Rekindled

     You never know what the day's going to bring. A FaceBook friend request, accompanied by a message saying, "We have a shared past," led to an unopened envelope, an ugly cry and the first new blog post in eight years.
     When last I posted here, I had begun another phase in my teaching career...Pre-Kindergarten.  It is a wonderfully exhausting task, filled with fun, language, literature, emotion and purpose. But it consumed the energy I had formerly put into writing regularly. The desire to journal has been there all this time, but the fire that fuels the flow of creativity had been reduced to a few glowing embers. Yesterday's FaceBook message was the breeze that fanned those embers and eventually blew me right back to this desk where I had begun My Meandering Way.
     "I would be interested in speaking to you about your family's recollections of the event that happened in 1965." This woman had been searching the internet for information about her family history.  One of the links Google produced pointed her to my June 28, 2011 entry on this blog. She was referring to my Grandpa Major's murder conviction. At that time, I was researching my own family's history, and my mom had given me several large manila envelopes with photos and a few handwritten historical accounts. One of them was labeled Major (Shooting).  I never opened that envelope, thinking that was a story for a future post. I told the woman she'd do better by asking my mom since the event was before I was born, but when I asked mama if she would be willing to talk to the woman, she emphatically said no.  So I agreed to speak with her myself, we made a phone appointment, and the next morning I opened the envelope.

                                                                  

       Way back in my youth I had heard that Grandpa Major had come across a couple of fellows poaching on his land down in Wakulla County.  They got into an argument, the boys pulled their guns on Grandpa, and he shot them.  One died and the other was paralyzed.  When I opened the envelope, the truth spilled out.  That's exactly what happened.  My grandfather was nothing if not organized.  He saved all kinds of things, from newspapers to coffee cans, and wrote the date on every one.  Inside the Major (Shooting)  envelope was a date book which contained a stack of original newspaper clippings, each with the date attached.  They told the tale from the original news item in which Grandpa said exactly what I'd heard happened, the follow-up investigation, the charges filed, the lawsuits, the shady land deal, the trial, the conviction, the retrial, and the acquittal.  Yes, Grandpa Major was eventually acquitted, but not until after a whole lot of work on his part to expose some shifty dealings and non-partial prosecutorial staff. 

     There was a wealth of emotion in that envelope. I was proud of my grandfather for standing his ground, never altering his story, asking to appear before a Grand Jury, and petitioning then-Governor Askew to review conflicts of interest.  There was a character reference from Grandpa's application for private investigator license. (That made me chuckle.) And then there was the mail. Envelopes addressed to Major Langston c/o Crawfordville Jail. That's when the ugly cry happened.  Grandpa spent Valentines Day in the jail, so there were a handful of cards from the women's group of the church he (or most likely my grandmother) attended and my mom.  There were also letters from his daughter Anne and grandson John, telling him about school and how he wished he could see his grandfather.

     When it was time for the phone appointment, I was a mess.  I had cried for Grandpa Major, the time he lost locked up and defending himself, the defamation of his character, and the land he lost in the process. I had cried for my Grandma Margaret, my mama, Aunt Anne and cousin John who loved him so much and were there to witness the injustice of it all.  I've written about my grandfather in several previous posts.  He was one-of-a-kind...a dapper gentleman with a sharp sense of humor and an endless supply of whatever a stray animal needed.  That he'd had to endure this and put his family through it was heartbreaking. And Mama told me that Grandpa never got over causing the death of that young poacher and the permanent paralysis of the other. Their obituaries were also in that envelope.

     The phone rang as I made my way out into the field behind my house.  Cell service out here is only clear in a few spots. I answered, and a cheerful voice thanked me for taking the time to speak with her.  She was the niece of the survivor of the shooting in 1965, and was intrigued because, like me, she had been given the basic information surrounding the event and then no one talked about it anymore.  After reading the post that Google had originally directed her to, the woman had taken the time to read more about Major Langston.  She was surprised to see me describe him as a compassionate animal lover and all-around great guy.  Not surprisingly, her family had seen him as quite the opposite. That triggered another wave of tears for me, and I found myself standing knee-deep in wild pepper defending my grandfather like it was 1965.  I told her how he loved animals, and walking in the woods, and teaching the grandkids how to fish.  He was multi-talented, built the house he lived in as well as a swinging bridge or two down in Smith Creek.  He was always busy doing something like crafting things from wood, building animal habitats, tinkering with vehicles, and building models of machines he invented. How could anyone think that man was an evil killer?

     We talked a bit and conceded that there are two sides to every story and that the truth is usually somewhere in between.  She thanked me for sharing a bit of the real Major Langston, and I thanked her for caring enough to ask. We can't fix anything from the past, and won't likely be able to change either family's conception of the other, but we can start with us.  That concept can be applied to many facets of society today.

    After hanging up, I went to my desk and pulled up the blog I had wandered away from back in 2012.  I scrolled to the posts about Grandpa Major, thinking he'd look a little different to me now, post murder trial.  He didn't.  But I felt different. Emotional outbursts aren't common for me, and I felt the need to document this ...analyze it...write about it. My writing desk has now been reorganized, Compose Blog page is bookmarked, and my schedule is clear until August.  Ooooh...there's another post!