Musical Beginnings

I have no idea if either of my parents had any musical leanings or longings. By the time I came along, if they did listen to music or sing or play anything, I never witnessed any of it. Mom did occasionally listen to music on the radio and I'd heard tell that Daddy was a great dancer once upon a time, but I did not grow up in a house filled with music. There were no family sing-alongs or performances. I was not musically influenced or inspired by my parents.

My siblings dabbled in piano. I guess they took some lessons. Mac played this same piece over and over. I think it was a Bach etude. Drove me crazy. I don't really remember Maggie playing although I do seem to recall a time when she taught me the dual Chopsticks thing. We had a piano because Granddaddy thought "the children" (meaning Mac and Maggie) should have one.

Maggie taught me to sing my first song, Herman's Hermits', "I'm Henry the Eighth," or whatever it was called, complete with a bad Southern hillbilly attempt at a British accent. "And every one was a 'enery..." I loved shouting, "Second verse, same as the first!"

I suppose she was trying to make up for teasing me about not being able to sing "Happy Birthday." If I'd known then what I knew now (I consider Happy Birthday to be a tuneless funeral dirge), that wouldn't have fazed me. But I didn't and I took it quite personally and once I was old enough, I began diligently singing along to her records. I had, apparently, a good ear. She doesn't make fun of me any more.

Grandmom had an organ. I don't remember ever hearing her play. I loved fooling around on it, though, pulling out all the stops, literally, and messing about with the pedals. The loudness was quite satisfying. I have no idea why she had one.

The same grandparents had a stereo and we did sometimes listen to music, especially at Christmas. Bing Crosby's White Christmas comes to mind. And Firestone Christmas albums.

I don't remember us having a home stereo but fairly early on, I must've either had my own record player or used Maggie's, because one record I loved to listen to was Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who. The piece about the "pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them" riding a bicycle scared the beejeezus out of me! And I loved the one about the woman with a bunch of children, all named Dave. "Come into the house, Dave!" she would yell, and they'd all come running.

At some point I got ahold of a copy of The Charge of the Light Brigade. My, oh, my, did I love the dramatic grandeur of that record. To this day, I have a thing for anthemic, larger-than-life music.

I also had one of the Firestone records. "Do you hear what I hear?" I loved that one.

The summer before fourth grade, my brother's boyfriend and my brother lived with us for a brief period of time. (I have no idea where they stayed or how this came to be. Quite shocking, really.) The boyfriend, Dan, played the trumpet and had it with him and he let me fool around with it. I was smitten. So when it came time to join the band that school year, I knew what I wanted to play: the trumpet. And when the instruments came in and I was handed mine, I'd been given a cornet. Now, perhaps this was an honest mistake but I did not read it that way at all. I was indignant! I felt certain that Mr. Hurt pulled a switcheroo based on me being a girl and that girls shouldn't play trumpets and cornets were more "feminine." I felt certain he hoped I wouldn't know. Wrong, Mr. Hurt. Wrong. Innocent mistake or not, let me just say, I got my trumpet.

I took the trumpet, and the idea that Mr. Hurt thought a girl shouldn't play one, very seriously. And spending weeks just blowing on the mouthpiece just didn't cut it. So I found two pieces of sheet music in the piano bench, "The Theme from Hawaii Five-O" and "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme," with which I was familiar, and taught myself how to play them. This was the musical equivalent of refusing to use training wheels when I learned to ride a bike. I'd show him, by God.

I guess there are two main paths to music: either you're born into it in some way, or you are drawn to it as a form of rebellion. Mine was obviously the latter. Maggie says I can't sing. I teach myself to sing. Mr. Hurt thinks girls shouldn't play the trumpet, I excel at it.

What started my songwriting and guitar playing? Hanging out with my Hippie sister and her boyfriend. They were older, cool, not rednecks, and NOT country. So, rebellion against the dullards that surrounded me, rebellion against living the expected life. Once Emily and I started writing and playing together, we planned to put our guitars on our backs and ride our bikes across the country, playing wherever we stopped.

I do not regret that we didn't ever make that bike ride. But I do regret that I did not learn to play the piano. I took lessons in my early teen years, but didn't stick with it very long. I tried again in college and enjoyed "class piano," but I wasn't really able to master the whole left hand/right hand thing by that point. I managed to get through the piece I chose, "The Moon's a Harsh Mistress," but not very fluently. I do still have hope that someday I might settle in enough to actually learn to play.

Big Apple Band On the Run

To be honest, I don't really remember the exact content or sequence of events. What I have are little vignettes, stand alones without context or fluidity. I can't really string everything together properly.

I know KoKoKu was booked for a gig at Folk City soon after our open mic. (Yes, of course we said, "Yes!") I know we played there more than once. On another occasion we opened for Peter Tork, of The Monkees. I remember hanging out in the basement "green room" with him. He was bitter about The Monkees. Not long after, they embarked on a reunion tour. I guess he managed to put his hard feelings aside. On another occasion we were part of a New Year's Eve show.

But you see, even as I write these things I wonder, "Did that really happen? Is that what happened?" 

Either at the open mic or at another show soon after, a classmate, Cathy, asked to be our manager. She had no experience but then, neither did we, so we said, "OK!" I have to say, she did pretty darn well. (She's now a successful filmmaker and professor-she was clearly up to the task.) In pretty short order she had us booked for several gigs around the city: fundraisers, a radio show, The Speakeasy, The Bitter End. We played gigs with the then up and coming Suzanne Vega and Lori Carson. We had a photo shoot by the East River. And Gio brought a producer on board, someone she had worked with on a previous project. He was keen to get us in the studio.

In other words, a whole lot happened very quickly. It seems hard to believe, but I think the whole thing only lasted about nine months, start to finish. Unfortunately for me, the emotional fallout of the band's break up lasted for many, many years.

So there we were, poised to go into the studio, making really good headway into the business. Rising stars. Gio had moved from upstate New York into the city in order to make everything easier. We all had girlfriends. Life was good!

And then we had a band meeting. I can remember us sitting around the table at Cathy's apartment on the Lower East Side. Delancey Street, I think. And Gio quitting, giving us some nonsense about her being more "professional" than we (Emily and I) were, knowing how to dress in a more commercially acceptable way.

You know, I guess she was saying we were coming across as too butch, which is kind of funny, given that all three of us were pretty butch.

I don't really know what happened. And you know how relationships are. It takes two and all that, only in this case it took three or more. I know that I was having a crisis of conscious about being a professional musician: was it really important? I think Gio was having a fear of success crisis. As for Emily, well, I don't know. I suppose in one way or another, we were all having our individual crises.

I think the bottom line was that it was a relationship crisis. We'd fallen in love, hard, and had many magical music moments together. Then, right on schedule (meaning, at about the six month mark), we all started having doubts. And as many relationships do once they reach this point, the make or break point, we broke.

Big Apple Band

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence in 1981, I lived in New York for the next 7 years. Those were heady times. New York in the 80's may have been better than New York in the 70's, but not by much. And I loved it. What better place to be in my 20's?

Emily found a place on E. 12th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues, at the time a borderline OK street. The East Village in general was pretty sketchy. Our building, however, was a co-op (this was a new thing back then) and the owner, Dieter something or other, managed to get permission from the other tenants to rent to us. I think he (and his wife?) actually lived in Germany and our apartment was an investment.

The apartment was quite nice. It was on the 2nd or 3rd floor, covering the left half of the floor, front to back. The front windows opened onto 12th Street. We had a back door that opened onto the roof. Huh. I guess we were on the 3rd floor, then. It had hardwood floors. And it wasn't very expensive. As a matter of fact (and you will find this hard to believe), I never paid more than $575 for an apartment in New York, and only one was kind of questionable.

I wonder now what we ate. I only remember going to the little Chinese take-out place around the corner. It was a walk-up place, long and skinny. No tables, just a man at a counter to take your order. I loved getting take-out. It was so cheap! I also loved buying challah bread. But did we cook? Shop? What was in our fridge? The only thing I ever really remember eating in that apartment was pesto with Italian bread. Gio had made some and brought it to a KoKoKu rehearsal. It was my first time having pesto. I was hooked.

I remember rehearsing in that apartment. KoKoKu was in full, albeit what would turn out to be a tragically short, swing. I remember playing Gio's electric guitar (a Gretsch, I think) and her making a recording of it, a rough cut of "Quite Happy." I wrote that song on the electric and have never been able to play it as well on the acoustic. Damn bar chords. Plus, it just doesn't have the same movement.

KoKoKu. I still think that's a cool name, 30 years later. Gio came up with it. She told us it was the name of a Laurie Anderson song. It fit because, as Gio said, Emily and I were KoKo and she was Ku.

Emily and I had been playing and writing together for several years, starting in Tennessee then continuing at Sarah Lawrence. (In fact, we are waiting this very moment for delivery of a long lost cassette of one of our concerts at Sarah Lawrence.) One summer day after graduation, Emily and I took the train to wherever Cheryl was living with Gio to rehearse. Only when we got there, Cheryl was in a pissy mood and didn't want to play. Gio piped up, "I'll play with you." Not wanting to have wasted a trip, of course we said, "OK."

My memory is that we all got our guitars and stood in a circle facing each other. Emily and I played one of our songs. Gio joined in, both playing and singing. And when we finished, we looked at each other, mouths hanging open. KoKoKu was born.

After a month or so of rehearsals, it was Gio who suggested we perform at an open mic night somewhere. She picked the famous Folk City. We invited a few friends to go with us one night. We signed up. We waited. I remember the interior of the place. Red. And so many framed photographs of everyone who was anyone in folk music from the 60's and 70's. Then it was our turn. We had three songs. I don't remember which ones we played but I'm guessing "Darkness," "In Your Way," and "Gimme Your Secret." One written by each of us.

I do remember loud applause and when we finished, the owners came up to us immediately and wanted to book us for a gig. KoKoKu was on.

Journey Out of Knoxville

I'm going to have to put the Joyce Saga on hold. In the meantime, let me regale you with some fun facts about my life that you probably do not know. I'm inspired by a friend's FaceBook post.

1) I worked at the same car wash in East Knoxville two different times. Huber's, owned by the Huber brothers, Jimmy and Louie, on Magnolia. The woman who ran the cash register was nicknamed Butch. She chain smoked and pretended to keep an eye on things. Working there was very much as the the movie "Carwash" portrayed. We partied on site as well as off. During the slow times, Lil and I would sit in her car and drink Canadian Mist mixed with Sprite. Sometimes we would slip around the side of the building and smoke a joint. I played my guitar and wrote in my journal and drew. When things were really slow, Jimmy and Louie would send us all home. Then a group of us would buy some beer and head out to one of the many rock quarries in the area and hang out there. I never swam. The car chassis and tires in the water were a deterrent.

2) I did not want to go to college. This is how I ended up working at the car wash the first time for pretty much the entire year after graduation. Mom, however, was very afraid I would turn out like Mac so at her insistence, I finally enrolled in some kind of engineering program at State Technical Institute at Knoxville (S.T.I.K.), now known as Pellissippi. I have no idea how I chose the program. I had no known interest or aptitude in the field. I did briefly enjoy the course(s) in which we got to draw circuit boards. However, by the end of the first week of the second quarter, I was out of there. Somehow my ex-boyfriend and I had ended up in the same class. My recollection is that after class that first week, I told him I was quitting, left, and never went back. This is how I ended up working at the car wash the second time.

3) Two years after graduation, I met a woman at the local gay bar, the Huddle (just off Gay Street, by the way). She got me to join the lesbian softball team, the Animals. That's a whole other story but the point in this context is that she and another woman I met on the team were college graduates. And through them, I met another college graduate. It was because of them, college-educated lesbian Feminists, that I finally felt inspired to go to college. I finally realized that college would be nothing like high school. (S.T.I.K. felt exactly like high school.) So in the fall of 1980, I enrolled at U.T. I declared no major. I took classes that interested me: music history and theory, philosophy of film, life drawing, class piano. And I started living in Ft. Sanders. I loved it all. That was a really good period of my life.

4) However, never one to let moss collect on me, over Thanksgiving of that year, Debbie and I drove up to NY/NJ, she to visit her mom and step-dad, me to visit my friend, Emily, at Sarah Lawrence College. It was a fateful trip. Several of Emily's friends had stayed on campus for the break and we all ended up hanging out together, eating, partying, and going into the city. They all welcomed me with open arms and recruited me. "Hey, you should come to Sarah Lawrence!" they said at the end of our four days together. "OK," I said. So when I got back to Knoxville, I proceeded to apply as a transfer student. I guess the combination of being from the South and my essay on women's music and Meg Christian won the admissions people over. I started in the fall of 1981.

5) The summer of 1982 was the last time I lived in Knoxville for a long time. I came back and lived with Kari and Flash again on Freemason. At least, I think that's where I lived. Anyway, it was that summer that I got a job working at the World's Fair souvenir warehouse. We were responsible for pricing souvenirs. I got real good at slapping price tags on with the pricing gun. We also had to assemble that year's craze, the dealy bobbers (a plastic headband with objects sticking up like ears on springs), as well as foam alligators that were at the end of a wire; people "walked' them around the fairgrounds. The iconic structure for the fair was the Sunsphere (the fair's theme was energy) so there were a million different Sunsphere souvenirs. One was a small metal replica, about five inches high. I clearly remember pricing it at the beginning of the fair for about $25 and laughing at the absurdity. I laughed even more when by the end of the fair it had been reduced to about $5. Even though I worked at the fair, for some reason I thought it was a ridiculous event so I only actually went on the fairgrounds one time and even then I really didn't do anything but walk around. I admit that I regret this now.

The Joyce James Saga, Pt. 2

Soon after meeting, our "sisters in Christ" relationship evolved into a letter writing contest. This was Joyce's idea. The letters would be declarations of our love for each other. Proof. The anticipation of every exchange made me anxious. Would I have written enough? Would Joyce still love me?

I can remember making an exchange during one of the bonfires, in the dark, by the light of the fire. We were off by the parked cars, meeting after sharing furtive glances at one another during the meeting. We exchanged more than one each because we accumulated letters over the course of the days when we couldn't see each other. I distinctly remember one of her letters simply saying, "I love you," written in very large print. Even at the time I thought, "This is cheating," but I said nothing, not wanting to upset her. From the beginning, I understood that I couldn't upset her without risking a big scene.

I don't remember exactly how Joyce conveyed to me that taking her love away from me was an ever-present possibility if I upset her, but she did, and quite effectively. I spent much of the next 3 years tiptoeing around her volatile moods. Hot, cold, indifferent, needy, accusatory, indignant, grandiose, magnanimous.

Today I would quickly recognize that she had a personality disorder and was an alcoholic. And a pedophile. But then, I knew nothing. I was a kid.

At some point, we started talking on the phone. This was before the days of answering machines and call waiting and, like our letter writing contests, talking became another way of proving my love. We had to "talk" for hours. I put that in quotes because often our time on the phone consisted of me being on the phone while she partied with friends, went to the store, or put others on the line to talk to me while she flirted with someone. She was always threatening to be with someone who loved her more than I did.

Wow, I've never written that down before. Doing so makes me feel sick to my stomach. I'm going to have to stop now.

The Joyce James Saga, Pt. 1

That's right. Joyce James, not vice versa. But a saga, none-the-less.

I met Joyce at one of the Jesus People functions. I don't remember whether it was at the coffee house or one of the bonfires. I also don't remember anything about our first meeting, or how it evolved into what it did. In fact, when I stop and try and remember, it's hard to understand how any of it happened. It seems almost unreal, mythological. I also don't remember exactly how old I was, although I think it started the summer after I turned 12.

12. What an impossibly young age, certainly too young to be romantically involved with someone who had graduated from high school and had a baby. Certainly too young to have one single clue about what I was getting into and to understand that Joyce had no business messing with me.

Joyce was 19.

19, African American (this matters because of the time and place, 1972, Maryville, Tennessee, the South), living in Alcoa with her mom and her baby, and an alcoholic (although of course I didn't understand that at the time). She was funny, smart, athletic. And charismatic. However it started, when she showed an interest in me, I felt "chosen," and being chosen by someone was a very powerful drug given that I felt abandoned by my mother, unwanted by my brother, and my sister was largely absent from my life.

The coffee house was above The Love Shop. The Love Shop's previous incarnation was a head shop, owned by my best friend's brother. We used to hang out there and feel really cool. Incense, leather jewelry, beads, black lights, "Jesus sandals," and posters. I guess he must've had pipes and bongs and papers, too, but I don't really remember all that.

But then Johnny got busted and sent away to the work farm and his mother took over the shop and turned it into The Love Shop, a Christian bookstore. Needing to roll with the situation and wanting to still belong somewhere, Diane and I made the transition from budding hippies to Jesus People. This wasn't too difficult given that all the Jesus People were ex-hippies (meaning they no longer smoked pot, supposedly).

I wish I could remember the who and how of everything. I guess because the coffee house was part of The Love Shop, Mom and Daddy didn't worry about me going there. I guess it seemed like a safe place. The thing is, I don't remember Diane's mom every being there. I just remember sitting around on bean bags and cushions and old couches, listening to preaching and guitar playing and singing.

"And that hammer fell
on the wooden nail
through his hand into the cross
and they laughed at him"

I remember being in love with Mickey and being into Courtney (a boy-I plaited his hair one time while he, Diane, and I sat in The Love Shop). I remember Joyce being mad at me for being into Courtney, making fun of me, even though she and I were just "sisters in Christ."

That's how she sold our relationship to me at first. Our love was Christian love, therefore it was all OK.

Oh, it was so not all OK.

Church

I went to my first Catholic mass yesterday morning. The Sisters of St. Francis church in Oldenburg, Indiana. I liked it. However, I suspect it was more like a Unitarian service than a traditional Catholic service, thus making it both accessible and pleasurable. I liked being surrounded by stained glass saints.

