The Side of the Road

I grew up before most people started exercising for health. In fact, the first time I decided to take a long walk from the house where I grew up, somebody offered me a ride halfway through. We just didn't see joggers or bicycle shorts.

I remember one time when my Maw Maw walked the quarter mile from our house to hers. She let me come with her, racing along, darting in front of and behind her, taking three steps to her one. If Maw Maw ever told me why she was out walking that day, I don't recall what she said. I couldn't have been older than 11 at the time because that's how old I was when Maw Maw died.

From around that time, Mother (not "Mama" or "Mom" but always "Mother") gave me free rein to walk or ride my bicycle between our house and her parents'. One side of the road was entirely fenced off with "Posted: No Trespassing" signs every hundred feet or so. This land belonged to Maw Maw's baby brother, Uncle Bud. Her big brother, Alf, was the first soldier from Coweta County killed in World War I. A plaque at the Newnan courthouse honors his sacrifice.

All the houses on the right side of the road belonged to relatives. The first house on the way to Maw Maw's and Paw Paw's was where Mother's oldest brother, Charles Grizzard (pronounced "GRIZZ-ard," not "Grizz-ARD" like the writer) and his family lived. One house up, Uncle Bud lived with Aunt Ruth on the same piece of property where my great-grandparents had brought up their eleven children. Their house was destroyed in a fire long before I was born. Then, at the end of a long driveway, Maw Maw's sister Nina (pronounced "NINE-a" because the doctor gave her the name as her parents' ninth child) and Uncle Deward lived.

Aunt Nina never let on that she had it rough. Uncle Deward was, as the saying goes, "bad to drink." Drafted into World War II although well into his 30s, Uncle Deward came back shell shocked and never able to fulfill the Southern male's primary role as good provider. The younger of Mother's two older brothers, Uncle Harry, told me Uncle Deward ran a general store out of the house Maw Maw and Paw Paw came to occupy after Paw Paw retired from the mill. Since Uncle Deward took out a mortgage to start the store, Aunt Nina ended up working at the dry cleaners owned by her brother-in-law to pay off the mortgage when her husband spent more time drinking than working and the store failed. Around 1970, Uncle Deward and Aunt Nina's only child, Douglas, married, and moved into a new house on the driveway toward his parents. On account of a divorce and another unsuccessful business, this time one started by Douglas, both of those houses were lost rather than sold.

The last house before Arnco village was my grandparents'. Paw Paw was shrewd enough to buy it years before retiring, and a series of relatives lived in it. In addition to Uncle Deward, Zale Shoemake -- Paw Paw's middle sister Allie's husband -- ran a store there for a time. In the same house, Maw Maw's oldest sister, Bertha, died of cancer in 1954. Maw Maw and Paw Paw finally moved there from the old plantation home they rented on Sargent Village when Paw Paw retired, after 56 years at the mill, in 1966.

I came to know both sides of Austin Road very well as a child. During the summertime, I would nose slowly back and forth, looking for soft drink bottles tossed out car windows. A bicycle basket full of bottles, at two or three cents a pop, could earn me enough money at Clemet Harris's store up near Arnco Baptist Church to buy a Dr. Pepper, a bag of peanuts, and maybe a comic book.

Paw Paw's front yard also provided a reliable but irregular income. Nearly blinded by cataracts, Paw Paw would sit on the front porch after the heat broke and smoke cigarette after cigarette. When he finished a smoke, he'd flick the butt, end over end, out in front of the porch. While he probably never saw the mess, Maw Maw did, and she'd fuss at him to pay a grandchild a couple of nickles or dimes to pick up and discard the butts. We would dig into the cooling grass, our fingertips black and dirty, removing as many butts as we could and finally dumping them into the 50 gallon drum behind the free-standing garage.

The money one of us earned from Paw Paw's chain smoking often tested patience versus wanting it NOW. We could always spend our 10 or 15 cents at Clemet Harris's right away, or we could wait until a day when we put on our shoes and went shopping in town. A nickel here and a dime there, and I might just end up buying a cone at Dairy Queen.

Uncle Bud was a diabetic, possibly a reason he always maintained a healthy weight. He walked to and from work every day. Then, after supper, he often walked to visit with my grandparents and whatever assortment of grandchildren had gathered in their yard. When he was nearly 60, Uncle Bud would race any of us the 30 feet or so from the road to the house. The sight of a man that age sprinting for a couple of seconds amazed us almost as much as the times he'd open his wallet and show us that he walked around with two or three hundred dollar bills on him. I couldn't imagine where anybody would spend so much money, and since Uncle Bud was known for keeping 50 cents out of every dollar he ever earned, he probably didn't, either.

After Maw Maw died in 1973, everybody else remained in place for a time, but nothing was quite the same. With all of us growing toward or into adolesence, the change was inevitable, but Maw Maw's death hastened it and made it more final. By 1976, Paw Paw had had enough of "batching" in his house and sold it to Gary, the youngest son of Maw Maw's baby sister, Essie. Gary had a college education and had served as a captain in Vietnam. He found a banking job close to his mother and moved into the house that already had so much family history. Paw Paw distributed most of the furnishings and pulled a trailer onto a piece of land he had kept right behind our house.

Gary was one of the first people in Mother's family to have a career rather than a job, so it wasn't long before his bank offered him a bigger job in Texas. The first and only buyer for the house he had bought from Paw Paw was ... Paw Paw. He moved back into a less furnished version of his old home and sold the trailer to Imogene, the daughter of his baby sister, Eva.

Aunt Allie and Aunt Eva had introduced Paw Paw to a widow who lived across the Meriwether County line. Paw Paw married her, making a simple arrangement: she'd never send him to a home, and he'd leave her the use of his house for the rest of her life. Lou kept her part of the deal. On January 1, 1979, I was driving my 1963 Dodge Dart, the car Maw Maw bought when she learned to drive, home from basketball practice when I saw the cars gathered at Paw Paw's house and the black wreath on the door, and I knew he was gone.

I was one of the seven grandchildren who inherited the house right next to the village, but even though I was part owner for the next 17 years, the place never again felt as much mine as it had when Maw Maw and Paw Paw lived there. Mother died, way too young, a few years later, and once my sister and I were in happy marriages, we sold Mother's house.

From time to time, I visit some of the cousins who remain on Austin Road. I slow down and take a close look at my grandparents' house and "ours." No matter how long I may stare, I can't bring back the boy whose bare feet long ago trod along the side of the road.