The house had evolved to a condition that a realtor would say was beyond Handyman Special. Its beauty caught our eye as we rolled past, so we backed up. the silver Prius turned into the gravel drive to join the line up of dented and rusted 30+ year old trucks and cars parked in the weeds. As we walked toward the old whitewashed farmhouse which was perched on a high hill distantly overlooking the busy traffic of Old Hickory Boulevard above Nashville, we noticed the side door of the newest old car, a ford van, cocked open and a heavy woman on an oxygen tank seated inside. She was using the van as a lawn chair and having Sunday afternoon chitchat with the occupants of the farm house who were sitting on the wooden steps of the back porch. The heavyset older man dressed in worn overalls, and presumably his wife, dressed in a cotton housedress from the 1950s looked like they came from one of those WPA depression era photographs, as did the house, and the setting of the yard, where I imagined that many a grubworm had lost its life to the spear of a chickens beak over the decades. At present, only a bobtailed tabby tomcat presided over the yard. That cats got an attitude. hes mean. His mama was mean. He comes from a long line of mean. I made a mental note to save that line for a future song. I was very matter-of-factly warned not to pet him, of course, after Id already petted him a few times. I think if you dont assume mean, you wont get mean. Anyway my friend Robert started up some chit chat with these folks and we hung around there in the drive for an unwatched amount of time, as country folks do, when visiting on Sundays. We dont look at our watches when chatting with the neighbors. We have all the time in the world. Their accents were heavy, from another era, so heavy, in fact, that I had translate a couple times to my Arkansas friend who had trouble understanding. I dont know why my Illinois ears could understand that ancient lilt, but it could. In the course of the conversation we found out about the neighborhood, their family, their history, and the fact that they were deeply rooted to that farmhouse and that yard, no matter what went on on the other side of the overgrown wooden and barbed wired fence that surrounded it. I was raised in this house. We were offered $150,000 for this house by one old boy, and we turned him down. Then come another old boy and offered $175,000. Aint no amount of money gonna get this property. Obviously, those old boys didnt know the power of history and roots. Stronger than money. Stronger than almost anything. We left there with a little bit of that strength, and a headful of tips on how to survive in a world gone mad, from the perspective of an old Tennessee farm couple who had nothing, nothing but an old house, and their history, which in my opinion, made them richer than all their neighbors.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 15:05:42 +0000
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