Songs from the Hope Well

 Here is a flash from my past. A snip I wrote 3 yrars ago.
  

                                                             Hope Well 

 

When I was a young woman, on a day much like today with the winter trying to peak its head through autumn’s amber coat, my father decided to take my younger brother and myself on an adventure. Unlike the adventures he had taken us on in the past of things he had yet seen, this was one of sharing his past.

“I’m going to show you where I was born!” He said. So we set out on a 30 mile journey in to the deep woods of West Georgia in search of his birthplace.

Along the way we stopped to pick up my father’s oldest brother, Elmer. The brothers were seven in all, my father being in the middle.

Continuing our journey we pulled off of the Highway onto a dirt road passing saltbox houses along the way. Expecting my father to pull into a driveway at any one of them, knock on a door, exclaiming his birthright, then probably being let in. As this was the custom in the south. Instead we drove on over the river onto a slat bridge that made you pray for its reinforcement. The road ended at the edge of a thick wall of Georgia Pine.

The rest of the journey was to be on foot. Stepping out of my Dad’s truck I looked back on the River we had just crossed. An outlet of the Chattahoochee River, was rushing over the rocks with never ending determination to reach its destination. Glancing up I took in the luminous view of the Mill; built a few years prior to the Great Depression. Those that built it never imagining the sorrows that it would house. Now it stood hollow and empty looking down upon the water that once gave it life.

We turned to head into the thick woods. I was never the outdoors type so I let the men lead, following my brother who was plotting future adventures of hunting and fishing in the area. Walking the never ending hills that had been deemed useless at the beginning of this country’s formation; it was too hilly for farming and too much trouble to build on.

My Uncle turned, and gave us a stern warning, “Watch out for the wells! Break a leg if you’re not careful! Must be about 60 of ’um.”  He said, while checking his footing in a tuft of brown leaves.

Curious I asked, “How do you know how many wells there are?”

He turned and said,” I was there when they was dug. Every one of ’um hit rock.” I imagined him a nine year old boy watching the men dig over and over to no avail.

Over two hundred yards away from the rolling river that could still be heard but not seen, my father and uncle began to slow their pace and run their hands over the trunks of trees. Squinting as he rubbed the trunk of an elm, my father asked, “Is this where Jimmy is? I know Frank is by a maple.” My Uncle walked over and searched diligently on the bark of the tree finally finding the hint of a worn carved cross even with his shoulder. I became aware of the ghosts of many left behind in graves without markers. Friends and still born babes who had not survived the unsaid holocaust of our great nations poor.

It was then that I realized that my Father had been born in a shantytown, the places in our south that have no historical plaques marking their paths. What we were looking for was the remnants of a shack put together with scrap lumber, tar paper and tin. The first time I had seen one was when I was five, my father moved us to a small town in Georgia where he had bought a truck stop. One Saturday he took me to work with him for the day and on the way we stopped at the tar paper shack of a man named Coot.

Coot worked for my Dad pumping Gas and cleaning up. I offered to wait in the car but Dad wouldn’t hear of it. He knocked and pushed in at the same time saying, “It’s me Coot!” The old man was lying on a cot and seeing my father he rolled and turned himself to sit up. Trying to stand he slipped back down. He was drunk and teetering. He still managed to say,” Hey, how y'all do? Can I get you something?” To my utter horror, my father said,” Yeah, I sure would like some coffee, Coot.” At the time I thought, how rude could my father get? It took a lifetime for me to realize that he was trying to pull a man at his lowest state out, either by shaming him with my presence or putting him back into a sober routine. Teaching me the spectrum of life, and to respect every man, was just killing two birds with one stone.

 

At the height of the depression mill owners took on desperate workers from all over the south. Whole families would travel in hopes of finding work to survive. Men knowing if they left their loved ones behind that they had less chance than if they were with them. People with little more than the clothes on their backs, arriving at their destination, only to find all the housing full and a man pointing to a pile of scrap lumber telling them to make do.

These workers were tenants of the mill paying ten to forty percent, the Devil’s tithe, of their wages to live on the property. The pay was daily, as people came and went without ever knowing if there would be enough work the following day or if they would live through the night. Every able body in the family worked. If not at the mill then anywhere he or she could. Women would warm benches at the Mill in the grim hope to fill a spot that no man was around to fill for half the wage. Children would sweep and load spools.

My Father and Uncle forged on, as my brother and I followed. Having walked the same path daily for years in their childhood, either to work, or the few months of school they had to teach them enough not to be any man’s fool. They came to a halt in a grove of pine that was no more than three years old. My father stood, bewildered,” This is where it was. I thought there would be something? I didn’t think it would be standing after all these years but still something!” He kicked the ground as if he would unearth a treasure from his past. Nothing, his birthplace was long gone; taken away, either by needy neighbors for kindling or ordered whipped away by the owners of the mill. Moments passed in silence until my Uncle finally spoke,” We can show them the rock.” he said. My father was awoken from a memory that had hold of him. His face turned to excitement and he exclaimed, “I’d forgot about that!”

As we followed the men dutifully my brother asked aloud, “What’s so great about a rock?” My Uncle just smiled and said, “You’ll see!” wanting to humor him we continued on.

We headed down a steep slope, till we came to the edge of a dried creek bed. I saw my Uncle pause; stare into the gully as if to reflect over the grave of a loved one. The men leapt the three foot gap from lip to lip of the trench as I crawled down and then up the roots of trees to cross. Catching up, I heard my Uncle’s story of the women and children who dug this man made creek. Unable to spring a well, they had to divert the water from the river itself. The young boys dug the trench with whatever they could find; and the little girls would watch the children that were too young to watch themselves. Babes not yet weaned, strapped to their mothers, as they rolled stones away. It was young boys mostly that tried to dig the wells. Suddenly I realized that my Uncle’s reflection had been on a monument to his childhood contribution to his family’s survival. It was long since dried from the lowering of the river.

My brother persisted, “What does this rock look like?” My father smiled and answered, “It’s a river rock.” My brother looked at my Dad like he was nuts. “We saw plenty of those near the truck.” he said. My father smiled and said,” This one’s special. It’s a praying rock!” My brother replied, “Rocks can’t pray!”

We made our way to the top of the last hill before the river. My Uncle walked towards an indention in the side of the hill. Once closer I discovered that the indention was an abandoned attempt at digging the creek. It was here that he searched with a stick to sweep the brush, shifting years of debris. He then began to uncover a flat rock smoothed by the wear of the river’s water, at one time coming to where we stood.

To my amazement his efforts uncovered a pair of hands imprinted and indented into this rock. My Uncle smiled, and said “This is it, The Prayer Rock. We found it in 1930 while we were digging this creek. Our Mama, who had had an Indian grandmother, said it was a Praying Rock. They’d bear down on it and pour all their sorrows into it. After that we heard stories of them being all over the South.”

I examined the rock and it had the formation and texture of an ordinary river rock. No signs of it being hardened clay or left over mortar from the bridge.

My father put his hands into the imprinted ones; as if to measure his growth from the first time he had. My brother did the same. I asked out loud, “Shouldn’t this be in a museum?”

My uncle bent back down over the stone and began replacing the brush and dirt he had removed. “Worse thing you can do in this world is take another man’s hope.”

An acceptance came over me, that my uncle was right. The wonderment of the survival of one man’s prayer outweighed any scientific explanation I could think of.

Thank you Dad and Uncle Elmer