I knew it was coming but… damn.
Last Sunday (January 12, 2014), Cheryl and I went to visit
Doug in the hospital. After about a year of increased breathlessness and
weakness, a quintuple bypass that never quite accomplished anything, a spot of
lung cancer and a boatload of radiation, Doug decided he’d had enough of
hospitals and went the hospice route. They were fine-tuning his oxygen levels
before sending him home to his cozy and comfortable house.
We didn’t know what to expect when we walked in his room. He
was lying in bed, staring at the clock on the wall.
Sick as he was, Doug lit up when he saw us and we talked and
talked. I think he must have known this would be our last visit and he wanted
to be sure we knew of every site he had stocked away in his massive mental
archive of Sites to Dig. Names, roads, towns, stories… Cheryl took notes
furiously. We wracked our minds trying to remember the questions we had for
him. It was wonderful to see him so engaged and so much himself: lucid,
opinionated, funny, acerbic, generous. He told us, laughing, that the oxygen he
was on sometimes made him dream he was flying a fighter jet.
I showed him a shiny, lacquered horseshoe – my first
experiment with electrolysis – and when he said it looked great, I was so
proud. Somehow, as old and Cheryl and I are, we felt like kids around him and basked
in his approval and excitement.
As best we can recollect, Cheryl and I first met Doug Drake
in November of 2011. Novice detectorists, the two of us had been heading out
together nearly every weekend not really knowing what we were doing or where
the good spots were. We spent a lot of money on gas in order to dig a lot of
junk, but it sure was fun.
The full story of our first meeting is described in an early
Dirt Girl post, “Triune”. But the short version is that Cheryl and I had arrived at a site we’d heard about, staring at a huge NO TRESPASSING sign, when a big, brown Crown Victoria pulled up
beside us and a tall, 70-something guy in overalls got out.
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| Doug. Overalls. Ball cap. |
He had the twinkliest eyes ever, made even twinklier (I like to
think now, looking back) at the sight of two disappointed middle-aged ladies
with detectors.
Doug Drake to the rescue. He told us to follow him and we
did. About ¼ mile away, he rolled down his window and pointed to a dirt road;
then he sped off.
It was a great site and I found my first (and only) truly
valuable (not to mention amazing) Civil War relic. About a week later, I went
over to Doug’s house to show him my finds from the past nine months. He looked
them over carefully, then looked up at me and grinned and said, “I want to go
metal detecting with YOU!”
Like I was a lucky charm.
From then on, we were a three-man detecting team. Because
Doug was retired and Cheryl between jobs, they went digging several times a
week, while I joined them on the weekends. We learned so much from him. So many
times, when I dug an unidentifiable item, I’d think, “I’ll show it to Doug;
he’ll know.” And he usually did.
But sometimes he’d turn the item over and over in his hands,
so studiously, then look up and pronounce, “Hmm. It’s just one of them there thangs.”
Twinkle, twinkle.
Born in 1936, Doug was a member of the fifth generation of
Drakes who had settled the Madison area in the 1700s. He was a born historian,
a man with an intense and coursing curiosity, and not quite of this era. Today,
at the visitation, his sister told me that he used to sit out in the field
behind their house, just sit there, staring at the land, ignoring his mother as
she called for him. As a boy, he hunted for arrowheads, then became fascinated
with caves. He began using a metal detector 50 years ago and had an
encyclopedic understanding of the history of middle Tennessee. On our dozens of
road trips in that swaying brown Crown Victoria, (with me battling motion
sickness), he pointed out hundreds of sites he’d dug years ago. Cheryl and I
tried to remember them all, but it was just too much.
He and his wife, the gentle, lovely Brenda, whom he married in the early 1980s,
explored farmers’ fields and deep woods and – on their own – discovered the locations
of several pioneer forts then shared the information so the sites could be
properly documented by archaeologists. Doug donated hundreds of items he dug to
local museums and historical societies.
About a year ago, we noticed that Doug was having to stop
digging and sit down a lot.
The long hikes back to our cars really seemed to
take it out of him. It wasn’t like him
at all; we tried not to worry but as the year progressed, he came digging with
us less and less frequently.
One day, though, he felt better and he and Cheryl met up south of town. After a few hours of fruitless digging, she came upon Doug leaning against a tree, grinning from ear to ear, with a rare Confederate button he'd just dug.
In April, my dear friend, Terri Sarris, a film and video
artist at the University of Michigan, came down to Nashville to shoot footage
for a short film about me and my metal detecting life. It hasn’t been edited
yet, but I have a strong feeling that a lengthy interview with Doug, seated in
the doorway of an ancient smokehouse, in a Tennessee holler, will be a
highlight of the finished piece.
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| Frank Pahl, Terri Sarris, Doug Drake during filming in Doug's incredible Basement Lair of Antiquity. |
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| Early December. Dealer Chase Pipes inspects Doug's collections of bottles, books and ... stuff. |
(In the video above, Doug takes a break from selling his bottles to recall an amazing site...)
After about an hour, we could tell Doug was getting tired so
we wrapped up the visit. I patted his arm, but Cheryl said, “Doug, I know you
don't like to be hugged but I’m going to hug you anyway.” And she did. We
really thought we’d be able to visit again once he got home.
Tuesday, an ambulance brought Doug home and set him up
comfortably in his chair. The hospice nurse left. Brenda puttered around for a
bit, then checked on Doug. He was gone.
In the midst of life… yup. Sigh.
The visitation this morning at the Madison Funeral Home was
filled with folks from throughout Doug’s life, laughing and talking and crying
and thinking. Then, we went outside into the cold, January gray, we got in our
cars, turned on our flashers, and headed downtown with a full police escort.
I’d never driven in a funeral procession before. Here in the
south, it means that all traffic stops as you pass by. Police cars speed past
you to block the intersections as you sail through red lights. It was pretty
impressive and I felt strangely proud that all these strangers were stopping to
honor my digging buddy without even knowing who he was. (Some of these Southern rituals – like
children saying “Thank you, ma’am; I enjoyed it” when they leave the dinner table,
and stopping traffic to honor the dead – are worthy and good.)
We drove to the Nashville City Cemetery where the Drake
family plot was purchased in the 1830s by Doug’s great- great-grandfather,
Henry Hollingsworth, who was then the mayor of Nashville. The line of cars
drove slowly between the ancient stones and past huge, old trees. We stood,
shivering, under a small canopy, where the casket lay draped in an American
flag. (Doug served his country in the Tennessee National Guard and in the United
States Air Force as a young man.)
A young soldier stood
some distance away, under a tree, and played taps, so sweetly. (That’ll make
you weep for a tough old digger any time.) Two other soldiers folded the flag
and presented it to Brenda. We sang
Amazing Grace. A minister said a few words. The pallbearers placed their
corsages on the coffin, then Arthur, another of Doug’s digging pals, added a
bullet.
And it was over.
Cheryl and I went to a meat ‘n’ three, because funerals make
me hungry like nothing else.
The part that’s so hard to grasp – and it’s hard to grasp
every, single time – is that he was just here. And now he’s not.
It’s just one of them thangs...
