Every year about this time, my favorite flower blooms. I was always taught that the patches of these beautiful flowers always marked the place of an old home. So, every time I see them, I think of the people who came before us. The quiet and peaceful lives, the lives of beauty and struggle, of pain and redemption. The generations of men and women who simply were. They raised families, farmed, raised livestock right there. Those little patches in my mind are the history of the people who make our world go around. Those never written about in fancy books or studied in Ivy League universities by people who think meat comes from grocery stores. When those flowers bloom it sparks a feeling deep down in people like me that brings hope, a renewed sense of purpose, and a feeling of peace.

Those flowers were one of the favorites of my maternal grandmother. She was a tall, very slender lady from a little farm up on Hot House Creek in Fannin County, Georgia. I called her Granny. My maternal grandfather (whom I have written about before and said everyone says I remind them most of him) was from a little farther up the mountain and I called him Pop. They were the grandparents I spent the most time with. Granny would take me from, I guess, the time I was born up to the mountains to visit her mother, whom we called Big Mamma and her sisters. There were a good many of them. I think of Big Pappa Rackley often even though we never met. The man raised a houseful of girls and one boy … I can relate.

I remember going up there and seeing the little spots of yellow along the creeks and the mountain sides. I remember family taking me to graveyards, old home places, family sites of all kinds and seeing those little yellow flowers. It seems every place we went, I was told stories about our family and their history. I believe it more than shaped who I am today. It gave me a strong sense of pride in my heritage, my family, and where we are from.

Pop would take me up as well, and we would go get his brother Bill who lived up in McCaysville. Pop called him Little Willy, so we all of course, called him Uncle Little Willy. He loved to fly fish. While Pop loved to camp and cook, he didn’t care much about traipsing around in those cold mountain streams very much anymore. So, Uncle Little Willy and I would fish all over those mountains and he would show me old stills, old lumber camps, homeplaces, hunters’ cabins, and you name it back in those mountains. It seemed he knew every inch of them and was never lost or even turned around. The stories he told and the fish we caught; I will never forget.

Those flowers would fade away as others came into bloom, but in my mind’s eye they always were the brightest, the harbingers of spring, the trumpets of better weather and better times to come. When warmer weather would come, I remember sitting on the front porch of their modest mountain homes and watching fireflies play in the evening while the old folks talked and reminisced about their childhoods and their grandmothers. I heard stories about women who could heal, men who died fighting the union, panthers tracking women in the night, and the Cherokees who lived there before.

Mountain folks are closely tied to the land and to the region. They may have left the mountains, like almost all my great aunts and uncles did. However, they always came home. They always stayed close to family. And those little yellow flowers marked the spot.

So, you see those little yellow flowers to me bring back lots of very good memories. What about you?

Tight Lines and following seas y’all.