If you look from my living room into my backyard, you will see an old iron-metal wagon wheel leaning against a tree. Sometimes I sit and look at that wheel and imagine the stories I could learn from it. You see, it didn’t come from around here… Virginia, which is full of its own history and stories. No, this wheel’s story comes from another place…another time.
Last month, I was visiting my brother in Kentucky. He asked me if I would want to ride along to Jacksboro, Tennessee, the next morning, stay a few hours and be back to his house by lunch. This involved leaving at 3 am. I was so tempted to say no, because I do love my morning sleeping hours. But I had not been back to Jacksboro since my mom and I went for the Richardson Reunion five years ago.
Jacksboro is an important place to me. It is right near all the action that took place so many years ago with the Tennessee Valley Association, For you see, my relatives lived right where Norris lake is now. My ancestors had to leave their homes for higher ground for the government wanted to put a manmade lake in their valley. So they just moved…up. Up to Jacksboro. Jacksboro is a little tiny town…the kind that you would miss if you blinked. But from the town, you start going up the mountain and many folks lived up there. Most of my dad’s family did. My history is there…and when I am there, I feel that history all the way down to my bones.
My great-grandparents, Hattie Gaylor and Lee Richardon, did well for themselves. They owned about 300 acres and they farmed the land. From the time I was born, my father would take me there every summer to visit his grandparents. We called them Grandpa and Grandma Richardson. As I grew, I used to roam the rolling hills that my family owned, with the barb wire fences separating the fields, the crops growing, and the cows (and that bull we ran from) chewing their cud. It was a world that didn’t exist back home in Ohio, the Midwest flat lands! Even as a child, I could close my eyes and see great grandparents working in the fields, their 9 children helping them. I heard the stories Grandma Richardson used to tell us of days that she remembered with such clarity. She lived to be 104…but she died in 1990….so long ago, it seems to me. Now her home is rundown and empty….a terrible sight to see. But one of her grandchildren still raise hogs and cattle on that farmland.
So that day, when I agreed to get up when it was still dark and take that 4 hour trip with my brother, I was thinking that I had the chance to see it all again. So much had changed and that made me sad. We went through her ransacked house and I tried not to cry. The very same couch she would sit on and tell us her stories still sat there in ruins. The bed she would sleep in, still there but destroyed! I found a pair of her shoes, one of her purses and some cards she wrapped in red ribbon.
But as we were leaving, we drove by the house in their side yard. The one with the cellar….the one where grandma would take us as she got her preserves or her canned green beans that she had put away and needed to cook for us on her wood stove. I asked my brother to stop…could we look in it? Could I take one whiff of that cellar smell that was so familiar to me. We could hardly open the door….my brother stepped in, hoping to avoid any creatures hanging around. But he saw something! Leaning against one of the walls were two old wagon wheels! He wanted one to take home….it was soooo big. But he wanted to use it as a decoration in his yard. Did I want one?, he asked me…….I thought, oh, that’s big and we are far from home…what will Steve think? But I said….YES! I did!! So we loaded the second one….took it back to Kentucky and then into our van and back to Virginia.
Now that old wheel, that sat so many years in an old cellar, of a home where no one lived anymore, where there was nothing left but memories, was sitting at my home. We leaned it against our back tree in the back yard. It looks good there! And it makes me think. I can now imagine about the Richardson land from my own yard in Virginia. I look at the wheel and wonder if my great grandfather had it on his hay wagon…for that is what it looks like…a hay wagon wheel. I imagine him in the hot, Tennessee sun, with his boys, working hard in the fields…the wheels slowly turning as they make their way up and down the rows of crops they planted themselves.
Then I remember that my dad spent his summers there. His father died when he was 5. His mom wanted him to spend time with men. So he would go to Cincinnati to stay with an uncle or he would go to Tennessee to spend time with his grandfather. Dad told me how he would work out in the fields sometimes and help. He told of riding the hay, drinking cool water and working hard. So now, I look at that wheel and wonder if it could possibly be one of the wheels of the hay wagon carrying a teenage boy, who had lost his father, but kept touch with him through his family? Did my dad hoist himself over that same wheel that now leans against the tree in my yard! What a thought! I wonder what he would have thought if it were true? Could he imagine being married someday with a daughter who would miss him when he was gone and miss the family that he introduced her to when she was born? Could he have realized that he could put love of family and love of land in that little girl? Would he had ever thought as he noticed the wheel of the wagon he was riding in that hot day, would 50 years later be in Kentucky at a son’s home and in Virginia at a daughter’s home? I wonder and I wonder!! These are the thoughts that tumble around in my mind as I look out my living room windows at the old wagon wheel in my back yard…..oh how I wish that wheel could answer my questions!!
