The Joy of the Journey
**This was originally published on Thursday, November 13, 2014, in my newspaper column, “The Old Paths,” in The Stokes News. Due to a website change a few years ago, the publishing company broke all links to our old articles which were archived online. This was a tragic mistake and resulted in the loss of thousands of newspaper articles. Little by little, I am putting my old columns on this blog so that they can be preserved. Each column may be updated to reflect present times when transferred to this blog.**
We humans always seem bent on getting somewhere. Rush, rush, hurry, hurry, get to where you’re going—eyes on the prize. Sometimes we focus so much on the goal that we take the journey for granted, not realizing that the joy is in the journey.
Before we know it, these present paths become the old paths. I think that often we are somewhat arrogant about life. We assume that “what is” will always be. Then when we come to our senses later, we mentally kick ourselves for not treasuring those old paths while we walked them.
Because they DO end. Times do change. Progress happens. And that’s okay. It’s the way of life. But the realization of the inevitability of change should make us appreciate the present more.
I remember the day Andy Griffith died. How I astounded myself by sobbing for a spell on that July day! Somehow the thought that I had never lived a day on Earth without Andy figuratively presiding as “Sheriff of Mayberry” hit me hard. A very pleasant era of my life seemed to have ended.
I sort of felt the same way last week when L.D. Sutphin passed away. I don’t remember a time in my life when he didn’t run the Cove Grill. That place has become iconic to Walnut Cove, hence rendering L.D. a sort of icon himself.
Many’s the time over the years I’ve walked into Cove Grill to get a cheeseburger on toast—all the way, of course. And I usually got a side order of L.D., too (whether or not I asked for it!)—his wit, his jokes, his genuineness.
One time he brought out his keyboard and wanted me to play “Amazing Grace.” Mind you, he didn’t ASK me to; he TOLD me to. The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass myself by struggling to remember the chords to that song in front of the other customers. But guess who ended up playing “Amazing Grace” in the Cove Grill? Yours truly. It’s a memory I smile at now.
When my Granny Smith was dying of cancer in the mid-1970s, she still loved to eat that trademark cheeseburger on toast from Cove Grill. My five kids grew up loving that same treat that nobody could make like L.D. (or his many children, grandchildren and relatives who worked there and learned from the best!).
Lately, I had taken to ordering the two-hot-dog special, including crinkle-cut fries and a big ol’ sweet tea. And I generally sent one of my kids into Cove Grill to get it. I’m regretting that now. It robbed me of some of the final times I could’ve enjoyed L.D. picking on me.
Yes, I’ll remember the picking and good-spirited teasing, but you know what will stick with me the most? The way he treated me after my first marriage ended. L.D. had been friends with my ex-husband, too, so I was nervous about seeing ye olde “Cove Grill Meister” after the split. Truth be told, I avoided the Cove Grill for a little while.
But one day the lure of those cheeseburgers won out, and I went back. My fears of judgment were in vain. L.D. greeted me just the same as always. He kindly told me he had heard the news and was sorry, then he went right on back to pleasantly passing the time of day with me while I stood there in the narrow space in front of the counter, waiting on my food.
I’ve heard it said that when you die, people won’t remember what you said and did as much as they’ll remember how you treated them and made them feel. Wisdom indeed.
Now that L.D. is gone, the good way he treated me and the multitudes of customers he served over his 40-year career at the Cove Grill are a part of the old paths. We come to expect what we’ve always known, and when it’s gone, we are somewhat taken aback.
That same universal truth hit me at the recent “Back in the Day” festival in Walnut Cove. When I saw the old tobacco buck with a vintage aluminum can holding the ball of twine, I was transported back to a time I had falsely assumed would never end.
Some of you, like me, remember how you spent your toddlerhood sleeping on a blanket under the barn shelter on early summer mornings while your parents primed “baccer.” You recall running on your little legs to catch a ride on the slide as the tractor came in from the field.
You girls might remember hanging around the barn, just itching to be whatever age they told you you had to be to hand leaves. (For me, it was nine.) Oh, the precision of making sure your tiny hand had three leaves in it, with the stems evened up at the top so that the stringer (a person back in the day—not a machine) could grab it and sling it over the stick.
Since that’s all I’d ever known, I thought that was the way it would always be. But by my teenagehood, the bucks were relegated to a back corner of the packhouse, and the barn area was filled with the mechanical hum of an electric stringer. We slapped armfuls of tobacco onto the conveyor belt—gone the precision of three-leaf handfuls. Stringing skills my mother and others had honed their entire lives were suddenly obsolete.
And then I was a mother myself, and my kids were asking, “What were Papa’s old tobacco sticks used for?”
Well, last Saturday, they got to see firsthand. They learned to hand leaves as my mother taught them right there in Walnut Cove’s Fowler Park. And crowds gathered around to watch, cameras in hand, videocameras rolling—some reliving the memories, others gaping at something they had never witnessed.
As for me? I was hit once more with the universal truth that while we’re in the moment, we tend to think the current way of life is permanent. And when we realize our error, we wish we could go back—even if just for a few minutes.
I’d like to spend just one more Saturday handing leaves to my mama down at Grandpa Bray’s old barn, chatting up a storm to Aunt Sylvia and the other gals. Then I’d like to ride over to the Cove Grill and get me a cheeseburger on toast from L.D. before getting ready for another Saturday night of softball at DeHart Field.
But I walk the paths of the present which will all too soon be old paths themselves, so I’d better enjoy this journey before it’s gone—making precious memories along the way.
****The Cove Grill shut down in 2019 due to coming road construction. It was finally torn down on Tuesday, August 3, 2021, to make way for the planned road. I can’t explain what it did to my old paths heart when I saw the site of one of my favorite eateries now a bulldozed vacant lot. There was a lot of Walnut Cove history in that building. I will confess having shed some sentimental tears over the loss of the Cove Grill.
Longing for Him 