My brother Donald once said, “It’s so quiet in the country, the quiet hurts your ears.”
The Willie Williams’ home place on Ragged Ridge has been quiet a long, long time. But there is still life there, especially in spring. The dog wood tree near the woodland blooms white each April; wild flowers grow fresh and fragrant at the base of the Willie Bluff; and blue birds build nests in the fence rows behind the garden.
Ernest said he could remember when the Uncle Willie house was still standing. Uncle Willie’s son John told Donald that he could recall the day they moved from there to Calvary Ridge. The farm they were leaving was one of several smaller farms occupying a few acres, just a few acres, just large enough to raise a cow, to raise a garden, to grow corn for the pigs, to sow a wheat field. That was the nature of all the small farms comprising his father John Frank Williams’ original settlement.
The first picture attached is of my Uncle Willie Thomas Williams (1888-1961) and Aunt Arvina Raney Williams (1890- ?) and their children after their move to Calvary Ridge. The second picture is of Uncle Willie’s son John Williams and his son when they attended one of our reunions in the 1980’s or 1990s, I’d guess.
