Virgil is quoted as saying that, “Come what may all bad fortune is over come by endurance!”

It’s March 14!! And I wanted to celebrate the day with a pie from the Shire….
A quick Google, LOTR pie, found the Hobbits meal at the Prancing Poney
Tolkien says that the hobbits ate hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, fresh bread, butter and cheese.
Well, I didn’t have any Blackberrys and I don’t know how to make a tart SO I decided on Aunt Bonnie’s Bluebery cobbler.
But I didn’t have have any heavy cream SO I used extra butter!!
After the pie had cooked long enough I turned the oven to broil to brown the top….well with the extra butter acted like it had been exposed to the fires of Mordor and the buttery crust quickly blackened, smokin, Jan yelling DAVID!!
SO, I scraped the crust off and garnished the pie with extra berries and it is delicious!!
SO to going back to the opening lines Endurance and not quitting will over come much.
SO, why tell all of this..especially in such a lengthy manner….well it all goes round in circles and is long enough to warrant seconds!!
Happy PI Day!!
Not sure how the blue berries will survive this cold snap!!
Humming
But cold March made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step
The day the blueberries died…

Memories of my first ride!

One evening, a little over 60-years ago, after we had finished milking cows, my dad took the training wheels off my bike.  While he stayed down the road, mom walked beside me holding the seat as I peddled down the gravel road to my dad and then she let go!!  I road to the bottom of the drive got off pushed back up the hill and this time I road without mom pushing…..

Each evening when the weather is fit, I still ride my bike down that same little stretch making my final rounds for the day.

Although my parents passed many years ago, in my mind’s eye, somehow I still feel my mom’s care as she prays, “be careful son,” and at the same time, I’m aware of my dad’s watchful eye as he smiles saying, “Get it Boy.”

Down the hill and around two curves, the road I am on leads home

A little bit about me, I am a farmer and I produce food.  I am the 5^th generation to make their living off a little 65 acre strip of land lying at the foot of Tally Mountain with wonderful bottom land along Walkers Creek.  My Great Grandfather as well as my Grandfather grew cotton and corn and bartered for a living.  My father ran a dairy farm here, where I learned that the comfort and care of the dairy cows came before my own, but by taking care of our cows (resources) they in turn took care of us.  Upon graduation from college with a degree in management I worked in various management positions first in the clothing industry,  and then moving into the rubber compounding industry, all the time the farm was growing and selling beef cattle under a lease agreement.  In 2009, like so many other Americans, my position as Quality Manager was eliminated.  Faced with graying hair and significant hearing loss and little hope of finding employment in this area, a depressed cattle industry it quickly became apparent that I was not going to be able to pay the taxes on the farm nor the many other expenses that go along with owning land.  At that time I was offered the opportunity to build poultry houses and grow poultry under a contract agreement with an integrator which I accepted.  I don’t often talk about the poultry houses because of all the negativity that goes along with them.  However I will say that in the short time the chickens are here of the farm they are well taken care of with plenty of fresh water, food, and ventilation in the houses. They are monitored both by computers and myself daily.   They have plenty of space to grow and rest, it is a chicken’s tendency to huddle together and I have to take steps, using migration fences, to keep them evenly spread throughout the building.  Basically I say that suppliers (farmers) will bring to market the demands of the consumer.  As a people we all want bargains and that drives producers (farmers) to make monoculture type decisions.  I also grow and sell hay to the cattle and horse industry and for the past three years I have attempted to care for honeybees.  It seems my ability to sell the honey far out strips my ability to produce it and that is where you come into the picture with your posts and sharing your knowledge. 

I am an American farmer, with all the warts we have as an industry In a world with seven billion people and one out of every six going to bed hungry and almost four hundred million facing starvation we have to continue to be at our best.  And I believe that given commonsense direction from sources such as yourself we will make the changes necessary to secure this environment for generations to come and we can still help feed the world. 

“Plant more flowers, use fewer pesticides and leave some areas in a natural state,” Rusty Burlew

At the induction center for the U.S. Army the Chief Medical Officer remarked “Robertson you have the legs of a linebacker” the young man proudly replied “Yes sir, I grew up on Tally Mountain.”

Sgt. Robertson went on to serve his country in WW-II, he was decorated with three oak leaf clusters, the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.  He most notably led his platoon out from behind enemy lines after being trapped for seven days following their landing on Normandy Beach.  The platoon would later be known in history as “The Lost Platoon.”  Sgt. Robertson was my dad.

Dad never spoke of the decorations he received. All that I know of them is what I’ve learned from others and reading.  However he would tell me stories of his training in the infantry; he’d speak of the saw-briars at Ft. Jackson, S.C.; of the heat in Death Valley. Most often though, he spoke of his training in the hills of Tennessee, “those folks from Tennessee are just plain good folks” he’d say “they got to be to be able to go up and down them hills.”  Yes, I think it was his happiest time in the service, training in the hills of Tennessee, he’d then go on to tell how he was accustomed to the hills because he and his brothers grew up hunting and working on Tally Mountain.

