Where I’m From by Mandy Haynes

I’m from a small town called Greenbrier in Middle Tennessee. Some stories say that it got its name for the thick vines full of long, sharp, green, briers that still grow wild there. They say they almost kept the L&N (Louisville to Nashville) railway from being built. Another story is that it was named after an old fella nicknamed “Greenbrier” who worked at the local whiskey distillery. I like the second story best myself because it gives me a chance to talk about the fact that in 1885, Nelson’s distillery produced 357,000 more gallons of sour mash whiskey than Jack Daniel's distillery.

The distillery was what built the town - everything needed to make the whiskey was grown here, and the barrels needed to ship it were built here. Just think what would’ve happened to this little town if the distillery hadn’t closed in 1909 due to prohibition.

Some of the buildings still stand, including the spring house and a spout where clear water runs nonstop. I never knew what those buildings were until I was an adult, all I knew was that the creek that ran behind them was a great place to catch crawdads.

Greenbrier is twenty miles south of the home of the notorious Bell Witch in Adams, and twenty-five miles north of downtown Nashville and the haints of country music stars that frequent Broadway. It’s fertile soil to grow storytellers and feed superstitions. When I lived there we had one red light on the “big” two lane highway. The “old highway” which was barely wide enough for cars to pass each other, ran the full length of town on the opposite side of the railroad tracks. It still had a pig pen that let you know you were about to hit the big bump in the road that – if you hit it just right and were going fast enough – would turn your mama’s car into a flying missile. Back then no one wore seat belts, so the jumps would flip stomachs and unstick sweaty little thighs from the hot vinyl of the backseat. That two to three seconds of freedom when all four tires were off the asphalt did wonders for a carload of antsy kids and a mama with a hangover. You could still find hidden caves, freshwater springs, and places to skinny-dip when you were let loose to roam the woods and creeks that seemed to go on forever. And new sightings of the Carr’s Creek Critter (Robertson County’s version of Bigfoot) were reported every two years or so. But things have changed. There are two red-lights now due to increased traffic on Hwy 41N. Fast food restaurants and even a small strip mall litter the side of the highway as well as two liquor stores. When I was growing up, Greenbrier was a dry town. If you wanted to buy a six pack of beer you had to make a trip to “The Beer Store” which was actually a gas station – but the ONLY gas station that sold beer unless you wanted to make a run into Springfield or go down the ridge into Davidson County. The song B double E double R, U N seemed like it was written for us.

If you wanted liquor and you didn’t want to leave the ridge to go into Davidson County, you went to a bootlegger. I was in Jr. High when I figured out that all those trips my parents made to the Circle K in Springfield weren’t because they had the coldest Yoo-Hoos or Dr. Pepper in the county.

The hill behind the high school (the make-out spot if you had access to a four-wheel drive) has been cleared of the big oak and cedar trees that offered protection from nosey parents and police officers and they’ve been replaced with a subdivision of McMansions. Big brick houses with tiny yards that look about as out of place as false eyelashes and lipstick at the gym. The pig pen is gone and the bump in the old highway was removed when they widened the road. I wish I’d been there when that happened, because I was always curious what caused that bump. I’d bet my best friend Holli that it was the body of one of the James brother’s victims after we learned that they’d spent time in our town. (Fun fact – one of the old houses I’d lived in had been a hideout of theirs. Jesse James had been patched up in our kitchen after one of his run-ins with the law. Scouts honor). I went home in February of 2020 for the first time in a few years and was reminded of all the changes. I was coming “home” a published author and had two new events to promote my first book. It was surreal. I’d left Greenbrier when my son went to college and moved closer to my job in Nashville, so it hadn’t felt like home for a long time.

Driving around looking for the old houses we’d lived in when I was a kid and finding most of them torn down was odd. I’d never felt like I’d had a home because we’d moved around so much - without ever going anywhere. I felt like an imposter. I was searching for something to make me feel like I’d belonged somewhere, in a place I’d left four lifetimes ago, and all I was finding were empty fields or brand new houses that I didn’t recognize. The last house I looked for was one we’d lived in when I was eleven. One that almost felt like home before we moved to another old house and another new start.

The first thing I noticed as I got closer was a bright yellow sign by the edge of the road. BOOK SALE. My heart skipped a couple of beats. Book sale? What a strange coincidence. I’d read so many books there and thought up so many stories. Stories I’d used to scare my friends and cousins, stories I dreamt of writing one day. And here I sat with seven cases of my first published collection in the back of my van. Stories that mentioned the Carr’s Creek Critter, Possum Trot Road, and the ghost of the Pilgrim Lady who walks down Owens Chapel - the seeds were planted for some of those stories when I lived there. Then I noticed another sign, Greenbrier Historical Museum and Library, in the spot where we raked leaves to burn after my dog got tired of running through them. Fat Albert had made lots of moves with us, but died at that house after living a long, happy life chasing us on our bikes and three wheeler. Putting more miles on his short dachshund legs than seemed possible. He’s buried in that yard as a matter of fact.

I saw my first ghost in that house. I’d felt them and heard them in other places, but it was there on the staircase under the stained glass window that I saw her. And she saw me too. I never saw her again, but she would remind me she was there by turning on the light in the foyer and making my bedroom light dim and go bright when I was brave enough to ask her. I didn’t get to go inside. The Museum was closed and the rest of my short stay in Tennessee was a blur. But I did think about that old house and how it made me feel. I was glad it was still there. So what - I didn’t have a childhood home to gather round the table with family for Thanksgiving Dinners or Christmas Eve parties to prove I existed. I had the stories, and those stories are me.

Imagine my surprise when a year later I got a message from a lady named Stephanie Simmons. I’d met her when she purchased a copy of Walking the Wrong Way Home at the event I’d had at Stokes Brown Library in Springfield, Tennessee. She wanted me to know that she loved my book and that she had donated it to the library.

This library… Isn’t that something?

This place right here. This is where I’m from.