Tim Wildmon

AFA president

September 1997 – One recent July evening my brother-in-law Neal called to invite our family to go water skiing the next weekend. I would have invited Neal and my sister Donna first, but I didn’t have a boat. Still don’t. And if you’re going to go water skiing a boat is essential.

“Sure,” Alison told Neal over the phone. “We would love to go.”

When Alison and I married in 1984 we vowed our children were going to have as happy a childhood experience as possible. Life is short and the time parents have with their children at home is even shorter. Our childhoods were filled with great memories, and we wanted the same for our kids. One day Wriley, Wesley, or Walker may find fault with their momma and daddy, but it won’t be because we didn’t spend time with them.

So we met Neal, Donna, and my sister Angela at Bay Springs, a recreational area on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway about 40 miles north of Tupelo. It’s also just 10 minutes from the now abandoned country farm where my grandparents reared my mom, her two brothers, and one sister in the hills of Tishomingo County.

We brought our two sons, Wesley, 8, and Walker, 3, who along with Donna and Neal’s boys – Neal Russell,4, and Drew, 2 – rounded out a cotton top foursome. I should say the cotton top fearless foursome because this quartet of blond-headed southern boys were not the least bit scared of the water, despite their age. Well, you wouldn’t expect Wesley to be, but neither were Walker and Neal, the reason obviously being that they were fresh off their first swimming lessons which they thought made them fit to swim the English Channel. At every opportunity the boys jumped out of the boat into the water, did their little half swim/half dog paddle and hooped and hollered.

The summer day went by, my heart better for having seen my sons and nephews having such a ball and tucking away a lifelong memory.

What is it about children’s laughter that makes grownups feel so good? Maybe we remember the fun we had as children. For me, it’s therapeutic. It washes my soul. How I long for the days when high stress was having the chain come off my bike.

By the time we pulled the boat out of the water, the sun had set behind the pine trees putting an end to one scorcher of a day. We loaded our boys in the van.

I remarked to Alison that it had been nearly three years since we moved my Granddad and Grandmother Bennett from their little country farmhouse to the retirement home in Tupelo, and I hadn’t seen the old homeplace since. The move was due to my granddad’s failing health. He died just a few months after the move. 

“I’d like to drive by and take a look at the old place for a minute,” I said.

Alison agreed, so we drove down the winding road for about 10 minutes, the only sign of human life an occasional front porch light from one of the few homes along the way, until we made it to grandmother’s house. I turned into the front yard shaded like giant mushrooms by two huge oak trees. Grass and weeds had now taken over this once well-worn area. “This isn’t right,” I thought. Grandmother’s station wagon and granddad’s pick-up should be parked here. I shined my lights ahead to what remained of a small house which had burned down a year or so after we moved my grandparents out.

“Turn on your brights,” Alison said.

“They’re on,” I responded. It was pitch black.

“I want to see if the barn is still standing,” I said as I got out of the van and walked closer. The barn was just a couple of hundred feet from the back of the house, but it was so dark I couldn’t see it. My mind began to wander back to my boyhood years.

This yard was where my granddad first put me on a Shetland pony when I was one year old. 1964. Those steps led to the front porch, screened to keep out the bugs and dogs. There were always three or four dogs around the yard.

I spent a lot of summer nights in a swing on that porch with the only sounds being the crickets and the humming of the window air-conditioning unit dripping water into an old coffee can. You could hear a car coming from two miles away.

The first and only time I ever plowed a field with a mule was on that farm. (Grandaddy used tractors for the big fields, but he still kept a mule around for good measure.) The mule got going and I couldn’t get him stop, despite my pleas of “Whoa! Stoooppp!!” The beast dragged me thirty yards, me plowing with my feet all the way, before Granddad came over and took control. Scared me to death, but he laughed.Oh, how Granddad laughed.

Then I recalled the many Christmases spent with aunts, uncles and cousins. Thirty-one consecutive Christmases for me. When we were all young, Granddad would gather us around and “count our ribs” until we collapsed in laughter.

“Count mine, Granddaddy,” we would all say. He was glad to oblige until he tired out. We could have gone on all night.

I walked back to the van. Out of the summer night’s thick air, back inside the comfort of our cool van I thought about how life changes. Good times. Bad times. They come and go. Sad thing is, I can never go back again. I suppose it’s sad, especially when I get in such a melancholy mood. I often tell my three-year-old Walker I’m going to give him “stay little” pills so he won’t grow up on me.

God is the giver of life. Time is such a precious gift. What better way to spend that gift than with our family. Loving them, making them happy, maybe giving them a little slice of heaven here on earth.