DROPPING IN ON OLD MAN TOM IN WINTER

I've found the notebook from my first months on Waterfall Road, the winter of 1976-1977. Conscious mind has forgotten most of it, but these reminders from page to page bring back the people, the places, the moments. Thought I'd share some of it with you. Tom is Tom Pruitt, later known as old man Tom. I am remembering these first experiences knowing him. Then, he was new, someone like I'd never experienced, somebody who, himself, was the old-timey way. He would be my teacher and friend for the next fourteen years. I helped carry his coffin from funeral home to grave site. I saw him last a few minutes before spirit left the body, or may have been while spirit was in transit. I came to know his life over the period of time I had the good fortune to know Tom. In the time I knew him, his culture was waning fast. He was left surrounded by exurbanites he was an oddity to. Farm land he'd spent his life working had become suburban lots with new houses. The exurbanites around him thought it was funny, like mystical, he always knew what the weather was going to be. "Is it gonna rain, Tom?" Tom's answer, "Always has." They thought he had the old farmer way of knowing by signs what weather was around the corner. He watched tv news from Winston-Salem and heard the mountain weather report every evening. No one ever questioned the source of his knowledge, assuming he was the wise old farmer who could read the signs. Characteristic of Tom's personality was his direct way of seeing and speaking. He said it came from his mother's side; she was direct. Tom never skirted around anything except when he was consciously misleading. I about got shot by him once. After I'd been here maybe four years, he was mad at me and told a great big lie on me to three different people. All three told me and all three told the same story separately. I went to his house and spoke to him about it. He swore he didn't say it. It came to, "You calling me a liar?" In the mountains, when somebody says that, it's the same as a death threat. It means WATCH. YOUR. BACK. I knew he was lying, he knew he was lying, he knew I knew he was lying. I answered his question as directly as he spoke, "Reckon I am." His eyes became shotgun barrels. There was no more for either of us to say after that, and I left. Walking from the door to my truck I anticipated falling down dead any split second. Tom would not miss. We were both irritated for awhile, then it passed. This journal entry is Thursday, February 3, 1977. Temperature outside was between zero and ten F, snow.

 

tom's house today

 

2-3: This afternoon at four I went to visit Tom. We sat before the stove and he told me some good tales. He talked about Christ and salvation. Christ and John the Baptist, according to Tom, are the only two perfect men that walked the earth. I about mentioned India, but held back. I asked him if he knew the reverend George Farmer, who preaches on local AM radio. Tom said, "Money preacher. He preaches for money. He don't preach from the spirit." Tom said a real preacher is a man chosen by God who has the spirit in him and lives by the spirit. He told of a preacher he knew who was a money preacher. The preacher had a vision once of himself and another preacher fishing. He came back with two fish over rough, dry, rocky ground. The other preacher came back with a load of golden fish over a green meadow. As a result of the vision, the preacher with two fish became determined to match the other preacher's abundance. He never amounted to anything and lived a carnal life for a preacher. "He didn't have sense enough to know them two fish was his churches." He was working two churches trying to make money. He told of another preacher at a wedding Tom went to, who passed the offering plate twice.

 

He talked about the divinity of Christ and quoted scripture. He said he could talk scripture all day, but he wasn't a preacher. He didn't have the spirit. He could get up and talk scripture in church, but it would be speakin, not preachin.

 

He told of the time he broke his wrist jumping out of a hay loft and had Don, his nephew, pull it back into place. Later, the next day, after sitting in the chair all day, after sitting in the chair all day the day before, pulling on the hand with the broken wrist to keep it in place, he knocked it out of place again. He went to the doctor to have a cast put on it. When the doctor pressed it with his thumb to snap it back, Tom said, "I like to jumped a foot from top to bottom."

