Barefoot Memories of a Hillbilly - To Be His Valentine

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Moores Creek in the winter of 1940-41 was a pretty muddy place. The dirt roads well worn from people, mules, wagons and horses in the summer became rutted mud canals that made automobile travel ruggedly slippery at best. Snow gave way into sunshine and milder days, only to refreeze and thaw and refreeze. No sane man would attempt the journey in the falling of dusk, but who ever said a man in love was sane?

Winter of '40 found Mom and her sister Wanda playing and singing at church socials and pie suppers. Mom on guitar singing melody, Wanda and her banjo singing harmony. They were invited to play quite often, but traveling on foot on these cold nights thru the John Causey holler of Moore’s Creek to get home could be slickish underfoot. At one of these pie socials one of Mom's cousins offered them a ride home in his little auto. Traveling with him that night was his buddy, who just happened to have a crush on Mom. During the car jolting ride home over the rutted frozen mud route, the buddy got up enough nerve to ask if he could come courting. Mom agreed on the condition he asked permission from her folks. He braved up and did.

Long story short, Pap spent the remainder of the year and on into 1941 slogging thru the mud, giving his four buckle overboots a good workout. Carrying his carbide lantern that had become his companion thru his fox hunting nights, now it became his constant sidekick on his travels to and from the road into Moores Creek. He drove as far as possible, lit his lantern and walked the rest of the way, thru the hoot owl hollers and the wildcat squalls that seemed to be plentiful on these long treks to see his Valentine. Courting in these years wasn't an easy feat. Finally, as February began shifting into March, gathering his nerve, he sought permission from the future in-laws to marry their black haired daughter, and it was granted.  Just a week or two earlier, in the midst of February, she had agreed to be his Valentine.

More than 60 years later, Valentine's Day found him gathering paper and markers and scissors to create his Valentine card for his love. Every year, without fail, he created for her a homemade Valentine. Sometimes made from a brown paper bag, other times from hearts cut from newsprint, and sometimes simple handwritten notes asking her to once again be his Valentine. She received each "card" as if it were gold embossed and diamond crusted. The cards made her very happy, she saved them away, to be re-read when he was no longer at her side to ask her in person. They were valentines, true valentines, the sort that was for always.

I wear shoes now, but sometimes I have barefoot memories.