Rest and Be Thankful (Goodthoughts)

Our daughter, Amy, and her fiance, Randy, were married Labor Day weekend. Amy and Randy are so much fun to watch...they are both very creative and appreciate the simple things of life.

Amy is an interior designer who specializes in sewing window treatments and
accessories. Randy is an artist working mainly in metal who does everything from sculpture to custom wrought iron stair railings.

Randy bought a farm in the scenic rolling hills of middle Tennessee the year before they married. He and Amy have been cutting and hauling trees for fence posts....building a corral and chicken coop....and planting and tending
a vegetable garden this summer.

Randy completed his studio and a tack room last year and the next project is a workroom for Amy beside his studio. After that they are building a house around a 150-year old log cabin. Nobody will ever call these two folks..."couch potatoes!"

Chuck and I wanted to get Amy and Randy a wedding gift that was "them." But what could it be? Then we remembered something we had from long ago...something they would both love! Chuck wrote the story that went with the gift...and here it is...

Rest and Be Thankful

When I was about 11 years old, I spent two weeks in the summer with Mama and Daddy Warnock, my grandparents, on their farm near Piedmont, South Carolina. Daddy Warnock was still working as a seed salesman for the Pennington Seed Company, so during the day Mama Warnock and I would run errands in their 1950-something Nash Rambler – a big black car that resembled a large humpback whale moving down the road.

The old farmhouse they bought, along with about 40-acres of land, was in the process of being redesigned by Mama Warnock. A woman with only an eighth grade education, Marguerite Callaham Warnock was a self-taught artist, heraldist, and interior designer. The old kitchen in the house had already been torn out and relocated to a remodeled outbuilding behind the main house. Where the old kitchen stood, a library with volumes of books graced the back of the house. But that was by no means all Mama Warnock would do to the old farmhouse.

One of her projects involved the local blacksmith. We piled into the black Rambler one day, drove down the two lane country roads, and pulled in to a blacksmith’s shop. Mama Warnock found a set of old sleigh bells somewhere in her antique hunting, and wanted the blacksmith to craft a metal bracket for them. She intended to use them for the front door bell, and eventually they were mounted on the side entrance to the front porch where they stayed until the house was sold. I think the bells must have stayed with the house.

But she had another project – a metal sign hung from a hand-forged bracket. This sign was to hang at the upper entrance to the driveway at the road. As she talked with the blacksmith, explaining in great detail how the sign and bracket were to be crafted, I looked around the blacksmith’s shop. We had been there before, because old Joe, my cousin Barbara’s horse had been shod by the same smith. I remember that day that the forge was hot, and the bellows stood by waiting to pump air onto the coals. With instructions given, and assurances that the smithy understood, we piled back into the Rambler and headed home.

The next week the smith called and the work was done. Back into the car, down the two lane blacktop, and to the blacksmith again. The sign and bracket were there, leaned up against the open side of the shed. A shield of metal, tool marks still visible where the smith had pounded the edges. The mounting bracket scrolled and forged into one piece ready for the post waiting for it at the driveway. On both sides of the sign, lettered by a skillful hand, the words – Rest and Be Thankful.

That sign hung at the driveway entrance for years, greeting each arriving family member and friend at the old farmhouse on the hill. Over the years, the letters became less distinct, the metal aged, and then rusted, but the old sign remained.

When the house was sold, I asked Mama Warnock if I could have the sign. I recalled our visit together to the blacksmith’s and how vivid that memory still was. She told me that everything attached, including the sign and the sleighbells, had to stay with the house. So, for the last time, after all the packing was done, we pulled out of the drive, with the sign still hanging in it’s place.

Years passed and so did Mama and Daddy Warnock. Our lives changed and by then we had moved to Spartanburg. It must have been about 1991 or 1992 when we found ourselves coming back from somewhere, near the exit that led to Mama and Daddy Warnock’s old farmhouse. We pulled off, just to drive by and see what the place looked like. I had heard that the new owners had built a swimming pool, and made other changes, and I was curious about what they had done.

We pulled up to the house and into the driveway. I noticed that the sign no longer hung on the post by the road. We introduced ourselves to the lady who came to the door, explaining that my grandparents had lived here and we just wanted to see the place once more. She invited us in, gave us a tour of all the remodeling they had done. The library was gone, swallowed up into the master bedroom. The keeping room, with it’s massive fireplace, antique corner cabinets, and gigantic paned window had been reworked. We were polite, but the house no longer felt the same.

On the way out, I asked about the sign at the road. I explained that I had been with my grandmother when she told the blacksmith what she wanted. “The sign is over there,” she said. And with that, we walked to the old open front garage where the Nash Rambler had been parked. Hanging on the wall was the sign and bracket. “Could I buy it from you?” I asked. “Go ahead and take it, we really don’t have a use for it.” I removed the sign from the nail that held it on the garage wall, and carried to the car. With many thanks, we pulled out of the driveway realizing that the old house wasn’t the same, and never would be again. But the sign symbolized the life Mama and Daddy Warnock had there – a simple life lived with grace and dignity surrounded by beautiful things they had gathered in a lifetime of living.

When we moved to Nashville and bought a house, I mounted the sign on the garden shed. I liked it there, but it didn’t seem to suit the sign. When we moved to Fayetteville, we carried it with us, but never mounted it. Since moving to Chatham it has hung in our garage waiting for a place. Debbie and I talked about putting the sign in the front yard, or the back garden, but we never had much enthusiasm for either location. The sign belongs on a farm because that’s where it came from. A farm where a family gathers to work, and laugh, and rest.

Randy and Amy, this is our gift to both of you. It belongs with you because of your artistry in working with metal, Randy. It belongs with you because of your passion for design, Amy. May this old sign bring the same joy to you that it brought to my grandmother and grandfather, to our family, and to us. We love you both and pray God’s richest blessings on your life together.

5 Comments

Wonderful story. The gift could not have been better. When I read anything from Goodthoughts, it always makes me feel I am home. Thank you for making a difference in so many lives.

Posted by: Mary Dinneen | October 24, 2008 at 07:08 AM