Dad loved to hunt and fish but because of the demands of the dairy and arthritis in his legs he was unable to take the time or stand the strain of walking up-hill, so we spent what free time he had hunting on the level ground around the farm.  The game was plentiful, the trails were easy to follow and just spending time with my dad was fine with me.   He always talked of the mountain and whenever we could we’d get on the tractor and ride up to the top we’d climb up the fire tower and look out on what seemed to me to be the entire world. Dad would show me the farm to the west; he would point out Tallapoosa to the north, and Buzzard Rock to the east. Still as a young child I never really knew what it was like to walk up the mountain or what it looked like in the “hollers” that dad spoke of so fondly.  All of that was soon to change me. For when I turned thirteen dad bought me my first 22-rifle.

The fall after I turned thirteen Uncle Dewey and Aunt Bonnie came up to visit.  I always loved for my kinfolk to come, dad would put off the chores that we normally had to do and after we finished milking we’d get into the truck and ride around showing uncle Dewey all the changes that had taken place and then we go visit with some of the other kin.  Aunt Gladys would always have us over for supper and she’d fix a meal like it was Thanksgiving.  However, things were different now Uncle Dewey’s surgery made it hard for me to understand what he was saying and even though I tried not to I shied away from him.  I could still remember the tone of his laugh and the quality baritone in his voice and why that had all changed was more than a thirteen-year-old could comprehend. After they had been here a few days uncle Dewey found out that I had a new rifle, he took me outside and pointed toward the tower and said,” lets go”.  So we loaded our rifles and went looking for squirrel or something that mom could cook for supper.  What I found that day was far more meaningful than anything I could have eaten.  Uncle Dewey showed me Blackjack trees that were full grown but not much taller than I, we found acorns with caps as big as quarters, long leaf pines with needles at least a foot long, and pinecones that were as big as pineapples.  There were rock cliffs that were just right for a young man to climb and in places they jutted out to form what I considered the perfect home, “a roof over your head what more could a man what.” Each time we crested another rise there would be a new hollow for us to walk down into, new sights to see and new things to explore.  Yes, to a thirteen-year-old I’d found the Promised Land.  Years later I took my mother up that trail and I still remember her saying that as long as she had lived at the foot of Tally Mountain that she had thought that all you had to do to get to the top was go up. She had never known that there were so many ridges and hollows in between. Uncle Dewey showed me places where he and his brothers had hunted and where granddad had brought them to cut wood.   He said that granddad would never cut the tall straight trees down in the valley you had to save them for timber, so they came to the mountain to cut the crooked trees to get firewood for the cook stove.  He took me to a place where we could look down on the farm and for the first time I began to realize that the farm was not just my home but a home to another generation.

I know that neither one of us knew what was happening that day. I was too young to understand, and even as an adult I cannot grasp the full implications, but I know it has changed my life. A couple of weeks after Uncle Dewey and Aunt Bonnie went back home. I asked my dad to take me back up on the mountain, he looked at me and said he reckoned I was big enough to go on my on. I loaded my rifle and off I went.  For the next seven years I spent every moment I could exploring the wonders that lie just out my front door. They have become a part of me, each year sometime in late August or early September when the heat and humidity of summer begins to break, from somewhere deep inside I can hear the hollows calling.  Calling for me to once again to come and to enjoy.  Each year God has granted me the privilege of walking over the same hills, to cross the same streams and to climb the same mountains.  The same places that my father and his father and even his father walked.  It is not within me refuse to return to stalk the game, to partake of the bounty.  Doing so is part of what I am and for that I make no apologies.  I no longer depend on them for physical sustenance as my forefathers did but I do depend on them for replenishment of the soul.  

This story has been rambling around in my head since Uncle Dewey’s death.  Since that time I have been trying to sort out the feelings I have and the things I wanted to say.  At his death I could not help but to think that another bridge to my past was gone and that my cousins and I were now becoming the bridges to the past.  This is true, but there was more I wanted to say and now as the saws begin to cut the trees on the mountain and around the farm I realize just how much that little hike up the mountain really means.  Yes, I am saddened to see the trees fall for they are old friends, but I know that it is something that must be.  I know that I have been privileged far more than many to rest in their shade and to be comforted by their beauty.  I also know that the paper upon which this is written came from trees (how can anyone forget the smell of the paper mill….         “Smells like bacon and eggs to me,” as Aunt Nadine would say.)  The house in which I live was built form trees, even the knotty ones were used for the walls, and the bent one were used to cook the meals which raised my father and his brothers and sisters.  The trees as they stand are not what last –it’s the heritage from those trees that will last.   Its not our lives, which last but the heritage of our lives which, will last.  And our heritage is something we must protect; we must be the strong bridges to the past, the straight trees so that our children can know from where they came. To give them the deep conviction that God, our creator, provides for us the things, which we need.  The love within the family is part of God’s provision, within which we can find strength to face the problems of the world and its trials.  In taking time to take a young man up a mountain, Uncle Dewey was taking time to look back at his past and show part of me my past and helping me find strength for the future.

           “Yes sir, I grew up on Tally Mountain”     

The end

David Robertson

The Bridge Builder

“There followeth after me today

a youth whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm that has been naught to me

to that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

good friend, I am building the bridge

for him.”

Will Allen Dromgoole

(Bridge builder found in church bulletin 9/95)

Wp/tally/5/94