WEBVTT

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This is called
"Wheelwright & Smith."

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Yeah, what to say about it?

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I don't know.

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Three of my four grandparents
died this last year.

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And during that time, I
came to know my great aunt

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better and some of the family
history a little bit better.

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And on that side of the
family, my mom's family,

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we have preachers.

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And on my dad's
side of the family

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we've got truck drivers
and Harley riders

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and highwaymen and those--

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virtue and vice, like in a
lot of Southern families.

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So this is a poem
in that context.

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"Wheelwright & Smith."

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A wheelwright in the
glen trains his young son

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on the forge and the while cures
his deer meat at the spring.

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The water cold and
swift makes it last.

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Trains his son that is to
shape and cool to hitch.

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A hitch is anything one
carries from spring to hilltop,

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like a son or a
hard bulb universal.

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There are both meanings.

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A freight on wheels
drags against the trail

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but for the wheels.

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The trail can lead
overpasses and dales

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full of dwellings
providence has had to ditch,

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up the old pig path a
bad deal in the weeds.

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The wheelwright raises a
smith after his ampersand,

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but the trade card
the sun enterprises

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to distribute among
travelers he never

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prints until the wheel of
the old man's passing parks

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and the horses unyoked, then
empties a sigh into winter.

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It took this lifetime to learn
the trench suggesting settlers

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stay a while was his doing
too, drawing on far more

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than the team could manage.

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Attached to his
other idea up and go

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had ever been as
popular as abide.

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And at that rate, to set out
was likewise heritage here.

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Fanning across the
Blue Ridge and Piedmont

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dismay and its parent Calvinism
intermarried more primitive

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Baptists and highwaymen until
Huguenot and her broad face

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and hymnal rumbling,
he, like his brothers

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atop the overhead
valve, pushrod engine.

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Age 28 by 1980.

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The census records his
profession as tractor trailer

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dispatch manager,
one hitch seven.

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