Happy Birthday Minnie!

Ophelia, Dixie and Frances Colley
Fannie Tate Colley seated

One hundred eight years ago today, the fifth daughter was born in Centerville to Tom and Fannie Tate Colley. To the world, this little girl became known as Minnie Pearl. To me, she was my great- aunt Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, who I called “Phelia.” I have a letter she wrote to me just after I was born, written on her birthday to celebrate my birth-day. In the letter she wrote, “If things don’t go to suit you, you holler for you Dixie Grandma – let her run a few errands for you. That’s what I did when I was your age!” She was in Galveston, Texas, and finished with the promise to see us on Sunday.
What she said about my grandmother was true. Phelia was born when my Nanny was already in first grade and she became like a live doll for the four sisters to dress up and wheel around Centerville in a baby buggy or drive through town in the pony cart. They weren’t content with that so they taught her to play the piano and sing and dance – all at the same time! When she was a toddler, her sisters taught her a song and dance and convinced their music teacher, Miss Daisy Nixon, to give her a spot in a recital.
I think the seed of Minnie Pearl was planted in the mind of that little blonde haired, freckled faced child standing in front of the piano, picking out a tune, singing at the top of her lungs and dancing a little jig. As soon as she was old enough, she performed every chance she got. And a dream was born. Her mother taught her to be a lady, but Phelia’s daddy carried her with him on the front of his saddle to the lumber camps, taught her to whistle and introduced her to the rough-hewn men who cut the virgin timber in the county in the early 1900’s. I can see her now – a young girl absorbing the tales they told at dinner or around the stove at the depot where they loaded railroad ties.
I can remember sitting around a big dining room table as I grew up with all the sisters and my great-grandmother, who I called Ma Ma, listening to their stories of growing up, or stories about people in Centerville from long ago. They knew the art of storytelling. Phelia’s daddy was a great storyteller – I’m sorry I never knew him, but I was blessed to have known my great grandmother and she was a storyteller in her own right. I suspect much of Phelia’s storytelling ability came from Tom Colley. His motto was “Never let the truth interfere with a good story.” That’s good advice, especially for a child who would one day be famous for her storytelling!
Phelia never meant to become a comedian. Her ambition lay in a different direction entirely. She wanted to be a great dramatic actress – perhaps another Janet Gaynor. Her goal was to attend drama school in New York and seek fame on Broadway. But the stock market crash during her senior year in high school put an end to any hope of such a thing. Two years at Ward Belmont in Nashville was the best the family could afford. After graduation, she returned to Centerville until she turned 21, then took a job with the Sewell Company, traveling the southeast directing plays using local talent. It was during that time that the character of Minnie Pearl began to emerge, taking inspiration from an Alabama mountain lady who Phelia boarded with for one snowy week. Her career was cut short when her much-loved father died unexpectedly and she returned home to take care of her mother. It was a dreary time, with hopes of a career in entertainment seemingly over. But, the hand of fate that had been guiding her footsteps all along was still with her, for it was in Centerville, of all places, that the break came that would change her life.
In 1940, the Centerville Lions Club produced a minstrel show that featured a “hillbilly skit” performed by Ophelia Colley as Minnie Pearl. Shortly afterward, a bankers convention was held in Centerville. J.B. Walker, the bank president, asked Phelia to entertain the bankers with some of her music students during dinner. As an afterthought, he said that the main speaker might be late arriving and if he was, could she do that character she did at the Lions Club show to kill time for a few minutes. She agreed, with no idea what a momentous night this would become.
Sure enough, the speaker was late, and Phelia performed her Minnie Pearl act (without a costume because she had left it at home). The performance lasted more than a few minutes – maybe the hand of fate delayed the speaker longer than expected. The next week, she got a call from the general manager of WSM radio. Bob Turner, who had been in the audience on that night, had told him about her and suggested she belonged on the Grand Ole Opry. She was invited to audition, then earned a trial spot on the late portion of the show. The rest, as they say, is history.
Of course, my memories of Phelia go beyond watching her on television. She was also the great aunt who took us to dinner, took me shopping when I went to Denver for a national competition as a senior in high school and gave me a bridal tea when I got married. She was so supportive of my mom during her bout with breast cancer and of me when I lost my husband at a young age. One of her gifts was an ability to listen intently to whoever she was talking to, and I can still see that focused look on her face when I would tell her about my activities and my own dreams of being a writer.
Phelia said that her drama teacher at Ward Belmont earnestly believed and passed along the belief that if you have a God-given talent, it is a sin not to use that talent to its fullest. Not giving your best effort to develop that talent is the ultimate ingratitude to the Creator. She was faithful to that idea. I’m afraid I’ve not followed her example as well as I should have but I have remembered it.
What I want people to remember about my great aunt is not so much her fame. I want them to remember that she had a dream, a pretty big dream for a little girl from a small Tennessee town. And when that dream seemed out of reach, she was willing to listen to a voice inside her and adapt that dream. She wasn’t destined for Broadway – she was destined for a different kind of performing. And when opportunity came, she was prepared. She gave people the gift of laughter and love, by creating in her mind a town called Grinders Switch, populated by a cast of characters that could live in any small rural town in the mid twentieth century. Uncle Nabob, Ceph Jones, Brother, Mammy sprang to life in Phelia’s head and became real for the people who listened to and love her. In later years, she would shake her head in wonder, “Those old jokes,” she would say. “They still laugh at them.” And they still do.
It’s hard to believe my great aunt has been gone 25 years. Of course, in a way, she is still alive. Minnie Pearl has never changed. Grinders Switch never changed. We can still see it – a place where there is no war, no disease, no quarrels. It was very real to her. Sometimes when I am up there (there really is a place called Grinders Switch), I have the strange feeling that if I could just slip quietly enough up the hill and hide behind a tree I could see it all, just like she laid it out in her imagination.
I saw the video of a talk she made to a group of students once. She talked about her unfulfilled dream of a career on Broadway. But she said that if she had gone that route, she would have missed the joy of making people laugh and the many friends and life she made in the country music family. Hers was a life well lived, or maybe you could say two lives well lived, one as Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon and the other as Minnie Pearl. I still miss her. I hope she knew how proud I was of her.