I grew up attending First Baptist Church of Maryville. I went to church nursery there (basically kindergarten at the church), which I loved. It was there that I was heading the day Mom snapped my favorite photo of me, wearing my Roy Rogers cowboy outfit and looking over my shoulder as if to say, "Yeah, I'm badass and I know it!" God bless my grandparents for getting that outfit for me from Sears! Of course, even though I tried to convince Mom that everyone was wearing their guns and holsters to church nursery, she didn't believe me so in the photo I am without them and, instead, am unfortunately carrying a flowered lunch box, tulips and a little Dutch girl. Bless her heart, Mom tried for many years to make me be a little girl. Easters were a disaster.

One of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Trentham, was killed in a car wreck when I was 3 or 4. I cried and said to Mom, "Why did she have to die? I wish it had only been a fatal accident!" She gently explained to me what fatal meant.

Mrs. Trentham was replaced by some woman who didn't get me and one rainy day, Micky and Ricky, the twins, and I were chasing each other around the room over some keys. I think one of them had brought a ring full of them from home and I wanted to see them. They were teasing me with them. I am a Taurus. They might as well have been waving a cape. So after them I went. And indignity of indignities, I got in trouble and had to have a time out. Let's just say, this did not endear that teacher to me. In fact, here I am over 45 years later, still feeling disgruntled and wronged. Did I mention that I am a Taurus?

I don't remember whether or not Mom, Daddy, Maggie, and I went to the actual church service on Sundays. I know we went to Sunday School before church and Training Union on Wednesday nights which, if you don't know, are basically bible study classes. And I know we went out to eat on Sundays after church, often to the Blue Circle or Shoney's Big Boy.

My memories of church are sketchy but here are a few: Eddie Seals stepping out from under the stairwell and punching me in the stomach for what I don't know. Flipping pencils during Training Union every time the teacher left the room. Memorizing the books of the Bible. Being Baptized in the tank behind the pulpit. (Thank goodness we didn't have to go over to Pistol Creek!) Having to wear dresses.

About wearing dresses. I put up with that as long as I could wear socks with my patent leather shoes, which was acceptable up until I was, oh, a teenager? At that point I was supposed to switch over to wearing hose. I was having none of it and it was at that point that I stopped going to church. However, lest you be worried about my soul, I soon started going to the Jesus People bonfires and coffee houses and began my short-lived life of "witnessing," which means asking strangers if they've accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior into their souls. Shocking, but true. I did that. I remember going on some sort of Christian retreat at Lake Junaluska and walking around with people, witnessing. I walked up to some poor man who was working in his yard, pamphlets in hand, and asked him that question. I think it's amazing he didn't run us off with a shotgun.

Anyway, I stopped going to church and Mom and Daddy didn't try to force me. Most likely this was more about saving their energy for dealing with Mac and less about really being OK with me not going but regardless, I didn't have to go. I do remember one time when Diane wanted me to spend the night on a Saturday, her mother bargaining with us: I could stay over if I went to church the next day. I do believe that was the last time I went to church until I went to the Unitarian church three years ago.

Long before the hose-wearing line-in-the-sand, I'd become acutely aware of the rampant hypocrisy evident in the differences in behavior in my school mates at school and in church. One boy in particular, Charles, was such a total jerk during the week, only to transform himself into Mr. Pious at church. Of course, he wasn't the only one nor was this glaring difference limited to kids. What I noticed the most was how mean many people were outside of church, only to transform themselves into "loving" Christians on Sundays. So, in truth, I think my rebellion against wearing hose was more about the underlying hypocrisy of being judged at church for what I wore.

I'll save the Jesus People story for another time because it leads into The Joyce Story, which was a long, dark period of my life, but suffice it to say, the real reasons I started going were: 1) they played guitars and sang at the coffee house, 2) they were a bunch of hippies, 3) Mickey (a young woman, not to be confused with one of the twins) went to the bonfires and coffee houses and the retreat and I was enamored, and 4) I actually felt like I belonged and could be myself. Powerful stuff at the age of 12.

Ghost Houses

On the eve of Halloween it seems appropriate to talk about the various houses I have lived in that now no longer exist except in my mind. Ghosts, if you will.

Of course, my childhood home still stands...for now. My feeling is it was waiting for a visit from me before finally deciding to let go and die. I bet that before the end of the year, it will be razed.

When I first moved away from home, I lived in an apartment in an historic house in the Ft. Sanders neighborhood in Knoxville. While living there, a fire happened at the house across the street. A friend escaped. One person died. I remember hosting escapees while the firemen worked to put out the fire.

Ft. Sanders may be an historic area but that hasn't saved the many beautiful Victorians from being unceremoniously torn down by the university and the hospital to make way for parking lots and ugly apartment complexes. Such was the fate of my first apartment. "Jamaica Flats" no longer exists.

As far as I know, every place I lived in New York still exists.

However, the first place I lived in California disappeared in spectacular fashion: in the Berkeley-Oakland Firestorm of 1991. Up in smoke. Gone in a blaze of glory. Nothing left but the chimney and a pile of ashes outlining Beth's big oak desk.

Then there is The Farm. Moved. Left in a field on a hill. Then...gone. It may still exist somewhere but I don't know where so, for all intents and purposes, it's gone, too.

I ask you, is this normal? Have you lost a former abode to a fire, a storm, a bulldozer? If so, have you lost more than one?

I suppose, given how much I have moved, that the odds are in favor of more than one place disappearing but it is still a bit unsettling.

Home Sweet Home

The house we grew up in has been on the market for a while. A few months ago, before leaving California, I looked at the realtor's photos on-line. They were unnerving and tantalizing at the same time. Of course, I have walked/driven/ridden past the house many times over the past 32 years (Mom sold it in 1981). Stopped and marveled at its decrepit state, the same old air conditioner in the window, how huge the trees have gotten, how small the yard seems, the leaves piled ceiling high in the back porch. Wondered who lived there, if anyone lived there.

One time ten years ago, Sissy and I actually walked around the house then entered the woods that lie adjacent to it. Afterwards, Sissy got a migraine. Bad ju ju?

Anyway, as part of the quest I was on while living in Murvul, I decided to ask our realtor if she would be willing to give up a half hour of her time to give us an insider's tour. She agreed. (Sissy and I can't decide if she's a glutton for punishment or if she agrees to work with us so she'll have good stories to tell at her realtors' conferences.)

So one day, after Sissy and I had finished wandering around the Foothills Fall Festival and I'd shown her the plaque that marked where Hale High School used to be and we'd walked the labyrinth I'd discovered in the old Presbyterian cemetery next to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, we met our realtor at the house. She was a few minutes late, so we had time to get ourselves sufficiently weirded out by walking around the house and yard: the same garage door with the hole cut out for Tom, the cat, and still covered with the same flap of carpet; the same mailbox; Mom's concrete planter; the same storm doors; same porch light fixture. But if we thought these things were weird, just wait until we got inside the house.

First, just let me say, you know that thing about things seeming so huge when you're small? Well, this trip confirmed that for me many times over. I don't know if it was because the trees are now HUGE (and there are trees where there used to be none) but the once vast, wide-open yard now seems miniscule. I actually felt claustrophobic standing in it. And inside everything seemed about ten times smaller than when I was a kid: Daddy's walk-in closet, for example. This is the place where I would climb up his dresser onto the shelf and lie there on the blankets and read. When I saw it, I truly believed the subsequent owners must have shortened the depth. It was SO small I couldn't believe a dresser and Daddy's foot locker would even fit in there. The dining room area, the bathrooms, the bedrooms. Everything seemed so tiny. I felt like Alice in Wonderland.

Coupled with the warped size experience was the time warp we went through upon entering. While it's true that subsequent owners and/or tenants had changed the green shag carpet, painted some rooms, removed a wall heater in a bathroom, added a couple of closets in the "master" bedroom, and knocked a couple of holes in the stucco in order to put in air conditioners, everything else was unchanged. Untouched. 32 years later (although certain features had been the same since it had been built in 1948): bathroom sinks, door knobs, bathroom light fixtures, switch plates, light covers, the hardwood floor in the living room (it obviously had not been waxed or treated since Mom and Dad moved out), the stove.

Above is the medicine cabinet in the main bathroom. I can still see Daddy's tin of Pepsodent tooth powder and his shaving brush and razor sitting on the shelves. You can see that no one has bothered to paint inside.

But all that was a mere drop in the time warp bucket compared to the basement. Time stood still down there.

Mom and Daddy put down this piece of linoleum when I was 7 or 8. It was in the play area they created for me, complete with a blackboard, table and chairs, and bookshelves. I remember that one of the conditions for occupancy was periodically mopping the linoleum.

I was terrified of going down these steps alone. I believed something would reach in between from underneath and grab my legs.

My playroom was in the area just past the steps, between the three columns. The linoleum is under the boards that are lying on their sides.

This is what remains of one of Daddy's packing blankets (he was in the furniture business) that was wrapped around this metal support pole so the car door wouldn't get banged up when we opened it.

There were other relics down there: the pie tin that covered the stove flue hole, the hand made wooden shelves, the drain in the floor where Daddy cleaned hundreds of fish, Mac's "experiment" room (and the location of the freezer that held Mom's frozen birds), a card of very old fuses hanging on the wall. But nothing beat finding my handiwork.

