Well, I remember that and also this: I discovered fried green peas. They were at a small grocery store known as Jay’s, which was next to an auto plaza known as Carl’s, which was just down the road from the only restaurant for miles around, known as Hank’s.

Talk about a first-name basis.

I had to drive this last lingering distance to West Branch by myself. Pattye, whom I’d come on this trip with, was in the car ahead of me with our friend Scott, who was in Michigan directing his version of Rent, styling, modernizing it if you will.

(By the way, good job, Scott).

I’d only been to Michigan once before. I’d taken the train the last time; perhaps you’ve read my blog on that eventful trip.

I saw no dead animals, that time, though. I was rightly mesmerized that so many raccoons had come to Michigan to meet their deaths.  I tried very hard to turn them into badgers or wolverines, or a jaunty mix of both, but sadly, their markings were too obvious.

I’m not sure what I expected out of this second venture northward: pickled herring stands, brown patches of grassless lawns, perpetual Christmas. (I saw none of these, either, during my first foray to the Great Lakes State, and I must confess, I felt a little cheated. Then I remembered that Rose Nylund was from Minnesota, and forgave the whole state).

But, I was at least, on this trip, better prepared. Thanks to Al Gore’s Internet.

See, I did a little thing called research. (Which, I’ve discovered, is a lot like a drug—addictive).

Michigan is chock-full of things to see, and things to do. Did you know that among its many monikers, it is also called the Great Beer State? There’s also a large German influence in Michigan, most notably seen in the village of Frankenmuth, or as locals call it Little Bavaria. And though we didn’t get a chance to visit it, I hear Mackinac Island is well worth it. After all, Condé Nast Traveler called it “one of the top ten islands in the world.” I mean, that’s got to be a good thing, right?

In retrospect, though, I realized that Michigan is a state best seen by train. The reason? You don’t have to drive a train.

Plus, like every other state in the contiguous USA, a highway is a highway. By any other name, it becomes an interstate. Bottom line: boring.

Of course, I’m not one who appreciates driving like others.  (There are a few who do).

And like most every other state, the highways, the interstates aren’t built to take you to a place, as much as through it. Meaning? The charm of Michigan isn’t seen from I-75, or Highway 10. Though, unfortunately, its state motto doesn’t really encourage you to take the next exit ramp. I mean, what can you expect from a state whose motto boasts, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.”

I had looked all about me. And all I saw were dead raccoons, which I pretended were freaks of a badger-wolverine hybrid to keep myself interested enough not to run off the road.  (Badgers, I learned later, weren’t even associated with Michigan; they belong to Wisconsin).

It was all the same to me: the north—one large, cold state.

It wasn’t until I stopped, and got out of the car, that I learned my mistake.  That I remembered where, despite landmarks and sites of interest, the true charm of any place lies: in its people.

The people of Michigan are good, honest, people who a) don’t mince words, and b) don’t mix drinks. They also like a hearty pizza.

And they are resiliently, surprisingly, hospitable. I thought that was only in Mississippi; maybe it’s an “M state thing.” Though I wouldn’t bet on Montana.

After our brief stay in Lansing—only for the night of the performance—we were invited to stay with Scott at his mother’s (Anne) house, a quaint two-story, loft-style bungalow, near Lake Houghton, I believe, and it possessed all the magic that a cabin in the woods should: tall cathedral trees, bird feeders, quiet and serene back porch, and the following morning, a breakfast that could feed the neighborhood.  In a sense it did, his mother’s best friend, who told us her grandkids call her Granma Ribs, made short work of the front door welcome mat.

The evening before, they sat in front of the fireplace and enjoyed a few cocktails while regaling us with a barrage of amusing stories about their lives, their children, the strength of commercial lubricants, and gay marriage. Pattye and I at once saw the potential for a cable-style TV program: Ms. Anne and Granma Ribs. There would be a censorship disclaimer at the start of each episode. I think, before we went to bed, we’d gotten halfway through Season 2.

It was hardly twenty minutes into their dialogue before I felt what I always hope to, when traveling. I felt at home. When you’re on the road, for any length of time, that feeling is well worth the drive.

Earlier that night, we were taken to Hank’s, the local restaurant, vis-à-vis juke joint, where we met with our first round of colorful locals. What I will say about these Michiganders is the men smile and nod a lot and the women will kiss anything that moves. You will, no doubt, draw your own conclusions, but after the dust (of hairspray and makeup) has settled, and the John Deere caps removed, you end up sitting at a table with people you know. And oddly, people you like.

I don’t think they believe in strangers, in Michigan.

Which is a good thing.  It works for us down south. So, I guess what’s good for the goose, is good for the Michigander.

