Post Thirty-One: My life at Wing is ending

     Sammy Turner and I learned how to swim in stock ponds and kept our skills brushed up there regularly. The only problem was, you had to keep the top water scum beat back or it would envelop you. One day, we were working on our swimming skills in a hidden pond, strictly forbidden. Barbara Lou and Jan had followed us there once, and the rumor was getting around about what we were doing. Well, Bernice Turner, Sammy's mother, caught us. “You boys get out of that water right now!” Well, Sammy started wading out, and I, being always the good follower, started wading out. It suddenly hit me, when we were about knee deep, that I was buck naked. I fled back to deep water. Bernice was a nice lady who could appreciate my situation; she left so I could come out.
When I left Wing for college in the fall of 1962, I knew a large chunk of my life was ending. I knew I would never live there again, as much as I loved those mountains, bottoms, that river. I loved the only home I had ever known, but I knew there would never be a way for me to make a living there. I would always be back, every chance I got. And I have been.
I have never thought I had a deprived childhood, as some might think when reading this. I had very few material things, compared to children of today. But actually, I sorrow for them. I could walk out my back door, walked 40 miles south, and never see a house, maybe never see another person, and never cross a paved road. Now I ask you, what child has a back yard to compare with that? The adventures many children today can only hope to see on television were lived out daily by Tooter, Sammy, and me.
     I wanted to go to college and then see the world. Go to faraway places. I had seen that my dad, and my uncles around me, had become so attached to their spot of ground in the world that they began to believe that the farm could not continue if they were absent even for a day. “The Gillums were not like other people.” If I ever asked Dad, after I had left the farm, to come see me graduate from college – to see me get married – to come to my house and watch me coach a basketball game – to be there when my children came into this world – the answer was always the same: “I need to stay here to look after these cows.”
Years later, a month or so after Dad's death, I drove to the farm. When the farm came into sight, I guess I was surprised to see that it looked just the way it always had. I realized I had really begun to buy into the idea that the farm would totally go to hell if Dad was not there to watch over it. The land was exactly the same, the house had not changed, the cows were all grazing contentedly – nothing, nothing at all, had changed. Dad was gone, but everything there was the same as it had always been. I just sat there and looked for a long time. And I cried.
     Two years later, Barbara and I were moving to a new job in Hannibal, Missouri, on a very thin shoestring, two babies, and an old car. Dad's old truck carried our stuff. Our babies were just joining their generation, which was well in progress already. We knew Mom was not doing well alone. Barbara Lou took her to Memphis to live with her. Barbara called me one day. Mom was in the hospital there. Mom fought hard for a few days, but the end came soon after Harry's arrival from California.
I did not set out to write a sad story. But, in writing of a generation of people, the story must end, and it just sorta works out that way. We can't stop that. But we can help to write that ending. Once written, it can never be rewritten or erased.

     Dear readers, we are nearing the end of this story. My blog contains about one third of my book. Two or three more posts will finish up our story.
     My book is available only through me. Ninety-three pages, lots of pictures of the Gillum Clan. It is $17 postage paid. E-mail me if you wish to buy a copy. I hope you have enjoyed, and I thank you dearly for reading.  barbandpat66@suddenlink.net

     My blog, of course, will not be ending. My next story, "The thing about Water," is an autobiographical story, telling of my life-long fascination with the river, and the adventures that happened along the way. I hope you will like it!