Wayside Road
About 10 miles from my house is a short road in the neighboring county. It connects Highway 401, once a major north-south corridor before the interstate highway system, to Plank Road, which dates back to colonial times and used to connect the town of Fayetteville at one end to the Moravian community of Salem at the other. Today, what's left of it runs primarily through the training area for Ft. Liberty.
My grandparents built a house on Wayside Road in the early '70s during the year I started school. They didn't have to move far since they lived on a farm only a mile down from where the new house was built. The farm they lived on had been in my grandfather's family. The move took them closer to the farm where my grandmother had lived when they met. You could throw a rock from their new front yard to it.
Their place was a small ranch house with three bedrooms, although they later built an extra room off the back by closing in a porch. It was brick, with a fireplace. It was located on a curve in the road that many, many people took too fast. They lost count of the number of mailboxes they lost. Once, I was visiting when the military police escorted a young soldier to the door after he knocked down the mailbox while running from them. They brought him back to the house, made him apologize, and arranged to get it replaced on the spot.
Across the road was a small plot of land where my grandfather always tended a vegetable garden, growing tomatoes, okra, peppers, green beans, butter beans, field peas, and rows of sweet corn. There were pecan trees on the edge of the garden, and he would even fertilize them with post hole diggers and a bag of 10-10-10 ammonium nitrate. Back when satellite dishes were huge 10-ft in diameter monstrosities, he bought one for the express purpose of watching the Atlanta Braves play baseball. It sat right in the front yard. You couldn't miss it. My grandmother was not known for keeping her opinions to herself, but I never heard her complain about it being an eyesore.
The house was her workplace, and I don't mean in the traditional stay-at-home wife variety. While she didn't do what people called "public" work in my memory, she was an accomplished seamstress, and people came from all across the community with patterns for dresses, skirts, and pantsuits for her to make for them. Her sewing machine was always open unless she was expecting company, and you'd better not mess with her fabric scissors.
My early twenties were not my finest hour. When my first wife and children moved to another state, I went to Wayside Road to stay with my grandparents temporarily. It turned into a couple of years. It was the most fragile time of my adult life, and I don't know if I would have made it through without their support.
This evening, Wonder Woman and I traveled to Southern Pines, where our granddaughter is staying overnight for a horse show she'll be competing in tomorrow. To get there, we had to ride down Wayside Road. It was the first time I've been out that way in months and the first time I've been there since my grandparents' house was torn down. I made myself look at the small empty lot where it once stood as we passed by. There are subdivisions all up and down the road now and stoplights at both ends. It's not the little country road where my grandmother used to walk for her health anymore. In my memory, though, that's what it will always be. In my mind's eye, it will always be my favorite road with my favorite house and my favorite people. You can't tear down a memory.
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