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    The Welcome Home Door and Other Stories: Tales of Appalachia and Beyond
    The Welcome Home Door and Other Stories: Tales of Appalachia and Beyond
    The Welcome Home Door and Other Stories: Tales of Appalachia and Beyond
    Ebook142 pages3 hours

    The Welcome Home Door and Other Stories: Tales of Appalachia and Beyond

    By Richard Rouse

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    About this ebook

    Lighthearted, humorous storytelling from a seasoned traveler firmly grounded now in rural Southern Appalachia. With a love of character and community, Rouse delights readers with subtle details of relationships, adjusting to country life, wisdom of nature and the landscape of domestic negotiations. Americana with a twist. Regional yet global.
    Snapshots and slices of life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9781887712163
    The Welcome Home Door and Other Stories: Tales of Appalachia and Beyond

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      The Welcome Home Door and Other Stories - Richard Rouse

      Nepo

      The Welcome Home Door

      Our cabin was located high in the Blue Ridge mountains near Mt. Rogers between two ridges. One was so steep that no trees could hang onto it and just the bedrock showed. When it would rain, water would run over the rock and down into a creek bed which our little spring fed into. That little creek ran down next to the cabin supplying our family with the sweet water that sustained my daddy’s few head of stock and us.

      We could sit on our porch as of an evening and watch the sun go down for its rest just before we retired for ours. I loved this little cabin. My daddy built it with his own hands just after Mamma said that she would have him.

      I remember coming home from my job at the store. Pulling my old truck a ways off, opening the door and sitting on the running board where I would unlace my work shoes, take off my socks and stuff them inside and step out on the warm grass. As I would walk toward the cabin and feel the grass under my feet and between my toes it was, as if, well, I used to get a sort of soft feelin’.

      I would walk up to the old sagging porch where they would sit in their chairs. Dad in the old rocker and Mamma in the straight chair with the heart carved in the back. She used to say that the straight back kept her steady and Daddy used to say that the rocker sort of hugged him.

      I would go up on the porch and I remember that the boards in the porch were old and weak and I would say to him once in a while, you know we need to replace those boards one day. Daddy would nod and say, I know, but had no intention of changin’ anything. After saying hello, I would squeeze around them as they had a strange habit, which I never questioned, and that was to have their chairs directly in front of the old front door and anyone wanting to get inside had to squeeze around them or their empty chairs.

      Behind them was the big heavy three-foot door that Daddy made out of an old black walnut that was knocked down in the storm of ‘29. This was my favorite part of the cabin. This big walnut had fallen down and Daddy had cut an eight-foot chunk of it off down near the roots at its thickest part with his single man crosscut.

      Making that door was a chore. He told me all about it one night when we were sittin’ on the porch smoking our pipes and just kind of talkin’ the evening away. He told me that after wrapping his log chain around that log and hooking it to the rear bumper of his truck, later mine, he started to drag it up out of the ditch where it lay and it began to roll away and almost pulled the truck off the road. But he said that he finally got it down to Junior Hick’s sawmill and had it cut into two-inch planks. After paying Junior a quarter he loaded the planks on his truck and carted them home where he proceeded to smooth the sides with his big hand plane.

      He said that all he had was a burlap bag over the front door opening and it seemed to him to take forever to smooth those boards. I remember Mamma coming out on the porch about then saying, Law, it did. I got so sick of chasing that little black pig out of the cabin I told your daddy, Mr. Stamps, ifin you don’t get that door done pretty soon we’re going to roast that pig early.

      Apparently, he got the boards all smoothed out and assembled and then the two of them raised the door up into its opening and Mamma sort of held it up while he placed the heavy hinges on it that Junior’s brother Billy made on his forge.

      Lord, I found out just how heavy that door was when we had to take it off and bring in Mamma’s new ice box I got her for a loving present.

      But what I liked most about it was what my daddy did up in the right-hand corner on the handle side of the door. There he had taken his saw and pocket knife and had inlaid into the door the words, Welcome Home with some maple he had set aside from the fire box.

      I didn’t mind struggling to get around those two beautiful people to reach the door and each time I pushed it open I would say to my self Welcome home.

      Well, things progressed along well for us for quite a while. Daddy slowly began to go to his little barn less and less and Mamma used to fall asleep in her straight back more and more.

