The Legacy of Jim Tom

I was a wildlife officer in Graham County in the late 1980s. During those early days of my career, I spent many days lost. Sometimes in those pre-GPS/cellphone days I was physically lost. I was often given directions that included colloquial descriptions that I couldn’t decipher. Other times I was lost in the sense that I didn’t know what I was doing. The game law seemed straight forward while sitting in a classroom in Chapel Hill, but out in the field I discovered that was lots of gray area between those poles of black and white. More than anything, I felt lost and adrift because I didn’t know anyone.

But during those first few years, I met some fascinating folks. Most were ordinary people who had experienced extraordinary lives. I recall a woman who taught school in a logging camp. She rode a narrow-gauge train to the camp where her classroom was in a railroad car. An old logger told me of skidding logs from the deep in the Smokies with a team of steers before Fontana Lake was flooded. Or the quiet Cherokee man who fought the war behind the war in southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. One of the more colorful characters I came to know was Jim Tom Hedrick. 

In those early days, my sergeant, Travis Whitson, spent a considerable amount of time with me. He showed me around the county, introducing me to people and giving me the lowdown on the various folks we encountered. After running into Jim Tom, Travis shared that while Jim Tom had many challenges, he was a mechanical genius. He was a skilled unlicensed electrician. Travis added that the rumor was that Jim Tom was the first person in the county to use propane to fire a liquor still.

 

Over time I saw more and more of Jim Tom. I would often find him hanging out at Robinson’s store in the Snowbird community. Jim Tom was a talker. I don’t think he ever knew my name, so he just called me Game Warden. Many of his stories began, “Well lemme tell you Game Warden” and off he would go. I once saw him wearing a cap that proclaimed, “Jim Beam 1000 gallon club.” I asked, “Jim Tom have you drank a thousand gallons?” He thought briefly and said, “Well, lemme tell you Game Warden. Me and ______ was running still one time and got to drinking. When we came to two weeks later, they was 25 empty half gallon jars laid around us.” He thought again, obviously doing mental math. “Yea,” he added, “I’d say I’ve drunk a thousand gallons.”

Other times I would run into Jim Tom camping in his school bus. One day I pulled into his site while he was setting up on Big Snowbird Creek. He noticed me eyeing his four cases of beer on the picnic table. He raised his hand to protest my thoughts. “I know you’re thinking – that that’s a lot of beer for just me. But it ain’t that much. Afterall, I’m gonna be here for two weeks.” I stopped back by a week or so later. The beer was gone. Jim Tom said, “I see’d you up here a couple of days ago, sneaking around trying to watch me. I hollered out, ‘I see you over there in the laurel Game Warden. It’s just me Jim Tom. I ain’t a fishing or hurting nothing. Come on out.’ But you didn’t move, so I hollered again, “Come on out Game Warden. I ain’t doing nothing wrong.” But you stayed still – hunkered down in the laurel - real sneaky-like. So, finally I walked over to where you was a sitting. Turns out you was a stump.” We both laughed.

I was saddened to hear that Jim Tom died back in September. His death surfaced the thought of how easy it is to label someone or dismiss them. I visited my daughter recently and saw a miniature liquor still on her shelf. I flashed back to when Jim Tom built that still for me. He apologized for charging me for it, but he explained how much the copper cost and how long it took to build. He said that the wormy chestnut blocks were getting harder to find. It sat on my mantel for years before I passed it along to Elizabeth.

I turned the model over and written in pencil was a simple inscription “Jim Tom 1989.”

As I grow older, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about legacy. Jim Tom gained notoriety from his five-year stint on the Discovery Channel’s show, Moonshiners. I suspect there are scores of those little stills sitting around people’s homes. But are those Jim Tom’s legacy?

These thoughts have been prominent over the past months. October 8th was the third anniversary of Amy’s sudden death. November 14th was the second anniversary of my brother, Dennis’ death. And over the past weeks I have spent time cleaning out my dad’s workshops. As I have worked, I’ve considered their legacy. A more difficult question I've pondered is what am I leaving for others?

As I considered that question, I circled back to Jim Tom. There’s a notion attributed to several different people that folks do not recall what we do, they remember how we made them feel. Jim Tom left me with a host of great stories. He built two of those tiny stills for me. They are nice mementos, but that’s not his legacy piece. The thing that Jim Tom left me was a sense of connection and belonging in a place and time where I felt disconnected. That seems to be enough.

https://www.townson-smithfuneralhome.com/obituary/MarvinJimTom-Hedrick

 

Of Storms and Rainbows

It’s been three years since Amy died. Since that moment when my world was forever changed, I’ve written of my journey through grief. I’ve shared some of these thoughts publicly, but most I’ve kept private in my journal or discussed with a few close friends. We could argue my motivation for sharing. Some may say that I continue to seek sympathy as the grieving husband. Others suspect that I’m struggling to somehow keep Amy alive - living a life of denial. The more noble story is that I’m sharing what the process has been for me to help others. Quite frankly, it’s a mixture of all those and other things - a cocktail that varies from day to day.

