The House on Hazel Mountain

«ja^The House ¿¿ff as*9 .+'«W T* ***** 0** Hazel Mountain ^V**, .»¦»¦ by Michael Kiser The house where my father was born stands empty and alone, as it has for some years, at the crest of Hazel Mountain . No one visits much anymore, except for the few members of my family who have, like me, moved away. I move through the empty rooms in silence , paying homage to a time lost, a feeling that has escaped me. Outside, there are the unmistakable signs of the passage of time. Paint peels from the white pillars in curled dry flakes and the chain that holds the porch swing has long since rusted. But whenever I pass through the unlocked door, I can't help but feel that everyone has just stepped out, that my grandmother will return at any minute with an apron full of apples 16 from the tree below the barn, or that Papaw is out trying to mend the broken latch on the gate. I grew up in the North, in the shadows of smokestacks and the grey, dingy steel mills. It is a place with no past, a place that exploded with growth only in the last century. Perhaps this explains why my memories of the mountain are so strong and alive after all these years, unlike my recollections of the treeless monotonous suburb where I grew up. There is no Yankee equivalent of bathing in a pan of hot water behind the coal stove, sandwiched between a box of kindling and a bucket of coal. There is nothing else in my upbringing comparable to the view of the blue mountains from the porch swing or the way my grandfather sat for hours in front of a smoldering grate of coal until his rough corduroys were hot to the touch. There is no logic to the strength of these memories, except that I have become a part of the mountain and the mountain has become a part of me. There is always some disappointment to be faced whenever I return. Much has changed. Papaw has been gone for over twenty years and Mamaw now lives with her oldest son in a modest house just outside of town. The circle of aunts, uncles, children, and grandchildren has grown and spread out over the middle of the country. Two brick colonials squat proudly in the fields where hay and alfalfa and clover used to flourish. Even Shorty Blackstone's grocery is gone. But these changes are noted and quickly forgotten as my mind dredges up some new memory to replace them. There is an unmistakable, almost palpable sense of tradition and heritage and history in these mountains. Every curve in the winding road leading up to the house on Hazel Mountain holds once familiar sights and my eyes inevitably scan the dark banks of the roadside, searching for things once forgotten. Like many of their generation, my mother and father married young and, shortly after the birth of my sister, fled from the mountains in search of a better life. The road led north to the burgeoning steel industry and I became the first in my family to be born outside the embrace of the mountains of rural Virginia . Others fled at the same time, many of them my father's friends and peers. And so, though I grew up in the North, I was always surrounded by this circle of displaced Southerners, united only by their unspoken longings for home. We made the journey back several times a year, piling into the car just after supper and barreling down the narrow highways for hours on end, stopping only for gas. Daybreak found us in a new landscape, where the roads were narrower still and the houses were crowded into steep-sided ravines. Crossing the Clinch River, my father's foot fell heavier on the accelerator, powering through the turns and up the unnumbered highways until there came the slight, yet unmistakable pressure on my eardrums that told me we were near. When we finally skidded onto the gravel road leading up the mountain, my sister and I would lean over the front seat, anticipating every turn and switch back...