Settling herself in a split-bottom chair
on the remnants of her front porch,
her hands weather-beaten as the porch rail
she grips to steady herself,
she leans forward. With age weighing
heavy on her like a winter shawl,
she says, "When you got land, you got something.
Clothes, fancy things--they don't last.
Husbands run off; children grow
up and away from you.
Land, it's always there."

Her land lies too close to town
to be much account for serious farming;
not close in enough to fetch top dollar, even
if she'd consider selling.

A run-down trailer park leans so close
against her, she shuts her front door
in summer to keep out
the brassy voices of women
shrilling at drunken husbands
who drink to escape
the brassy voices.

Over the past seventy years,
what was her grandpa's five hundred acres
was chopped off, whittled down, doled out
to one heir or another: razor thin slices
like her grandma's smokehouse ham
served to hungry-eyed young'uns
til the plate was only a slice
away from being licked clean.

The one slice left is hers;
unlike the others, she'd not been tempted
("Not by love nor money!" she brags)
to sell herself out.

"Well, I don't need much," she allows.
I'll make do with enough for a garden plot
long as I can find somebody to come plow."

From under her sun-bonnet, she squints
past other people's laundry flapping
on rusty clotheslines, and sees the farm
the way it was when she was a girl:

Traffic noise transforms into lowing cows
or clanking trace chains; her spindly tomato plants
fighting each other for sun
against the fence become a crop
spreading green over too many acres
to look at all at once.

Every so often,
after a rain, she smells
the sweetness of wet earth,
new-plowed and waiting.

"You ain't got land," she says,
her voice rich with conviction,
"you ain't got nothin'."

In 1951, when I started first grade, Huff Lane Elementary School in Roanoke, Virginia, was still new. It had been built the previous year to accommodate all the kids whose families lived in the post-Korean War housing development across the road from the schoolyard.

On the other side of the schoolyard, right where the asphalt playground ended, was the edge of the civilized world: a huge field was where Pete Huff's farm began. Sometimes wheat grew in the field, sometimes corn, and sometimes alfalfa, but the field was always forbidden territory to us as we played on the playground. When we climbed to the top of the jungle gym or the hot metal sliding board, we could catch a glimpse of the dairy barn and the cows in the distance.

When I was in the third grade, we stepped off the edge of the world--into the field--and took a field trip to that dairy barn. That late fall afternoon, we tromped across the cut-over cornfield to the dairy barn for a close-up view of the Holsteins munching hay while milking machines made strange noises.

For years afterward, I believed that a field trip always involved walking through a field. Consequently, all the other field trips I went on--which involved climbing onto a bus and eventually going into a building--were disappointments.

In the 1950s, each school day started with morning devotions. We stood up, faced the flag, and pledged. The phrase "under God" hadn't been added then, but we didn't need it because we also said the Lord's Prayer. That's how we knew God's name--it was Hallow Ed, as in "Hallow Ed be thy name." And we always sang. Sometimes we sang "America," and sometimes we sang my favorite, "America the Beautiful."

One morning in the mid-50s, while we sang "America the Beautiful," I looked out the window and actually saw the "spacious skies." They were bright blue. I looked at Pete Huff's field--now planted in wheat--and saw the "amber waves of grain." Beyond the field, I saw the "purple mountains' majesty" of Fort Lewis Mountain and Brushy Mountain in the distance. In front of the mountains, the breeze rippled through the field, which might indeed have been a "fruited plain." That day, God indeed "shed His grace" on me and gave me a glimpse of the America we sang about.

Things have changed since I attended Huff Lane School. Now it's called "Huff Lane Microvillage," whatever that is.

I doubt the students ever sing "America the Beautiful." After all, it contains a reference to God, so the song is no longer politically correct. I know kids haven't said the Lord's Prayer at school for years, so they probably don't know Him as Hallow Ed.

The asphalt playground has been replaced by grass. The jungle gym and sliding board are gone. A high gray wall with mountains painted on it separates what's left of the playground from what is no longer farm.

Whenever I drive past Valley View Mall, where Pete Huff's farm used to be, I pass close to my former school, and I feel a little sorry for the students behind the wall who'll never see the world the way I once did and who can never step off the edge of the playground and take a real field trip.

I'm in the striped dress, 1st row, R. side

Mrs. Clark's fourth grade at Huff Lane School, 1954-55.

"Sunday was always visiting day at the farm," Ralph Porterfield remembers. "Some days we'd go to Joe and Sally Smith's place and sometimes to another uncle's place. Then some Sundays, they'd all come to my grandparents'place. The conversation was always about tobacco, weather, and what the relatives were doing. And always about past history."

"The farm" was Kate and Dave Mattox's place in Union Hall, Virginia, down a dirt road off a paved road that now leads to Smith Mountain Lake.

