I know it’s a bit cliche to talk about dirt roads when you live in the South. Every other song on the radio professes the singer’s love of old dirt roads, and two out of every three facebook posts insist that those who grew up on dirt roads have more common sense than those who grew up in the city, like and share if you agree! I’m not really a product of that mentality. I don’t wear cowboy boots, I don’t particularly enjoy football, and country music makes me cringe.
But all of that being said, I do have a certain fondness for dirt roads.
There is a certain mysteriousness about them. The roads that take people where they want to go are paved and marked and maintained. Yet over here to the side, there is a barely marked path of brown and red clay that will take you somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn’t traversed enough to warrant that kind of attention.
A paved highway can take you to a specific destination, but dirt road can take you anywhere. Somewhere with a personal significance to you, that these others cars on the road have no business being on. There is a magic to it, in a way. A sense of an older time, when people were not in such a hurry to get anywhere.
There is a dirt road just east of Lamesa, Tx that holds a special significance to me. Country Road H is its only label. It cuts along the cotton fields with scarcely a single tree or house in sight. The land is as flat as any on Earth, and you can see cotton and dirt for miles and miles.
Along this dirt road, there is a very small patch of land, barely more than an acre. To walk it now, it does not look like much. Simply more land for cotton to grow on. A black patch of brush where a tangle of old trees huddle together. I close my eyes and can picture it all as it stood nearly three decades ago. A caliche driveway leads up to a red house with two archways. A porch swing that always had a stray kitten on it. I can smell the food being cooked in the kitchen, and can hear the constant near-silent ticking of the clock.
This was my great-grandmother’s home. It is gone now. But I will never forget it.
My great-grandmother was Tula Fern Roberts, but everyone just called her GG. She was very proud of that title, and made sure to point out its significance to anyone and everyone. “That stands for ‘Great Grandmother’”, she would say with a smile. Even in my oldest memories, she was small and frail, but she never let that slow her down. I spent a lot of time out at her house, especially in the summertime, and I cherish those memories.She was always happy to play with me, or cook me up some extravagant snack. I remember craving something sweet, so she took me to the kitchen and we made s'mores and drank eggnog. After I was done vomiting, we sat in the living room together and watched Matlock and Murder, She Wrote because some stereotypes cannot be denied.
I was a young boy still unaware of who I wanted to be as an adult, and GG always pushed me to nurture my creative side. She was a poet at heart, and was very proud of the work she got published. She always encouraged me to write what I felt in my heart, to put something of myself down on paper and send it out into the world to be seen and read and felt by others. She always made such a big show of my own writings, telling me how proud she was of me and encouraging me to follow up with more.
In the evenings, we would sit on the porch swing in the cool air and watch the clouds kicked up by cars traveling that lonely dirt road. I did not know it at the time, but the conversations we had out there taught me lessons that I would carry with me the rest of my life. The importance of family. The value of hard work. The responsibility one had to nature, to care for and assist the world around you. I was a blank slate then, wide-eyed and curious, and Tula Fern made sure that I got a proper foundation placed on me, one that I could eventually build a life from. I loved my GG, very much.
Later in life I discovered another dirt road that was destined to shape my life. Well, not so much of a road, as a dirt alleyway.
About half an hour south of Lubbock is the charming little town of New Home, Texas. For many years, my mother’s parents lived next door to the local Church of Christ, where my grandfather preached every sunday. My grandparents, known affectionately as ‘Grannymom and Daddad’ to us, and Joyce and Jerry to everyone else, were another powerful force in my life at a young age. Just behind their house was the aforementioned dirt alleyway.
Now, that may not sound like much, but what you need to understand about this part of Texas is that at times when the wind blew, it blew as much dirt as it did actual air. And so some fences, particularly west-facing fences would accumulate piles and piles of dirt in some absurd mockery of a snow bank. This was a fun play area for me, because the piles of dirt in the back alley were a source of adventure for a young boy.
Understand, this was not like the alleyways of the city, where they are bordered by tall grass and overflowing trashcans. No, see in New Home, there was one main street that led into town. By the street was the row of houses where Joyce and Jerry lived. Behind the homes lay the alley, but on the other side of the alley was, once again, cotton. And so it really was more of a dirt road than an alleyway. But in either case, it was my magical little world. See, at the time I fancied myself a cowboy, with my cap-gun six shooters and straw hat, I’d hide around the fenceposts and fire at the bankrobbers and outlaws that dared show their faces in my town.
And then I’d come inside, covered in dirt, tracking it all over the carpet, and Grannymom would make that exasperated face of both annoyance and amusement. She’d march me straight to the bathroom and throw me in the shower, reminding me to wash the dirt out of ‘all my cracks and crevices’. Afterwards, I’d watch a cowboy movie with Daddad or read a book quietly with Grannymom.
I’ll always remember Joyce as being an icon of quiet kindness. I learned from her that despite all the craziness one might encounter in the world, there was nothing more important than simple kindness to others. Joyce was always very interested in whatever nonsense I was up to at the time, and always listened to me with rapt interest. I learned that it was okay to be excited about things I enjoyed, even if they were not things that others around me enjoyed. From that, I also learned that it was important to respect people for their differences, even if you don’t necessarily understand them.
I learned a lot from my grandmothers, Tula Fern (GG) and Joyce (Grannymom). I cherish them, greatly. And I can scarcely set foot on a dirt road without being instantly transported to those days as a child, dirty and happy, unknowingly absorbing lessons from two of the most wonderful women I’d have ever the honor to meet.
I suppose this has all been a very roundabout way to say what I really came here to say.
My daughter, Tula Joyce Wearden, enters the world in a few months. And you can rest assured that she will walk the same dirt road paths I did.
