Faith, Folklore, and Friends

  To amuse ourselves on sunny Sunday afternoons, we would walk in the woods. It was cheap, fun, and we actually learned some things.  It also spent a lot of energy that would have otherwise been used for fussing and fighting. We always had free-range chickens, and some would go into the woods and make a nest when they got in a setting mood. We always looked for nests, and now that I am mature, I suspect that is why Mama wanted to go for a walk in the first place. If we found one, we would keep an eye on it and as soon as the little chicks hatched, they would be moved to a safer place. The woods were full of various wildflowers and herbs.  Mayapple is one of the first to appear in the spring, and Mama would point to it and tell us how that during the depression, she and her siblings would dig the roots and carry them to town in a burlap sack. The druggist there would give them a few cents for the roots and their work. There was always sassafras and sometimes some elderberr...

It was all my Grandma's fault for up and dying right after she had paid to have the winter's coal delivered.   Everyone in the neighborhood heated their homes with wood, even the people we thought were rich.  It was what we had done since the first cabins were erected, and we didn't see any sense in changing as late as 1965. Wood was free and plentiful in those Tennessee hills, and almost everyone had a chainsaw by then. Grandma and Grandpa were getting on up in years, and it became difficult to lift the heavy firewood to put in the heater to heat their home. Someone they knew had a good pickup and a source of cheap coal, and with a little encouragement, they bought a used coal heater and had a winter's supply of coal delivered. Oh, it was so good!  They could get enough coal in a bucket to last for most days. Just a few pieces of the burning coal could  put out enough heat for them to stay comfortable.  No more piling enough firewood by the front door...

  I have really tried to love winter.  It is, after all, twenty-five percent of my life, time too precious to waste.  I've tried.  I can't do it.   January moves like a freight train going through Sheffield, Alabama,  during the busiest time of day, while May is like the Maglev that moves across Japan. The days from Christmas to April seems longer than the rest of the year put together. In my recollection of  the cold Januarys of my youth, one in particular stands out.  "Don't think I've ever seen it this cold before," Daddy said, and he had seen more than fifty winters by then. We lived in a shotgun house in a Tennessee holler, which was shaded even on the rare sunny days of winter.   The only source of heat was a big heater in the living room, which warmed that room and the adjoining kitchen.  The bedrooms across the hall (someone had enclosed the dogtrot by then) had no heat at all. One night during the extreme cold, Mama tu...