Jim Carson

Shady

There really is a place called Shady Valley
Green like an Irish postcard lying in the Smoky Mountains
Go east in Tennessee about as far as you can go without hitting Virginia
It’s there home to a few hundred souls used to be about a half dozen last names
Rockwell’s people

Go over the Holston Mountain from Bristol and there’s a place to pull off if nature calls
Known to the locals as Dogwood Bench but bring your own paper
Or come along the creek from Damascus or across from Mountain City also a real place
Stay off the Elizabethton road unless you have a stout heart it’s not for the faint
Or weak brakes
There is one stoplight or used to be a post office and a couple of stores volunteer fire department tractor supply

Mom grew up there high on the mountain above in the apple orchard
Rose before dawn to milk the cow ice on the windows in winter -inside
Walked a mile down in the snow to catch the school bus a true story not the
Kind you make up to shame a whining child

I spent happy times there in summers as a child I remember the time we bought
The old jeep and painted it with green house paint the weathered farmhouse where my grandparents lived with the spooky second floor and soothing rain pattering
On the tin roof sitting on the front porch swing waving at the cars going by
A simpler time

I remember Plummers store dark dusty wood floor where a body could get about
Anything you would need in Shady yellowed paper on merchandise of unknown age
RC colas bobbing in the old ice chest with the opener on the front so cold you could
Hardly stand to grab one but nothing ever tasted better

I remember my one and only White Christmas snow so deep our little dog was nothing
But a moving miniature snow canyon out of sight and emerging
A shivering drowned rat when he came inside
The smell of frying chicken and holiday treats

I heard they are building luxury homes on the mountainside now
shame
Everything changes and not often for the better- I haven’t been in a while
But will probably go back some time I’ve been busy here working on my own little valley
Memories for my child

Frog Strangler

A wonderful palette
This English language
More of a mongrel mutt
Amalgam of flotsam and jetsam from the great
Root languages

Plastic fungible
Kneaded like so much raw dough by the
Inhabitants of each region to suit their own unique
My roots in the mountains of eastern Tennessee

No objective observer me
But
I prefer the lilting ya’ll to a nasally you guys
Understand the difference between dinner and supper
Hate to see a feller with a hitch in his get-along
Know that storm clouds may bring a frog strangler
And that it’s not a reptile assassin

Would never
Ever
Let a piece of grandma’s fried chicken go beggin’
 

Sweet Tea

You can’t get sweet tea in NEW YORK CITY
Or decent gravy
If you order it folks look at you like you’re an alien
Think grits are something your shoes pick up off the pavement
I prefer to sip mine in a warmer clime

The ingredients are simple:
A place to park your truck-preferably gravel
That certain comforting squeak of the front door
The linoleum worn in the ghostly patterns of thousands of trips between the pick-up window and the booths
Cracked vinyl cobwebs of cigarette burns stitched by artful applications of duct tape
Fried meat varieties
The freshest vegetables cooked beyond the point of surrender
Cat head biscuits-gravy
Stir and enjoy

For the more advanced there are actually two types of sweet tea
Regular and sweet tea darlin
I prefer the latter where there is as much sugar in the voice as the glass
You want some sweet tea with that darlin?

She’s a few years past prime
Her once trim figure settling a bit in the usual places
Straining the seams of her man made fabric
Perhaps offering an extra button open to my view
Her hair neatly combed and sprayed stiff in the same style she’s worn for 20 years
Used to be the fashion
Framing an easy smile crinkled at the edges by a few too many Camels
The quiet simple confidence of knowing that though she may not be much
She’s the best at what she does-takes my order

She’s my anchor though
Steadfast against the currents trying to pull me away from home
Worn smooth by the effort but unyielding keeping me grounded in a better simpler time
And place
I’ll leave her a few extra bucks tip and come back whenever I can
May I please have some more sweet tea darlin?

Jim Carson is an architect and aspiring poet and composer living in Atlanta with his wife and daughter and Snickers the wonder dog. His works have appeared or are forthcoming at Hungry River, Ink Sweat and Tears and Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal.