Goin' to Grandmaw's by John Godfrey

The other day I noticed a couple of items in our kitchen area that suddenly brought back almost forgotton memories from my past. The reflections were of an old nineteen-fifty Chevrolet heading south down highway 41 from Nashville Tennessee toward Northwest Georgia. Back in those days there were no Interstate Highways around so it was a long winding three hour drive to my grandmothers house; one that we frequently made when I was young.

While standing between the refrigerator and the sink, my mind wandered for a few minutes back to a time when I ran around barefoot and shirtless all summer long. During those hot summer months we always made a trip or two to North Georgia to see our grandparents and our cousins. It was always the highlight of our year.

Back in the late fifties and early sixties, Nashville was already a much busier place than the more rural area where my Mamaw Godfrey and Mamaw Shinault lived. Why down in Georgia you could actually see the stars at night because there were no street lights to interfere! You could gaze upward through the gentle blowing pines and let your young imagination run wild as to what was going on way up there in the galaxy. I wonder if there really were space-ships?

I'll never forget the first time that I was old enough to really pay much attention to the strange things in Georgia that seemed so different from my usual nights in Nashville. One night while spending the night at my cousin's house; it was late and all of us kids were laughing and joking around as usual after being put to bed. When we finally quieted down after a few loud request from the other bedroom by my uncle Joe and aunt Hattie; in the quiet darkness with the bedroom windows opened, I heard that strange noise. To show my intelligence...I asked my cousin Buddy;

"What in the world is that loud noise I'm hearing outside? I don't remember his exact answer, but he responded with something like...

"Hey dummy...its just the crickets!" Wow, that was the first time I remember hearing those little critters as loud as that! Nashville had its abundance of cars, drunks, and sirens every night so I know that must have drowned out any of natures music. Oh well live and learn huh?

No matter the sort-of dumb questions that I occasionally asked; the memories of running through the woods, climbing trees, my first pizza ever (home-made), and even remembering the time that my bare-feet were cut up pretty badly behind the old wooden out-house when my cousin Joe and my brother Barry laughingly locked me out forcing me to use the rear instead of the inside; all are times that I would never change even if I could. My brother Barry, my sister Patty, along with my cousins and I do have a heritage of memories that many kids never had.

So here I stand, smiling to myself in my kitchen while those memories come back simply because I'm looking at canned peaches and apples that were a gift from my cousin Ella Ruth (wonder why they call them canned when they are in jars?), and there are the cans of Campbells soup to remind me of those times that I've had soup heated up just for me. Over in the corner sits a green flower in the window that brings back mental images of flowers in the yard at Mamaw's house years ago.

In spite of some memories back then that were painful, regardless of the troubles that surround me at times, and no matter how out of control life seems to get these days; I have the old places hidden in my mind that bring back times when life was at a slower pace. My hope is that I too can implant those types of memories into the lives of my granchildren. Times of night time walks, wrestling with them on the floor, loving them with times of fun without the TV, the computer, and video games. Times I hope they will cherish with Mamaw and Papaw. Pleasant memories of "goin' to grandmaw's house."