To Never Grow Tired of Playing

My Mamaw wrote an autobiography of sorts. More than a few handwritten pages that might make for a good book someday. She grew up here in Walker County on some land halfway between the mill town of Shell Creek (to the east on the bank of The River) and the mining community of Roncoe Hollow (to the west at the foot of The Ridge). Just south of Wheeler Township, this long stretch of land off of Route 1, never got a proper name. Just county land in the northwest corner of Georgia. But I’ve always called it Noble Point, after the main road that cuts through it. She passed away from cancer just a few years ago, not long after the pandemic settled down, and only a few days after we talked for hours about the glory to come and the wonderful book of Revelation. Beyond inheriting her home and land (which has been the family farm since 1879), I also have this biographical collection. Her papers are never just the story of her life, but of this community and the four families that owned the farms within it (The Jacksons, the Colts, the Daughtrys, and the Canons). I’d like to someday tell that story, but for now, I feel the pull to ever know it more, and more beyond mere intelligence. To know it and become a part of it, as it is not just the story of this people or this place, but of the God who put them here. To that end I've begun my work.

Today's work started as it usually does with simply reading her words again, and within the task, something struck me for the first time about the people who populated it, and how she wrote of them—particularly Robby Colt's mother, Maddie. After her husband, Rick Colt, would leave for work (second shift at the mill in Shell Creek), Maddie "would gather all us kids from the neighborhood [a funny word for a collection of small farms spread out over Route 1] and we would have a roast and play." Mamaw, having the emotional intelligence of the curiosity you find in a whisper-spooked doe, was apt to mention that sweet Maddie "had to walk on thin ice when Rick was home." Rick was not a nice man. In the previous sentence, I'm being abundantly gracious with the words she used to describe him—seeing how he's dead, and if there's anyone angry enough to fight Heaven or Hell in order to come haunt me for repeating my Mamaw, it would be Rick Colt. But this Maddie, whom Mamaw seemed to love so much, still found the time and the love (the latter being the harder of the two) to teach her, the neighboring farm-kid "how to milk a cow and whistle through the front of my teeth." What strikes me about Maddie is the impression she left. Not because of what she taught, not the least because of what she went through (being married to such a man: the kind you hope the work-day goes long for, and pray to convince yourself ghosts aren't real). No, Maddie left a life-long imprint on the soul of a child, now in her eighties, because she was present: "All the kids loved her because she took time and played with us." Made in the image of a God who loves to play and be present, we all long to join the pretending of creation, to be the nursing child who “plays over the hole of the cobra” (Isa 11:8). How the daisies by the pavilion next to the creek bend in the wind and dip their yellow tips in the greenery of the spring, and how the spring fights off the algae like a laughing wife running from the playful aggravation of her husband—and running down the hallway to the bedroom.

God loves to play. In creation, in redemption, and in the glory of the age to come. And we his bride, having by grace the foretaste of that glory, do our best to forget the fall and our fears, and to remember the faith of a child; faith like a plaything we never wish to part with. If there was one thing you could say about Mamaw it was that: she loved to play, and she took time to do it, and she did that all her life. And through that faith, she was made well, and so were we all. Now, we all hope, in the name of the Laughing Christ, to leave such a mark as Maddie did. To teach a child something that they never forget, even in the midst of something like a prayer for your husband to take the long way home. The hole of the cobra. And what Maddie chose to teach was how to play: faith, and who God is. It takes a certain style of life to be so playful, and to see God that way. I think that way of living can’t be bought or earned through technology and the progress of man. And so I think the rich folk on the mountain would bristle so hard against a Laughing Christ that you could clean grease from a crockpot with their skin. Their intelligent, very serious, holy-bored god.

Following the reading of her story—which at this point is something of a liturgy, like a prayer or a song, drawing nearer to my own heritage and this place, and continually introducing me to the question of why we play at all—I loaded up a copy of her story with an introductory letter, and went out to the Post Office in Shell Creek. When I got there, I thought about leaving the car running, given how short this stop would be, and how hot it was getting as the morning was giving way to the day. I couldn't do it, and I took the keys with me (just in case). I paused before closing the car door, confronted with something reminiscent of the world in which Maddie Colt inhabited: the black sedan I parked next to had its windows down and the keys in the ignition. Someone was playing a joke on me and my irrational fear of big things in small towns. Behold, upon walking in, I discovered the comedian was none other than one of my pastors! Our conversation, however, was quickly interrupted by the mail-lady, having not yet left for her route, "Hey! What are you doing here?" she asked. "I'm sending my Mamaw's story to an author and poet I've recently come to admire—you have any books for me?" She delivers mail every day to our house, and has come to know me, my brother, my wife, and the boys.