Even after three years, my grief-driven lows can still strike with an unnerving velocity and intensity. It can be like a sudden, unexpected summer thunderstorm that rolls across the mountain, catching me far from home. A full week of sunshine that is blotted out by ominous, dark clouds as the air becomes charged with an electrical force that is more felt than seen. This tingling alarm is followed by blinding flashes of lightning, a cacophony of deafening thunder, and a flood of drenching rain. It can be overwhelming and emotionally violent. But more often these days the storm is a low, distant rumbling with a light, almost gentle, soaking shower. Some storms last for minutes. Others continue for hours. On increasingly rare occasions, they can last for days.

These emotional storms can be triggered by a song or place or gathering or any number of sensory stimuli. Some, such as birthdays or holidays, can be forecast and are anticipated. Others come upon me without warning. While both cases can be disorienting in the moment, I’ve learned that regardless of the circumstances, the clouds eventually lift, and the sun shines once again.

It’s in this middling space between the storm and sunshine that the rainbow appears.

In the weeks and months after Amy’s death, I doubted I would see the sun again. I zombie-walked through each day, unsure whether I could breathe in enough oxygen to live. But slowly, over time, my capacity to smile and laugh without guilt is returning. I realize that I still have the ability to give and accept love. In the most surreal moments, I recognize that sadness and joy; hopelessness and hope; sorrow and happiness; and loss and love can all occupy that rainbowed space between the storm and light. I’ve come to look for these metaphorical rainbows as an assurance that even the fiercest grief storms will not destroy me and that somewhere beyond those dark clouds the sun will certainly shine.

I miss Amy. Hardly a moment passes that she doesn’t come to mind. Her death is a constant reminder that life is fragile. This fragility reminds me daily to readily forgive others, to tell people I love and appreciate them, and to be kind. I’m trying to keep short accounts.

And I’ve gained a new appreciation for rainbows.

Illumination

Two years ago today, as dawn was breaking, the light went out in my life. My wife, Amy, died after a short, but intense struggle with Covid. As the days folded into weeks and weeks into months and now months into two years, I have longed for the time when it all gets easier. I’m still waiting. As I wait, I have become more attuned to the snatches of light that briefly illuminate the path and beckon me forward. I’ve come to realize that in the darkest moments, the most minute light casts an outsized glow.

There are blocks of time in those early weeks and months that evade my memory. Many of the vaporous recollections after Amy’s death are reflective of the late night, shadowy world between dreams and consciousness, - difficult to discern what is real or imagined. I sometimes walk through the basement of our home, now just my home, and recall a hazy image of preparing to give her eulogy. Did that really happen?  Or I “see” her standing at the workbench I built, the one she thought was too big and took up too much space, sorting through her quilting cloth and telling me how glad she was that I built that table.

As the months passed, I grew increasingly concerned that I would forget the details of Amy – the texture of her hair or the smell of her lotion – the way she sang all parts of Bohemian Rhapsody gloriously off key. I woke with a start one morning with the realization that I couldn’t remember the sound of her voice. I had saved her voicemail message from her phone, but it sounded too mechanical – almost metallic –familiar, but not her voice. But, when I hear her daughter, Taylor, shouting encouragement and guidance to her son Liam when he is playing ball, I can hear Amy’s voice as clear as spring water. I recently heard Amy’s sister, Dawn, speak a phrase and recalled Amy using those same words. Words that penetrate the darkness.

Central Park, NYC January 2020

Often, I find myself wishing to relive a moment with Amy. Oddly, it is rarely a desire to revisit warm memories. I hold those tightly and can feel all their details. No, the times I want to go back to are those when I disappointed her or let her down in some way – a desire to make amends. Two days before she died, Amy’s condition was worsening, and she was deeply depressed. She asked me sit with her and tell her a story. This was something of a game we played. I love to tell stories and she loved listening to them. But that night, I was so concerned for her that I couldn’t conjure even the simplest story. When I told her I couldn’t think of one to tell, she whispered, “That’s okay.” I realize now that Amy didn’t need to be entertained as much as she needed me to attend to her – to provide a momentary distraction from the fear that she was dying.

When I visit Amy’s grave, I usually carry a small stone from somewhere I’ve been – a hike, a trip, working in the yard - and I tell her the story of finding that stone. Most recently, it was a hen-egg sized, red, rounded stone from a creek bed in southwestern Wyoming. The stone was polished as it rolled about inside a glacier that crept down the valley before being left behind as the glacial ice inched back up the mountain. The stone had laid there in Cottonwood Creek, washed over by thousands of years of pulsing water. As I walked the creek bed, the wet stone reflected a sunbeam from the late summer sun.  In that reflection, as Amy would have said, the stone “spoke to me.” I told Amy that story as I placed it in the center of her tombstone when I returned home.

That is my experience with grief.