some thirty-three years earlier
On a warm late summer day in September (the 18th), 1921, she was born
Myrtle Mary Washington Wood to Bailus Earl Wood and Pearl Wooten Wood.
Catholic? Hardly. Her parents were Hard-shell Baptists of Dutch decent
lost in the back woods of the Appalachian Chain.
In the time honored tradition of the mountain people of their era -
their word was their bond. They labored in the fields under an
alternately scorching sun and a bone chilling cold from sun rise to sun
set six (6) days a week. The seventh day (actually the first by the
calendar) was spent in the House of The Lord.
Leaving the fields on work days with just enough day light remaining to
get the teams of mules rubbed down, fed, watered, and stabled for the
night. Then there were eggs to gather, hogs to feed, cows to milk, and
water to draw from the well before dinner - after which relaxation was
found in sitting on the front porch and listening to the unique sounds
of the night as the nocturnal life of the mountains scurried about in
song and mating call.
There were no cars to zoom up and down a noisy highway... no chain saws
interrupting the call of the whip-o-rill during the day... no pumped in
sound displacing the symphony of crickets, katydids or frogs in the
evening... no magic boxes with snowy black and white moving pictures
competing with the big dipper and or the beauty of the fire fly against
the black of the night sky... no street lights to disturb one's sleep
when the body needed to be manufacturing and releasing melatonin.
Rosalie Myrtle was but one of eight siblings - three boys and five girls
at a time when the larger the family the better it fared. Why? There
were simply more bodies to accomplish more work.
Mechanism had not yet over taken the American Farm and the living, if
good, was hard and if filled with love and trust, they were earned. Time
had to be made to cut one's own heating and cooking wood. Henry David
Thoreau had, after all, rightly observed that by cutting his own wood, a
man was warmed by it twice. While the first warming experience may have
been anything but comforting, the second time around - setting in front
of the fire place - perhaps popping corn - sure was appreciated.
A young girl's mind races in the winter night when she should be
sleeping, but darkness comes so early this time of year and the flicker
of the dying flames in the fire place is pure magic. The flames create a
wee bit of light that dances across the floor, hops around the walls,
and runs about the ceiling. They cast shadows of one thing creating the
appearance of another entirely different. It only exists in the ever
active mind of the young and the innocent.
Christmas is on the horizon! What will Santa bring? She hopes for a
stick or maybe even two of hoar hound candy, and maybe... an apple or an
orange... and a banana sure would be nice. And, maybe Santa could even a
leave few pecans or walnuts this year.
Though apples, pears, peaches, plums, persimmons, grapes, blackberries,
strawberries, blueberries, huckleberries, water melons, walnuts, pecans,
and mush melons are abundant in the summer and early fall, there is not
much fruit around here in the winter she muses.
And snow! Yes, it will be Christmas, and we should have snow. Snow
really lights up the night! It saves kerosene, too, she thinks as if
trying to convince God while watching the last flickers of the fire and
is sure it casts a shadow of Rudolph flying across the north wall.
But Rosalie Myrtle can't remain a little girl in flour sack dresses
forever. Soon enough she is a beautiful and vivacious young lady in love
with a good looking well tanned young Cherokee Indian - a farm boy
across the mountain who had been encountered a time or two while on
errands for her father.
The Wood's had no problem with the Indian boy who turned out to be
better to them than their own children, but his family had picked out a
young Cherokee Maiden to be his wife. Against the wishes of his family,
Rosalie Myrtle married the young Indian just before he went off to World
War II drafted as a white man. It was really easy to pass in those days
and he wanted to give their children every advantage a Tennessee
Mountain Man could in the world of the forked tongue so he never
corrected the record.
She was the only one of the Woods girls to stay married to the same man
until he died of coronary artery disease while in the prime of his life
young life just like his father had before him. Her brothers enjoyed a
more stable family life than did their other sisters.
Rosalie Myrtle, having lived most of her adult life at Rosalie, Alabama,
who served honorably as the matron of two different families, went to
meet her Lord and be reunited with her young Indian lover on December
12th, 2000 at the age of 79. That was appropriate as her beloved
Cherokee had gone to his happy hunting grounds at Christmas some
thirty-three years earlier.
That millennium Christmas must have been some celebration around the old
tepee! Two young lovers wrapped in each others embrace with no shortage
of flickering flames... no sickness and no shortage of candy, fruit or
nuts... And, I would even bet that on Christmas Day the old Cherokee who
went to war to defend his nation as a white man had his dearly loved
Fleetwood Coffee with chickory and one of her home baked white coconut
cakes - his favorite.
When I remember them together, I think of the old Mercury Record Label
song, Running Bear.
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