I will always respect my mountain heritage. But the young ones who live
in Appalachia today don't feel the way we older ones do. That's why those of
us who remember how life used to be in those beautiful mountains need to
tell the younger ones so that at least a few of them will know what it was
like when we are gone.
I think about the past with fondness. But what about the future? What
does it hold for my family, my children and grandchildren?
Changes are crowding in all around us, even as we older ones try to hang
onto our way of thinking, hang onto the way we were taught by our parents.
But there was no way our parents could have foreseen the changes we are
facing today.
And how can you bridge the gap between us and younger people when most of
us don't really understand those changes ourselves? When we don't understand
things like computers and other forms of modern-day technology?
For most of us, all these things have come too much too soon.
It's like we're strangers in a crowded world we don't understand.
Years ago, when I was a young man back in Virginia, an old man used to
visit my grandparents, who lived down the hill below us. The old man would
just show up one day, sit in the swing on my grandparents' porch and swing
or nap. Sometimes he would get up and walk back and forth, and sometimes he
would sing.
He always sang about coming home, where there was no one to welcome him;
he sang about being old and tired from traveling, and that all those he knew
on this earth were gone on before him. And now there was no one to welcome
him home.
Even then, when I was very young, his songs seemed very sad to me.
My memory of the old man comes to mind now, as I myself am getting older
and those before me are gone. Of course, there are a lot of younger family
members coming along, but it's like they live in a different world than I
do.
Life today and life in the future may be easier for us, but I will always
miss the way things used to be. It's hard to give up a life-time way of
thinking and believing and behaving just because some say we should give
them up.
Yet I know yesterday is gone. Even back in the mountains and hollers that
I remember so well, things are not the same anymore. There will never be
another yesterday for us older ones. It is gone forever. There is nowhere
you can find a place where people live the way we used to live.
They say history repeats itself, but our past will never repeat itself.
I'm proud to have been a part of the life I remember so well. But I will
do my best to be a part of life today. I want to keep a home where my family
can come to when the stresses of the modern world seem too much for them to
bear. A place where they will feel welcome and safe and comfortable.
One of the most beautiful sights I see nowadays is the sun coming up each
morning. The world outside my home is on a fast track, but in our kitchen,
the coffee and newspaper are as fast as Doris and I want to go.
It's like a little taste of yesterday.
