Tuesday evening, I decided to go up to my grandfathers house up in the mountains.  I hadn’t been up there since he died back in 1998.  I honestly didn’t think I could find the place, but I went anyway for the adventure and brief jaunt down memory lane.

I remember that it was 117 fence post to the south to the church and 95 fence post to the north to a girls house that I had a crush on for years.  Gramps and myself would set out around sunset and watch the cows and horses graze on the lush lucerne and fescue covering the mountainside.  I learned a lot about life from observing those animals.  Grandpa Davis wasn’t a talker, he was a doer. 

He walked softly and carried a big stick.  I never saw the man get angry except for maybe one or two times in the 26 years I knew him.  His hair was as white as the cotton he picked as a child, and he was as tall and slender as the cotton mill smoke stacks that he worked in most of his adult life.  He was the very essence of the phrase, Facta Non Verba. 

Everyone knew and loved him far and wide.  He retired not long after I was born.  The earliest memory I have is of him almost getting mauled by my dog, a huge German shepherd named Zack.  I was five or six and he was playfully chasing me around on Christmas morning.  He started tickling me, I started screaming and laughing, and gramps almost lost his arm due to a very overly protective dog.  Grandpa and the Zack didn’t get along well after that. 

Anyhow, let’s go back to Tuesday evening, shall we?

I turned onto the street that he lived as the sun filtered through the coloured leaves setting atop a vast hillside that runs along with the curvature of the road.  I was shocked at how so little had changed, as I pulled up the gravel driveway.  The enormous oak tree in the front yard that gramps planted, when he and my granny moved in the house over fifty years ago, had grown a little but not much with the passage of time.  The roses and hedges looked almost the same.

I was shocked yet again, when I finally arrived at the back of the house.  There were people and cars parked in his driveway.  As it turns out, the house is rented to some folks.  I called me pops to verify that it was indeed being rented.  I don’t have a problem with him renting it, I just thought it had been empty for a bit.  Anyway, I turned around and continued down the long country road.

A few minutes later my mother called, so I had to pull into a strangers driveway, a long and narrow drive.  After I hung up with her, I tried to do a three point turn but the road was too narrow.  Pulling onto someone’s land up in the mountains is a very dangerous proposition.  Mountain folk don’t like strangers.

I ended up having to drive all the way down the road that ended at an log cabin.  There were cars parked in the garage, so I turned around.  Pops called me back and I told him I’d call back due to my whereabouts.  He told me to just say that I’m a Davis and they’d leave me alone.  I didn’t believe that for a moment.

Just as I was about to pull off, an auld grey haired fella in overalls and what looked like a twenty year-old baseball cap came running out with a shotgun demanding, “What are ye doin’ ‘ere boy”? 

I nervously rolled down the drivers side window, put my hands out, and answered, “I’m just turning around, sir”.

“Ye ain’t got no business ‘ere boy.”  He exclaimed, as he walked closer to the truck.

The sweet smell of freshly baked apple pie passed my nostrils, as his wife, still wearing a cooking apron, peered through the screen door.

“I’m sorry sir, I just got lost…I was down the road visiting my grandfathers old place”, I mumbled, as the man approached with his gun by his side.

“….Now don’t let me catch ya back down ‘ere…aga…Who was yer grandpa?”

“D*** Davis, sir.”

“Yer L**** Davis’ boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well I declare, Ester, get out ‘ere.  This is D*** Davis’ grandson.”, he hollered as the lady of the house came running out.

She stopped dead in her tracks, when I stepped out of the truck. 

“Dear Jesus, you look just like yer dad, she yelled as the auld fella patted me on the back. 

They told me stories about my dad and grandad, and ironically about myself, when I was knee high to a grasshopper.  All in all, it was a good visit down memory lane. 

Moral of story:

Sometimes trips down memory lane can be a bit dangerous yet entertaining and informative at the same time. 

Video is “Have you ever seen the rain?", by CCR.  It doesn’t fit, but it was playing on the radio when I met Mr. Shotgun. 

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