They love to check the mail, and they always tell her, yelled from the swing or barefoot on the pavement, "Have a great day," or "I love you!" She returned with a stack of packages, all books, and all but one for the School Library where my wife works. Seerveld's Normative Aesthetics. I sent the letter off and stepped out on the sidewalk, facing the old mill, now in ruins and mostly a parking lot of broken asphalt. I thought of the irony of the Shell Creek Fall Festival hosting games and inflatables for the kids in that parking lot. I couldn't help but stare at the now quiet thing, because I knew what many didn't: while Rick Colt was working second shift there, his wife was thankful and playing with the local kids, teaching a few of them many different things. But she probably never taught them how to walk on thin ice. And that’s why we play games. It is, in the midst of the sometimes hard realities of life, not to ignore them, but to submit to the “continuing smiling, subliminal laughter-perculating, and bubbling frolicsomeness” of the surprises of joy in life (Seerveld, 100). The joy of work and community, and of God, who “loves seeing God’s people play joyfully before God’s face on the earth” (Seerveld, 103).

I eventually did leave the post office, and Shell Creek, and headed back home. I had work to do. Somewhere around here were the Colts—or what was left of them. I know one lives across the street from me on the farm with the pond, but he's recently put up a gate; and one lives down the road somewhere on the big farm. But that's 40 acres and a whole road of houses. I could look them up online and reach out like I've been taught to do: social media and the world come of age. But I didn't think Mamaw or Maddie would have liked that way of doing things. So I, just as my Papaw and Mr. Colt would walk down Route 1 to the mill, began my journey, house-to-house, down Route 1—thankful it was no longer dirt.

The first house, just two plots down from mine, was a small light-blue cottage with a wide front porch, holding some lounge chairs and a swing, backed by a large window looking into the dining room. Behind the house and to the left was an old red tool shed, and to the right was a small patch of corn and what looked like some tomatoes going up to the edge of the property. I started here because those tomatoes, but for the cages, would be tangled in the wire fence of the Colt farm across the street from my place. I knew at one point, according to my mother and great-aunt (Mamaw's sister), this home was once part of that farm. As it was 10:30 AM, it took some time for the old lady of the home—grey-haired and hastily covered in a half-closed morning-gown—to come to the door. She bought the place from the Colts eight years ago, and her husband (her, not knowing where he had gone off to so early; and me, hearing him knock away at something down in that shed) might help get an introduction with the gated Colt. I thanked her and began walking further towards town.

My next stop was a yellow house in the curve just past, and across the street, from what used to be Sitton's farm. A young lady was sitting on the porch with her two dogs, a cup of coffee, and her Bible. I asked her what she was reading and she read to me a portion from the prophet Zechariah, "Thus says the Lord of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets." Ignoring my impulse to ask her what she thought about glory and the kids playing in it, I asked instead for the Colts, and she pointed me down the street and on the right, "The first house before you get to their farm, a bit off the road. That's Solomon's place. He used to teach at the school." Solomon was Rick Colt's nephew and a cousin of the gated Colt across the street from me. I thanked her and patted the retriever bouncing at the porch-gate for some love. The next house was the wrong one, but she, after I heard her rustling around, spoke through the camera-doorbell and behind the glass storm door (the main door was open), "The Colts are next door. The house in the woods." She had a beautiful log cabin, set well off from the road and tucked behind Mrs. Wiggley's place. The speaker on her doorbell, from which she spoke, was so loud it disturbed the birds, and seemed to quicken the approach of the afternoon. It made me feel as if I were intruding on more than just her porch, and startled me with the power of what I can only compare to the sudden rush of the Holy Spirit. The wind blows where it wills, and I will not be knocking on that door again. I began my walk through the woods, the shade offering a reprieve from the growing heat, both of the day and of the previous doorbell Revival.

Upon knocking on the Colt’s front door (they had no doorbell, thank God), Mrs. Colt came to the window and stared. I began to introduce myself, having to yell, and told her how often their family is mentioned in my Mamaw's story, "My husband's getting dressed. Come around through the garage." Their house was tucked back in the woods, centered by two sheds on one end and a meadow on the other (a set of bee boxes staggered in the wildflowers). Packed away in the woods, you wouldn't guess they had 40 acres behind the treeline and more down the road. "I'm sorry for the mess," Mrs. Colt said as I entered through the side-door, “We had company over last night, and they were here late into the evening.” Solomon came into the kitchen at the same time I did, sipping coffee through his long, white beard, and then propping his foot up on the stool to slip his boots on, "Who are you?" I began explaining my work, and reading relevant portions of Mamaw's story. They were a bit reserved but found her story to be a cause for small laughter. The infection and affection of playfulness.

Their reservations slipped when they realized who I was. In a flash, she knew my mom, a former student of hers; and then from lap he leaped to my Mamaw, an old friend who used to buy some of his honey. They'd even seen my mom playing with the boys by their barn not too long ago. At that point, knowing me, my mom, my mamaw, and even the boys, Solomon began to unfold the lands around me: the plots of Jackson land and how they bumped up to the Colts and the Canons. He also filled in some of the story my mamaw had told, including one she hadn't about Simon, my grandfather's brother and the last to own a large portion of the Jackson Farm. He ended up homeless and living out of Angry Rick Colt's hayshed. Solomon asked me to read some more from Mamaw, and he told me how to reach the Daughtrys and the Canons. The Daughtrys were all gone, as far as he knew. And the Canons remained, but Jenny Canon, the head of the house, was a recluse, "She hasn't spoken to anyone but her daughter (Lana) for 20 years." He took my name and number and said he'd give Lana “a holler” to see if she’d be open to talking. As I left, I couldn't help but think about how much they talked of Uncle Rick and how little they knew of Maddie. She was his first wife, and after the divorce, didn't come around much. She got out of Noble Point, off Route 1, and far away from walking distance to the mill. As I was halfway out the door, Mrs. Colt stopped me to talk about Solomon’s singing at Old Bethel Church, and I mentioned my upcoming sermon on Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King. Rather than ask what Uncle Rick thought of Jesus (ignoring my impulse again), I asked instead why such a hard man would take someone like Simon into his hayshed. All she said was, "Yeah. All the Colts were hard." But I knew Maddie wasn't, and she wasn't long a Colt. She was a Christian, though, and I’m sure she would have loved her nephew’s singing.

After the visit with the Colts, being halfway down Route 1 and now walking distance from the library, I decided to see if there might be any information on the Daughtrys at the Heritage Center. I flipped through every old book, some self-published and put together by families, others by local churches, and even one by a committee set up by the county. No mention of the Daughtrys. The computers were even less helpful. At least the books gave me a story or two from Roncoe Hollow, the community a few miles west of Noble Point. On my walk back home I called my parents and told them about the day. Dad, a library of locality, knew the Daughtrys (still in town and just up the road on the other side of Jackson Hill). When asked why the Jacksons sold the farm, mom said that Mamaw's Uncle Willis had to move to the mountain in Bright, TN, on account of his asthma; life between Roncoe’s mines and Shell’s mill. Monday I'd be back to porch-hoping in search of the Daughtrys—this time with the accuracy of a family who grew up here, and who (for my dad at least) played with the Daughtry boys while his parents played cards with theirs.

And that’s what struck me so hard about my day, and about the story that started it: the necessity of playfulness in building a place, and the need for people in order to play. In short, the glory of games is essential to a Christian way of living in community. Pretending my own game, porch-to-porch, I thought about my kids swinging in the yard, or digging through the dirt, when the mail gets delivered; about the husband hammering away at something in the shed so early in the morning, and the woman on the porch with her dogs—how I should have asked what she thought the prophet meant by it all. I thought about farm gates and not leaving my keys in the car like my pastor did; about going to the wrong house, and open doors with camera doorbells that keep us closed in, from where we can yell (even if without intention) at the birds and the neighbors we never see. I thought about my mom playing with the boys around the Colt’s barn; and my dad, just a kid, happy to play on the farm next to my mom's place, unaware of the someday-love next door—but only slightly so, if you understand the cultivation of love between two kids in such a small town. But most of all, I thought all day of Mamaw, Maddie Colt, and the Canon Kids. How Maddie would let them steal watermelons from Rick just to make him mad, or how she'd sabotage his ways of keeping them out of the cotton shed so they could “play in the cotton and build tunnels,” as Mamaw put it.

I've never seen Mamaw milk a cow, but I know she could; and I've never seen her make a tunnel in a pile of cotton, but I can still hear her whistle to this day. I'm certain Maddie Colt would be proud. In fact, I know she would. All these families still in some sense, together, because at some point, years ago, those who have now passed on to play in the streets above, once played on the farms stretching down Route 1. Oh, that we would never get tired of playing, for when we do, community, our place in it, and heaven itself lose their delight. And with that goes our faith, a laughing thing Maddie taught Mamaw, and something Mamaw taught my oldest boy while dancing in the living room. Something he, now six-years-old, still talks about today.