Saturday, July 25, 2015

Sometime during the morning mom decided she wanted to ride down to Teachey, the small, rural, Duplin County town where she and my dad grew up. Some family on her side still live in the area, not so many on my dad's side; they got the hell out of Dodge, or Rockfish in their case, the township in which they lived. There used to be a lot more of my mom's family living there but most have moved on - to a more sublime afterlife or away from the dusty dirt roads that once defined the town. To call Teachey a town is really a stretch, it's more like a crossroads with a railroad track through the middle of it. It's close to Wallace, NC if that helps. If you're having problems falling asleep, do a street level drive through Teachey using Google Maps. It's better than Ambien and a hell of a lot cheaper. To facilitate  your slumber, here's a link to follow.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.781245,-78.006902,3a,75y,247.49h,75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sYSFeDR3wzTIoRFXUPc5wtQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1?hl=en

This is a good time to point out that Teachey is supposedly named for Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, the famous pirate who presumably frequented the North Carolina coast. But what would Blackbeard be doing 45 miles inland? I'm not sure if the Northeast Cape Fear River was navigable in those days but it would have provided Blackbeard with a watery pathway to the area. Maybe he was burying some booty or looking for buried booty? (Double meaning warning for post-Boomers!) To date we haven't discovered any buried booty, of either type.

Mom, Mari Jo and I drove to Teachey using the 'back' roads, NC 111 and 11, through towns like Kenansville and Charity, the former a veritable bustling hub of commerce compared to Teachey. The back roads are far more scenic if you're into rural landscapes. The other route is faster but more scenically sterile, US 117 and I-40. As we approached the area where she grew up, my mom pointed out the house where her maternal grandmother, 'Big Mama' Rouse, lived back in the early 1900's. It's a smallish house with an inviting front porch and a large front yard neatly framed with a white picket fence near the road. (Photo credit: my lovely wife, Mari Jo.)

Once we arrived in Teachey, our first stop was the cemetery where my dad and many relatives on my mom's side of the family are buried. I'm not sure what prompted this side trip but it very well may have been the conversation about mortality the night before. The visit to the cemetery was emotionally uneventful but nevertheless poignant. It's been 5+ years since my dad passed and I still miss him like crazy at times. You're still my hero dad and I love you to the moon and back! You're the first person I want to see in the afterlife, if there is one.

Just a quarter mile from the cemetery is the house where my grandmother and grandfather lived when I was a kid. We stopped in front of it to snap a photo. What memories I have of that house and the huge farm that surrounded it. I'll save that story for another post. (Photo credit: MJ)

While in the Teachey metropolitan area we decided to visit some of my relatives living in the suburbs. The traffic was a bitch! First visit was to see my aunt Mary Vann, my mom's sister-in-law who was married to mom's brother, Rufus Casper Jenkins. He was called R.C. most of his life, for obvious reasons. If I was given the choice of going by either Rufus or Casper, I think I would seek out some terminal illness in order to limit my suffering with such a moniker!

Then we drove all the way across town through horrendous traffic yet again. This time we visited with my cousin Winifred, my mom's niece, who is the daughter of her other brother, Elmore Royal Jenkins, who went by the nickname of 'Buck', again for obvious reasons. My mom's father was Elmore so Buck was a junior.

At this point most readers are probably thinking what the hell is it with the names of my mom's siblings? Were the names chosen just to make them grow up tough, like a boy named Sue? My mom's name is Elsie Lorea, also not one of the most common names around. My grandfather and grandmother weren't on drugs when their children were born, of that I am absolutely sure. These have to be family names that they wanted to keep within the family for as long as possible. Unfortunately, for them, but fortunately for the grandchildren, that trend ended with my mom and her two brothers. My cousins' names are Bobby, Winifred, Danny and Donald. My brother's name is Joseph and none of those names are as catchy or macho-inducing as Elmore Royal and Rufus Casper. Alas, the family tradition may have come to an abrupt halt but the family lives on anyway. Isn't that more important?

We returned to Goldsboro using the more sterile route; I like mixing things up. After a rather late but delicious dinner of grilled T-bone steak, charred sweet potato slices and corn-on-the-cob, we followed this gastronomical tango with a slow-dance of hand-cranked, home-made peach ice-cream. (Was there a misuse of hyphens somewhere in that last sentence?) Exhausted by our afternoon adventures in the land of Blackbeard and sated by our evening meal, we languorously beckoned the night and embraced its sweet promise of dreamy repose in the house that I grew up in lo so many years ago.