After a few rounds, a pizza the size of Pittsburgh, and what I’m pretty sure was an accidental lap dance from a woman named Shelia, we called it a night, and that’s when I saw the pièce de resistance: that huge, expansive Michigan sky.

I turned to Pattye and said, “They don’t make them like anymore.”

“No,” she replied, “They really don’t.”

I’ve seen a few clear skies in my day, but clear stars? That’s rare.

Just like Michigan.

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It just fell out. You know, I was standing around, my mouth was open, and then, Boom. There it was, a whole sentence, a sentiment of ontological bent, floating around the room.

Now, I usually say things for two reasons: Either I like the way it sounds (which is a sort of philosophy in and of itself), or I’m not aware of what I’m saying (which is more often the case).

Of course, far be it from me to retract a statement. Unless it’s slander or the like. No, I’d much rather pretend I meant I knew what I was saying and argue you down. It’s part-hobby, part-the-way-I-am. It’s also how I learn.

Because if I pace myself, and you know as well as I do that Argument is a finely-drawn art, I can find my way out by digging my way further in. In other words, I find some half-baked flaw in my own self-designed debate and make a remark a la “Didn’t I say that?”

To which the response is, No, I don’t think you said that.

And then, I’m pretty sure I did, why I was say anything else? That doesn’t make any sense.

If the wine has been forgiving, so will the other person, and before you can ask for the rest of the bottle, the whole point has been forgotten, or has been turned into a “teachable moment.”

This, by the way, is a phrase too often bandied about in my family, most often used at what I’d considered an inopportune moment, as an attempt to cover over what is more likely a cry for help than education.

For instance, Wynn got his head stuck in the wrought-iron fence during Christmas (as have all of us, at some point or another, be it Christmas or a Tuesday evening) that for some unknown-1960s-esque-decorating reason lines the sunken, inner den at Nana’s house. He has a big head; we don’t affectionately refer to him as Chunk just for the hell of it.

He pulled and gawed and hollered, until finally, he figured out how to remove his head from the grip of the twisted iron.

It was, we concurred, a teachable moment for him.

This only works if it doesn’t happen a second time, though.

The other night—and this has been a month back— it was my head, not Wynn’s, stuck in a verbal bit of ironwork, also known as “chit-chat.” I was browsing around, admiring the handiwork of original artists, at an event known as First Fridays, a local venue that showcases, as you might have guessed, new and original art. I love attending and when able, purchasing some of this art. I’ve lined my walls with it.

And this was a particularly interesting First Fridays that was highlighting the work of what I assume was, by all stretch of the imagination, an “avant-garde artiste.”

Every piece of his objet d’art was rumor-worthy, trust me. There were the usual “attacks on modern society,” such as the reconfigured computer keyboard, and the smashed-out TV set hypnotizing the bowling pins carved into the shape of an armada of swans, if you will.

All clever, indeed.

He also, single-handedly, wrapped every item he possessed in newspaper (the comics, naturally), and made every person in attendance open a present, which he filmed. I ended up with catnip and a collection of CDs by artists I couldn’t have cared less about, but the idea of it, that was appealing.

Even the glass ornaments he’d personally filled with urine.

I know. Right?

I only mention this rather engaging visual (if unsettling) because it was there that this sudden burst of philosophy fell from my mouth, skipping the rim of my glass of Moscato, and thrusting itself upon the ears of those standing beneath these balls of pee with me.

“Is that so, Kris?”

“Is what so?”

“What you just said…if something’s possible, then it’s necessary?”

Tongue-in-cheek-like, I pointed to the glass ornaments of yellow liquid, “Well, it explains this, doesn’t it?”

A tight laugh.

“Yes, but not really.”

I countered, “So, what are you saying? That everything has to have a point?”

What followed was a discussion of Being tinged with Purpose, which I admit I didn’t quite follow to the “flat middle of a solid T,” but I did begin to sense a deeper truth: We just plain don’t like thinks that don’t make sense.

We are a people of Order. And I mean that quite literally.

This artist, for whatever reason, had collected his urine into glass ornaments and then hung them in degrees of yellow hue from the ceiling. From a distance, it was rather nice to look at, because it was “in an order,” a design. Once we discovered what it was in truth, then the opinion shifted and we were, at various levels, appalled, disgusted, confused, intrigued.

Without Order, we couldn’t approve because approval requires labels. And labels, if they’re good ones, don’t need explanation.

Which led to: Is there such a thing as art for art’s sake? and Do we have to “know” why?

The argument deepened, to drastic depths, which I suppose is an important facet of any conversation regarding philosophy. One doesn’t just “go around” initiating new schools of thought without hearty, healthy debate, it seems.

Not that that’s what I was trying to do.

