Compton Arkansas1983

March 1983 Spring was in the brisk air of Litchfield county the day I hiked Kent Falls with Don and Brett, wonderful friends whom I graduated with from Newtown High. While hiking the trails, we chit-chatted about our upcoming trips, theirs to California, mine to Arkansas. We were navigating some rocks on the trail when Brett commented, “Tammy you’re a natural on the paths.”  What did I know, I just did what came to me, but his encouragement fed a piece of my soul that day, filling my heart with glee.

April 1983 My best friend Dawn handed me JRR Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings series to make sure I wasn’t bored on my upcoming twenty-two hour bus ride to Arkansas. Her inscription reads…

April 5, 1983 (in the front of The Fellowship of the Ring)

Tammy, For all the times when it’s the dreams and the fantasies that keep the spirit alive, these stories seem to make it all come true. It’s to let you know we love you and we’re gonna miss you, even if it’s just a little while. Have fun.

April 1983 (in the back of The Return of the King)

Tam, Just a personal note – I am going to miss you very much but in spirit we’ll always be together. Love ya much Dawn

In April of 1983 Greyhound dropped me off in the middle of nowhere. “Yup, this is your stop young lady.” It was a far cry from the hustle and bustle at the Washington D.C. bus station sixteen hours earlier where city life never slept. I was plopped in isolated only-God-knows-where country. I believe I was dropped off in Harrison, but don’t hold me to it. What I remember is there was one building, rustic, something that looked like nothing and it was a highway road that looked like a back rural road. Me and my nineteen years of wisdom stood on the side of the road wearing a jean jacket, hoisting my green army canvas knapsack with my red bandana over my shoulder while holding an old leather suitcase.

Unbeknownst to me, I was absolute bait to anyone fishing. Oh sure I had some reservations as to where I just landed. I stood still several minutes taking in my surroundings and hoping I was dropped off in the right place. I didn’t see a phone booth. Cell phones didn’t exist. There wasn’t a mall to walk into. I don’t know if it was fifteen or thirty minutes, but when you don’t know where you are, hardly any traffic goes by and you don’t know a soul except the people you are there to visit, it was a long wait.

Relief washed over me when around the bend came his old green ’55 Chevy truck, rattling tanks of oxygen strapped in back, as he pulled over to pick me up. The familiar cap on his brown head of hair and his beaming smile were a sight for sore eyes as he declared in his booming voice, “Well hello there Tammy Sue Peterson!!!!” Ecstatic to see my Sunday school teacher, Peter Burch, I hopped up into the cab of his truck as the end of day was nearing!

The last time I saw him and his wife Kim was back in Connecticut when we watched ‘Gone With the Wind’ with our youth group. It was the longest movie I had ever seen. The Burch’s had a friend Mick, who looked like Willie Nelson, who had offered them some of his property in Arkansas. Therefore, Peter and Kim uprooted their Connecticut life to go build the solar house of their dreams and live off the land. When they offered me the opportunity to stay with them in Arkansas for three-months, I jumped on it. This would be the biggest adventure of my youth.

Mick had a shack-house on his property that had been built in 1976. He welcomed my Sunday school teachers to live in it while they built their home. They slept upstairs in the loft and I slept on the pull out futon chair in the living room, a tri-fold of hard foam that laid flat. The shack wasn’t insulated. Up close you could see outside through the cracks of the boards. When I arrived in mid-April the ground was still covered in a smattering of snow.

The barn, where they parked the truck and car, was a quarter-mile walk to the house. Peter’s blacksmith shop was in the barn, Kim’s garden and one of the ponds was also near the barn. Near the shack was the root cellar and coup with 25-chickens.

When I stepped into the shack, I stepped back in time. It was so rustic, yet so cool.  I was up for the challenge, whatever it was going to be. The bathroom had a tub and a window. No running water. Hot showers were outside under the solar panel rigged up with a garden hose and shower curtain. And yes there was a bonified outhouse on the property! It came with rules of how much toilet paper not to use.  Clothes were washed by hand in a tin bin, then squeezed through the rollers before hanging to dry. We syphoned water into the house from the upper-pond in order to heat water on the woodstove to wash dishes or bath at the sink. Kim and I always fought over doing the dishes because our hands were so cold.

 

I couldn’t help but remember when I was a little girl, in elementary school, my mother would drive us to White River Junction, Vermont to visit our great grandmother Grace Woodley. She had an old house built into the hill, 2-rooms on each floor. She never owned a car, walked everywhere, had a kerosene heater going on the 2nd floor. The third floor was always cold. When she got indoor plumbing, her broom closet had been turned into a bathroom. Our knees about touched the wall when you sat on the toilet. And we always heated water on the stove in her kitchen as we stood there shivering to wash our armpits and face.

