Time Again with Daddy and Mama

 

               They have been gone for far too long--Daddy for 26 years, Mama for 12 years.  All too often, it seems longer, but sometimes it is as if they were just speaking to me moments ago.  I hear their voices in my own words, feel their genes and their nurture in the way I experience life.  Every day when I think of them, I think of all the things I want to talk with them about.

               As the youngest of three children, I remember them only as adults, grown people with busy lives.   With the egocentricity of a child I was primarily concerned with the attention they paid to my needs.  I had little consideration then for the responsibilities they carried not just for our immediate family, but for their own parents, as well as their jobs.  Somehow they managed all of that without giving the appearance of being burdened.  Now I realize it must have been wearing, but they were stoic in the face of what must be done.

               For a time in my childhood, my father's father lived with us.  A quiet, rather withdrawn man, Grandpa nonetheless made time to teach me to play checkers.  We would set up the board on an old cedar chest in his room and while away the hours as he challenged me to be good enough to win without him having to let me, he said.  I think the lesson he intended was not just about the rules of checkers, but rather about learning patience and strategy.  It also lengthened those times we shared and I like to think that he wanted my company for longer than my normally short attention span.

               I don't remember Grandpa telling stories about his life or my father's early years.  I can't recall him ever mentioning his wife, either. He became a widower before my parents were married.  Though I was a curious child, I don't remember asking him about either of those subjects.  I wish I had.

               When I look at the photographs of my parents, Billy and Frances as young people without the responsibilities of children and aging parents, they look back at me with an energy that makes me feel happy.  I know they met in Albany, Georgia, when they were in their 30's, both working there and part of a group of young people who had a good time together, they said.  Two of their friends ran a funeral parlor and hosted parties in the back room that sounded like high-spirited fun when my parents referred to those events.

        

Once we did get my father to talk about an even earlier time when he worked for the Columbus Enquirer newspaper in what was then a small town in western Georgia.  It was just across the river from Phenix City, Alabama, which was, Daddy said, "as wild and gangster-ridden as Chicago in Prohibition." Daddy didn't go into as much detail about those days as I wish now that he had.  He also worked a number of other jobs during those tough Depression years, including what he described as "running a chain gang" that was repairing the highways.

 

               Now I am hungry to know more about Daddy and Mama than I ever thought to ask when they were alive.  I am curious about what brought them together, those two strong-minded people who bickered as continuously as Archie and Edith Bunker, but who loved each other as long as they were together.

 

         Daddy lost much of his hair early in life, but his big personality more than compensated.  He made jokes about being bald, rather than being shy about it.  He had the most amazing blue eyes that showed the dazzling intellect that lay within him.  They both could be stubborn to a fault and insisted that we children behave according to their rules.  There was always a soft heart behind Daddy's bluster.  Mama's sharp tongue was offset  by the way she would spend hours after work sewing so that we would have the clothes they couldn't afford to buy in stores.  They both worked long hours at their jobs, then spent time teaching us to read or taking part in school and scouting activities. 

Mama was a really striking young woman and full of fire.  What were their dreams as young people?  Neither of them had more than minimal education post-high school.  Daddy might have been a doctor, perhaps, because he always had a remedy for our minor hurts and illnesses.  He seemed to get by on very little sleep when any of us needed attention, though he rose early each morning to go to his job.  Mama could have the boss almost anywhere, but had limited patience for whiny, sick children.  She still always found time to make the standard curative tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich.

 

               I can't recall that they ever bemoaned their lot in life, whatever the dreams might have been.  Daddy, when told that he had a cancer that would take his life within a year or so, took the news in stride, saying "I've had a good life and a good family."  Mama, too, professed herself "ready to meet her Maker" in her last months before first senility, then death, took her from us.

               Sometimes people ask "if you could have a conversation with anyone in history, who would it be?" I'm sure that I could make choices that would be more sophisticated, but my choice would be to have a couple of hours with Billy and Frances.  It would be a real joy to learn more about the people who made me who I am and to let them know how much they will always mean to me.

