The Big Little Things

      I lost a friend last Thursday, though I only found out about it today, which gives you some kind of idea about how close we were. No, I didn’t know Keith very well, and, no, we had not shared an endless list of important times, holidays or similarities, but he was a friend, just the same.

I met Keith Woody at his family’s world-renowned chair shop. The Woodys have been incredible chair makers for over a hundred years, and their chairs grace places like the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington, D.C., and the Kennedy Library, in Boston. Keith’s uncle, Arval, who I was fortunate enough to meet, was given the prestigious title of Living National Treasure years ago because of his superb craftsmanship.

I met Keith and Arval when I dared venture into their shop to see if they’d be willing to talk to me about furniture making as I was researching my book, BENEATH A THOUSAND APPLE TREES. I almost didn’t stop and nearly drove past their driveway because I’d not called first and was sure they’d have no time for an interview. However, a little voice in my head said “just do it”, and I took a right hand turn off the highway and into a parking spot in front of their shop. As I mentally went over an apology for dropping by unannounced, I pulled open the screened door - with attached bell that charmingly tinkled with each new arrival – and walked into an old-timey shop complete with wood burning stove, aglow with bright red embers. In typical Norman Rockwell style, sitting in one of their beautiful handmade rockers near the stove was a big man with an even bigger smile, who I was sure would lose it once he realized that I wasn’t there to exchange money for a chair, but rather information in exchange for an acknowledgment in my book. The man was Keith Woody, and he couldn’t have been more gracious, warm and welcoming had I told him I’d come in to order a thousand rockers.

Keith gave me a tour of the back of the shop where all of the magic happens, then we sat back down as he went through an old picture album full of his great-this, and great-that, parents, aunts, uncles and relatives of all sorts. I learned how the business got started by one of Keith’s ancestors, Charlie Woody, and how Arval, Keith’s elderly uncle, was a dye-in-the-wool Democrat who had graced John Kennedy Jr., and Caroline with the two rockers that now sit in royal splendor in their father’s library. And then, as if on practiced cue, Arval walked through the door. It was his 92 birthday, and he had just come back from lunch with his niece, Jo, who was Keith’s cousin. I was immediately introduced and Arval was delighted I was there. He, too, sat down by the stove and regaled me with stories about his great-greats, and the good ol’ days of furniture making but which he’d given up some years before and let the younger ones take over. Then Mr. Arval Woody invited me up to his lovely home behind the shop where he showed off pictures of his beautiful, long dead and very missed wife, and pictures of our town, Spruce Pine, from way back when, though it really hasn’t changed that much over the years. I was more than touched that this man and his family would open their world to me, but if that wasn’t enough, as I got ready to leave, Arval graced me with a handmade wooden business card holder, superbly crafted, just like his chairs, as well as a wooden bookmark - treasures bestowed upon me by a Living National Treasure.

When Arval passed away about a year later, Keith invited my husband and me to join the family for a dinner their church was providing for them before the service. And Keith asked us to sit with the family during the service. We were beyond moved. We were humbled.

Keith and I have exchanged Christmas gifts before, though we didn’t last year. I didn’t get to see him – or maybe I just didn’t take the time to see him – and if I’m honest with myself, I’d guess it was the latter. You see, I was “busy”.

I never did stop to give Keith a copy of BENEATH A THOUSAND APPLE TREES, even though I acknowledged him and his family in the front of the book. I drove by his shop a hundred times, but was always on my way to some other place, and in too much of a hurry to stop. I told myself I would another day. Now, there won’t be “another day.”

During this holiday season, I think it’s important to remember that it’s the big little things that make a difference in people’s lives. All things considered, some of those big little things can be enough to write a blog about, and even a book. It’s a wonderful little irony of life that my home, where I do all of my writing, is on a mountain named Woody’s Knob, and I look down from my deck onto a beautiful winding road named Charlie Woody Mountain Road. It’s one of those big little things, and I’m most grateful for it.

Wishing each of you much happiness, and many big little things this holiday season.


Janie

Arval Woody, Chair Maker

The Bomb Shelter

Today, as I was sitting in the middle of my family room, surrounded by Christmas wrapping materials, and the many gifts that needed to be wrapped in them, I thought back to the bomb shelter my dad had built in the fall of 1962, as a direct result of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  As crazy as that sounds, every year when I wrap presents, I think back to that time for the bomb shelter had an indirect link to Christmas.

Because Miami is at sea level, my father had to build the bomb shelter inside of our garage, as opposed to below ground.  Both our home and separate garage were built in the Spanish style in 1925, and both had withstood tremendous hurricanes, but this type of storm looming on the horizon required an even greater defense than just our strong home could provide.

When Daddy and Mama decided that the shelter must be built, Daddy went down to Highway US-1, where, waiting patiently under the shade of an overpass, day laborers sat from early morning until early afternoon hoping that someone would come along and give them employment for the day, week, or longer.  Daddy hired three of the biggest men he could find and they worked on our fortress for several days.  

