♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Earl Hamner, Jr.> A tree now climbed by a new generation, a railroad crossing, a store, a street, houses, a fence, a park.

Who among us has not had a quickening of the heart, a sense of anticipation upon seeing a long-forgotten landmark of our youth?

Each of us harbors in our mind a special place of excitement and yearning.

For many, the place of our birth or youth is unique in all the world.

For the Southerner, it is especially so.

He lives in a land of "was" and "is," a land that has a rare relationship with place and time and other people , a land perhaps very much like your special place.

Each person born of this land writes of the place that is a part of him.

William Faulkner spoke of his spot in Mississippi as his "own little postage stamp" of Earth.

♪ ♪ Place may be a thriving city street, a sleepy half-forgotten town, a rustic country road.

♪ ♪ Girl> The sky looked gray and dismal as I walked down the little road made through the woods by the woodcutters.

I knew it was going to rain and that I should turn back, but I kept walking, as if compelled by some strange urge.

♪ The woods were still and quiet.

The only sound to be heard was the rain dropping from the trees.

♪ It made a steady rhythm as it hit the already wet leaves that had fallen off the trees.

The wet leaves were soft and didn't make the least sound as I walked toward home.

♪ ♪ Earl> Place can also be a memory not marked on any map.

Going down the long road of remembering, I step into a place of many yesterdays.

Mounting the steps, I hear the laughter of faces.

[children talking] [children talking] Teacher> Alright, stop right here now and get right to work.

All right class, let's stop this now!

[silence] ♪ Earl> The very earth beneath his feet is, in reality, an affirmation of his oneness with all creation.

♪ Farmer> When I feel the warm sunshine saturating my skin, the cool, steady breeze, the rough, gritty ground beneath my ankles, or when I see a tree with its arms and hands reaching out and waving as the winds blows through its fingers... ♪ or remembering my youth, lying in the moist, green grass, just enjoying life, or seeing a leaf racing across the sandy ground, or when I hear birds singing, each in different pitches and tones, or the wind whispering, I can't help feeling God is real and that life will go on.

♪ Earl> Life will go on.

It continues in the ceaseless pattern of day-to-day living, but the Southerner senses a balance in this pattern... joy and sorrow, sickness and health, birth and death.

♪ ♪ Jonathan> Life has been wonderful to me.

It gave me an efficient, working body.

For so many it did not.

It gave me integrity, trust, and hope.

At times it gave me sadness and bitterness.

♪ ♪ ♪ I took advantage of life's gifts.

I took my health, and I played, I ran, I worked.

I like to think I have been trustworthy, honest, and sincere.

I also hope and pray for the good of our land.

I like to say I returned all life's gifts.

I even gave back the sadness and bitterness.

♪ ♪ Earl> One way he dispelled that sadness and bitterness was to swap today's news around the pot-bellied stove in a country store or a feed mill or a friendly, neighborhood barbershop.

Jonathan> How you doing there, Charlie?

Charlie> Hi, Jonathan!

Look like you brought me two customers, man?

Jonathan> No, they're just tagging along.

Charlie> Good.

Look like they might need a shape up or something.

Jonathan> Yeah, I believe they can use a shave.

Boy #1> No, I don't.

Earl> As you walk in, you are greeted by the smell of talcum powder.

The rickety benches creak with the seating of a customer.

The old-fashioned pot-bellied stove sits proudly near the back of the room.

The floor is covered with hair, neck rolls, and other assorted trash.

Outdated calendars hang on the walls.

A modern one is lying on a table of newspapers and magazines which decorates the middle of the room.

[checkers hitting table] Boy #1> Jon, can I have a soda?

Boy #2> Me too.

[coins falling in machine] [soda bottle knocking] [bottle cap falling] [coins falling in machine] [soda bottle knocking] [barber's brush swishing] [barber items knocking] Charlie> This got you, Charles.

[cape rustling] Charles> Haircut still a buck-fifty?

Charlie> Well, due to the price of everything going up, we had to go up another quarter... [money rustling] which is one seventy-five.

[money rustling] [cash register bell ringing] [drawer closing] Charlie> Thank you and come back.

Charles> See you, Sam!

Charlie> All right.

You're next, Jonathan.

[papers rustling] Jonathan> A shape-up will be fine, Charlie.

Charlie> Alrighty.

[cape rustling] I understand that y'all have a tough game Tuesday night against Newberry.

Jonathan> Yeah, but I think we can make it out all right.

Charlie> Good.

Earl> Behind one of the chairs stands Charlie Sam.

He's a jovial, friendly man, and I guess that's why he's so successful.

Charlie> By the way, I believe that I heard one of your boys got his leg broke or something like that.

Jonathan> That was Jesse Crouch from what I was informed, he got the torn ligaments.

He'll be playing in the Newberry game.

[barber items knocking] Charlie> Good.

Earl> The little barbershop has been on the corner for a long time and will probably remain there as long as Charlie Sam has anything to do with it.