 

A Bridge Becomes a Moving Force

      Sometimes a word is more than a word, a structure more than a structure.  When it comes to the word bridge, I've witnessed the truth of this concept.  Most bridges don't visibly move, though there are exceptions -- floating bridges, drawbridges, for example.  Most seem to be just solid structures designed to allow movement from one place to another.  But when a bridge captures the imagination, it can become a moving force. 

           
Such is the bridge that occupies much of my time and

thought these days.  We call it the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge.  It is a marvel of community bridging, taking an aging concrete structure that carried vehicle traffic for more than eight decades and transforming it into a garden space hanging above the Rocky Broad River in western North Carolina.

 

            Once just a notion based on a childhood memory, the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge is now home to tall spiky red and yellow cannas reaching above the structure's graceful balustrades into the mountain air.  Across a span of 155 feet, a myriad of plants and flowers flourishes in raised stone-walled beds, competing for attention along a winding pathway.  The sights and scents of roses and other fragrant plants invite bees and birds and butterflies as well as people.  One bed features medicinal, fragrant, ornamental and culinary herbs.

            On the bridge's east end, a pathway from the Town Hall leads visitors through a garden space of plants and trees, then under an iron archway above open gates, then onto the bridge itself.  A nearby bench invites a restful stop to look out over the river where ducks and geese and even kayakers might be paddling by in the cool water that tumbles down from the mountains above.

           

How has all this come to be in just three short years?  One man's memory of trips to the Bridge of Flowers in Massachusetts became the vision of a group of dreamers.  These community volunteers believed the decommissioned Rocky Broad Bridge Number 7 could also become a garden that might itself create memories to inspire another generation.

      
Their belief has drawn an entire community together.  Individuals and local businesses donated seed money to explore the possibilities.  An architectural firm was engaged to draw up a plan.  A state fund to preserve the bridge itself, managed by the Town of Lake Lure, provided further support for the gardens that have given new life to the bridge. 

            Throughout the process, the bridge has proved itself a connection among the various communities in the Hickory Nut Gorge where it is located.  As needs arose, volunteers stepped forward to donate time, talent, money and expertise.  Creative collaboration found solutions to problems,  keeping momentum building through the preparation of the bridge for its new purpose.   Then, in April 2013, shovels turned the earth and enthusiastic volunteers nestled plants into their new homes. 

          
     Now the flowers are blooming, visitors are strolling through the gardens.  Having come together to create this garden connection, residents are devising complementary concepts.  A coffee shop has opened on one end of the gardens and plans are being discussed for other development in conjunction with the gardens planned for the west end of the bridge.  This is a place of ideas and imagination.

     In the case of the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge, it is clearly much more than just a structure that allows passage across a river.  It is now a beautiful catalyst for collaboration and creativity, for unity and innovation.  It is that moving force that a bridge can become.

 

Thanks to Bill Miller for leading the effort to turn his childhood memory into a dream that has become a reality.

Photos by Mike Lumpkin

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

Thinking of You on Your Birthday, Pops

              

Pops All Dressed Up
Too Serious!

This June 21, it's not just the first official day of summer, but it's my grandfather's birthday.  Though he died in 1959, I think of him often because he was one of the important people in my childhood.  I didn't realize until recently that he was born on this day in 1887 because I don't remember that we ever celebrated his birthday and only a little ancestor research taught me that this day was the day his life began 126 years ago.

               Raymond Livingston Artope was my mother's father whom we called Pops.  By the time I was born, he was 59 years old, so my childhood memories are of this man in his 60's.  When you're a kid, people in their seventh decade are OLD people.  Now that I've achieved 60+ years, it doesn't seem all that old to me, but then it was definitely old. 

               As I look back from adulthood, that childhood impression of age is altered by experience.  I realize that he was, in fact, still living a vigorous life, pursuing his craft as a carpenter.  Perhaps he wasn't working as much as in younger years because he certainly had time to spend with family, thus my memory of his importance to me.

               He was a big man, hearty and strong.  It seemed that his chest was broad as a barrel and though he didn't carry a belly, he seemed to fill up space in the front seat of his pickup truck.  One of our joys as kids was riding in the back of that truck.  There were no seatbelts then and his only rule was that we "hold on."  I'm pretty sure the truck never went fast enough when we were back there to generate much danger.

