Floyd County and the Locust Tree Story
This Saturday was gorgeous in Southwest Virginia. After a lot of tough days we decided to head out to Floyd County, about 20 minutes away. Now, I must say, I really love Floyd county. It is such a beautiful and oddly weird, eclectic place. Half the populace is made up of old time farmers. The other half is comprised of new age artists and organic farmers in the granola/birkenstock tradition. If you were to see a fellow with draft horses pulling a wagon down the street, you would not be surprised, and when I saw someone driving on a country road in his energy efficient, electric golf cart… well, that did not surprise me either. Almost everyone I know around here is enchanted with Floyd County.
The place is growing. There is only one town of any size in Floyd County, and that town is called Floyd. There is actually a stoplight at the major intersection. Just past the stoplight, the Floyd Country Store, home of the famous Friday night jamboree, is newly renovated. Floyd now has a small hotel (built with sustainable. renewable materials, of course) and a small set of shops for the timberwrights, photographers and local artists.
As I walked around town Saturday I found a new shop had opened – this one specialized in handbuilt furniture and millwork. Sam, the owner, makes everything from local woods and from scratch. All the hardwood flooring, wainscotting, fireplace mantles, stair parts – all of it was done by Sam. I was pretty impressed. An older woman who works for Sam was running the shop. She was a small woman quietly sitting in the back, working a jigsaw puzzle. As I looked more through the store I was taken by the fact that everything in there was hand made. By a local guy. This amazed me – it was like a trip back in time. Not one “made in China” sticker anywhere. I asked the woman (whose name I did not catch, I am sorry to say), if the owner actually made all his own hardwood flooring. “Oh yes”, she said, and looked down at the different floor patterns where we were standing. “This is cherry”, she said, pointing to the back wall. “And this, well this is a stressed maple. That over there is red oak. And the part you are standing on, that is locust”.
“Locust!” I exclaimed. “I have never heard of a hardwood flooring made of locust.”
“Well”, says the woman, Sam uses anything he can get his hands on. This is yellow locust, but when they first put it down it was an ugly green. Now it has turned a kind of a golden color.” The woman had an interesting expression on her face as she looked at the flooring. Kind of a mix of admiration and disgust. Having grown up around locust trees my entire life, I understood completely.
“Those locust trees,” I said. “You don’t know whether to praise them or curse them. They make such nice fence posts because they never rot. The wood is harder than oak. No wood smells better when burning in the woodstove. But Lordy, they are ugly, they have stickers (thorns), the limbs fall off all the time, they take over your pasture, and when there is a storm they are nothing but lightening rods. They get struck ALL the time.”
“Oh yes, you are right about that”, the woman exclaimed. I could see her face kind of relax. I knew she was thinking of a memory and a good story was coming.
“When I was a little girl, my momma took her metal bucket and went out to pick some berries. All of a sudden a big ol’ thunderstorm came up. It came so fast and fierce that there was no way she could get back home. ”
I could see this in my mind’s eye. “Don’t tell me she went under a locust tree to get out of the rain!”. I didn’t even want to think of that. We are fearful when horses go under the locusts trees during an electrical storm. Many a farm animal has died that way.
The woman’s voice started to rise and she was filling with emotion from her story. “Oh yes! And not only did she go under the tree, well she turned that metal bucket upside down and sat down on it!”.
At first I laughed, but then there was a silence as she looked me in the eye. “Oh no”, I said. “Don’t tell me she got struck by lightning”.
“No, but that tree sure did. And”, the woman added, loudly and seriously “it blew her right off of that bucket!”
Fortunately, momma was safe, even though she got blown off her bucket. I can’t help but wonder if she has a circular scar on her behind.
I’ll never see another thunderstorm when I do not think of momma and her berries, all asunder. And the next time I put down a hardwood floor, I think I’ll see if Sam can make me a nice one out of locust.
