Once when I was little...

Once when I was little, I was sitting a couple of feet from my grandfather on the front porch. The air was still in the morning heat which was mounting with the intentional deliberation of a large geared clock. The front porch had a stillness about it that I often wondered about both then and many years later when I returned as a grown man. It was like some sort of unearthly stage of sorts. It stood a good five or six feet off of the ground, and was the main landing to the entrance of the magical house that was the home of my grandparents in south central Texas.

Pom-pa shifted his feet. A slow act of deliberation as he slowly dragged the soul of his shoe closer to him. It sounded like a labored breath and I could hear every grain of sand trapped between the leather of his shoe and the bright sparkle of the concrete porch. While it may have sounded like a labored breath, it was more like the winding of that big mysterious clock that was even now mechanically increasing the temperature like an oven. Pom-pa didn’t seem to notice. He made me aware of my feet. My thoughts wandered between the intermittent bursts of dialog that punctuated the chewing of his tabacco. His were the shoes of a man who didn’t much care about comfort or performance. Just a piece of leather, wrapping his foot in a style that suggested a fashion long since forgotten by time itself. A big grasshopper inched his way across the edge of the porch in the now almost blinding white light. I looked at my feet. They were in sharp contrast to Pom-pas. Bright blue and white colored adidas. Even the shape of my shoe was technologically advanced. Aerodynamic. Next to Pom-pa’s shoes mine were like an exotic sports car, while his were rather like the rusted dented up old truck that he honestly seemed to prefer. But there was something about the old man. Something mysterious. Something that the little voice in the back of my head told me to hold reverence for. Something deep and exciting and frightening and amazing all wrapped up in my confusion about how to feel about this man. I sensed a darkness in him. But I also sensed a strength in him that I wasn’t certain that I’d ever run into before. Nobody else seemed to have it. It was just a feeling that Pom-pa always knew what to do. It didn’t matter WHAT happened. Pom-pa KNEW, what to do.
Pom-pa spat at the grasshopper and it stopped exactly short of it. A warning not to come any closer to the door. The grasshopper seemed to get the message and slowly retreated.
“It’s like I was telling ya Chiron, “ my woolgathering snapped to sharp focus as he broke his silence. A breath of wind rustled the leaves of the trees around us and whistled through a giant spiderweb over our heads where a spider bigger than my hand could be seen surfing the breeze. “It’s all in yor head.” I listened attentively as Pom-pa chewed the wisdom out of the tabacca .

“Say you got ta make a long trip now.” “Why what you wont to do is, yew goin’ find yo’self a beg ROCK.” I listened, enrapt with curiousity. “An’ then you goin’ find yo’self nuther beg ROCK.” “Not so beg you caint walk right, but pret near beg assa yo-cun carry.”

The cicadas let loose a silence shattering blast of sound as pom-pa continued.


“So you got TWO beg ROCKS and you go on and make yor way now, way you’ve gotta go.”

“And when you git to where you can’t go ONE STEP FARTHER, no matter how hard you try,............why you put one of them rocks down. You’ll feel refreshed and realize that you might have a LOT more energy left and can keep on goin’. So then you keep on way you’ve got to go tell you caint go ANY FARTHER. Then you put the other of them rocks down. Sure enough, like MAGIC you’ll be refreshed and can keep on goin’. It’s all in yor head Chiron, how hard things are.”

Leslie Caldwell was a mountain man. One of the last of a dying breed. A man who had his home taken from him in the name of “manifest destiny”, and his pecan orchard now resides at the bottom of lake Belton. The undocumented original discoverer of the mounds Indian burial grounds who had his find stolen from him by some collegiate academics. But that’s okay. The family knows what he did. A man who, like all of us had more than his share of demons and challenges, but who underneath it all was an incredible human being.

Pom-pa was right. I sometimes find myself back in the body of that small boy listening to him tell me about life challenges in that same matter of fact tone that he always had about him. As he used to encourage me that the true journey was not the one made by my feet, but the one made by my head.