By Joyce Caughron Rhodes
Memories are strange. They are reflections of our lives and can recaptured an event from a sound, a touch, a sight, a smell or a taste and this can trigger the memory. Some of these memories are good and some not so good. Some are easy to recall and some we have to really concentrate on to bring them to light. This memory was one of the easy ones.
First, I was thinking about the large old barn that was on the property Momma and Daddy purchased after my great grandmother died. Then I remembered my sister and I listening to my mother telling about her two grandfathers. We were both fairly young my sister was five years younger than me anyway, Momma was telling us that her grandfathers were pretty big farmers and that they owned a lot of land. I remember looking at Carol while she was looking at me. We raised our eyebrows at each other and said: ìReally.î Mother liked things bigger than life so we figured she colored it up just a tad, to impress us.
Well, years later when the two of us were working on our family history we were shocked to find in old records in the various Court Houses, the deeds of many acres of land that once was owned by these two men.
Three of the records really surprised me. The land one of my great- grandfathers owned in Hickman, Kentucky was sold to the Roper Family where all the pecans were later grown.
We also found that this same great-grandfather owned 200 acres on the water side of Reelfoot Lake and the last one really surprised us when we found that he also owned the land where the United Methodist Church is now standing in Tiptonville.
You can imagine our shock to discover that Momma hadnít embellished this account at all.
Now, back to the barn. This barn was very big with a huge loft and a tall pitched roof. Now all the kids in the neighborhood loved to play in that barn. There were many rooms or stalls and a steep ladder nailed to the wall leading to the loft. Thatís where we all liked to go; to the loft. We were up so high and looking over everything made us feel great. We started talking about being able to parachute from the
large window. This was once used to load hay up by a pulley.
My brother said, ìI bet you couldnít parachute from here.î This was another dare. ìI bet I can,î I told him. I climbed down the ladder and went straight into the house. I got one of Mommaís sheets and marched
straight back to the barn and up the ladder. I had a pretty good size audience and was going to show them how it was done. I grabbed the four corners of the sheet and walked over to the large opening and looked down.
It looked so far down. I almost got cold feet but out the window I sailed. To my surprise the chute did not open. I thought it would billow above my head but that didnít happen. I made a crash landing on the ground.
My audience did not laugh because they couldnít decide if I was alive or dead, since the sheet covered me like a shroud.
This was my last effort to use a parachute or jump from a barn.