               We learned that the danger came from within that front seat.  Pops chewed tobacco.  People who chew tobacco spit occasionally.  What is spat is brown and slimy and acidic.  When one is driving a pickup and spits out of the window, that nasty stuff is carried by the wind around the corner of the cab and across the bed of the truck.  After once experiencing the sudden whap! of chewed tobacco across the face, we learned to listen for the spit and we ducked fast.  It was an art of childhood that we mastered pretty quickly.

               The other knowledge gleaned from that pickup was related to the clinking noise that always came from under the seat.  Nosy kids had to find out what it was, of course, and given an opportunity, we explored.  What we found rattling around under there was a whiskey bottle.  Young enough to be brash, I marched into the house and asked Pops why it was there.  He replied simply that he liked a drop now and then.  When I asked why, he said that carpenters always drink a little whiskey.  And that was that.

               Pops had a workshop in the basement of my grandparents' Atlanta home.  It seemed like a special cave.  He made little wooden stools for us to sit when we visited him there and he placed them a safe distance from the workbench.  He was savvy and didn't want us to get sawdust in our eyes or to be hit by an errant nail hammered inelegantly. 

               A man of few words, my grandfather didn't say much most of the time, but he would talk as he worked.  Those hours we were allowed in the workshop were special times when we saw the care he took as he crafted a bookcase or cabinet.  Despite the fact that the basement was unfinished and had a distinctive smell, a mix of the Georgia red clay that floored it and the years of sawdust that had been generated, I remember it as an organized place.   He had places for tools and materials and kept them in those places.  I wonder now if that's where I got my need for a similar organization.

               Pops managed to convey both his affection for us and his pride in us in his quiet way.  When our grandmother, the family worrywart, would begin to chastise us for some misbehavior or careless transgression, he would gently, but firmly, remind her that we were just children.  He always made us feel that he was on our side.

               There remained a hint of mystery about him.  He didn't talk about his past or his philosophy of life.  I don't remember any comments about politics or the state of the world.  He wasn't overtly religious.  He was a craftsman who lived simply, loved his family and, some might say, made little mark on the world.  He did, we were told, help build the amazing Fox Theatre in Atlanta.  There is no plaque there with his name or the names of the many artisans who built that marvel. 

               He did, though, make a mark on me.  He left me memories that I cherish and  the pride that somewhere in me are his good genes.  Thanks, Pops, and Happy Birthday.

OUR UNFORGETTABLE MISS MARCIA

           

Today is a watershed day in the history of Chattanooga television.  After fifty years of selfless service to the WTVC-TV audience in the tri-state market of Tennessee, Georgi and Alabama, Marcia Kling said goodbye.  Beginning as Miss Marcia on Romper Room, she went on to other assignments, always reaching out to us, always teaching valuable lessons by letting us see the possibilities, always helping us believe that we could successfully meet our challenges. She has been teacher, friend and exemplar, always there with a word of encouragement.

            Anyone who has been fortunate enough to know her knows that her influence will continue to affect so many lives.  Her innate goodness, her willingness to reach out to help those in need and her consistent ability to stand for what she believes while not judging others are qualities that are rare.  It is easy enough to have beliefs or opinions.  Our Miss Marcia never made others feel that they were beyond the pale, no matter their imperfections. 

            Over the many years since I was lucky enough to have her in my daily life at WTVC-TV, I have remembered her wise counsel and quoted her to others.  At a particularly trying time in my life, she reminded me that life is about choices.  She helped me understand that I could actually choose to be happy and pursue that choice actively with success. 

            I am grateful to have had her wisdom so readily available.  She set an example that I will always strive to emulate as best I can, despite knowing that I cannot possibly match her capacity for giving, her patience or her courage to rise above challenges that would daunt a saint.  Part of her amazing gift is that ability to inspire in those who experience her joy of life the belief that it is always worth the effort  to be the best that we can be, whatever disappointments we face as we strive to meet our goals.  In a culture that puts so much emphasis on winning, she allows us to see that personal growth and giving are the true wins in our lives.