The doorway goes into the experiment room, the bluish part of the wall is where the freezer was. All of the graffiti was done by me. Turning and seeing this stopped me dead in my tracks.

Red Nikoban once held meaning. I remember that much, just not what the meaning was. This is part of a larger body of work that included the name of my elementary school-Sam Houston-and  the initials of my high school-M.H.S.

L.M. My initials.

I mean, really. Why wouldn't someone at some point in time paint over this? Even if it had been some stellar piece of street art I would still think the owners or someone would've gotten rid of it. The fact that it's juvenile scribbling makes it even more baffling.

And yet, someone did paint over the hash marks on the bedroom door that showed our growth. Go figure.

Born to be Wild

Actually, I don't know if I was born this way, but I quickly became a wild child at home. Now I can imagine my insides screaming, "See me! Pick me! I'm here!" At the time, I just remained in near-constant motion. If something could be climbed, I was on it. Wrestled? Ditto. Run around? Zoom! Kicked, punched, batted, poked, dragged, thrown...well, you get the picture.

One of my favorite Saturday indoor activities was to turn the T.V. on to the local channel for the Wide World of Wrestling. I would get all wound up because Ron and Don were cheating again and beating up my favorite wrestler, Whitey Caldwell (they'd hit him over the head with a garbage can or folding chair!). Then I'd get out my big orange stuffed bulldog and pounce on him and wrestle him all over the place. Mac told me many years later that I scared the shit out of him when I was doing that.

Of course, the ability to be wild indoors is somewhat limited by space constraints, but as you already know, I did manage to tear around the house on a roller skate boot. And I liked to climb sideways up the door frame, back against one side, feet pressed against the other, and "sit." But most of my wildness took place outside.

Again, you already know that one favorite outside activity was to race around the house, up the hill on one side, around the back, and down the other side, then dive and roll and stand up and take off again, over and over. I also did this on my bike, sans the diving and rolling part. At one point, I built some sort of ramp, just to keep things exciting.

I also enjoyed climbing the pine tree as high as I could go (30 feet?) and sit and look out over the tiny town of Maryville. One time I managed to coerce a neighbor up into that tree. To this day, she tells the story of the time I made her climb that tree. Of course, she tells it with more than a hint of pride that she actually did it. If I wasn't climbing the tree, I might climb up the antenna that ran alongside the chimney to get up on the roof then jump off one corner. "Geronimo!" I remember trying to "parachute" by using an umbrella. Unfortunately, since it was only about a ten foot drop, the umbrella didn't really have time to work.

In addition to more normal outdoor activities, such as riding my bike or going down the slide or playing on the swings or whirl-a-gig, I often took a football or baseball out to the field. There I would throw the ball as high and as far as I could (which was pretty far, if I do say so myself), then run as fast as I could to catch it at the other end.

Man, I wish I still had that kind of strength and energy! Just always in motion, always running headlong into this or that, full of myself. I miss that.

Oh, wait. That's kind of how I am now, only not so much with my body, just with my life. Wild Child, and proud of it.

Living in the Sadness

Ten years ago I took a leave of absence from teaching in California and moved to Maryville. I lived in the neighborhood where I grew up, a block from my childhood home and across the street from where I went to church nursery and church. (If you've seen the photo of me in my cowboy outfit, I'm standing outside the doors of that church.)

Back then, Mom, Daddy, and Mac were still alive and living together out at what we called The Farm, even though it hadn't really been used for that purpose since before Granddaddy bought it. Granddaddy and Grandmom moved there when I was about two. In fact, I have a very clear memory of being in someone's arms and looking down on the red clay in the hole where the foundation was being dug for the new house.

Grandmom died in 1977, a couple of weeks before Sissy got married. Granddaddy continued to live alone at the farm until 1981, when he moved in with Maxie in town. He gave Mom and Daddy the farm. They moved right after I left for Sarah Lawrence in August of that year. They had a couple of years of blissful country living before Mac showed up, unannounced, one day, desperate for a place to live because he had to get away from someone. And there he stayed for the next 25 years until he died in that house.

A little background for you.

Anyway, when I lived here ten years ago, they were all alive and I visited regularly. Daddy spent most of his time "recovering" (from Parkinson's) by lying in his bed and Mom frequently asked me questions like, "Now, who are your parents?" and fed Daisy, the cat, bananas (Alzheimer's), but Mac was, at that point still relatively pleasant to be around.

I actually moved back in order to spend time with Mom and Daddy and, I thought, to help out. Since I hadn't been there in a while (a year or so), it was very obvious to me that things had deteriorated a lot since I had last visited, but I quickly realized that my assessment of the situation was a bit too realistic for everyone at that point. They (and by they I mean Daddy, Mac, and Sissy) were still living in the land of Things Aren't That Bad.

When I discovered that Mom had put the pajamas Sissy had given Daddy for Christmas (and that had been missing for 8 months) in the freezer, Mac's response was that anyone could've made that mistake. In my opinion, that's bad enough, but add to that ludicrous response the fact that he hadn't noticed them in there, nor had he noticed the 40 or 50 unwrapped hamburger patties sitting in the freezer and, well, I think you've got a pretty precarious situation. He was supposed to be taking care of them.

Anyway, what's my point? Ten years ago, they were all alive, but those seven months were some of the hardest of my life in terms of dealing with their deteriorating health and my siblings' resistance to almost everything I felt needed to be done or tried to do in order to deal with the situation. Basically, after several months of fighting an uphill battle with them, I gave up and moved back to California.

Ten years later, here I am again, living in Maryville, not quite as close to where I grew up as last time, but within spitting distance. Only, of course, everyone is dead except Sissy. The Farm doesn't even exist anymore, having been donated and carted off to some unknown destination.

I've been spending much of my free time these past two months walking and biking around town, through my old neighborhood and ones where friends lived; past stores and churches; the elementary, junior and high schools; through the cemetery where my grandparents are buried; the college; and, of course, past The Farm with no house. No family and no house.

I've felt compelled to visit and re-visit. It's almost ritualistic.

The other day I stopped in front of the house and yard where I grew up and stared for the longest time, remembering. Remembering everything that I did there, everything that happened. Gone. Ghosts. All that I was left staring at was a yard. And a house. The past does not exist.

A friend has told me that she feels I am very brave, coming here and living in the sadness of the loss, of the past. She is right, but not about the bravery. Just about facing the sadness. Really, if I'd known that's what I was about to do, I wouldn't have done it. After all, I've managed to avoid it for more than 40 years. I just thought I was coming to buy a house.

"Surprise!" says the Universe.

Back to the Beginning

This all started with hearing William Powers read from his book, Twelve by Twelve: A One Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream. I'd just moved back to Knoxville to recover (hmmm, actually, I guess it was really more uncover) my life. I don't remember why I was drawn to go.  I've gone to very few book readings in my life since college. It was at a neat bookstore. The topic sounded cool. I've always loved small spaces. (As a child, I loved spending time in small spaces: the clothes hamper, the dog house, the shelf in Daddy's walk-in closet.) And I was already intrigued with the idea of living off the grid.

As I remember it, although he did read a little from the book, it was mostly a discussion, an inquiry into his essential question: What's your twelve by twelve? What are you doing, or what do you want to do, to live in a way that is more sustainable, given the limits of many of our resources, to exist in a way that is less antagonistic toward nature and more in harmony with her rhythms and gifts?

I found the question provocative and inspiring. What is my twelve by twelve?

Somehow, this led me to Beardsley Community Farm. I think he mentioned visiting there. I really don't remember. But within a few days of seeing him, I'd called the farm and scheduled a time to get a tour. I think it was late October or early November.

It was a warm day because I remember wearing shorts. I was greeted by the Farm Manager. She was very warm and welcoming. Her enthusiasm and love for the farm were infectious. By the time I left an hour or so later, I'd signed up to come back at the end of the week and volunteer. I had no idea that I was embarking on a life-changing adventure. I love that we never do.

Let me go back to part of the subtitle of Bill's book (that's what he goes by, Bill), "beyond the American dream," because it has relevance to my current direction in life, my recent divergence from my plan. How does one live beyond the American dream? What does that even mean?

So there I was, looking at houses, planning to buy one. That is part of the American dream, right? To own a home. I was going from home-to-home (many of them perfectly cute and seemingly what I was looking for), subdivison-to-subdivision, one planned, square plot of land after another. But rather than feeling excited about the possibilities, I was getting this increasingly boxed in feeling.

After seeing about 20 houses, I allowed myself to acknowledge: I have a dream, but this isn't it. This is not beyond the American dream, it is squarely (pun intended) in the middle of it, in the middle of The Box. My dream isn't to settle into The Box, but to create something outside of it, which is, by necessity, beyond the box.

Live inside my heart and outside the box. That is my twelve-by-twelve.

What's inside my heart? Farming. Homesteading. Animals (goats!). Music. Writing. Playing. Building. Collaboration. Teaching (but not inside the classroom box). Community.

This is my dream and it all began with a book reading.

Finding Oneself

I've tried on more than one occasion over the past 32 years to live in my hometown. 1991. 2003. Now.

