My dad was my hero. Turned me loose with a cheap Japanese fixed blade knife on my fourth birthday (in 1950). Was constantly making me knives and steel spear heads in the machine shop of the cotton mill where he worked. Let me freely roam with the single shot 12 gauge Iver Johnson that I inherited from my maternal grandfather at age eight. He gave me freedom that a kid today could only dream of, and I never abused his trust. One of our favorite outdoor activities and shared interests was collecting the arrowheads, stone knife blades, etc, that were abundant where we lived in South Tallapoosa County, Alabama. Even After I moved away and had children of my own, he would get excited over showing me his latest find.
He died at age eighty-five in 2001. Fell in a ditch in front of his house, and was so frail he was badly busted up and never regained consciousness. Got into a downward spiral of heart failure treatment leading to kidney failure leading to dialysis leading to heart failure and so on. My inconsolable mother asked me to deal with any medical decisions that had to be made, so I was the one that said no more to continuing to torture his tired old body.
Surrounded by distraught females (mother and two sisters) and having to handle funeral arrangements and make all the decisions on logistics, I never had a chance to be alone and to properly mourn. So two days after the funeral I finally managed to get away and visit his gravesite, in the cemetery next to the little country church I grew up in. They had recently bought a patch of woods behind the cemetery and cleared it to provide room for expansion. He was buried at the back, near the edge of the new property. I stood at his grave, still feeling guilty about having to pull the plug, and missing him very much. Suddenly I caught a flash of white in the corner of my eye. Coming from the woods at the edge of the newly cleared property was a small white plastic bag moving along in the brisk breeze that was blowing, tumbling along the cleared ground about sixty yards away. I moved to do what I knew dad would do, to pick up the litter from his beloved countryside. I sat a course to intercept the bag, and when I got to it I stepped on it to stop it. I reached down and picked it up. In the dirt directly beneath the bag I saw a bit of familiar white stone, and I brushed the dirt away from a perfect two inches or so of broken knife tip, although the uninitiated would have called it an arrowhead.
Total coincidence? Maybe, probably. But I chose, and still choose, to look upon it as a message that everything was, and was going to be, ok.
I have scoured that field several times since that day, but have never found another stone artifact.
He died at age eighty-five in 2001. Fell in a ditch in front of his house, and was so frail he was badly busted up and never regained consciousness. Got into a downward spiral of heart failure treatment leading to kidney failure leading to dialysis leading to heart failure and so on. My inconsolable mother asked me to deal with any medical decisions that had to be made, so I was the one that said no more to continuing to torture his tired old body.
Surrounded by distraught females (mother and two sisters) and having to handle funeral arrangements and make all the decisions on logistics, I never had a chance to be alone and to properly mourn. So two days after the funeral I finally managed to get away and visit his gravesite, in the cemetery next to the little country church I grew up in. They had recently bought a patch of woods behind the cemetery and cleared it to provide room for expansion. He was buried at the back, near the edge of the new property. I stood at his grave, still feeling guilty about having to pull the plug, and missing him very much. Suddenly I caught a flash of white in the corner of my eye. Coming from the woods at the edge of the newly cleared property was a small white plastic bag moving along in the brisk breeze that was blowing, tumbling along the cleared ground about sixty yards away. I moved to do what I knew dad would do, to pick up the litter from his beloved countryside. I sat a course to intercept the bag, and when I got to it I stepped on it to stop it. I reached down and picked it up. In the dirt directly beneath the bag I saw a bit of familiar white stone, and I brushed the dirt away from a perfect two inches or so of broken knife tip, although the uninitiated would have called it an arrowhead.
Total coincidence? Maybe, probably. But I chose, and still choose, to look upon it as a message that everything was, and was going to be, ok.
I have scoured that field several times since that day, but have never found another stone artifact.
