Silver and Tates Creek,Thomas Johnson, Beer and Fish

Sorry about yesterday's posting. I'm not sure what came over me. I'd just finished watching a PBS Inspector Lewis broadcast. It was all about murder, artists, autism and Shelley. Somehow it all combined in a weird brew with the work I've been doing on Cecil's book,tomatoes, barbecue pork and Flat Tire Beer, I mean Fat Tire Beer (which is the champagne of beers by the way, just hold it in your mouth a second before you swallow, it's that good) into some some ethereal moment that just had to be expressed. No matter what.

Water is an important element in my family's history. After all, Thomas Johnson came to Kentucky on a raft. Didn't I tell you that? I don't know who his parents were, just that he said he came from near Roanoke, Virginia and that he told someone once that his mother was a squaw. Near Roanoke is a pretty vague origin and since Johnson is a common name... he could even be from Floyd County of which I own a teeny bit.

Enter Silver Creek, a photo of which I found in my father's album. I had no, and even now have only a little, clue as to why a photo of a creek should be in my father's album. So I asked Jim P., who is becoming invaluable in this (it has to be a quest, right, no other word will describe it quite) quest to connect with the past, in particular my own family past. Jim said in an email, I hope he doesn't mind being quoted, that the farm on which Leon and Carl and the rest grew up sat "right about at the top of the ridge dividing the Tates Creek and Silver Creek watersheds...Tates Creek was closer, but Silver Creek was larger and had better swimming holes. It also had fish (unlike most of Tates Creek)."

So maybe my father fished or swam there, or took girlfriends there or something.

I started trying to organize my Uncle Cecil's book mostly because for a long time now I have felt like a orphan, parents both dead, sister bi-polar and effective schizophrenic (whatever that means) which makes for a strange relationship, my kids gone on to their lives in other states. Which they should do. Right? I wanted to feel that I had other relations, wanted to know who they are or were.

And guess what? I've found Zetta. Sort of. And Thomas Johnson and Cecil and Carl and Emma and a couple of living people, too. And I'm getting a sense of those early Kentucky settlers, pioneers and farmers. It's faint and elusive, an echo of music played a long way away, a scent gone as soon as it comes. But it is there.