grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Bat Cave

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I’ve been visiting Northeast Arkansas for the past week and a half. Northeast Arkansas replenishes my soul with peace and quiet, soil and wide open spaces, memories. Northeast Arkansas is a great place to write.
While here I’m staying at my mother’s house, our childhood home, known as the Bat Cave.  We nicknamed the house after my mother, Barbara Ann Tate whose initials spell BAT.

The name is fitting for both the cave and my mother…

Our old farmhouse rambles and meanders much like the nearby mighty Mississippi River. Every seven years or so, when Daddy had a particularly good crop, rooms were added on here and there by local construction workers, who may or may not have been qualified, resulting in oddly placed windows and rooms with no windows at all. Although I’ve not yet noticed a stalactite or a real, live bat, I would not be surprised.
Growling and moaning deep underneath the Bat Cave lies one of the largest seismic zones on the planet. The New Madrid Fault cuts through the middle of the carport, zigzagging under Mississippi County and into Missouri and Illinois. Like a beast, it burps and sighs as everyone in Northeast Arkansas waits for The Big One. 
Bat Cave Car Port…
I’m pretty sure I felt a tremor a few night’s ago. 
The constant earth movement has resulted in wall cracks allowing easy access for mice and squirrels and frogs and giant bull snakes (plural) that slither on the fireplace mantle…
Despite all this, the Bat Cave provides good sleeping with a extra helping of adventure.

The Spanish tile in the back game room is riddled with bullet holes from the hostage shootout. There is an entire wall of cheesy pictures marking the Yellow Corvette Days. And, like Elvis’ Graceland, we have our own jungle room.

Papa Creecy’s wild boar
I’ll be here a bit longer. Stop by if you would like a free tour.

talya

Grace Grits and Gardening
Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

I Feel the Earth Move, Carole King

The Home Stretch

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     Turning north at West Memphis, I breathe a bit easier. The air seems lighter, the skies clearer.  An ordinary trip driven countless times now fortifies me, replenishes memories, helps me remember.  
     A crop duster tilts his yellow wing in my direction, then turns and dips before misting fertilizer across winter wheat. Like crocus pushing through the cold, he is a first sign of spring.  To dazed travelers and long-haul truckers, the flat landscape appears dead and dull, yet I know life churns beneath wet fields. 
     In the distance, a recent thunderstorm hovers over the Mississippi River. Clouds hang heavy and purple.
talya

Musical Pairing:

Home Sweet Home, The Farm

the grass grows

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Yesterday I parked in Daddy’s parking spot. The place where he always parked his dusty farm truck, not in the carport but along the gravel road beside the field. Grass now grows through the gravel, nearly covering it. I guess he really isn’t coming back.

I still expect to see him dragging through the back door for supper, hungry yet too exhausted to eat, his jeans hanging loose and tired. I still hear him grumble about the rain shower today. Such terrible timing during cotton harvest…
On the porch, wheat from his last harvest still fills a vase. Eighteen years later.
At the Corral diner in Keiser … Are you Thomas Tate’s girl? I remember seeing your daddy drive up and down the road in front of my house at Coleman Lateral. Seems like I saw his truck ten times a day when they were pickin’ cotton… He’s been gone a long time, hasn’t he?
Yes ma’am.
In eighteen years, most everything changes.

The tree Daddy planted my senior year of high school soars over the back yard. Only a twig at the time, he transplanted it from the banks of Little River.

Grass now grows through the gravel, nearly covering his parking spot. 
I still feel the same. 
talya
Musical Pairings:

I Miss You a Little, John Michael Montgomery

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!