Mama's Place: Celebrate me home

Mama sang hymns as she worked throughout the day. Her singing expressed emotion, deep spiritual resonance that conveyed a soulful connection to her purest inner self. Clearly, these hymns brought Mama solace and strength. Mother also sang hymns throughout the day, sitting at the piano to play and sing. She encouraged everyone to gather 'round and sing with her.

Before experiencing a paralyzed vocal cord, I too sang as I played the piano. Mama (my maternal grandmother), Mother, and I found that singing drives the clouds away.

Unlike Mama and Mother, however, along with hymns, I listen to secular music on FM radio and Satellite XM. Occasionally, a song hits me like a lightning bolt, piercing my consciousness to the core of my reality.

Kenny Loggins was interviewed May 22 on CBS Sunday Morning. As he sang the 1977 hit song "Celebrate Me Home," the essence of my very being unfolded to grasp and hold its meaning. Everything about the song combined to whisk me home. Beginning with measures of slow, deliberate piano, the artist's voice emphasized specific words, drawing them out plaintively, while other phrases presented throaty, growly, desperate yearnings, furtively begging, "Please Celebrate Me Home".

Music and lyrics together merged to ignite within my soul the profound, unmistakable longing for home, that place of warmth, comfort and affection, wherever, whatever, whenever, whoever it may be. For me, home is Mama's Place and the community of childhood family and friends in Parks during the 1950s and '60s. As Kenny's song suggests, whenever I find myself too all alone, I can recall a song we sang and I can sing myself home.

This past Saturday, many of my community sang ourselves home to the Historic Parks School House. Built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1939-40, with master carpenter Monroe Kuykendall and his 19-year-old son Rex from Leslie, Arkansas, who followed WPA regulations, the building has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Rex built the windows and doors, which have been restored with grants, along with the rest of the building.

The school had four graduating classes, after which grades 9-12 were bussed to Waldron. By the mid-1960s, Scott County's rural schools were consolidated with Waldron, leaving cherished buildings scattered across the county. Although few remain, Parks' building stands as stately as ever between mature pines, just east of the Parks Cemetery and Baptist Church.

In November 1970, the federal government opened a senior center in the school building, providing fun, food and fellowship for local seniors until its closing in 2016. I remember Mama's reaction to the center's opening being one of disgust.

"Why, this is a waste of taxpayers' money and an insult to us, even suggesting that we have nothing better to do than play dominoes and sit around listening to old people tell stories," she declared.

However, soon Mama became leader of creative activities, including seasonal programs, collections of food and clothing for "the underprivileged," and quilting bees. I became a senior citizen during the center's 46 years and, on rare occasions, visited there with dear ones from my childhood – parents of my friends.

As cousin Carolyn from Tulsa and I pulled into the school yard crowded with pickup trucks and cars, eager anticipation led us up several steps to the west front door. Children lined short cement walls on both sides of the steps.

Unfamiliar with the family name printed on their tags, I asked, "Who are your grandparents?"

The oldest girl readily answered, "We're part of the Blackwell family."

Oh, yes, the Blackwell sisters I went to school with are the grandmothers of these young 'uns. Similar exchanges were made as I worked the room, checking name tags of unfamiliar faces and asking questions to connect them to people I have known since childhood.

Clearly, the Parks community means home to attendees, who brought children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to "celebrate me home, back to that place, from which I can make believe I have never gone." Throughout my life, during good times and bad, a familiar song, a smell, a story, a sensation, a touch takes me home to my Parks community.

Perhaps unaware Saturday, we natives took our progeny to the Historic Parks School Reunion, hoping they too would find home by meeting our good people, hearing our beloved stories, and walking the halls and classrooms we walked.

I know that at the reunion my son, Clayton, and grandson, Liam, from Houston experienced home as poet Robert Frost described it, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. I should have called it something you somehow haven't to deserve."

Mama and Mother sang themselves home. With my one functional vocal cord, I mumble Kenny Loggins' lyrics that captured my spirit and continue to soothe my soul:

"Please, celebrate me home. Play me one more song that I'll always remember, and I can recall whenever I find myself too all alone, I can sing me home."

Louise Owens Finney is a retired secondary teacher and part-time minister in Fort Smith. She can be reached at louiseofinney@gmail.com.