I always go into it with a positive attitude and high hopes. But here's the truth: something about this place just rubs me the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong. There are many aspects that I love. Pistol Creek. The greenway. Sandy Springs. Being able to ride my bike around town. Ye Olde Neighborhoods.

But once I'm here for any length of time, my fur starts feeling all mussed up and full of static electricity. I start hissing and swatting.

I'm sure it's left over stuff, unresolved feelings about childhood experiences and, with a goodly amount of analysis, I could probably overcome it. But why bother? Life's too short. Time to accept the fact that I love to visit but don't want to settle here. So, Knoxville, here I come!

The Farm is on hold. Goats, chickens, bees will be experienced vicariously for now. The cart is being put back in its proper position: after the horse.

I am moving in with my very dear friends, Rocky and Chick. A mini-intentional community, if you will. Community, pets, garden, truck. Sounds good to me!

And just how did this happen? Honesty Openness Willingness

Honesty with myself about the fact that during the house hunting process I quickly came to understand that I didn't want to own, didn't want to farm, didn't want to live in the country all by myself.
Openness to a new idea, to saying, "Yes."
Willingness to let go of trying to make my dream happen and instead give it time to come to be.

It's an interesting process, this letting go of who I thought I was, my story, and being willing to pay attention to what my heart is really telling me about myself. I no longer want to do things simply because I can handle them. Or, more importantly, because I should. I want to do things because they resonate, they bring me joy, they feel good.

A fish cannot drown in water.
A bird does not fall in air.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature.

-Mechthilde of Magdeburg

"Part of the blessing and challenge of being human is that we must discover our own God-given nature. This is not some noble, abstract quest, but an inner necessity. For only by living in our own element can we thrive without anxiety. And since human beings are the only life form that can drown and still go to work, the only species that can fall from the sky and still fold laundry, it is imperative that we find that vital element that brings us alive." -Mark Nepo

So, here's to shutting out the Devil voices, to letting go of some imagined person I am supposed to be, to doing what feels right instead of chasing after some imagined Holy Grail of Success.

Namasté

Tour de Murvul

I've been riding my bike around town. On the one hand, I love that I can do this, ride through all my old stomping grounds. On the other, the nostalgia I feel, the longing for the way things used to be, makes the ride a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

And surreal. It is such a strange mix of old and new, of some things being exactly like they were, exactly where they were, 45 years ago, and other things being juxtaposed onto the landscape, replacing or displacing. It's very disorienting. As much time as I've spent here over the past 31 years, it's an aspect I can never quite get used to. It's weird to be standing someplace and know something's different and yet not be able to quite put my finger on it. Or to look at some new development and be completely unable to recall what the area used to look like. That makes me feel guilty, like I'm somehow betraying the memory of my hometown, or like I didn't care enough to memorize every square inch.

And the traffic. Holy smokes! It is, perhaps, the traffic that I am fighting the hardest to accept. The other night, about 9:30, I was driving home from Sissy's. Mind you, she lives out in the country, a good fifteen minutes from downtown. Once upon a time, maybe 5 cars would have passed me at that time of night. This night? 40-50. And this wasn't just as I got closer to the college and town. The stream of cars started passing me when I was still out near her house. I was flabbergasted.

I fight these changes so much. What happened to the Murvul I grew up in?

It's ridiculous, I know. Because let's be honest, if the Murvul I grew up in was so great, why did I leave? And this Murvul is so much more user friendly in terms of being LBGTQ and/or a person of color, in terms of open-mindedness. I mean, a transgender remembrance candlelight vigil in front of the courthouse? A lesbian minister of the UU Church with a wife and adopted child? Banning the display of the Confederate flag on campus?

Radical changes.

It is really hard to "go with the flow," to not put change into categories of good or bad. Change brings, well, changes. They go hand-in-hand. So, I am working on accepting the "good" along with the "bad," trying to simply appreciate the dynamic nature of life, and allow myself to be One with the Universe, the great, big, ever-changing Universe. Things feel better when I do.

Post-Move Pondering

I am slowly regaining my senses. The past four weeks have been a bit of a blur. I don't know which is more disconcerting: flying or driving across the country. Flying, of course, is surreal because you start off in one part of the country and then, fewer than 12 hours later, you're in an entirely different part. It's a slow version of the Transporter. Driving is surreal for kind of the opposite reason. Every day things are just a little bit different so that you don't really notice the fact that, in reality, you are moving very far away from where you started.

As I was writing this, I thought of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: "The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa." -Heisenberg, Uncertainty paper, 1927

What I can say for certain is this: I am completely uncertain as to why I am here. I am in a complete state of unknowing.

Regardless, here I am, and being here, I have the uncomfortable task of living in this unknowing and making peace with letting go of what I thought was going to happen, what I think needs to happen. Making peace with letting go of a pre-determined destination.

The following helps:

"A friend was traveling around Europe, training from city to city. Despite her plans, her interest drew her in different directions, and a path unfolded that she couldn't have foreseen. Each point of discovery led to the next, as if some logic out of view were guiding her. During this phase of her journey, though she often wasn't sure where she was, she never felt lost. It was when she needed to arrive at a certain station at a certain time that she felt she was off course, astray, and at the fringe of where she was supposed to be...All this led her to realize that the more narrow her intentions on any one day, the more she felt behind, late, and lost. In contrast, the wider her net of designs, the more often she felt a sense of discovery.

More often than not, our image of a destination is only a starting point that we cling to needlessly. When we can free up the sense of needing to arrive in a certain place, we lessen the weight of being lost." (The Book of Awakenings)

It's a very strange internal sensation, to feel as if I am beholden to someone, that I have to "make good" on what I said I was going to do. Truly, it is this feeling that causes me suffering, not the situation itself.

So I am working on uncurling my fingers and letting whatever this is become whatever it will be, right now, and not getting stuck on an idea. This is only a starting point. Where it leads, only time will tell.

Homeward Bound

On the eve of moving back home, I find myself thinking about the past and wondering what the past really is. The experiences that I remember are no more real to me than a dream. I know I was there, I know these things happened, and yet my ability to feel connected to them is nonexistent. They are apparitions, flimsy, fleeting, and they often make no more sense in their retelling than a dream does.

What is the past? How do we know something "really happened" if it only exists in one's memory? If memories are real, then why aren't dreams?

It is when I remember the past that I fully grasp that what I think of as real, what I experience as real, is only the present moment. It strikes me that life is like a sparkler, fading almost as soon as it bursts onto the scene.

Pistol Creek

Was Daddy the first person to sell Igloo Ice Chests in Blount County? I don't know the answer to that but he probably was the first (and only) person to take his motor boat down Montvale Road in order to check on people one time when Pistol Creek overflowed and flooded all the nearby houses.

And Jeff, Vicki, and I were probably the first (and only) kids to float on inner tubes in the Sterling's field another time when the creek overflowed. Not the smartest idea, come to think of it. I'm certain the creek water was moving pretty swiftly and we most likely did not give the respect it derserved. But it seemed perfectly natural, hauling inner tubes out to the field. Although, now that I think about that, where did the tubes come from? I think we may have had a blow-up raft, too. It must've been summer.

Pistol Creek. The section that ran down below our house along the edge of the Sterling's field and through the backs of nearby yards was the scene of many an adventure. "Swimming," one time. I put that in quotes because it was a creek, not a river. I must've been pretty little to actually submerse myself. I seem to recall Mom being pretty mad at whoever I was with for that, probably mostly because even forty+ years ago that creek was not viewed as particularly sanitary. (If nothing else, there were plenty of cows upstream.) Or maybe she was mad at me because I went in fully clothed and sneakered.

Standing on the driveway bridge, throwing rocks, tossing sticks, poking at the dead, bloated muskrat that was stuck on a branch that jutted out into the water.

Catching crawdaddies. Lots and lots of them. There's a trick to it. Crawdaddies shoot backwards when they're trying to escape. So after you've carefully lifted rock after rock until you find one hiding, you have to carefully position your net, container, or hand behind it before you startle it. If you're lucky, and it's not, it'll propel itself into your catching device.

One time Robbie and I decided to catch a bunch and sell them for bait. This was not a successful venture, for us or the poor crawdaddies. Looking back, I actually feel pretty bad about that. Prior to this ill-thought-out activity, I think we mostly just caught and released them.

Hands down, the best adventure was digging under the bridge. Robbie had discovered some old bottles that were buried there. I'm not sure why he was digging around there in the first place but he let me in on the secret and we spent several hours over the next few days, unearthing bottles of all shapes and sizes and colors, all obviously quite old. Apparently Robbie had discovered a former trash pile. Or perhaps the dirt fill for the bank of the bridge had come from the dump. We also found pieces of porcelain dolls and buttons and tins and other household items. It was a fantastic treasure hunt!

It seems we may have also tried fishing occasionally but to no avail.

Today the creek is still there, running along Montvale Road, its banks overgrown with weeds and bushes. The bridge is there, too, although in complete disrepair, both ends blocked to prevent people from walking on it. The Sterling's home has been gone for quite some time although I don't know when it was torn down. I just know I kept driving by the field and finding myself thinking, "Something's not right. What's missing?" until I finally realized the house as well as the back apartment building and garage were all gone. Many structures have gone missing from that neighborhood.

