Turn By the Red Calf

I have read funny stories, some probably true and some apocryphal, about giving directions in the South.   My childhood friends and I laugh at some of the things we say – like turn where Pickard’s Store used to be.  Pickard’s store has been gone for at least fifty years now, but in my mind, it is still an important landmark.  What else are you going to use, since there’s basically nothing else there to point to?  If someone in the conversation looks confused, we have to tell them the story about Pickard's store, explaining that it was Chessor’s Store before that, and the school bus used to stop there sometimes and let the bus riders off to get a candy bar or coke on our way home from school.  I can still remember the suspense and anticipation as we neared the store.  Would the driver pull in today or would he sail on by, leaving us deflated?  It was a much more innocent time, and it probably was one of the reasons we had very little disciplinary problem on our bus.  No one wanted to be the reason we didn’t get to stop at the store.

Sunday afternoon, I found myself uttering a directive that was the epitome of the cliché that is Southern direction-giving.  “Turn at that red calf,” I directed, from the back seat of an all-wheel drive Saturn.  The designated calf was watching the progress of our vehicle as we made our way along what used to be a road of sorts.  I was the only one who knew about the road, and it probably didn’t matter if we were on it or not, so long as we didn’t get too close to one of the gullies that ran down the hill.

We were metal detecting, a new adventure for me.  Friends of mine are enthusiasts, one an expert who has discovered historical artifacts around the area and the other his pupil, a history-loving beginner.  The attractions in my pasture were the remains of an 1850’s log cabin and a tumble-down 1920’s frame house.  Sophie and Bear accompanied us, trotting along behind.  I had left Scout in the house.  I don’t think he could tear up or steal a metal detector, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Back of the log cabin

I told my audience about the cabin and about my great-great grandfather who built it before he went off to fight in the Civil War and raised a large family in it before building the house I live in now in the mid 1870’s.  As we looked inside, I marveled again at where they all slept and ate.  I’ve always figured it had an additional room at one time, but if it did, my granddaddy didn’t remember it.  He did share the story with me of my great-great grandmother, Lucinda, who hid her horse from the Yankees in a crevice between two rocks down behind the cabin.   

Lucinda's hiding place

I wrote a short story about the incident when I first started seriously writing for magazines.  I believe it was about the second or third story I sold.  “Save Raven” was the title and I made two of the younger children the heroes who kept the family horse safe.  Somehow I lost my copies of the story down through the years and the magazine no longer exists.  I wish I had it; I think it was a pretty good story.

I made a few passes with the metal detector, but mostly I walked around and looked at the scenery.  The cabin was built on a hill, with a view of the bottom land and the trees that line the river.  The hills across the river stretch west and a few buildings dot the landscape over there.  When I was a child, there was not a building in sight. I would love to have a house there.  I pointed out the steep hill behind the cabin where the family most likely got spring water and we speculated on where the garden might have been.  We didn’t find anything of real interest buried around the site, other than some abandoned machinery that trees had grown into and a small piece of an old iron stove.  Sophie got bored and went home and Bear occupied himself looking for something to chase.  The cows, as cows do, gathered nearby to watch intently, wondering what the humans were doing and what those weird noises were from the sticks they were waving across the grass.

Fragment of old iron stove

It was when we decided to move down the hill to the other little house that had been built for farm workers that the red calf became a signpost.  When my family was still working the farm, they had a pretty decent road that led down and past the house on the way to the bottom, but it had long since disappeared from view.  The house was fairly intact back then, but now much of the floor has fallen in, the porch is gone, the steps are broken and I would not dare go inside what is left.  We did salvage some ceramic doorknobs from there when I started renovations on the farmhouse and there might be some old doors worth saving still.  It’s a sad sight, with faded, peeling wallpaper and sagging doors.

It was at this spot that Mandy made the find of the day, a saltshaker buried about four inches in the ground.  How it ended up there is a mystery never to be solved.  Bear flushed what may have been a coyote and I had to call him out from under the house several times in his quest for something I would rather not know about. I pointed out the sledding hill we used when I was young and dumb enough to dodge briars and frozen cow piles during infrequent snows.  We called it a day when the sun dropped behind the trees by the forlorn little house.  Sophie greeted us back at the house, offering everyone her paw as if to apologize for deserting us.  Treasure hunting, it seems, is just not her cup of tea.