            I believe that the power of her personality is such that she remains with us even when we are not watching her on television or talking with her in person.  Her good soul, having touched us, lives on with us, following our paths in life.  As someone who has always believed that television provides an electronic backyard fence over which we get to know one another, I will always be happy that Marcia Kling was--and remains--our favorite neighbor.

 

            "The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in your life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people's lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them." –Rabbi Harold Kushner

Remembering the Birthday Girl

 

           

Just one year ago today, we celebrated our friend Dale's birthday in her hospital room in New York City.  Disappointed that she was unable to be at home for her birthday, she rallied through the many phone calls from friends who brightened her day with their birthday wishes.

            She was, our dear Dale, a birthday girl in more ways than one.  Her famous "little red book" helped her keep tabs on the birthdays of her many friends.  She was often the first or second call that came on one's birthday, her throaty Southern accent lilting through the receiver, enveloping the celebrant with her warmth and humor like a hug.

            Though she left this life less than a week after her 2012 birthday, she remains with those who knew and loved her in a thousand memories. This being a Sunday, we're reminded how often she would call on Sunday mornings to check in with us with her signature opening of "Darling, it's Dale" in that unmistakable voice.

             As we watch Jeopardy almost every night, we think about how much she loved it and how she and her friend Brenda would dish about the contestants after each show.  In the many years before her last illness, she would tape the show and watch it after an evening at the theatre.  In that difficult year when she battled illness mostly in the hospital, she watched the live telecasts and Brenda's call would come just after the show ended.

            So many times over this past year, I've found myself wanting to share something with her that I knew would make her laugh.  How I miss that laugh.  At other times, I've wanted to know if she saw a movie that we'd seen and what she made of it.  Ever ready with her opinions, she was such fun in those conversations. 

            As we follow the photographs of her beloved nephew and grand-nieces via Facebook, we think of how much she loved them and how proud she would be of their lives.  She loved them and loved planning their next visit to New York or her next visit South to be with them.

            When her time with us ended, so many spoke of the investment she had made in their lives and their careers.  Several commented that she was one of so many people's few best friends.  She had that capacity for love and a boundless curiosity for what lay within those she loved and what they might show the world.  She took pride in the accomplishments of relatives, friends and clients.

            What we remember viscerally and with joy is that encompassing interest she took in those of us lucky enough to be in her circle of life.  Her very presence seemed to create more oxygen, breathing energy and laughter into us.  She cajoled, encouraged and demanded that we embrace life, even as she embraced us.

            So we remember you, dear birthday girl, dear Dale.  Even as we miss your physical presence, we continue to bask in the glow that you brought to our lives.

New Year's Eve 2012 - Words and Pictures

            For those who have been following our move to a new home, this post probably will come as no surprise.  Some of you have heard my moans and groans all the way across the country as we've spent the past year undergoing the rigors of building a new house, leaving our nest of 12 years and trying, with some stress and strain, to unpack and settle in again.

            What you might also have heard was my elation that our new neighbors are our son and daughter-in-law.  We found a piece of land and designed and built two homes, mere yards apart and only one mile from our former home.  Our vision realized, we can now walk the stepping stone path from one house to another and have found, indeed, that we can help each other easily while maintaining privacy for each generation.

            What I haven't shared as much has been the sheer fun of discovery that is part of this process.  Sure, we've discovered lots of "things" we'd forgotten we had.  We've been rather ruthless in taking many of them to Goodwill to share with others who might have a place for them in their lives.  Candidly, we lived through the year of designing and building in some sort of denial, doing much too little to purge our accumulation of "treasures."

           Just this New Year's Eve, I've finally begun unpacking the boxes that purportedly belong in the dining room.  I share with you the discoveries from the effort thus far, including the boxes marked "china" (as though  they didn't also include a myriad of other things).  I uncovered  a veritable potpourri of items that I hadn't seen in years and/or can't remember ever seeing before!  And in one corner, the artwork that reminds us of places we've been sits in its protective wrappers awaiting the time we find just the right place to hang each piece. 

