This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain by Sidney FanThings have an almost uncanny way of coming together, sometimes, and forming units without human intervention. Such has been the case with this issue. Almost every piece has some variation on the theme of coming home. This seems appropriate for a summer issue because it is during the summertime that there are family reunions, high school and college reunions, Church conferences and association meetings, all-daymeetings -with-dinner-on-the-grounds, and other types of gatherings. The dictionary defines the word homecoming as a return home, the return of a group of people on a special occasion to a place formerly frequented or regarded as home, an annual celebration, etc. As you read the articles, fiction and poetry herein, you will be aware of the homecoming theme expressed individually by some of the writers. A line in a mountain song says, "Come home, come home, it's supper time." I believe this symbolizes the homecoming theme, because to mountain and southern people, coming home and eating are inextricably woven together. Talk to people about visits back home and reunions and they invariably speak about the abundance of good food along with the joy of seeing family and kinfolk again. I remember the blue supper-smoke rising into the evening sky on Stoney Fork, and the smell of cornbread baking in my mother's Home Comfort Range. It was wonderful to come home from work in the fields or play in the hills and hear Mother calling, "ChiFren, come home, it's supper time." We older ones would hurry a little faster down the hillside from the cornfield and the smaller children would rush in from their play. We were always tired and hungry at the end of the day. My mother died in January of this year. I feel such a loss in that there is now no home for me to go to, at least not one in which she will be there to welcome me. She always wanted us to come home more often than we did. She spoke of being lonely most days and especially on Sundays. She lived for our letters and telephone calls, and our visits home. Now that she is gone, there is grief and regret, and living with the knowledge that her ten children could have gone home more frequently—if we had really made the effort. Mountain women, perhaps because they are more vocal than the men who surely must feel the loneliness and loss just as keenly, speak with deep yearning of the holidays, vacations, or other special times when the children will come from "up north" where they live and work. The "children" also turn their thoughts towards the green hills of home and travel back when they can. They may live in other places for decades but still speak of Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, 4 North Carolina, as home. When they do come for a visit it is a renewing of family ties, an emotional contact with the earth and sky and trees as well as with family and kinfolk. In this day and time when society is, for the most part, a transient one, it is good that some people still retain their love for the land, their sense of place, of roots, of family ties. At family reunions, church suppers, and other kinds of gatherings in the mountains there is no over-all food plan. Nobody tells anybody else what to bring. When the food is laid out on plank tables it is smorgasbord, country style! I've known women who, on hearing that a friend or neighbor would not be able to come, "lit right in" and baked an extra cake, made another casserole, or fried more chicken for fear there would be a shortage of food. There never was. In fact, some of the dishes would hardly be touched, so great were the variety and quantity of good food. As soon as one makes a statement like the above, someone will inevitably prove the exception . Shannon Wilson, a co-worker, told me about one family reunion where the food was not diversified: "When a boy in...