Take Me Back
When you get old like most of us, it doesn’t take much to trigger a memory of yesteryear. It can be a smell, a sight, a sound or a taste. Before you know it, we are sharing our memories with anyone around, whether they want to hear about it or not.
We close our eyes and go back to a simpler time. At least in our minds.
The smell of hickory smoke burning takes me back to two different events. The first is the sight of my Dad, squatted down under his chicken stew pot, wearing his “official” uniform of khaki pants, a white t-shirt and a sweat-stained Colbert County High School baseball cap. He was precise about using hickory to make his famous chicken stew which would make your tongue slap your brain out.
Secondly, that smell takes me back to the early mornings of CCHS football camp on the Tennessee river. There were two, 30-gallon cast iron pots with boiling water in them to wash and rinse our mess kits in. The hickory made a hotter fire. Since the camp had no air conditioning, that hickory smell drifted through the open windows, waking us all up, just prior to the ear-splitting sound of whistles as a wake-up call.
Due to the demanding two-a-days in the early August heat, it reminded us that we made it through one more day. We were like the pictures of inmates, marking off the remaining days on a calendar before getting to sleep in our own beds. Also, to this day, when I see and smell the bitterweed plants, it takes me back to practicing on the bushhogged pasture, commonly known as “Bitterweed Hill.” That very pasture formed a bond among teammates that is still shared in an almost reverent way.
The sight and sound of a fungo bat takes me back to the red clay baseball field at CCHS which is now known as Bradford-Newman Field, named after my Dad. For the uninformed, a fungo bat is a long-slender wooden bat, used by the coach to hit grounders and flyballs to the fielders.
Daddy used his fungo with precision like Picasso would use a paintbrush. Only better. The catcher would soft toss the ball to Daddy in a rhythmic motion. They felt special. Just ask Ray Fitzgerald, Curtis South, Tommy Davenport, Butch DeLoney and Tom Gargis.
Occasionally, I see a cook, sweating over a grill making “smash burgers.” Very few people know it but Leon Chapman invented the original smash burger at the Sandwich Shop in Leighton in the sixties. That sight and smell, takes me back to Leon, sweating through his white apron as he smashed a ball of ground beef, from the size of a golf ball to a burger that St. Peter, still orders for all his Leighton friends, Up There.
Ask anyone from Leighton this question: “If Heaven doesn’t serve Leon Burgers, do you really want to go?”
When I see a rodeo clown at a rodeo either in person or on TV, it takes me back to Lecille Harris, who was with the Preston Fowlkes Rodeo. Each April, the booster club at CCHS plowed up the football field and hosted a two-day rodeo. After more than 60 years, I can still remember some of the jokes and stunts that Lecille did at the rodeo, to entertain us all.
We would fall for his famous Dolly Parton joke. Lecille would banter with the announcer and tell him that he just saw Dolly Parton sitting in the crowd. He kept pointing to a section and would get all the way to the fence saying that Dolly was sitting right up there. Then he would deliver the punch line: “Sorry, I was mistaken. It’s just two bald-headed men sitting close together.”
The smell of fresh rolls baking? This is another double whammy for me. Our head cook at CCHS was Tiny Rose Johnson who made school rolls, the size of a Studebaker hubcap. The other triggered memory is from the football practice field at the University of Alabama on Hackberry Lane. The old Hardin’s Bakery baked and sold thousands of rolls from its location at the corner of Hackberry and 15th street. When the wind blew from the south, that yeast smell drifted up Hackberry. Ask any former Alabama football player, coach, manager or staff member about this and they start drooling like one of Pavlov’s dogs.
When I witness anything related to the Boy Scouts, I immediately go back to special times with our idol and scoutmaster, Jimmy King. Belt lines. Tying a bowline knot. Reciting the Boy Scout pledge. Camping out at jamborees or just in his back pasture, takes us all back to Jimmy. Next month’s St. Jude Trail Ride on Underwood Mountain will be the first since Jimmy King’s passing and reunion with his bride, Polly.
When I hear a banjo playing, it does NOT take me back to Deliverance but to the hills and rocks which make up Horse Pens 40 near Steele, Alabama. This was where I went in 1977, to my first bluegrass festival, by myself. I fell in love with bluegrass, the greatest music on Earth (to me). Next year will be my 50th year of listening, loving and playing this special sound.
Later, at Horse Pens 40, I met the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys. Before his death, I was able to get a picture of Mr. Bill with me and my oldest son, Jake when he played a show in Shepherdsville, Kentucky.
There’s an old gospel song called Precious Memories. I will steal and change the first line:
“Triggered memories, how they linger, how they ever flood my soul.”
Amen.