Harvest Song

Sometime in the night, fall stepped across the threshold. Each season seems to have its own approach. Spring tiptoes in, like a child dipping toes in the water before the first swim. Summer blasts in, like a flame that smolders briefly then flares up with heat and light. Winter, in my neck of the woods at least, is indecisive, with several false starts and stops until fields lie blackened by the first hard freeze. Fall’s commencement is defined not so much by temperature as by the change in the song of the insects, a quieting of the frenzied night time chorus, and a subdued bird song in the morning. The trees whisper “fall” and the feel in the air is unmistakable. The light is different, and rain, when it comes, has a different feel. Every day I hear the sound of the harvest. Harvest music, signaling a sense of urgency to gather in the crops before winter. Once upon a time, the harvest would have been gathered with mules, wagons and “hands” picking the corn by hand and hauling it to the cribs. But in my lifetime, the combine has become the instrument of the season, creeping through rows of corn and soybeans that are the livelihood of so many farmers. At this time of year, it is a race against time, to put away what was sown with shining hope in the spring. The machines sing from early morning to dark, and golden streams of grain pour into wagons and grain silos. In years like this, of good rain, there is a final cutting of hay. There is no more beautiful sight, or more intoxicating smell, than a barn filled with hay for the winter. Gratitude seems to be in short supply these days for a lot of people. I believe that the further away from the land we get, the easier it is to forget to be thankful. Farmers find it easier to give thanks, when the barns and silos are full, the harvest song is stilled, and the machinery has been cleaned and put away. Every year at Thanksgiving, congregations sing the words “Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home. All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.” Country people understand those lines better than most. When my hay shed is full, I like to stop and just look at it, breathing in the fragrance. (Why don’t they make air freshener with that smell?) The winter ahead doesn’t seem so daunting when you have a barn full of hay. It’s the same feeling a family gets looking at shelves of canned food – jelly, jam, beans, peas, corn and tomatoes, waiting and ready to be enjoyed while the cold winds blow. I guess you can feel good about canned food from the store, but somehow I don’t think you get the same sense of happiness as you get from glass jars of rosy tomatoes or green beans. We don’t do as much canning now, but I still can remember row upon row of canning arranged on shelves in our basement and baskets of potatoes and onions. Hams and sides of bacon hung in the smokehouse, promising breakfast feasts on winter mornings. It was hard work, but easier then to be thankful. Here’s hoping Thanksgiving doesn’t get totally lost in the rush to Christmas and our hearts will be warmed when we sing, “Come, ye thankful people come, raise the song of harvest home.”

