Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 23, 1994 TAG: 9406080001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LUTHER R. KIRK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This particular sister came for Sunday dinner each week and at times took one of her younger siblings home with her. Many times during the summer I would go and spend a few days or perhaps even a week. I remember walking to the railroad tracks near her house and watching the passenger trains as they flashed by like silver snakes. They were coming from, and going to, places I thought I would never be able to visit but could only imagine because someone, probably my older sister who had moved to Baltimore, had spoken of them. Such places were foreign, intriguing, exciting and intimidating to me. I imagined tall buildings, ribbons of concrete, stores that stayed lit up at night, flashing neon signs, and people by the score moving to and fro.
I would sit on a knoll overlooking the tracks waiting, watching and listening for a train while such thoughts trampled through my mind.
I remember the first faint sound of its rumble as it slid along the tracks somewhere far off. Suddenly, a lonesome squall would pierce the stillness and the train, streamlined, long and sleek would ease around the bend and streak past me, one silvery flash after another. Cars swaying, wheels jangling, metal rolling against metal, it would be gone just as quickly as it had arrived, disappearing around the next curve.
Far off, the train's long, low wail would linger, dying in the distance as it raced on. My grassy knoll above the tracks would return to the shushed, quiet, gentle silence of crickets chirping, and grasses, nudged by gentle breezes, whispering to each other.
As the train flashed past, I remember seeing people in the swaying dining cars sitting at tables covered with white linen table clothes; they would be smoking, eating and drinking. Others would be sitting in the Pullmans. I would wave to them; they would wave back.
I would sit on that grassy knoll barefoot, in my bibbed ``overhauls," imagining where the people on that train were going and where they had come from. What kind of lives did they lead? Were they rich? Famous? Who was that woman, peering out at me with her long cigarette, looking so elegant and fine? Who was that well-dressed gentleman talking to her as they sped past? What a glamorous, sophisticated, bedazzling world they must be going to in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore or Washington, D.C.
I thought that it must have been wonderful to have boarded that train in the smoky, misty morning of some distant, Deep South city such as New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville or Chattanooga. The names themselves held a certain mystery and fascination for me.
The grassy knoll above the railroad tracks where I once daydreamed has been replaced by a steel and concrete bridge. Much of the hill has been paved over for a parking lot. A junky, overcrowded convenience store sits nearby. Styrofoam cups, candy wrappers, plastic bottles and other debris litter the area.
Passenger trains don't glide over the railroad tracks anymore. Only an occasional freight train rumbles past. Parallel to the railroad tracks, a man-made trench has been bulldozed out for Interstate 81, where cars and trucks shuttle back and forth like speeding bullets.
Sitting by the railroad tracks so many years ago, watching and wondering about all those strangers whizzing past and fantasizing about all those far off exotic places, instilled in me a desire to search for a better, more sophisticated life than I thought I had in the mountains, hills and hollows of Smyth County, Va.
I was ashamed of my roots. I wanted to forget them and search for something I thought was more glamorous. I wanted to flee the Kirk farm, which lay on the side of Barton Mountain. Across the valley, Iron Mountain reared up like a giant. The old house where I grew up with its sagging front porch, crooked wooden steps, tar-papered walk and rusting tin roof was an embarrassment to me.
After high school, I went into the military, left the mountains and never wanted to return. My travels took me far away from Southwest Virginia. I visited many of the cities I had fantasized about on that grassy knoll overlooking the railroad tracks so many years ago. They were exciting and entertaining for a while.
Eventually I had to come back home. As I grew older and had children of my own, I realized I didn't want to lose my rich mountain heritage. I will never again abandon my past. I can't. It is filled with joyful, as well as painful, memories, which I now more fully understand.
I grew up in a shanty at the head of Hog Trough Hollow in the mountains of far Southwest Virginia. That simple fact remains, no matter how sophisticated I think I am, how far I travel or how educated I become. I can't change it and don't want to anymore.
The mountains where I grew up, with their gently molded edges, deep gorges, rolling hills and dark hollows, have changed. Broad-shouldered Iron Mountain still looms in the distance, but the gray barns, herds of cattle, yellow stubble fields, lush green meadows, whispering rows of tall corn and flat, broad-leafed tobacco plants, once living and dying in its shadow, are gone. They have been replaced by houses and mobile homes.
Today, the Kirk farm lies forsaken on the side of Barton Mountain. The trees have slowly and quietly marched from the edge of the woods, where they stood like silent, responsible sentinels for so long. Spreading across the once open, fertile fields, they have conquered them all, one by one.
The mountains of Southwest Virginia seem far more exciting, and safer, than any of those far-off, exotic places I once visited. With maturity and the passage of time, I have become quite aware that there was something unique about those mountains, their hollows, and the farm where I grew up.
The simple life I led there, surrounded by my family, helped shape and mold me. It helped give me the character that I have today. I want others to know that I am proud of who I am because of such early surroundings.
Luther R. Kirk of Pulaski is principal at Bethel Elementary School in Montgomery County.
by CNB