Low Gap

Yesterday I told my landlord, "B," that I will be moving out. I thought it was fair to give him ample notice. I do not have a place to move yet, but that is my intention. He has been a good landlord and I haven't been bothered at-all in the four years I have lived here.

Hearing about my plans to leave seemed to make "B" feel kind of sentimental about everything. He told me what a good tenant I have been and urged me to stay as long as I could. Then he proceeded to tell me more about the place that I live than I ever knew.

Long ago, when "B" was just a boy, he and his daddy cleared all the land where I live (the yard, the garden, the hay field and the back pasture) with a mule. He used to have to farm like that until he went away to the Navy. When he was a boy, some of his kin folk lived over in Sodom*. He used to take a mule over a gap on the ridge to get down into Sodom. He pointed out the spot in the ridge and said it was called Low Gap. He said back then all the people who lived over in Sodom Laurel and Guntertown would travel by foot over Low Gap down into Hickory Flats to get to Marshall. He said every week when people would get their welfare checks, they would walk from Sodom over Low Gap to Hickory Flats. There was a man who lived at the top of the cove beneath Low Gap who had a car. A lot of times he would give people a rive to 25/70, where they would catch a bus to Marshall to get their checks cashed and buy groceries. He said Low Gap through Hickory Flats was the main transportation route from people in Laurel to get to Marshall back then.

Then he told me of this lady named Granny someone who lived in one of the houses on Hickory Flats. She had the worst humpback of anyone he ever saw- got it when she was young. She was so humpbacked it wasn't even funny. She raised these 2 boys who were kin to her somehow. Their parents died, and she raised them. Even with that humpback she did everything for them 2 boys- cooked their meals, made their clothes, raised a garden, chopped wood. He said she was a real good woman, and everyone called her Granny.

He told me about an ole feller named Buddy who lived down in a shack until he died a few years ago. He used to walk up and down the highway every day.

"B" and I walked up the road to check a mare who is due to have a colt any day. He noticed that someone cut a doughnut in his bottom hay field. He kept repeating, "Who cut a doughnut on my bottom?" He was mildly upset about it. I guess his "bottom" referred to his bottom field... I had to look away when he said that for reasons that should be obvious.

I was so excited to get all this history off "B". It made me think I'll have to wait a spell and then remind him that I am moving soon and see if he comes out with even more good stuff from long ago... In the meantime I plan to walk over Low Gap into Sodom sometime this week.

*Note: Sodom is not only a rural part of Madison County, but it was a city destroyed by god because of its wicked ways in the old testament (Genesis 19:24-28) Apparently, Lot struck a deal with the Lord and the Lord spared he and his family by giving them time to flee the burning city. The only thing was they were not allowed to ever look back. Lot's wife, however, took one final peek and was turned into a pillar of salt (by the Lord of course).