The Cumberland winds through valleys like the water snakes that glide along her eddies. Clay red, bath warm and still save for current ripples along her banks around tree roots and the legs of Tennessee cattle seeking some relief in the baked cloudless summer. Heavy with Appalachian silt, river bottom carpeted in fat mudcats he would lure with bread balls on a cane pole and fry crisp in smoking lard. Thick stands of willows, poplar and pine line the shore, red sand strands sprinkled with smooth skipping stones, bleached timber and flood drift. Dark water dotted with white bleach bottle trotline buoys leaning to the current. He paddled these waters in a dented flaking canoe he found half sunk after a flood.The leaks from a few casual bullet holes cooled the sun scalding metal under his feet. A Krogers coffee can for bailing, a black iron frying pan and a jar of peanut butter in a knapsack under the seat; the cane pole bowsprit pointing the way.
The flood-black loam bottom land along her banks grow rich hay, corn and tobacco fields for farmers who lived in sprawling old tin roofed farm houses retrofitted with central air conditioning and heating. Land passed down through two centuries of generations, forgotten of surveys that bespoke corner markers of trees, fence posts and rock outcrops long since vanished. The rolling lush fields and hardwood forests of old moneyed farmers that wore faded overalls, drove tattered pickups and hid cement floored horse barns and inground swimming pools behind those old houses. Narrow county roads connect the farms. Old paved roads, bordered by deep grassed ditches full of wild sunflowers, ragweed, dandelion, sowthistle, and power lines hanging low in the summer heat. The county lanes spider out from state road 12 that follows the river down to Nashville.
The Cumberland headwaters form up in old warn mountains near Corbin Kentucky and 700 miles later the river joins the mighty Ohio near Paducah. Along the way the Cumberland services a hydroelectric dam at Lake Barkley, feeds innumerable riverfolk, and sucks up an occasional bluegrass quarter note as it slips through Music City. The river cradled Clarksville in a sweeping bend that undercut echoing limestone bluffs on the far side and deposited a broad sand pebble beach at the town landing. One 4th of July he fired off bottle rockets from those cliffs that streaked across the river and rained the roof of the town’s police station. Riverside Drive followed the shore and the town streets, Main, Commerce, Washington, Jefferson and the others trudged uphill from the river. The town buildings all red brick solid structures. Old stores selling hardware, men’s and women’s clothes; a shoe store, a feed store, a stationery store. Two movie houses, the Capital and the Roxie. Downtown seemed about three blocks wide and about four blocks long. Small enough to window shop and daydream. Small enough everybody knew everybody, for better or worse. A single street housed the elementary school, junior and senior high schools and the cemetery.
In those days it was a small town surrounded by steep hills and deep forests of middle Tennessee. Mature thick forests of pine, oak, hickory, poplar, maple rarely thinned from fire. Dense clambering, toe grabbing undergrowth over a thick carpet of annual leaf and needles, rotting roots, kindling nests of small critters and dead limbfalls. Honeysuckle, blackberry, kudzu, ferns, moss all mixed in a decaying dirt scent dark and moldy recipe of impossible off-trail human penetration. Sunlight slanting through the overhead canopy to show a sparkled rainbow of light as he climbed and descended down scrabble banks of loose scrim, crumbling dirt, rocks and mushrooms. Occasional rattlesnakes coiled in patches of warm light and a creek on his farm that bubbled down to the river reflected waterbugs backstroking and the cold shadows of crawdads scurrying from rock to rock. The flip flops and limb jumps of curious squirrels mixed with the soft cool sound of settled deep green shadows and breeze in the tree canopy.
The farm was part of the hill itself with a half mile drive up to the settlement, snaking around trees too big to fell, up steep grades of gravel impassable in winter ice, to plateaus to more grades still. At the top was the house, built in 1826, the main supports four giant old poplar trees; a green painted tin roof with a noticeable bow in the middle, the walls white siding clad, a front porch the length of the house, with symmetrical windows and a front door between, green painted shutters flank the windows, a fireplace chimney on each side wall another on the back wall, dubious electrical wiring and water from a deep cold cistern. His father added on rooms, modernized, had a deep well put down and spent each summer with his boys cutting cords of firewood. The farm had a separate garage and workshop, a horse barn, corral and pond on one side, a fire supply pond on the other side of the house, and a huge tobacco barn out back. There was a chicken coop, a smokehouse converted to a study, and a kid’s western cavalry log fort, complete with a wood flag pole and watch tower.
About 30 acres were in fields back then, fenced-in thick high wild grass. The summer scorch would shimmer across the fields driving human and animal alike into the cooling woods; only crows would stand the heat. But In the fall and winter small deer would ease out of the forest to nibble the grasses. There were 10 acres in pine seedlings planted in neat soldier rows, waiting for lumbering. The pine hammock floor was mattress soft with pine needles scented of sweet turps and fresh resin. Pets for the boys: horses, dogs and cats, a dimensioning flock of ducks as the dogs caught them, chickens for eggs. No one hunted the land, deer and rabbit were plentiful.
All of it gone now. Sold off for estate tracts in some artificial gated community of expensive homes. The driveway now a paved road you can find on Google Maps. The farmhouse, barns, ponds and fencing all dozed and leveled save for a small patch that still blooms tulips his father planted more than a half century ago.