Checkers Player> Your move, Eugene.

Eugene> Huh?

Checkers Player> I said don't take all day...your move.

Eugene> Hold your horses.

Earl> The Southerner is aware, like the barber, that a life without human friends is like an empty room... no life at all.

♪ It's the people who make a town, and friendliness that binds it together.

Here, there are still people who know each other.

♪ Men still have time to sit on the courthouse square swapping stories of days gone by while the steady wheels of commerce grind slowly around them.

Man> My wife gave me this watch, and my son-in-law gave me an automatic Winchester three-shot rifle.

My daughter gave me the ring.

Twenty-four years later, I lost the ring.

My daughter gave me another one.

And it was too little, and I went to James Pough up here to stretch it.

He said, "Well, Davenport said put it on your little finger.

All gamblers wear their rings on their little finger."

Thought a second, I said, "My God, I've been gambling ever since I was a little chap."

So I left it on there.

Still got it on there.

And I said, "Well, I'll get ahead.

Maybe I'll have better luck."

Somebody stole my hay while I was in the hospital in July.

And I decided I'd manure my pasture to make grass grow for my cows.

I had a herd- 50.

And God knows, it didn't rain in three months in that- down there on the ground...!

My cows like perished to death.

But, I'm still wearing the ring on my little finger, and blessed be the time I found the other ring that she give me after I got the second one.

Now, if that ain't enough, I don't know what is.

Earl> These people, looking to the future, living in the present, remembering the past.

Young faces, vibrant and alive... and old faces like Cora, full of the wisdom of the ages.

♪ Cora> Sitting here, I remember things that I often wonder about.

I frighten myself at the thoughts of what my life will mean to me and to others.

I wonder if I'll be special to someone.

I wonder if someone will care as much about me as I do about them.

I wonder if people will look back at my memory and smile because they remember the times I visited them when they were sick or loved them when no one else would.

It is so easy to forget other people and their problems, but I don't want to be like that.

Life is too short, even if you live to be 100.

Few people accomplish all the goals they would like to, and I just wonder... will I?

♪ Earl> Frail shuffle and faulty equilibrium... bases of her stability.

Wrinkled flesh and lusterless, silver hair... hallmarks of her beauty.

♪ Ignorance of space and rock and Kissinger, only dust on a chest of agrarian knowledge, her lemon pies and strawberry cakes are sufficient weapons to defeat death, heal the sick, or birth a baby.

♪ Success on Earth... how foolish to fear death, how silly to fret over life.

Though her remaining contemporaries fall every day, death is no demon.

The aged parlor is cozily too warm, much like a nursery.

She understands that the fetus and antiquity both await birth.

It is much more remarkable to sit on the porch in the spring, more remarkable to watch the jonquils bloom for the 86th time, to see the sun fall on her noble, gentle, begonia-like face-- she'd like that simile, we understand begonias-- or to watch it snow as we crack pecans by a fire.

You see, she accepts life.

♪ ♪ ♪ Earl> That is why my real sermon every Sunday comes after church, shuffling down the aisle, slowly down the steps, holding the silky hand tightly, trying to follow and fall into her pace.

♪ ♪ A young girl of 16 today, speaking of love, might have been Cora 70 years ago, feeling, for the first time, the awe of newfound love.

♪ ♪ ♪ Young Cora> The fun of loving is playing hard-to-get, turning him down, hoping he'll ask again.

The advantage of loving is wearing his ring, always having a date, getting "I love you" notes.

But love is more than fun and advantages.

Love is a memory, memories of our first date, our first kiss, his first "I love you."

Love is warmth shared only between us.

The best thing about love is knowing I'm loved.

♪ ♪ Earl> The springtime of her love turns slowly into the summers of her life, shared now with a man, her mate, her husband, and time began to pass so quickly.

[footsteps on porch] [wind blowing through trees] [beans snapping] Young Cora> Time, what is your hurry?

Why do you pass us by so quickly?

[wind blowing through trees] I've just been born to the realities of life and death and survival, and yet I see you every day in the faces of clocks, in the faces of people, aging us all into a time from which we'll never return.

[beans snapping] If only you could stop... or begin again.

[wind blowing through trees] Soon, I'll not be.

♪ Earl> But time cannot stop, and life replenishes itself with new life.

♪ ♪ Young Boy> Come here, Sam!

[boy whistling] ♪ Earl> Time is also a thief, taking from us even as it gives.

Cora> Sadness is seeing a child when you have lost yours.

You see it and think, My child might have been a boy with blond hair as his.

You just pray that you never have to give up a child again.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Earl> The true daughter of the South packed her grief in a gold chest sealed with her faith, and imprinted with her love.

Hunter> Hi, Cora.

Cora> You have any luck?

Hunter> Yeah, I've shot seven birds today.

Had a good day.

[light breathing] I'm tired.

Been walking a long time.

[patting dog] Wish you could have seen Jake this morning.

He sure has turned out to be a fine hunting dog.

