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Being the middle child of two working parents during the seventies was not such a bad life. When I arrived home from school, I changed out of my "good" clothes, did my chores,homework, then played with the masses of children who lived in our charming neighborhood on Della Drive in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky. My childhood was almost story book. The highlight of my entire year, though, was my summers in Lothair, Kentucky.

My mamaw and papaw lived there, on a mountain, in a house my grandfather had built for their family in the 30's and 40's. Papaw made a pulley for Mamaw to dry her clothes on since the landscape was so hilly, and what fun it was to pull those clothes in and out. Papaw was a jack of all trades, a coal miner, cobbler, handyman, whatever the community needed, that was Papaw's specialty.

Every year he planted a garden below their house full of corn, green beans, carrots, collards, and every other variety that would grow in that rich soil. Amongst that garden was an apple tree. That tree produced the sweetest apples in Kentucky, and Mamaw made sure that each apple was picked, cleaned and utilized. We made apple sauce, apple pie, canned apples,and apple cobbler.

In late November of 1972, Papaw passed away of black lung. We all grieved the loss of this great man. People I had never met told me stories of how he had fixed their shoes for free during the depression when no one else would even talk to "their color". The debts he paid off and never asked for repayment, even though he had no money to speak of himself. I could understand my Mamaw's pain and suffering to lose her soul mate.

Spring came around once again, as if the passing of my Papaw had never happened, but Mamaw and I knew we must do something wonderful to immortalize his life. As we worked the garden, Mamaw was telling me stories about the patch of land we were hoeing on was where his cobblers shop stood, as we found small nails, and other such brick brack from the remains of a once thriving and giving shop.

Mamaw told me the story of how on their wedding day, Papaw had planted that Apple tree in the snow, thinking it would never make it. But there is still stood in all its glory, and that is why we had to preserve every single apple that it produced.

My nine year old mind had a thought that I presented to Mamaw shyly,"Why don't we plant a tree in honor of Papaw, to preserve his life."

Mamaw went right to work thinking of types of trees we could put up on his old cobblers shop.
Should we go with fruit? She was getting older and she could not put the love into it as she did the apple tree, so what?

We had just received the Sunday paper that had a section of trees that caught both my Mamaw and my eye. It was so obvious to both of us... a Weeping Willow.

It took two weeks to get that limb of a tree in, but that gave us just enough time to cultivate the soil, and make a memorial to my Papaw, Admiral Dewey Perkins. We had a private ceremony to commemorate the life of our family Patriarch, and the life our tree would carry on in his behalf.

The apple tree still produces some fruit since Mamaw passed, and it is still as sweet. But that Weeping Willow is as strong as my grandfather was and as beautiful as the summers he gave me.

Learn more about this author, Sharon Smith.
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