Thank You, Mrs. Carothers

Note: I wrote this essay many years ago and it was published in the newspaper. It is just as relevant now as when I first wrote it and I wanted to share it again. It is especially timely on this rainy March morning when I saw my first bloodroot of the year.

I don’t remember much that I learned in my tenth grade biology class. I wouldn’t have any idea how to classify anything, I almost got sick dissecting a frog and I never could see a thing under a microscope. But early every spring, I joyfully retrace a path I first took when my teacher assigned our groaning class a wildflower collection.
In the years since, my mom and I have spent countless blissful hours trekking over hills and up hollows, scrambling over steep bluffs and rocky outcrops to see the spring wildflowers It is a ritual for us, anticipated impatiently through the dreary months of January and February. Our discussions begin in early March. “Reckon anything’s up yet?” we ask each other. “When was it we saw the trout-lilies last year?” We always go looking too soon, hoping for early bloomers. And sometimes we are rewarded by a few eager trillium or a precocious bloodroot.

Of course, the flowers had always been there. We just hadn’t particularly noticed them before my assignment. Now I had to find them – twenty-five if I wanted an A. Not only did I have to collect them, I had to identify and preserve them. So, armed with a pocket field guide and accompanied by my mon and the dogs, I set out on a journey that has never ended.
We discovered toothwort, lacy saxifrage and petite bluets, all right under our noses. Shooting-star grew on a steep path overlooking the river, and Virginia bluebells flowed down a hillside like a blue waterfall. The fragile blooms of rue anemone danced in the spring breeze among the rocks and trees, and shy yellow violets hid in last year’s rotting leaves.

As the years passed, we met other new friends – dainty yellow trout lilies with their mottled leaves, stately Jack-in-the-pulpit almost unnoticed against the leaves, wild hyacinths and the curious walking fern. We have traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains in April to enjoy the parade of wildflowers there and sought nature trails along the Natchez Trace. And we have haunted secret spots closer to home, marveling at showy orchids and lady’s slippers. Each new discovery brought just as much excitement as did that first trillium long ago.

The next logical step was to transplant some of our favorites. There is something satisfying in reproducing the growing conditions of our specimens and seeing them thrive and multiply. Mom soon had a well-established colony of bluebells, rue anemone, bloodroot and larkspur. Later, plants from her garden helped start my own plot, which has been expanded with roots from other collectors and from wildflower nurseries.

As time has passed, a few favorites have diminished or disappeared from our woods. The shooting star is all but gone from its rocky perch, victim of occasional floods and foraging cattle. But a thriving clump blooms every spring in Mom’s garden. The Jacks seem to have disappeared too, suddenly one winter as if they folded up their striped canopies and stole away into an unknown land. But a whole family has established residence next door to the shooting star and an offspring began a large family in my own garden. So we became conservationists of a sort, in a small way.

