Poem the Call Away and the Kingston Hwy Rock Store and Johns Store

   This last week had some exchanges with a kidney Doctor in Arkansas. Shared the Robert Bly poem The Call Away and he got several comments on his facebook. Recently he wrote a piece on his facebook about two gas stations near his home. That sparked in me thoughts on the Rock Store and the Johns Store on the Kingston Hwy about a quarter mile apart.  they are about five miles east of Rome Ga on the east side of Dykes Creek in walking distance of my grandfather's fram he bought in the early fifties and the Baptist church where was strong influence. Retired chief army Chaplain Doug Carver creist my Grandfather's faith and witness as big reason he rose in the ranks.

   Woven into these musings will be a reference to the chapter in Cormac McCarthy's last novel The Passenger and his return to his grandmother's farm near Harriman and Oak Ridge  Tennessee . 

      This passage reminded me of themediations I had on my Grandmother's farm in my thirties, a break, a retreat from the first thirty years of my life. I could almost describe Nanny and Papa.s 120 acres in similar language .

    Spot passages from pages 165 to 167 of the novel

        When he got back to the creek he followed it up into the woods and crossed on the flat stones below the old wooden spillway. The spillway boards were cuped and back with age, and the water that ran over them looked dark and heavy. Of the gristmill itself nothing was left save the stones of the foundation together with the rustd iron axle that had once carried the wheelmill and the rusted iron collars in which it once had turned. ( continuing for a page and half of rediscovering his grandparents farm we come to this)

      Bobby understood that over a few hills lay Oak Ridge which  brought his father from Princeton in the forties.  His existence was owed to Adolf Hitler. The forces of history that ushered his troubled life into the tapestry were those of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the sister events that sealed forever the state of the West

     Ive been in and out of Rome Ga since my first year of life and lived there good bit of the time from the fall of 81 through December of 86.  The fall of 81 I got entangled with a former Miss Alabama contestant who made a significant impression on me for a good six months. She lived on the east side of Rome near the neighborhood of the shortlived South Caroina coach , Will Muschamp formerly at Florida. Across the hwy from them was the Ledbetter Mansion, farm and estate .  She'd live in Atlanta for a couple years near the Big Chicken and would often take the Kingston HWY where Johns and the Rock Store became part of her traveling memories just a few miles out.

      Sadly an upscale Dollar General has located about two football fields east of the Rock Store screwing up the neighborhood which only 150 some odd years ago was the founding of Morrison Campground --worth a google search, and the potable spring water; just a few years after Sherman left Rome in the fall of 64. The Novel The March takes it up from there.

     Come back to this blog soon as I have a great story about Tom Edsall of the Wah Post and a ride I caught at Johns store in june of 86