Last month, I was visiting my brother in Kentucky. He asked me if I would want to ride along to Jacksboro, Tennessee, the next morning, stay a few hours and be back to his house by lunch. This involved leaving at 3 am. I was so tempted to say no, because I do love my morning sleeping hours. But I had not been back to Jacksboro since my mom and I went for the Richardson Reunion five years ago.
Jacksboro is an important place to me. It is right near all the action that took place so many years ago with the Tennessee Valley Association, For you see, my relatives lived right where Norris lake is now. My ancestors had to leave their homes for higher ground for the government wanted to put a manmade lake in their valley. So they just moved…up. Up to Jacksboro. Jacksboro is a little tiny town…the kind that you would miss if you blinked. But from the town, you start going up the mountain and many folks lived up there. Most of my dad’s family did. My history is there…and when I am there, I feel that history all the way down to my bones.
My great-grandparents, Hattie Gaylor and Lee Richardon, did well for themselves. They owned about 300 acres and they farmed the land. From the time I was born, my father would take me there every summer to visit his grandparents. We called them Grandpa and Grandma Richardson. As I grew, I used to roam the rolling hills that my family owned, with the barb wire fences separating the fields, the crops growing, and the cows (and that bull we ran from) chewing their cud. It was a world that didn’t exist back home in Ohio, the Midwest flat lands! Even as a child, I could close my eyes and see great grandparents working in the fields, their 9 children helping them. I heard the stories Grandma Richardson used to tell us of days that she remembered with such clarity. She lived to be 104…but she died in 1990….so long ago, it seems to me. Now her home is rundown and empty….a terrible sight to see. But one of her grandchildren still raise hogs and cattle on that farmland.
So that day, when I agreed to get up when it was still dark and take that 4 hour trip with my brother, I was thinking that I had the chance to see it all again. So much had changed and that made me sad. We went through her ransacked house and I tried not to cry. The very same couch she would sit on and tell us her stories still sat there in ruins. The bed she would sleep in, still there but destroyed! I found a pair of her shoes, one of her purses and some cards she wrapped in red ribbon.
But as we were leaving, we drove by the house in their side yard. The one with the cellar….the one where grandma would take us as she got her preserves or her canned green beans that she had put away and needed to cook for us on her wood stove. I asked my brother to stop…could we look in it? Could I take one whiff of that cellar smell that was so familiar to me. We could hardly open the door….my brother stepped in, hoping to avoid any creatures hanging around. But he saw something! Leaning against one of the walls were two old wagon wheels! He wanted one to take home….it was soooo big. But he wanted to use it as a decoration in his yard. Did I want one?, he asked me…….I thought, oh, that’s big and we are far from home…what will Steve think? But I said….YES! I did!! So we loaded the second one….took it back to Kentucky and then into our van and back to Virginia.
Now that old wheel, that sat so many years in an old cellar, of a home where no one lived anymore, where there was nothing left but memories, was sitting at my home. We leaned it against our back tree in the back yard. It looks good there! And it makes me think. I can now imagine about the Richardson land from my own yard in Virginia. I look at the wheel and wonder if my great grandfather had it on his hay wagon…for that is what it looks like…a hay wagon wheel. I imagine him in the hot, Tennessee sun, with his boys, working hard in the fields…the wheels slowly turning as they make their way up and down the rows of crops they planted themselves.
Then I remember that my dad spent his summers there. His father died when he was 5. His mom wanted him to spend time with men. So he would go to Cincinnati to stay with an uncle or he would go to Tennessee to spend time with his grandfather. Dad told me how he would work out in the fields sometimes and help. He told of riding the hay, drinking cool water and working hard. So now, I look at that wheel and wonder if it could possibly be one of the wheels of the hay wagon carrying a teenage boy, who had lost his father, but kept touch with him through his family? Did my dad hoist himself over that same wheel that now leans against the tree in my yard! What a thought! I wonder what he would have thought if it were true? Could he imagine being married someday with a daughter who would miss him when he was gone and miss the family that he introduced her to when she was born? Could he have realized that he could put love of family and love of land in that little girl? Would he had ever thought as he noticed the wheel of the wagon he was riding in that hot day, would 50 years later be in Kentucky at a son’s home and in Virginia at a daughter’s home? I wonder and I wonder!! These are the thoughts that tumble around in my mind as I look out my living room windows at the old wagon wheel in my back yard…..oh how I wish that wheel could answer my questions!!
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