photo by Tatiana (instagram free downloads)
Thanksgiving Morning, 1997
This morning is a road toward noon,
and noon is a feast.
Afternoon will be the rest and warmth of coffee,
stories poured til dark.
Now, humming us home, are the memories,
and I am the restless child.
Georgia’s farmland is a broader back than I can straddle. The highway stitches me onto its straight, hilly spine. I have just buckled in a four-year-old daughter, and, still in the early minutes of trip euphoria, we are pacing down to the farm in Baxley, Georgia, for Thanksgiving. Yesterday we hurdled two state lines (“pick up your feet!”), leaving the North Carolina mountains, and now we have a well-worn, downhill stride into homeplace. Sounds are smoothing out in the car, with homey songs and chatter, so my mind can melt back into the years.
The Comer family has gathered in Baxley since the early 1960s, some 35 years running and more years than I have lived. After Granddaddy died in 1962, Grandmother moved into a little house across the yard from Aunt Millie and Uncle Al. Grandmother and the little white-framed cottage are both gone now, though I can still see her delicate figure in a pastel shirt dress and sweater, carefully walking a bowl of sweet potatoes to the big house for dinner. Over a span of fifteen years, from 1918 to 1932, she and Granddaddy had seven children-Harold, Hubert, Camella (Millie), James, Gerald, Barbara, and Murray. The last one, the baby, is my father; now, I nearly wince to hear my daughter call him Granddaddy Comer.
The air is crisp and cool; we whip down GA 36 through Jackson and Locust Grove, where farms, old clapboard houses, and railroad tracks paint a landscape right out of my memories. Zipping past a restaurant strip on I-75, we turn due east on I-16. This rural four-lane heads toward the Georgia coast, but today we’ll let it link us with another state road, keeping us stably fixed in quiet, stubby gray farmland. I nod at the sign reading GA 15-Soperton/Vidalia, and with my blinker give it the thumbs up. Highway 15 is still my favorite road in the world; during college, it was a faithful companion on my trips back up to Athens. The stores and houses marched past me like a parade of old friends in Blackshear, Baxley, Eatonton … the list went on as the clay got redder.
My excitement builds; we drift through one town, its rich, outlying farmland, then another. I see cars line up at houses along the highway, imagine the Thanksgiving meal they will share at a bountiful table. I can smell the oak burning in their cast-iron woodstoves, know the teenage awkwardness of lanky boys clustered around their pickups at the edge of a driveway. Farther south, we follow the cold, silent train tracks, their iron doggedness outlasting the loads and commerce they hustled in and out a century ago. The railroads built these towns; only later came a need for the black-top I’m pressing down.
The road stretches out what seem like miles of memories from my girlhood, when I would anticipate a day on the farm. Every time we’d pile out of the car, kicking pine cones under the tall, swaying trees in the front yard, my brother, David, and I would run around back to find a new litter of Uncle Al’s beagle puppies, or black kittens darting behind an empty flower pot. “My goodness, David and Suzanne are as tall as the pine trees!” we’d hear from our Aunt Millie, whose pretty face and name made me always think of sweet, creamy camellias. And of course all the familiar barnyard animals startled me with their sharp smells and sounds: chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats, pigs, cows, and a pony or two. Around the age of eight, I grew fascinated with horses, and Uncle Al had a Shetland pony named Dusty that he saddled up for us children to ride.
Uncle Al’s personality pervaded the Thanksgiving holiday like the smell of roasting turkey. Of course all the uncles loomed large, both in their physical size and in authority of wisdom and age. Their stature spread from a slow-spoken story with child upon a knee, to a far-away glance as they remembered their own Depression childhood and the parents who raised them in the poverty of tobacco farming on somebody’s else land. Though Uncle Al is not blood kin, as the husband of Daddy’s sister Millie, he made sure that Thanksgiving wrapped us children in the warmth of his home and his own bear hugs. I’ve always known, and know today, at age 33, that this is where I belong. He has drawn so many generations of our family together with a warm, quiet humility, that the spark of his unexpected humor still often rattles me.
A New Generation Whom I Didn’t Know, 1996
Memories of our Thanksgiving gatherings are as sharp as cranberries in my mind. Last year, when we drove up at the farm, all the Comer-Garner gang–some 30-40 uncles and aunts, cousins and parents–were scattered in groups all over the backyard, in the pastures, around the hot, steaming pots of fresh vegetables in the kitchen. I stood amazed, having been away for about ten married years and unable to rejoin the family at each harvest time. So many faces I didn’t recognize; whose gathering is this, anyway? I felt a little possessive of the sacred places and uncles and aunts whom I now see are the old folks–do they remember me the way I hold them fast to the center of my being?
