A Merciful Respite

That's me with my big sister, ready for the trip to Rustin's Lake.

When I was four years old, Mama and Daddy scraped together the down payment to purchase a small house on Sunset Drive in Butler, Georgia.  Butler sits almost exactly between Macon and Columbus, in the middle of the state, where the Piedmont meets the Plain and rolling hills turn into long stretches of loneliness. Back then, Sunset Drive was a dusty dirt road just a couple of miles out of town. Ours was the only house within eyeshot, and other than the twice-daily school bus, traffic was non-existent.  The yard was flat and open, without a single tree. Soon after we moved in, at Mama’s insistence, Daddy planted a Sycamore tree for shade. It was only head-high, but he said he was planting for the future. As for immediate relief, there was none in sight. A few big pines in the fields beyond the yard’s edge provided the canopy for our playhouses and forts.

Our simple clapboard house with peeling white paint had a living room, an eat-in kitchen, and three small bedrooms with a bathroom connected by a tiny hallway. There was a small porch on the front of the house. The floors were unfinished hardwood which we later covered with cheap vinyl, the kind that comes in a big roll from the hardware store.  The walls were unpainted sheetrock and remained so for most of my childhood.  In winter the house was heated with propane gas space heaters, one in the hallway to heat the bedrooms, and one in the kitchen to heat the front of the house. In summer a fan was strategically placed in a window in hopes of creating a cross breeze, a futile attempt to keep cool. Daybreak brought the only relief, but by mid-morning each day a heavy blanket of heat and humidity settled in again.

On the most unbearable days, Mama would announce plans to spend the afternoon swimming at Rustin’s Lake, a merciful respite from the relentless heat and the vexatious south Georgia gnat. The buckets of peas and butterbeans to be shelled and the bushels of corn to be shucked and cleaned would wait for tomorrow. This was our version of a summer vacation. The first real vacation that I recall was in the mid-seventies when Mama finally got so hot, tired, and fed-up that she found the courage to drive us all the way to Daytona Beach.

Once the outing to Rustin’s Lake was announced, we scrambled into our bathing suits and raced for the car. My two older siblings and I jockeyed for the front passenger’s seat of our 1961 black Ford Falcon. Whoever got their first claimed it, and the other two grudgingly crawled in back. My younger sister, the baby, was plopped in wherever she would fit. These were the days before car seats and other restraints; we just climbed in, rolled down the windows, and hung on for the ride.

Rustin’s Lake was way out in the country, and the trip involved a maze of dirt roads, a mix of red clay and white sand, sharp turns, some rolling hills, and long flat stretches through farmland and puny forests of scrub oaks and loblolly pines. The swimming pool in town was no longer an option since it had been filled with dirt and cement rather than allow white children and black children to share the same water. It was the 60’s, and the rural south was clinging to its ways.

The last few minutes of the trip were marked by a steep climb, then rapid decent into the lowland where the lake resided. With dust billowing behind, the car bumped across the rickety wooden bridge and shortly came to a stop under the shade of a huge oak tree just up the hill from the lake.  Mr. Rustin always greeted us in bare feet with khaki pants rolled into neat cuffs that hit him about mid shin. Despite his big straw hat, he was deeply wrinkled and brown as a ginger-cake. His feet were wide and strong, the kind that spend most of the year unshod.

As soon as the car came to a stop, we leapt out, yelled our quick respects to Mr. Rustin, and ran squealing down the hill to the lake, leaving Mama behind to handle the baby. We charged straight into the water, taking high choppy steps until we could run no further, then collapsed into cool relief.

Midway through our afternoon vacation, we took a break from swimming to rest on the wooden dock erected near the waters edge. Mama always gave us a few coins to spend at Mr. Rustin’s country store located up the hill next to the big oak tree. Bottled sodas were available in a shiny red Coca Cola chest; it opened from the top and the words “Ice Cold” were painted on the side. We liked Grape Crush, Orange Crush, or Mountain Dew, but Mama always got a co-cola. In a small bottle. She said it tasted better than in a big bottle. Our favorite candies were available at the counter: Mary Janes, Sugar Babies, Butterfingers, Candy Cigarettes, Fireballs, and Bazooka Bubblegum with a comic strip inside. I liked the penny candies best because, for just a dime, I could fill the bottom of one of the little brown paper sacks that Mr. Rustin kept on the wooden counter.

After the obligatory 30-minute delay, we returned to the water to play, swim, float, and roughhouse for as long as Mama would allow. The sad part of the day was when she declared, “It’s time to go home.” We dallied and delayed as long as possible, eventually acquiesced, and trudged up the hill with towels in tow. Tanned and exhausted, we climbed back into the 1961 Ford Falcon and made our way home.

In the Midst of Loss

A bouquet of Sunflowers and Zinnias

I was recently laid off from my 11-year employment with a small, family-owned business. The company has been doing poorly for several years, and I had managed to survive numerous layoffs. But not this latest one. I’m not sure the company will make it, but that’s not my problem any more. My problem is unemployment. This is a new experience for me. I’ve never left a job when it wasn’t my choice. Until now.

