Pete Armes 1926 - 2019
Nashville, TN
Reading Time: 2 min 01 sec
Fractions of seconds between the image and where the life of that photograph might transport you have always intrigued me.
Though the photographs below were made in a Franklin, NC barbershop, they take me back to summers in East Tennessee. Memories of sitting by Watts Bar Lake, the wooden dock was rough to the touch and was weathered by the heat and humidity. Splinters would be easier to catch than the fish.
Pappaw did not fish, and neither did I really, only when mammaw cast her line because she was the expert. Pappaw would help clean the days' haul, and he loved to help eat it. So much so, that he once cleaned a prized catch stored on ice for later mounting. The prize was a largemouth bass that fought like a wild dog to remain under the surface of that murky TVA lake.
My grandparents worked two shifts in the now-demolished Burlington hosiery mill, my grandmother took the later shift so she could fish in the mornings, and my grandfather tackled assigned shifts and picked up all the hours his body would allow. They helped manage a floor of weavers and the endless line of loud, clunking machines. Later more advanced and efficient automation technology would someday replace the men and women that helped the previous mechanisms hum. Though like two pontoon boats passing in the night they made it work for a generation of kids, grandchildren, cousins, and stragglers. They both retired to spend more time on the lake until they both couldn't and moved back to town but always just within a trotline length back to Watts Barr.
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So this fish, I'm sure it was a beautiful creature, as beautiful as any East Tennesee largemouth could be. It was pristine, on ice, of course, laying half floating in the kitchen sink as it awaited its space on the living room wall — a shrine to the gems of Watts Barr.
But pappaw Pete has other plans for that fish which involved a sharp knife, a well-buttered pan along with some beans and cornbread if they had any.
Oh, I hope they did, it was breakfast fit for a hardworking king.
I wasn't there that day because we honestly missed a lot growing up so far from home and family, but these stories remain. The stories will always survive. I can vividly imagine my grandfather coming home in his work clothes, peeling them off as he walked through the door, spying that fish and heating the nearest frying pan.
The one that replaced it hung in the living room as long as I remember and my grandmother would mention that this is the one that replaced the one Pete ate. There were no hard feelings, and that's the lesson here, to work together no matter what the circumstance. That model is what made their relationship work for 71 years of marriage, four children, 11 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren.
Pete Armes died on a Friday, buried on a Wednesday and is survived by three of his four children. He was 93.
Rest easy Pappaw. You are missed.
Pete Armes, 1926 - Sept. 13, 2019
