I grew up on a gravel road. It's not something I was proud of at the time but I've noticed lately that it's become a way of growing up somewhat glamourized by country music lyrics and by storytellers that want to sound "folksy". It's sort of a badge of honor now in the same way that people used to be ashamed of having some Indian blood in their family but now could not be more proud of it. The truth is that it really sucked to a great extent to live on a gravel road. When a car passed during the hot, dry, months of summer you would get a cloud of dust in it's wake that floated up into the yard and if you were doing something that required focus, cleanliness, or breathing you might wait for a minute for the dust to settle before you resumed. And...it was 24/7, all the time. I don't think I will ever brag on it, at least not unless I get rich enough to want to invent a poverty story like the singers and storytellers.
Our house was far enough off the road for the dust to not be too much of a bother but I remember my daddy had a shop where he worked on cars and trucks and basically just did any type of mechanic work that came along and that shop building was closer to the road and it always had it's rolling garage doors open when he worked in there. That was all twelve months of the year. Everything stayed covered in dust. Daddy never bragged about the gravel road either. He didn't write songs about it. If he penned his biography the gravel road would not be in it. I guess it's not really the gravel road that got me to thinkin' and rememberin' about thinking about daddy working all those years in the dust. I guess sometimes we use one thought as an excuse to get to another thought. The other thought has to do with me, but it has a backdrop of daddy and the shop and the gravel road. My daddy didn't often call me by my name. I don't think it's because he didn't like like it. I think it was just his way of funnin' with me. He had a lot of nicknames for me and the more I think about it there were a lot of nicknames that had to do with my feet. Lead foot, slew footed boy, tumble foot, big foot, hook worm ,"'ole crow foot over there" and the like - each used as a term of endearment, albeit weird. So all of this connect-the-dots type memory lead me to remember something he said to me a couple of weeks before he died in the shop when a jack stand slipped and a car fell on him. I was hanging around the shop on a Sunday morning wearing a white shirt and he told me to go on before I got my clothes dirty out there. I was fixin' to go to church with my grandmother that morning. I had said "Good, then if I'm dirty enough I can just stay here with you". He said to me " You need to go to church. I don't want a boy of mine heading out into the world on feet of clay". I had no idea what he meant at the time but I figured it out this week. I was 14 then. I'm 45 now. Sometimes it takes the gravel and the dust and the turkey-leg nicknames to help remember. Sometimes they lead to a breakthrough. Sometimes it takes a long time. I try not to live on feet of clay now. Daddy, I finally heard you.
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AuthorI am a Mississippi native and now live in Jackson,Tennessee. I write about everyday life and events from the perspective of how they effect my own thoughts and feelings. Archives
April 2020
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