“Thomas Wolfe” (for The Thomas Wolfe Journal)

Starting in sixth grade, we used to be taken there every October on field trips…jammed into a school bus ride over the mountain/s (we were instructed to appreciate the Golden Glory of the Autumn leaves)…..clutching a thrilling “box-lunch” (a sandwich, an apple, and two cookies in a paper-bag….not a single box in sight). The best part was being greeted, more or less, by Wolfe’s brother, Fred (one of the region’s most prominent alcoholics; all of our older siblings and cousins had met him on previous trips). He stayed on the front porch, and he, too, always had a small paper bag with him. We knew, however, that his bag didn’t have a sandwich in it. This, too, was thrilling. We knew that he drank whiskey everyday, right out on the front porch, because everyone in his family had DIED. Wouldn’t you, too? Then there was the tour, during which our teacher would yabber endlessly with the docent (sometimes this was Fred, himself, when he was feeling up to it). Most of us were, if not exactly bored, definitely unimpressed; the house and everything in it looked and smelled exactly like our own grandmothers’ houses in Jonesborough or Johnson City. Old Lady, in a phrase. At that time (mid 1970’s), I don’t think a single thing had been changed since Wolfe’s mother had died. The high point of the tour was when we all crowded into a narrow room and were told, once again, that THIS IS THE BED WHERE THOMAS WOLFE’S BROTHER DIED!!! There were no blood-stains on the floor, however, so we gave that anti-climatic room only about a C+. Of course, he had died of the flu, and we all thought he must have been sort of a weeny, since nearly every one of us had had the flu and had NOT died. We also knew that the mother had been too cheap to put him up in one of the nicer rooms when he got the flu, which is why he died. That made us appreciate our own mothers a bit more. After the tour, we always ate our lunches at Riverside cemetery. The teacher would point out Thomas Wolfe’s and O’Henry’s graves (We had all read “The Gift of the Magi”, which was ALSO sad and sorta pointless, from a 12 year old boy’s point of view), while we all scampered around, locating the confederate graves. Then, we would pile back on the bus and drive back home. All in all, it was a markedly death-centric field trip for a group of Junior-high students. It was, however, a perfect way to get into the Halloween spirit