One might think that, with a house separated from civilization by many acres of pasture and fences and trees, the occupants of Wyldswood could roam the property in our skivvies with no worry that we will encounter the prying eyes of a neighbor peering over the fence. It is certainly more private that the place in South Walton, where folks build houses right up next to each other and the only reason I could drink coffee on the porch in my underwear was that the investment properties that flanked us were usually empty.
The truth is, however, that on any given afternoon we might find ourselves here on the farm with company who just drive through the gate for one reason or another. Mike needs to check on his cows. Dean heard we might need mowing help. Almon is worried about the chickens. George decided now might be a good time to lean into the endless project list Peggy has given him. Folks just show up.
At first, this drove me a little batty. During the first 56 years of my life, it would never occur to me to arrive at someone's home without calling first and agreeing on a time. If I showed up early, I'd drive around the block for a few minutes so the grill of my car would penetrate the curtilage of their home at three ... two ... one--on time, on target. Old fighter pilot habits die hard.
That's not how it works in the country, Peg has explained. From the days when folks did not have reliable phone service, they would simply ride over to a neighbor's and drop by for a visit. Sweet tea on the porch. The latest gossip about goings on around the county. An update on Aunt Rita's lumbago. Then they would ride back down the drive as spontaneously as they'd appeared.
Of course, in 1965 one was unlikely to drop in and face the scene of two naked middle-aged people drinking wine in the truck bed swimming pool. Or, more likely, to interrupt a farmer-lawyer in a Zoom hearing on his computer in the home office. And yet that's what has happened from time-to-time here. Peg and I keep bathing suits draped over the bed of the truck, just in case.
I say all of this is new to me, but as I reflect on my childhood I realize it's not. From the mid-60s through the mid-70s we regularly traveled to my father's boyhood home in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, to stay with Aunt Alice and Uncle Happy and visit Dad's parents and the siblings who filled the hills around where the family farm used to be. We never really went anywhere once we arrived--the whole two day visit (for this was all Dad could handle) was spent on Happy and Alice's screen porch, talking some but with long silences because Alice wasn't much of a talker, and Happy liked to nap.
Every so often we would hear a pickup coming up the drive, and the next thing we knew Uncle James or Uncle Wayne or Aunt Hilda and her husband "Preacher" (whose name was a mystery because he was a menacing alcoholic with a pencil-thin mustache and a penchant for wielding machetes with a head full of rotgut) would come to the back door, never the front, and plop down on the screen porch for a sit. We would tell the same story to each visitor about what their city slicker kin were up to there in Atlanta, then listen to stories about working at the textile factory, or Uncle Donald shooting the sheriff's hat off his head as he fled the bed of the sheriff's wife, or a violent confrontation with a group of black kids who had the temerity to try to swim in the Water Valley city pool. That was my family. They would float in and out all day long, for two days straight, always unannounced. The smart ones arrived close to midday, when Alice would put out a southern dinner for the ages, with chicken and okra and black eyed peas and fresh tomatoes from Happy's garden. It wasn't a problem if you missed it, because around 5:30 she'd put it all out again for supper.
After a few years Dad would stay at the Downtown Hotel up in Oxford, and spend as little time as he could justify sitting on that screen porch. Gradually the drop-ins stopped as well, as folks got old or got busy or just up and died.
So over four decades separate that time of dropping in from the present. No wonder I forgot it, even as it felt vaguely familiar here at Wyldswood when a pickup would come through the gate and ride past the house toward the back forty to check on a water trough or some such, or I'd get a knock on my office door so someone could impart unsolicited wisdom in the middle of the afternoon about raising ducks. And I just need to adjust to the rhythm of life here, and realize not everyone is riding around with a calendar filled with pre-planned appointments, as busy as their social lives might be. It's not rude. It's just different.
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