In 1983 Compton, Arkansas population was 296. Today it is 311.

Up the road I met their neighbor Irene, a lovely woman. “Nice to meet you Tammy Sue. Would you like an ice-coffee?” “Sure,” although I’d never heard of such a thing. She brewed coffee and poured it over ice cubes. How original. I loved it! We walked around her property where she pointed out comfrey and asparagus. She plucked an asparagus stalk from the dirt, asking if I wanted to try some. Shaking my head no, I scrunched my face. Well I had no interest because I hated the canned asparagus I grew up on, it smelled awful. But the competitive spirit in me caved as she insisted it wasn’t the same. I was pleasantly surprised at how sweet it was. To this day I love fresh asparagus, steamed or grilled.

There was always something to do. By the time I arrived, they had been digging out their foundation. There were makeshift ramps where we carried rocks out in wheelbarrows. Their Connecticut cat and dog were adjusting to Arkansas. Because their property wasn’t fenced in yet, the Burch’s kept their cows and moonshine the calf, down the road at the Brady farm. It was a two-mile walk by road or about half-mile through the woods to go milk them morning and night. Milking…I discovered used muscles in my hand and wrist I never knew I had. Moonshine was still feeding on the bottle. I learned quick to hold it tight with my arms or thighs, because he had quite the strong head butt as he nursed.

Milking twice a day meant we had to do something with it so homemade yogurt and butter were in abundance, which we stored at the Brady’s because they had electricity. We also made granola which was a nice compliment to the yogurt.

Exercise was built in. Bales of hay needed stacking. Wood needed chopping along with chicken heads. I helped pluck the feathers. Their mailbox was 1-mile down the dirt road. I loved those walks. Peter and Kim sent me off with my very own sling shot in case I found something good for dinner. I never did. They also taught me to fire a shotgun, nestle it firm into my shoulder, which about threw me on the ground, but I remained standing as Peter laughed. I don’t know, maybe he caught me!

A friend of theirs from Connecticut visited and the four of us went canoeing down the Buffalo River. What a blast. Fayetteville was the big trip into town to pick up grains and sacks of flour and other niceties like toilet paper. Highway roads looked like back roads. One took us to a beautiful field where we hung out and I climbed a rock face in the sun. Snakes sunning were in abundance. Every trip in Peter’s truck was bouncy on those rural roads and to this day Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Brown take me back to ‘these days’ of when that wonderful storytelling music came out of their vehicles while I was in the middle of my own story.

Three months was a lifetime of escape, a blur of a moment, an ideal I will never regret, and an innocence I wish I could absorb more of.

August 2002 shy of twenty years later, my Curtis and I drove to Arkansas to celebrate Dawn’s parents 50th wedding anniversary. The trip became an unexpected opportunity to find the old shack and introduce my husband to a poignant and precious time in my life. During the hunt to find the old memory, we stumbled on a small town second-hand collect all shop called Grampa’s Place. I fell in love with the owner. Supposedly Merle Haggard had been there too! After I purchased an old baking powder can from him, I asked where the rest room was. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and directed me to out back of the store. There I found an outhouse with a two-seater and fresh flowers on the ledge. It was the nicest privy I’d ever been in. Outside of the building was a spigot to wash my hands. When I walked back into his store, Grampa asked if I had found the bathroom? I said, “Yes sir!” He kept looking at me waiting for a shock reaction, but he wasn’t gonna get one from me! We hugged goodbye. Out in the parking lot the friendliest dog ran up to me and immediately I was brought to tears. This sweet dog looked just like my Francheska, my childhood dog. However, that’s a story for another time.

We continued our search for the property of the house-shack. I wasn’t sure if we would find it and if so, what would be left. An old foundation? A walk through the woods entered us into a time standing still and a gift that kept on giving. Mick, the owner had a sign over the door welcoming visitors, should they find themselves there.

Unbelievable. Like an excavation, we walked around the property, Curtis found the privy and we poked into the out buildings before going inside the shack.

Here I was about to step inside my story still in tact.

 

After absorbing this treasure of memories, I wanted to leave a thank you note.  I found paper in the sunroom which wasn’t there in 1983. Curtis captured a photo of me writing to Mick, in hopes he might see the note one day.

More than words can capture, I’m forever thankful to the unfettered willingness of these people who opened their intimate world to me for but a glimpse of my life.

When I make room to reflect, I uncover treasures that deserve being recognized for the ongoing salve that God uses to protect and hold me up along the way.

Photos from 1983 and 2002

PS my Sunday school teachers didn’t complete their dream home and eventually moved away. Their story is not my story, but they are a special part of what makes my story. Never underestimate the difference you make in someone’s life during a time when….(you fill in the blank).

Barefoot’n it with Barefoot Willey