Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

Hunker Down with Kes

O Beautiful For Spacious Skies...

Posted

I tell you near ’bout every week that McKenzie, Tennessee, is the best place on earth to “be from.” Without a doubt. Without hesitation. And without reservation. Of course, I don’t do it with very good sentence structure. Or proper English.

Please don’t blame Barbara Clark or Polly Rucker for my grammatical shortcomings. Those wonderful English teachers poured a fountain of knowledge into me “once upon a time”…..

And I’ve told you a hundred times how Miss Clark turned me on to Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson and that highwayman who “came riding-riding-riding….up to the old inn door.”

But I also learned from Col. James T. “Bird Dog” Reed, Mr. Graden Featherstone and Mr. Jack Cantrell. They’d “hold forth” on a wide array of subjects whether I’d run across them up at the City Café, in the cozy office at Bill Argo’s Gulf Station or standing up on the town square watching Mr. Charlie McIver win another game of checkers.

They never let syntax, dangling participles or not ending a sentence with a preposition get in the way of a good story. I remember riding to a baseball game with Bird Dog one time when he got to telling a story about every person who lived in every house between McKenzie and Greenfield. Listen, he knew’em all! And he had a funny story about each one…..

But I digress. I was saying that McKenzie is the absolute best town ever. And the absolute best time to be in McKenzie is early May. The weather is so perfect it will make you take notice……and appreciate anew this particular place and time.

January and February were just too cold. March would blow you away. April would always surprise—and annoy—with one last chilly blast. But May would come! It was always refreshingly mild without any hint of what was behind and no overtures of the oppressive heat that was to come.

We didn’t celebrate May Day. And I can promise you, me and Buddy, Yogi and Ricky never one time in our whole lives danced around a Maypole. But there was something so special about that month in our little hometown that the memories, the sights, the sounds, the smell, the joy of “being”, still reverberate down through the ages…..

We’d start walking to town that first Saturday morning in May and there was a spring in our step. The air was so fresh, clear, clean, crisp, light…..you’d breathe in a big ole mouthful and it would practically lift you off the ground!

I believe the sun was a little higher in the sky. Clouds would cast their faint shadow over you as you bounced along. The wind tickled your face as it gently meandered down Stonewall Street.

Food taste better on days like this. Your older brother wasn’t such a nuisance. Homework was forgotten. Cares cast aside. Silly misunderstandings, or long time grudges, faded like the morning dew.

Yogi would remark as we passed the Presbyterian Church, “On a day like this, Barbara Jean doesn’t even look so bad….if she turns sideways and the sun shines just right off her forehead.”

We were seven, eight, ten years old….but we didn’t miss the sheer perfection of the moment. “It’s pretty nice out here” was the succinct opinion voiced by all.

It was so blatantly true, and yet, so majestically understated, as only children can do.

Spring, for us, had truly sprung. Grass was turning green. Leaves were suddenly appearing on every tree along the street. Baseball fields and clover patches were shaping up for the game. School would be out and the swimming pool would be open in just a couple of weeks. And I’m sure there were some dogwoods and a daffodil or two waving at us.

Talk about a freshness, a newness, an awakening of what is good and right about life, living, friendships, family…..you could taste it all on that first Saturday morning in May.

I was God blessed to share in so many of them.

We didn’t know a funny story about everybody in every house along Stonewall like I’m sure Bird Dog did. But we loved them anyway. They were a part of our world. If they were out and about on this perfect day, they got a big wave from us.

You talk about living large! We might have been young, but we understood “special” when it was chirping all around us. Early May in McKenzie is like no place else on earth. Hope truly springs forth in every direction. I’ve seen it with my own little eyes. Felt it deep within my heart.

Surely no one fortunate enough to be living in the 38201 zip code is taking it for granted this week….

Wish I Was With You,
Kes