Prior to this most recent job I worked for the same company for 16 years; when I left that position, it was on my terms and my timing. It was a huge transition in my life; I was 39 years old and had been planning for several years to make a change. I was vice president of development for a large software company. I traveled regularly to India and back and forth between Atlanta and Boston; I was burned up and burned out. I no longer had any passion for the work I was doing, and I dreamed of more rewarding and fulfilling work and a simpler life. When I resigned, I didn’t know what my next move would be. My plan was to rest for 6 months and use that time to figure it out. During that time I did whatever I wanted which included a lot of gardening, walking, reading, and napping. At the end of the 6 month sabbatical, I “chickened out” and took a job doing exactly the same thing I had done before, except in a much worse situation for a horrible Australian man named Simon. My fear got the best of me - fear of failure, fear of making less money, fear of the unknown. Within weeks of taking this new position I knew I had made a mistake. I was uninspired, stressed, and unhappy. I cried a lot and ate tons of the complimentary candy bars available by the baskets-full in the break room. It was 2000, just before the internet bust, and this little internet startup, like many others, used all form of gimmickry to get employees to work long hours. And we know I’ll do pretty much anything for a candy bar. Within four months, I had gained 20 pounds. And my clarity. I had to resign. The future was still unclear, but I was crystal clear on the present – it did not include this job. In hindsight, I’m thankful for the horrible Australian man who made my life miserable and for the know-it-all software engineers who reported to me – who knew nothing really, but thought they knew everything. Had it not been for these characters, I might have stayed longer, might have wasted more time doing work I dreaded, trying to make something out of nothing.

Shortly after leaving the internet startup, I made the decision to return to school (at age 40) to study horticulture. I did a year-long certificate program at Gwinnett Technical College and LOVED every minute of it. I took a part-time job with a wholesale nursery just to get some experience in the green industry and to see how I liked it. When I finished my horticulture studies, my part-time employer offered me a fulltime job. That is where I have spent the last decade. I started in sales; then moved to account management; then to sales forecasting and production planning. I was so-so at sales, really good at account management, and excelled in the analyst position. When I first took the analyst position, I found the work satisfying. But in recent years as the company declined, I felt less enthusiastic. It’s no fun working for a company that is in decline. It’s much more rewarding when things are thriving and expanding. And it is really no fun being told that your position has been eliminated. I know I did good work; I know I made a valuable contribution; I know the company is in a dire situation. But it’s still hard not to take it personally. When you get laid off at age 51, it’s pretty personal.

I’m sure in time I’ll look back on this as another key turning point in my life – one that marked the end of a period that had run its course and the beginning of a new chapter. I am trying not to panic or make any desperate moves. I have the benefit of severance pay, and I have saved for a rainy day. So I’ll be ok. In the moment, I am fine. It’s when I start worrying about what the future holds that I get into trouble. I’m reminded of a quote from a Wayne Dyer lecture that I listened to recently. He said, “You don’t have any problems; you just think you do.” In the moment, everything is fine. I am sitting in my comfy chair at the cabin, early on a Sunday morning. I am drinking coffee and writing. The doors and windows are open, and there is a nice breeze. The birds are singing. My cat, Rudy is sitting at my side watching me type. My dog, Melvin is snoring at my feet. In every direction there are beautiful views of the hardwood forest. I hear the tic, tic, tic of the clock and the hypnotic whirring of the ceiling fan. In this moment, I don’t have any problems. It’s only when I start thinking about what tomorrow may bring that I can conjure up a problem. But when the present moment brings a problem, we always have the tools to deal with it. The day I was laid off, well, that really was a problem. But I got through it. Loss is a part of life; we lose a job or a loved one or our health takes a turn for the worse. But we always have the ability to get through it. God provides. Even in the midst of loss, by staying present and grateful, we will find our way.

In Memory and Stillness

The Store at McCants Mill Pond
Highway 19N
Butler, Georgia

Recently I drove Highway 19 south from Atlanta to Ellaville to attend the funeral of a dear uncle. It was the second time inside a month that I made this trip; three weeks earlier I had attended my grandmother's funeral in the same small town. Funerals and trips back home are ripe with emotion and can quickly get one thinking about the way things used to be. I slowed well below the speed limit as I entered Taylor County, the place where I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life. Highway 19 used to be a lightly traveled two-lane route, but for years now "they" have been expanding it to a divided 4-lane. Miles and miles of a lonely, sparsely traveled four-lane through the heart of rural south Georgia. I wish they had left it like it was. Like it was back when as far I as knew it took you from my home in Butler to Grandma's house to the south and occasionally Aunt Minnie's house to the north. Later as a teenager I learned from my business education teacher, Mrs. Guy that you could take it all the way to the big city of Atlanta. It was on those trips that I got a glimpse of my future and the possibilities available to me.