My biology teacher is gone now. Before she moved to her retirement home, she gave me her collection of wildflower books, which I will treasure always. I’m sure her students remember her well. I expect many of them remember more facts than I do. Some of those students may have gone on to become doctors or scientists because of something she taught them. Their work is important; but just as important to me is the sight of the shiny white blooms of bloodroot or the whimsical pantaloons of the Dutchman’s breeches. She gave me a legacy of beauty – a great gift. Thank you, Mrs. Carothers.

A Barn at Christmas

There’s something special about a barn at Christmas. Actually, there’s something pretty special about a barn at any time of the year. I’m sure I’m prejudiced, but I especially love my barn this time of year. It’s an old barn, probably about 125 years old, at least the main part is. It was built by my great great grandfather out of huge hand hewn chestnut logs cut here on the farm. Sometimes I just run my hand over the marks and the notches that someone cut by hand. It’s a marvel to me. When I was a child, the barn was my favorite playground. The loft was usually full of fragrant hay, perfect for the building of forts and secret hiding places. Sometimes there were kittens to play with and it was a perfect place for a rainy afternoon in the summer. I used to also play in the corn and oat cribs, always watchful for snakes, who feasted on the mice that were drawn to the free buffet. I’m sure these areas would not be approved by the health department as safe play spaces for children, but they didn’t seem to do any harm to me! Of course, my very favorite spaces were the stalls where my horses lived when they weren’t being ridden or turned out in the fields. I could spend hours brushing and combing, dreaming of the day I would be a famous rider and own a whole stable of horses to choose from. I realize now I seriously underestimated the amount of time, sweat and money a whole stable of horses takes, and I have settled for just a couple of riding horses and only one or two at a time to show. I haven’t become a famous rider, but I sure have had fun with my horses. I have, for several years, invited friends and neighbors to my barn during the Advent season for a devotional time. We read the Christmas story from Luke, sing a couple of songs and talk a little about what Christmas must have really been like for Mary and Joseph and the tiny newborn baby Jesus. It’s a special time to pause and think of the simple truth of the season, a break from the madness and hurry of today’s holiday season. Sometimes I like to just pause in the middle of my barn chores and enjoy the silence and the history around me at that old barn. The people who built it, the folks who have labored so hard to make a living from the farm, the friends who have played with me there, the animals that have been such a special part of my entire life. I feel very blessed to have grown up on a farm, and especially to have grown up on this particular farm. I love the legend of the animals talking on Christmas Eve. I am told that when my grandmother first moved here back in the twenties, she insisted on going down to the barn at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if it really happened. I never heard whether she heard them or not, but sometimes I think that if I could just have a child’s heart again, I might be able to catch the whispers of the horses, the cattle, the sheep as they remember that special night when God slipped down the back stairs from heaven and laid a baby in a manger. Merry Christmas to you all and may you, like the Wise Men, rejoice with exceeding great joy, during this time of year and all year long.

