free day

There aren't many of those on my calendar that come at the end of a weekend so I'm living it up and having a ball digging through memories of my life. The finds are random and stir up all kinds of stuff I had totally forgotten. A program from when I played Mrs. Keller in the DSCC production about Helen's family. My long lost Irish setter Brandy played the dog! Even then I was a dog lover. She had a litter or two of puppies that I sold before she got down with heartworm disease. A beautiful copper color, she was as gentle as the day is long.

That was when I was madly in love with a guy who somehow popped into my life after being raised in Chicago the rough way. My family adopted him as one of our own and my brothers tormented me mercilessly while I tried to court.

I was a student at what was then Memphis State doing the required course work to get into medical technology school at UT Memphis. Following two years at DSCC making perfect scores I found myself in huge classes with professors who really didn't care that I had problems...suck it up and learn organic chemistry and quantitative analysis all in the same semester. With German and parasitology for good measure. I thought I had died and gone to the devil. The B's and C's and one D that I got managed to move me toward the next step though. Med tech school was so hard I threatened to jump out the 9th floor dorm window until my mama showed up to talk me out of quittin' three months shy of graduation. I graduated in June '77 and went to work in Dyersburg that August. Been there ever since. How's that for loyalty? Many times I think I've just been lazy..preferring to stay close to home and hearth until there is no reason to cruise back up the lane again. So many old timers come out here and just drive around remembering when they were kids and played on this very land. It was quite the little community with a school and everything. Helen and her kids lived in it until it burned.

Mr. Council was a horseman who lived in the house that I'm in. For fifty years he was the king of this hill and generations of kids learned to ride on horses that were boarded here. His last ten years were as a widower so you can imagine what it looked like pre-makeover. Built in 1918, the house has a full basement and attic which aren't used except for storage. His signature is scrawled across the concrete wall of the basement with paint. And a date! So are all the junior high chalk messages from the numerous make out parties that BG and her bunch had. What the hell was I thinking???????

It is a mighty peaceful place and I feel fortunate to have lived here most of my life. I am trying to remember the don't own/can't defend rule and pray that the heirs of this land will treat it kindly and without greed. The ancient pecan trees that frame the lane are a legacy to all those who have come before me.