Hainted Holler

A quick note: I haven’t been posted much, because I’ve been working really hard on my new book of real estate stories that is coming out in March of 2024. Make sure you subscribe here or follow me on Facebook or Instagram to get the latest news on pre-orders and readings in your area. It’s exciting!

Now, for a Christmas story…

The graveyard at the Halls Hill Baptist Church. These are my people.

Christmas is generally not my bag, but I do like the time of year. I once had a Polish friend tell me winter is the best time, because we all come together indoors and spend time together, and if that was what Christmas was all about, I think I would be more into it. Remove all the Christmas carols playing for two months – a week is quite enough – and all of the presents no one wants and the pressure to cook, clean, and entertain, and I think the idea is fairly solid. 

This idea was proven to me one Christmas in the late 90s. I hadn’t lived at home in a long time, and even though I saw my parents fairly regularly, my father was usually so busy working that I didn’t get to spend what the kids call “quality time” with him. He was often worried about something – money, work, money, my mom – and tended to space out a good bit. 

This particular day, it did something it rarely did in Middle Tennessee: it snowed. I would have to have been a no hearted Grinch not to get excited about a White Christmas and to my surprise, this also excited my father. He wasn’t prone to excitement that didn’t involve winning games or gambling. 

He decided we should go out driving in the lightly falling snow and I was game. He drove me and my mom out to the place where he grew up. Halls Hill, Tennessee was never incorporated and was a place only to people who remembered it. Yes, there was a Halls Hill Baptist Church, but there wasn’t anything else to indicate to an outsider that a community had once existed in this collection of fields and “hollers” as my father called them. 

The first thing he wanted to show us was Tiger Hill. This was the hill where he and his brothers had gone sledding when they were young. It was steep and long and he told many stories about wiping out halfway down or pushing his little brother down while he was crying. He was animated and happy in a way I didn’t often see him. 

Our next tour stop was Hainted Holler, so named because the local kids all believed it was haunted or “hainted.” He said his parents tried to tell him it was just the wind whispering to him and his brothers and their friends through those trees, but they knew better. They would dare each other to go and stay in Hainted Holler and call each other pussies when they wouldn’t. He said it still sent a chill up his back thinking of the things he had heard there. 

The farmhouse where he grew up was long gone and there wasn’t a lot left in Halls Hill, so we turned back to town. It was a few days before Christmas and the local Cracker Barrel was still open, so we stopped there for lunch. 

They had a roaring fire going and we sat right in front of it, drinking coffee and eating biscuits and gravy. I was thrilled because my father wasn’t done telling stories. He talked about his grandparents, the ones who had disowned his father when he married my West Virginia, far from society, grandmother. I didn’t know anything about them, other than my great grandfather was a mule trader and had owned the first car in Rutherford County. 

The story he told was of their later life. According to my father, my great grandfather was bedridden in his 80s and required an in-home nurse to take care of him. Maybe required was a strong word, but they could certainly afford it and my great grandmother may not have wanted to wipe her husband’s hind end in her dotage.

Apparently one day, my great grandmother walked in the room to find the nurse astride my great grandfather. He may have been bedridden, but it seemed one of his most beloved parts was still very much in working order. 

“And goddamned if my grandmother didn’t have my granddaddy’s balls cut off to spite him!” yelled my father, right there in the Barrel of Crackers. 

I’d like to think I almost did a coffee spit take here, because, I mean, Jesus Christ.  Even my mother, teller of some of the tallest tales south of the Mason Dixon, was credulous. 

“She had him castrated?” I asked, hardly believing what I was hearing.

It took my father a moment to answer, because he had teared up a little. “I know it’s wadn’t right, but if a man can still do his business at that age, then by God, he oughta be allowed to!”

I sat, looking at the fire, reflecting that he really did have a point. 

My father wasn’t close with his grandparents who had disinherited the father he lost much too early, so I have no idea where he heard this story or how much, if any, of it is true. What I do know is sitting there in that Cracker Barrel that day, hearing about my great grandfather’s involuntary castration, I felt more of the Christmas spirit than I have since.  

It wasn’t about my great grandpa’s balls. It was seeing my father happy and lit up and doing what he did best: tell great stories. I hadn’t seen him that animated in a long time and I wouldn’t see it again very often. 

If I could have that afternoon in a snow globe to shake up and watch for the rest of my life, that’s all the Christmas I would ever want. Being safe and laughing inside with the people I love while snow falling outside is a feeling no one can buy at the mall.