From the picture window, I looked outside to see a new clique of young girls in the family, about eight or ten years old–Lindsay, Christina, Ashley, Rebecca. Yesterday they were babies, preschoolers giggling around their mamas’ skirts; today they are fast friends, swinging on the old board-seated swings that once were the territory of my childhood group. Kara, Kim, and I used to keep that rusty iron frame squeaking and thumping up and down in the dirt, our stories and boyfriend fantasies swirling like the long hair we’d tediously wash and braid that night. I marveled at their brown-blonde locks stringing in their faces, squeals filling the air, lanky legs pointed straight out to fly with the wind. Later the girls rushed down to the small pasture where a gray, sway-backed pony tenderly carried each one around the field.
“Oh, there’s Dusty!” I said to Kara, remembering the bony back, the awkward grip I tried to master to stay upright.
“No, that’s Smoky,” my cousin corrected me, and I stood silent, not comprehending the image before me.
During my early teenage years, the heyday of my horse obsession, Uncle Al purchased for himself a stallion. Smoky was almost mythic when Uncle Al displayed him to the extended family: a beautiful, mountainous quarterhorse, white-gray and muscular, an equestrian image of his tall, dignified new master. Smoky had been trained to compete, Uncle Al said, and was famous among fine showhorses in the area. Now he was older, a distinguished gentleman’s horse. Uncle Al loved him like a brother, I could tell, and I watched my Daddy notice, too. The respect made Uncle Al seem strong, yet vulnerable, an endearment that I had not seen openly in an adult. Smoky stayed over at the Baptist Children’s Home, where Uncle Al worked as Farm Supervisor and had free use of about a dozen gentle horses for his family, on holidays and such, to ride. In contrast to Dusty, the pony Uncle Al kept in a small barn and field behind the house, Smoky had a stall in a big, businesslike barn, along with the herd of resident horses, and Uncle Al took on a professional aura as he stood overseeing the riding ring, acres of land, fine cattle, and his award-winning cornfields. And if these places were the landscape, he and Smoky were the snapshot I still carry; together they were immense, intimidating to a thirteen-year-old girl who just once a year had the chance to comb, saddle, and breathe in the sour, rich, sun-ripened horse smell of these animals, and to sling a blue-jeaned leg over Champion, the beautiful Morgan horse I claimed as mine for the day, and ride as fast as we could go.
The Thanksgiving Day Horseback Ride would come after the enormous meal we’d share as a family at midday. Fervently, the women would lay out the hefty bowls of creamed corn, turnip greens, sweet potato casserole, crisp colorful salads, platters of turkey and smoked pork, cornbread dressing baked to a buttery gold. I remember Aunt Millie and Virginia’s faces moist with ardent work, but their smiles conveying the love of their labor. Desserts would line the sideboard in the dining room–my mother’s famous pineapple cake, pecan and pumpkin pies, something sticky-rich and wonderful from Aunt Gladys like peanut butter caramel pie, and plates of cookies.
“Mama, you ready? Then let us gather together.”
As Aunt Millie took off her apron, her eyes met her husband’s, and Uncle Al called us all around the big dining room table. He spoke proudly as head of his family, as Brother Garner of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Baxley, and bid us bow our heads. Our robust, broad-nosed cowboy-uncle, that esteemed horseman, tractor-driver, and champion corn grower, bent his head down and in the voice of a child gave thanks–for the food so tenderly prepared by the women, for the family gathered around that table, for the mothers and fathers who have gone on, for little Carol and blessed Stevie whom he and Aunt Millie lost. He asked the Lord to bless our table, our family, to forgive our sins, to keep us humble and thankful of his gifts.
Our forks worked fast, with a mother’s scolding hand touching us if we got too loud or sloppy. But mostly the women smiled playfully to see us and our daddies feasting on all this homegrown food. “Al, how much corn you put up this year?” Jerry would ask, waiting with an empty plate in his palm. His fields brought us the sweet potatoes, greens, barbecued pork, too. We grinned to be subjects in the jokes of our big uncles: “Jerry, you see Kara’s plate?” Uncle Harold would exclaim. “She better not have got all that corn!” “Suzanne, are you gone eat that big piece of pecan pie?” Our answers had to rush out, to beat our giggles. It was true pleasure, there packed with family in the farmhouse kitchen.
