Once Upon a Farm

by Rory Feek

  But through it all the sign has remained. A reminder of how beautiful life was. Of how beautiful life still is.

  When Indy and I ride out into the back field on the Polaris Ranger, sometimes I let her climb into my lap and “drive” for a while. As she spins us in circles, giggling from ear to ear, I almost always find myself staring at the spot where Joey and her mama sat on the red tin with their cans and brushes in 2013, painting and talking. Wondering what it was they were saying to each other. An exciting weekend in front of them and not a care in the world . . . other than how to feed and handle having a couple thousand people that were about to converge on our little farm.

  Our bus driver and good friend Russell Brisby would always say, “We Brisbys fear change,” when Joey and I would ask him about making some improvement on the house or one of the barns. But, for some reason, Joey and I always seemed to welcome it. Knowing that from some change in our surroundings usually comes some kind of change within us.

  There have been lots of changes since that day Joey and her mama climbed up onto the lean-to and painted those words. Some have been terribly hard to swallow or get used to, and some have been okay. And some changes don’t seem like changes at all.

  Joey’s favorite belt buckle is still here. Laid out neatly on the nightstand beside our bed, it has a large “J + R” carved in silver with beautiful filigree and carvings around it. It was a gift from a cowboy we’d really only met once named Billy Hudson. I’d seen him wearing an unusually beautiful buckle at an event we were performing at in Alabama and mentioned how I’d like to get one like it for my wife . . . He showed up at our little family restaurant Marcy Jo’s with Joey’s buckle a couple months later.

  I’m not sure if we ever even properly thanked him. But if he was paying attention to country music videos or award shows for the next seven or eight years afterward, I’m sure he’s seen it. Joey loved that buckle and wore it to just about everything. It is one of the most prized possessions I have.

  And I, of course, am still in my bib overalls. They grow a little tighter and looser, depending on whether I’m doing the cooking most of the time or my sisters are having us over for dinner a lot. I don’t have as many of them as I used to own. Only a shelf with a half dozen pair in different colors now. I have a pair of jeans in my closet that I try on from time to time, but I’ve yet to wear them. I just keep rotating bibs and shirts. Always a little different but, somehow, still the same.

  I think I’ll just leave the sign there on the barn like it is. At least until the letters fade so much you can’t read what it says anymore. Then maybe I’ll get out the red paint and cover it up. But then again, maybe someday instead, I’ll get the urge to put a fresh coat of white paint on those letters and park another hay wagon stage in front of the barn. Maybe even plug a guitar in and open the gate.

  And see if anybody shows up.

  Presidential Treatment

  “And I met the president of the United States . . . again.”

  —Forrest Gump

  We have some good friends who own the Texas Rangers, and from time to time Joey and I would go see a game with them. I have been to only a few major league baseball games in my life, so when I go see one with the owner of the team, it’s kind of a different experience.

  Joey had never been to a major league game before the first time we went to one at the Rangers’ ballpark. We had been visiting our friends at their home in north Texas, and late in the afternoon when it was time to head to the game, we jumped in the car with them to go.

  Soon we were sitting in a jet, and twenty minutes after that, we were getting back into an SUV headed the mile or so to the ballpark. Three motorcycle policemen were waiting for us when the plane touched down, and as we drove off the tarmac toward the stadium, they led the way. Sirens blaring and lights flashing. They stopped traffic in front of us, and we never even had to slow down. Driving through intersection after intersection, through what seemed like a sea of cars, all trying to get to the same place we were. It was clear that Texas is proud of their ball teams.

  “This is just like the president,” Joey whispered in my ear, as we crossed another intersection and people stopped and stared and waved. And it was. I had never seen anything like it.

  A few minutes later our black SUV disappeared into the belly of the ballpark and up a ramp to the owner’s parking spot. Some security men led us the few feet to a door that led to a hallway that led to the owner’s box. We hadn’t walked twenty steps when another door to the hallway opened up, and George W. Bush stepped in front us.

  “Well, hello, Mr. President,” our friend said.

  “Hi, Ray,” the president answered. “How’re you doing?”

  “I’d like to introduce you to some good friends of mine,” our friend said, turning to Joey and me.

  “This is Joey Feek.” The president smiled at Joey and shook her hand.

  “And this is her husband, Rory.” The former president of the United States just sort of stared at me for a few seconds. I’d like to think that he recognized me from our TV shows or was a big fan of our music. But more realistically he was trying to figure out how I managed to marry such a beautiful woman. And also why a guy was in bib overalls at a Rangers game. And why was he friends with the owner?

  He shook my hand and smiled. “Nice to meet you, Rory,” he said. And he headed to his seat, and we headed to ours.

  As we watched the game from high above the Rangers’ dugout, drank, and ate the free food and ice cream to our heart’s content, I turned to Joey, and she was smiling. “This is crazy, isn’t it?” she said to me as she snuggled into my arm.

  And it was. Just like our whole life and love story together was. And is. Filled with stories that are hard to believe but are true. Always pinching ourselves, saying, “Wow, isn’t this something . . .” in the very hardest and the very best of times.