Highway 19 dissects McCants Mill Pond on the north side of the county before you enter Butler. When I was 3 years old, we rented a house just up the hill from the pond, just a few paces past the country store where you could buy fish bait, co-colas, salted peanuts, and potted meat. My earliest memories are of this home. Faint, vague memories of french doors, hardwood floors, an outbuilding with a dirt floor, and the country store next door. The house is long gone, but the building that was the store still stands. I must have driven by it a hundred times or more in the years since I left home. But on this day, I slowed for a long look. Then decided to circle back and stop to honor this monument from my childhood. I stood for a while in the late morning sun, in memory and stillness. I thought of my little hands on the store's door handle nearly 50 years earlier. I looked up the hill where our house once stood and thought I heard my laughter echo through the pines.

The Door to the McCants Country Store

"I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age; I am not your destination

I am clinging to my ways . . ."

From "I am a Town" by Mary Chapin Carpenter

Remembering Nettie



1990



My grandmother died last week on Tuesday, May 22nd. She was born December 23, 1912. I remember her saying often in recent years, "I might live to be a hundred." Except she pronounced it "hunderd."  "I might live to be a hunderd," she would say.  And she almost did.  She was the last of her siblings to pass, the last of her generation. Her life spanned a full century, an accomplishment that not many can claim.  But that is certainly not her greatest achievement. As Abraham Lincoln said, "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count; it's the life in your years." And neither precludes the other. She certainly did a lot of living in her 99+ years and left a legacy that included 5 children, 17 grandchildren, 29 great grandchildren, and 2 great great grandchildren.  Her clan was well represented at her service along with some friendly locals who loved her like we did. Many at her service knew her as Grandma; some called her Mama, some Aunt Net, and others Miss Nettie.  All those who called her simply "Net" have already passed on, and she is with them now. Her sisters and brothers, her husband, many friends, and her parents, Maw and Paw as she called them. She was much loved, and I feel she was pleased by the attendance and the outpouring of love from so many.

My memories of Grandma are precious. When I was a very young girl, she lived with my step-granddad (we called him Paw Paw) in a big white farm-style house on Buena Vista Street in Ellaville, Georgia. The house had a big, deep porch that spanned the full width of it with a swing on one end and rocking chairs on the other. Big, old abelia shrubs lined the front of the house. I can still smell them, but it was only in recent years that I realized what they were. The front door was in the center of the porch and opened into a wide central hallway that divided the house into two apartments. Grandma and Paw Paw lived on the left, and I remember my fun, cool, young Aunt Elaine and her new husband living on the right.  There was a ramshackled, shared bath at the end of the hall at the back of the house. The first room on the left housed the console TV where we watched Ed Sullivan and The Lawrence Welk show. It also contained the guest bed where I slept when I spent the night. In my memory I could lie in that bed in the front room and see straight through the next bedroom, the dining room, and into the kitchen. So when Grandma got up early and pulled the cord on the single light bulb that hung from the kitchen ceiling, I could see that she was up. (I'm not sure that you could actually see from the front room all the way back to the kitchen, but that's the way it is in my memory.) Soon enough after Grandma was up, I could smell the coffee percolating and breakfast cooking. She always made eggs, grits, the best buttered toast or maybe even biscuits, and bacon or sausage. Seems like she always had homemade jelly or preserves, usually blackberry from the previous summer's pickings.  I would spend the night with my Grandma many times over the years, and not always in this same house for she moved a number of times, but the essence of the memory is the same.

We visited Grandma every weekend when I was little. Family meals around her big table were common. Every Christmas Eve was spent at her house; then we would make the long drive home. It was only a 30 minute ride, but seemed much longer to a child. By mid-morning on Christmas Day we loaded up the 1961 Ford Falcon and headed back to Grandma's house to show her what Santa had brought and to enjoy her wonderful cooking. She was a gifted southern cook who could throw together a feast in no time and never seemed to stress over it.  She was a hard working woman who somehow always managed to make ends meet. She grew up in poverty and didn't finish school. She worked in the cotton fields, then the cotton mills, and later sewed shirts at Manhattan Shirt Factory in Americus.  She could stretch a dime and never wasted anything - not cardboard or tin foil or old worn out clothes. Everything was reused in some way. She loved to shop at Goodwill and often combined floral prints with plaids or whatever struck her fancy. She was not concerned with fashion; if she liked it she wore it. She never studied music but could play by ear; I heard she could play the piano, but I never got to witness it. Many times I enjoyed her harmonica playing. One Christmas comes to mind - late on Christmas Eve she played into the wee hours while we all laughed and danced. She had a hearty laugh that could easily turn into a snort.  She loved story-telling and often shared stories from her childhood. She enjoyed gardening, berry picking, canning, cooking, rocking on the porch and talking with family and friends. She loved coffee - not just the drink, but the ritual surrounding it;  I can still hear her asking, "you want some coffee?" One of her favorite treats was an occasional co-cola and snickers bar.  She was a hopeless romantic and loved a good looking man, especially if he could play the guitar and sing.   She was strong-willed, disciplined, and fiercely loyal to her own.  She loved her family, her home, her town, her church, and her God. And we loved her.

May, 2004