I was listening to Alan Jackson’s “Remember When.” I had heard that song a hundred times, but this time that one line reached out and grabbed my heart: “Old ones died and new were born.”
I thought, “That is us, caught between the ones we lost and the little ones coming along.” At that moment, my mind started writing a story to that line.
I can remember when we were the “new” ones. We were the kids running around the yard at Thanksgiving, being told to shut the door because we were “letting the heat out.” We were the ones sitting at the kids’ table while the grown folks drank coffee and talked about people we did not know yet. Back then, the “old ones” were our grandparents and great-aunts and uncles. They sat in the good chairs, they carved the turkey, they led the prayer, and their names were the ones on the mailboxes and tombstones.
Now, a lot of those voices are gone. They rest on the hillsides at Cedar Grove, Pleasant Hill, and all the little cemeteries that dot Todd County. Their houses have new owners. Some of the old barns have fallen. The stores they shopped at have closed or changed names. But I can still see them plain as day. Grandpa in his overalls, Grandma in her apron, my mom and my aunt laughing about something over the stove, my uncles talking about a new set of plugs and points in the tractor, all of it just grown-up talk that did not mean a thing to us kids. And while the old ones were slowly leaving, something else was happening. New ones were arriving.
Kids were born. Then grandkids. Then great grandkids. We sit at ballgames and see our children and grandchildren in the same colors we once wore, on the same fields and in the same gyms where we played. We walk into Todd Central and realize we are pointing at pictures on the wall saying, “That was my class,” while some young person looks at us like we are part of ancient history.
Somewhere along the way, our place in the picture shifted. Most of us are the old ones in the room now, but we are not gone yet. We are the ones in the middle, remembering who came before us and watching the little ones come along behind.
We became the ones who know where everybody is buried, who married who, who used to live in that old white house on the corner before they tore it down. We can remember when the Dairy Dip was packed on a Friday night, when the store at the “Y” still had gas pumps out front, and when you could ride in the back of a pickup on these back roads without anybody saying a word.
The old ones died and new were born.
It sounds like a simple line in a song, but it is really the whole story of a place like Todd County. One generation slips away, another one rises up, and the road just keeps running past the same fields and fence rows. The tractors are newer, the trucks are different, the phones are smarter, but the rhythm is the same.
Every time I drive past an old homeplace, I think about who used to live there. I picture a porch light that used to shine, a wood stove that used to burn, a garden that used to be full. Then I think about the kids today, sitting in the back seat scrolling on their phones, not knowing that their roots run deeper than they realize. They may not know it now, but one day they will hear a song, catch the smell of a dark-fired barn, or drive past an old farm and feel something tug at their heart, just like we do.
That is why these memories matter.
Todd County is not just a place on a map. It is people. It is the ones who raised us, and the ones we are trying our best to raise now. It is the grandparents who are gone and the grandbabies who do not even know yet how many stories they are walking around inside of.
So when I hear that line in Alan Jackson’s song, “Remember When,” I think of my people and yours. I think of the Sunday dinners, the tobacco patches, the school halls, the backroads, and those long summer nights when we thought life would always be just like it was right then. Old ones died and new were born. It hurts and it comforts all at once, because it reminds us that we are part of something bigger than just our own short time here.
And maybe that is what Todd County, Ky. Memories Facebook group is really all about.
We write these stories and look at these old photos so that the ones who are “new” right now will have something to hold on to when it is their turn to remember.