My mom and Aunt Pearl enjoyed occasionally going “home” to the place where they grew up. I remember the afternoon in this picture. The car is just out of the frame. Daddy waited there with Grandmother, while I listened to my mom and aunt reminisce about growing up there and took the picture.
As they stood on the road they faced where the house had been. I had only been there once with my mom as a little girl. I’d been too young to remember more about the house than vague impressions and a shadowy staircase.
Indulge me for a moment. Imagine you’re standing where they are, remembering your long lost childhood home. If you let your mind’s eye take you a little to the right and off a bit diagonally, well across the field behind the no longer there house, you’ll find a shady fence fence row corner.
That corner will take some wild imagination. My mom and I went to look at where “the old home place” had been a few times. She directed me to look at that corner, which is why I can describe it now. She told me there used to be a very old falling down house nestled in that little wooded area.
The story goes that that tumbling down cabin had been the last home of Davey Crockett, before he went to Texas and died at the Alamo. The pieces were eventually gathered up and moved to the little town of Rutherford, Tennessee where we lived. It was put back together and called a replica of his last home.
My junior high history teacher told us a story about working the land on his farm way out in the country revealed a lady’s ring and several inches of dark, rich soil. He knew from the history of his farm that it was likely the original grave of Davy Crockett’s mother Rebecca Hawkins Crockett. It was carefully gathered and taken to the replica cabin and buried on the grounds.
The site is now a museum known as the replica of Davy Crockett’s last home, before the Alamo and his mother’s grave. I toured it on a school field trip and found it interesting. It was furnished and decorated as a home of the era would be. I remember the pungent smell of old wood, animal skins, and aging papers.
Standing on the road with my mom, I listened to her talk.about begging her daddy to go with her to the old cabin so they could look around. He wouldn’t, saying tramps sometimes slept in there and it might not be safe. He warned her not to ever go there by herself too, so she didn’t. I thought it was really cool to be there with her. Learning about our family’s onetime proximity to an important piece of history. Though Davy Crocket had long been dead by the time my mother was born, his legacy is a solid presence in the area. The town holds Davy Crockett Days in October of every year and celebrates his life with various events, including a parade that draws quite a crowd. You just never know when you drive through some nondescript little town, what connection it may have to important historical figures.
Oh. Back to the cedar tree. My mom and aunt were both into plants and trees. Aunt Pearl planted that cedar tree and they enjoyed watching it grow into what became this towering sentinel in the old yard. My mom always called it Pearl’s cedar tree.
Dreams of the Purple Koala 