THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Christmas at
poet Byron Herbert Reece’s house
Byron Herbert
Reece composed several poems about Christmas. I have taken writer’s
license in this story to imagine how he might have written the poems
during a week of snow leading up to Christmas as World War II raged in
1942. He still had regrets that he was rejected for service at his
physical examination because of a nervous tic in his face. Having lived
in the same community as Poet Reece, growing up on a neighboring farm
near his family, knowing how we all lived during the wintertime, and
having heard him speak as a lay preacher at Salem Church, it was not
hard for me to imagine this story:
It was a week
before Christmas. Hub Reece, as his family, friends and neighbors knew
him, went on his regular rounds feeding and caring for the farm
animals, milking the cows and making sure all the animals were
comfortable in the barn alongside Wolf Creek.
Returning to
the house that cold winter morning, he noted how the clouds formed over
nearby Blood Mountain. Snow is in store, he thought, and soon Choestoe
Valley and these mountains will be a fantasy-land of white. Already,
ice crystals were forming along the edge of Wolf Creek as the water
flowed over time-worn stones. He heard the melody made by water on
rocks, its rhythms beating out iambic lines that played on the chords
of his imagination.
The odor of
bacon, eggs and hot biscuits met him as he opened the kitchen door. His
mother, Emma Lance Reece, took the pail of milk. Hub quickly washed up
and the family sat down to a hearty early morning meal. Hub and his
father Juan discussed the weather, both noting the signs of impending
snow.
“I’ve shored up
the animals,” Hub told Juan. “And there’s enough wood on the front
porch for both the fireplace and the kitchen stove to get us through
several weeks of bad weather.”
“And enough
food in the cellar and preserved, even for Christmas,” said Emma. We
can use the cured ham for our Christmas dinner, and I will make a stack
cake from the dried apples.”
“Don’t forget
the peanut brittle and the candy canes we enjoy making from sorghum
syrup,” said Eva Mae, Hub’s sister, a teacher at Pine Top School. “I’ll
make these Christmas treats,” she said.
With all the
crops gathered in and the animals sheltered in their stalls, Hub Reece
had a luxury on his hands seldom known to this farmer-poet. Time. Time
to write poems that edged his imagination as poignantly as if the Muse
were there in person dictating what he should write. “Excuse me,” Hub
said. “feel strangely moved on this cold day to go up to my attic room
and write. I will sit by the chimney where I will be warm from the
fireplace below.”
“Hub,” his
mother addressed him. “What about Christmas at church” You know if a
big snow comes, our pastor may not be able to travel the roads from
Blairsville to Salem Church for the Christmas service. Since you’ve
been made a lay preacher, you may have to substitute. Do you have
something in mind, if this happens?”
“Mother, you’re
always thinking up ways for me to preach!” Hub teased Emma.
“Don’t worry,
Mother. We’ll have Christmas at Salem Church one way or the other.”
Comfortably
settled in his attic room, Hub began thinking about Christmas and its
deep meaning. How could he get its truths into simple and meaningful
lyrics? Taking his pad and pencil in hand, he began to write: “When I think of Christmas time/It’s not of candlestick
nor chime, It’s not of bells nor mistletoe/ It’s of a Babe born long
ago.” The lines almost wrote themselves, coming in steady cadence until
ten stanzas were on the page. He read what he had written. How could he
improve its message, rhythm, rhyme? The poem covered Christ’s life from
birth to death in a simple but profound poem. The last stanza was a
plea for the present age to keep Christmas with reverence and honor:
“Therefore let My Birthday be/A time of joyful jubilee/With the Host
hosannas sing;/I am born anew to be thy King/On Christmas day,/On
Christmas day,/On Christmas day in the morning.” [When
I Think of Christmas Time was later published
in A Song of Joy and Other Poems, p.
112-113].
He was in an
extremely creative mood. He thought of the newborn lambs in their own
barn. His mother wanted them to raise a few sheep so she could process
the wool and use it to knit socks, sweaters and scarves for the family.
He wrote: “Since Christ was a lamb O/A lamb O,/A lamb O, Since Christ
was a lamb O,/Blessed are the sheep.”
The four
stanzas pictured Christ as a baby lamb, a child, a man, the Savior.
When he read his penciled lines, he felt a sense of accomplishment.
