I first heard the Stanley brothers while driving with friends in the N.C.
mountains, a tape of "Rank Stranger." I didn't know who these singers were,
but I knew I was hearing something deathless, profound. The two voices,
one, as smooth as sweet cream, the other harsh as ground granite, made an
eerie, lonesome sound that seemed to evoke a memory of something lost in
the mists of time, something once known but long forgotten. When I returned
home I rushed to the library, where I read everything available on
Bluegrass, and on the Stanley brothers, then I drove to the mall to find
several Stanley albums. Why, I wondered, is all the world not listening to
this music? Well, now, all the world it seems, is listening. Lucky old world!
There were a few songs I recalled my Dad singing on Sunday mornings while
shaving, preparing for church. I had always thought Daddy made up those
songs. "It's a Beautiful Life," "Canaan's Land," and others, were sung when
he was a boy, but I had only heard Daddy sing them, and I would lean on the
bathroom sink, and sing along with him. He and I had several years to
listen to the Stanley Brothers, and other great Bluegrass musicians, before
he died. I still smile when I recall Daddy, lying on a guerney in the
hospital after cataract surgery, subjected to several trying hours of lying
flat on his back, but content, with his Walkman on, listening to The
Stanley brothers.
I wasn't born in a log cabin, but my Mother told me stories of her
childhood in one. The old homeplace was originally her grandfather's house.
He left in 1862 for the Civil War and never came home again, and I dreamed,
as a child, of the log house, where wild violets grew on the hillsides, and
wild cranes flew up from the cane break. It is my belief that everyone
dreams of home, of the childhood they had, or the childhood they wish they
had. The following little verse is my own idea of the old homeplace.
Last night I saw in dreams again
the place where I was born
In youth I left to wander far,
in age returned to mourn
About the old stone chimney now
the honeysuckle twines
the hearthstone where I knelt to pray
is Mother Nature's shrine
I wandered to the courtyard, where
beneath the azure skies
all blanketed by daisies now
young love a'dreamin' lies
The only thing familiar was
the old rose covered gate
and we'd find Mother waiting there,
whenever we were late
What man abandons
nature claims
She'll not desert her own
She made a chapel in the hills
of my old mountain home
And if in youth you wander lads
don't let it be your fate
to find there's nothing left of home
but the old rose covered gate
**********
Kathleen
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