MARTY KITTRELL

One of my first look-ins every morning is at a blog that captures the sights and colors and even the scents of HOME.

The scenes are of the small-town South, with bright spires and ivied graveyards and gravel roads to rolling fields; of bridges and flags and where Jesus lives on signboards, right out there unashamed and uncensored for all to see, and the names of towns and families are spelt out in concrete letters on the lawn---those are the things and places of ME. I'm just sorry I can't make them load into the spaces between the appropriate paragraphs. I'll learn.

The old churches, withering to dust, the saggy old pianos like patient mules waitin' with their snaggle-toothed keyboards and demure veil of musty velvet, and whose dwindling congregation had not the strength to carry them elsewhere when the last song died. The light and the color are real---I’ve stopped and wandered through those mote-filled old places, walking lightly on the creaky planks, stepping respectfully amongst the sunken stones with their worn-away words of grief and farewell.

And the old hotels and town buildings, the one-street downtowns with whispers of old Co-Cola ads on the fading bricks, and the beautiful scenes of growth and harvest and toil. I’ve spent many an hour wandering the edges of the bayous, where time is unknown and the passing of years a mere drop from a dragonfly’s wings.

The strange growths emerging from the water around the tree are called cypress knees. They’re the only tree I know of which sports KNEES as a body part. They’re upgrowths of the root system, and just ARE, like the wind through the swinging-moss and the call of an unknown bird; I’ve seen them polished and used as table-legs, as mantel-charms, and when they’re shined up and varnished, they make a unique lamp base, much in demand for dens and hunting camps and meeting halls of the Masons and Elks.

This particular picture looks for all the world like a congregation of meerkats in eager worship at the feet of the tree.

The photos are by a marvelously-talented young man, and when I asked if I might borrow a picture or two for sharing here, he posted:

Hey, Rachel,
I can’t find an email address for you on your site, but it is OK for you to use the photo you requested. It’s OK with me for you to grab any of my photos for your use whenever you want!

Marty

http://martykittrellphotos.blogspot.com/

Go have a look; be amazed and delighted and lost in another place. See the How and the Why and the WE of me, as Frankie expressed it---this is Home, and this is where I’m FROM.

Thank you, Marty, for bringing me a taste of it every day.