I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving! I am so very grateful for all of you. If you are a paid subscriber and are too busy to offer feedback, no worries. Just enjoy the story. But if you do have comments, now or at the end, please email me at susan@susangabriel.com . Or simply hit reply to this newsletter. This mystery is free to paid subscribers.
Chapter 2
At the end of our driveway, a wooden sign reads Honeycutt Farms. I remember the day Daddy put up the sign, though the farm belonged to my granddaddy before him. Honeycutt Farm was my Granddaddy Honeycutt’s promise to my grandmother Rosie before they got married. He promised her that they would get out of the big city of Knoxville and move out to the country. Bythe time daddy was born—Arthur Jefferson Honeycutt—they had saved enough money to buy the land, and the house came a year later.
Granddaddy built the house himself, along with his brother, Ray. Within two years, he and Rosie had lost two kids, one from scarlet fever and the other from influenza, which left Daddy the sole heir of the farm and mighty big boots to fill.
After he died, Mama told me that Daddy didn’t want to be a farmer but dreamed of playing banjo at the Grand Ol’ Opry. He played better than anyone in Nashville, she said. I wondered why I was just now hearing of this. I never listened to my Daddy play, though I once discovered an old banjo in the attic while digging around up there as a girl.
Country people are bad about hiding their dreams as if even voicing them was some betrayal of the land. I wonder how my Daddy might have been different if he had acted on his passion back then. He left the creative spark untended until it finally went out. An ancientsadness sweeps over me. How many farmers have buried their dreams in a cornfield, thinking them too costly to follow?
After grandma and granddaddy died, Daddy and Mama took over the farm and looked after Granny Seeker. Before that, we lived with my grandma and granddaddy Honeycutt. I am the third generation Honeycutt to live here. I no longer stay in my childhood bedroom, but I moved into Mama and Daddy’s room last summer, which is at the back of the house and a lot cooler in the summer. (continued if you have a paid subscription).