The Wormlips Scrapbook

Every single one of the 354 posts on this here blog have been written by me me me. I am greedy, possessive and controlling. But just to show you that I do know how to share, I’ve decided to let my dear friend Richard take a turn and have given him the key to my playground. He is a witty and talented writer. I may have to take the key back.

But in the meantime, Richard will tell you about the field trip that he, Teej and I took today in the Sierra foothills.

Would you all put your hands together and give him a nice wormlips welcome!

At last — in case anyone cares — here is documentation of my trip to West Virginia: eight days of hiking hiking hiking condensed into a six-minute slideshow featuring an appropriately bluegrassy soundtrack. All the photos were taken on Dad’s farm, except when I accidentally wandered off by following the wrong ridge. On my connection the slideshow takes a couple minutes to load, unfortunately. Once it’s ready for you, a little “play” triangle will appear in the lower left corner of the movie screen.

Next, below is a little time-lapse photo thing I put together, also with a lovely little soundtrack. If you try to load this at the same time you load the thing above, your system will choke. I took the photos from the deck of our house. Dad built that thar snake fence years ago:

And here are a few stills. This is my still-beautiful, nearly-80-year-old mother who gave birth to three odd-looking children:

Here is a picture Molly took of me visiting my father in Lewisburg:

And here is a picture Lulu took of me as I snoozed on the flight home. I found it by accident on her photo blog. I should sue her:

Before I upload my pictures from my recent visit to West Virginia, I’ll tell you about one day in particular: our field trip to Talcott: “The home of the John Henry Legend.” I’d spent a lot of time tromping around there while producing Steel Drivin’ Man. You can read more about the documentary or visit the old Web site I did about it years ago, or read an article I wrote about producing the program, or download a PDF of the program transcript.

Not only that, you can listen to the half-hour documentary (which aired on Weekend All Things Considered, among other places) right smack here:

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So anyway… Anna, Molly and Bates accompanied me on my pilgrimage to Talcott, about an hour from Dad’s farm. My real goal for the day was to see Mamma Ginna, now in a nursing home, but I also wanted to show my guests the Great Bend Tunnel and some of the other landmarks that are close to my little old heart. I hadn’t been in town for five seconds before I started running into people I’d interviewed over ten years ago. Here’s how Anna describes it:

We’d go a few blocks and there’d be someone you’d know and they’d greet you with open arms and it was so exciting. Like, you hadn’t even gotten your foot in the door of the corner store when that woman screamed Ginna! And then the next thing you knew we’d be in their homes and they’d be offering us soft drinks and candy. They were so happy to see you and so open with their stories.

That was fun. A lot of the people I interviewed are dead, but some of the ones who were instrumental to my work are still around: Donna and Kenni and Bill.

We stopped to see Mamma Ginna’s daughter-in-law, B, whom I’d met only once in person but have been talking to on the phone a lot since Mamma Ginna had her last big stroke. B was a total delight: smart and funny and full of character. She’s also quite exceptional in Talcott: a white woman long-married to a black man in this traditionally southern small town. Her hubby, Buck, had sudden gutter work to do when I asked to take his picture, but B obliged. Here she is with Lulu and me:

Then it was off to the nursing home where, we’d been warned, Mamma Ginna might not recognize me any more. But after a split second of confusion, she lit up and we had the most wonderful visit. She looks beautiful and her eyes still sparkle and you’d never guess she’s 94. Here’s Anna again:

Mamma Ginna was full of wonderful stories. She remembered you two. It took her a moment. And then she got all comfy and you held her hands and she went on and on with her childhood stories over and over which made her feel really good. When she spoke it seemed that maybe she didn’t have this long for this life and that you and Molly meant a lot to her.

She was still able to recite from memory parts of her 1930s poem about when the state knocked down her grandparents’ homeplace to make room for the highway. Here are the last two verses:

I go there every summer,
Just to fish and swim.
There’s no one there to greet me,
No home to enter in.

I often sit and wonder
Just why it had to be.
But the old home place we loved so well,
Was more than a heaven to me.

After an hour, as I reluctantly took my leave, she did something she’d never done before: cried. It was like the time I said goodbye to Dad when we both knew it was the last time. Here are some pictures of when we were still laughing:

Here’s part of the statue on the hill above the tunnel. You can see the railroad tracks in the background:

Here’s the tunnel, which has finally collapsed somewhere in the middle; you can no longer see a pinpoint of light at the other end:

And here’s me hugging my tunnel: