehead, Pine Swamp and Miller's Creek. The Willie brothers, Joe picking mandolin and Jerel the bass, with Jerel's boy, Justin, picking resonator guitar, better known as the Dobro. Gary Miller from Miller's Creek picked banjo, and Bobby Wagoner from Pine Swamp picked guitar. Bobby, Jerel and Joe sang the songs. Chris Durgin picked guitar. It was a jam at Chris's house of guys who like to pick together. I saw Chris last week, he told me to come on by for the jam. Different ones get together on Friday nights at his house to jam. They've been doing this for a few years. I knew about it, but, like everything else, it takes necessity for me to turn the key in the ignition to go someplace. I've become so jealous of my time, I don't want to go anywhere. I like to see people I'm close to and that's about it. Social for the sake of social is not enough to inspire me to leave the only place I want to be. Gas is expensive. I like to do my part keeping the pollution down by staying home. Now and then I feel a need to get out among some people I am comfortable with, like tonight, a bunch of Whitehead fellers I've known for a long time with a great deal of respect. Chris I've known for several years. He was new here about ten years ago. Bobby and Gary I met the first time when each one walked in the door. Bobby's singing took hold of me. He knows a lot of songs, good songs, country classics like, You Win Again, I Still Write Your Name In The Sand. Good singer and good guitar picker. Gary's banjo was not showy, but listen closely and he's right there every lick of the way. Justin started on mandolin, by now is playing guitar and banjo, and tonight was playing his resonator guitar. I'd heard Jerel play bass a few times, but had never heard Joe play mandolin, though I've known he was a good picker for some time. The best part of their music, to my ear, was their drive. They make music when they play. It's not just playing a tune and having a rhythm. They do all this and they make music too. By music, I mean infectious, makes feet tap the rhythm, forces body to move with the rhythm.

bobby wagoner, joe willey, jerel willey

Seeing and hearing Joe and Jerel, a moment from the past took its place in the front of my mind and stayed there. It was the time I missed hearing Joe pick at Jr Maxwell's 80th birthday party. Several musicians showed and had a dynamite bluegrass jam. I intended to be there. It was a special occasion, Jr's 80th. A woman Jr knew declared no liquor at the party. No liquor at a birthday party for Jr is not even a consideration. Of course there will be liquor. I'll drink before I go, thought I'd get my head right. It's a back road down the mountain. Thought I'd get my head in a place where it would last awhile, then go. Went past that place before I knew it. It weren't no bonded liquor, neither. A time came right away when I drank more than I knew I oughta and it was too late. Too many trees between here and the bottom of the mountain. I did not want to bounce from one tree trunk to another like a pinball on its way to the hole at the bottom. Milly called telling me to get my ass down there, some good bluegrass music is going on, people are asking, where's TJ? I said I'm on my way out the door, and didn't make it to the door after assessing the chair I was sitting in the best possible place to be, considering I did not want to run into a tree, did not want to mess up the front of the truck. Thought I'd stay in place, let the liquor wear off. It didn't happen. I stayed in not quite a stupor, but unable to move about accurately. Milly called again letting me have it. I didn't want to say I was unable to move with certainty of balance, said I'd be there soon, on my way out the door. I sat feeling I'd done something dumb, and realized, too, that I drank that much to make it impossible to go. I did  not want to be there. I accepted it, because it was the case. I did not want to be there. I wanted to see all the people there, but individually. I do not do well in a big bunch of people, whether I know them or not. My inner Taurus objected to the ban on liquor as pretentious, having nothing to do with reality. I didn't feel like honoring it, objecting to the control issues going on. I didn't want to be there. By this time in the life, I'd given self permission many years before to honor I-don't-want-to as valid a reason as any.

gary miller and justin willey

It was not an intelligent move. My life is not characterized by intelligent decision making, so it was nothing out of the usual. But it was another of many times I've had to remind self, I did not come here for this. I like knowing the people and do not like crowds. It's my right and I hold to it as such. Jr loved the music and all the good picking going on. He talked about Joe Willey's mandolin picking as something to regret missing. I believed him. He talked of Joe's mandolin with the satisfaction of an older musician seeing a younger musician he'd watched grow up turn out able to pick and make music too. Jr talked for weeks and months and years about Joe's picking. When asked why I didn't show up for the party, I answered straight up, I didn't want to, told him I got shit-faced to stop myself from going. I did regret bypassing a chance to hear Joe pick, knowing he would be good, just by knowing Joe enough to have seen he's good at everything he does. At work, he's a cabinet maker, a lifetime of working with wood, paying attention to detail. Joe's mandolin style struck me something like Bill Monroe's. I can't explain. It's a fast kind of strumming to keep the strings ringing. Noting with left hand determines the tune that flows on the wave of continuous mandolin strings ringing. A few times during the music, I felt like I heard a fiddle. Where was the fiddle coming from? I knew Gary played fiddle, though only brought a banjo. I searched for the location of the fiddle sound, knowing my ears were playing donkey tricks on me. I think it was three times I heard the fiddle. Each time zooming in on the fiddle strings, I found it coming from the mandolin. Only then did I hear the rhythm of his licks. It sounded like a long draw of the bow on the high strings, the noting fingers telling the story. I watched Joe's noting fingers dance on the strings as casually as my fingers dance on the keyboard. I'd think, Joe has been doing this for a long time. Joe likes a strong driving rhythm that pushes the music forward. He plays a mandolin like somebody who races motorcycles. Bluegrass is his music. He plays country and old time, too, though it's bluegrass that lights him up. 

justin willey picks chris durgin's guitar

Jerel is a bluegrass bass player who picks the bass instead of thumping rhythm with it. He carries the music in the bass in association with the other instruments. Jerel playing it, the bass becomes an integral part of the music. He doesn't overwhelm the other instruments with the power of a bass's vibration. The bass flows in the music. I'd heard Jerel's bass a few times before. His boy, Justin, who was playing Dobro, then was in a band with a couple other kids in high school, and English teacher, Lucas Pasley, on fiddle. Jerel with them, Borderline, I felt like Jerel was using the bass to back up the younguns, take care of the rhythm for them, keep the music flowing. I saw in Jerel with the band in Chris's living room cut loose on his bass and do some bluegrass singing too. He and Joe were bluegrass singers to my ears' satisfaction. Their voices have the mountain ring to them that is the heart and soul of bluegrass. Their music making all the way around is particularly bluegrass of the central Blue Ridge. Justin grew up musically with these musicians, one his dad, the other his uncle, and everyone they make music with. He was at home musically. Justin learned his way into music with a mandolin, became a respectable musician in a short number of years. During a break he picked up Gary's banjo and picked some licks. Another time, he picked Chris's guitar, feeling its sound. Perhaps my greatest appreciation of the Willeys as family, Jerel and Joe are friends with their kids, friends who can be counted on to the grave. I call it good people. First thing they wanted to do when the instruments came out of the cases, was work on a song they were learning, Angel On My Shoulder, recorded by bluegrass singer Larry Cordle. They had a good groove, a good flow with it, singing it the high lonesome bluegrass way, made a beautiful song of it. A second audience member came in, Pam Sundstrom, a facebook friend who knows a lot of people I know, though we'd never met. Her art form is silver. Interesting woman to visit with. Brought refreshing feminine energy into the circle. An evening of mountain music by musicians from home restoreth my soul.        

chris Durgin

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