The two days in the woods, thick with briars and vines encircling large hardwoods and small saplings, had a special purpose. It was not hunting game, nor taking an afternoon stroll. At the start of the outing on a Friday morning, the woods were wet from a slow but steady morning rain. Though the rain had stopped, the sky was still overcast with a smooth blanket of gray. My two brothers and I went up the dirt road from our mother’s house to the edge of a neighbor’s property off of County Road 21.
The weather was a consideration during the early
morning. It resulted in a decision
to postpone our adventure until after lunch. To take advantage of the collective manpower we three
provided, Mike, Ricky and I spent the rainy morning under cover of our daddy’s
tractor and tool shed. Daddy had
left the contents of the shed to all four of his children at his death in April
2012. For the most part, the shed
was as Daddy had left it, except for one small area, which Mother and I had
cleaned during a recent visit.
It was good to have we three brothers together. It is a rare occurrence when we are
visiting at the same time the home of our childhood. Those rare visits usually come for a holiday or a special
occasion. This visit had a
different purpose. There was work
that needed to be done and we had a limited time in which to do it. Not to waste our time because of
the weather, we cleaned up the shed, and discarded old paint cans, cardboard
boxes, old car engine parts, along with other assorted things that were of no
use. Metal objects were kept, with
a plan to take them at some later time to a salvage company in Jasper.
It was a fruitful morning. By lunchtime, we were able to actually see the top of some
storage cabinets against the wall of the unit. Eight large bags of trash were taken up to the garbage stand
on County Road 21 for the Nauvoo community garbage truck to pick up. Mother had lunch ready by 11:30 am. We had hamburgers, chips, and
slaw. It was a satisfying lunch
topped off with some of mother’s fried apple pies. The rain stopped while we ate lunch.
Clothing was a consideration for our afternoon trek through
the woods, not because of the wet weather, but because our purpose would be a
messy one. Mike wore some nice
high-top wading boots, along with what he called some old clothes. Ricky wore
jeans, a nice-looking shirt-jacket over a shirt, and some brown leather
boots. I wore some really old
clothes-- jeans with holes and multiple paint splatters from previous projects,
an old flannel shirt also paint-stained, and tennis shoes covered with paint
mixed with brown dirt stains.
These clothes had seen many a messy project before, and I knew they were
adequate for the mission at hand.
For further protection, I wore some disposable coveralls over my
clothing which my brother, Ricky had brought.
Setting off into the woods, we each had in hand a bucket of
red pigment boundary line paint and a large paintbrush. Our work began easily enough, as
we marked over the fainted paint previously marked three years prior. Daddy had the land surveyed some time
ago, knowing that his plan was to divide the one hundred and seven acres among
us children. He had already marked
the boundary lines, and in fact, three years ago he walked with each of us as
we helped him mark the lines again over the fainted paint he had placed on the
trees from the original survey.
On the outer borders of Daddy’s property, there were yellow
markings on the trees indicating land owned by the state of Alabama. Our land adjoined the state “school”
land, sharing the same boundary line. It was evident that Daddy honored the yellow boundary
lines because there were no red line markings on the outer border where our
land and the state land joined. It
was important for us to make sure all our boundary lines were well marked as
soon as possible. The state of
Alabama and the private forestry corporation land nearby had both relinquished
their mineral rights to the Birmingham Coal and Coke Company for coal strip
mining. Also, the state of Alabama
had put out bids for the timber to be purchased during this month of February
2013. The timber is to be totally
removed prior to the onset of the strip mining.
In marking the landline, the trees are painted on the side
of the trunk closest to where the actual line is located on the inside or the
outside of the tree trunk. The trees are marked with three big dots of
paint. The color yellow is the
boundary line color indicating state owned land. The color red is the boundary line color indicating
individually private owned land.
We painted the same trees hat had a yellow mark on them with our fresh
red paint to indicate a common border.
Sometimes a sapling may fall on the line. If so, the small trunk is painted all the way around. At the corner of the land is a round
metal stake indicating the actual corner point of the property line. It is from that point that the boundary
runs in a straight line to the next corner marker. These stakes too are painted yellow and/or red.
On the first day of our painting the landlines, we finished
the property willed to my brother, Mike, to my sister, Rebecca, and to me. It was getting late and we could not
finish it all on one afternoon.
The next day the weather was, according to the weather forecast, to be a
sunny day, making for an ideal time to go back into the woods to finish our
project. After a terrific
breakfast of homemade biscuits, sausage, bacon, and scrambled eggs, we brothers
got back into our old clothes, ready to finish the task at hand. All we lacked was Ricky’s land next to
the state of Alabama land.
We began in the corner off the dirt road and into the woods
behind the Lawson place, not far from Mother’s house. When we were kids, we had our pigpen down in the hollow near
that corner. Today that section of
land is thick with briars and vines nestled among the trees. It was not an easy task to find the
marked trees indicating the boundary line in that section. But eventually, as we went farther
along the line, the land’s underbrush thinned. We soon came across a fire lane, which was parallel to the
boundary, speeding up the process, as well as making for an easier walk through
the woods. We would see a blue
ribbon occasionally on a small sapling that was also painted with the red
boundary paint. We speculated that
the blue ribbon was there to help indicate where the line was when the timber
cutting begins on the state land.
As we continued marking the trees with our three red dots,
we eventually came to a corner stake.
From that stake, Daddy and Ricky had marked the line three years prior
on the backside of the property.
Eventually, way down in a hollow, we came to the next corner of the
property. From that corner, we
could see yellow and red boundary lines and a blue painted line converge. The color blue is used to indicate
private company or forestry corporation owned land. At this corner all three meet—the Kilgore land, the state
of Alabama land, and the company’s land.
From that same corner, Daddy never did paint forward to County Road 21
because he just honored the yellow line the state had painted. We thought to clear up any confusion,
we would continue to mark the same trees with red as we did the day before on
Mike’s property.
It was evident that in the past, there had been confusion.
We found a deer stand on a yellow marked tree on our property. We were sure who ever put the stand
there thought they were on state land.
In actuality, the stand was on our property. It was all in knowing that it was private land on the inside
of those three yellow dots of paint.
We added our three red markings to the trees, and in that way, a stranger
would know that it was the boundary line for both properties.
The boundary lines for all four sections of Daddy’s property
had been marked by the middle of the second day. But the trees were not the only things painted with red
paint. There was our clothes, our shoes, and our bodies, especially our hands! Cleanup though was
easy. Some mineral spirits would
get all that red off our hands. We
just threw the brushes away. All
in all it was a rewarding job. It
was also a time to appreciate the land of our childhood. The woods are timeless and beautiful.
It was also a time for us brothers to be together. In Ricky’s words, “We’re bonding.”
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