Old Home Place
"In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky;
That's the place where I trace my bloodline;
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone;
You'll never leave Harlan alive."
- Brad Paisley
Home. There is a deep yearning for home that no amount of wanderlust can assuage. Not the place where you currently live, but home. The place you are from; where generations of kin lie in a hillside churchyard. Where you can stand in one place and point in any direction and your gaze falls on the farm of this relative or that.
Where you know and are known.
Where all you are and hope to be is celebrated by those who know and love you best.
Where striving, successes and failures are not nearly as important as gathering around a table groaning with homemade everything; biscuits from granny's recipe, cherry jam from the old tree out back, country ham and sausage gravy.
Walking the road that ends at the birthplace of your father - now only memories live there.
Driving over the creek where he learned to swim. Crazy Southern aunts who lapse into the latest character they are portraying in the theater. She returns from that land of make believe to tell you tales of the grandmother you never met who stitched the quilt you hold in your hands. The grandmother who prayed aloud for you by name every night And now her faith has become sight as she watches from above. You are home.
Tobacco barns, corn fields; un-rushed coffee of a morning. Trips to the Amish community for tomatoes, honey and molasses.
That piece of land that fed a nation; a foreshadow of our true home where that great reunion awaits with those who have gone on ahead...
Home....
That's the place where I trace my bloodline;
And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone;
You'll never leave Harlan alive."
- Brad Paisley
Home. There is a deep yearning for home that no amount of wanderlust can assuage. Not the place where you currently live, but home. The place you are from; where generations of kin lie in a hillside churchyard. Where you can stand in one place and point in any direction and your gaze falls on the farm of this relative or that.
Where you know and are known.
Where all you are and hope to be is celebrated by those who know and love you best.
Where striving, successes and failures are not nearly as important as gathering around a table groaning with homemade everything; biscuits from granny's recipe, cherry jam from the old tree out back, country ham and sausage gravy.
Walking the road that ends at the birthplace of your father - now only memories live there.
Driving over the creek where he learned to swim. Crazy Southern aunts who lapse into the latest character they are portraying in the theater. She returns from that land of make believe to tell you tales of the grandmother you never met who stitched the quilt you hold in your hands. The grandmother who prayed aloud for you by name every night And now her faith has become sight as she watches from above. You are home.
Tobacco barns, corn fields; un-rushed coffee of a morning. Trips to the Amish community for tomatoes, honey and molasses.
That piece of land that fed a nation; a foreshadow of our true home where that great reunion awaits with those who have gone on ahead...
Home....
Comments
Tom