The shelter had shelves made of simple plank boards and there was a wind-up fan which would be cranked by a handle to bring air into the room.  That was the only source of air.  I always wondered why the air we’d crank into the room from outside would be any safer than the air that was already outside, but I never asked.  Childhood ignorant bliss and acceptance is a wonderful thing, indeed.

Mama lined the shelves with cans of Campbell soup, blankets, batteries, flashlights, and other paraphernalia which wasn’t important to a child, however vital it might be in enabling that child to have the opportunity to reach adulthood.

My sister, the kids in the neighborhood, and I thought it was the neatest “fort” to hang out in, although Mama would chase us out of there, so as not to disturb our emergency supplies.  Think about it:  We’ve just been slammed by missiles, and while hunkering down in the shelter, Mama asks where the hand-held can opener is, to which Kathy or I would have to answer that we used it while playing one day and forgot to return it.  The newspaper caption would read:  “Family Survives Nuclear Blast but Dies without Can Opener.”  

Another reason that we didn’t spend much time in the bomb shelter – through our own choice, as well as Mama’s refusal to let us do so – was that it was hotter than Hades in there.  Imagine August in Miami, inside of a barely ventilated, solid block and steel, 12 X12 foot room, within a room.  The front yard with the big Banyan tree, which offered shade and made for great climbing, was more appealing.  But, as kids, we still liked to venture in there, to show it off, for we were the only family on the block that had one.  I recall wondering what would happen to our friends and neighbors if the bombs fell, and wondered if we’d let them inside.  I think I was too afraid of the answer to ask, so I didn’t.  However, I do remember imagining what the aftermath of the “big one” striking us might bring.  “The Night of the Living Dead” movie immediately came to mind, and I envisioned our neighbors speaking in death-like monotone voices through our ventilation fan, asking us to let them in.  Of course, it was always the adult neighbors who would be disfigured and shuffle along, not my little friends.  Somehow, my imagination couldn’t quite get wrapped around that image.  I never did think too long or hard about what would happen to them.  It was just unthinkable.  Perhaps it was because that thought could actually conjure up thoughts of something that awful, devastating and corruptive happening to my sister and me, too.  

At the eleventh hour, backroom talks between Russia, Cuba and the United States put an end to the immediate nuclear threat.  Everyone at the wrong end of the Soviets’ nuclear warheads, as well as at the wrong end of the United States’ arsenal, breathed a collective sigh of relief, and no more so than those of us who were living just 90 miles from the shores of Cuba.  Ill winds were once again replaced with gentle breezes off of Miami’s Biscayne Bay, and things returned to normal.   However, there was still the one gigantic reminder of how very close we’d come to being no more; our bomb shelter.  Although the immediate threat was over, my parents were in no great hurry to tear it down.  Why not just stay prepared - just in case, they sensibly thought.  And, in the meantime, why not use it for other things?  How sensible!

With the nuke trouble blessedly behind us in late October of that year, the holidays could now be focused on with great anticipation and a newfound appreciation.  I do believe that children’s wish lists grew ever longer with the advent of The Advent.  And, to be honest about things, kids always know when to use a situation to their greatest advantage.  Knowing that mothers and fathers were overjoyed that their little Billy or Marcy, or themselves, for that matter, as well as their not-yet-paid-for home, and station wagon, local golf course, beauty salon and burger joint weren’t going to be vaporized in a flash, kids feverishly added on to their holiday lists.  In an ironic twist, we kids owed a world of thanks to Kennedy, Castro and Khrushchev.  Thanks for not blowing us all to kingdom come.  And thanks for the unprecedented, unequaled, momentous amount of presents we got during the holidays of ‘62.  

The bomb shelter took on a whole new purpose and persona.  It became the private present-wrapping place.  Campbell soup cans were replaced with rolls of ribbon.  The folded blankets were replaced with sheets of wrapping paper.  The niche for batteries became the nook for Scotch tape.  And the ever-important, lifesaving, hand held can opener was happily replaced with a pair of scissors.  Deck the halls with boughs of holly.  Fa la la la la, the nukes are gone!  The Christmas spirit was alive and well because there wasn’t any question that we would be alive and well to celebrate it.

The passage of time fades things, even the bad things, so we returned to our everyday lives and gave the fall of ’62 an extra page or two in our scrapbooks.  As the years passed, the immediate need of more space in our garage led Daddy back to US-1, to the overpass there, where the day laborers still arrived each morning in the hopes of earning a day’s pay.  Once again, Daddy hired three of the biggest guys, (even bigger than the ones he’d hired years before) and the four of them tore into the old bomb shelter with sledge hammers.  After a couple of days, they brought the “old fort” down.

