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Kyles Ford by Jo Carson The following is an excerpt from a play I am currently working on about my mother, grandmother, and me. Ella is grandmother, Ree (Marie) is mother, and I am Jo, the narrator. My mother is a victim of Alzheimers, her mother is still alive and in as great a need as her daughter, and my father and I are the caretakers for both of them. He does most of it. I write about it. At this point my mother does not know I am Jo most of the time and the Kyles Ford Story probably will not be in the final version of the play, but the story is no less true. The things I cannot vouch for or against are the names going down the west side ofClinch Mountain. They are sifted through grandmother's shaky memory from more than sixty years past and then my own because I wrote the story six months after we made the trip. There are other stories in the play. Inez, who is mentioned a couple of times and is crucial to this play, was my mother's older sister who died the year I was born. However, grandmother calls me Inez, has for years now, and that's in this story. It all started with a picture, an oldpicture that grandmother had hadfor years. She neverput it up anywhere but as a child I was allowed an occasional rummage through the storage closets so I had seen the picture. The storage closets were also where I learned aboutInez—Inez who haunts us all—but that is another story. Thepicture was a hand tintedphotograph ofa place calledKyles Ford, Tennessee. It had been made by a man who came through with his equipment in the back ofa horse drawn wagon. He made the photograph on speculation and then sold copies to the residents ofKyles Ford. There wererit many ofthem and most everybody bought one. There are two houses in the scene that the man chose to photograph and thefurther one is the house where my mother was born. I had been there or so I was told . . . Ella You were just a young'un. It was when those people came that nobody knew and it turned out they'd come to the wrong reunion. They should have gone to the Ketrons. Catron is a C. Catrons can all read. . . . but I didn't remember and I wanted to see it and to take my mother before my mother doesn't even remember me any more, much less the place she was born. It was the Sunday after Thantegiving, one ofthose occasional November gifts, a beautiful , almost warm day. Grandmother wasn't going to go . . . Ella Lord, what do you want to go back there for? 52 . . . but when we stopped to get her, she decided maybe she would go after all. I took the precaution of bringing a map. EHa What do you need that for? Just start like you was goin' to Rogersville. I'll show you. And when we got to Rogersville . . . Ella Turn around, Inez, we come too far. Ree This is Jo, Mother, Inez is dead. Ella Well, she better turn the car around. I turned the car aroundanda mile or so back up the road where the map suggested I turned off HW. EllaThis ain't it, there ain't no road like this to Kyles Ford. JoJust be patient. EllaI know where I come from. ReeMaybe we should just go back home. When we got to a crossroad with an arrow thatpointed across the mountain to Kyles Ford . . . Ella You're just lucky. They done cut another road. Even a blind hog gets an acorn once in a while. We started up the mountain. Ella Lord, let's turn around. I wanna' go back home. Ree Mother . . . Ella We're a like to die . . . you have to start in the mornin' if you're gonna get across Clinch Mountain in the daylight and you done took your own time and eat dinner already. Once, you probably needed to start in the morning ifyou were going to get across Clinch Mountain in daylight. Clinch...

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