As we were leaving Yadkin County, we drove down Union Cross Church Road that passes less than a mile from the long dry mill pond where my mother had been born.
We had just come from the funeral of my Aunt Sallie, she was the last of my mother's sisters and brothers. She had died just a week from turning ninety-seven.
I wrote about, my mother and her sisters in The Three Sisters, a 2006 post that also had a picture of my Aunt Sallie the last time I saw her outside of her home which was also less than a mile from the original mill pond.
My Aunt Sallie's family was the part of my mother's family that stayed on the land and even farmed much of my grandfather's original lands. Farming was their way of life. I can still remember when they got rid of their last cows and chickens.
As a young boy I can remember fishing a few times in the creek that flowed at the back of their pastures. It was the creek that once provided the water for the mill pond where Walter Styers, my grandfather, ground grain. After the original house on the mill pond burned down, Walter had a dairy farm and eventually collected milk from other farmers. Milling had been a tradition in the family that was hard to give up.
I was probably the only one of Walter's grandchildren who actually made their living from a farm. My wife and I built and ran a cattle farm in Canada for eleven years. We grew most of our own food. We learned to preserve much of it from my mother and her other sister, Aunt Mollie.
I miss my mother and her sisters, I miss tales of their early life on the mill pond. On our farm, we got a taste of their life.
But life on the farm changed in the twentieth century, they had mules, we had diesel tractors. They all left the farm early in their lives. My mother went to the big city of Mount Airy. My Aunt Mollie ended up working in a textile factory in Winston-Salem, NC. Their lives still had room for gardens and cans of home preserved green beans, but it was a far cry from living on the mill pond where their only cooling was an ice box or a covered spot in a spring and cooking was done on a wood stove.
Now that the last of my mother's generation is gone, the mill pond will fade farther into the shadows. The pond had been drained before I was born. I can remember hiking down to the old pond site once as a young boy. There was not much to see as very large trees were already growing where water had once been.
I had a far different childhood than my mother. They spent much of their summers picking berries and working in gardens. My generation got to play in the woods and fields.
I am glad that my own children got that same opportunity to play in the woods and fields. They might have been the last to do that since video games seem to be the preferred way to play in this century.
Now that the last of my mother's generation is gone, I guess my cousins and I have to figure out how to be the family elders. There are some big shoes left to fill.