But for now the field and creek and woods are still there, just waiting for some sort of development. The land was up for auction not too long ago. It may be difficult to sell because there's long been talk of widening the road which would end up ruining a good part of that property. My prediction is that one day I will turn onto Montvale from 321 and there will be a mini-mart and gas station sitting in the middle of the field.

The Case of the Missing Neighborhood

OK, so I wanted to start this entry off with hard dates but I obviously am not using the right search language to find out when the Lamar Alexander Parkway (State Route 321) was built through downtown Maryville. So for now, let's just say sometime in the 80's. I think that's close enough. I know Mom and Daddy had already moved to the farm and I was no longer living in TN when it happened. Otherwise, I believe it would have been seared into my memory because its construction cut an ugly swath through my old neighborhood.

In order to "align" and widen 321, construction gouged out huge chunks of the surrounding areas, creating a diagonal pathway that resulted in the demolition of businesses and homes: West End Drugs, where I was almost killed by a runaway car when I was 4 or 5 and where I stole Odd Rod cards when I was in 4th grade. All the homes of my friends that lived on Highland. The apartment building my uncle owned. The apartment building next to our house. The apartment building across the street that had the cool garages where we played. The little homes along Pistol Creek. The big ol' home in the woods where the neighborhood "witch" (in other words, elderly, cranky, slightly senile lady), Mrs. Lyles, lived.

Then the Taj Mahal was built and even more of the neighborhood was demolished: the fruit market, the barber shop, more homes, yet another road. Where we once had a perfectly normal-sized and functional Municipal Building we now have a perfectly ridiculously large and ostentatious building with a grand lobby of unused space. It is a classic example of people getting too big for their britches.

And over the years the high school expanded and in so doing, demolished more homes and roads, mostly in order to build parking lots (no one drove to school when I attended). There's something particularly insulting about lovely old homes being torn down for a parking lot.

Today, I can still walk around the old neighborhood and often do when I'm there. Much of it still exists. But every step is punctuated by the absence of some important piece of my history, and it is disconcerting: this is here, but that is gone. In many ways, I've never really gotten over it. I want my neighborhood back!

The Beginning of the End

In my last post in 2008, I wrote that Sissy and I had made the decision to spend Christmas together. I anticipated this being difficult. Little did I know.

Sissy and I spent a fair amount of time going back and forth to the nursing home to see Mom. She was sleeping a lot. She wasn't really eating. In retrospect, it's clear she was preparing to die.

I can't really remember now very much about that time except that we carried on. We brought her clothes Maggie had bought for her, checked in with the nurses, tried to feed her, talked to her, held her hand, sat with her, kissed her forehead. Told her we loved her.

We planned to visit her on Christmas Eve day. Sissy called the nursing home the day before and asked that she be dressed and up in her chair in the Day Room when we arrived. We wanted to eat lunch with her (well, feed her).

When we got there, we went to the Day Room but Mom wasn't there. We asked a nurse where she was but no one seemed to know what was going on. Someone called someone else who said she would bring Mom. We waited. No Mom. Finally, we decided to go to her room.

Mom was in a chair outside her room, slumped over, with something gross coming out of her mouth. It looked like vomit. She didn't respond, wouldn't open her eyes. She looked dead.

Sissy and I started crying. What the fuck was going on?! Was she dead? What was wrong with her?

It was that moment when I knew that if she wasn't already dead, she would be soon. She really was going to die.

I stayed with Mom while Sissy went and got one of the nurses. Mom wasn't dead, but something was obviously wrong. She felt hot. She was sweaty. "Oh," the nurse said, "She has a bladder infection. I should have called you."

Damn right you should have!!! And you should not have gotten her out of bed! Dammit all to hell.

Needless to say, we did not spend Christmas Eve with Mom. We made sure she got put back to bed and was receiving treatment for the infection. We spent the next few days checking in on her. She was responsive only a few times after that. Within a few days, we received a call from, and met with, the hospice nurse, who advised us that Mom was dying. We made the decision to put Mom on hospice. Within a day of that decision, a week after our harrowing Christmas Eve experience, Mom passed on quietly with Sissy at her side.

Hello, Ruby Tuesday

I'm not exactly sure how the McDaniels ended up having real estate dealings with two of Blount County's Big Wigs: Ruby Tuesday and the Coach. But we did.

Granddaddy left the store to Mom. This was when I found out that Granddaddy owned it all along. He built it with O.K. Spears, the father of one of Daddy's good friends, Oliver Spears, who owned a furniture store out off East Broadway. Oliver's son, Tommy, one of my classmates, eventually bought the store from Sissy and me.

Daddy continued going to the store for several years after he retired. It was his home-away-from-home. As previously mentioned, it was a place where his friends and colleagues frequently stopped by to say hello and visit. In addition to the taxidermy and such, he eventually installed a couple of tables filled with Indian artifacts he had found over the course of his life time. He kept the row of chairs and the fridge filled with Coke. Though there was no T.V. in later years, everyone still sat in the chairs and chewed the fat.

However, eventually the Parkinson's prevented him from driving and he stopped being able to go down there on his own. At this point, he and Mom decided it was time to sell. Sissy, heroine of the family saga (I mean this), took it upon herself to get it ready. She spent hours cleaning and sorting and packing. She found a company to do an estate sale.

I just realized that I did not attend the estate sales for the store or the house. I mean, I knew I didn't but it just now hit me that I didn't. What was wrong with me?! (Well, I lived in California, that's what.)

I'm not sure how long after the estate sale happened that Ruby Tuesday expressed an interest in the building. But in January of 2003, they signed a twenty year lease with us and, thankfully, agreed to leave the underground gas storage tanks in place, rather than force Mom and Daddy to pay to have them removed. Soon after the lease was signed, RT began extensive, and expensive, renovations.

Although there are many things about that corporation that are baffling (it is run as a real strange mix of good ol' boy, home spun country-ness and high falutin' big spending that is part of a very strange business "plan"), I have to give them credit on the transformation of the store. They took a stark, former gas station and turned it into a gleaming modern showcase of a building with fancy fixtures and landscaping. We figure they spent a million dollars.

The building became an employee training center. The top floor was, for a while, not only their training kitchen but also their flagship restaurant, open to the public, a place to try out new dishes and ideas. The second and third floors were an employee recreation center, housing massage rooms and a gym.

Sissy, Mac, a friend of Mac's, and I had dinner there once. It was a very strange thing to be sitting in my Daddy's store drinking an alcoholic beverage. In addition to that unsettling oddness, Mac was in a very manic phase at that point in time. He brought his camera and, oblivious to the fact that the restaurant was full of diners, went around taking pictures of various and sundry architectural features. To say that the staff and diners looked at him with wariness, suspicion, and a touch of horror would be an understatement. Of course, attempts to get him to see that maybe he shouldn't be doing that without permission were met with his usual derisive dismissal of our concerns. What do we know? We're women!

The restaurant didn't last very long and now, for the past eight or nine years, the building just sits there, unused as far as the outside world can see. It's become Maryville's very own Willy Wonka Factory. No one is ever seen going in or coming out.

And thus the mysterious fates of our family buildings began.

Mom, Pt. 2

Mom tried her hand at several different lines of work before finally finding her true passion. As previously mentioned, she worked in some government department during WWII as a decoder of some sort and she worked in an insurance office after the war. Before the war, during college, she worked in the laundry. I'm guessing she did other things that I don't know about.

Sometime after I was born she got her real estate license, became a notary public, and did some substitute teaching. I remember going with her to one of the schools once (I guess she had to pick up or drop off something). She took me into the classroom. In one corner was a dunce cap!

Then, when Sissy was 16 or 17, Mom decided it was time for her (meaning Sissy) to get a job. So she went to the library to pick up an application. However, instead of giving it to Sissy, she filled it out herself. And thus she found her true calling in life at the age of 48. She began working at the Blount County Public Library in 1970. By 1975 she'd earned her M.L.S. and had been appointed Director.

At that time the library was in this very cool old brick building across the street from Daddy's store (The building now houses Dandy Lion's Gifts). What a life I had! I could hang out at the store, "work" there, go on deliveries, play, shoot hoops, then mosey on over to the library to hang out and read. I felt so special being able to visit Mom there! Going to the library in the summer was especially fun because the children's section was down the awesome winding staircase in the basement and it was cool, temperature-wise. (There was no air conditioning in the building.) I remember one summer joining the reading program and reading every single Hardy Boys book in the series.

Mom was a forward-thinking person and was instrumental in developing and implementing the Friends of the Library. That legacy is huge. She also oversaw the library's move into a larger building (that now houses city or county offices). Most importantly, however, she was a staunch champion of keeping controversial books on the shelves. She was adamantly opposed to censorship. In this way, she was a True Librarian and my hero.

Really, I can't tell you how proud I was that she was my Mom. She was well-liked and respected and loved by many. Every time I visited her at the library I felt proud. I'm not just exercising my Southern right to hyperbole, either. I was proud.

