Who Will Watch the Baileys' Homeplace?

  Nothing much can trigger my memory faster than thoughts of family and home. I mean, it all comes flying back in there in just a second! Today, while e-mailing with a cousin about things that trigger thoughts of family and home, I was transported right back there to childhood. While my grandparents have been gone since the mid-1950's, the memories are very fresh and very precious. I invite you to read my list of random thoughts and then create your own list.

Here is the house and here are some precious memories (how they linger!) of times gone by. It's tough to create such a list of memories without thinking of Laurie Lewis' beautiful song, "Who Will Watch the Homeplace" (Kate Long/Feeny Feemster Music, BMI). Sometimes I can listen to the song all the way through and sometimes it's just too much.

• Grandmother walking up the front hall to open the door to greet us
• The door itself, handmade by Granddaddy (I want that door!)
• The smell of the house--only one other house ever smelled that good (the home of a classmate)
• Grandmother letting me brush her hair or powder her face (neither of which needed improvement)
• Early version of a TV (one particular old Ford driving by the house could send the picture into all kinds of lines and static until the car went on down the road)
• The Bailey rose garden (on the tour for locals on their Sunday afternoon drives)
• The mud room (Granddaddy had his instructions as to where to go first when coming inside)
• The heavily-laden dining table with Grandmother's biscuits and home-made pear preserves (with pear slices the size of a biscuit half)
• The wood-burning stove in the kitchen prior to the electric model
• The planks from Granddaddy's lumber mill laid end-to-end all the way out back to his garden
• The noon whistle at Granddaddy's lumber mill that sent everyone home to "dinner" in the middle of the day (the mill whistle could be heard all over town)
•  The chicken coop and chickens out back ( I still collect blown-glass settin' eggs just to remember)
•  The small kitchen table covered with a white table cloth after Sunday dinner (great for lifting and peeking in to see what quick snack awaits)
• The front sidewalk where I learned to skate (skates that clipped onto the sides of my street shoes, requiring my skate key, which I still have)
• My little flower pot that I made from mud at my grandparents' house (Granddaddy didn't recognize it as a flower pot and broke it up; Grandmother fussed at him)
• The "little brown building" out back prior to indoor plumbing
• Running out the front door to the sidewalk near the street to watch the trains go by downtown
• Some great wicker rockers with their comfortable rocking noises, that I haven't seen anywhere else
• The corn crib, smoke house, and one-car garage all in one structure (In my grandfather's shed, there were hundreds of tools. . . .)
• The smell of fresh-cut lumber at the W. H. Bailey Lumber Company (at the edge of my yard, a recently installed telephone pole with creosote in it comes close to that same smell on a hot summer day)
• On a day when the lumber mill was quiet, Granddaddy would turn on the big shuttle that transported giant logs to the giant saw (which was not running) and let me ride back and forth a few times

The family that resides now in the Bailey homeplace is taking very good care of the house and the grounds around it. They have been so gracious to invite my cousin and me in for a look around. That was a special visit!

Get started on your list. . . .

Pick away!