      After I got out of school, I went to work at the general store at the four corners and when Mr. Bailey died Widda Bailey said that I should have it and made me a good deal. So I became the general store owner but I would still go back to the little cabin as of a night.

      Then came the fire. I’ll never forget it. The bell rang down the street at the firehouse and the volunteers were coming out of doors all up and down the street. I threw off my apron, ran out of the store and reached the front of the fire station only seconds behind Billy who had already swung the big doors open. I ran over to the old Hollands, jumped in and it started with a roar. Billy had swung upon her by this time and took his usual seat next to me and pointed to the right. I started her going out the doors and turned right.

      As I began to gain speed, others began to grab the old vehicle and heave themselves upon her. Junior was following in his pickup with a few men and when we cleared the limits we must’ve had twenty or so.

      I yelled through the engine noise, Whose place we going to? Billy acted as if he hadn’t heard me so I yelled it again only louder. By this time, going in the direction of his hand signals I had a sinking feeling as we seemed to be heading in the direction of home. He must’ve gotten the call from the Hick’s, who lived near us, as they had just had a new hand crank telephone put in.

      Billy wouldn’t look at me. Usually we would be hollering over the noise of the big engine. He’d be urging me to pour it on and me handling the old vehicle like a race car driver down at the dirt track in Rural Retreat and yelling.

      By this time I had the Hollands going as fast as I could up Slippery Creek Road. We were going around corners so fast that many a scrub oak was run over.

      When we pulled into the yard the building was pretty well down and there was no sign of them. I jumped out of the cab and ran toward the house. Billy ran around the front of the truck and grabbed me as I went by. It’s too late Harold, it’s too late. I struggled with him and then as the porch roof fell in I sank to the ground, my head swimming, tears falling out of my eyes.

      The other men unrolled the hose and started splaying water on the front of the blaze and after a half hour or so it began to die and then they just stood there looking first at the embers and then at me. I just sat on the ground staring straight ahead at where the porch with its old rocker and straight back used to be.

      Slowly the men began to roll the hose back up, shaking their heads and I could hear one of them say, Late again. By this time others were coming to me and squatting down, placing their worn soot-covered hands on my shoulders, expressing their concern for me and looking back at where the little cabin used to be. Some of their wet faces expressing their own sorrow over my loss.

      The fire was out now and just smoldering here and there and I believe that Billy was trying to get me to my feet. But I couldn’t move or speak. Then I heard it. A muffled voice saying, Harold, Harold? Billy heard it too and looked at me. I jumped up and ran to where the front of the building used to be. Looking down I saw that big, old, charred front door laying there smoldering and again heard, Harold, which seemed to be coming from it. Don’t you do this to me old door, I screamed. Billy, more rational, ran to the truck where he grabbed his big leather gauntlet gloves. Running back to the door he reached down and tried to lift it. More at myself by then, I reached down and grabbed a corner. I could feel the awful heat burn my hands but lifted anyway. The door came free with a sudden whoosh, but we kept pulling until we had pulled it up and back over.

      We dropped to our knees and stared into the root cellar, directly under the old porch and saw two old people huddled there with their arms around each other. The older of the two said, Harold.

      We reached down and as gently as we could we pulled those two burned, soot-covered, frightened but alive people out of that hole.

      After they were taken care of I walked back to where the front of the cabin had been. I wanted to look at that old door, my favorite part of the cabin, which had fallen over that root cellar, protecting my parents who had fallen in. It lay there still smoldering, but through the black charred wood, in the upper right-hand corner I could just make out the words, Welcome Home.

      An Unlikely Flying Companion

      Thinking about all of my adventures I remember a time when I found myself on a small island down in the Caribbean, suffering from one of the maladies that adventurers, especially those that sail the high seas, suffer from but seldom talk about. It was motion sickness. I decided to do something about it.

      It’s not fun adventuring on a boat when you never see the deck.

      By telephone, I made an appointment with a doctor in New York City to check out the problem. Late in the afternoon of that same day, I arranged for a ride to the airport with the local taxi service.

      At the appointed time, an old yellow Chevy with hand painted black checkers on the sides and an Indian driver who spoke impeccable Indian but no English, pulled up in a cloud of dust

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