POP'S ROCK FENCE...IS GONE

In 2005…all that was left of Pop's rock fence 

The rock fence at Pop's Place...
    A fence built with colorful reddish-
         brown rocks--- is gone.

Oh how that hurts!

So much depends on a fence.
    It sets forth boundaries, others
         must not cross...

Like the old castles, it defines safety
    security, and one's property,
if only symbolically.

That fence enclosed Pop's new white
    clapboard house with the
      black trim, built in 1938

after a lifetime of walking miles---
   plowing behind kicking mules,
        planting, milking, killing
           hogs, building barns,

                  hoeing weeds,

             and picking cotton...

He and Mom, finally got their dream
    house, after years of living in
         uninsulated, gray wood,
                    drafty
           old farm houses.

The beautifully-masoned rock fence
    enclosed the entire main
         living area---the garage,

the rose garden, grape arbor (with
    the stainless milk buckets
       swaying and airing in the wind),
         the lawn,  and the elm trees...

On the west  side of the fence, from
    whence the winds came,
       the sand piled to the top
         of the fence...

Beautiful, clean pure-looking golden
    tan sand...if that made any difference...
It had to be plowed away, periodically.

A sad tale to tell: Pop's house is not
    the same

as it was seventy-six years ago...
    Oh, the house itself has been
bricked...a new roof put on...

But the marvelous fence (like few
    farms had in 1938)
is gone...as cleanly as if a bad sand
    storm, still waiting in the wings

from dust bowl times...finally made up
    its mind and came roaring thru...

and took POP'S fence...leveled it---
     better'n a bulldozer could have.
        (or did a culprit otherwise

          level it somehow, or did it

          simply crumble with age?)

It was gone with the wind...
    at some time.
Just as life as it was in

       those times...
         has departed....

Gone with the wind are

      delightful farm  days....

Family times, Thanksgiving, Christmas,
    summers, watermelons, making
      ice cream in the old crank freezer...

turkey and dressing, black-eye peas and
    corn bread, milk in Mom's big
       mug glasses---

the old red barn, gathering eggs, hog
     killing time, the clung-clung of
       the windmill, the garden (full
        of all kinds of vegetables)

the healthy green elms, under which Pop
    parked his new Farmall in 1939---
      (Joy! no more walking behind
        mules to plow---ever again
             while on this earth!)

Yes, and gone with the wind are---
    Mom's rose garden, that she waited
a lifetime for---and then was disabled
    with arthritis...

The windmill's gone, replaced by an
     unpoetic pump, made of steel.

An important, unforgettable slice of
    America is  gone, memorable
      to those who remember:

Saturday afternoons in town, around
    the square, if your town had one.

The people quit work, went to town,
    the women stocked up on
                 groceries

The men got shoe shines, haircuts,
    filled the sidewalks, sitting on
      cars, talking---they slipped away
        to shoot a game of pool.

Pop in his J.C. Penney's blue bib
             overalls is gone...

Those times, so incredibly hard, were
    still loved, somehow, by the people.
After all, it was the only life they had---

       this life, that was so characteristic

  of the American South.
 

It's all gone with the fence,
    and the wind....
never to be brought back.

*******30******
BY MIL
02/16/14

 In 1939, Pop backed his new Farmall right beside the house by the two white windows

2013 - The old windmill is gone, but the pump house is visible.

2013 - Pop's fence is entirely gone.