History in an Old Shoe

Recently I checked out a page on Facebook that is dedicated to my hometown, Alexander City, Alabama (affectionately, or lazily, called Alex City by locals).  I'd been on the page a couple of times earlier and found some interesting posts that allowed me a few moments of memory floods.  This time, however, I read a post about someone who had written a novel about life in one of the mill villages in Alex City in the 1920's.  Having been raised in a textile mill family, my interest was high.  The author is Bob Whetstone.  The book is Grave Dancin'. 

I did a quick Google search and found the author's website.  A former Birmingham-Southern professor, he has actually written a few books.  I found the page for this particular book and found this excerpt:



I was dumbstruck.  A chill sort of crawled up and down my spine. 

As a child, I would go and play in the workshed that my dad had built behind our house.  We always called this small one-room structure the "little house" - In an old, wooden toolbox in the little house, there was an old, tattered leather shoe.  The story behind the shoe is the story you just read from the excerpt from Grave Dancin'.  My father had told me the story many times - and often I would go to the little house, take the shoe into my hands and get lost in the stories that my imagination would conjure up from the little bit I knew of the history of the shoe.  When I took a closer look at the picture on the cover of the book, I realized that I knew that picture.  It was a picture that, for most of my childhood had resided in one of the hall closets - an oval picture - of my grandfather, Jeff Tapley.  I knew immediately that Dock Tarley from this book was actually my grandfather.

I reached out to Bob Whetstone exposing my thoughts and curiosity.  Sure enough, he is my cousin.  The son of my favorite Aunt on my father's side of the family - Mary Whetstone.  This was an unexpected family connection - which, being mostly estranged from my family for the past decade and a half, was both sweet and bitter.

Reading the book was slow and laborous.  Not because the book was poorly written or difficult to follow, but because each sentence sent my mind on a search through memories, stories, rumors - most of which I thought were long forgotten.  Turns out, these memories were still there waiting to be unlocked. 

This was a fascinating read.  I chose to read a few pages at a time, on the subway too and from my office in Center City Philadelphia.  I was reintroduced to my father's half-sisters and half-brother, as well as being reintroduced to my grandmother.  This was also the first real introduction to the personality and life of my grandfather.

Bob Whetstone is a kind and wise man - the same traits that I remember in his mother, my aunt.  The aunts and uncles are all gone now.  Some living into their nineties.  In a recent email, Bob shared with me that he had told his sister about our reacquaintance.  She sent back a message - inviting me to come back South where "people love you - at least your cousins do".  I was deeply touched.

I just received his new book, Cotton Mary.  This is about his mom - with the personalities of her three more "colorful" sisters.  I just started reading it on Monday.  And today I already know that Mary Whetstone is still my favorite aunt - but for many, many more reasons than I ever knew before.