Reflections: Forty Years of Country Roads

Long Game

James Fox-Smith

During the course of the year just ended, I promised my wife that I would build several structures that have yet to materialize. Most fall into the garden hardscape category: arbors and trellises (trelli?), and various fences meant to support, contain, exclude or obscure certain species of flora and fauna. But despite best intentions, the year has passed without many (okay, any) of these structures having come to pass. Since I love a carpentry project, and since my wife’s horticultural ambitions fall somewhere between ‘grand’ and ‘delusional,’ this bothers both of us. During the admittedly not ordinary COVID years of 2020 and 2021, her bottomless appetite for garden hardscape, combined with my misplaced optimism about my construction abilities, made our rural property fertile ground for building projects. But during 2022, as the pace of work and school obligations has returned to pre-pandemic levels, my schedule of do-it-myself home improvement projects has ground to a halt. There’s also the fact that we live in an old house where scarcely a week passes without the need for some new repair announcing itself in dramatic fashion. Between the general upkeep, a tornado that took down several huge trees in the spring, and a self-inflicted injury brought on by the meeting of skis and fifty-two-year-old knees, during 2022 the list of unfulfilled spousal requests grew considerably. So, since writing about my resolutions seems to improve the likelihood that I’ll keep them (see: “Dry Spell,” January, 2022), let it be known that during 2023 I resolve to construct not only an arbor, but also a brick walkway, and a she-shed for good measure. There, I’ve said it. Now … where to begin?

Probably with the arbor, since that will consist of little more than four posts holding up some beams. So, it should be a layup compared with either the walkway or the shed. The vision for this arbor is that it be an entranceway to the part of the yard that has been the main focus of my wife’s horticultural ambitions, and since the plan is that it be festooned with yellow Graham Thomas roses as soon as spring and the liberal application of cow manure allow, any shortcomings in joinery or general symmetry should be hard to spot soon enough. The brick walkway shouldn’t be very hard— more risk of back injury than actual structural failure. The she-shed? Now, that is a different matter, since expectations for this edifice range from the pragmatic (potting shed, greenhouse, plant nursery, garden tool storage facility), to the inspirational (it should also serve as a whimsical, feminine lair to which my wife can retreat for periods of contemplation, garden planning, or shirking work and family responsibilities). All this, while also being electrified, plumbed, and quaintly styled to complement the dogtrot cottage architecture of the house in which we live. If all that sounds intimidating, it is. Indeed, after a lifetime spent living in this house, it’s probably why my wife doesn’t have a garden shed yet. Still, since January is a good time for setting lofty goals, when better to embark on an ambitious building project than today?

Speaking of things that take a long time to build, did you ever hear the one about the St. Francisville woman who, in 1983, started a magazine about things to do “from Natchez to New Orleans”? Forty years ago, my mother-in-law, Dorcas Brown, launched Country Roads on the idea that tourists coming to New Orleans for the 1984 World’s Fair might pick up a magazine that revealed what there was to see in St. Francisville and throughout the constellation of small towns along the Great River Road. Naturally, none of those tourists so much as stopped for gas in St. Francisville, but along the way Dorcas discovered that locals liked having a magazine that celebrated the culture their state had to offer. Forty years later, the project that is Country Roads carries on, and despite all that has changed in the River Road region, the demand for quirky, artfully-told stories exploring the culture of this unique part of the world seems stronger than ever. If there’s a lesson, perhaps it’s that building a good thing takes time. And that, if you want something that doesn’t exist, sometimes you just have to build it yourself. So, maybe this is the year my wife gets her she-shed after all.