"Home, Sweet Home to Me!"

I was hooked on East Tennessee when we turned on 11 W and slowly climbed and wound our way to Hawkins County in the spring of 1968 when Klep took me to the hill to meet his parents.  When we returned that October, two months after our wedding, I first experienced the glory of the hills in full color.  Since then, I have loved that part of the world.  Some days I get just a little homesick for the place we lovingly refer to as "the holler" which has become our second home.  Today was one of those days.

We have just recently returned from a week traveling around the Caribbean enjoying the warm air, the soft breezes, and being totally pampered aboard a cruise ship.  After several slothful days of ignoring the pile of laundry and the Christmas things which needed to be dealt with, I finally got moving.  I bought some detergent, dragged out the storage boxes, and got it done.

While I worked, I thought longingly of Tennessee.  The hills would be bare now, the air cool.  I thought of the people who have become so much a part of our lives:  the cousins, the friends at Music Junction, the fellowship of Shady Grove Baptist Church, and the people we see as we go about our lives while we are there.  And, yes, I missed them all.

As I worked my way through the stack of laundry, the music of Larry and Ernie, and Vance and Phil and Hugh Kyle and Sheila and all the others filled my kitchen and carried me the five hundred miles plus to Rogersville.  I sang along to "Rocky Top" and other songs until the job was finished.

  Eleven or so weeks will pass quickly and once again, as the red buds burst with color, the bank blooms yellow with daffodils, and the violets emerge in the meadow, we will once again wind our way up the narrow, crooked road to Winegar Hollow.  I can hardly wait.