The Bell - Day First

When I was a young child I loved being outside. I loved playing with sticks (much to my grandmothers horror). I loved dirt and grass. I loved snakes. But we lived "on the other side of the railroad tracks", quite literally, and this meant that it wasn't always safe to play outside. The backyard was enclosed by a tall fence that we couldn't see over. Of course, that didn't stop people climbing over to steal things from our shed, which happened from time to time, either at night or in day light. Our front yard had a quaint, and somewhat out of place, white picket fence that I remember helping my dad put up. Though we had a nice sized front yard, we were rarely permitted to play there since shootings were far from uncommon and the fear of being shot, kidnapped, etc was a well founded fear. 

When I was 12 years old my father moved my family to the country.

At first my sisters and I were timid, though we didn't realize it. We would stick close to the house. We would cry when we tripped and skinned our knees on the uneven ground around our home. Walking down to the horse pasture or to the other side of the pond seamed to transport us to another imaginative fairy world. But soon we began to venture farther. The thick woods surrounding our 10 acres of property called to my independent and adventurous tendencies. Soon, once school work and chores were finished, it was our habit to dive into the woods to explore, build, pretend. 

This new found freedom presented a problem for my mother. Her daughters had been converted into tough new creatures who were now off exploring come dinner time. Thus issued in the existence of The Bell.

The Bell was an old and beautiful, and extremely heavy, belonging of my father's dad. It had stood mounted on a tall post in the backyard of the home he built by hand in Charleston, SC. This bell had been used, before his neighborhood had been a neighborhood, to call his sons in from their play, back when his own backyard had been nothing more than an entrance into unending woodland and marsh adventures for his sons: my dad and his older brother, my uncle. 

With the passing of my grandfather The Bell became ours. I remember it sitting on the floor of our van all the way home to rural Mississippi. I remember my father mounting it on a tall post in front of our house. I remember those first few rings echoing out through the piney forest around our house. And I remember playing with my sisters in the fort we build deep in the woods and hearing The Bell peeling, calling us in for dinner as the day came to an end.