HOME AGAIN!

When I was 9 years old, my mother took my younger brother and me by Greyhound Bus from our home in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, to visit her brothers and sister in Hardy, Arkansas where they were all born. She was the only one who moved farther than a few miles away from the 100 year old “homestead.” 

This was high adventure for kids who had never been on a bus, never been further than a city park away from home, and never remembered meeting these people with whom we shared DNA.  There was my bachelor uncle, shot gun over his knees, just in from hunting squirrels -  a trunk full of confederate dollars in the corner of the log cabin where he lived.  My other uncle lived with his sweet lady just down the hillside in a pristinely clean farmhouse. We drank milk straight from milking while Aunt Delaney baked biscuits and pies for lunch. Two cousins showed up - Aunt Velma’s sons - that I never saw before and only once since when he was interviewed on a 60 Minutes episode twenty years later.

Now I’m home from a week’s road trip through the Carolinas - one of innumerable jonts my husband and I have gone on over the years and so I am thinking about “vacations.”  I remember vivid details about that long ago visit to Arkansas, the closest thing that I can loosely label “family vacation.”

My mother must have been homesick all those years away from family and place that she loved. For her, the bus ride back to Arkansas meant something entirely different from the shift into alien territory I might describe. My brother, four years younger than me, probably holds a totally different memory (or maybe none at all!) of the bus ride back to Arkansas.

Families, known or unknown. Trips familiar or exotic. The value is in the deposit they make to our memory bank. I am thrilled - even as old as I am now - to add to the treasury.  

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This is artist Patrick Doughtery. He's building a site specific work in Hillsborough, N.C. commissioned by the arts council and paid ($26,000) by private donations and grants from the Merchants and Tourism Councils. He works with one salaried asistant and loads of volunteers.  Chip and I spent part of a day stripping leaves from saplings.

The Round Stone House in Wilson,NC, was designed and built by Oliver Freeman (born 1882), a graduate of Tuskegee and one of the country's first African -American architect/builders. It was built in the 1940s to house vets returning from World War II.

A completed work by Patrick Doughtery - NOT the one in Hillsborough. I love that these pieces are built of natural material and meant to fade back into the earth in 3 or 4 years.

The home - and art installation! - of Clyde Jones, one of the naive/folk artist we tracked down in N.C.