Daddy In A Nutshell, Pt. 3

Daddy was an outdoorsman, an adventurer, and I was Daddy's little boy. Who knows whether I was born into it or groomed for it? I suspect the former, that Daddy was just playing to my strengths. After all, he tried with Mac and Sissy and they would have none of it. Me? I took to fishing and shooting and traipsing through plowed fields like a duck to water.

Daddy ran a furniture store. To this day, even after many times asking to have it all explained to me, I don't really understand how it all came about. I know that initially Daddy and Granddaddy worked together. Granddaddy owned the store. Clyde, Mom's brother also ran a furniture store, just around the corner. That street was full of furniture stores, which was in and of itself curious. I think there used to be four on one block. I guess Maryvillians bought a lot of furniture back then.

However, by the time I came along and started spending time at the store, Granddaddy had moved on to work with Clyde. I'm not sure when they moved their store a few blocks away. I seem to recall being in the original one a few times before they moved.

Think of Daddy's store as more like the jail in Mayberry. Less of a business, more of a hangout. Although Daddy did sell furniture and he never locked anyone up, as far as I know. But my memories are that Daddy cared much more about the people that were constantly stopping by than about the business end of things.

Daddy had a row of rockers and chairs set up on the first floor, along with a TV, and a refrigerator that was always full of Coca Cola (in bottles, of course). When there was a ballgame on, his friends would show up and they'd sit and smoke cigars and watch it on the TV.

A big part of the opening and closing routine was setting up the Igloo ice chests outside. The building used to be a filling station and the islands were still there (along with the tanks underground which would prove to be a bit of a headache when it came time to sell many years later). In between the islands, Daddy would make a pyramid formation using the ice chests. He was very proud to carry them. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is one of his firsts: The First to Carry Igloo Ice Chests in Blount County.

What can I say? That store was Daddy, through and through. One wall was full of signs and letters and photos he'd collected and tacked up. "Gone fishin'." A photo of his unit. Plaques about his ancestry. A wall full of taxidermy that included an owl whose eyes, I swear, would follow me around the store. Hornets' nests with a sign that said, "You won't get stung here?" A huge moose head. Lava Soap in the bathrooms. Man, can I remember THAT texture and smell! Signs in the bathrooms, too. (Friendly reminders, if you will.)

His office was in what used to be the elevator shaft. He had this fantastic roll top desk that was just chock full of interesting items. A drawer full of pocket knives. One filled with pens. Buckeyes. Coins. All sorts of little things he had collected that I loved to go through and look at, time and time again.

The counter was in front of the office. On it sat a register and a box of McDaniel Furniture Company matches. Underneath was a cash drawer which had a secret combination that involved switches that had to get pulled in the right way in order for it to open. Even as an adult I felt a strange sense of pleasure and power every time I opened it because I knew the secret.

On the counter there was also, at least for a time, a display of fishing lures that Daddy and a friend made and sold. And the top was glass and underneath the glass Daddy had put more notes, cards, photos, etc.

The store had three floors. "Three floors of furniture!" it once advertised. The top floor was the show area. Dressers, chests of drawers, chairs, desks, framed pictures. (One was of Jesus holding a baby lamb-I had this in my room at home for a while but for some reason when I looked at it upside down while lying in bed, it freaked me out so back to the store it went). There was a brief period in time when I "worked" for Daddy. My tasks consisted of cleaning the mirrors, dusting, and sweeping the tile floor. He showed me how to ring up customers although I'm not sure I ever did. I felt very grown up the day he taught me how to decipher the information on the tags.

The second floor was where the beds were, I think. It was only a half floor. Part of it was storage. For some reason the storage area was mysterious and going into it felt daring.

The bottom floor was really my favorite for many reasons. 1) Daddy kept the linoleum down there and when he had an order, he would let me mark the cut by snapping the chalk line. I loved the chalk line! 2) He put a basketball goal in one of the garage bays and would move his truck on rainy days so I could shoot hoops. 3) One end was the garage. The building used to be a filling station. This meant there were car lifts, grease, tools, and all manner of exciting boy things to explore and get into. Daddy had an employee named Fred who apparently didn't mind me hanging around. He would let me drill holes and nail things and sharpen tools and carry on. 4) I loved opening and closing the huge garage doors. 5) The ceilings were really high. Halfway up one wall, above the workbench, 10 or 15 feet off the ground, was a huge rectangular opening. This was the old coal chute. As I could never really grasp how that would work, it fascinated me. (I'm surprised I never climbed a ladder in order to look in there!)

Daddy was never one to let business get in the way of what really fed his spirit. (I am so like him in so many ways and this is one of them.) So every Wednesday he closed the store at noon and took off on some sort of adventure. Blackberry picking. Collecting walnuts. Looking for arrowheads. Fishing. Hunting. A drive somewhere with his best friend, Jeff. Visiting. (Daddy knew everyone, another way he was kind of like Andy of Mayberry.) Sissy continues to be amazed that he did this. Not the adventures. The closing the store every Wednesday. Being my Daddy's daughter, it makes perfect sense to me.

Nomad for Life

I really should've been born a Bedouin or a Mongol herder. Then I wouldn't question my nomadic behavior nor would it be looked at askance by friends and family. It would be accepted, by myself and others, that that is who I am: a nomad.

Does this mean I have some deep-seated psychological problem that interferes with my desire and ability to put down roots? Yes, of course.

AND I am nomadic at heart. A wanderer. An explorer. Adventurer.

They say home is where the heart is. Well, my heart has been with me everywhere I've lived. Truly, I have loved every place I've ever lived. Well, OK, maybe not loved, but the places I haven't loved are few and far between and, at least, I've enjoyed living in those places.

Not too long ago, a friend asked me why I was moving, again. She said, in a way that was meant to be cautionary (and came across as judgmental), "Everywhere you go, there you are." And, of course, this phrase is usually used in both ways. But I had a very freeing epiphany at that moment. Yes! Everywhere I go, there I am. What fun!

I just have way too many interests and a desire for adventure to tie myself down, to settle down.

So why the move back to TN to buy a house? Two words: home base.

And I'm framing it as settling in. Into myself.

How will I have chickens, goats, bees, you ask? Well, I may not have them, not yet. (I love to volunteer.) Or if I do, I will ask for help. A novel idea for me, a lesson that I have been slowly learning over the past three years. It turns out that if I ask for help, I usually get it! Besides, Sissy is just dying to have chickens and goats. Do you see where I'm heading with this?

Yes, I am a Nomad and I've finally come to believe that it is better for my mental and emotional health to acknowledge this aspect of my character and, rather than try to change it or suppress it, accept it so that I can work with it in a more conscious way.

So, a twist on the "build it and they will come" mantra from Field of Dreams: Build it and I will go and come back!

Mom, Pt. 1

Mom was born in 1922 in a house on Sevierville road. There was a midwife in attendance. The house still stands and I always took great pleasure in asking Mom to point it out to me when we drove by. My mom was born there!

She grew up in Rockford with her parents, Bessie and Hobart Williams, and her brother, Clyde. Granddaddy took over and ran his father's mill, imaginatively named The Rockford Mill. (I'd never thought about this before, but I do think my creativity comes from Daddy's side of the family. For sure my craziness does!) Parts of the mill race dam are still visible from the greenway parking lot. The road on which the mill stood is now called Williams Mill Road.

Their house sat back from the road, on the other side of the river. There was a narrow walkway/bridge that connected the mill with the property where the house sat. Mom took Sissy and me once to see the house. We drove back to the house on this overgrown road. It looked abandoned but I remember that once we could see the house, we could tell it was occupied, run down as it was. It seemed very backwoods to me. A little scary.

Mom had a scar on her chin from falling and cutting it on the chicken coop when she was a kid. She thought it was ugly. I thought it was really cool.

I remember talking with her one time about whether or not I was a "surprise" baby (7 1/2 years younger than Sissy, 10 years younger than Mac). She confirmed that I was and told me she was, too. "Hole in the rubber," she said. I was completely flabbergasted. I had no idea there were rubbers back when Granddaddy and Grandmom were having sex! I also felt kinship with Mom.

Mom was athletic, loved basketball. Unfortunately, when she started menstruating, she had such bad cramps and heavy bleeding, she couldn't play during her time of the month so she quit. (She had a hysterectomy when I was a kid. She most likely suffered from endometriosis.)

Mom went to Maryville College and graduated Cum Laude with a degree in History.

During WWII mom got a job with the government decoding messages. I thought this was the coolest thing ever. I remember her telling me that /e/ is the most frequently used letter in English. I've recently wondered why she was not recruited to work at the then top secret Oak Ridge project. Maybe she was and chose not to do that. Anyway, her job took her to D.C. She told me she hated it there.

Upon her return from the war, she worked at an insurance agency. It was here that she met Daddy, who came in one day, most certainly looking very dashing. I can so picture him standing in the doorway, handsome, charming, funny. And mom sitting at her desk, pretty, smart, and also funny. They had great senses of humor. I wonder what they talked about, how he asked her out. I wish I could've been a fly on that wall.

