Appalachian Heritage

§ Summation ? y (for Dcothy and Mary) S When we are young we scorn our origins: there's grandma and grandpa, but beyond that we have about as much interest in ancestors as worms do. And history? that's a subject taught in school, no relevance for us, for nothing ofsignificance happened until we appeared on the scene. But what a difference the years make! As we grow older we begin to wonder if, when we are gone, anybody will know or care ifwe ever lived, and.we begin to show some interest in those who've gone before. What is our legacy? What genes were passed down to us and from whom? What family traditions should we rediscover and preserve? Did we have any forebears of note, or were there more crooks and ne'er-do-wells? Do we have any living kin we've lost sight ofwho might be worth knowing? Like old Rip we've slept for twenty years while the family passed away, old tales and records gone, too late to hear their stories of their ancestors. And places? In our modern dislocations is any place home? Everybody used to have "an old home place" where all the clan rallied, but no more—sold, passed into other hands, and we can't go back to Bethel. This summer some cousins from the West came to visit for the first time in many years. We reminisced. No one person could remember the names ofuncles and aunts and cousins, cousins once removed, second, third and where do "kissin' cousins" 79 stop and hand-shake ones begin? But between us we summoned memories of quite a host in a homespun threnody for folk long gone; we didn't quite make them immortal but for a throbbing moment they lived again. We visited the old farm which held memories of our visits in childhood and youth. The little little fork of the Shenandoah ran in front of the farm as it always did, and the mountain behind the back fields was as solid as ever; the spring branch ran over its little fall down to the river, but the apple trees in the orchard were gone and the old red bank barn was about to tumble in. We sought the old whitewashed stone springhouse in an overgrown thicket which was not visible till we pushed our way in, but it was still there and water, too, where we drank when we were young. A partial compensation for our loss was a huge wisteria which climbed a hundred foot tree on the river bank and spread to nearby trees, forming a canopy, with its lilac racemes dangling like bunches ofgrapes and the air was perfumed with its fragrance. The sands have run out ofthe hourglass and it can't be turned over again, and new people will make new memories, but the mountain and the river will remain. What we think and feel is not a "first," former generations felt the same; they discovered they could not reclaim the fresh-mourned past, for time has burst the wineskins of our treasures, new and old, and images ofpast and present merge as life and death inevitably converge and with a sigh the tale oflife is told. — Richard Relham 80 ...