Roy Exum
There is a most delicious moment, and it always happens differently with each person, when the parents of your best friends growing up morph into becoming your own personal best friends. It is with warmth and genuine love I can say that my 92-year-old pal Hardwick Caldwell just departed this world for a well-deserved better place. The one I finally called “Rocks” will be eulogized at 11 a.m. this morning at the Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church.
I have known him, quite literally, since just after I learned to walk.
His oldest three children, all boys, were the same ages of my two brothers and myself and so close were our friendships that “Mr. Caldwell,” back then, had some men carve out a path between our houses and line it with pea gravel. Hacker, Teddy and Mark are my dearest friends to this day and my younger sisters played with their younger sisters, Charlotte and Tina.
To further add to our neighborhood’s cast of the “Little Rascals” were “Big Bob” Caldwell’s kids, who lived just across the street from their Caldwell cousins. Bob’s oldest, Bobby, became my dearest lifelong friend ever and Zan Guerry, who lived across the street from us with Pem and Chappell, was clearly the best athlete among us. Still more Caldwell cousins, Anne, Billy, and Margaret, were usually in the mix and so was Cindy Kemp, who grew up next door.
Cindy became the first female to get a tennis scholarship at Alabama and you know who signed her? Bear Bryant. But back in the day, when all of us would meet on our bicycles to ride to school and back, we looked like a junior version of the Hell’s Angels. I mean, we were a huge flock of kids pedaling hard because we would race all the time.
My goodness, we had a legendary neighborhood and that’s because our parents were really involved with “the whole herd.” If we were playing in Hardwick’s side yard, wonderful Hattie Sinkfield would feed all of us lunch. At “Big Bob’s” house, sweet Manna would do the same. I could write a thick book about our adventures and our constant camping out, especially the night my dad told ghost stories so scary that Zan set a land-speed record running from our campfire to get under his own bed.
We built a big clubhouse out in the woods and Hacker decreed we needed a cannon. So we fished around until we found about a six-foot lead pipe that would exactly accommodate a 12-gauge shotgun shell. We found a heavy cap that matched the pipe’s threads on one end, drilled a hole in the cap’s center, and then Hacker would take a nail, slap it with a rock against the shell’s primer, and turn us into evermore pirates.
Why we weren’t blown to bits by the contraption proves “God looks after drunks and fools” but the cannon caper was tame compared to other stuff we did. All of this is to say “Hardy,” or when he later picked up the moniker “Hardrocks,” was a huge part of my early life and I grew up believing he was one of the greatest men who ever lived. That thought has never changed.
Every one of his children has grown up to be just as wonderful. I must interject their mother, the incomparable Harriett, was easily the most-adored person on the mountain back in the day and it is her youngest, Tina, who now reflects her spirit and her core the best. Harriett actually beat her multiple sclerosis – I watched – but when she died in 1989 it was probably the saddest day for all of us back then.
In the way the Lord works, He finally sent Hardwick “my Betsy,” who married “Rocks” about 25 years ago. Back then I wondered how could he could ever possibly love anybody beside Harriett but now I realize God, in his infinite wisdom, blessed Hardwick with two chapters of love. Each chapter was different, but both were so equally wonderful that only those who have had two spouses can ever understand such divine chemistry.
One memorable day a big bunch of men and machines started digging a huge hole behind Hardwick’s house and it wasn’t long before we learned it was a real-to-life bomb shelter with blankets, cans of water, potted meat and flashlight batteries. It was even said to be lined in lead to thwart atomic-bomb rays and, when Hacker told the rest of us there would be no room for anybody but his family, we didn’t speak to him for a week. He even said he’d shoot-to-kill if we begged to come in. That didn’t sit well with the gang at all.
One night at dinner I asked my dad whether we ought to build a bomb shelter, because now another one was being entombed at Big Bob’s house as well. “Are you boys fools?” he countered. “If an atomic bomb hits – it destroys everything instantly. If you actually believe a bomb is going to hit Lookout Mountain, which I promise will never happen, let’s walk the rest of the way through it.
