Full Circle...and Then Some

I was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1960. When we lived in Ohio, my parents, my brother, and I would travel down to Anglin Branch in Southeastern Kentucky to visit Grandpa and Grandma Smith as often as possible.

In the summer of my eighth year, we moved from Ohio to a farm outside of Wartrace Tennessee. We would then travel up to Anglin Branch to visit Grandpa and Grandma as often as possible. We would visit them there until Grandma and Grandpa moved in with Uncle John and Aunt Hortense’s family in Dayton, Ohio. They moved to Ohio somewhere around 1975.

Now, sometime soon after we had moved to Wartrace in 1968, Dad had gone to the Martin and Price Hardware store in Shelbyville, Tennessee. There he purchased two identical John Primble knives. He gave one of them to his brother, Dale Smith.

Uncle Dale, Aunt Naomi, and Cousin Roger Dale lived about a mile up the road from us in Tennessee. We visited with Uncle Dale’s family fairly often. Uncle Dale drank coffee that had so much sugar in it that it was surely more akin to syrup than coffee. He could squat down like the hind catcher for a baseball team for, it seemed, hours on end.

 

                                                         Uncle Dale stirring his "syrup" 

Uncle Dale was a very forward thinking man. He was stringing television cable from antennas on top of steep hills to homes in rural Southeastern Kentucky nearly as quick as he was running electric to them. Back when televisions were bulky boxes with tubes, he could fix televisions. He and his brother-in-law, Harold Becknell fixed televisions to make a little cash. Uncle Dale and Aunt Naomi owned a skating rink at one time in Island City Kentucky. After moving to Tennessee, he ran a small dairy farm for a while. He worked in maintenance at Eaton Corporation for several years. Later he owned a Vemeer round hay baler business and then a Deutz tractor business. Uncle Dale was a real entrepreneur.

Years before his death, Uncle Dale had even predicted that one day folks would be buying bottles of water at the store like they were buying pop and beer back in the day. I guess that we didn’t really take him seriously, but today, Mom and Dad have to buy every drop of water they drink or cook with because their tap water tastes strongly of chemicals. Most folks probably have bought some bottled water sometime in their lives.

I don’t know what ever became of the knife that Dad gave to Uncle Dale, but one of those John Primble knives purchased by Dad at Martin and Price Hardware in Shelbyville, Tennessee was given to him.

Dad gave the other John Primble knife to Grandpa Smith the next time we visited with him on Anglin. This was sometime soon after we had moved to Tennessee in 1968.

Now, when I imagine Grandpa, I picture him wearing either his bib overalls and a long-sleeved button up shirt or a dickey type shirt and britches. He is also wearing his old felt fedora hat and there is a twinkle of mischief in his blue eyes. Grandpa Smith loved to play rummy. He also loved to whittle.

 

                                                             Grandpa playing rummy.

                                                           Grandpa in his bib overalls.

 

           Dad sitting on the steps and Grandma Smith sitting on the porch where stories were shared. 

It was while we were sitting out on the front porch with Grandpa whittling aromatic curls of cedar from a stick that he had pulled from the bib of his overalls that he told me of his giant friend. It seems that when mists were hanging in the hillsides, his giant friend who lived nearby was sitting out on his own porch smoking his pipe. That day, those mists dotted the hills and his giant friend was enjoying his pipe.

Still today, when I go to the Smoky Mountains and see all of the mists hanging in the mountains, I imagine that Grandpa’s giant friend is having a family reunion in the Smoky Mountains.

Last week, I visited Mom and Dad. After taking Mom to the grocery and then eating lunch, we sat in the den visiting. After looking around the room at all of their “stuff”, Mom lamented that probably no one would want all of the things they had collected over their lifetimes. Dad said that he was just going to tell folks to take turns picking out knives from his collection of knives. I mentioned that I would love to have any knife that he had that had belonged to Grandpa Smith as I could remember Grandpa sitting on the porch whittling with it.

Dad stood up and left the room. When he came back, he handed me this knife and told me of how he had bought it and another just like it at Martin Price hardware in Shelbyville, Tennessee. One he had given to Uncle Dale and the other he had given to Grandpa Smith sometime soon after we had moved to Tennessee. He said that after Grandpa passed away, Uncle Wallace ended up with the knife. Uncle Wallace then gave it to Dad.

 

 

Dad said that he couldn’t promise that I had seen Grandpa whittle with this same knife, but we figured that since he had given the knife to Grandpa soon after we moved to Tennessee in 1968, and Grandpa didn’t move from Anglin Branch until around 1975, I very well could have remembered Grandpa whittling with that very knife.

I admired the knife, opening and closing the blades and noted how it seemed to have been used more than a bit. I could almost picture Grandpa opening that main blade, and swishing it back and forth across his soap bar-sized, dark gray, whetstone that had a nick along the bottom edge. Then he would pull his stick of cedar from his bib to whittle as he told me a story of a pipe-smoking giant friend who lived nearby in the hills.

I stood and handed the knife back to Dad who asked, “What are you doing? I am giving it to you; don’t you want it?” I hadn’t realized that he was giving it to me now. I hugged him and said “Thank you. Of course, I want it!”

So, this knife came from a hardware store in Shelbyville, Tennessee. It made its way to Anglin Branch Kentucky before making its way with Grandpa to Dayton, Ohio where he and Grandma lived with John and Hortense Smith Allen. When Grandpa passed, it made its way into the hands of Uncle Wallace Smith in Loveland, Ohio. Uncle Wallace then returned it to Donald Smith back in Middle Tennessee.

And now, it belongs to me, April Smith Hajjafar, here in Tennessee. I am not certain who I will pass this treasure on to. I am not certain if it will make its way across the country, or perhaps even the world. I just hope that whoever ends up with it, the owner will know stories of the wonderful Grandpa who once sat on a porch whittling with it as he regaled his granddaughter April with the story of his neighbor. That neighbor just happened to be a giant who happened to smoke a pipe.