One of the few constants in my life has been visiting my Grandma Callie at her home on Groce Meadow Rd. nestled quietly in the woods and farm fields of the piedmont region of the northwest corner of South Carolina. She almost reached a century on this earth, seeing more change than most of us will ever know. She was both stability and change all at once. This piece is an attempt to grappled with the idea of home in a world defined by change and the march of time. This story is still in development.
Photos by Thomas Hammon
On the last day of June 2020, I woke up with a sense of urgency to take the path through the woods to Grandma’s house before it stops being the path to Grandma’s house.
From her bed, she asked me how I was doing and I told her that despite it all I had nothing really to complain about.
I asked her about the old oak tree that had to be cut down over the weekend. It’s lifespan nearly mirrors her own. With a few tears in her eyes she said she was sad to see it go.
We left as her energy was quickly fading. I told her I loved her as many tines as I could stumble over the words. This was the first time I’ve ever left her without a warm hug. With her heart and lungs failing as they were I’m not sure COVID would have made things worse, but that wasn’t my call to make.
At 96 years on this planet, she was a survivor. I said I would try to see her again before her transition to the next plane of existence.
Six days later, Callie Barnette Hammond was laid to rest next to her husband Tom at the Mountain View Methodist Church in Taylors, SC. The ceremony was brief as I’m sure grandma would not have wanted anyone to go to much trouble for her. I learned for the first time that she used to enjoy meeting up with her girlfriends at Red Lobster for a regular meal.
Callie’s son Mike (and my uncle) presides over a modest celebration of her life. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, just a few close family members gathered at the hold house on Groce Meadow Rd.
Thomas D. Hammond (bottom right), a skilled heavy bomber pilot who survived 35 missions in the European Theater of WWII, built the house that still sits quietly off Groce Meadow Rd.
A fading map in the hallway still notes Tom’s travels during and shortly after the war while he served as a pilot in the US Army Air Corps (pre-cursor to the US Air Force).
It was Tom’s hands that built the house, but it was Callie’s that made it a home for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (including Charlie and Henry pictured above).
Callie’s eldest son James left home as early as he could. A brief stint in the Navy hunting Soviet submarines with a Fairchild K-20 aerial photography camera, followed by a long career in journalism, took him all around the world. Inevitably, the bonds of family brought him back to the old home place, where he and his wife Elizabeth enjoy a comfortable retirement on the lake that was once the river that was the playground of his youth..
Brothers, Mike (left) and James (right) inspect one of the old out-buildings that their father Tom built.
Jim, Mike, and Susan continue the tradition of cultivating a family garden plot next to the old house. In all my life, there’s always been a surplus of green beans, squash, and tomatoes, among other things. The land continues to provide for generations.
The transition from local agriculture to ex-urban development and the subsequent population growth led to the damming of the Tyger river and creation of Lake Robinson to meet the needs of the nearby city of Greer, SC. The old farms quickly got divided up as newly minted lake front property with mountain views.
In early summer, a local firefly species synchronizes their lights in the woods near the house on Groce Meadow Rd.
Much of the old farm has been sold off and developed into upper-middle class homes.
My mother Elizabeth enjoys the new deck built my father, Callie’s son James.
The neighboring property, originally used for family-scale agriculture and timber, was recently sold to a developer who has denuded the land to make way for a concentration of bourgeois “Tiny Homes”.
Views of the “Blue Wall” of the SC upstate are quickly becoming privatized as the area continues to develop.