Whenever someone hears this story,
they invariably think I am exaggerating.
After all, it is not unusual for families to sell their home in order to
build a new house or to buy twenty acres of land in order to plant a
substantial garden or to take their families on an extended camping trip in
order to appreciate the simple life.
However, forty-five years ago, when the Buffington household decided to head
for the hills of Hall County, build a home in the wilderness, and raise their
own food, our lives were anything but business as usual.
Daddy
developed a plan that included selling the home I had grown up in, buying land,
building a house with solar heating, growing our own food, and raising farm
animals. Mama lovingly explained to us that
daddy had always been borderline eccentric.
My brothers, sisters, and I laughingly insisted that daddy had always
been way over the edge. Daddy prepared
for this metamorphosis from city slicker to country bumpkin by reading
publications like Independence on Three
Acres of Land, the Farmer’s Almanac,
Mother Earth News, and Organic
Gardening. He even had a daily
schedule worked out ahead of time. In
the mornings, his plan was for us to work in the garden and finish chores, in the
afternoons to mosey over to the lake for a swim, and in the evenings to gather
around the home place for quality family time to the hum of Appalachian
dulcimer music. Throughout the entire
enterprise, daddy would announce, “It’s not all going to be work!” To this day, I don’t know if he was trying to
convince himself or us.
As always,
my parents were a team. Daddy had the
dreams, but mama made them a reality. It
took over two years to sell the house that had been our home for twelve years. After a multitude of contracts with real estate
agencies, frequent cries of, “they’re going to show the house!” frenzied
cleaning sessions of dubious quality, and parades of strangers roaming through
our bedrooms, mama finally sold the house- to the Avon
lady. I did not realize then how
difficult it was for mama to leave the home where each baby, except for Janet
and me, was brought home from the hospital.
There had been a lot of loving, a lot of growing, and a lot of laughter
in that house. Mama’s heart overflowed
with cherished memories and squeezed tears from her eyes, but she resolutely
hitched her wagon to Daddy’s and they headed for northeast Georgia.
 |
| Cutting the driveway through the wilderness. |
The parcel
of land was loosely divided into useable regions based on the terrain. The upper three acres closest to the road
were terraced into three sections for cultivating a garden. Consequently, the rows of bean plants curved
and stretched from one end of the garden to the other, like the ocean straining
to meet the horizon. The back five
acres, closest to the creek, embraced the skeleton of a new home place, the
hint of a future orchard, and the promise of civilization to seven uncertain
pioneers. Between the garden and the
future homestead were woods, and nestled in a grove of hardwood trees was our
new temporary home- the camper.
 |
| Mama and Billy in the garden. |
Our family
was experienced at camping, or so we thought.
The pop-up camper, which served as the main bedroom, had a metal base,
two, full-size, pullout beds, and a canvas cover. Zipped to the front of this was an extended
room that served as a kitchen, sleeping area, and eating area when it
rained. A large, plastic dining fly-covered a picnic table for an impromptu dining room. The living room was a circle of lawn chairs
and campstools surrounding the campfire.
 |
| Our new home. |
In a manner of speaking, we had all the comforts of home. Our bathroom facilities consisted of an outhouse lovingly referred to as the throne room, thirty paces southeast of the living room. Daddy even used his ingenuity to create a shower. The water source was the neighbor's well, connected to a spigot, attached to a pine tree about six feet off the ground. The pine tree was connected to three other pine trees by a swatch of black plastic forming a rectangular enclosure. The make-shift shower surround was placed at a fairly strategic level to shield our innocence from prowling eyes. The theory was sound, but the location was questionable. The shower was placed northwest of the camper, south of the garden, and directly adjacent to the road used by the workmen when traveling to and from the building site. However, the workmen’s trucks were big, tall, hardy affairs that easily allowed them to see down from their lofty heights into our lowly shower. We consistently endured the icy well water and took our showers after dark, when the workmen had gone home for the day.
 |
| Daddy, right, with his farmer hat. Charles, left, allowed us to connect to his well. |
Daddy,
being daddy, managed to get a hot shower every afternoon. The hose, stretching from our new shower to
the neighbor’s well, meandered along the driveway, across our property, and
over their lawn in the sunshine. True to
the physics of solar energy, the sun heated the water in the hose enough for
daddy to get a hot shower every afternoon before going to work. Some days, as the summer temperatures rose,
he was blessed with a hotter shower than he had anticipated. Daddy continued to work for IBM and every day he left for work clean-shaven, sweet-smelling, wearing a neatly pressed suit,
white shirt, and polished shoes. I often
wondered if his colleagues knew how he was really living.
Mama must
be descended from rugged stock. She
always could get more accomplished in less time than other mere mortals. Facing the challenge ahead of her, she braced
herself, put on her best, comforting smile, took control of her offspring, and
proceeded to make a home in the woods.
Ordinarily, voluminous jobs, like doing the laundry for seven people,
including five rambunctious children, became one of her biggest obstacles. Every other day or so, we piled into the car,
along with the clothes, and went to the Laundromat to wash. As the clothes sloshed and spun in the
electric washing machines, we eyed the traffic of people and cars going about
their daily, colorless routine.
Miraculously,
mama also managed to prepare the traditional, southern meals we had always
eaten, like fried chicken, breaded pork chops, and country-fried steak and
gravy with all the extras, using only our makeshift kitchen. We even had real iced tea, home-cooked
blackberry syrup, and homemade jams and jellies. She planted a huge garden, and as the crops
began to come in, she canned food for the winter over a Coleman stove. From beginning to end, I did not hear her
complain, but I did hear her laugh. She
taught us, by example, to make the best of things, look to the future and keep
working.
For my
siblings and me, this was the beginning of a grand adventure, an extended vacation, and wonderful home. Looking back, we
joke that we were homeless before it was popular, but at that time, we didn’t
realize we were homeless in the traditional sense. We knew where home was really located. Our house was the camper, sheltered in the
shade trees, but our home was wherever mama and daddy were together.
