A while back, I wrote about the Rev. Riley Wright, whom everybody called Preacher Man. He was the good pastor of the First Church of Christ in a small Middle Tennessee farming town 12 miles south of Columbia.
My mother, my two brothers and I lived there in the mid-’50s.
Head out from Columbia on two-lane Hampshire Pike. Run through Cross Bridges, a spot in the road. Roll around a couple of wide curves and, in a few miles, you begin to pull the hill. We called it Hampshire Hill. When you get to the top and begin your descent, you’re heading straight for the little town.
Almost every day, I walked my bike to the top of the hill and flew back down. I didn’t have a speedometer, but I figured I was probably going about 300. At least it felt like it. Maybe only 250. Let’s put it this way, if my hair was still wet from swimming in the creek, it was dry by the time I hit the bridge going into town. I was pretty sure I held some sort of world record.
Coming down the hill, there were barbed-wire fences and sloping green pastures on both sides of the road. Guernsey milking cows and a few bulls grazed out in the open, and a few more hung out under the shade of tall elm and maple trees.