Long,
long ago—when I was just a little kid, my family visited
the graves of our dead relatives not only on Decoration Day, as Memorial Day
was known then, but also on every holiday and at the change of seasons. Among Civil
War and other war veterans, upper-crust titans, and lower-caste farmers of our
region of Southern Ohio, most of my deceased maternal kin lay in our designated
plot of the old cemetery. When spring changed to summer, we thinned the
old-fashioned lilies of the valley and irises on their graves and then
supplemented them with geraniums and petunias. We embellished each grave with perky
little American flags, stars and stripes that waved patriotically from their wooden
pegs. As the weather turned brisk again, we planted pumpkin-colored chrysanthemums
at each headstone, the ebullient faces of the flowers reflecting the last rays
of the sun. Next came festive Christmas wreaths, and finally, grave blankets of
fresh hay before the January freezes blew in on the frigid north winds. There
was never any second thought about those tasks of caring for the graves of our
departed loved-ones. It was as natural and as necessary to us as breathing.
Back when my mother and her siblings were young, and to accommodate the whole large brood, Roger and Smoky, the team of workhorses, straining against their leather harnesses, pulled my grandparent’s heavy flatbed wagon on visits to the graveyard. Taking a rare break from the demanding chores of their farm, Mommaw and Poppaw were at the helm of the wagon. Dean, the baby of the family, sat between his parents on the high seat of the buckboard, a vantage point that looked out over the ample rumps of the horses. Piled in the bed of the buckboard, the seven other children sat on bound bundles of hay perched vicariously on the gaping floorboards of the conveyance. In perfect harmony and at the top of their lungs, and accompanied by Uncle Bob and Uncle Bussy on their mandolins, the group sang the old song, “On Top of Old Smoky,” while the groaning wagon appeared in danger of imploding from the weight of its human cargo and the rough terrain that suffered its challenged wheels and chassis. As the first grandchildren born to the family, my brother and I also rode in that wagon on some of those excursions, singing that old song in unison with our aunts and uncles at the top of our voices. As the newest youngsters in the family, it was we who then got to ride between Mommaw and Poppaw on the high seat that gave view of the broad backs of Roger and Smoky. I was a grown woman with a husband as well as children of my own when suddenly one day it dawned on me that the song was about the Smoky Mountains rather than a horse named Smoky. My Uncle Dean and I, during every gloriously long and adventure-filled summer of my young life on the farm, rode bare back together on top of our own Smoky many times, often singing the song. It was natural that the song took on the meaning of riding Smoky, the horse.
I
still can see in my mind’s eye the wobbly wheels of the buckboard and the
iron-shod hooves of the horses kicking up clouds of dust on the deeply-rutted
mud-caked lane that opened onto that hillside cemetery, the accumulated clamor
of buckboard, horses, and human beings setting in motion the flight of collected
birds in an old oak tree at the edge of the plot, the overlapped and snapping
black wings of the birds, for those brief moments, nearly blotting out the sun.
One of my prized possessions is the ancient earthenware jug that housed the
grease Poppaw used to lubricate the screeching wheels of the buckboard, the
interior of the jug’s fissured walls coated to this day with black and slick remnants
of the grease. During those journeys, every once in a while, Poppaw yelled,
“Whoa, Roger…Whoa Smoky,” and the buckboard came to a grating halt. While the
horses snorted from their huge nostrils and pawed the ground with their heavy
hooves, their hot bodies steaming and making auras of their perspiration all
around them, down from the high seat on his long legs Poppaw jumped, pulling
that jug from beneath the seat, a stick jutting from its open top. The working
end of the stick wrapped in a grease-blackened cloth, he smeared the axles of
the wheels with it.
Many
years ago, a psychic, supposedly consulting messages pertaining to me that
emanated from an otherworldly realm, where, I am told, such things are known, and
scripted within her crystal ball, told me that as a spiritual practice, I should
visit cemeteries on a regular basis again. I am yet to wrap my head around the
fact that she was privy to the habits of my family of old, and it wasn’t until
I wrote GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, a book about my family, that I set out to
take her counsel seriously.
This
Memorial Day I come to call in my car rather than the old buckboard. At the
entrance to the road that loops the deeply forested community of Cedar Fork in
which the cemetery is located, although over the years several new homesteads
have cropped up among the trees, the road improved, and the bridge that spans
the creek refurbished to modern standards, still it feels as if I am entering
an evolutionary backwater, a safe haven cut off from the rest of the world. Nevertheless,
I am shocked at the greater accumulation of headstones in the cemetery as beneath
the tires of my car the gravel on the lane pops and crunches. And as was the
case during my childhood visits, huddled within the gnarled branches of a wizened
oak tree on the boundary of our family plot, gathered birds are perched. Their
noisy flight as I exit my car and approach the graves briefly blankets the sun.
These days, the graves are almost exclusively under the custodianship of some obscure
caretaker, and I imagine, with the assistance of the watchful birds.
Late, but better than never, I see fully
the meaning behind the psychic’s counsel to visit cemeteries every chance I get.
How easy it is for me to lose my way in imagining that life is one way when it really
is something else. Few things are more accommodating than a cemetery in which
to gain a foothold in reality.©
***
The
above essay is a revised excerpt of Linda Lee Greene’s GUARDIANS AND OTHER
ANGELS, a book of historical fiction based on a true story. To purchase a copy of
the book, please click the following URL: http://goo.gl/imUwKO
Image: Dean and Linda on top of Old Smoky.
#Decoration Day, #Memorial Day, #Southern Ohio, #Cemeteries, #Farmlife,
#GuardiansandOtherAngels, #HistoricalFiction, LindaLeeGreene