 

Every time I'm around Tom, he tells me stories and tales I love to hear. I sit all ears, trying to be a memory box, and lose most of it due to there being so much. I look hard at his face and his clothes and his hands and his feet propped up on a chair in stockings. I don't think he ever washes anything. He carried a pot of stew from the wood-stove to the kitchen, using a cloth for a hot pad so filthy a woman would scream seeing it.

quan yin on cloud mountain

 

1-27: This morning I took a walk down to the waterfalls. Walked through snow over the ankles with Sadie, whose four legs could not go as slow as my two. She ran off ahead of me sniffing the snow for rabbits. She would turn and come back to say hello, and be off again. Often she would walk ahead of me and I would follow her through the thick trees as she always finds the easiest ground to walk on and the best ways through the most dense places. Followed the stream that runs by this house, under the road and through Tom's property. Many small streams flow from springs in the hills on either side, down to the stream that grows as it moves along. Small falls about a foot high, all the way down, then the big one, at least fifty feet high and just as wide. Most of it was covered with ice, huge forms of ice that cover the rock shaped like a big thick white quilt. There was a huge open space about ten to twenty feet wide where the water flowed at its constant rate, changing so fast a high-speed setting on a camera might not be able to catch it. I climbed down close to it and watched the water shapes that reminded me of white flames flowing down rather than up. Heavy flames.

 

Yesterday I cut down two more maple trees for firewood beside the road. They both fell perfectly between the fence and the road. The first one gave me a jolt when the butt of the trunk came down on my left arm, which was holding the chainsaw, and it running. Fortunately, the tree's major weight was held by the growth of laurel, and the saw was hung up in the laurel branches. I could not let go of the running saw and could not turn it off--my thumb could not find the switch. I stood there a few seconds trying to figure out what to do with the weight of that trunk on my wrist and the saw in my hand. I forget how I got out of it, but it was easy. I must have taken the saw with right hand, which had been occupied holding me in place on the steep bank wedged between laurel branches. Dealing with that saw is like having a loaded gun. You have to be conscious every second of what could happen if you slip, or if it jumps out of your hand. That, I suppose, adds to its excitement.

 

Sadie was funny today when a rabbit ran across the top of the snow in front of us. She took off in great excitement leaping through the snow. Every time she jumped, she broke the crust and sank in the snow to her shoulders. But she was not discouraged by this impediment to her grace and speed. She kept on hopping the same way she hops through tall grass, in great deer bounds.

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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FIRST TEACHING FROM OLD MAN TOM

air bellows outdoor art museum

I found my first notebook/journal from the time of arrival in the mountains. It's a spiral bound school notebook that covers the time of transition from city to mountains, 3-12-76 to 3-30-77. I've looked around in it, read a few pages. It covers the first complete winter. I was reading forgotten experiences. The dreams in that time were horrendous nightmares. Much old going away, much new coming in. I want to see my thoughts about the people I was becoming acquainted with. Old man Tom was the same age I am now. I knew him fourteen years, he died almost twenty-five years ago. In the time of knowing Tom, he was the most interesting person in my life. I was a pallbearer for Tom and swore off it, would never do it again. My arm still feels his weight and the grief. I didn't think it would hit me so hard when Tom died at 86. I went to the funeral home the day before the funeral. Sat and wept for half an hour, was so bad somebody came from the back and handed me a box of Kleenex. At funeral next day I thought I had my tears all cried out. Harold, the funeral director, placed me on a bench behind some people I went to church with, Tom's brother's church. First thing, the two rows in front of me stood up and started singing. They sang three songs, Amazing Grace the last one, songs by Tom's request. I leaned forward and let the tears flow. They made a puddle on the floor between my feet. I was chosen as one of six to carry the casket to the car and later from car to grave. Standing next to Tom's grave and casket was about more than I could take any way but in silence. A niece of his began jabbering some gossip questions and I had to control myself, make myself not say, Show some respect. I've been to his grave a few times, but don't like it. I see a nasty old skeleton in rags and can't get the image out of my mind. This always happens when I go to visit somebody's grave. I wonder, What the hell am I doing here? There's nothing here. I have memory; that's where he lives.

 

air bellows outdoor art museum

 

Found an entry in the notebook from a week before the permanent move to mountains. I was here for a weekend, brought a pickup load, wanted to see and feel the place that stayed in the front of my mind, the mystery of the unknown. The day of the final drive to the mountains was October 30, 1976. I found this entry from a week before the move, after a conversation with old man Tom. I call him old man Tom, because that's what everybody called him. It's how he was known, and it was how I thought of him. The scene is him in his pale ivory colored Chevy pickup that looked like it had been through a demolition derby, had never been washed. His elbow sticking out as he rests his arm on the truck's door at the open window. Khaki work clothes and dark brown hat with brim all the way around. Tom was thin and walked like a stork. The corners of his mouth had a permanent brown stain from "backer." His eyes were the pale blue of a winter sky. They were a bit unsettling, they looked so cold. My entry for October 24: Advice from Tom Pruitt: The proper way to wear insulated boots is to warm your feet and put the boots on. This is to warm the inside of the boots. You take them off and warm your feet again, then put the boots back on. Your feet will be warm all day. Tom said, "After I thought about that awhile, I could see the reason in it." Tom talking about the cows: He said you have to talk to them softly. When they are sold and bought they travel in trucks to strange places, get shuffled around at auctions with people all around them. By the time they get to the farm, they've been shuffled around so much they're afraid of people. He said if you give them sweet grain they begin to trust and like you. They will come to you when you walk through the pasture rather than run from you or attack. He said be gentle with them. He said he can drive his truck right into the herd and they won't run away.

