Well, to make a long story short, (too
late) those valley and mountain people of Yell County just seem to always
support their own, even those fifty years removed, and when launching day
arrived, they just kept coming. Sometimes, I had a stack of books half a dozen
high waiting to be signed, and still they came. I've always dreamed about how
great it would be, with a line of people coming to me to get my signature! But
I didn't have time to fully enjoy it. Even so, it was one of my best days ever.
I didn't even get a bite of that mountain of salt pork and biscuits. We sold
seventy books that day.
Equally as important, they ate up every
last scrap of that salt pork. Even more importantly, I had a chance to renew a
lot of very old, wonderful
relationships. Edith Turner was there. She was ninety, but not anywhere
near the oldest person in Wing. My children, Corey and Kinley, found out she
was a friend of my mothers. My mother passed away when they were at or near
infancy, and they are now at or near forty years old. They just could not seem
to let her go, just hung with her every word, until long after the big event
was over. She told them story after story of my mother. Kinley said, “Holding
her hand was like finally getting to hold the hand of my grandmother.”
Corey and three others, at great risk to
life and limb, climbed up to the old classroom above. The stairs were long
gone. I started up the ladder, but at the top was a three foot wall, to keep
people from climbing up, I guess. Well, I'm sixty eight years old, so I headed
back down. But Cindy Turner Buford, whom I knew was at least eight years older
than me, (maybe more, but who's counting) just upper middle aged by Wing
standards, scrambled up and over that wall. When they were all about to come
down, Corey came first, and I saw him standing under that ladder, panic in his
eyes, already holding his arms out as if to catch someone. He told me, “There's
a lady in her seventies about to come over that wall!” I didn't worry too much
about that. Those normal age limitations don't always apply to Wing people.
I grew up with Cindy, just a tall ridge
over. We often communicated with a loud holler, that went something like this:
“Whoooo, Whoooo, Whoooo weeee ouhooooo! Of course, that was back at a time when
I could still holler that loud. I well knew Cindy could have climbed that
tallest mountain behind Wing again, if she set her mind to it. That hill up to
her house was about as steep as any mountain around.
Anyway, in the old classroom, they found
the name of my aunt, Leta Lazenby, who left Wing forever in 1930. It was on the
chalkboard, still just like it had been written yesterday. It was just like it was when I saw it in
1950. That chalkboard was made, it appears, by painting or spraying something
on those very wide, virgin pine boards. It also had a lot of newer names. Seems
climbing up there has become a “rite of passage” for Wing children. Nephew Ken Gillum said, “It was just like
stepping back in time.” The old classroom had not been used in at least eighty
years, maybe much longer. Nobody living knows for sure.
Effie Turner, an icon of Wing, ran the
store next door all during my child hood. She died in 1979, at one hundred
years of age. During her lifetime she rode to Wing in an oxcart, and saw men
walking on the moon. Her son, JR, passed away last year at one hundred two.
Elois Hunnicutt, just across the road and
down the lane, ninety four, still grows a large garden. But she fell, out in
that garden last year, and broke some bones. She managed to crawl to her back
door, but could not get in. She had to lay out most of a day and a night.
Remember, cell phones don't work well in Wing. But she's back now, as lively as
ever. I know I'd have a hard time keeping up with her now, doing the kind of
day's work she does.
My sister Jonnie taught Sunday school
classes in Fourche Valley for many years. Once I visited her class. The best I
remember, her youngest class member was in his ninety's. CONTINUED NEXT WEEKEND
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