  I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

  . . . just say it.

  My sister Marcy had never told me she loved me. She showed it to me and others in a thousand little ways, but she couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say the words. I’m not sure why. She just couldn’t. For twenty years. Thirty years. She kept those words locked away inside.

  I remember many times when something beautiful would take place and Marcy would so desperately want to say the words but couldn’t get them to come out. Her face would turn red, and tears would fall, and she would open her mouth and try to speak them, but they wouldn’t come. I would say, “It’s okay . . . ,” and her tears would fall harder but still nothing.

  I guess something that happened in her life years and years ago . . . or many “somethings” . . . made her close that door and promise herself never to open it again. Hurt, I’m sure. Deep, deep pain that someone caused her. Everyone caused her.

  And so the greatest three words in the English language stayed trapped inside of my sister for decades. Until the day finally came when the dam broke and the truth flooded out. I don’t remember what happened. When that was exactly. What caused it. But I know it was about six or seven years ago. And Marcy’s never been the same since.

  Now, there isn’t hardly a phone call we have or a text that she sends that doesn’t end with “I love you.” If Indiana and I walk over to visit in the afternoon so my baby can play with her grandbabies, it’s almost guaranteed that she will tell Indy, “Aunt Marcy loves you,” again and again while they’re playing with dolls or puzzles. And before I get out the door to head home, she’ll have hugged me and said the words to me too . . . I love you. It is so beautiful to see and hear. Especially knowing how long she had gone without being able to say those words.

  We all have things that we long to say but don’t. Powerful words and phrases that can change the world for someone, including ourselves.

  I love you. I’m proud of you. I’m sorry. I forgive you.

  Love that we want to show or share, but we keep it locked inside. Sometimes to protect ourselves for self-preservation or because
we’re damaged and we have desperately needed to hear someone say the words to us, but they never came . . . and so now we don’t know how to say them to others.

  And sometimes because we think there’ll be lots of time to say the things we want to say to the people we care about. But the truth is, there isn’t.

  Losing my wife, Joey, made it painfully clear that none of us know what tomorrow holds or even if there’s going to be a tomorrow for us. All there really is is today. Right now. And so I try my best to tell the people around me how much they mean to me, what a great job they are doing with their kids and with following their dreams, and that I love them. To swallow my own pride and build theirs a little bit with words today and not someday.

  Almost every single Valentine’s Day card, Father’s Day card, or love letter or note that I ever received from my wife ended the same way.

  I love you, I love you, I love you.

  For Joey and me, it wasn’t enough to say it once to each other, we always said it three times. It was originally a line in the chorus of a song called “Josephine” that I wrote before Joey and I got married. And, somehow, we adopted it, and it is how we said I love you to each other. Three times. Always.

  And in my wife’s final days, it was one of the last things she said to me. And in her final moments, kneeling beside her bed with her frail hand in mine . . . the last thing that I said to her . . .

  I love you, I love you, I love you.

  Modern Family

  Like most families, ours is functionally dysfunctional.

  Joey and I saw only a couple episodes of the TV series Modern Family, and we thought it was super funny. Crazy but funny. I really enjoyed it because, like the family in the sitcom, my extended family is a bit of a mess. With dysfunction everywhere and a plethora of story lines and characters you would hardly believe are real. But they are.

  And, at the same time, when the crazy meter seems pegged a little higher than it is with most families, like the one in the sitcom ours is a family with heart. A heart that is trying to be something better than it is. Something wonderful. And usually as a family unit, we fall somewhere between broken and beautiful.

  Through the last fifty years, my brothers and sisters and I have loved each other. Hated each other. And spent a lot of years somewhere in between. We have been close. Far, far away. And mostly both at the same time. We have had moments when it feels like the same blood is running through our veins and other seasons when we’re convinced that we must be adopted and from a family far different than our own.

  I think my mother’s way of dealing with the dysfunction in our family was to pretend. To imagine that we were an amazing, tight-knit group of siblings—always there for each other. It wasn’t true most of the time, but for her, I think she needed it to be. Or maybe, just maybe, she wanted to believe it into existence. And you know what . . . over time, we are actually doing fairly well.

  My two sisters live on each side of our property now. Marcy and her husband, Donny, on the south side and Candy and Keith on the north. Living this close to each other, we spend an unusual amount of time together, and, for the most part, it’s incredible. I think we’ve learned to respect each other and to understand that we are all “doing the best we can with what we have,” and that’s made a big difference.

  My brothers live together now, thirty or forty miles west of the farm, on a place where, like me, they are putting down roots. Trying to make a better life for themselves and their kids and grandkids. I don’t see them that often, maybe every couple of months or so. But when I do, we give each other hugs and try to catch up on our lives. What’s happening in their world and in mine. With their kids and mine.

  We are all so alike. And yet completely different. Most of us have battled demons our whole lives. Some, like my youngest sister, Candy, have had a better grasp on it than the rest of us. She made good choices early in her life and has mostly seen the fruit of them. And others of us have meandering, broken paths that have led us from hardship to hardship to get to where we are today.

