Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002
From: Northwestern Georgia, USA
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Over the past few weeks of AE downtime, I've been working on a couple of short articles. Here's one that's nearly finished, though I may end up adding additional "stories" from the "old days" in this little community.
My Favorite Tombstone
This is not my church. These are not my people. Nonetheless, I feel at home.
On a sultry July afternoon, I stand alone on a tree-covered hill, immersed in death. Crows caw irately from the canopies of a southern red oak and an eastern red cedar. A solitary great-crested flycatcher mournfully whistles it’s “weep” call in the deep woods. The dispiriting drone of cicadas fills the summer air. Together, these form a choir singing to a congregation of the deceased, whose modest graves are marked by sunken ground and canted tombstone.
The hilltop cemetery at Mountain Springs Methodist Church in Floyd County bears witness to the all-too-common occurrence of death among the young a century ago. Among the graves are Infant Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H.C. Camp, Born & Died 1902; Son of Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Beard, Born & Died Oct. 7, 1904; Martha Sybilla Terrell, Safe in the Arms of Jesus, Sept. 9, 1908 – Sept. 10, 1908; and Baby Gail Padgett, Born 5-9-1902, Died 5-9-1902. There are dozens of others, all serving as solemn reminders of the primitive state of medicine in rural areas during that era.
But I’m not here to contemplate death, for this cemetery also holds my favorite tombstone, which celebrates life. The inscription on the wide granite marker under an arching black oak tree lists the names of a husband and wife, H. Grady Terrell and Luna Presley Terrell, but it does not include their dates of birth or death. Neither is there a touting of military rank, membership in any secret society, or an important position in the community. All that is given is the date of their marriage – December 5, 1909 – and the names of their seven children: Sybilla, H. Grady Jr., Vaughn E., Flora E., Paul S.H., Annie L., and Alene A.
In all likelihood, Grady and Luna didn’t mean to broadcast a profound postmortem message, but the emphasis on family is unmistakable. During reflective moments while visiting the cemetery over the years, I’ve often thought that these parents must have fully grasped the counsel of the psalmist: “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.” (Pslams 127:4-5)
Last summer, I decided to find out if this was the case, so I telephoned David Terrell, a Rome realtor. The son of Grady, Jr., David is a gifted storyteller, who for an hour spun tails about his grandparents and life in this community a century ago.
“We loved to get together at granddaddy’s house!” David enthusiastically offered after I had explained the reason for my call. “They were a gregarious bunch; a sweet bunch of people.” When I asked about my hunch that this had been a tight knit family, he replied, “Your take on the tombstone is accurate.”
Times were not easy for the hardscrabble farmers, like the Terrells, who lived in the Flatwoods section north of Rome a century ago. “Daddy spent his life working hard,” David remembers. There wasn’t any bottomland to farm and the soil was mostly infertile. The only factory in the area closed not long after World War I and the railroad went out of business in 1923. Times were hard, cash was scarce, and people struggled to make do with whatever they had.
“If they threw it away,” David explained, “it was past using.”
Growing up on a farm meant that the Terrell boys were accustomed to working with livestock. “One day when daddy was about 14,” David recites, “he was driving a wagon. To allow a vehicle to pass on the narrow dirt road, he pulled over to the side, with two wheels in the ditch. Whenever that horse got into a tight spot it would balk; it wouldn’t pull. So daddy stopped the man in the vehicle and asked, ‘Will you beat this horse with a tree limb while I hold the reins?’ The man said that he wouldn’t, but that he’d be glad to hold the reins while daddy did. So daddy commenced to whaling on that horse. It came out of the ditch like a shot.”
David laughs, “Granddaddy was soft on animals but hard on kids. So daddy had to hide that horse from granddaddy until those whelps went down.”
Not long thereafter, Grady Sr. and Jr. were back in the wagon on that dirt road and pulled over to let a vehicle pass. “Granddaddy told daddy, ‘He won’t pull out, son,’” David smiles. “To which daddy replied, ‘You might want to try him once.’ Well, that horse shot out of the ditch, much to granddaddy’s surprise.”
Grady Jr. only had a second grade education, but his farm work made him wise in the ways of animals. “One day he drove an ox to get butchered,” David says. “He got so far and the ox just sat down. So daddy climbed up on its neck, put his hands over its nostrils, and the ox had to get up.”
The children of Grady Sr. and Luna grew up to be hardworking, salt-of-the earth kind of folks who worked in education, law, and agriculture. As with any family, there was also a sprinkling of disappointment and sadness, but the family always remained close. As David recalls, they “looked for any opportunity to get together.”
Every grave in Mountain Springs cemetery undoubtedly can yield similar stories of life and death, laughter and tears, love and loss, success and failure. But while most of the tombstones are testaments to lives cut short, the Terrell grave proclaims the joy of life with a quiver full of arrows.
Hard work. Cash poor. Meager possessions. A family complete.
Who could ask for more?
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