The Dog Who Hears Ghosts

First of all, let me make clear that Buddy, my mom’s dog, is just about the best dog we’ve ever had. He was a stray, apparently dropped off to fend for himself and taken in by friends of mine who then gave him to us. I’m not sure what all went into the mix that is Buddy, but I think there might be a dose of English Shepard, almost certainly some Australian Shepard and I suspect a little Rottweiler might be lurking the background. The main thing is, he is super smart and, at some point, had some pretty good training before we got him. Much to my surprise, he has ended up as a house dog. I never thought my mom would have a dog, especially a 60 pound dog, in the house. But there he is, and he is a great companion for her and a great companion for the two-year-old she babysits for a few days a week. But there is one great oddity about Buddy, which can be a little disconcerting. He hears ghosts. My mom’s house is an old farmhouse, well over 100 years old, and has seen many births and deaths within its walls, so it does not surprise me that spirits are present, at least if you believe that spirits exist. But we’ve never noticed them and other dogs we have had over the years have not noticed them, or have kept their existence to themselves if they have. Buddy, however, is not so considerate of our feelings. The first time Mom noticed it was just a year or so after Buddy came to live with her. They were sitting in the living room one night and suddenly Buddy got to his feet and started looking up with a worried expression at the ceiling, prowling around the room and growing more agitated by the moment. Pretty soon, he crawled under Mom’s bed, which in itself is quite an event since the bed only has about ten inch clearance and Buddy is a big dog. Getting under there is a monumental task and getting back out is even more of an event. Now, this ordeal happened not too long after both dog and owner had an unfortunate incident outside with a nest of hornets. So, our theory about Buddy’s panic was that he heard something in the attic that reminded him of the angry buzzing of the hornets and had a flashback. A week or two went by without incident and then it happened again. Actually it happened several times again, always starting with staring at the ceiling in alarm and then the dive under the bed, where he remained until morning. Then it got worse. One night, they were sitting in front of the television when Buddy slowly got his feet, looked at the ceiling a few times and then started prowling the house, sniffing the floor, behind the furniture and in every corner. He insisted on inspecting every room of the house, alternating between looking up at the ceiling and smelling the floor. Mom said it was pretty disarming and she began to think maybe someone was hiding in the rather large house. So, she got up and followed the dog on his tour, opening all the doors for him and half expecting to find someone hiding in a closet. The tour ended but there was no settling down for Buddy. Finally, she asked him if he wanted to go outside and they sat on the porch for a little while, after which he seemed to forget all about whatever it was that had alarmed him so. It’s a puzzle, I have to say. What does he hear that we can’t hear? Or what does he smell? We have no idea. It doesn’t happen every night or even every week. Maybe someday we will figure it out. If Buddy could only talk, I’m sure he would be glad to explain it.

Goats

I should have known when I finally got goats, they wouldn’t be exactly like other goats. I’ve wanted goats for years and I heard all the reasons why I shouldn’t get goats. I knew they would get out of almost any pen. I knew they would eat almost anything (one of the reasons I actually wanted goats)and I knew they would eat things I didn’t want eaten (a small price to pay for their eating all the stuff I did want them to eat). What I didn’t know was that they would stand on the front porch and knock on the door with their knees and then, when I go to the door to see if it is a goat or a human, they would rear up on the door and stand asking to be let inside. I didn’t know they wouldn’t like thunder and they hate walking in wet grass. I also didn’t know that they would terrorize the horses or that the cats would fall in love with them or that they would follow me everywhere I go when they are not in their pen. And to think I was worried about being able to catch them when I needed to put them up!
Like I said, I have wanted goats for a long time. When I expressed that, my friends and family would roll their eyes and tell me I didn’t need any more animals. When I mentioned that they would eat brush and weeds, they rolled their eyes again and mentioned how well Roundup works. But my friend Vanessa understood my desire and didn’t roll her eyes and so Leroy and Jethro came to live with me. The first few days were filled with the barking of the dogs, who didn’t know what these strange things were but pretty sure they weren’t supposed to be here. The horses lined the fence like spectators at a circus and there was much blowing and snorting if they got within close range. One by one, I introduced the dogs to the two boys and one by one they came to understand that these strange creatures did indeed belong here. Phoebe still thinks it is her job to constantly put them back in their pen whenever they are out, and a few of the horses, notably Watch, are still convinced that they are a special species of horse-eating goats and will not pass by them willingly.
Leroy is the leader of the herd and was the first to make friends. The two brothers are never far apart; in fact, I keep looking to see if there is some kind of invisible rope that ties them together. They aren’t hard to catch at all. Just walk outside and call their names. Walk toward the barn and they will run ahead and wait by their feed bucket for their treat of a handful of sweet feed. They are learning to stand their ground with the dogs if they get too inquisitive about them, lowering their heads and stomping their foot. In fact, they are keeping the dogs off the front porch when they are there. And they are exploring more and further afield when I turn them out. Best of all, they are a lot more fun than spraying Roundup!

