 Fallen Blossoms and the Ghosts of Crowley Corner
Rushing against a fast approaching deadline for the paper, I pulled the car into a tight curve and swung around stopping just short of the Highway 2208 sign at Crowley Corner. To most travelers along Highway 58 going into Clinton or headed the other way to Mayfield, this small intersection held nothing special.
However, for some of us mortals, there were special memories that lingered each time we drove through this part of Hickman County. Like today, bitter April chilled wind pulled at my warmth, until I pushed the scarf into a tight fit around my neck. Moving from the parked car, I headed for my target.
Unlike most years, a unique blend of large azaleas, red buds, and tulip blossoms were dancing in the wind each day at a high yard overlooking the road. But this year’s flowers were in trouble. The ice storm had wrought a very cruel pronouncement of a brilliant death sentence for the flowers and trees.
I shelter myself from the wind in between the fallen branches of a large 30 foot high tulip tree. The wind could not reach me as all around my position were the broken and sheltered tree branches of the tulip tree. Some of these broken limps were 10 inches in diameter and twenty feet long. Just laying on the ground or hanging from the tree as if they were gently going to sleep.
I snapped 15 photographs of this quiet ballet of sun light; colors of brilliant pinks, reds and yellows; sweet smells of bees moving nectar from one blossom to another, and a yearning that this moment would never end.
But it did. Somewhere in the deep part of my mind, labeled “being responsible,” I came back to the realization that I came only for the photographs, nothing more. Yet, I knew I was lying to myself. There was a much deeper reason for coming to this spot, ghost of my youth and a feeling of slight remorse for the past.
Just as the sun faded in to mid afternoon, I stood for several minutes looking out over the scene, remembering the year of my 14 birthday. My grandparents, Charles and May Bell Cauthorn, lived three miles to the west of this spot.
My remorse was from remembering the warn summer days of that time when my grandfather “Doc” would let drive down to the little Weatherford Grocery store at Crowley Corner. We drove in a 1953 Blue and white Buck Special. At 10:00 each day, grandfather would search the shelves of the little store for Big Apple Chewing tobacco. My treat was a Dr. Pepper and a moon pie.
I enjoy my time with him. He was a mechanic genus with motors of all sorts. I would help him repair broken engines and enjoy the feeling of getting grease on myself as I help to bring to life an old engine.
Time is a cruel mistress in that there is never a chance of going back. Here, some 48 years later, at a stop in the road, I silently visualize my youth in mental snap shots of cars, buildings, relationships, and people who were never to be seen again. Framed against my self recollecting, was the image of the cemetery of the Mt. Moriah Missionary Baptist Church on the other side of the Highway 2208 sign.
The tulip tree will live on. It is smaller, but still with life for many more seasons. But after this year, the fallen branches with their wonderful assortment of pinks and whites blossoms will be no more. The memories of their sweet beauty will be added to that time portal we call the past.
In each of our lives there exists a special Crowley Corner, where youth still resides and lingers during quiet times of reflections. But for now, I must move on with my life. Standing next to the black car, I take one last look at the geography of what had been co existing with what is.
Along most rural roads, memories of youth pull us back from time to time to make us
recharge a sense of being. Smiling, I bid good day to the spirits of my past and the brilliance of an April day, along the intersection where headstones, highway signs, brilliant pink tulip blossoms, lost buildings and gas pumps, Big Apple Chew tobacco have all become a part of the ghosts that haunt Crowley Corner.
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