Saturday Mornings with David White Sr. — Westerns, Gardens, and the White House on the Hill

Saturday mornings at David and Gladys White's home meant one thing: Westerns. David White Sr. would settle in, and his grandson Michael would join him in front of the television for a morning of cowboys, outlaws, and frontier justice. They watched all the classics together — The Wild, Wild West, Bonanza — the kind of shows where the good guys always won and the music told you exactly how to feel.

In the evenings, David's tastes shifted to something a little grittier. He was a faithful viewer of In the Heat of the Night, the crime drama set in the small-town South. It must have felt familiar — a world of tight communities, complicated people, and justice that sometimes had to be wrestled into shape.

But David's deepest love may have been his garden. He was a gardener at heart, and his pride was his tomatoes and green beans. He tended them carefully through the growing season, and when harvest came, the family would gather to process the bounty. The green beans would be canned and stored away to feed the family throughout the year. Sometimes, though, the beans never made it to the jars — the family would eat them fresh, sitting together on the front porch of the home everyone called the "White House on the Hill."

That house still stands in Glade Spring, perched on a hill across from the old Methodist Church where Gladys sang in the choir for decades. The porch where the family gathered to peel green beans and watch the evening settle over the valley is still there — a quiet monument to the simple rhythms that held a family together.