When the dinner was finished, a near tangible shift of mood would silently overtake the adults, as each man, now round-full with food, sought out a place for his afternoon nap. Uncle Harold would be the first to drop off and the last roused. He got kidded a lot for his loud snoring and was sometimes the butt of a joke in the form of some costume carefully laid on top of him while sleeping. The children would scurry outside in their clusters again, return to a fishing pole or beebee gun, run down to the barn or sit quietly to plait grapevine wreaths for our hair. It was so easy to pretend we were pioneers surviving with a few fish, chickens, and trees for wood and pecans. The women lingered with low talk at the table, and Aunt Rose’s laughter would float musically through the warm house; this would be their short-lived rest before the tasks of clearing, cleaning, and calculating the next meal. We older girls would slip off with our minds clearly set; we tried to be patient before nagging our uncles:
“When we goin?” Kara would risk whispering underneath someone’s cocked hat.
“Where y’all wanna go?” my father would punch back, feigning no knowledge of our obvious desire.
The horses. We could imagine them standing out in the pasture, breath heavy, moist, grainy. The saddles, rich in wood-brown leathery oils, were hanging in the barn, next to them the bridles’ steel shining. Though we enjoyed the bountiful lunch, and threatened to slurp Aunt Millie’s creamed corn right out of the pot, horseback riding would be our day’s extravaganza. We had to rein in our urge not to bother Uncle Al too soon after dinner. One by one, as we rattled fathers and uncles from their snores, the men lifted a crinkled, red-brown eyebrow:
“You gone go with ’em?”
“I reckon. Roger, you gon’ ride?”
“Naw, I’m gon’ throw a worm in the catfish pond with Jerry.” No doubt Aunt Millie would slip down through the yard and join them, too. As a dutiful son, Roger helped Uncle Al catch the ponies and saddle them up for the children, but he always preferred to fish rather than ride.
“Jim? You goin, aintcha?” Uncle Jim, Kara and Kim’s father, would sometimes ride, but was just as likely to squint and spurn us in his comic way:
“What y’all wanta go get a sore rump for?”
We girls itched for them to gather up flannel jackets and hats and head to the yard. In what seemed like hours, we’d finally all pile in Uncle Al’s farm truck, four or five of us in the boarded-up back, and pad down the highway at a painfully slow gait.
I remember watching Uncle Al as he groomed his companion, preparing Smoky for our afternoon ride with the care of a statesman. I watched the other men, too. They couldn’t help but pause and regard the dignity in Uncle Al’s devotion to his horse. When Smoky and my uncle would emerge from the barn, a gray felt Stetson extending their domineering height, I sensed an awe for these working mates that I knew not how to speak of. Uncle Al depended on Smoky to help him watch over the cattle, canvas the land. In his eye was a great rider’s respect and trust. At other times I witnessed his gentle, motherly love for the little animals he birthed, tended, buried. Then, out on the trails, our plump-cheeked uncle was as playful as we were, spurring on our horses with an occasional tenor call, “Get up Champion,” “Let’s go Misty!” And no one could mistake the sparkle in his eye as he watched our bursting excitement, when a trail would open up into a hilly green pasture and we would roll down the slopes in a wide-open gallop. The sloshy mixture of fear, exhilaration, freedom, the heat from the sweaty-back animal–it all thundered a blast of “Hooray!” to Uncle Al, who gave us a wild, new experience we couldn’t match in our hometowns.
As the years passed, our stories blended into a blanket of humorous, rich memories of riding horses at Thanksgiving.
“Remember the time Uncle Al let us help him round up a field of cows at the end of the day?”
“Yeah, Kara’s horse took off right up the middle of those cows.”
“Split ’em up right down the middle! I can still see the long tail of her hat flopping in the wind. Seem like it was a real cold day.”
“And my horse nearly threw me off racin’ down through the pasture following Kara’s. I had to hang on for dear life!” These were battle-like memories.
“I remember when Kim’s horse ran away with her, and Uncle Al whipped it so bad that Kara stomped off mad as fire at him.” The lessons of farm authority were confusing for us, as we saw Uncle Al as the greatest lover of animals.
“Yeah, well, I had to show that mule who’s boss, especially with my niece on his back. That’s part of loving animals, too.” We paused to grasp his twist of logic, as he let out a heh, heh, heh to the other men.
“Remember sleeping in front of the fireplace with the sorest rear-end you ever had?”