We covered a lot of territory.

Went back over through the briars... Earl> Life was good and long, a mixture of sweetness and sorrow.

Hunter> ...about fifty yards in front of me.

Cora> Life was so simple when I was younger, just taking each day as it came and not worrying about what the future might hold.

But then sometimes when something special would happen or something that I didn't understand very well, I'd go to the stream behind our house.

It was always plush with its carpet of long-past winters and springs, falls, and summers, and most of all, memories.

My stream, in one of its crooks, there was a rock that I'd sit on if the water hadn't risen.

When I would tire of my dreams of glory, I would sit and think about my little troubles that seem so trivial now but were so burdensome then.

In a few moments, though, I was no longer troubled with my problems, but was again free of all cares.

Around dusk I would hear Mama call me into supper, and off I'd go, racing over the tall grasses toward the house, where there was warmth and safety.

Oh, to be racing across the field and living, living in a world where there were no heartaches and no pain, to be able to go to Mama when anything at all would happen, and to be able to go to my stream and my rock.

Those days are gone forever now.

My problems are so many, and my answers so few.

The woods, with its plush carpet of springs, falls, summers, and winters, is gone now, but the memories are there.

They will always be there.

♪ Earl> The memories, always there, of places long ago, changed or gone except in the mind, of times when life was joy or sorrow, not often measured in exact proportions of people whose entrances and exits created a drama of a lifetime, a journey through a life that was and is.

I look at the South, with the dirt in its nails and the sand in its toes and the shadow of magnolia over its head, ♪ and I see the big meetings and everyone 'round as the preacher damned Satan and makes little children with wide eyes in their heads wet their overall jeans as they stand in a hot, grassy field where their fathers shot doves and raised cows and just walked... ♪ ...for they like to look at the pines with the jays on the boughs and the cottontail rabbits asleep in the needles that fell to the ground that the fathers walked over to dream at their dream.

♪ I see the big meetings of each other kind, with the fat-jowled mayors and the barbecue plates and the band and the trimmings of red, white, and blue on the fine, new grandstand.

♪ I see the white-masked men that yell in the night, and the angry black men that wait for the day when they can have pride and can shout it out loud.

And I look at the present, but is it the past?

♪ But we all know the past and the rich, courtly squires and the proud, white-dressed ladies, and how the war came in the North.

But we bowed to the North... [drum beating] ...for the big, iron gears churned.

And in the North, it was strong, in the North, it was right.

And the damned institution had to be done, ♪ but the bucks and black mammies still sang to the child in the deep swamp voice, and the patient black men still worked in the field, and the thick Spanish moss on the oak trees looked down.

And the North came again, only gradually now.

In the North, it was strong, in the North, it was right.

And we had to do better by our fellow man.

Yet the burly, white redneck still worked at the corn, and the tobacco they spat made the wooden floors moist.

And the ancient, black mammy still stirred at the greens and put sweet molasses on the hot, coarse cornbread for the patient black men with the stubby, gray beards when they came back from the farm or the mill or the plant.

♪ But I can't believe right would have all the black men in a fight at their tasked in button-down, white-collared shirts, with their wives all at home with their hair all done up, and the men in their offices all drive back to home to the ticky-tack houses and well-molded kids.

♪ And the oak does not grow in the concreted sand, and the myrtles not next to the slow-moving brook, where the simple black mammy pulled fish from the shadow with a pole of dried cane and a fine, long, red worm, and the mockingbirds stilled because some person came and said it was not cultured to stir the dense air with a voice he had used for 300 years.

♪ No, let's all line up and join the hands with the dirt in the nails and pray that our children may learn the new way but yet not forget the wisdom they gained from the still, damp, hot nights and the patient, old faces that remember the wrongs.

And if the new children can so march on forth, they will be a fine people and proud that the lot of the Lord has placed them in the lap of Southland, the land of my birth.

♪ ♪ ♪ Julie> The sky looked gray and dismal as I walked down the little road made through the woods by the woodcutters.

♪ Earl> Going down the long road of remembering, I step into a place of many yesterdays.

♪ Farmer> For remembering my youth, lying in the moist, green grass, just enjoying life.

♪ Jonathan> Life has been wonderful to me.

It gave me an efficient, working body.

For so many, it did not.

♪ Earl> As you walk in, you are greeted by the smell of talcum powder.

The rickety benches creak with the seating of a customer.

♪ Cora> Few people accomplish all the goals they would like to, and I just wonder... will I?

♪ Earl> Frail shuffle and faulty equilibrium... bases of her stability.

♪ Young Cora> The fun of loving is playing hard-to-get.

♪ Adult Cora> Time, what is your hurry?

Why do you pass us by so quickly?

♪ Adult Cora> Sadness is seeing a child when you have lost yours.

Life was so simple when I was younger.

♪ Earl> And if the new children can so march on forth, they will be a fine people, and proud that the lot of the Lord has placed them in the lap of the Southland, the land of my birth.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