The Cast Iron Patio Set 1974
I grew up in the country mountains with all my family beside me, guiding me and helping me heal from incidents of life, then and thereafter. I think family is the greatest thing ever. They will always be there for you, holding your hand and helping you through any pain as a child comes your way. I’m someone who could have never made it without their love.
Growing up, it was hard living on the mountain with no one anywhere around us. However, as difficult as it was growing up at the time, looking back now, I’d never change a thing. We had nothing, but still, we had everything. I know that, at the time, growing up with hardly anything, I really wanted more, but it was impossible and so far out of reach. I started hating everything as a child.
As a young boy, I couldn’t find a way to get the darkness out of my head from things I had been going through during my earlier years. I believe, at the time, I was in my early teens when I watched one of my favorite characters, Val Ewing, on one of my favorite nighttime soaps, “Knots Landing.” After seeing her story, I sat down to put my darkness somehow on paper. Around 1981–1982, I started writing, and the more I wrote out onto paper, the less I felt my head so heavy with memories I couldn’t let go, but now I figured out that the more I wrote and brought it to life on my paper, the lighter I started to feel. Even though I was somewhere around 14, I had already fallen in love with wanting to write, but I always felt too angry to sit down and find something to write about. The more that the memories of the cast-iron patio set drifted from my mind and onto the paper, the more they helped me let go of so much I was holding onto.
I started letting my grandmother, whom I called Momma back then, read what I wrote, and it made me feel so great about myself, especially about how I could sit down and bring something to life on paper. After that, I was unstoppable. My grandmother (Momma) made me feel so proud of myself. That was the first time I knew I loved doing something besides sharing music with my cousin Tammy, which is the greatest memory of all memories.
However, a while later, I had to stop her from reviewing my words because it seemed that the more she read, the harder she cried. In my young mind, I felt that she also remembered what I was writing about, for she was there with me through it all. She would try to stop me from crying as she’d sit with me on the patio set. I felt she was crying because she saw me crying, and she knew what was in my heart. After that, I put an end to her reading it altogether. I couldn’t handle her heartbreak as I was putting all my heartbreak into words on paper.
As I grew older, I came to the realization that I’d never wanted it any other way. Looking back at everything now, my heart is so full. I’m guessing that no matter how old I get, my mind will always take me back to those years I spent sitting at the cast-iron patio set, looking down the road for my life to come back to life as it used to be. I’ll always have the “Cast Iron Patio Set” so drilled into my mind that there is no way I can ever forget it.
However, time has passed, and that road has grown quieter. The sounds of childhood laughter and long talks under the fading sun have become distant echoes. The only issue now is that I’m not getting back to my happy place, not in the way I once knew it.
So I have written this book, filled with the memories of all those years, as an attempt to release the pain and hurt I received and to feel peace again. Most of all, I have inked these words to give life to the memories I shared on that cast iron patio set with my baby sister Lucy and the rest of my family—so that this book itself becomes my new happy place, one I can return to any time I need to remember who I am and where I came from.
When a seven year old boy living on Griffith Creek Mountain of Whitwell Tennessee in the year 1974 with memories full of sorrow learning how to hide and control the demeanor of always hurting feeling homesick from having to leave his mother and sister Lucy, especially his sister Lucy. Getting on that school-bus that he despises taken every morning simply because it is little over thirty minuets away from his home and is so far away from his mother and Lucy. Dealing with the lonesome heart felt pain that happened to him some years back. His heart full of fear and grief, his mind filled with the possibilities having to leave home come back and things have changed as they did back then. The family not having any money and seven to sometimes nine people live together in the same two bedroom house. His heart and spirit filled with grief not knowing how to let it go. feeling as if any day the same reaction he felt of that pain may be rearing its ugly head back around into his life once more. This seven year old knows and understands those years are gone and the pain they caused should no longer hurt him as they do. His little worried head tells him he should be prepared for any darkness that awaits him. Only wanting to be this little seven year old boy that he is and spending so much more time with his family but Holding all his pain inside learning never to let it show so badly. Even as darkness seems to follow him through his outrageously kind felt heart. he lives each day trying to hold his head high and just know that he is being loved and cared for. Though he was very young, his pain cut deeper than most well beyond their years. Separated from his beloved sister, Lucy, he must overcome the pain of his past while facing the uncertainty of what lies ahead. What happens to a kind hearted boy who must hide what he feels in his hope for love and happiness.
About Me
About The Book
