Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.John Adams (1735 - 1826)

My father moved to North Georgia after graduating from High School in Gassaway, WVa. because his aunt, my great aunt, Marie had relocated down here to be closer to the walking horse shows. Jim Tanner was an avid horseman and wanted to be close to that walking horse action. (To those who don't know, the Tennessee Walking Horse is a special breed of horse that naturally lifts it's front hooves high when it walks. A well-trained walking horse has a beautiful stride when it is being shown, and walking horse shows are huge part of the culture in Middle Tennessee, where most of the best stables are.) He was down here when he met my mother while at the University of Chattanooga, and the rest is family history. The up-shot is that because of horses, my brother and I came to be.


After my father and mother were married in the early 1960's, he had to drop out of college. He was ROTC, so when he left college he was called into the Army. This is how my mother and father spent their first year of marriage. When he was discharged they returned to North Georgia to be close to her family and his horses. They worked to purchase a small farm where they were able to raise a small herd of cattle and walking horses, along with a myriad of other "experimental" animals. Dad was a member of the Walking Horse Association. He would show horses all over Tennessee and Georgia. He never had the money to go for an all out stable, but there was always a horse or two on the farm. While my mother worked on her postgraduate work, he raised horses and, as they came along, boys. My brother and I enjoyed growing up surrounded by fields and animals.

In 1981, my father was killed in an industrial accident at the foundry where he worked. I was five years old and my brother was thirteen.

Most of my father's family was still in West Virginia, except for Aunt Marie. She was basically the only contact we had with my father's side of the family. She was a fiery and loving woman who taught my brother and I to be strong and smart. She and my mother grew very close, but the rest of my father's family were only distant relations. We would see them every now and again, marvel at their bizarre accents (if you have never heard a West Virginia accent, I'm sorry but there's no way to describe it) and I would wonder if I would be bald like my uncles. They were very loving to us, but because we were Georgians and because the loss of my father, the oldest son, they were always distant.

Now I am grown and I realize that I don't know much about one half of me. I haven't heard the old family stories and have never been close to all the extended family. I never learned to deer hunt (a Tanner tradition, apparently) or ever seen where my father went to High School. I have not been on a horse in over a decade, although I am still fairly confident I would do all right. I don't even have the ability to spot a picture of my Grandpa Russ, for whom I'm named, in a photo album. I am a Tanner of a new breed, with new habits and talents. I am taking a new direction in life, divergent from the roots that I have never known. Where my Tanner cousins have taken safe and lucrative jobs, I am struggling to find my place in the world and trying to explore my creative side. Where they have wives and children, extending the family further from me and into the future, I remain alone. They are a little bit country while I am a little bit Rock n' Roll.

There are times when I wish I could just be a comfortable old style Tanner.

And yet I have taken a different path, at times by force and at time by choice. I am happy with the path I am on. Sure, there are things I want, security and family, but I also want to use my creativity to share myself with the world. I am glad that I don't hunt and prefer art museums, a past time that is utterly alien to my cousins. I will take a Renoir over a tree stand any day. I cannot be disappointed with my path because it is mine, taken from my life and my choices. If it were not for that path, I would not be me, and I do kinda like myself, even if I can be annoying at times. Thank you, Tenneesee Walkers, for bringing my roots out of the hills of West Virgina, and thank you Dad, where ever you are, for giving me this life.

(This is written to honor James Ferris Tanner, of whom I got to learn a little more about this weekend.)