A Visit Back to Wing

I went back to Wing awhile ago. I walked out and looked over the old farm some. Seems like, now that I have written a book about it, and blog about it a lot, I now know all those old places better than I ever did when I was a kid, 60 years ago. As I just stood, looking at that old farm, a large part if my childhood passed through my mind.

     Right in front of me was where the huge barn had stood. Grandpa John Wesley Gillum used that barn to breed super mules. He bought a giant mammoth black male donkey to breed to everyone's mares. He paid a thousand dollars for King Leo, at the turn of the century. King Leo won first place at the Arkansas State Fair. Mares were brought from far and wide to King Leo.

     Right over there, under that giant oak, my great grandpa, James LaFayette Gillum, built his blacksmith shop. That ground was just covered with iron scraps when I was a kid. I'll bet I could bring a metal detector up and dig up a ton of old horseshoes and other old Gillum treasures.

     Right up on the hill, right there, the old home place stood, now long gone. It was a genuine kit house, ordered from Sears and Roebuck in the 1920's by my school teacher aunt, Hallie. She must not have ordered the entire kit, because it retailed at around $2300 dollars as a turnkey job in the 1920 catalog, and this one cost between $500 and $800, depending on who was telling it. But she ran out of lumber, and lumber was taken off the old Gillum home place to finish it up. My aunt Lula Bell had come over and thrown a royal fit when she found out, but the salvaging continued. By the time Hallie's house was built, the old house was not fit to live in, so the whole family made the 20 foot move in with Hallie. Aunt Hallie never lived in her new house alone, dying early, in 1941. I was born in that house in 1944.

     Fifty yards away is The Bluff, where ninety years of Gillum’s threw ninety years of trash that wouldn't burn. The thick trees below now hide all those glorious piles of Gillum history. A thousand years from now, an archaeologist will dig into that spot, and be filled with wonder. Gillum’s always produced spectacular trash.

     On out, between the bluff and Stowe Creek, is the field of stinging nettle. Sister Barbara Lou and I always had to walk through it to get to the swimming hole. That's the only place I've ever seen that particular species. Touch it, and you itched for hours. Years later, I remembered this plant, and transplanted one to my biology class room, along with a big sign, DO NOT TOUCH THIS PLANT. But seems like most of my kids eventually just eased by and rubbed against it, just to spite me when I wasn't looking. But it never went unnoticed by me in the long run. The guilty party always scratched until the bell rang, then walked out scratching. Every kid needs to experience stinging nettle, once.

    On the other side of the road is the Big Hill. My nine acres. As a kid, it had huge pines on it. It was cut over after I left Wing. Forty two years ago, I bought it. Thirty four years ago, son Corey and I planted those pines back. They're pretty big now, but nothing like they were when I was a kid. My brother Harold was a forester at the time. He kept on at me to thin them out, cut out the hardwoods. Maybe I could make some money off them someday.

     But he never understood. I didn't want the money, I just wanted to see those pines like they were when Sammy Turner and I rode those carts we had made, with abandon, down that hill, dodging each big tree. Mine had a genuine B-29 steering wheel on it, and wheels off my little red wagon, removed when it was too tired to go any more. I hope I see those huge pines again before I die. Whip-poor-will hill sits atop my nine acres, where large groups of that bird gather each spring, just as they did when I was a child. My cabin now sits atop that hill, where I sit out for hours listening to them each spring. Now, packs of yipping coyotes have joined them. That always gets the domesticated dogs to start howling. That particular howl seems to have carried down through the eons when the coyotes yip, back to a time when they, too, were truly wild.

     Looking off the bridge over the little creek by Uncle Homer's house, I saw the little hole of water where I fished, using grasshoppers or wasp larvae for bait, as a boy. I could always count on catching four or five big perch or goggle eyes, string them up on a forked stick, and head for home to clean them for supper.

      As I stood there and looked, two perfectly round black balls, the size of a basketball, each consisting of hundreds of tiny black animals, swam by. They were packed tightly together, and they swam perfectly together, like synchronized swimmers, here and there. I had seen this before, once, as an 8 year old boy, not 100 yards from this very spot. My biology professor walking buddy just had no idea what I was talking about when I described them to him. Even tiny critters in Wing are just a little bit different.

