The old farmhouse is gone now. Rendered to splinters by the blade of a bulldozer, along with the barn, tobacco barn, chicken house and outhouse. Most of it was probably shoved into the big pond that was dug at the edge of the barnyard so many years ago. Then covered over with dirt leaving a grave filled with hard back-breaking work and memories.

            Those were my thoughts as I stood at the edge of the field watching the soft summer breeze flutter over the lush month-old corn. Looking over what once was the farm of my mother’s parents, and the place where I was born. Trying to imagine where the house once stood. My eyes wandered a few yards into the field. Let's see now, I believe the front porch was right about here. That took me back to the first recollection of the farm. My mother and I stood on that porch the day the thunderstorm charged in, swiftly and without warning. I was three, maybe four years old at that time. My father was cultivating cotton across the ravine where a small creek divided the cotton field from the apple orchard. I've heard my father tell the story many times. "Dadburn cloud blew up before I knew it," he'd say. "I thought, 'well heck!,' I'll just unhook the cultivators and leave 'em here and take the mules on back to the house. So, I tied the mules to a telephone pole out there in the middle of the field, then I went around in front of the mules and started unhooking the harness. Ordinarily I'd lower the plows of the cultivator so it wouldn't roll, but for some reason, I don't know why, just forgot I guess, but I didn't lower them this time. Well, just about the time I walked around in front of them mules, lighting struck the ground or something close by. Well, when that happened them dang mules jumped clean over the top of me - cultivators and all. If I had lowered the plows on that cultivator like I normally would have, why it would have probably killed me. Well, it almost knocked me out. I rolled over and looked up to see where the mules were and all I could see was them cultivators bouncing upside down going out across the field. Tore them dang things all to pieces."

            Some people might say that I was too young to remember anything like that, or that the scenario was set in my mind from hearing it being told throughout the years. That's probably true, but I never forgot standing there on that porch behind my mother and hearing her scream my father's name, "Verdell! Oh my god, Verdell," as the mules and cultivators plunged over my father.

            Pa Kent and Mama Lee loved that old farm, especially Pa Kent. One of the hardest things he ever did was when he got too old to farm and had to retire and move into town. Years later, when I would leave my home in California and travel to see the family in Tennessee, Pa Kent and I would go out and drive around over the countryside, and visit his old abandoned farm or drive up to the courthouse in Paris.

            He would strike up a conversation with the other oldtimers he knew that were sitting on the benches around the courthouse square; whittling and trading pocketknives. Passing a Saturday afternoon telling tall tales. He would introduce me, and without fail, somewhere along the way he would reminisce about him and me. "Why, I'd take Little Rodgie and stick him on my back, he weren't much bigger than a minute. He'd put one foot in this back overall pocket and one in this'un and I'd tote him all over that old farm. He'd wrap his little arms around my neck and hang on like a tick."

        I'll never forget those times together either, Pa Kent. Your familiar scent of a hard days toil, your rough unshaven cheek rubbing against mine as I hung on up there around your neck. Or the way you'd scratch your forehead when you were in deep thought with fingers twisted at the first joint from arthritis.

        After a kiss on the cheek, you'd try and give me a whisker burn. Before dinner we'd wash our hands together in the old metal wash basin. We'd dry our hands, you on one end of the towel and me on the other, and we'd make a game out of jerking the towel from each others hands. You got a big kick out of that. We were great buddies.

        Then there were the times you would tell about taking me to the fields with you to plow cotton. You'd tell about hitching up them old mules behind the cultivators. "I'd stick Little Rodgie up there between my legs," he'd say, "and he'd sit there and dang if he wouldn't fall asleep. I'd look down at him and the little bugger would be sound asleep. I'd have to drive them cotton-picking old mules all the way back to the house so he could finish his nap." I can still remember sitting there watching the small stalks of cotton pass under the cultivators. I can still smell the pungent sweaty back-end of the mules. The leather from the harness and axle grease from the cultivators. You also got a big kick out of telling about the time I went to church with you and Mama Lee. "I happened to look down," you'd say, "and there was Little Rodgie just a singing at the top of his lungs." If we could only do it again, Pa Kent.