An old carriage road used to run past the house, which--according to Ralph's cousin Ron Mattox--was originally built by a Mr. Street in the late 1700s or early 1800s. The main part of the house was once used as a way station. A kitchen was later added to one end of the original log house and a bedroom to the other. Clapboards now cover the entire structure, but the logs are visible from inside the main section.

An old carriage road used to run past the house, which--according to Ralph's cousin Ron Mattox--was originally built by a Mr. Street in the late 1700s or early 1800s. The main part of the house was once used as a way station. A kitchen was later added to one end of the original log house and a bedroom to the other. Clapboards now cover the entire structure, but the logs are visible from inside the main section.

The road was still in use in the late 1800s and early 1900s. "My grandmother was born in that house," says Ralph. "She said people frequently passed through there."

"Mr. Street," notes Ron, "died about 1837. He's buried on the left." The graves of Mr. and Mrs. Street are in what used to be the front yard of the house. A trip to the outhouse, which required passing the graves, was called "visiting Mr. and Mrs. Street."

The Streets' headstones in the front yard.

Ralph regrets that he didn't pay more attention to the old family stories, "But a child thinks everyone is going to live forever. They talked about people that were a hundred years before my time, and I was only eight or ten years old."

Once Ralph's uncle, William Mattox, taught him to plow with a team of horses: "I can remember working a horse and slide when we were getting in tobacco. I didn't care much for getting the worms off, but I liked anything that involved horses."

Ralph particularly enjoyed the Sundays when Tom and Berthie Brown, who lived next door to his grandparents, would come by in their buggy.

"They would let me drive them home, and I'd walk back home by coming through the woods. My mother said she used the same path when she was a little girl."

His mother and the Brown girls would walk up to the main road together--a distance of about mile--to catch the bus to the old Glade Hill Elementary School, which used to be in the woods behind where the current Glade Hill School is.

"I remember eating many dinners by the light of two kerosene lamps" Ralph recalls. "We got our water from a spring about 200 yards away. On washday, it took 8 to 10 trips to the spring carrying two buckets. I guess it's a way of life we're never going to see again, and while some of it was hard, all in all, it was a pretty good life. I know I'd love to go back and do it again."

The spring is located near where slave cabins used to be, about 50 yards from the house. In pre-Civil War times, a slave coming to work at the house would bring water. Decades ago, Kate Mattox would point through the kitchen window and tell her grandchildren, "See those jonquils? That's where the slave cabins once were." Now even the jonquils are gone.

Ralph remembers parts of a story his grandmother told about family members who left long ago: "One of the brothers loaded his family and possessions in a wagon and headed west. This relative had two back-up horses tied to the wagon."

Their departure would have been shortly after Mariah Louisa Martin and Henry Silas Smith, Kate Mattox's parents, were married in 1876. Henry Silas was 23, and Mariah, his second wife, was 22. Mariah was the daughter of Rev. John Reid Martin and his second wife, Elizabeth "Queenie" Webb. Henry Silas was the son of Samuel W. Smith and Malinda Laetitia Holland, who had owned the place.

Kate Mattox never heard anymore about the family members who left, but some other relatives thought maybe they went to Texas or New Mexico. Neither Ralph nor Ron knows who these relatives actually were,or even how they're related.

Ralph had many adventures on his grandparents' farm: "I had a lot of good times on that farm but there were a few scary times also. I stumbled onto a moonshine still back in the late forties. I was squirrel hunting way back in the woods east of the house. I was probably a mile or a mile and a half back in there. In the 1800's, one of the main roads in the area came through there.... It followed the upper edge of that hollow. It was slightly below the level of our yard, went on down, crossed the creek and back through that area. I was told that it eventually came out over towards Rt. 40 towards Penhook.

"I was following the remnants of the old road and came around a curve when I saw two men, the still, and an old truck. They loaded some quart and gallon jars on the truck and covered the bed with brush. I was afraid to slip out, and I knew they hadn't seen me yet, so I just laid down and hid in the brush. They sat around, talked, checked the still, and in an hour they left. I went back home and told my grandfather about it and he contacted the sheriff. Two days later, I showed several men how to get to the still. I later heard they got the still and all the equipment, but they didn't catch anyone. It was a good hunting spot with huge oak trees, but it was awhile before I ever hunted there again."

Another scary time involved an escaped convict: "One morning, two deputies and a guard from the chain gang woke us up about daylight. It seems a convict had escaped the prior evening, and the bloodhounds had tracked him right up to my grandfather's truck that he used to park under the old tool shed. Fortunately, he always locked it at night. They caught the guy later that morning hiding in that old building a mile from our place. It used to be a black church. I used to go up there sometime on Sunday morning and listen to them sing."

The shed where the convict hid.

Ralph remembers the old place fondly: "One thing about that place, good or bad, calm or crazy, I loved every minute of it; but since I've gotten older, I get a little bit of a sad feeling when I go there. It's kind of like that country-western song with the line that says, 'You can go home, but you can't go back.'"

"Going Home to the Farm" was originally published in the July/August 2003 issue of Blue Ridge Traditions.