One year Uncle Al let us ride home on the horses and keep them in his barn overnight. We were earnest mothers, tending to our own big, flared-nostril babies. It was special, too, for me to be able to spend the night at the Garners, since I usually returned for the night to my mother’s family gathering in a nearby town. By suppertime, the Comer crowd had dwindled to a handful–the women tired, with a damp dishrag or crochet project in their hands, the men slouched over a cup of coffee and a serious game of Setback–what they call the poor man’s bridge–and I felt a special pride to be among the Thanksgiving diehards. After supper, some of the older boys built a huge bonfire out back to roast marshmallows and shoot off firecrackers. Aunt Millie noticed we girls were restless underfoot in the kitchen; she took a break and showed us her own spark for having a little fun.
“Why don’t you ride your horses up to the bonfire tonight?” she asked Kara and me. “Be mysterious.”
She sank into the dark of her bedroom and reappeared with a colorful menagerie: scarves, shawls, beads, blankets. Kara and I transformed ourselves into Indian squaws with the garb, painted on rouge, braided our long hair, and waited, silent. Just as the fire blazed high, bronzing the ring of chilled faces around it, we slowly emerged out of the dark on our ominous bareback mounts.
Aunt Millie played up the questioning: “Look over yonder. Who’s that comin’?” We kept stony faces, dead quiet under the starry, cold night.
“Aw, that’s just Kara and Suzanne.”
“Well, now I don’t know. Al, what you reckon?” Aunt Millie’s voice grew shrill, and the icy cold crept up our necks.
“Look like some strangers come up. Injuns. Reckon they’s trouble?”
The little ones were wide-eyed, and it was beyond joy to have the big uncles play along in our joke.
So the years drifted by, and we married, scattered, bore our own children, and hardly noticed our horse phase diminish into a kid-sized past. The memories would always be strong if we got together, though, like a fenced ring we’d climb into and go around with one story after another. Now, in my early thirties, it was startling to see one of those horses actually before me again. And there I stood, jingling the changes in my mind as I looked at the elderly sway-backed horse. Of course I had failed to calculate the years that Smoky had been on the farm, side by side with Uncle Al as he tended sheep, swiped honey from his bees in their little white box-hives, shoveled grain for swine in their clattery, smelly pens. Now, with Uncle Al slowing down to a few animals to take care of, Smoky bore the image of the sway-backed Shetland who gave my generation our first good ride. It threw me.
A Chance Revisit, Spring 1997
Late in the next spring, the family gathered to bury my mother’s mother in nearby Blackshear, one town down the road. Many of our Comer relatives attended the services, and I stayed overnight with Uncle Al and Aunt Millie. The mood was nothing like the frenzy of Thanksgiving expectations. The house was quiet and dark when I arrived late at night off a barren highway. Though the occasion was to big my other grandmother goodbye, it afforded the extended time to visit privately with my Comer relatives–I had Uncle Al and Aunt Millie all to myself! Our conversation skipped along the points of my adult accomplishments–college, marriage, job, a child–but, like a hand in an old leather glove, it quickly slipped into the familiar family lore, and I was their playful, little niece.
What a keen chance, I thought, to recount the moment when I mistook old Smoky for Dusty–knowing Uncle Al loved a good story and would identify with the emotions I felt. He was resting under a reading lamp in his bricked-in back porch, where he likes to wind down with a Louis Lamour paperback creased open in his hands. Working with the sheep tires him a great deal, and he spoke of the thick sore that won’t soften on one heel. He’s also hard of hearing, so I sat up to project energetically.
“Is Smoky still doing alright?” I asked, hoping to trigger a cowboy’s lofty praise.
“Smoky died last year,” he said matter-of-factly, with a nasal, musical rise in his voice and his eyes kept low on the book. “Sam’s got his skull up in his barn.” Of their ten grandchildren, Sam is the one who has inherited the love of farming and animals, part of the land, and many of his Pa Pa’s chores.
Robust and wry, my uncle settled back in his chair, cutting a steely look right at me. “Yep, his body rotted out in the field, and Sam went and got the skull, hung it right up over the door!” he said again, this time with a twinkle, his low heh, heh, heh escaping from the cracked line of his lips.
I was again the girl of thirteen, wide-eyed and marveling, struggling to figure out this sidestep of humor my uncle had slipped by me. I thought I could prompt him to bare a sliver of human flesh, as he sometimes does with adults, but no luck this night. I was out-rodeoed. But at least it was by a resting giant, my Uncle Al. At least it was by a champion.
Suzanne Comer Bell
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