The Case of the Mysterious Disappearing Chicken

All chickens are strange, if you ask me, but some are stranger than others. Ever since our last snow a couple of weeks ago, my mom and I have been involved in the “Case of the Disappearing Chicken.”
I guess it started the afternoon of the sudden snowfall. I came home from work early and after I fed the horses, it occurred to me that the chickens had probably gone into the chicken house and I could save my mom a trip outside by fastening them up. Surely even dumb chickens would have had sense enough to go inside to get out of all that snow! Not exactly. Most of them indeed were inside, but a little group had taken refuge in the shed by the smokehouse and I had the devil of a time getting them to leave their questionable and non-varmint proof shelter for the safety of the chicken house. After a lot of squawking, scrambling, and loud complaining (from all of us) I got them safely tucked in for the night and went to tell my mom of my good deed.
Sometime after dark, Mom called to say that she had just gone out on the front porch and found a little black hen sitting in one of the chairs, hunkered down in the cold. She picked her up and put her on the back porch until morning. Little did we know that this would not be an isolated incident, brought on by the snow.
The next night Mom called me again to say that she like to have never got that little black hen off the front porch and into the chicken house. She said she was clucking like she had a nest somewhere but it was nowhere to be found on the front porch but that she was adamant about staying there. I thought to myself that maybe she wanted to spend another night on the back porch, but that would probably be giving her too much credit for good sense. The plot thickened the next morning when Mom called me again to report that when she turned the chickens out, the little black hen made a beeline for the front porch. Not unexpected, but what really mystified her was that, in the time it took her to return her coffee cup to the kitchen, the little black hen disappeared into thin air. She had looked on, under and behind everything on the porch and had searched the front yard, the side yard and the garage with no success. I joined in the search and we again walked all around the house and investigated even tiny spaces that surely no hen could fit into. It was truly a mystery.
I went home and a couple of hours later, I came out of the house and found a little black hen on my carport. Now, since I had not seen the disappearing hen, I could not make an identification, but it seemed to me to be a logical conclusion. Since I was on the way to pick Mom up for a trip to town, I drove over and told her about my discovery. But, when we pulled into the driveway, the hen was nowhere to be seen. We searched the carport, walked all the way around the house and I even investigated the dog houses and the bed of my truck. Not even a feather was visible. I was beginning to feel like there was something uncanny about this chicken, but as we drove past my barn on the way out, there she was! We got out so Mom could make a positive ID and the little black hen was just clucking away and scratching in the dirt about the horse stalls. “That’s her,” Mom said, and we both agreed that not only was she the mysterious disappearing chicken but a very speedy mysterious disappearing chicken.
She spent the rest of the day in my front yard, scratching under the bird feeder and making occasional trips to the barn, where I began to suspect she had plans for a nest. Just before dark, Mom came over and persuaded her (with my shooing from behind) to follow her back home. She has been back every day since. It’s funny to watch her march over here, like she has a bus to catch or a job to report to and she has to be on time. And yesterday morning, she had dug most the dirt out the flower box on my front porch and was sitting in it clucking away. Maybe I will have fresh eggs for breakfast tomorrow!

