"Haydenville Holler"

Paula Lehman
10/4/06
Haydenville Holler

Grandpa,
You were never more
Than an idea to me.
A picture of you
In your uniform
Sat on the mantle
And I wondered
What your voice sounded like.
What it was like
To storm the beach
At Normandy.
My aunt says
You ate bacon
For breakfast everyday
And knew the woods
And caves of Southern Ohio
Better than anyone
But the Indians.
You are almost a legend
At this point.
The story of your birth.
The fables about your
Biological family.
Your mother was a Cheyenne
From an Oklahoma reservation.
Your father, a German-American
Bible and Snake Oil salesman.
She ran away
And he auctioned you off
On some backwoods
Church steps.
July, 1920.
Adopted by German and Hungarian
Immigrants.
Wonderful parents, farmers.
Descendents of frontier people.
Sometimes I envy you.
You with your roots.
You knew all the answers
And grudgingly kept them
To yourself.
When I would give anything
Just for their names.
I know you resented them.
You told Dad you only had
One mother.
Now you’re a guest
At every birth, every Christmas.
The sons look like you.
Every child learns your story.
I used to look at your picture
And wonder
What your favorite book was.
If you felt rootless.
Why you never encouraged
Dad to be more
Than you were.
Coal miner, brick maker, soldier.
He cried, looking at your grave
That I had never even seen.
Visiting his childhood hometown
And yours: the woods
That live in the back
Of his hazel eyes.
Even our family vacation
Became a journey
Back to you.
The town built of your
Star Co. clay bricks
Is falling apart.
Art festivals and grass roots
Movements fill the old café.
Burger King
Where Jack’s
Once stood.
Seeing that town
Was the closest I ever got
To my roots.
The family cemetery
Behind the church
Hidden in Haydenville Holler.
Nothing but a full cemetery.
And a white clapboard church.
A field of tombstones
With my last name—
Your last name.
But veins that never
Held a drop of blood
Like ours.
Hundreds of names, dates
And no answers.
I felt most alone there.
A stranger surrounded
By dead, cement eyes.
On the front porch
Of the house you built
I sit in your porch swing
And imagine the smell
Of your pipe smoke.
Your work boots
By the front door
And the sound of your laughter.
I sing your war songs
And Johnny Cash,
My father’s voice in my head
And the woods in my eyes
Creating memories with you.