Where I'm from # 2

I’m from mountains, older than human life; mountains that reach high and fall deeply.

I’m from mountain streams that carve paths to creeks and rivers.

I’m from shacks and ‘lean twos’ built at the bottom of these high mountains; shacks that raised fourteen kids to mostly adulthood.

I’m from barns, raised by hard workin’ men, to house their corn, bakker, hay, and livestock.

I’m from beehives, robbed annually, by men covered from head to toe with protective clothing, carrying a smoker, and trying to remain calm.

I’m from canned beans, beets, corn, and tomatoes; put up on steamy sweaty days.

I’m from cow and horse manure removed by pitch forks and hauled by sleds to nearby gardens.

I’m from chickens, brooders, chicken houses, chicken shit, egg nests, and rich orange colored fried eggs.

I’m from milk cows; slow, lumbering, gentle cows with brown eyes that showed love to a child.

I’m from fresh churned buttermilk that took two days to clabber and thirty minutes to churn; buttermilk that was drunk by families right after churning before refrigeration.

I’m from registered bulls; bulls that were a farmer’s pride and joy and reminded them of their own reproductive role as men.

I’m from long, curving front porches where men cooled down before a dinner or supper meal; porches that showed welcome and hours of shared laughter, and porches where politics was discussed at length along with the weather, crops, gossip and new babies.

I’m from weeds; weeds that grew tall in the summer; weeds that cut your skin, made you sneeze and broke your skin out.

I’m from quiltin’ women.  Women who planned, argued, discussed patterns, sewed signature stitches; women who sunned their quilts annually both as a cleansing and ‘airing out’ endeavor and a bragging rite.

I’m from outhouses; some sturdy, modernized and clean with toilet paper hung on a large nail. Others less sturdy, filled with catalogs, waspers, crickets, yellow jackets and stench.

I’m from hog killings and smoke houses. Long cold days in November filled with the hard work of scalding, scraping, butchering and salting; and a second day of lard rendering and cracklin’ making over an open fire and a black kettle.

I’m from soap makin’ from meat scraps, lye, and rendered lard in a black kettle over an open fire near the smoke house.

I’m from the smell of burned wood.  Wood that cooked food oven an open fire; wood that smoked meat in the smoke house; wood that heated kitchens and cooked food and wood that burned best when it was seasoned and dry.

I’m from sticky dry, dusty, suffocating dirt roads in the summer, and muddy, nasty dirt roads that became impassable in the winter.

I’m from the Spring of the mountains where trees bloom, the air is pregnant and fragrant and all things breathe with life.

I’m from The Fall of the mountains where dying leaves and weeds display their foliage like fireworks on the 4^th of July.

I’m from families; century old families who never knew the outside world, but knew their kinfolks and their heritage and talked for hours about their roots, world wars, diseases and deaths.

I’m from grave yards in woods and pasture fields, some so old that nobody knew who was buried there and only a smooth rock without words marked the spot. 

I’m from around the table discussions at supper where every living relative was tied to some dead relative through a story, and facts about their lives were argued and debated.

I’m from one place thatshaped my total being. A place that remains always within my soul.