Daddy in A Nutshell, Pt. 2 WWII

Daddy, and all four of his brothers, were in WWII. They all made it back alive, although one of them suffered a grave head injury and was in a coma for a few days. He came back with a plate in his head. And another one survived the Bataan Death March.

Daddy was a lieutenant with The Army Corp of Engineers. As best as I could understand it, he and his men built and repaired airfields, roads, and bridges. As far as I know, they did not engage in direct battle, although they may have had to defend themselves.

Update 2024: Daddy was one of the three commanders of an all-Black Engineer Battalion, one of a handful that actually went overseas. Company B, 847. (insert photo)

Everything about his involvement is vague, to say the least. He told us a few stories which are now little more than sketchy memories.

Before he shipped overseas, he was either on a military transport train to Florida that wrecked, or was in the vicinity when it wrecked. Regardless, he was involved in trying to rescue people from the burning wreckage. He saved at least one young girl. This experience left a deep scar on his psyche. He was never able to recount the event without getting very emotional.

In fact, Daddy was never able to tell any story about the war without getting very emotional. That's why we never heard that much, I guess. It's only recently that I realized he no doubt suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

There were a couple of stories that he could tell without getting teary, like the time he went out and shot a deer and brought it back to his troops for them to eat. Or the time that he and his men stayed in a castle, in Austria. He apparently won over the owners because we have photos of him partying with them. He looks very suave and debonair. Quite relaxed.

Sissy and I found quite a few photos of women, as well as cards and letters from women to Daddy, in his sacred foot locker. I'm looking forward to giving everything a thorough going through upon my return and once it is in my possession. I should find some really good material for this blog. Or, at least, be able to fill in some gaps.

Family Stories

Allegedly, my father's mother was kidnapped by Cherokee Indians when she was a child. That's the story I heard. I know no details. I find it more than a little suspect but then, who knows? Maybe she was taken as ransom for a gambling debt. Of course, the image I had as a child was of a wild-eyed Indian swooping in on his horse and snatching her up in one arm while letting out a war whoop. Too many cowboy movies.

A family story I know to be true because I've read the newspaper clipping is the one in which my granddaddy (Mom's father) shot and killed a man who broke into the mill when they were living in Rockford. Even if I hadn't read the article, I would believe this one. Granddaddy was a pretty unsentimental, pragmatic man. I can well imagine him shooting someone who trespassed.

Mac claimed that Uncle JB was in the local mafia. Another highly suspect claim, especially given the source. However, I am pretty sure JB was a gambler and a drinker and mixed up with the wrong crowd. And after he died (he had been living in that two bedroom house in Alcoa), Daddy found a wad of money stashed under the mattress.

Daddy's sister, Bella, apparently had a drinking problem. Of course, I didn't know this when I was a kid. All I knew was she and her husband owned The Princess Motel on 411. One time we went out there for Christmas. They gave Mac an Invisible Woman. Strange gift.

I would have never known she was an alcoholic except one time after Mom and I had taken a walk at Ijams in Knoxville, I told her I wanted to stop at a package store and get a couple of bottles of wine to take over to Sissy's. You'd have thought I'd just said I was going to get a gun and go rob a bank. Mom whipped her head toward me at the speed of light, eyes wide with fear and dismay. "Oh, Laurie! You're going to be like your Aunt Bella. You know she had a drinking problem!"

A couple bottles of wine, Mom. To share with two people. For the weekend. But thinking back on this now, I realize she knew a lot more about whatever addictions, alcoholism, and craziness ran in Daddy's side of the family than I did. She was probably right to be worried.

As I've written elsewhere, I don't remember a lot about any of my aunts or uncles on Daddy's side of the family. It just seemed like there was something not quite right about some of them. And, after a certain point (after Granny died in 1974?), I just never saw any of them again. It always felt like something had happened, or Daddy didn't want to be around his brothers and sisters. Just something that felt weird. I sure wish I could dial back the clock and be an observer of their lives. That would probably answer many questions.

Last year I did go and visit my aunt in Florida. She is the last one of the nine siblings that is still alive. (Although, she may have died since I saw her. You'd think my cousins would let me know, but I'm not so sure.) Before last year, the last time I saw her was when I was five. We took a family trip to Florida. Actually, I believe that was when I met her. She had three children who were teenagers: Ronnie, Judy, and Larry.

On this recent trip, I got to see Larry and Judy. Aunt Kitty lives with Larry. Larry and Judy don't speak to Ronnie. That trip deserves a story of its own, another time. The most significant and completely unnerving part of that trip was the fact that Kitty not only looked almost exactly like Daddy (apparently it wasn't just the brothers who looked alike), her mannerisms and way of talking were identical to his. It was like sitting in the room with Daddy.

Morning Musings

You'd think that by the time we're in our fifties we'd be so well-versed in the experiences that demonstrate that life is unpredictable-expect the unexpected-that we would stop believing that we can somehow see into the future. But we don't. We persist in believing that we are able, from our tiny, limited perspective in the here and now, to foresee what will happen, what's in store. We continue to operate from a place of foregone conclusion, no matter how many times we are surprised by life's twists and turns, certain that if this, then that.

I think it's because living with the discomfort of not knowing is unbearable for most of us. We humans like to be in control! How dare Life throw us curveballs?!

I mean, it does seem to be our knee jerk response, our default setting.

I love Arthur Ashe's response to the being asked if he ever wondered, "Why me?" He said, "Why not me?"

When unexpected wonderful things happen, we love to thank God. When unexpected "bad" things happen, we blame God, ask how He could've let such a thing happen, ask what kind of God he is.

Who's fickle?

I do not believe God is an entity that has a personal stake in my life. I think of God as a force, a creative force, that is in motion, constantly unfolding in ways that I simply cannot predict or imagine but if I tune in to the Harmony of the Spheres, let go and ride the wave, somehow everything seems to shimmer with Life and Light. Whereas if I fight the force, rail against it, try to make it be other than it is, freeze it in time by clutching at it, everything feels dull, lifeless, frightening. I can certainly exercise my will, but I feel exhausted and unhappy while doing so.

Let Go and Let God. Good Orderly Direction. Go with the flow. Let Go and Let Flow.

Life feels better this way.

Cat & Mouse, More About the House

I've failed to give an accurate picture of what went on after Mac died, in large part because I wasn't there and, because of that, I'd forgotten a lot. Sissy reminded me yesterday. But before I get into that, it's high time I gave her her due. She's the one that was left dealing with everything on a day-to-day basis for...a year? More? I returned to CA. She claims she's forgiven me, but I'm not sure. I think I better watch my back...

So, this part is accurate: We knew the Coach and his Wife wanted the property and they knew it. It was, really, a foregone conclusion. And if we'd agreed to let "their people" handle everything, agreed to a selling price that was a quarter of what it was worth, I'm certain they would've been very gracious about it all. After all, they are known for their philanthropy.

But we didn't, on either count.

I am also accurate in portraying them as money-grubbing, power-playing, self-important a@@holes who greatly misunderstood and underestimated all of us. They truly believed that being good neighbors would get them what they wanted. They also truly believed that we were ignorant country bumpkins.

They should've done their research.

Going into negotiations, Sissy had Daddy's words etched into her brain: "Don't you let them have that property for nothing. You get every penny that it's worth."

So, because we had no intention of bending over and, well, you know the rest, let the games begin! As soon as they realized we were not just going to hand over "their" property, they began an incredibly distasteful, ungracious, bullying campaign of Cat & Mouse: now we want it, now we don't. Do this, do that. Wait, we didn't mean that.

Because they wouldn't commit to anything, we were left having to move forward as if we were selling to someone else. This would not have been any big deal except, if you remember, the interior of the house had been decimated by (the) AfterMath. If we wanted to sell it, we needed to get it fixed up. So that was the choice we made.

Unfortunately, that choice meant that Sissy was the one left dealing with everything: real estate negotiations (don't think that just because we were moving ahead that the Coach had stopped playing games), insurance, selecting tile and paint and so on, contractors, taxes, and whatever else came up along the way. All on top of her regular job.

We also made the decision to have the foundation fixed.

Everything was to the tune of about $45,000. Plus the endless headaches.

Then finally, after the house was completely fixed up and looked beautiful, the Coach and his wife start acting as if maybe, maybe they did want to buy everything after all. And thus began some major Nickel & Diming and them acting as if they were paupers or something.

Do you remember that this Coach, after a long career with the university, was fired with a $6,000,000 severance package? You read that right. Yes, poor babies.

But nickel and dime he did, right down to the bitter end, when the Coach made us pay $500 for a copy of the tax assessment that he already had. There was no mistake that this was punishment for having the audacity to go toe-to-toe with him.

He not only put us through the paces, he put our Realtor through them, too. She got punished for signing on with us. It was incredibly childish behavior. A spoiled brat who wasn't getting his way.

But finally, we "won."

Of course, you've seen what they did to the house. Bricks removed, basement and carport removed, porch removed. By the time they had finished with it, it was half the house it used to be. And the last time Sissy and I saw it, it was still jacked up and sitting in the middle of a field, empty and falling even further into disrepair. Wasted. All that time, money, and effort wasted.

This is why I say our relationship with the Coach and his Wife was "complicated."