Chapter 2: February, 2016

My great-grandfather, on my mother's side of the family, was a strange man. Daniel William Pitt was a strange man. Well, not really strange. Maybe peculiar would be a more apt description. He was 104 years old when he died and had lived on the same plot of land for sixty of those years. He did not believe in modern conveniences with the exception of radio and television. The only reason he had electricity in his house was for those two 'damn fool boxes', as he used to call them. Only later did he add a phone and computer, at my urging. Going to college I missed our talks and with the phone and email we could keep in touch.

Shortly after his wife died in childbirth, he bought up almost 600 acres of land on the east side of the Tennessee River where the river briefly visits Mississippi. He built his house on a steep limestone cliff that dropped one-hundred-ten feet to the river. For ten miles either side of his house there was no place that a boat could make landfall. The only road in from the state highway was ten miles of dusty, rutted red clay or ten miles of gumbo mud depending on the season. A car would never make the trip. A four-wheel drive vehicle was the only chance, no matter the season. It helped keep visitors to a minimum, which suited great-grandpa just fine.

On those 600 acres were stands of timber untouched by chainsaw for over fifty years. Steep hills with swift flowing streams in the valleys. Swamps that were the home to alligators and more snakes that you could shake a stick at. And a shallow vein of coal that no one knew about except him.

On that tall riverside bluff he built himself a log cabin. Not one of those simple cabins, but a large rambling structure. Which was pretty strange in itself, because great-grandpa Daniel lived alone. Most of the time. His only trips off his land was twice yearly trips into the nearest town, Iuka, Mississippi, to restock supplies that he could not obtain any other way. Those trips were short... get the supplies and get out of town. Fast.

Do not get the impression that great-grandpa Daniel had not see the world. He was a veteran of WW2. As a Marine he hit the beaches at Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. He was still in the Marines, having been promoted to Master Sergeant, when he fought his way from the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War. After that little 'police action', he got out of the Marines and started looking for a place out of the line of fire.

Great-grandpa Daniel was firmly convinced that the world was going to hell in a handbasket and it would all be over very soon. He held that conviction for fifty years. It turned out he was right.

Maybe great-grandpa Daniel was not so strange after all.

I never understood why he took up with me. I was nine-years-old when I first saw the Old Man. My father was his grandson. The two of them never really got along. But once a year dad would load up the family - mom, me, my older brother Daniel, and my older sister Willimenia - and visit the Old Man for a week. Great-grandpa Daniel never refused those visits. He usually found things to do on other parts of his property whenever we were there.