  There have been countless glasses lifted up to cheer in the arrival of babies and countless trips to rehab centers. Lots of hopeful church altar weddings and almost as many frustrated courthouse divorces. Time spent in houses that felt like prisons and jail cells that provided the freedom to really think for the first time in a long time.

  But through it all we have been a family. We are a family still. Modern and yet old-school. Trying to prepare for the future and keep grounded in the values of the past. We have come a long way, and we are clear that we still have a long way to go. But we’re hopeful. Hopeful that we’ve learned from our mistakes and, even more so, that our children have learned from them. And that maybe, just maybe, they can enjoy a bit more of the good stuff of life together and have to endure less of the bad.

  Our Very Own

  My wife’s dog, Rufus, was a star long before Joey and I were.

  When I married Joey, it was a two-for-one deal. She came with a dog. Not just a dog . . . a hound named Rufus.

  Regal and handsome, Rufey was Joey’s best friend and they went everywhere together. He was with her when we had our first “coffee date,” and she was with him when the vet gave him a shot that relieved his arthritic pain once and for all.

  He was a permanent fixture in the bed of her truck and by her side morning and night. And they had a bond like nothing I’d ever seen before. She only asked once, and he did everything she asked him to. He was obedient and sweet and a lot of fun too. Joey would tell him to start singing and he would start howling louder and louder for her and we would laugh and howl with him.

  Somewhere around 2004, Joey was working at the horse vet clinic in Thompson Station and a producer for an upcoming movie came in looking for her. For Rufus, actually. He’d heard that Rufus would do just about anything Joey asked him to, and they needed a hound for a part in a movie they were about to start shooting.

  “Will he ride on a car?” he asked Joey.

  “He rides in the back of my truck all the time,” Joey said.

  “But will he ride on top of a car . . . on the roof of one . . . while it’s going down the road?” he asked again.

  “He can do it,” Joey answered.

  And just like that, Rufus was cast in a movie. It was called Our Very Own. You can see it on Netflix or buy the DVD on Amazon. Rufus is on the movie poster.

  That evening, Joey told me about the movie producer, and within a few minutes I had my old ’56 Buick in the yard, with a rug on the top. Joey said, “Up, Roo . . .” and Rufus climbed up the trunk and stood on top of the roof.

  “Stay,” was all she said. And he did.

  I drove in circles around our farmhouse, with Joey’s hound on the roof of my car, and he just kept his eyes on his “mama” and never moved a muscle.

  “Let’s see how he does on the road,” Joey said. And a few minutes later I was sitting in the Buick on the lane that goes behind our house, and Rufus was on the car again.

  “Stay, Rufey.” She looked at me and said, “Take it slow, honey.” And I headed down the lane away from her with a dog on the top of my car. I’m sure the neighbors thought we’d lost our minds.

  He was still on the car, staring at Joey as we went over the rise and out of sight. I turned around and drove back with him still there. When I pulled up next to my wife, she was grinning ear to ear.

  “Isn’t that something . . . ,” she said with a big smile. “Good boy, Roo.” She motioned for him to come, and he ran down the hood and went straight to her side.

  The following weekend we were all at the movie set in Shelbyville, a small town an hour or so away from where we lived. It was the first time we’d ever been on a movie set, and it was all pretty neat to take in. Camera crews and gear everywhere. Catering trucks and tents and people gathered around, watching. Hoping to get a glimpse of a couple of the well-known actors who had flown in from Hollywood to play key roles in the film.

  They were going to be
filming a few of Rufus’s scenes that day, and the director and producers of the movie greeted us when we arrived and treated Rufus like a star. One of them had grown up in the town and had been dreaming of making this movie for years, and he said that Rufus’s role was an important one. The story was loosely based on his teenage years and an event that happened in their small town. He said that an old man who lived in the town back then had a dog that rode in the back of his truck everywhere he went, but when his truck broke down and he had to drive his wife’s car, he had a dilemma. She wouldn’t let his beloved dog ride inside, so the man taught him to climb on top of the car, and that’s how they traveled. And if you were living and walking around the town back in the ’70s, the filmmakers said, you would see the car come by almost daily with this dog riding on the roof.

  And so Rufus was cast to play the old man’s dog, and that afternoon and evening was when the cameras were going to start rolling to capture the scenes that Rufey would be in.

  By late afternoon a large crowd had gathered in the town square to watch the filming. The director told Joey to see if her dog would stand on the little blue car as it drove down the street and past a movie theater. Joey smiled and said, “No problem.”

  I think they did it in one take.

  The cameras were rolling when the car drove past the actors who were standing on the sidewalk talking and turned to go down the street and out of sight. The director yelled, “Cut!” and the whole crew started applauding and high-fiving. It was so fun to see and be a part of. As the car came to a stop, Rufey just stayed where he was, taking in all the sights and sounds and not moving an inch till Joey rubbed his ears and said, “Down, boy.”

  They filmed a couple more scenes where the car came driving by with the dog on it, and then our big day was over.