Could he sing this poem if the occasion arose? Maybe so. [Since
Christ Was a Lamb O was published in Songs
of Joy and Other Poems, p. 114-115.]
Just as
quickly, Hub penned five more Christmas poems: As
Mary Was Awalking, The Gifting, In Palestine, It Fell Upon a Winter’s
Morn, and The Little Blind Boy of
Bethlehem. The words flowed in story-poems of
the Advent, giving aspects of the nearly unfathomable truths of
Emmanuel, God-with-us. [These poems were published in The
Season of Flesh, p. 59-65.]
“Byron Herbert
Reece!” he heard from below. When his mother used his full name, she
meant that he listen and heed. “Your dinner is ready. Come down and eat
it before it gets cold.” Dinner for the Reece family, as for most
country families, was the noon meal. He took his journal with him and
over the hot meal shared what he had written that morning.
While Hub had
been writing away the morning in his attic room, snow had come slowly.
The mowed hayfield was a white expanse of beauty alongside Wolf Creek
and the trees had been turned into a winter wonderland of Christmas
loveliness. Eva Mae had dismissed school early at Pine Top School,
urging her students (all who walked to school) to hurry home before the
snow got too deep. She had made it home safely in her old car before
the roads got too filled with snow.
On Christmas
Eve Hub hitched the mules to the family wagon. It would be a better
vehicle than Eva Mae’s car to take them the two miles to Salem Church.
Emma had prepared bags containing gingerbread men she had made, using
sorghum syrup for sweetening instead of rationed sugar. She had also
put into each bag an apple preserved from their fall harvest and stored
in their apple barrel for Christmas enjoyment. These would be little
gifts for the community children who came to the Christmas Eve service.
Eva Mae loaded the small Christmas tree she had used at Pine Top
School, already decorated with strings of popcorn and ornaments made by
the children.
As the mules
drew the wagon on toward Salem Church, the lines of one of his poems
pounded at the edge of Reece’s mind and he quoted it almost in rhythm
to the wagon wheels on the snow: “When the land is white with
snow.../And always the wind comes on to blow.../Turn to peace,
remembering/That the twice divided year/Is quartered toward the spring.
[Published in The Season of Flesh, p.
56.]
Surely enough,
as Emma had predicted, the roads were too bad for the pastor to travel
from Blairsville to Salem. Soon Juan had a good fire going in the
potbellied stove that heated the white-frame church building. Eva Lou
placed the tree on a table near the altar, and Emma’s goodie bags were
arranged underneath the tree. People began arriving, stamping the snow
from their shoes on the steps leading up to the church house door. Hub
Reece read the Christmas account from Matthew and Luke. And as his own
offering to the Christ Child, he read the poems he had composed the
week before as he took out time from his farm chores made possible by
the inclement weather. He made up a tune to Since
Christ Was a Lamb O and sang it. That was
followed by congregational singing of Away in the Manger, O Little
Town of Bethlehem, and Angels
from the Realms of Glory, the words and tunes
familiar to all.
After the gifts
were distributed and a prayer for the blessings of Christmas led by the
lay preacher, Byron Herbert Reece, the congregation was dismissed. Some
lingered to talk about the war, the weather, how they had been blessed
with good crops that year.
Juan and Hub
banked the fire and closed up the stove. Eva Mae took her Christmas
tree, and they quickly looked about to make sure the church house was
neat before closing the door.
On the way back
to the Reece home on
Hub Reece had
his own thoughts. Why was he blessed with the gift of words?
Coming from
some deep well of inspiration and understanding, he was composing in
his mind another poem, one that declared his life’s ambition. He would
write the words down as soon as he was warm in his attic room at home:
“Unto a speechless kingdom I/Have pledged my tongue,/I have given my
word/To make the centuries-silent sky/As vocal as a bird.../And I being
pledged to fashion speech/For all the speechless joy to find/The
wonderful words that each to each/They utter in my mind.” [The
Speechless Kingdom, published in Bow Down
in Jericho, p. 114]
[Note from
author: Thank you, Sentinel readers, for following my column throughout
2005. I have brought each article to you with joy and thanksgiving. God
bless you and yours at Christmas. —Ethelene Dyer Jones]
[Ethelene Dyer Jones is a retired educator, freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at e-mail edj0513@windstream.net; phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA 31061-2411.]