TERRE HAUTE —
Just a little way off Indiana 63, just a few miles north of Terre Haute, sits the sleepy little town of Shepardsville. Like most towns its size, it has seen its heyday come and go, and virtually every business that once made it a place to be on warm spring nights so many years ago is gone.
Jerry Yates — Fayette Falcons, Class of ’58 — remembers those days, and despite knowing he can’t go back in time, has done the next best thing: He’s brought a little of the past back to him, and he’s sharing it with his friends.
Yates, who turns 70 in August, has spent a life in the Navy and farming and at Columbia Records and selling Amway and hawking recreational property and trading cars, but his memories of growing up in Shepardsville have always brought him back home. Why, he even tried “city living” in Terre Haute for four years; “But it wasn’t for me,” he says.
A few weeks ago, my friend Bill Wolfe gave me a call and told me that I needed to meet Jerry Yates and that I needed to drive to Shepardsville to the place that Jerry, with a little help from his buddies, has built. It’s called “Yates’ Station,” and Bill told me, “You’re going to love it.”
So, with little more than Bill’s word to go on, Joanie and I headed across the river and south out of Vermillion County, and found, what we later agreed, was a wonderfully simple, marvelous place.
Calling Jerry a “collector” is akin to calling Donald Trump “well-off.” The station, roughly modeled after the gas stations and general stores of Jerry’s youth, was framed by the Amish out of yellow poplar, and the stone for its massive fireplace came directly out of the hills of Brown County. Even the dog that hangs around the front porch — Jerry doesn’t own it — is friendly.
“When I was growing up, we’d sit around there in Shepardsville,” Jerry said with a nod to the east, “and we’d drink pop and listen to the hillbilly music that came out of the tavern there. We just had a good time. I wanted to get some of that back when we built this.”
Inside and out, a visitor to Yates’ Station sees that Jerry never saw an old gas pump or antique oil can or antifreeze advertisement that he didn’t like. “This has been my dream,” he says of the station. “There’s a little bit of each of my friends in this place,” Yates added.
We met Bill on a gloriously blue evening, the warm breezes blowing out of the west as we parked in Jerry’s yard and made our way to his screen door. Bill, and his dad (Bill’s namesake), have been going to Yates’ Station on Tuesday nights as of late — that’s when Jerry and his buddies, who happen to call themselves “Blue Ridge Country” — get together for a little informal jam session.
“We play some bluegrass and some country,” Jerry says, “but our main objective is just to have fun.”
A few folks were sitting around the station picking and tuning guitars when Bill introduced us to Jerry, who in turn, offered us a can of pop out of his fridge and asked us to pull up a chair and relax. Mine was a comfortable old mission-style rocker, and slowly, but surely, after Jerry picked up his mandolin, a group of three, then four, then five members of the gang arrived to play and laugh and talk. We mostly just sat and listened and ate the pie that Bill brought along that night. It was, as Mozart put it, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” — “a little night music” — and it was wonderful.
Jerry was joined by Al Roach, who plays a five-stringed banjo, and Linda Popejoy, who plays bass and rhythm guitar. Rick Wheat was there with his rhythm guitar, too, and so was Bill Wheat, who hasn’t been playing his dobro for too long, but knows what he’s doing. After a while, Claude Umphries came in with his harmonica, while Jim “Jimbo” Fiock arrived a little later after making the trek down 63 from Montezuma. Jerry’s wife, Patty, usually gets into the act, too, as does Nancy Long on the rhythm guitar, and Bill Henson and Jack Shannon, on occasions. The whole gang misses Richard “Pitch” Livingston, who passed not too long ago and took the sonorous tones of his four-string tenor lead guitar with him.
The two Bills and Joanie and I, and a few others, sat, and rocked, and kept time by tapping our hands on the rocking chair arms and our feet on the planked floor. I occasionally closed my eyes and listened to the music, an old-time radio show that my grandparents listened to years ago playing in my head. I gazed over Jerry’s vast array of pop bottles, pedal tractors and black-and-white photos, and the old bicycle he had propped up against a wall; there’s enough steel in it to build a battleship.
Jerry’s walls may be filled with license plates and Orange Crush outdoor thermometers; the station may have a popcorn machine and an old pot-bellied stove and gloriously refinished Texaco and 500 Platolene gas pumps, but it was the music that kept us there later than we planned to stay that night.
The friends played “Little Rosewood Casket” and “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms,” and someone, the senior Wolfe, I think, asked Linda to play “You are My Sunshine,” which has been around since the latter years of the Great Depression. A refrain from one song kept coming back into my mind; “Old flames can’t hold a candle to you,” it went…
Before we left, I stood with Jerry near his door for a few minutes to tell him how much we had enjoyed ourselves and that we’d try to get back over to his place sometime. Bill wanted us to know that there was a little pie left if we wanted to stick around for another slice.
We headed to the car as the stars were just beginning to show and drove home with the windows down, the wind in our hair and that sweet music still in our ears.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, and by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Check Mike’s Web site at www.mikelunsford.com for a complete list of stores that sell his books, and a schedule of where he’ll be signing and speaking soon.
Mike Lunsford
How about ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,’ partner?
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We’ve created a honey of a problem
The Dutch clover is making its appearance in my yard this week. A cooler-than-usual spring has slowed its arrival by a few days, but it is here for now, bringing the honeybees and bumblebees with it.
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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