 

 

air bellows outdoor art museum

 

Earlier this evening hearing the NPR news at about ten minutes to six, the news guy was talking about some reprehensible white male behavior by two yoyos in some Yankee city and called them hillbillies. My back went up. I thought, Hillbillies? You mean city-slickers, city boys like you. Don't be comparing ignorant city behavior to mountain people you know nothing about. I was thinking, what else can he say? Every other derogatory term is off limits by way of political correctness. White man hillbillies are ok to use for demeaning examples. It's white man the non-prejudiced people are prejudiced against. At first, it grated my nerves. But I remembered: it keeps them away. The more ignorant the flatlanders think the hill people are, all the better if it keeps them away. Wrong Turn North Carolina is even worse than Wrong Turn West Virginia. They say the way you know the toothbrush was invented in West Virginia is anyplace else it would have been called a teethbrush. One thing I and other hillbillies like about this Depression we've been in since year 2000, it put an end to tourism. The local Chamber and a women's club of white middle-class women from Florida and the suburbs of North Carolina cities, who gather in a club to get to know people, think up cosmetic ways to make Sparta attractive. They are a whole chapter unto themselves, the busy dwarves that never do anything. They get their pictures in the paper and pat each other on the back, getting credit. Now the flatlanders can't afford the gas for a drive to the mountains to tell them ignernt hillbillies they don't know nothin. We've got more brilliant flatlanders now than we can stand. The mountain people don't mind people from the suburbs moving here to be in the exurbs, if they could show a little respect. Unfortunately, the people coming in here from outside have spent their lives watching television and know nothing of respect. They look down on the toothless illiterate they see in everybody. They're so high up the mountain people don't even see them.

   

air bellows outdoor art museum 

 

Can't say I knew much about respect, myself, in the first years. I learned gradually the importance of respect in mountain culture. Diplomacy I learned in the mountains. It is a world of diplomatic decorum in conversation between mountain people. I took to it happily, liked living among people who regarded one another diplomatically. It is the first thing I see when I get in a city. Many times in a city I am tempted to say, If you lived where I live, you'd have quit talking like that in first grade. You'd have had your ass kicked until you shut your damn mouth. In the mountains, a lot of people have short tempers, and you don't always know who it is, though you mostly do. You don't provoke anybody. You don't disrespect anybody, ever, unless you're ready for a fight that could turn into a gunfight really fast. You don't get away with calling a man a son of a bitch; that's slandering his mama, and she aint got nothin to do with whatever the problem at hand may be. Much of this tradition in the culture, being respectful of others and diplomatic, comes from history, the old days, the old ways, not very far back in time when every man carried a gun for hunting and protection. These mountains were wild for a long time in the old days. About all the men drank. Many of them had short tempers. You walk softly among drunk short-tempered men quicker with their guns drunk than sober. The diplomacy that became a way of life stays with the culture now that the men are not drinking so much anymore or carrying guns. They have access to one right away, but most often are not carrying. I like the diplomacy in the culture. Thought I'd look through the notebooks I kept in the early years. Different notations trigger memories. Old man Tom always carried a .32 revolver in his belt in front when he walked into a pasture with a bull. He told me about bulls and I observed what he said to be true. You might think one is calm and tame, think nothing of it. One day you're unsuspecting and you better look out. Bulls are not predictable. Looking back to the days of slinging a scythe through briar patches, briars raking across my face. It's the best way to get rid of them without using chemicals. Cut them back a couple years in a row and they don't return. There was a time Tom seemed so timeless, so outside time, it was not conceivable there would be a time without Tom. He stayed in place all his life and the world changed around him.    

 

air bellows outdoor art museum

 

 

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