“If everything is destroyed, who are they going to talk to when they come out of that bomb shelter? There will be no cars, grocery stores, Krystal hamburgers, church on Sunday or anything else. Now don’t you boys dare say anything to the Caldwells but if something as silly as a bomb shelter bothers you, walk it through before you also become a fool.”
From that point on we dropped the matter and played like usual. But if anybody mentioned those bomb shelters, us Exum boys would just smile and be real quiet.
As I have grown older, I have found the best parties always include at least two generations of families and, man, I’ve loved every Caldwell for my entire life. Take Mark and Ann, for example. Their son Mac is now the Wing Commander at the U.S. Air Force Academy. That’s the No. 1 student out of a huge field of thoroughbreds. You don’t think that doesn’t make my chest stick out? And Hacker’s boy, Hardwick, was the wildest child on Lookout Mountain since the legendary Burkett Rawlings (who displaced me) and I instantly grin with glee whenever I see him.
For years a bunch of Caldwells were always included when we ate together at the Mountain City Club at what was called “The Bad Boys table.” We ate lunch every day after everybody else had gone because there was always some stiff shirt who complained we were rude, crude, loud and terribly obnoxious. For the record, we were, and we ate late so we could be.
There were some of us who were genuinely bad and guys like “Rocks” were interlopers who joined in the fun. How bad? There was a day when one of our brethren wrote a blank check for $10,000, signed it with a flourish, and tossed it into the center of the table. As he did he cried, “If just one of you will have a scandalous affair and get these Lookout Mountain women off my back, the money is yours!”
A big part of lunch back then was, as the dishes were cleared, about a dozen of us would bet with dice each day to see who would buy the lunches. That’s right, the “host” (loser) would pick up the tab that could get pretty pricey sometimes. The game was hysterical to play and when you are talking about women, rumors, scandals, jokes and really fun stuff while you bet, you would come to the warm realization the fathers of your best friends were now part of your own best friends.
There were zingers galore and nobody was exempt. Hardy had this stupid way of posing a question: “Roy, my people tell me …” that used to drive me crazy. So one day when he said it, I loudly interrupted him. “Rocks, Mr. Ronald Reagan taught us to ‘trust but verify’ … just who the **** are ‘my people’?” Mercy! People fell out of chairs they were laughing so hard and – in true form – Rocks laughed the loudest.
There came the day “Rocks” was having both knees replaced and I snuck into his hospital room just before 6 o’clock that morning with a big bottle of his beloved Mount Cay rum, just in case he needed some extra pain-killer. The next day at lunch Hacker said his dad, who was 6-foot-4, really needed it. It seems the big man happened to “forget” his new knees when he decided to sit down on a standard toilet for the first time -- it was said you could hear his resulting screams all the way to Dalton.
Teddy, his second son, adored playing tricks on his dad. Being a thinker, “Rocks” hung a tennis ball from the ceiling in his garage so that when he parked his car, he knew that when the tennis ball touched the windshield the automobile was parked perfectly. Being the competitive sort, he delighted in zooming into the garage, faster and faster, until the ball touched the windshield. Once, when “Rocks” was on vacation, T-Bear snuck in the garage and moved the ball backward by about two feet. When Hardwick got back home, he went flying into the garage and, while trying to reach the ball, took a whole wall out of the kitchen.
Another time, this just after “Rocks” headed the Board of Trustees at McCallie, Teddy called his father, faking great sorrow, sobbing with anguish, to tell him the school had denied his grandson’s application. “Rocks” went totally ballistic and after McCallie officials finally calmed him down to assure him that his grandson had indeed gotten in, “Rocks” was so mad that Teddy had suckered him once again he wouldn’t speak to the prankster for about three weeks.
Gee, I owe Hardwick Caldwell so much for the time and love he gave to me. What’s more, people across this community have no idea how much he did for them. I know about the very quiet Caldwell Foundation and the thousands of volunteer hours he spent making this a better place. Don’t worry, he taught every child, and a few others like me, to try to be the same way.
Oh, you Rocks, oh you! Your life’s dash – that tombstone mark that separates one’s birth date and death date – was more overflowing than so many who have come our way. I’m so thankful you were one of my very best friends. Give Harriett and my mom my love.
royexum@aol.com