The hills of East Tennessee are charming to me. I have history here. Besides my little college apartment, these hills were the first place I ever lived as an adult away from home.

I learned how to be a husband here. I learned how to suck it up at work when the older men called me “boy.” I learned that ground hogs are called whistle pigs. I warmed my toes by the heat of my first coal-fired furnace here. I drove in the snow for the first time here. I met a bare-footed middle-aged woman whom I admired because she was tough as nails. I hunted grouse on slopes so steep if you fell, you’d roll downhill for a week.

These hills speak to me.

Back behind a little tin covered garage at the house we rented in town, I grew the best tomatoes I have ever grown, before or since. I had my first experience of playing music with a banjo player. I learned to get up on one ski in the Holston River.

It was from the little town of Blountville, Tennessee that I put a small pinch of lemon meringue pie in a Ziploc bag and mailed it to my dad back in Georgia. That was back when the address was simple, Route 1, Locust Grove. He would mail me clips of Lewis Grizzard from the AJC with his lefthand slanted note in the margin, “Good one.”

I’ve only lived two places outside of Georgia and this was one of them.

Beth and I had our first big disagreement here in these hills that lasted for three days. Mom and Dad came to visit right in the middle of our spat. It was obvious that the air was thick with angst. We had been married only a few months.

Dad said, “Let’s take a ride.”

Somewhere along the blacktop roads in the hollers of Sullivan County, he enlightened me on the finer points of swallowing my pride. I never forgot that.

Every life has a beginning. Mine was here.

My folks had their beginning in Griffin, Georgia when they got married. It always seemed strange to me to think of them living in an upstairs room of a boarding house. A small cook stove. A rented space. They had their own beginning that was obscure and unknown to me. Their neighbors in the other half of the upstairs were Scott and Helen Loftin. Years later we would travel all the way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to visit with them.

Beginnings stay with you.

Before 1978, I never knew an existence that did not include the farm outside Hampton. It was a time before kids when young love was tested. New ways were discovered. The life that I would have one day began to take shape, the effects of which have lasted over four decades.

If you knew me in high school, you probably never knew I had a life in Tennessee once upon a time. But coming back here reminds me of how important those years were. The names of the people I’ve known come back to me in a flood of memories.

The interesting thing about this trip is that Marion is with me, and she wants to know that part of my life. She is unafraid to know the stories about Beth and me, just as I am eager to know her story with Mike.

Our intent was simply to spend the New Year’s weekend in Johnson City. Though it had occurred to me, making a stop in Blountville was not on my radar. But the more we talked about my life there, the more she insisted that we go there.

“Who do you want to see?” she asked.

She got on her phone and started to look up some of the names from my past. She found an obituary where my buddy, Clyde, had passed away a couple of years ago. That sealed it. I would go see Judy.

We rolled into town on State Route 126, off the interstate. I turned into the old neighborhood and when I made the corner, their house was immediately familiar to me. The only change was the garage doors which had been added to the carport.

I left the truck running and knocked on the front door. Judy came to the door. She had a quilt draped over her shoulders, clutched in front.

“Hey Judy. You don’t know who I am, do you?”

I just showed up without warning. She stood for a moment with that deer-in-the-headlights look. She was still in her PJs. I told her who I was.

“Good Lord,” she said. “Come on in. Do you have Beth with you?”

I stepped inside the doorway, and we hugged.

“Let me go get some clothes on and comb this hair. I’m a mess.”

I introduced her to Marion. She called her daughter, Lisa, who came right over. The East Tennessee twang was thick. It felt right and I joined right in. She asked Marion if it was okay to talk about Beth and, of course, she said it was. We reminisced about how our lives had changed without Clyde and Beth. She told me about others who had passed away and some who had remarried. Wayne had lost Jeanie. David had finally married later in life.

“What about you?” I asked.

“I don’t want another man,” she said. “I’m finally getting to do things the way I want to do them.” She winked and I understood.

We left that day with full hearts and more stories to tell than I realized I had in me. We even came back to Blountville the next morning to go to church. It was a small reunion of surprise and hugs. We had lunch with Paul Gebhardt and his new wife. Susan died 8 years ago. I had no idea.

We drove past the old house where I grew tomatoes. A four-lane highway had replaced the old two-lane winding road that went to Bluff City. We drove along the Watauga River near Piney Flats. The knobbed hills and hollers and cedars spoke of a time when I could never have anticipated how much my life would change.

My dreams were different then. I was different then. I’ve had a lot of years since to grow into the life God has given me. It was the beginning to a life that was to include some of my greatest joys and deepest sorrows.

You cannot know at first where life will take you. When you start out, you don’t think about where you might end up. There’s no way to anticipate fully what could be.

As these hills faded in the rearview mirror, I couldn’t help but reflect on the events and people who have been a part of my past. I am a grateful man, for sure. I cannot change what has gone behind me. What lies ahead is still unknown.

When Marion planned our trip to East Tennessee, she had no idea about my life there. But because she shared the journey with me, there’s a new memory in these hills.

Maybe even another new beginning.