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RUINS Poem & Photos by Shirley Williams in my great-grandfather's house are many memories it is so and I am telling you of those memories of my last pilgrimage to that eroding time capsule perched desolate on an outgrowth hill moated by a lifeless stream the day was fair the sky bright a new road splayed out of the earth carrying a caravan of coal trucks for the strip mines the dirt was still raw but blackberries were red raspberries ripening I picked daisies laurel azalea pale pink wild roses and put the blossoms in my hair 48 the sun was hot but the trees were tall virgin timber shading the way to the ruins my grandfather you see allowed no one to live there the forty years since the old man died I once played by the empty house in the scented plum orchard used the swing Grandad built for Ona the child of his second marriage (7 at the time of my birth) and when I launched out toes touching branches the world lay miles below the swing is now absent from the pear tree before the once-handsome frame two-storied it was always painted gray and happier days had seen a roof of wooden shingles now boards are sprung apart its tin roof dissolving in rust the pepper vine my great-grandmother planted she was a Renfrew) is a monster parasite threading through its vines thick as an arm bulging over and under timbers and windowframes she also put down a cedar in the yard and always said that when it grew high enough to shade her grave she would die only a lightning-struck stump still stands five feet high 49 50 the side door swung wide and inside a dusky suit and yellowed shirt hung loosely on the wall vandals came calling but did not touch those clothes at all fearing perhaps the ghost of the rambunctious doctor the mantelpiece and fireplace stones wrenched violently free silently still an ancient rumor of hidden cash catalog and newspaper pages used for insulation swag from the ceiling like clumps of powdery Spanish moss broad and once well-scrubbed floorboards sway back half the stairs have fallen in dockweed shot up like rockets through the yard ridges of rusty tin flop from the eaves a haphazard timpanist when the wind stirs a short-horned heifer resented my being there I looked at the sluggish creek the rust of acid run-off straining the earth like dried blood cradled my head against the pear tree and cried quietly and for a long time later I stopped again at Grandad's place took fading flowers from my hair and wreathed them round the cedar stump 51 52 The Dr. Daniel Hamilton family, about 1913 Dr. Daniel Hamilton, the great-grandfather in the poem was well-known and respected in Leslie County, Kentucky, as was the family. The house site is near Frew, Kentucky (probably named for the great-grandmother, Mary Ann Renfrew Hamilton). The family owned considerable property. The members in the picture, as given by Shirley Williams, the great-granddaughter of Dr. Daniel, are as follows: Front Row, left to right: John Hamilton with son Daniel II on his lap;Mallie Farler Hamilton; daughter Mollie (my mother) at her knee; Dr. Daniel Hamilton ; his wife, Mary Ann Renfrew Hamilton; Carl Hamilton; Charlie Caudill, son of Rebecca Hamilton Caudill and Robert Caudill, Mae Hamilton. Back Row: John M. Morgan; his wife Eliza Hamilton Morgan; Lew Hamilton; Rebecca Hamilton Caudill, and an unidentified woman, a patient of Dr. Hamilton who had come to stay for treatment. Also unidentified, the owner of the hand holding flowers over Rebecca Caudill 's left shoulder. The only child not my mother's sibling is first cousin Charlie Caudill. John and Mallie were my grandparents, and of course, John, Eliza, Lew, and Rebecca were Dr. Daniel's children. Lew, however, is not Mary Ann's child. He was a woods colt whose mother brought him as a child and left him for the Hamilton's to raise. 53 ...

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