The Sound of Home
Before I knew what home looked like, I knew what it sounded like.
It sounded like seven guitars trying to agree with each other. Three basses following along anyway. One drum set holding the whole thing together, mostly by accident.
It sounded like Cherokee. Then English. Then Cherokee again, halfway through the same verse, and nobody seemed to notice it had switched.
Every year, on Duda’s birthday, people started showing up before the sun went down behind the ridge. First it was family. Then neighbors. Then people I never met and never did learn the names of. By dark the yard was full of cars, and once the yard filled up they just parked along the road, and the line of cars went on down the hill until it looked like half the county had decided this was where they wanted to be that night.
Nobody sent invitations. Nobody had to. People just came.
Duda met folks before they’d even finished parking, already laughing about something before there was a joke to laugh at — that was just how he was. Gran never asked how many to expect. She cooked till there was enough, and enough just meant whatever showed up that year. Nobody left that yard hungry. Nobody even had to ask.
Somebody always brought a guitar. Then somebody else did too. Pretty soon there were instruments everywhere — seven guitars, three basses, one drum set that somehow held it all together anyway.
The songs went wherever they wanted. Cherokee. English. Old gospel. Country gospel. Somebody’s praise song they’d learned that week, right there next to hymns older than any of us. Nobody stopped to explain what language was coming next. Nobody cared. The music just knew.
People sat in lawn chairs with cassette recorders on their knees, thumb already on Record, waiting for the real verse to start.
Looking back, I don’t think they were really recording songs. I think they were recording people. Some of those voices are gone now. But you put one of those old tapes in and press play, and they’re all still there — Duda, Gran, my aunts, my uncles, friends, neighbors, people whose names I never even knew but whose songs I’d still know anywhere.
As a kid I thought every family was like this. I thought everybody had a Duda. I thought everybody had a Gran. I thought every hill sounded like ours.
I just knew it sounded like home.