The Legacy of a Logan Countian

Tomorrow we auction the home and farm where I was reared.  I remember the summer before I turned four-years-old when my father was building the house.  My mother took us to the construction site.  The walls were being framed.  My Mom and Dad took my twin brother and me to a corner of the house and said, "This is where your room is going to be!"  It was impossible for a three-year-old to imagine that room that was coming, but it is easy for this forty-eight-year-old to remember that day.

My brothers and I have spent many weekends over the last year readying for tomorrow.  Ever since my eighty-four-year-old mother moved into an assissted-living apartment a year ago, I knew this day would come.  I knew that the house could not just sit idle.  I knew that we would need to make sure there are plenty of funds to take care of her.  With my brothers and I living in three different cities, none of us are able to manage the house and farm. While I have been caught up in all the work and preparation these last few months, I haven't spent much time reflecting on what this sale might mean for me.  Today, I devoted myself to that reflection.

How do you deal with the removal of such a significant part of yourself?  This was the house and farm where I was molded.  Both sides of my family have lived in this part of Kentucky for nearly two hundred years.  My ancestors pioneered this country as part of what was then the Western Frontier.  Though I've lived in Florida, Tennessee and now Louisville for the last 28 years, I have always considered myself a Logan Countian.  I have never really expected to ever live here again, but this place has still been the internal base that I return to when I think about the world.  This is the place I have called home.

It was here that I learned about animals and plants, biology and agriculture.  It was here that I hunted and fished and learned to love the outdoors.  It was here that I created and improved things and learned to engineer.  I learned to ride motorcycles, grow tobacco, climb trees, birth calves, bale hay, build barns and sleep under the shade of century-old oaks.  I learned to "smell" a storm and could feel when the air was energized for lightning.  I can remember fearing that one day I would become urbanized and leave the land - and I did.

I learned other things here that drew me away.  My father taught me to study, to think and to walk as tall as any other man (admittedly hard at 5'-7").  My parents pushed me to excel and utilize the full potential God had given me.  My teachers introduced me to a broader world of the mind and showed me that there are other parts of life worth exploring. My community (of largely WWII vets) taught me that the world is in desperate need of men who will be selfless, who are true neighbors and whose character is unassailable.  They taught me my word was my bond, that my family deserved to be honored and that my community mattered.  My church and family introduced me to Jesus Christ through faithful teachings handed down through the millenia and showed me that there was a world that needed to hear of Him as well.

Today, as I climbed up into the tobacco barn that my brothers, my father and I built with our hands, memories flooded back in waves.  I remembered when I nearly fell from the barn's forty-foot tall apex during its construction.  I thought about the motorcycle wreck that could have taken my life.  I remembered when my sixty-five year old neighbor wrestled me (then a nineteen year-old buck) to the ground to prove a point about manhood.  I remembered when I was almost trampled by a two-thousand pound bull.  I thought about cool September mornings when hickory trees are full with nuts, as I peered into the limbs for squirrels.  I remember sitting at the dinner table and listening as the adults expounded Scripture and talked about what it meant to follow God.  I remember the black day in 1984 when I was called out of a college final exam to race home before my father passed away.

Tomorrow, I lose possession of that home base.  I lose the source of some of my most cherished memories.  I lose a connection to my past that is irreplaceable.  I dread this loss mightily, but thankfully, there is much more that I keep.  I have my wife and family.  I have friends I would have never known had I stayed put.  I have experiences which have shaped me for the better.  And no matter where I go, I will still carry the imprint of the Green Ridge of Logan County, Kentucky with me the rest of my life.  It has been more beneficial to me than all my other experiences combined, as God has used this place to set the trajectory of my life.

Someday, the house that my wife and I have built will be sold.  Someday, our goods will be boxed and placed in our yard for people we've never met to handle and try to cheaply obtain.  Someday, our assets will be divided and distributed according to our wills.  I pray that I leave more than this behind.  I pray I leave an imprint that points others to Christ.  I pray that those I meet will feel they have benefitted in some way from knowing me.  I pray that I leave sons who will be concerned with something more than gratifying themselves.  These are the things I learned in Logan County.  These things are not confined to a place, a house, a farm or a family.  These things promote a legacy that matters.  God grant me that kind of legacy.