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t WaS a Cool Day in late spring, but i knew that fall was on its way. as i walked into the hospital to visit my father, i heard a few geese honking as they went by overhead. it was a comforting sound and i listened until the noise drifted away. i opened the glass and steel door by its cold handle, and i was inside. The place looked like i had always remembered it. The floor was made of individual beige tiles with little flecks of color kept shiny by weekly buffing. it was the exact same flooring you find in almost every elementary school in the country. The walls were beige and the ceiling was also beige. Some well-intended volunteer had painted bright blue morning glories, climbing up over the elevator doors. The morning glories looked like the kind of art you find on the top of old cheese boxes; and i imagined that the person who painted them also crocheted the skirts on the little dolls that cover rolls of toilet paper. (you see the little dolls sometimes in the county, where they sit on the backs of toilets.) The elevator doors sprang open almost the second i pushed the button. The hospital has only two floors, so the elevator is always on one floor or the other. it was constructed to be long enough for a gurney, and it creaked as it made its way between the floors. The inside was made of stainless steel that was smeared with fingerprints.
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The youngest member of the band (Dick, center) already at the drums

When i got to the door of his room i instantly knew that Daddy had died. mama was outside talking to the nice little nurse. nurses in edenton typically come in two sizes: small and very big. i was struck by the small nurses kindness. i didnt want to go inside the room and i did not. i wanted to remember Daddy as i had known himalive and very funny. i had visited him just a few hours earlier, and even though his eyes were closed, he had squeezed my hand as i talked to him. he lived his entire life at Beverly hall, the big old home where i live with my family. and he was now in this very beige place with a shiny linoleum beige floor and little and big nurses. he should have been at home, the place that meant so much to him, and in an environment where he felt comfortable. i wanted to get mama back into his room, and for a moment, i thought i might pick her up and carry her in there myself. Finally, i heard the elevator doors open again, and in walked my brother and sister. They were familiar to me, unlike the presence of the beige walls and my awareness of Daddys death. Daddy, of course, would have wanted the funeral service to be held at St. Pauls where he had always gone to church. The church is a small brick building, constructed over a period of years, off and on, during the 18th century. and it still looks as if it were dropped in edenton, right out of an english county village three centuries earlier. We really didnt have to make any plans. We just knew instinctively what to do. my brother called the funeral home, my sister called the preacher, and i was supposed to call the florist. i quickly found out that the florist had closed his shop for the week while he was on vacation. how could i fail at such a small task? Daddy loved flowers, but on reflection, i remembered that he really disliked flowers from the florist. like my grandmother, he thought they looked alien. i called another florist in a town about fifteen miles away and found that it had gone out of business. (not enough demand for Birds of Paradise, i thought.)
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By the time i got home, people were already coming in the front door with food of all kinds. The kitchen crew had quickly assembled. They were not only in the kitchen, but all over the house, getting ready. They were mamas old friends. Some were almost too old to walk. They were arranging tomato aspic on silver trays while commenting that they had a tray like this one, or that another tray had come from an aunt who had died. Where were they going to get enough linen napkins? and who had borrowed their napkins and not yet returned them? i hope when they are returned, theyll be ironed! you just cant get help like you used to! With that observation they launched into a conversation about the maids they remembered, and how much times had changed. it may have changed for them, but i was still in the same place where i had grown up, as had my father and my grandfather. and nothing had changed, except this: Daddy was no longer there. how he would have loved to see his friends, to laugh and talk with them. Suddenly, everything was different. i was okay until Daddys lifelong friend, Ben Wood, walked in. Ben was a few years younger than Daddy, but he always thought of Ben as his best friend. i knew him my entire life. Daddy said, and we never had a cross word. Ben hugged me and squeezed my hand. i fought back the tears. When he spoke, his broad accent was like Daddys, yet even more pronounced. Daddy and Ben had played together as children, as did their fathers. They knew so much about each other that things that would ordinarily bother people about each other just didnt matter to them. Daddy and Ben each shared the same flaws, and they were few. Bens son, Benbury, Jr. has been my best friend all my life, too. These three generations of friendships were part of our family traditionlike having country ham at Christmas, and singing Welcome happy morning at easter. Daddy had never made much money, but then, i thought, we had everything we needed. We had dishes left to us by some relatives and silver from others. The pictures and portraits hanging on the wall had always been there, and i couldnt see room for any more. The furnishings could probably have used recovering, but the worn places and little holes in the fabrics and curtains just seemed to me to add to their comfort. The
Dicks best friend, Ben Wood Portrait by T. John F. Becker Saying Good-bye To Daddy 159 b

furniture was far from sparse; but every time some distant relative died, more pieces came, always finding a place to fit in. over time, i had learned where each and every thing in the house had come from. The whole house looked as if it had just grown over time, maybe like the grand Canyon. Daddy didnt really care. he just felt at home there, and so did i. By the time both Benburys had gotten to our house i realized that we were not going to find a florist, and as usual, i remembered something my grandmother had said years before. She often told me stories about growing up in our little town. her grandmother, born well before the War Between the States, was married to the captain of the edenton Bell Battery, William Badham. my great-great-grandmother had always loved flowers. everyone called her mulla, and when she died, her friends picked flowers from their gardens and made a colorful pall to cover her casket. With that thought in mind i turned to Big Ben and asked him and Benbury, Jr., for their help in finding flowers for Daddys pall. They quickly went to work and ended up at Vine oak, the black cemetery on the side of the little creek we had always called lizas Bottom. i had played and fished in that creek, and looked for crayfish there when i was growing up. Back then, i thought the creek with its big banks all around, looked like a giant lady with her rear end up in the air. i decided that was how the place got its name. (But nobody seemed to know who liza was.) about ten years ago, the town did a wetlands project at the creek and put in all kinds of water plants. They multiplied beyond belief. now, when trash from the street occasionally gets caught up in the creek, the town manager sends

