One Roll, Two Pix

It was the same day at two different spots in Madison County - Hot Springs and Hopewell (don’t you just love that name). It was the same roll of film, two different exposures. But the pictures are so different from each other - illustrating the change taking place in the county at that time, change that continues to this day.

Hoy Shelton Family, Hopewell, Madison County, NC 1983

The first is a photograph of Hoye and Nina Shelton and their family, with two neighbor men. They have just finished a day of hanging tobacco. In 1983, burley was still king in Madison County, the leading county producer of burley in the state, with hundreds of small farmers like the Sheltons depending on tobacco for cash income. But tobacco’s days were numbered, and in ensuing years it has played a steadily decreasing role in the county’s lifestyle and economy. Farmers like the Sheltons either moved onto other crops, or more likely, gave up farming altogether.

Girls with ET platter, Hot Springs, Madison County, NC 1983

The second photograph is of a group of teenage girls holding a platter they’d won at a small festival in Hot Springs. The platter has an image of ET on it. By 1983, Madison was firmly engaged in mainstream culture and had been for decades. Radio and TV, better roads, telephone, and a changing demographic brought new values to the community, so an image from a popular movie shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me. Yet still I was struck by the availability and acceptance of mainstream culture in the county.

It’s the pairing of the photographs that I really like. The image of place they offer – a place moving away from a tradition that had sustained it for many years and toward an image of an unknown, and otherworldly, future.

 

 

ShatterZone - a Fiction

 

Jeff Johnson and John Henderson Moving Tobacco to the Casing House, Big Pine, Madison County, NC, 1978

It seems so long ago.
And I suppose it was.
When we were new to this place.
And the place new to us.

Not yet knowing how to act,
Or what to say.
How to be a good neighbor?
What it means to be in a community.

We offer help.
It’s clear they need it.
Children have moved off.
And the Mexicans have yet to arrive.

I help also to learn the place, and test myself.
To see if I could be all day in a field, 90 degrees,
Sweating and sticky from the tar.
Me of the soft hands and clerk’s body.

In those days, help meant tobacco.
It’s what was here. Lots of it.
The lifeblood of the county.
Everyone had a hand in it.

Working with a group, there wasn’t a better time.
Talking, laughing, teasing, forming a bond.
And the tobacco we cut . . . At the end of the day,
We’d marvel at what we accomplished.

 

 

ShatterZone - A Fiction

 

Marion and Dennis Chandler Heading into the Rice Cove, Madison County, NC 1978

We’re going to cook and heat the house with wood. My friends across the mountain in Sodom are a family of loggers and they have a sawmill and an excess of wood. They offer a truckload of firewood as a welcoming gift. One Saturday we bounce up the side of a mountain on the back of a flat-bed truck, barely able to hold on. We cut an enormous load of mixed hardwoods, which we load onto the back of the truck. Some of the sawed pieces are huge, and heavy, and I wonder how long it will take me to bust them into burnable size. When we go to pull out, the truck is mired in the soft ground and won’t budge. We unload it, piece by piece, move the truck a few feet, and reload the wood. Everyone gets a good laugh. I was exhausted by the double effort.

 

PawPaw Lost a Neighbor

 

Wayne Uffelman at Blue Hill Farm, PawPaw, Madison County, NC 2011.

No one died. But a long-term member of our community did sell his place and move. Wayne Uffelman had lived at Blue Hill Farm on Upper PawPaw for the last thirty-seven years. Most people knew him, or at least, of him. He farmed - tobacco at first, but after the tobacco buyout, he  switched to chickens and organic vegetables, which he sold at local markets. He also produced grits, cornmeal, and flour from his own mill. I thought his grits were the best I’ve ever had. Lately, he has been getting back to his true love - carving. He’s been doing a series of spoons and utensils to go with the grits, which are all replete with a carved heart, or owl, or snake at the top of the handle. But his real skill is as a bird carver and his move will allow him the opportunity to concentrate on that.

I’ve known Wayne a long time now. We met a couple of years after each of our arrivals in the mid-1970s. It has not always been the easiest of relationships, I think we’d both say that. But for many years now, he’s been a great neighbor and friend - always there to lend a hand, or tractor, or back, or his knowledge on any number of things. We’ll miss him in the hood.

Wayne Uffelman holding his "Chickenhawk" Walking Stick, PawPaw, Madison County, NC 2014.

 

Shu Sign

 

PawPaw, Madison County, NC 2014

For a time, Kate and Shu lived in our barn.

They planted a garden and tended the animals.

They mended fences and mucked stalls.

They left a footprint.

At some point, while walking to my workspace,

also in the barn, I noticed this shoe.

Ah, I thought at once, it’s Shu’s mailbox,

but not a very practical one.

Then, I understood it to be a mark, a totem.

A Kilroy Was Here moment.

A Sign of Shu, meant for the ages.

Leather, nailed to a locust post.

Who knows how long it will be there?

It's history was as half of a pair.

A flower bloomed from the other until the dogs claimed it as their own.

Chewed and carried off, gone for a time, then rediscovered like a forgotten lover.

It finally came to rest, under a shrub, nourishing the soil,

a different ending than its crucified mate.