When Mama and Daddy finally sold the house in 1993, after 33 years of living there, they sold it to a nice young Cuban couple.  There they hoped to build a happy life for themselves, in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”  It struck me as rather ironic that the land and the home that they fell in love with, and counted on to provide peace, safety and shelter for them, was, at one time, the place that was most vulnerable and in the direct line of fire from the country who’s Communistic regime had caused the new owners and their families to start a new life elsewhere.  Life is stranger than fiction.

Ten years ago, we made the physical move to our present home in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  For a short while, I dabbled in real estate, and as I did, I realized that the influx of other city people meant bringing some of the fears of today’s America in today’s world with them, no matter how much they might try living a more serene, briefcase-less life.  Because of those fears, I was asked by several potential clients for properties that would allow them to build an underground bunker – “just in case.”  I knew well what that “just in case” meant, though this was a lesser degree of it, and not the near zero-hour panic kind my family and I had lived.   

Just recently, at the very top of the mountain we live on, Homeland Security installed a large tower.  It was all very mysterious to me as to the reason they chose this out of the way, unassuming little town that wouldn’t seem to hold too much importance to the folks over at Homeland Security.  That was until I was told that these mountains contain the mines which provide the most mica and feldspar in the world – materials used to make computer chips and other vital communication components.  I figured that just might have something to do with it.  Talk about feel like a sitting duck!  Again!!

Even with that revelation, though, my husband and I have decided to just not worry about it.  And we’ve opted to not build a bomb shelter.  Instead, we’ll worry about garden beetles; whether the church has enough money to get the new roof; and whether my elderly aunt’s chest congestion will turn into anything more serious than a cold, just to name a few things.  And, I’ll continue to write, about the past and my hopes for the future.  I bet there’ll be one, too - and a good one.

Once again, as Christmas season descends upon us, I’m back out in the family room wrapping presents.  You’ll never find me in a bomb shelter doing that, or anything else for that matter.  Because if this world does blow, or anyway this part of it, I plan on going out with it.   All things considered, I don’t want to live in a Mad Max-style world, fighting over a can of Spam.  I never did like the stuff, and it’d just be my luck that I wouldn’t be able to find a hand-held can opener anyway.

On The Front Porch

           Looking through Norman Rockwell paintings, one can expect to find one of an ancient country couple, sitting in rockers on the front porch of an old log cabin. I always looked at it as such a mountain cliché, until I moved out to the country and into my own log cabin, and suddenly realized what this picture of such solitude and serenity was inspired by. 

This morning, I sat bundled up, rocking on my own front porch and had to smile thinking about old Rockwell. Maybe he had done this a time or two, himself. Or, perhaps he’d been invited to “set a spell” by a weathered mountain couple somewhere along the line. How Americana it felt to me. How Americana I felt I must look.

As a native South Floridian, living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, these mountains and their beauty never cease to amaze me. Starting in mid-summer, I strain my hurricane-blurry eyes to see the first hint of the leaves changing, and now that it’s the first of December, my head swivels around like some out-of-control bobble-head looking for each and every peak that the falling leaves have left exposed. I wait all year for the cool/cold months, though I try to remind myself to live for the moment and enjoy the warm/hot months, too. But, for someone like me, who’s lived in a year ‘round green landscape, this is nothing short of thrilling; it’s a miracle, actually.

It’s the little things that are so important to me anymore, and I often find an unexpected muse in them. I suspect that most artists do. Like this fall, I happened to glance out the window and spot a mother deer with her fawn. They leaped and bounded through my yard, until they came to the salt licks I had set out for them. (Most people can’t understand why they like those licks, but being an anchovy fan, I do.) I stood there mesmerized, and couldn’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kennan Rawlings was doing when she was inspired to write The Yearling.

I was at the grocery store a few weeks ago, and an older woman let out a loud “Hey darlin’!!” when she spotted me. I didn’t know her from Adam (who’s Adam anyway – and maybe that’s the point), but I reached deep inside of me and brought forth that decent little actress. I didn’t disappoint. I gave her a huge “Hey honey! It’s so good to see you!!” in return. We stood there for several minutes and talked. I let her do most of it, since I didn’t know who the heck she was, but I nodded in just the right places, and even threw in a “bless her heart” where it seemed appropriate. Then I promised to see her soon upon our parting. I smiled the rest of the way through the store, and I didn’t forget her. She became the inspiration for a character in the first book that I’m working on in my new series - A Corner in Glory Land - which will make its debut in December of ‘17.

I’m meeting a friend for dinner tonight. She’s a hurricane Katrina survivor from Louisiana. We realize how fortunate we are, having ended up here. For one thing, we know we’ve struck inspirational gold. Our muses are as plentiful as BBQ joints, Baptist churches and breathtaking vistas. And even though I know many of the locals are not thrilled that we’ve increased their traffic, taxes, and new developments, the truth of the matter is us transplants love it here – with a passion. Heck, everyday we’re rocking on our own front porches, appreciating the little things and keeping that old American image alive. Norman Rockwell would be proud. And I hope Marjorie would be, too.