Snow Days

This winter has been blessed, or cursed, with an abundance of snowfall. This morning we woke to our fifth measurable snow since December 1, and this was far and away the prettiest snow in a long time. The snow started to fall last night, huge fluffy flakes that went “splat” on the ground when they hit. In no time, the ground was white and the trees and shrubs wore a plush white coat.
The dogs and I made our first trip to the barn through fairyland. The trees curtsied beneath the heavy load and every twig and every branch held a coating of wet snow. The horses snorted and capered in an unfamiliar landscape – even the gate with its white coating was something to be feared. The cats watched from their perch in the hayloft and the dogs chased rabbit tracks and sniffed for possums and groundhogs under the barn.
I walked past the tool shed, down to the big elm tree, marked with initials from a hundred years ago, taking pictures as I went. The old log cabin, built by my great great grandfather before the Civil War, was shrouded in drifts of white, and everything familiar looks somehow unfamiliar.
Phoebe spent the hour chasing smells and tracks, while Tess, a less adventuresome soul, paced beside me. I could read her mind. “Isn’t it time to go back to the house yet?” she seemed to be saying.
Winter has a strange effect on me. It makes me want to cook. Most of the time, cooking is way on the bottom of my list of things to do, but let winter winds blow and I pull out the recipe books. My chili is almost foolproof, and I have several dishes I can make well. My experiments sometimes go awry, however, and more than once the dogs and cats have lucked into an extra meal because of the failures. I have never been able to make a decent biscuit. No matter what I do, they come out flat and rock-like. I can’t fry chicken either, no matter what instructions I follow. The chicken winds up naked in the pan. One time I got the idea (no doubt from reading some book set in New England) of making “from scratch” baked beans. It took three days. I soaked navy beans, cooked and cooked and cooked them, seasoned them and ended up with Van Camp’s pork and beans! It was one of my great disappointments. Another failure involved a rolling pin and cookies. I seem to remember that after the dough wrapped all around the rolling pin, I just pitched the whole project in the trash. Probably my most spectacular failure were the waffles. Suffice it to say, the waffle iron ended up in the trash can too, covered with baked on waffle batter. Even the dogs couldn’t salvage that mess. I probably need to stick with chili.

Fall Musings

The fog is so thick this morning, I can barely make out the outline of the big maple at the edge of my back yard. I love the view out my back windows, especially in the morning and especially in the fall. I love watching the sun come up and paint the trees with yellow and gold. The dogwoods blaze with crimson and sometimes the deer creep out of the brush to welcome the day. I love the nip in the air, the smell of woodsmoke and the rustle of the leaves that carpet my yard. A brown thrasher is scratching industriously under the winter honeysuckle as I write this, reminding me that I need to be looking for my own breakfast. Fall calls for cold weather food – sausage and pancakes, chili and cornbread, bubbling casseroles and apple dumplings. It’s a time for the last bustle of work on the farm, preparing to hunker down for winter. The horses love the crisp air. I read somewhere that horses are happiest in about 40 degree weather. I seem to be happier in cooler weather too, and I have a little more energy when the thermometer dips below the eighty degree mark. I don’t run and buck like the horses do, but at least I can walk a little faster! And there is nothing better than riding on crisp days under a canopy of fall colors. My mom obsesses over the leaves in her yard, but I have found that mine will eventually blow down into the holler behind my house if I just leave them alone. Any leftovers can be chopped up by the mower next spring. The dogs love the leaves – Trace especially likes to burrow into them for his naps. And the little kids that visit love to rake big piles and jump into them. The leaves bring back memories of football games, hayrides and wienie roasts. The full moon these past days has been especially bright. The almanac says it is the Beaver Moon, named by the Indians because it was one of the last chances to trap beavers for the fur that would keep them warm through the winter. I’m not interested in trapping beavers, but I do love to go outside during a full moon, when I don’t even need a flashlight to make the last trip to the barn. When I was growing up, we didn’t do much about Thanksgiving. Usually, Thanksgiving week was reserved for hog killing and our traditional meal around that time centered around fresh tenderloin, freshly ground sausage, and crackling bread. I didn’t like the crackling bread, but I loved the cracklings fresh out of the kettle. I remember watching Gertrude Dansby, who worked for us for years, cooking off the lard and frying cracklings in a huge black kettle in our backyard. I guess the cracklings were sort of the equivalent of pork rinds, but they were much better! After we stopped killing hogs, we started celebrating Thanksgiving in a more traditional way, and this week, my mom’s family will gather at her house for turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, and all the other good things. It’s great to gather with family to count our blessings and enjoy the bounty of the holiday table. But I think my favorite time of Thanksgiving day is late in the evening, when the rush is over and I can enjoy a plate of leftovers by the fireplace, with my dogs at my feet and a book in my hand. It’s a last breathing space before the Advent and Christmas rush begins. And I am thankful.

