A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES

 

A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES

 

Sounds like a droll title I know. A lot of people go to a graveyard and walk the shortest path to a particular tombstone inscribed with the date of birth and death of a loved one, spend some time and then leave. My Daddy would wander around the graveyards and share memories he had of the residents.

Some leave flowers, some let tears fall while remembering the person whose bones lie beneath the surface. Some graves are sunken due to loose filled dirt not packed down. Some have mounds shaped by loving hands. One such grave  stands out in the Owen graveyard above my Uncle Robert and Aunt Lola’s homeplace.

That grave has a handmade wooden canopy built by my Uncle John Thomas Owen better known as J.T. Owen. J.T. said that he could not bear the thought of his Mama being rained or snowed on. With loving hands, he, with the help of my Uncle Robert, hauled the wood  to the graveyard for the cover over my Grandmother’s grave and built the canopy.  J.T. never got over losing his mother and when he mentioned her, involuntary tears filled the wrinkles on his face and rolled down his face into his tobacco-stained beard.  J.T. chewed Days Work tobacco. He always looked sad except very rarely when he would recount a story, a fond memory,  which brought a chuckle and smile to his weathered face. My Uncle Spurgeon Owen took J.T. in when my Grandma died. Spurgeon’s sons treated J.T. more like a brother than an Uncle.

I would see J.T. walking down the Quebec mountain on his way to the country store that was built above the French Broad River just off U.S. Highway 64. I would walk along with him to the store and back to the foothills of the Quebec community.  Not too far up Highway 64  from my Uncle Spurgeon’s house is a scenic waterfall, Toxaway falls.  In the movie Thunder Road starring Robert Mitchum , he drove a tanker car filled with moonshine down the long slope of the falls at 90 miles an hour while being chased by revenuers. Revenuers were always interfering with my relative’s production and sale of whiskey better known as white lighting.

My Uncle Avery lies in the Owen cemetery close to his Mama, Jeannette Leona Owen. He was killed in a knife fight over a poker game with some Black men. His son and my first cousin Willie B. grew up with my brother Charles. They were as close as brothers.  When my Daddy, Fred Dillard Owen, got too old to traipse through the mountain to his whiskey still and pack in supplies and carry out the finished product; he hired Willie B. One of my favorite stories is about Willie B. being caught by the revenuers. They raided my Daddy’s whiskey still and handcuffed Willie B. around a small sourwood sapling.

While they were chopping up my Daddy’s still with axes, Willie B. clumb (southern word for (climbed) up the small tree and as it bent over, he slipped away and ran through the woods. He came out of the woods into the back yard of our house breathing like a freight train.  My Daddy loved Willie B. and Willie B. loved Willie B.

Willie B. said, “Uncle Fred, they came up on me so fast. They chopped up the still place.” Daddy had Willie B. place his hands on our kindling chopping block stained with chicken blood, took a double-bladed ax, and raised it over his head. Willie B. looked up at Daddy with pleading eyes and said: “Uncle Fred please be careful.”

OOPs, wandered off a bit.

One of Daddy’s best pickups was a 1953 Chevrolet. One day he asked me if I wanted to take a ride. I never turned down an opportunity to go loafing with my Daddy. We drove down Frozen Creek Road and turned left on Highway 64 toward Quebec.  Just past my Uncle Suprgeon’s house on the left side of the road was a pipe sticking out of the mountain. It tapped into a spring of water. Daddy took a Coke can from behind his seat and rinsed it out, held it by the pipe and drank a can of water. He then handed it to me, and I drank the ice-cold water.  It was so cold, it would give you “brain freeze.” We then proceeded up the mountain to the cutoff leading to the Whitmire cemetery where several Owen’s were buried including my dear Mother.

As most people do, we parked right beside our people’s graves. My Mama’s grave was to the right of the road running through the cemetery. My Daddy took off his Fedora hat and stood at the edge of the grave for a while. Often he would brush his eyelids as he put his hat back on. Then we walked to the left of the road and stopped at my Grandfather an Grandmother’s grave. He told me that he and my Grandfather, Phillip Edmond Chapman used to make whiskey together up off Diamond Creek Road. My Grandmother, Eythel Chapman used to make the best jelly biscuits and grow the hottest cayenne  peppers in the county. She always  planted according to the Farmer’s Almanac. When the signs were in the “head,” that is when she planted her peppers and always had a boom crop. My brother, Edgar, decided to grow peppers and he consulted with Grandma. She told him he had to wait until the signs were right. Well Edgar ignored his Grandmother and planted his peppers when he dammed well pleased. The pepper plants came up looking beautiful. However, not one pepper grew on the plant. Edgar took Grandma’s advice after that.  

Oops, wandered off again.

Daddy and I would visit our people in the graveyard first and then Daddy would walk among the tombstones and tell a short story about the people lying below the stones. He knew a little about most of the people buried in the Whitmire cemetery. Some trips, we would spend upwards of two hours wandering through the cemetery. One of my saddest memories was when my brother Gerald witnessed the exhumation of my brother Edgar’s death. I arranged for Edgar to be taken to Raleigh for an autopsy. The Brevard Medical Examiner did not attend the scene of Edgar’s death and claimed that since Edgar had alcohol in his system that his death was an accident. Gerald posted reward posters for information about Edgar’s death throughout the county. No one claimed the reward. I am ready now to post another reward with the hopes that someone will come forward with information. Greed is a powerful thing. I am hopeful that my brother Edgar will one day find peace. Now both Edgar and my Daddy lie in the Whitmire cemetery. I hope some visitors stop at their graves and cite memories of them.

In the old West there are comical statements on tombstones. One reads: Here lies Wes Moore, with us no more, shot through the breast with a Colt 44.

Daddy used to sit on his back porch sipping some of his homemade elixir and singing an old ballad, Knoxville Girl. He put a lot of feeling into that song especially the line: “He grabbed her by her Golden Locks and dragged her round and round. He  threw her in the river that runs by Knoxville town.”

My first song I learned on an old Stella guitar was “Hang down your head Tom Dooley.”

On a pilgrimage to Westport Oregon, my brother Brian, and my sweet sisters Sis and Vonda Lee wandered through an old cemetery leading up to my sister Thelma’s old homeplace. We came across a tombstone that said: If love could have saved you, you would have never died. I am sure that many people share that sentiment when walking among tombstones. Forgive me for getting off track as I tend to do.

 

My wishes are not to lie in a cemetery with a headstone. I don’t want a tombstone with a “Gone but not forgotten” etching. Life is for the living and rarely do people really think about those who once walked the earth.  If anyone wants to remember me, look at the stars as I am probably in that area freely flitting about or go down to the ocean and look out across the waves where my ashes rest. My spirit will be free.

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