Eddie Lowe
Just A Thought
Have you ever enjoyed a place or a thing for a long period of time, only to look back one day and realize it was gone? The bird—and more so the song—of the whippoorwill used to be a favorite and familiar sound to me. These birds almost seemed magical, singing just before the break of dawn and again just after sunset. As I look back, maybe it wasn’t their song alone. Perhaps it was also a certain season in my life I warmly remember. Regardless, their songs and their presence disappeared, and somehow I didn’t even notice at first.
Another beautiful bird I miss hearing is the bobwhite quail. Both the whippoorwill and the bobwhite quail have one song—their own names, sung over and over. Another similarity is how hard they are to spot. The bobwhite hides in thick brush, and the whippoorwill sings in the dark. Sadly, I couldn’t tell you the last time I heard either one. A quick search reveals the reason: their habitats are nearly gone.
The thought behind this article is bigger than birds. We all can relate to things that once were, but are no more. They pass whether we realize it or not. My heart swells when I remember long summer days spent swimming in the river just off Riverside Drive in Mount Airy. AES now sits there, but I remember when it was a cow pasture. As young boys, we would run across that field for two reasons: first, it was a cow pasture, and second, we believed there was a bull in it!
The neighborhood I grew up in was a short bicycle ride away. We would stash our bikes, climb a barbed-wire fence just across Riverside Drive, and head straight to the water. Summers passed, years rolled on, and we all grew up, moving away with families and jobs. Life moved forward, but the memories remain—just like the song of the whippoorwill. If I pause and think back, I can still hear them both.
Today, when I ride past, I can hardly believe that parking lot used to be a cow pasture. In the back, hidden in the woods, was a great “swimming hole,” as we called it. As a boy, I also remember riding through the Beulah community with my dad. His stories rambled on and on. He would point out a field or a barn, and it was as if time rolled back. In his mind he saw poor farm boys pulling tobacco in the hot sun, pulling pranks, and drinking short, cold Cokes from Sparger’s store, where Mr. Sparger kept the drinks chilled in a cooler filled with cold water.
At one particular field, Dad always laughed when we passed. That was where he and his brother Doug hid their extra sodas. Their father, my Grandpa Lowe, would buy a carton of drinks, and there was always one extra. Dad and Doug slipped back to that field and tucked the extra bottles in a row. As fate would have it, one day Grandpa was plowing with a mule named Kate, and the plow jumped out of the row, turning up all the hidden bottles. Dad said they roared with laughter as each bottle popped up, one after another.
When I looked at that field years later, all I saw was a dilapidated barn and an overgrown, forgotten place. But when my dad looked, time rolled back, and youth rushed in, if only for a moment. For me, the sound of those bottles popping meant the same as standing in the dark grinning at the call of a whippoorwill, or hearing a quail sound off at the edge of my Grandpa Hiatt’s field in Cana, Virginia.
Our family has always passed down stories, and in my youth I put them to memory. A genealogy search won’t reveal wealth on either side of my family, but the stories handed down are treasures. I’m sure we all have memories we carry that may seem simple or even silly to others. But life has shown me this: memories remain, even when so many other things go away.
