Home of My Youth

An essay I wrote for my creative writing course.

I grew up in a small town here in Tennessee called Camden. We were poor, and life was hard for us. My father bounced from job to job. One week he would be cooking for this restaurant then the next he would be logging with that company. My mother wouldn't work until all three of us kids were in school. We managed somehow. Moving from rental to rental. One tiny trailer after the next, all at least fifteen minutes outside town. I will never forget the day when my parents told us that they had bought some land and that pretty soon we would have a trailer of our own. They even took us to the used trailer lot where (not that I knew it at the time) the first place I would always consider my real home was, well part of it.

            The second part was the land, all 24 acres, mostly woods. The clear area, where the trailer would soon go, was a hill with a flat top. We were told it was an old Indian burial site, and we did find a bunch of arrowhead. This hill had a slightly rolling field in back and on the left of it, later it would be planted with different things: corn, hay, clover. Then the rest was woods, beautiful, glorious woods.

            I spent most of my childhood in those woods, exploring and fishing. (There was the Big Sandy River about a mile into them.)   My sister and I pretty much lived in the woods when the weather was too cold for snakes, and it wasn't hunting season. We had the Eagle Tree on the lower, right side of the woods. It was a tree that had been struck by lightning, and the broken part looked like an eagle head. We had the Grapevine Playground, which was exactly what it sounds like. There we had swings and jungle gyms formed naturally out of beautiful, wild grape vines. That part of the property was an old cemetery with headstones and everything. They were too worn to read. My dad showed my an old map of the area once, and the cemetery use to be called Halls Cemetery. There was the fishing spot called the Honey Hole, a place in the creek that was very deep called the Miniature Honey Hole. (My sister and I were creative with names.) Our favorite spot was the Indian Summer Home. It was in the very back of the woods past the river. We had to cross it from the road then backtrack into the woods. It was a perfect dome made out of thorn bushes with a tree for support in the center. We, of course, played like we were Native Americans, and the dome was our teepee. There is no telling how many hours, even days, we spent playing in those woods. It was our little world where we were Kings.

            Before we could put the trailer on the land we had to tear down an old, four-room house. It was full of old junk. My sister and I found an old set of Chinese checkers that we kept and played with for many years to come. It turned out that old house was still a home to someone. One day my father and I were there going to start burning down the walls. We heard a noise coming from inside the now empty house. I was only seven and scared, but I looked in the no-glass window. To my surprise, out jumped a baby deer right over my head, making me fall down. From that day on, we had a pet deer. Silly thing would suck on your ear lobe when it was hungry. My momma wasn't very happy about that. We named her Sunny but ended up giving her to the neighbor. He could legally rehabilitate wild animals, and we figured he could take better care of her.

            It was finally time for the trailer.  We were so excited because it was the biggest thing we had ever lived in, with three bedrooms, two baths, a pantry, and a laundry room. (Our other trailer had the washing machine in the bathroom.) It was very nice and only two years old. We thought we were living the high life. There was a bar separating the living room from the kitchen, and my older sister and I had a window seat, with a toy box underneath, in our bedroom. Mom and Dad even bought us bunk beds, red metal ones with two ladders. 

            We lived there about two years before we got air conditioning, another new thing to us. Looking back now, I don't see how we lived without it for the first eleven years of my life. We only had antennae with two channels until I was 13, ABC and PBS. But all this was enough for us. We were happy children. I spent most of my time outside playing with my sisters and our animals; and when my two sisters got older and didn't play, I rode my bike up and down the drive way or played in the woods with my dogs. Life was simple. We didn't have gaming systems, computers, or cell phones. We read books, mountains of books. My mother, sister, and I still read more than watch television.

            My parents now live smack-dab in the middle of town. They moved, a week before I left for college, to a beautiful three bed, two bath, brick home with hardly any yard. I was very sad to leave the home of my childhood. I went back to every monument; the Eagle Tree, both Honey Holes, the Playground,  the Indian Summer Home. I think I cried at every one. Both of my sisters had already left home, and it didn't affect them the way it did me, but then I was the one who was much more attached to the land. They didn't care as long as they were sheltered. The only thing my sisters got upset about was leaving Reba behind.

            Reba was our miniature dachshund that we had had since I was seven years old. She was red, hence the name Reba after the country singer. She was the best guard dog anyone could ask for. She died when I was eighteen and away at New York City for a competition. She was very old and had had a very good life since we got her. (She was being beaten, and my dad just took away from the people.) Dad buried her next to some daylilies that grew by our mailbox. The only thing Dad said about leaving her behind was that she was staying at the place she loved.

            Home can mean different things to different people. My husband says his home is wherever I am. My dad says the same thing about my mother. My mother says hers is the house they are in now. Both of my sisters say they have yet to find theirs. I have lived many different places since I left that trailer. A dorm on campus, a duplex where I could sweep the carpet, a house in Martin, a very nice condo in Saint Louis, back to a house in Martin, a house in Bolivar, and right now an apartment in Bolivar. That's seven different places, and not one of them has struck my heart like that trailer almost in the woods. While I may never physically step foot on that land again, my heart does at least once almost every day.

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[B.A.R.]

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