        When I was in my teens and it seemed you and Mama Lee were getting old, the family would leave California to come back home for a visit. When it came time to leave to make the long journey back, you would sit on the front porch swing very quietly, never saying a word as Dad packed the car. Looking around as if nothing was going to happen. Making small talk to yourself and Mama Lee about the weather. "Ya know, Pogg, it might come a little shower yet." But I could tell you were fighting back the tears, and that hard knot would find its way to my throat. I would be sitting on the porch, feet dangling over the side, Mom behind me in the old blue armless rocking chair. Joy sitting on her lap and Little Danny half-hanging on to the back, and Mama Lee sitting in the metal chair. Arms folded across her bosom watching helplessly. Everyone waiting for that dreaded moment when Dad would slam the car's trunk lid, and walk up to place one foot on the first step of the porch. "Well," he would say, meaning the car was packed and it was time to pile in. As hard as you tried, Pa Kent, you couldn't hold back those tears any longer. You couldn't make up your mind who to hug first. It was as if you thought you'd never ever see us again. Mama Lee would give us all a big hug, wipe a tear from the corner of her eye with the bottom of her apron and be back inside the house before the car was out of the yard, probably to do her crying in solitude. You would be standing there motionless, watching until the car was out of sight. That lump in my throat would last through Arkansas. Back in California there would be teary nights while trying to fall asleep, dreading the day I would lose you and Mama Lee. Not yet having a concept of old age. Not realizing that many years would pass before then.

        You and Mama Lee had a hard life. Scratching out a living from the land. I can see Mama Lee as plainly as if it were yesterday, bending over there in the middle of the vegetable garden picking green beans. Her homemade bonnet tied under her chin keeping the sun from her soft grandmotherly face. Saturdays were her favorite day. The day that Pa Kent would take her into town to sell her eggs and buy a few groceries. I would stand up in the floor of the pickup so I could see out. Anticipating the moment she would take a box of Chicklets chewing gum out of her purse and open the little flap and shake a piece into my hand. I could always tell when she opened her purse, because the smell of Chicklets would come rushing out. I finally got old enough to find out what it was like to chew two pieces instead of one.

        There was the time Mama Lee had to go into the hospital. I remember my father drove the pickup into town to pick her up when she got out. I was so glad to see her. My mother was sitting in the middle so that when Mama Lee got in I was small enough to stand facing her. I was hugging her neck as she closed the truck door, not knowing that the thumb and forefinger of my left hand rested on the inside door jam. Blood squirted from my finger and thumb as the door slammed completely shut. As luck would have it, we didn't have far to go to the hospital. Earlier that day my father had bought an electric fan. I remember lying deep in the feather bed that night with my splinted fingers throbbing. The coolness from the new electric fan trying its best to overpower the humid, southern summer night. Trying to ease the pain in my hand. Me, the lucky one. The first to use the new fan. The fan we were still using when I was sixteen.

        My fingers don't remember the physical pain, but the pain that would be permanently etched in my mind was the pain I saw in Mama Lee's eyes when she realized my finger and thumb would be scarred forever. She never knew it, but many years later a Linotype machine to the same forefinger and a belt sander to the thumb would strike a more deadly blow. Memories of my first visit to a hospital would be replaced by much bigger scars.

        Mama Lee was always concerned about my not eating enough and how puny I looked. "You'd better start eating better or you're going to make yourself sick," she would say, sitting me on her knee at the table and pinching bite size pieces of bacon and biscuit together and feeding me with her fingers. I have a feeling that the reason I didn't eat at dinner time was because I knew that later she would put me in her lap and feed me tidbits of bacon and biscuit pinched together, and we would have this closeness that only she and I could share.

        She knew how much I loved pecan pie, and would always have a fresh baked pie ready when I came to visit or to spend the weekend. Even after we moved to California when I was ten, and during the summers we would come home for a visit, she would always bake me a fresh pecan pie.

        Even as a grown man, Pa Kent and Mama Lee always called me Little Rodgie. I'm afraid that was a name I tagged for myself. When I was very young, and first started talking, I couldn't pronounce certain words plainly. I would say Rodgie for Robbie, and Kent instead of Clint. I'm sure I couldn't pronounce Velva, so I probably gave Mama Lee her pet name also. For the rest of their lives that's what the immediate family would call them. Even my sister and brother, who were 7 and 12 years my junior, called them Mama Lee and Pa Kent. For as long as anyone could remember, Pa Kent called Mama Lee "Pogg," but no one ever knew why.