A Place Called Home

My maternal grandmother, Marion Ardella Biddix Hall, was born in a railroad house in the little community of Altapass, North Carolina. Altapass was a place where her family had lived for generations before and it is where she would spend most of her life. My grandfather, Cecil Guy Hall also lived in a railroad house. His mother and father ran "The Boarding House" which was a place for the railroad executives to spend the night when they came through. Mee Maw's father was a section foreman for the railroad. Mee Maw's childhood was spent with the chug-chug chug-chug of a train on the tracks humming as the eerie whoooo-whoooo of a train whistle became the background music for life, play, work, and death.

Mee Maw and Papa left the little community of Altapass for Eglin Air Force base as young newlyweds. They would come back to Altapass as a little family of three after my mother was born. They would leave again to move to Donaldson Air Force base and would come back as a family of four after my aunt was born. Mee Maw would never again live in any town other than Spruce Pine and for most of her life, lived in the little community of Altapass. It is where she would have three more daughters, where she raised children, where she would attend church, and where she would be laid to rest.

As her funeral ended, the hearse carrying her body began the processional and a shiver ran down my spine as we left the church where her daughters had said their vows... where children and grandchildren had knelt at an altar to pray... where her body would lay as family and friends paid their respects to her. The journey from the church passed the little piece of land that she was raised on and passed by one of Wise Hall's rental houses that she had raised a family in. As the cars came to a stop at the cemetary, we were within shouting distance of the little duplex apartment that she had spent her last 30 plus years in. Our journey was just a few miles and we never left Altapass Highway yet somehow, we had traveled most of Mee Maw's life in those few short miles.

As that stark reality hit me like a brick wall,

I began to wonder what really makes a place close enough to your heart that you can call it "home"...

and I came to a realization that "home" can be anywhere.

Home is where you can always come back to and it is as though you had never left.

Mee Maw kept coming back because she could.

Home is like that.

It is the place that you can leave from and explore the world.

It is the place you can come back to when you feel like life is about to fall apart.

It is the people who love you and will support you.

It is the land where you can sit under a tree and cry and think

just like you have done a thousand times before.

Home is the place you want to keep coming back to

and it is the place you want to raise your children.

It is the place where you find peace.

For Mee Maw, home had been Altapass and tonight it is where her body rests. There is a peace in that... in the knowing that even in death and even when her soul left her body, that her earthly flesh was laid to rest in a place called "home" for so many years and so many generations. I can stand at her grave and still hear the cadence of a chug-chug chug-chug as a train travels down the tracks and close my eyes to the eerie whooooo whoooo of a train whistle as it winds through my mountain town.

Two of the railroad houses near Mee Maw's railroad childhood home

The children, son-in-laws, grandchildren and spouses, and great-grandchildren of Cecil and Ardella Biddix Hall in front of the little church called "home" in Altapass