"My chores were those of the hen house, shoat pen, milk stalls, feed bins and wood piles. Dick and Sister made every step I did. Portia, Sister Mary's wet nurse, was our cook and the sovereign of the household. Life was difficult but filled with great adventures, as I recollect.
"By 1820 we had made a sturdy stand and a good start at corn, rye, and tobacco production. We had a large number of pigs and good beginnings of developing stock herds of sheep and both beef and milk cows. I had turned fourteen in March. Our second crop of cotton was planted when father died in May 1820." He did not display the emotion he had when remembering his mother's death.
After the briefest of pauses, he continued his report. "All of us young folk had been able to get some rudimentary schooling. A field school was maintained on the road to Pulaski and father had subscribed to the boys' matriculation. Dick and I held class for Sister after supper. All of us learned grammar, our sums up to twelve, history, and to write a good hand. You saw my handwriting on those old papers. I warrant that I had a fine hand, sir."
***
I sat fascinated by Mr. Jones' accounting of his childhood. In my mind's eye I saw the rolling hills crested by stands of Pine, thick tall canebrakes in the river bottoms, the lazy, brown-blue Elk River, the bluffs of the Elk, the great hardwoods-oak, elm, chestnut and poplar-and the cedar trees of the area. For me, when I feel home, it is with a picture of a big Tennessee Red Cedar somewhere in the scene. Deer, birds of all sorts, bobcats, foxes, and wolves populated the wild woods.
I wondered if buffalo were still present during his youth and then decided probably not. Bear and panther were also spoken of in the oral legends as natives of our hollows and ridges. I knew from study that they once had been numerous.
I'd driven all around that area as a teenager and college student. The crossing of the Elk River at Elkton from Pulaski was on my way home for holidays from college. My thirty-five-year-old envisioning was expanded by Mr. Jones' story. His story offered me a window on the times and places. It was lush, raw, verdant, crisp, and clean, offering a soft wildness for a stalwart widower and his clan to plant hope and harvest a home.
Mr. Jones paused in his story looking down at the table and my writing tablet. Then he lifted his head and connected with my eyes. "Well, sir, that should make you sensible of those times and serve to inform your beginning of my humble biography…oh, I mean biographical novel." He smiled and asked, "What would you like to be harrowed up about those glorious years of discovery?" Crispness edged his tone.