Ronda Rich

Syndicated Columnist

In my hands, I held the battered straw hat, holes torn in a couple of places. For a solid block of time, I studied it, having taken it down from the fireplace mantle.

I choked up. It probably cost no more than a quarter, yet Oscar Cannon, no doubt, wore it for half a century or more. That’s how our mountain people were: you used something completely up or fixed it if it broke.

My great-uncle Oscar is an Appalachian legend. So much so that an Appalachian history center once held an entire program on him. The stories of his brilliance, common sense, and kind heart abounded for two hours.

To the man who wore that old hat, I owe a lot.

Daddy used to visit him almost every Saturday and sometimes he’d say, “Little’un, wanna go?”

Long before there were safety laws or vehicles with seat belts, I’d climb up, into the ancient pick-up truck, stand beside my Daddy with my arm around his neck, and hang on tight as we chugged and sputtered to Uncle Oscar’s farm with the stream that twisted through the yard. If you stood at the end of the dirt driveway and looked to the right, you could see the Appalachian trail.

When the state highway department decided to carve a road out of that solid rock, winding up through the mountains from Turner’s Corner, the engineers announced that Corinth Baptist Church, where Uncle Oscar and Aunt Fairy attended regularly, would have to be torn down.

I can imagine the setting of that conversation: Uncle Oscar, skinny as a rail, with a beard that trailed to his chest, standing among the magnificent oaks, in front of that little, white farmhouse. He had a farmer’s stoop, so named because of the plow straps that went over the shoulders and caused a man to lean forward as he coaxed a stubborn mule through the field. He hitched up his britches with suspenders and often wore knee-high wading boots.

And, always, this straw hat. Uncle Oscar “studied” on it before he spoke, probably looking toward heaven.

“’S’possin’ I move that church? Yu’uns allow that?”

The big city engineers, with fancy degrees, laughed.

Uncle Oscar, who hand-crafted fiddles and spinning wheels, had a fourth-grade mountain education which is to say: he was born brilliant. He didn’t learn it.

The following I know to be true because my Daddy told it. He didn’t lie or embellish. That’s why folks called him “Honest Ralph.”

Daddy was 13 when he ran away from a mountain shack filled with moonshine and daily beatings from his Daddy. His Mama had left two years earlier. The Cannons took in their nephew when Uncle Oscar found him starving while hiding out in someone’s barn.

“Son, you live with us,” he said, putting his arm around my Daddy’s shoulders. “But you’ll have to go to school and to church.”

Daddy was one of the dozen folks that the mountaineer recruited to help move the church. They disassembled the hardy building with its heart of pine walls and floors and the pulpit that set on an eight-inch high stage.

“Uncle Oscar numbered every wooden peg and piece of lumber we took out and wrote it down,” Daddy recalled. Using big, sturdy mules that pulled logging chains attached to the timber, they climbed higher into the mountains, far away from the new road.

On a hilltop, overlooking a beautiful, rolling valley, Uncle Oscar, the short-brimmed straw hat plopped firmly on his head, directed the reconstruction.

“When we were done, there wasn’t one peg left over,” Daddy said, then smiled slightly. “Not one.”

The church still stands there with a ragged graveyard on the east side and a spectacular view on the other.

No congregation gathers there any longer in a stunningly gorgeous place. But its legacy will be passed down through the bloodlines of many.

Imagine the other stories that straw hat could tell.

Ronda Rich is the best-selling of the new Stella Bankwell mystery: Sapelo Island. Visit www.rondarich. com to sign up for her free weekly newsletter.