     The deer are back now. I had seen them today. They were totally absent during my childhood. Killed and eaten, in season or out. A couple of years ago, the bridge on Stowe creek, right beside my 9 acres, was replaced. But this new bridge had no sides. Later, Harold noticed it had been caved off on one side,
with the imprint of a pickup truck, lying on its side,  mashed into the mud in the creek bottom. That mud had a bunch of shotgun shells, 12 gauge buckshot, lying in the water. One of those midnight spot lighters had a little problem here, it seems. Good enough for him. He had no business messing with my deer.

     As I gazed over the old farm, I remembered back. 60 years ago. Dad had me totally believing that the whole farm would go totally to Hell, if he was absent from it, even for a day. And he almost never left. Yet here it is, nearly 40 years after Dad had left it forever, looking much the same. New owners now, but they are keeping it up well. The woods have not reclaimed the fields where the cattle contentedly graze, as Dad had always feared. He pushed me to mow every square inch if it every summer. Even in 1954, when those fields were nothing much but dust and a few weeds. Then he always sent me out with a chopping ax, to walk the patches of persimmon sprouts, to make sure not a single one survived.
     I went to see Elois Hunnicutt, now 94. Her sons Grady and Wayne were my good buddies as we grew up. They, Sammy Turner, Jack Larry Gillum and I often skinny dipped in that very cold, very deep hole in the creek down in our pasture. Some of the guys felt proud to walk the bank most of the time. I always called them the “Bank Walkers.” Personally, I tried to stay in the water nearly all the time.

     Elois Hunnicutt and her husband Alja were always the hardest working people I ever knew. They did the same kind of work most everybody in Wing did, only they did twice as much, twice as fast. I worked for him one summer during college. I got to ride 40 miles in the back of his pickup to Dover and 40 miles back, every day. I totally wore out two good pair of work boots that summer, just trying to keep him in sight in those hard mountains.  We lost him several years ago. A big loss to us all, and a very good man.

     Elois still lives alone on their farm, still has a big garden. Some time back, she fell out there and broke a bone or two. Over several hours, she managed to crawl to her back door, but that's as far as she could get, alone. She had to lay out a good part of a day and night. Cell phones don't work well in Wing. But she's as lively as ever now, and gets around pretty good with her cane. I know I would be hard pressed to keep up with her now, much less when I'm 94.

     I got to meet the Gillilands, the new store owners. There has been only one store in Wing, in my lifetime. I got to tell them about sitting, cluelessly, reading the funnies, throughout the great robbery of that store, 56 years ago. That is the only sure-enough crime I ever remember happening in Wing. Effie Turner figured out she had been cleaned out when she came back from her supply room, called ahead, and they were caught before they could get out of the valley. The robbers got a year and a day. Effie was an older lady at that time, and she died at 100, in 1979.. During her lifetime, she rode in a covered wagon pulled by oxen, and saw men walk on the moon.

     I told Mr. Gilliland I would like to place some of the copies of my book, Spreading Wing, there in November when it came out, as I wanted books available where it all happened.  He said, “Sure, be glad to. And it won't cost you a thing.” I told him I just never worked that way, he WOULD get a commission. He said I was sounding like my brother Harold, who had come in for a three minute repair job on his car, and just insisted on paying him. I told him Harold and I had the same Daddy and Mama, who gave us both that same “Do Right Mechanism.” A Gillum always pays his own way in this world.
     I went by and looked at the old church next door, where the Memorial Service for JR Turner, Effie's son, had just been held. JR died recently at 102. JR fired a wanderlust in me, as a child, telling me stories of his world travels, and showing me gold he had found “1000 miles off the pavement.” Without him, all of my tales of our world travels might never have happened at all.

     Scientists just really need to do a study in Wing, see why so many people live so long, far away from a major hospital. But actually, in my heart I already know. Folks in Little Rock would be amazed, living there in the hustle and bustle, and the rush, of big city life, at the lifestyle we at Wing lived, and how much longer many lived, just two hours away.

      As I drove out of the hills of Wing, I knew, as I always know in my heart as I leave Wing, that, though I left those hills 50 years ago, and have never lived there again, I am forever a hillbilly,
And proud to say it.

By Pat Gillum