He was a tall man with a headful of white hair. He wore
thick glasses and rare it was when I did not see him dressed in overalls. He
never owned or drove a car but he owned and used a few tractors in his time. He
raised some cows, owned a chicken house for a time and slaughtered hogs on the
coldest days in winter. In the hardscrabble north Georgia soil he always tended
a garden and whatever grew there-beans, corn, okra, squash, apples-ended up on
the family table or preserved in some way in a jar for consumption later after
harvest had passed and when the cold winds whipped down from the mountains to
the family’s front door. Sometimes he may have even preserved other things in
jars just to sell to others but some things are better left to share only among
family.
This man was my Pappaw, my Dad’s dad.
I recall learning he was born in another century, the late
1800s, and I then considered it awesome to know somebody so shortly removed
from the Wild West by just a few years. He married an older woman, older by
just a year or two, anyway. Together they had four boys and three daughters and
each one, minus one, had a nickname others in the family used although no one
in the family could or would ever explain why or how those nicknames came into
being. My dad was planted smack dab in the middle of the seven.
Growing up, we would visit my Pappaw and Mammaw usually on
Sunday afternoons after church or as my Mammaw would say after “meetin’”.
Sometimes aunts and uncles and cousins would be there. More often than not, my
Pappaw might make an appearance but usually not for very long because on his
farm, there was almost always something to do and he was the man to do it.
I noticed something from time to time whenever we would be
at Pappaw’s house or even sometimes when we talked about him. I noticed that my
Dad and his brothers and sisters referred to him as “the old man”. Every time I
heard that phrase I cringed a little. After all, old isn’t always looked on as
being something a person looks forward to, especially when you are young and
strapping full of life. Mom and Dad had also spent time and exerted effort teaching
me to be deferential especially to older family and friends so for me to hear
people I love refer to my Pappaw as “the old man” just seemed to be
disrespectful and more than a bit confusing. Do understand I never recall
hearing anyone call Pappaw “the old man” in a mean-spirited tone but still something
about hearing that phrase associated with my Pappaw has stuck with me all these
years.
I never asked anyone why Pappaw was sometimes referred to as
“the old man” until recently. We were with family talking about family when
Pappaw Dills was remembered. I was
sitting near my Dad so I told him how I remembered him and his brothers and
sisters calling Pappaw “the old man”, a phrase they sometimes reference even
now over twenty years after Pappaw’s passing. I asked Dad why they sometimes
referred to Pappaw as “the old man”. Dad didn’t really have an answer; it was
just what they called him. I then asked if they ever called Pappaw “the old man”
to his face. Dad grinned and sharply said, “Noooo.”
Dad’s reply didn’t really give me an answer I wanted but
gave me enough of an answer to understand it all a bit better. Maybe there was
some of that youth-knows-better-than-age idealism floating around when one of
the seven first uttered that phrase “the old man” and it stuck, like their
nicknames stuck for the rest of their lives, even past the point of realizing
under the gray hair and behind the thick glasses and down in the heart underneath
those overalls was a world of unique wisdom earned from life experience. Maybe somewhere
was a tinge of remembering how their youth was spent working hard on the farm
and how Pappaw, their Dad, was the one who was driving them to work that way.
Even then when I heard someone say “the old man” I could pick out a respect for
that man who gave them life and who taught them hard work is not a thing over
which to feel any shame.
Maybe that is me projecting what I want to believe so my
memories stay warm and remain unspoiled. After all, my mileage varies. He was
their dad but he was my Pappaw.
Pappaw lived to be an old man according to today’s
standards, ninety-seven years young. His last few years were challenging. His life
of hard work caught up with him just when he slowed in life. His feet and knees
could not hold out longer than the rest of him. One leg was removed and then
later another. Many of us thought once he could no longer be mobile the life
would drain from him and he would wither away. He was tough though, made out of
strong stuff. He held on and stayed sharp mentally, rarely forgetting a name or
face. He stayed at home as long as his children could care for him then he went
to a facility where at least one of his children visited him every day until he
drew his last breath. That’s how they showed their love; they were there for “the
old man” until the end.
Family still lives on that farm, a farm never since cared
for the way Pappaw cared for it. Sometimes bits and pieces of what I knew there
float through my memory, the well where we dropped a bucket down into the earth’s
belly and drew out cold, cold water, the old outhouse down a path in the woods,
the pond down from the house out from the old home place, the song of the
guineas over in the pasture. Mostly I think about the people I knew there,
loved there. I think about seeing my Pappaw on his tractor or watching him walk
down the dirt road to check on his garden or just listening to him talk while
he leaned back in a cane-bottomed chair.
Memories yellow with time. I now know I was younger then and
he was old, at least the way some people choose to measure time and age. Still
with that knowledge, he never seemed old to me.
