DONOVAN, Ga.  – This unincorporated community in North Central Johnson County is near the farm where I grew up.  I have returned to show my son, Kent, as much of the past as I can; but am challenged—owing to memory fuzziness and landscape disruption.

The house I grew up in is gone.  The coveted pecan orchard that gave our house shade in summer and snack delight when the pecans fell to earth in the fall months—there were at least eight magnificent specimens—are represented by a couple of dead stumps.  That hurt.

It was under the canopy of those remarkable works of nature where I dreamed the dreams that have, fortunately in many cases, come true.  I played underneath that canopy with great contentment.  

There were many times when I would fill a Croker sack with leaves or straw to form a pillow and place it against a protruding root and read for hours—from the books I had checked out of the country library.

Those books were mostly about sports, cowboys, the Wild West and biographies of famous American heroes.  I dreamed of visiting the places I read about—New York, Boston, California, Alaska, New Orleans, and Silver Springs—never thinking that it would come about.

A porch almost encircled the house which was great for racing one’s tricycle over the creaking boards.  There was a swing at the halfway point of the porch which needed to be avoided at all costs.  Somehow or other, I escaped collision.

There was a cow lot in the shape of a rectangle with a corn crib at deep centerfield.  There were countless rocks on the property, and with my homemade bat, I hit homeruns over the fences in my make-believe Big-League stadium.  I broke Babe Ruth’s homerun records before Roger Maris and Hank Aaron.

There are paved roads about today, none in my time which brought about some confusion.   Less than a mile away from the home place, there is a house which I concluded is the house where I was born, but I can’t be sure.   It is in the location that I remember, however.  

It had a well off the back porch and I remember my cat disappeared.   My mother kept asking me about the whereabouts of the cat. but I said nothing. I was afraid to tell her.  One day, when I was probably four-years-old, I was playing with my cat while we were near the well.  He scratched me and I threw him away from me.  Unfortunately, the proximity of the well caused his disappearance.

One day my dad said, “We know what happened to your cat.  When I drew up a bucket of water today, the cat was in the bucket.  Do you know anything about that?”   I was mum, too afraid to say anything.  Though inadvertent, it was my first and, hopefully, last affiliation with a violent act.

We visited the cemetery, Beulah Baptist Church, where my parents, grandparents and other relatives are buried.  I thought of them and the hard lives they lived.

They worked hard, they were frugal, and they knew how to make ends meet.  Work in the fields five and a half days a week, listen to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night and never miss church on Sunday. Some considered it a sin to play baseball on Sunday to the extent that I felt I might be going to hell by watching a Big League game on Sunday when television became prevalent.

They had little life insurance, if any, and never heard of health insurance.  The REA, rural electrification association, enabled my mother to get relief from cooking with stove wood, and a refrigerator that kept water chilled for a much-appreciated treat. It also helped keep the milk fresh.  Cokes were too expensive so there were no soft drink options.  I was a junior in college before I saw a Coca-Cola in my parents’ refrigerator.

The advent of a freezer, a pickup truck, a John Deere tractor, and indoor plumbing, all coming later, were godsends in our lives.  My social life was compromised considerably.  I had to date in a pickup truck before that became fashionable.  Consequently, I didn’t date very much.

My dad did not want me to play football.  He didn’t see any sense in the sport, but the underlying reason was attached to economics.  No high schools in those days had an insurance plan for the kids on the team.

If I had gotten a broken leg, it would have been consequently difficult for my family to pay the medical bills.  Nonetheless, my father did what parents often do, he yielded to his son’s objective.  

There was one thing he did not yield to—and that was a demanding work ethic.  It didn’t matter how late I got home from a Friday night road trip to play a game, I had to be up early the next morning for whatever assignment he had for me—everything from harrowing the spent cotton patch under to cutting firewood to clearing land for spring planting.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had a good life in that I learned the basics that have the greatest of sustainability.   Work hard, pay your bills, don’t spend more than you make, treat people fairly, do unto others properly, keep your nose clean and underscore faith, hope and charity.

It has been a goal to incorporate those principles with my own offspring but worry about the world going to hell in a handbasket—just as my father did in his time.  

You don’t have to be a seasoned genius to appreciate the notion that the honoring of the work ethic would solve a lot of our problems today.  I didn’t need to return home to be reminded of that.