A RED LOBELIA EVENING

A RED LOBELIA EVENING

“What you got a jacket on for?” my landlord asked as he slowed down in his car to say hello to Dango and me on our evening walk. “Well”, I said, “it is 62 degrees and this windbreaker feels just about right.” He laughed and went on down the lane and I went back to pondering. Some evenings are just made for pondering and wandering, I do believe.
After a long, but good, day down at the Reynolds Homestead, I stopped to drop some political material off at the home of some of my friends from church. There’s not too many of ‘our persuasion’ up here on the mountain, but I certainly really like all of us who are! They were busy making salsa from all their fresh garden produce and the smells were intoxicating with that comforting aroma of home. I would have liked to have taken them up on their offer to sit and chat and have a glass of wine, but I knew Dangie would be waiting for me. After twenty minutes of saying I needed to go but each of us bringing up another thing to chew or chuckle over, I finally headed on home, feeling blessed in knowing such folks.
The blessings continued. Sitting on the little round table that belonged to Grandma, just inside my front door (frankly, I don’t even know if I have a key to my house…..), was a big bag of roasting ears (as my mom called corn on the cob). Another dear friend was sharing his bounty and I had supper ready in a few moments flat. How many times growing up was supper a platter of roasting ears and sliced tomatoes? Ambrosia -- the food of the gods.
“Dango”, I said, and he looked up at me with that look of ‘is this one of those evenings when you talk the whole time we’re walking?’ “Yes, hear me out. I had the most interesting of small world happenings over the weekend. Where shall I begin? My mom had a best friend back in Greenbrier County, WV, when they were both college aged and grandpa was the minister at Louise’s family church. Mom graduated from Wesleyan, got married and headed to Chicago and Louise went to Berea College and met Tom, whom she married. Over the years, then decades, Tom and Louise would send a postcard to mom and our family about once a month or so. The friendship was deepened through postcards, which, as you know, Dango, warms my heart. Tom and Louise lived in Winston-Salem and I really can only remember meeting them a time or two, though I knew them intimately through their cards and letters. Louise was especially diligent to send Grandma Flanagan postcards after her stroke and subsequent blindness, and the teen-aged Bethie (that’s me, Dangie) would read them to her. One time, about 1974 or so, Louise sent a postcard of a place called the Reynolds Homestead, down in Patrick County, Virginia. She told the story of how No Business Mountain, a range surrounding one side of the plantation, most likely got its wonderful name – there were so many moonshine stills up there that the revenuers had “no business’ going up there! It was about 20 years later that I unknowingly followed the brown history signs on the highway and stumbled across this incredible 1840s House, beautiful grounds….it all looking vaguely familiar though I knew I had never been there in this lifetime anyway. As a tour guide took me through the House and told me the story of how the mountain got its name, I snapped my fingers – Louise and her postcard!”
“But, Dango, the tale doesn’t end here,” I said (by this time he was actually a little bit captivated). “You know when I drive off to work most mornings and wave at you from Bonnie Blues’ window, I’m heading down to my work as an “historical” something or other at the Reynolds Homestead. Well, one day a week or so ago, I had an email from a professor at Wake Forest University asking me some questions about the history of the House and the Reynolds family. I enjoyed delving into some books and asking questions of more learned souls, researching and doing some history detective work. After I had sent her answers, I noticed she wanted a calendar of our events and she had sent her mailing address – Royall Drive, Winston-Salem. Hmmmm…Louise lives on Royall Drive, but surely that was the city and not like here in Patrick County or back home in West Virginia where people tend to know their neighbors. But what the heck, I would ask. I received a reply that brings warm tears to my eyes. “Oh, yes, “writes the professor, “Louise is my favorite person in all of Winston-Salem. My teen-age son visits her often because he says she is the most interesting person he has ever met. Our cat must feel the same way because about 5 years ago he started going over to Louise’s and spends all day and then comes home to spend the night with us.” My, oh my, Dango, is mom looking down and having a good laugh right now or what? Life is so full of ‘coincidences’ – in fact so full of them that I wouldn’t even call them that, eh?”
For the past couple weeks, Dango and I had been admiring the red lobelia in a neighbor’s lower swampy field. I had no trouble hearing dad’s voice urging me to “go and pick just one – the most beautiful flower in the world”, he’d say as I accompanied him on a housecall in the rural parts of our county in WV, and I’d hesitantly crawl through a fence to get my dad ‘just one’ of these cardinal flowers. He’d practically purr and murmur, “Wont Mother just love this?” (“Oh, yea”, I would think in my 8 year old mind, “only if she doesn’t know you sent me into some farmer’s field and I could have been shot or eaten up by a swamp cow or something!!”). I’d thought about asking the nice neighbor woman who lives there if I could pick one, but she has an abundance of cats and Dango has a much too strong interest in cats, so we’d been content to look over the bank. But tonight, for the first time, I saw one growing beside the bridge, the spot where Dango takes his daily splash in the creek. With my heart beating and a very guilty conscience for picking something only ¼ mile from the Blue Ridge Parkway, a national park at that, I plucked that flower and held it like a tiny baby on the one mile walk back up the hill to home, smiling all the way. The only time I loosened my hold was to take down the big bag of tomatoes hanging from my next door neighbor’s tree. He always leaves his garden sharings there for me to find. A red lobelia evening indeed.