My cousins were the Smiths. Their mom and my dad were siblings in the Childers clan. My mom often told me the story of how Aunt Viola and her sister, Aunt Vivian, once served as go-betweens to help commence a courtship with Viola’s older brother, my Dad. They were students in Mother’s one-room schoolhouse in rural Lawrence County, Alabama. She asked them to check with their brother to see if he could be hired to provide transportation the following Saturday.
It was the 30s. Few had cars in Bankhead Forest. Dad hired out as a local “taxi” with his Model T Ford (?), and that ride to town that he drove for Miss Mae led to courtship and marriage. (Details in my autobiography Alabama and Beyond, Creating a Lasting Legacy, 209)
But that was many, many years ago.
Today, all the students at Mother’s school, all the romances, the weddings, childbirths, and funerals of that generation have ended. The participants have moved on to their rewards.
Young Viola grew up and fell in love with a fellow named Burley Smith (Uncle Burley), also in Lawrence County. (Photo below) Their children are my peers. A couple of them recently helped their offspring explore the PLACE where some of the action occurred in the old days in the Smith clan’s history. They even discovered the original chimney and foundation stones of a grandparents’ home and a Smith family cemetery, proof that they existed there
One of Mother’s one-room schools was once housed in the area. She remembered when families began to sell their homesteads to the federal government to create the national forest, much like the Tennessee sales to create the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Catherine Marshall describes those days so well in her popular book and TV series, Christy.
Recently one of the Smith descendants posted the results of their Alabama exploration on Facebook. A slice of history was preserved among the moss and leafage of the early spring setting.
Aww, the chimney! The Smiths once built fires in that fireplace. A home was there! A whole generation began and lived there. Now the PLACE remembered the Smiths no more. Where had I read about all this before?
Oh, yes! King David had similar thoughts: “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more” (Psalm 103:15-16 NIV). Maybe he had seen deserted chimneys in his generation, which was multiple generations before Facebook.
But Psalms that warn of the brevity of life, such as 103, 90, and 39, also give hope and instruction for the best course of action. The ringleader of Jesus’ disciples, Peter, tells us to escape from our own wicked and perverted generation and find the one Source of life that he found, God’s Son, Jesus. He only has the words of eternal life: Acts 2:40, 4:12, and John 6:68-69. Finding Him leads us to invest our treasures in things that last forever, after our earthly dwellings are just memorials.
Finding Him begins with a prayer. I have met several people who testify that they simply asked Him to show them that He is real, and He did just that!
Photos above by Regina Palmer, daughter of Wilda Smith Palmer. Used by permission.
Here is Uncle Burley Smith, who stole the heart of Aunt Viola Childers Smith.
Photo by Wilda Smith Palmer, used by permission.