Hedgeville (Part One)

It's not really a name. Not a legal name anyway .... but it was known by all, in the little Illinois town I grew up in.

Five houses and an old shack stood this side of the levee. A small self-ordained community, and everyone was related. I spent a lot of time there while growing up. My Grandparents lived in one of the little houses there.

My Grandfather came there from Arkansas as a little boy and put down roots in that little river town called Mt. Carmel. He married my Grandmother, built a house there, and never left. It was their home. My Mother grew up in that two bedroom cracker box house, along with her two sisters and four brothers.

My Grandmother's house was plain. I never knew that she was poor. I think she knew, but she never complained. She never complained about not having money, or the finer things in life. She had her family, and she had her God. She worked as hard as she prayed, and I never remembered seeing her tired.

I do remember the coal stove that stood in the living room, and the water pump outside the back door. I remember before she had running water in the house, and before she had a telephone or an indoor toilet. I remember the pictures that hung on the living room wall, and I remember the old Jenny Lind spindle bed that stood in the corner of my Grandmother's bedroom. The bed that I know she slept in all of her married life. I remember that her closet held treasures, with the best being an old box of pictures that I loved.

Mainly, I remember her bible, sitting on a wood cabinet that my Uncle made for her. I loved her bible, and sometimes she would let me thumb through the pages. Once in a while I would come to a paper that she had written on, or a dried flower from her past. She never left me when I looked through her bible .... she was always right beside me. Right beside me, and always in a dress. I remember her hands, and her fingers .... they were so gentle, and she was so patient with me. .... and she loved me, and I knew it.

I remember long before the levee was built, when the river used to flood the Illinois banks. When I was small, we would get in a boat at my Aunt Grace's house and paddle almost half a mile to my Grandmother's house. What fun it was. It was exciting and it was an adventure. I don't ever remember the water getting in her house, but I remember we would tie a rope from the boat to the porch post, and climb out onto the back porch. As I think back, I always wondered why the old house was built up so high in the back.

My Grandmother never drove a car, and she rarely left her house. I remember my Mother or my Aunt would take her to church every week, and if I was lucky ... I got to go with her. She believed in God, and she never cussed. She never raised her voice, and she always laughed .... from deep within her belly.

As I grew older, I remember the days that I would visit there. My cousins and I played in the old hog lot next to her house. We sat in the middle of the road and sifted through the gravel to find the indian beads and Grandma gave us jars to keep our beads in. I loved spending the night there with my cousin. There was something so special about being there. I belonged there, to that area, to Hedgeville. It is my roots.

In the summertime, the men would go to the river and dig mussel shells to sell. I remember the smell on the river bank as they would cook the shells to open them. Every once in a while, a perfect pearl was to be found. I remember gathering the shells as they cooled down and I remember getting to sort through the pearls as if they were diamonds. On really hot days, I would get to wade into the river with my Father. I can still remember that feeling of mud between my toes as I felt for the shells in the river.

Hedgeville is gone now. Progress came along. The houses are gone and a new bridge is coming through. When I go over the bridge leading into Illinois, I am so sad. A part of my life is gone. It's missing now .... the houses are buried and only the levee stands. But in my mind, I can still see Hedgeville in all it's glory ... my Grandmother's garden, and her grandkids playing in the yard. I can hear the giggles, and I can hear my Grandmother calling out to us. It will always be my home.

Her name was Ruth Hedge. My Grandmother, and the woman that taught me about God, and about being humble and gentle and kind. She lived her life by a motto, and taught me to live mine the same way: to always give more than you take, and to always love.

It's funny how life goes. I've talked before about that time line of life that we all live on. My kids can't fathom the changes of a few years. They don't know life without modern conveniences, or luxuries ... and they don't know the wonderful things they've missed in their life. But thirty years later, they did get to live in Hedgeville, and to them it was wonderous. Come back to read part two.

Be Blessed Everyone.