Back Home by Emma Stewart 

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1. As a child, I lived some distance back in the woods. The road wandered aimlessly like a writhing snake among huckleberry bushes and briers, along a sloping hillside where mountain laurel and honeysuckle blooms scented the air in late spring. It passed beside a field, which was enclosed with a barbed wire fence. Black Betty, our cow, was pastured there. Growing profusely beside the fence were large lavender violets.

2. When the road got tired of winding, and I got tired of walking, we were always at the same place. The huge boxwood bushes stood tall and graceful, as though they were soldiers, guarding a humble little shack, the closest place to heaven—my home.

3. There was a two-story frame dwelling, politely asking for a fresh coat of whitewash. It had a tin roof, painted as red as a strawberry, that rattled when the wind blew. A wisteria vine was tightly clinging to the front-porch columns, and a rusty screen door shrieked loudly when it was opened.

4. The floor was bare except for a few scatter rugs my grandma had crocheted with a button hook. The ceilings were high, and draped with a few cobwebs. The mantle was decorated by a seven-day alarm clock that had been on vacation for years. A kerosene lamp, its globe black from smoke, stood atop a dresser in the corner.

5. To the chimney was attached an old cast-iron heater, cracked down the side, which gave us comfortable warmth in cold weather. There was also a box of neatly sawed oak wood.

6. During the summer we waved a palm leaf fan to stir up a little breeze. However, the second floor was air-conditioned rather well by a “balm-ogilead” tree that swayed with the wind and circulated a gentle breeze through our upstairs windows.

7. We ate in a little kitchen which stood out in the backyard away from the main house. The kitchen was like an icebox in the winter and a furnace in summer.

8. We had an ugly, old black cookstove, a huge square table covered usually with a bright floral-patterned oilcloth, and some round-back wooden chairs. A bucket of water from the moss-covered well in the backyard was placed on a little table by the stove, and a coconut shell dipper hung beside the bucket. Electricity hadn’t found its way to our part of the country yet.

9. But our food was good. Nothing can quite compare to the homemade biscuits, fried ham sizzling in red gravy, cabbage floating in ham grease, or butter cake with homemade chocolate icing. My mother would stand on the kitchen porch and call out when the meals were ready.

10. I spent a lot of time on the barrel-stave hammock in the backyard under the old gnarled trees. I would swing for hours in the fresh air and sunshine and become lost in pleasant reverie. That was my idea of recreation. I didn’t know what it was to be lonely.

11. Mama was a delightful person. She was tall, stately and slender, with warm brown eyes. Her long black hair was tucked in a bun at the nape of her neck. She was always busy cooking, churning, feeding chickens, washing clothes on an old scrub board, or drawing water with a windlass and rope from a fifty-foot well. But she found time to rock and cuddle me, and sew for my dollies.

12. Daddy walked behind a mule and a horse and a double plow all day, turning up fresh ground and putting out of sight old dead grass and broom straw. There were fresh earthy smells everywhere. In the distance a crow would “caw,” and Daddy would mock him and try to frighten him away.

13. After supper sometimes we’d walk out to a neighbor’s house, or else we’d just sit and talk or play the hand-cranked Victrola. Life was simple for us, but it was good.

14. Since those days the world has changed a great deal—and so have I. With all our progress though, love is still the greatest force on earth. I saw it in my parents long ago. It was love that made a humble country home seem like heaven.

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