When I called the county historical commission at eight, the lady who picked up listened to me read Clydes note and the letters stamped on that brass pin, and then she said, Mrs. Maddox, please do not let anyone disturb that hilltop, because what your husband registered up there is protected, and a cell tower cannot touch it.
The young man with the tablet told me they needed a tower on the ridge for rural coverage, that if I would not lease, the county could condemn for public infrastructure, and Clydes bench was in the footprint.
He did not know what Clyde buried under the benchs left leg.
Clyde had documented and registered the hilltop as a protected historic site years ago, the brass surveyors pin marking it, and his note explained that the ridge holds something the law protects, which is why a utility cannot condemn it for a tower no matter what ordinance they point to.
Clyde built that bench where you can see three counties, and we watched the sun go down from it every evening for fifty years, and it is where I scattered his ashes. In 1994 he made me promise that if the phone company ever came, Id dig under the left leg, and there was the registered marker and his note telling me why they could not have the hill.
A protected historic site is not in play for a cell tower. The commission confirmed the registration, and the company that thought it could condemn a ridge from a widow found out the ridge was spoken for long before they showed up.
When the young man came back, I did not argue. I handed him the commissions confirmation and I said, you went up and looked at the view. So did my husband, every evening for fifty years, and he made sure nobody could ever put a tower on it. Its a protected historic site. Find your coverage on a ridge that isnt.
The tower went somewhere else. Clydes bench still sits at the top of the hill, and I still climb up there in the evenings, where three counties spread out gold at sundown and my husband is part of the ground.
That bench is in the footprint, he told me. It is not. Clyde stepped it out of the footprint in 1994, with a brass pin and a promise, and I sat on his bench by flashlight and thanked him for it.