Barbie Loflin

I grew up in a small town in east Tennessee. The beautiful rolling hills lay just outside the dusty curtains that hang haphazardly above my bedroom window. In the mornings, I was awakened by the sound of birds singing, the mournful moan of our red-bone hound dog, Bum, and the sound of my mother bangin’ pots in the kitchen as she scrambled eggs and fried sausage. I could tell exactly when it was time to get up, ‘cause I’d smell the biscuits browning.

My summer days consisted of fighting with my younger sister, Angie, then playing games with her. We knew those hills like our own backyard, for that is just what they were. We played ‘Lost in Space,’ -she always got to be Judy because of her blonde hair-, hide and seek, freeze tag, bicycle races, stomped through muddy creek beds, caught butterflies, lightening bugs, frogs, crawfish. We simply enjoyed life. A simple life. We lacked for nothing and wanted everything. I remember laughing loud and often. I remember jokes, smiles, music. I remember the way my father smelled on Sunday morning before church. I remember how beautiful my mom looked in her red suit.

I remember so many things; still others are reduced to images, feelings, smells. They are triggered by the strangest things. Going on a field trip with my son, sitting on his bus, I was carried back to another bus, thirty years before. The seats stuck to my legs in the same way. The bus driver peered through the overhead mirror in the same manner; you know that kind of searching-scowl that all bus drivers develop over time. I was suddenly six years old, on my way to school. I felt the same little rush, the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I shook my head to clear the deja-vu webs.

I lived in a butterscotch-colored house on a dirt road called Walls Hollow. My dad built the house after our trailer burned down one night while we were at the stock car races. Does that sound redneck enough for you? I loved our butterscotch house. I never asked why daddy painted it that color, but looking back, I feel reasonably certain that the paint must have been a good deal. Back then, I just thought it was beautiful. I felt calm when I looked at that house. I felt safe living in that house.

When my grandpa was pouring our concrete sidewalk he let all of us girls, four at that time, put our hands in the wet cement. Four perfect little hand prints sealed in time. It was fun then, it makes me cry now.

A year or so ago I went back to the old house. The new owners had changed everything. The house had been enlarged, outbuildings added. My old basketball goal was now home to a couple of cars. The garden my daddy had planted every year was gone, the yard swing absent, as well. A couple of things remained, however. Wonderful things that called me back again, to a time that now exists only in my mind.

Sitting beside the kitchen door was the dogwood tree I had loved as a child. In the springtime, it had large white blooms with crimson edges. My mother had stood with me at that dogwood tree and shared the story of how the bloom represented the cross of Christ. I remember how tenderly she held the flower as she explained its legend. I remember her hands. I look at my own hands now to see hers. They are the same.

As I approached the walk, I was almost afraid to look. Thirty years had come and gone since papaw had knelt with us, pressing chubby fingers into wet, gritty cement. What if they had erased the hand prints? Would proof of my childhood also be erased? I wanted so badly to see the four tangible imprints of my lost youth. I walked slowly, eyes shut tight as I approached the place where they had once been. I took a deep breath, counted to three, tilted my head forward and opened my eyes. They were there! I exhaled. Just as they had been thirty years earlier. Their imprint more shallow, yet undeniably there.

I knelt beside what I felt almost an effigy of the little girl I had been. My now wrinkled, dishpan hand, trembled as it cautiously traced the edges of a much smaller one. I looked at my sisters hands beside my own and flashes of a lifetime skittered through my mind. Tears, unchecked, spilled from my eyes as I mourned the loss of those tender, innocent years, then those tears were replaced by tears of triumph as I realized that all four of these little hands still led full, blessed lives. Not one of those children had been lost over the years. They all still loved one another, still played ‘house’ together – only for real this time, still spent holidays together, still rambled through the unchanging, beautiful hills of East Tennessee…

They all still laughed … loud and often.

Dirt Roads

There’s a house of butterscotch

Slumbering just down the road

Often times I travel there

Just to let my mind unfold.

I sit beneath the dogwood tree,

Touch the hand prints on the walk,

If I listen close enough,

I can hear the old walls talk…

Here comes the wind, The leaves they turn.

The pictures change, Still I have learned,

That all I’ve known, Still walks with me,

Down the dirt roads.

Daddy’s mowing in the yard

Wearing high top leather boots,

Little girls play upon the swing,

In their faded summer suits.

Sweet Mama in the kitchen there,

She’s never hard to find.

My sweet constant companions

On the back roads of my mind.

Come on wind…

Years pass swift and little girls

Hold babies of their own,

They leave the house of butterscotch,

Still, they’re forever comin’ home…

So, come on wind, leaves that turn,

The pictures change, but I have learned,

All I know will walk with me,

Down these dirt roads.