Adventures in the Show Ring

National 4-H Week – it surely brings back good memories for me. And I daresay that much of what I learned through my work in that organization have helped me out more in my life and my career than most of what I learned in school.
Of course, being a farm girl, most of my projects in 4-H involved animals. They didn’t have the horse project when I started out or I’m sure it would have been my main focus. Horses were the main focus of just about everything in my life from the time I was able to say the word. But there were plenty of other animals to keep me busy. Beef cattle, swine and sheep were the projects I concentrated on. I could have raised chickens but have I ever mentioned just how much I have always disliked chickens?
The pig shows were always held in March. It was a lot colder in March then than it seems to be now, and my feet were always half frozen, no matter what kind of socks and boots I wore. Pointy pig feet and half-frozen human feet were not a good thing, especially since pigs seem to have a penchant for stepping on those human feet. The local show was held at the fairgrounds and then we went on to the big show at the Nashville Union Stockyard. If there has ever been a colder place in the state than the stockyard, I don’t know where it was. The wind whipped off that river and went right through you. Showing pigs was really pretty simple. They turned all the pigs in a big ring and we had to find our pig and show him off to the judge. We carried long sticks – some were made of wood and some were made of metal – and we used those sticks to guide the pigs around, stopping and starting and trying to show off the pig to his best advantage. Of course, if you had a lesser quality pig, you tried to stay out of the judge’s line of sight until they had weeded out the other lesser quality pigs. But if you had a really good pig, you wanted the judge to see him. It was fun, and I earned a pretty good little bit of spending money with the pigs, but I was always glad to take my poor bruised and frozen feet home at the end of the day.
Oddly enough, we showed lambs in June. I always thought they should have reversed the dates on the pigs and lambs, but I’m sure there was some sort of good reason why they didn’t. Nowdays, the kids have it easy. They have little halters to put on their lambs and they lead them around. We were a hardier group when I was a child. Like the pigs, they just turned all those lambs loose in the ring and we had to find our lamb, catch it and wrestle it over to the wall and try to hang on. We knelt on the ground and held the lambs by the head, or tried to hold them. My lambs were usually pretty tame, but there were always a few who escaped or dragged their handlers across the ring. I remember how soft my hands always were after the show, from the lanolin in the wool.
The biggest shows were always the steer and heifer shows. The steer show was held in December, at the Nashville Union Stockyard, and it was even colder than it was in March! There was a lot more excitement at the cattle shows than the other shows, or at least it seemed that way. The judges were masters of suspense, taking their time selecting their top steers and looking and studying and going back and forth until they would slap one of the calves on the rump and applause would break out. The bidding for the champion steers was lively, and the top calves always brought top dollar. H.G. Hill always bought the grand champion – not because the calf was that much better than all the rest but as a publicity move. Another tradition was eating at the Charlie Nickens barbecue place on Jefferson Street. I don’t know if it was the only restaurant nearby or just the favorite of the adults, but that’s where we always went to eat when we showed livestock at the stockyards. Their menu was shaped like a pig, if I am remembering correctly and their barbecue was great.
I really enjoyed my heifers. The show was in June or July, at the Ellington Agricultural Center, and after the shows, the heifers came back home and raised babies. I could let myself get attached to these sweet calves because I knew they would most likely live out their lives on our farm. We raised Shorthorn cattle, which are known for their gentle dispositions. They come in three colors – red, roan and white. My greatest disappointment was that I never had a white heifer to show. Ironically, my good roan heifer had a white calf the very year I became too old to show in 4-H. A few months earlier and I would have had my wish!
Showing livestock taught me a lot. Winning and losing graciously, the truth that it takes hard work to reach a goal and that sometimes life isn’t fair, that the best part of competition is not necessarily the ribbons and other truths that I only came to appreciate fully as an adult. The prize money I received kept me in spending money all through my teen years, and I made a lot of friends that I still keep in touch with from time to time. The stockyards is gone now, as is Charlie Nickens barbecue. I’m glad I was able to experience those historic spots before they were gone.