It Runs In the Family

Route 55 takes me by my mother's home much more often than my previous path did. For most of my adult life, it has always taken serious advance planning to swerve out of the fast lane for a rushed 600 mile detour to the farm in Tennessee where she lives.

About 35 years ago, Mom and Dad dismayed the entire family by abruptly leaving the city where they'd raised most of us five children for someplace we'd never even heard of in southern Appalachia. We were incredulous when one day they simply announced the purchase of a 30-acre farm. What a shock to find they had this secret plan! It sure knocked the assumption that our parents would grow old right there, close to all of us, all out of whack.

A farm????? With horses, cows, and other barnyard animals, we were told. This information baffled us further, since both our parents were born and bred in Long Island, NY. Not a single word of interest or yearning for bucolic bliss had any of us ever heard. Had they been watching too many episodes of Green Acres? My dad was no Eddie Albert, and Mom was sure no Eva Gabor.

We could not understand, either, why they bought a place some hour's drive away from our mother's new job in Chattanooga. She was always exhausted as it was from her present job only 15 minutes from home. All that extra driving wouldn't improve matters, especially since we all figured she'd do most of the farm chores, too. Our father did not lift a finger around the house, and we were betting that he wouldn't do much around a farm either. We couldn't even imagine him coming near a cow, much less milking or feeding or cleaning up after farm animals.

It was all a mystery to us. Yet within a month, our parents had packed up their clothes and books, put my mother's enormous white German shepherd in the car, and moved. This was in 1971 -- the year, I now realize with a jolt of comprehension, that my father turned 55.