The Edenton Preservation Band with Dick Dixon (second from right)
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prisoners from the jail to clean it out. all the signs identifying the plants have long ago faded, and today, lizas Bottom looks almost prehistoric. Vine oak Cemetery is beautiful. huge old oak trees with heavy vines shade the graves. many of the headstones bear the names of freed slaves. a railroad track borders the cemetery on the south, and the creek runs beside it. Close to the stream is a low place where, over the years, people cleaning off the burial plots have thrown all kinds of things that had once been used to decorate them. Ben and Benbury found some discarded pall forms there in a pile, picked up two of them, and headed back to our house. When Ben showed them to me, his eyes sparkled; for Daddys sake he was so glad they could help. Word spread quickly and before long, Daddys friends had filled all the buckets on the back porch with flowers just picked from local gardens: Sambos father, Richard Dillard Dixon, Jr. camellias, planted by grandpar1940s ents, and prized for their large blooms; jasmine, larkspur, tulips, iris, azalea, madonna lilies, and daffodils of every size and color. They even brought opium poppies, which had been grown illegally in almost every garden in town ever since the time a local lady visited China, and somehow managed to bring back a few seeds. When the poppies bloom, more seeds can be collected and planted for a new crop in the fall. and, of course, there was Queen annes lace, which grows along the railroad tracks in the county, and blooms through the summer. all the flowers were put in vases throughout the house, and arranged for the pall. all Daddys grandchildren, and my sister and brother helped. The result was extraordinary! The pall was beautiful, and smelled like a loquat tree in the early winter. We kept it on the kitchen table overnight and the next morning, put it on Daddys casket.
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Editors Note: The Northampton County Courthouse was the third structure built for that purpose in the charming small town of Jackson, North Carolina. Jackson is known principally for its exquisite and diverse architecture; its famous racehorse of 1816, Sir Archie, called the foundation sire of the American turf ; and the role three of its citizens played in the American Civil War: Thomas Bragg (18101872), Matthew Whitaker Ransom (1826-1904), and Henry King Burgwyn, Jr. (1841-1863). Bragg was a local attorney who served in the State Assembly and later became the 34th governor of North Carolina (1855). He held a seat in the U.S. Senate until the outbreak of war and in 1861, was appointed Attorney General of the Confederate States of America. Matt Ransom also served as Assemblyman and State Attorney General until he was chosen in 1861 as one of three commissioners from North Carolina to the Confederate government. As Colonel of the 35th North Carolina infantry, Ransom saw action in the battles of Seven Pines, the Seven Days, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Plymouth, Weldon, Suffolk, and the siege of Petersburg. He was wounded three times during the War and finally surrendered at Appamatox. The story of Henry King Burgwyn, Jr., son of the gentleman believed to be the architect of the 1858 Northampton County Courthouse, is perhaps the most poignant. Following a personal recommendation by his professor at VMI, Thomas Stonewall Jackson, the young Burgywn became lieutenant colonel of the 26th North Carolina Regiment in 1861; he was nineteen years old. Nicknamed the Boy Colonel, he was killed at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. According to an eyewitness at the time: Then Colonel Burgwyn himself took the colors and as we were advancing over the brow of a little hill and he was a few feet in advance of the center of the regiment, he was shot as he partly turned to give an order, a bullet passing through his abdomen. A story printed in 1906 in the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, records Burgwyns last words: The lords will be done. We have gained the greatest victory in the war. i have no regret at my approaching death. i fell in defense of my country. It is said that the 26th Regiment suffered a greater loss than any other regiment, either Federal or Confederate, during the entire four years struggle.
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t WaS one oF thoSe hot DayS in august when i thought nothing was going to happen. i was driving towards Jackson, a beautiful little town which at its peak was the commercial heart of the Roanoke River basin. The Roanoke River has carved a valley through the fertile lands near the Virginia border. The soil is rich beyond belief and during the 19th century, many people became very rich from farming. The houses and public buildings they left behind still cling to the landscape. time has forgotten this area, which is on the way to nowhere. it is fields and fields and pine trees. Vines cover many of the old houses left behind. Jackson, however, still has life and vitality and is the seat of northampton County. an amazing courthouse, built in 1858, and thought to be the work of the distinguished planter and local architect, henThe Boy Colonel, ry King Burgwyn, dominates the little Henry King Burgwyn, Jr. town. The building is a perfect example of Photo courtesy of Northampton greek Revival architecture and looks like County Museum
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