            What I've been realizing throughout the unpacking is that it isn't things we've been collecting; it is actually a collection of love and memories.  Tonight as I dug into one box after another, I found the glasses we bought on a trip to Venice in 1992.  All the memories came back:  the wonderful hotel at the corner of two canals, the boat that picked us up from that hotel to take us to the glass factory on the island of Murano and the factory itself, replete with rooms of gleaming glassware that took our breath away.  I remember the awe on our 13-year-old son's face as he was presented with a blown-glass horse.        

            Further digging found the pottery wine glasses purchased on a trip to Seagrove with friends who love pottery as I do.  I remember that day as we wandered together through one potter's studio after another, oohing and aahing over their creativity, laughing together when we got lost between potteries, despite the  map.  It always feels so good to be with longtime friends who know you well enough that they could catalog your foibles, but choose simply to love you, foibles and all.

            And I dug on, finding tickets and pins from the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, keepsakes from a once-in-a-lifetime experience we shared with family and friends when the world came to our hometown.  I remember the ease with which we took rapid transit to venues, despite the fears many had that Atlanta wouldn't be able to handle the crowds.  Apparently so many people left to escape those predictions that we moved about rather painlessly.  We saw swimming and basketball, baseball and those famous golden shoes of Michael Johnson flashing around the track.  We watched the glorious standing ovation given the last woman to circle the stadium in the marathon when she slowly made that last lap long after the rest of the runners.  Her finish was the most meaningful of all for the crowd that day.  We were saddened by the bombing in Olympic Park, a place that first was associated with happy children running through fountains of cool water, but bears also the stain of one man's lethal anger.

            Obviously, I could go on as the memories emerge with so many of the items we've accumulated and moved from state to state or just this one mile from house to house.  But one last picture was tonight's most amazing find--the "witch nose" that neither  of us remembers buying, owning or being gifted.  Amid all the happy memories of trips taken, family and friends enjoyed, there is this, a mystery that brings a smile with it.

            As I've been writing this, we've been hearing the fireworks of the New Year celebrations.  I stepped out on our front walk and saw the bursts of color rising into the sky, blooming like giant chrysanthemums and booming like the guns of a naval battle of old.   It is a good night that ends a year that brought us joys as well as the sorrow of a dear friend lost.  She would like our new house and would enjoy sharing the memories, many of which included her deep laughter and ready wit.  We remember her with love, knowing that this night, too,  begins a year, one with the promise of new joys, as well as the possibility of new sorrows.  It is the promise and possibility that we anticipate and celebrate.

            Here's to a Happy New Year for all who've read this far.  May the memories you make in the year ahead give you joy for years to come,

           

I Salute Those Who Serve

William Hayward Lumpkin

On this Veterans Day, I think of all those who willingly step up to serve our country, especially those who choose to wear a uniform that requires them to go where they are sent, even when those orders take them  to the front lines.  Most especially, I think about those soldiers, sailors and air warriors, nurses and medics who served in World War II.  Many of them are gone now, as that conflict ended more than 60 years ago.

I think especially of my husband's father, William Hayward Lumpkin.  He was among those in uniform in World War II, then served until his retirement from the U.S. Army many years later.  Though retired from military service, he never really left the Army behind, retiring a second time from a civilian job at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky.  He remained loyal to his comrades-in-arms, maintaining friendships made in the Army throughout his life.

While I never saw him in uniform, I heard the pride in his voice when he talked about his service.  Those comments were rare, actually, despite the breadth of his experience.  He wasn't inclined to share war stories.  Rather than talk about those memories, his conversation was centered around those he loved and his penchant for wry humor.  Whatever he'd known of hardship and strife in uniform was left behind, replaced by the joy he knew in home and family, friends and golf, or the pleasure of a good horse race.

I saw the pride in the eyes of his family, their pride in his service.  I know that pride lives on in their memories of him more than a decade after his death.  They know the sacrifices he made for them and for our country, a country boy from Alabama who honored the uniform he wore.

So, I think this Veterans Day of the man we called "Pappy."  I thank him and all the others, gone but not forgotten, who have given of themselves in service to America.  I thank those who go into harm's way today.  We are a fortunate people to have among us the men and women who choose to serve.