Mood:
lyricalNow Playing: Home vs. the Homeplace
Topic: The Homeplace
Recent events have me thinking about homes. It is a new thing for me, having my own house as opposed to an apartment. And being an Appalachian, I'm thinking about it hard. I've finally joined a long line of my ancestors who have created new homes in new places. Granted, I didn't hop a ship and sail across the Atlantic, ride a wagon train across the mountains, or have to build my own house out of native materials. I don't envy that, and can certainly appreciate the hardiness of the family I came from. Although I've not had to live the tough lives of, say, my great-great-great grandparents who fought in the Civil War to protect the very bit of land they lived on, I did fight with credit ratings. There is not comparison, but it was none the less stressful.
There are things, though - good things - that I inherited from Mom & Dad, Granny, and all the others who have come before me. For example, I can't wait to plant lilacs in my yard - saplings from Granny's lilac bush that have grown on our mountain since she planted them in the 1920s.
These are Granny's purple lilacs - soon to be growing in my yard in Morgantown. Granny is my great-grandmother Mary Burns, who lived next door to us until she passed away in 1988. She was the last grandmother I had, and she and my great-grandma Tabitha "Bithey" died within two weeks of each other. I was 13 then. Still today, though, we remember them both fondly. They were both good country women who raised large families.
Granny was a Germany Valley farm girl. When she was young, she had a white horse that she rode around the hills and farms, with her long blonde hair flying behind her. This would have been the early 1910s. Her father was a tenant farmer, traveling from farm to farm finding work. She actually lived and grew up in a log cabin called Fiddler's Green, which still partly stands in the Harman Hills of Germany Valley.
My great-grandfather Don & Grandma Mary "Granny" in the 1950s.
It was my brother's remembrances of the 1985 flood that made me think of Granny. I remember shortly after the flood, the relief agencies came in and started handing out stuff to all the people like us who had been affected. On one occassion, Granny and Mom had gone to Franklin to the churches (after the mudslides had been moved off the North Mountain roads). One of the women asked Granny what condition her house was in, and Granny said something like, "Oh my it's full of mud. I don't know if it will ever get cleaned out". Well then the woman turned to my mother and asked her, "What's your house like?" and Granny piped up, "Oh, her house is as bad as mine, she lives right next door to me - there's mud all over in it."
As the woman was gathering up cleaning supplies for them to take home, Mom whispered, "Granny! You just lied to a woman in a CHURCH!"
To which Granny replied, "No I didn't! Both our houses are full of mud - them kids have been tracking it in the house since the first day of the flood!"
Granny always had a way with words - and there are many reasons why I miss her. She truly is a lady to remember!
