Many years ago, wild plums grew all along the dirt roads in Bemiss. They grew as a result of birds sitting on a cattle fence next to the road and depositing the seeds of plums they had eaten. The wild plum bushes grew into huge thickets. They could be twenty yards long by the side of the road and almost as thick. And their limbs would reach high in the air.
When I was a boy growing up in Bemiss, we picked these wild plums. If I was walking down the road, I would stop and check the bush to see if any were ripe and would eat them. On Saturday, my siblings and I would pile into the family station wagon, and daddy would drive us all around to these wild plum bushes, and we would pick them until all our buckets were full. There were bushes on Studstill road, on Deloach road, and on Old Pine Road. The plums were then taken home, and my mother used them to make jelly.
The wild plum bushes are now gone. As Bemiss developed and more houses were built, the roads were widened and then paved. When they were widened, the wild plum bushes were pushed up with a bulldozer and removed. Those who removed them had no idea what a special place those plum bushes had in the lives of those that lived in Bemiss many years ago.
The wild persimmons are gone as well. They grew at the fence line along the side of the road with the wild plums. The wild persimmons grew from the same process as the wild plums.
My siblings and I use to walk up and down the dirt roads of Bemiss. We either went to our granny’s house or the country store that Mr. Wilson owned. At Mr. Wilson’s store, we traded empty bottles of Coke, Fanta, Nehi, Pepsi, and RC that we collected in for candy, moon pies, peanuts, or a Coke.
If it was the right time of year, which was usually late fall, the persimmons would be ripe. A persimmon is ripe when it’s as bright orange as a pumpkin. But even then, it might not be fully ripe and might have a little bitterness in the bite. The best and sweetest persimmons are those on the ground that fell from the tree overnight.
There were a bunch of these wild persimmons on my granny’s farm. To find them in late October, I would walk back to the far side of the pasture and into the woods. These persimmons have disappeared as well. When Granny passed on, her almost hundred-acre farm was sold, and it’s now covered with asphalt, cement, and houses.
There aren’t near as many blackberries, but you can still find them growing in many places. But the blackberries that I remember are gone. They grew at the fence line all along the side of the dirt road in the same fashion as the wild plums and persimmons.
The blackberries were so plentiful, and we would go out with buckets to pick them. When we picked blackberries, we had to be extra careful of snakes. Snakes would position themselves around blackberry bushes to ambush birds that came to eat the berries. Of course, it was a given that you were going to get a few scratches from the blackberry thorns.
Blackberries usually got ripe in the middle of summer, and we would pick them until we were tired and had our fill. They were so good when they were made into a blackberry cobbler. We made a delicious snack by putting blackberries in a tall glass with milk and a spoon full of sugar.
I wouldn’t say that I’m complaining, just reminiscing. I realize it doesn’t make sense to pave a narrow dirt road, and that the wisest thing to do is widen it so traffic can travel in both directions. For this to be accomplished, the wild plum trees, the wild persimmon trees, and the blackberry bushes must be pushed aside and removed.
It just seems like this monstrosity called “progress”, in its forward progression, erases the past and leaves no remnant.
Progression is supposed to mean we’re moving in the right direction that will give us more and leave us in a better position. But, receiving more through progression seems to result in more frustrating, depressing, violent, hysterical, criminal, immoral, unhappy, and suicidal tendencies.
I would say this is because even though our life contains more things, we have less contentment. The more materialistic we are the more degenerate we become. Though we have containers full of valuable things, our life seems to have less meaning and significance. We’ve become like King Solomon, the richest man of his day, that said he “hated life” (Ecc. 2: 17). He didn’t hate living; he just hated the life he was living.
Life was simple when the wild plums grew by the side of the dirt road; when Bemiss road was a two-lane highway and you and your dog could cross it without having to run across.
I know we can’t return to the simple things of life, but we can, in the midst of all this progression, do our best to simplify our life in order to save our sanity and have some decency and dignity.
We were dirt poor when we grew up in Bemiss; that is materially speaking. But I didn’t know we were poor until someone told me. The things we lived for and the simple activities we were involved in enriched our lives by giving them meaning and significance. Progression has given us more in the things that won’t matter two seconds on the other side of eternity and less of the things that do matter.
The wild plums, the wild persimmons, and the blackberries are gone from the side of the dirt road. They’re gone because of progression, and modernization, and because room had to be made for growth. I know we can’t go back. The “Good Ole Days” are gone forever. But the wild plum bushes will always be in my memory to remind me of the days when people had a life and didn’t just live.
