Day 28 – Blaine, TN – Spotty West Goes East

July 13, 2021 – The Land, Shed and Gravestones

I’m staying at my mom’s cousin in Corryton, TN, but just a few miles down the road is the family land where my father spent summers as a child. It is a happy coincidence that my mom’s cousin who I’m close to lives near the family land on my dad’s side.

In 1936, my father’s father, Judson H. Robertson, bought land in Blaine, Tennessee as a summer farm retreat from Knoxville. The farmland was sold by my grandmother when he died, but there are two pieces of woodland left. The flatter piece contains the “Sheridan Cabin” named after a family that lived there.

It was rumored that some mafiosos from Chicago would come to Tennessee and stay in this cabin on occasion after the Sheridans left. Ticks and poison ivy are very bad in these woods though this time I didn’t run into any ticks. Lots of poison ivy though.

The other piece of land is knobby. Here is a picture I took from the highest knob:

The knobby piece of land holds the memorial markers for my grandfather, grandmother and dad’s brother Clifton. My grandfather died in 1962, three years before I was born. He was head of the chemistry department at the University of Tennessee where he was a professor for 42 years from 1920 to 1962. Dad’s brother died young at 54 in 1985. My grandmother died in 1996. She is the person who placed these markers. A huge genealogist, Grandma put slab markers in various locations in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee commemorating distant relatives and places. It is ironic that her death date is blank on the slab having placed it here before she died—the remaining Robertsons being negligent. It is something perhaps we will correct by getting a stone etcher to the location.

Markers after clearing. I need to return and use something that will get rid of lichen and moss.

Grandma may have been a little overzealous with genealogical information. The broom on left gives the size of these slabs.

The farmhouse that later burned down was sold to a family who still lives nearby. The son is my age and he told me a funny story that his bedroom was painted pink until he entered high school and finally repainted it. Grandma had found some cheap reject paint at the local hardware store and painted a number of rooms that color. When grandma Robbie was alive she paid this man to keep a path cut through the forest to the markers. The day before I cleaned them off he led me through the forest to find them. I was very thankful. It would have likely taken me a whole day just to locate them. At his suggestion I left a blue shovel pointed up so I could more easily find the stones when I returned.

Grandma Robbie introduced mountain laurel to the area around the gravestones. It has taken off through the forest mixed with poison ivy and other ground cover.

This old storage shed is also on the knobby property across the road from where the old farm house was. I spent a few hours looking through the three wooden chests and boxes inside.

I really wanted these shoes to be salvageable, but I think the leather was too far gone. Mice were living inside the shoes and wooden crate. Chewed up paper made voluminous nests. One of the mice came out looking at me with his tender eyes and then leapt from the box.

These two very large spiders were in the shed. I thought of the one on the left as pappa spider and the one on the right as mama spider because she had a sack of eggs under her. I was never able to separate her from the mattress she is on. When I took it to the dump she disappeared into a hole on the backside.

Bed springs and mattresses occupied most of the shed. The mattresses were chewed through and offered more material for the mice.

Random books, paint and oil tins, bottles, games, clothes, pictures, calendars, utensils, cups, pictures, awards and honorariums all made up the mouse-eaten, aged and spoiled treasures. The shed was a time capsule to the days my family existed before me, offering clues to their lives.

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