journey

I was eighteen years old the first time I visited Old Joe, Arkansas. I was a guest of our pastor’s family, whose son had caught my eye several months earlier. By that May afternoon the feeling was mostly mutual, and I was excited to visit a new state and meet some new faces.

I had never seen a place like Old Joe. Something about this area of the country took me back to an earlier time, when life was simpler and sweeter. I later described the area as similar to Mayberry, the only frame of reference common to my Missouri friends and family. The teenagers walked the quiet gravel road while the adults visited and prepared a meal. A quilt rack, owned by the woman I would come to know as Granny, hung over the bed where I slept. I prayed myself to sleep hoping the foreboding contraption wouldn’t come crashing down on me during the night, only to be jarred awake by Granny’s sharp, drawled admonition to a barking dog named Troubles to lay down and go to sleep.

On a Sunday afternoon not long ago, we headed to Old Joe by way of Highway 63, the closest route from our home near the Mark Twain National Forest. Our last visit, five months earlier, seemed a lifetime ago. We told our perpetually excited Jack Russell puppy as we pulled out the driveway that he would add a new state to his list. His fifteen-year-old predecessor had occupied the back seat on our previous trip, just weeks before a sudden illness sent him over the rainbow bridge.

We made our way to West Plains, then across Highway 160 to 101, where landmarks such as the Three Legged Mule and the Hitchin’ Post Cafe marked our turn toward the Arkansas state line. We commented on the beauty of the green pastures, rolling acres dotted with cattle and framed by blooming dogwood and redbud trees. We passed a biker church (complete with a motorcycle mounted over the entrance), Norfork Lake, and more campgrounds and Dollar General stores than I could count.

The Historic Galatia Church and Cemetery signaled the nearness of the right turn that would take us to Granny’s old home place. Smooth asphalt replaced the dusty gravel some years ago. We noted the tract of land where an aunt’s home once stood and trees being cleared across the road, apparently making way for new homes. We pulled into the driveway facing Granny’s house, now many years vacant, and then made a right turn to our aunt’s home, where I first visited all those years ago.

Over a half century ago, a young man from “out East” made his first journey to Old Joe, where he met the family of the young lady who had caught his eye at the Bible college they both attended in Springfield. Worlds apart in experiences and culture, something drew the young man to the simple beauty of the Ozarks, and he became part of the family who no doubt wasn’t quite sure what to make of the newcomer.

Upon graduation from college, the young man and his new bride made their early home nearby, where two children were born. Eventually the young family moved to the midwest, drawn by better jobs and the husband’s love of travel. They had been away for over 10 years by the time I made my first visit, but over the years I often heard the stories and recollections of those early days, and of the people who are now part of my own history.

This drive through the hills and hollows marked the last mile of my father-in-law’s journey from cradle to grave. When Dad passed in November, we honored his wishes to be cremated with no services. Now the pathway of duty led us to the family plot at the Galatia Cemetery, where we placed his remains beneath the shade of a pine tree, surrounded by members of the family who came to know him as “Danny.”

Two weeks later, we repeated the scenic drive with my mother-in-law in the navigator’s seat. We’d brought her down from her home in Indiana a couple of days earlier; this was her first visit to Arkansas since Dad’s illness had rendered him unable to drive several years ago. Aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered around the grave site for the reading of Dad’s favorite Scripture and a prayer. Granny’s surviving children, together for the first time in nearly fourteen years, reminisced about days and relations long past. Youngsters from that last gathering now introduced spouses and youngsters of their own. We ate and laughed and promised to keep in touch and visit more often.

This family is as much a part of my journey now as my own flesh and blood. Their memories wind through my own, like the roads that wind through green pastures lined by dogwood and redbud trees. Wherever my journey takes me, for however long, there will always be a path back to Old Joe.

Copyright 2017 Sherry Hathaway. All rights reserved.