I’d actually and honestly come up with that “what’s possible is necessary” quip as a means of encouraging myself in my upcoming move to NYC; it isn’t easy to uproot yourself at 33 and leave a good job that you’ve got under your belt—good as in salaried.

I guess it’d been wafting around my mind ever since, because, to me at the time, it sounded pretty heady and important.

But, dear god, let the lesson be learned, by all: you better think through the things you let slip on the lip. Because, that comment as a means of encouragement, Fine, it works. But, if it’s to hold its weight, it has to work in all situations. (And I don’t know, maybe it does).

I certainly had no answer, though, when asked, “So, if I murdered you, right here, right now, that’d be OK because according to you, if it’s possible, it’s necessary?”

“I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to murder me,” I said. My head now firmly caught in its own wrought-iron.

“Yeah, but still…”he said.

I was becoming uncomfortable at this point. I saw no way out.

So instead, I did what Wynn did. I pulled (at my shirt); I gawed (which is sort of like a low, guttural murmur) and I hollered (or, in this case, I laughed, too loudly).

I looked him square in the face and said, “You’ve got to look at it from both sides, naturally.”

“What?”

I had no idea what I meant, but I continued, “…as in, it is necessary that I get some more wine, and it is also…possible.” With that, I slathered on a smile, and excused myself, heading for the Moscato.

Which was safely an entire room away…from him and the urine.

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He and I were talking the other day and he said it’d be nice to explain who some of these people are that I keep writing about. He said it’d increase reader-interest if I described in some detail the repeated members of my sweet, dogged family I refer to so often in my memoir-esque blog.

I think that’s a great idea.  

For several reasons: first, it’ll certainly help those precious few of you who read this thing with any regularity to have some reference points, and secondly, it’ll be a good wake-up call for me to reflect on those people who have influenced me so much in my life. Those that I take after, both in blood and beatitude.

It’s a good exercise for any of us, I think. Besides, lately, I’ve been so encumbered with work and worry that I’ve been straddling that god-awful fence of Depression, again.

So, as a remedy, I’m taking Kirby’s advice, to remember those who have made me, Me, for better or for worse.

And I’m going to start with the person I most remember as the center of my thrown-together, partly-fictionalized family. (I’ll explain what I mean by “partly-fictionalized” eventually…so, don’t you worry about it).

That person would be Tigi.

Or as she was brought into this world: Tiny Gertha. She was born in August of 1898 in the Delta, and for most of her life was referred to as Miss Gertha, by the community. Or, good, old Granny. Eventually, nicknamed, Tigi, with a soft “g.”

She passed away in 1984, and never grew taller than 4’11”. I’m not sure if some Delta gypsy cursed her at birth, or if she did what any proper, Southern belle would do, and live up to (or down to, rather) her name. Either way, she was, indeed, tiny, in all things but heart and determination.

She would marry young and well…until the Depression. That didn’t stop her from giving birth to nine children, among them U.L. and Nana. Their stories come later, though.

Tigi was, despite her name, the first giant I ever knew in this world.

She was the first person to encourage my creativity, the first to cry in front of me, and the first to put a pan in my hand and point me toward the stove.  She was riddled with cancer, my entire time of knowing her, but she smiled anyway. She played the “mouth organ” as good as Little Walter Jacobs, and tickled only the black keys on the piano. But, boy could she play. Mostly roots gospel, but is there anything better, really, to play on an old upright?

A few things I’ve already mentioned to you like her cooking elan and legendary temper, but those were in her worn, later years, when experience had sharpened her to the point of exhaustion and wisdom. They were also only a part of her portrait, a few deep hues caught in the glare of a waning sun. It was her determination to walk even after the cancer denied her the use of her own legs, her refusal to stop making, in the last years, even a pitiful pone of cornbread for U.L.’s supper, stubbornly overlooking the resistance her arms and fingers gave, victims to the spreading killer, rippling beneath her skin, that made me love her, that helped me understand the stock from which I came.

She’d lift that iron skillet, if it took an hour, and never once did I hear her complain of its weight. Not once did she show anything but grace. I’d try to help her, but it wasn’t until the afternoon she fell that she finally relented and let me.

Starting in kindergarten and up through second grade, it was with Tigi that I stayed in the afternoons. She lived with U.L., and as it turned out, the house was a mere four houses away from the school I attended. It was a private, small, and extremely focused school, where, ironically, despite the distance my upbringing necessarily created between me and the Jewish side of my mother’s family, I still learned Hebrew at the age of four.

Jesus’s kind of Judaism was fine. My maternal grandmother’s was not. And oh, what a delicious story hers is.  But, later.  Later.

Tigi was never one to spoil me.  

Though she did make my favorite snack for me, each afternoon: fried dill pickles. She did this until she was no longer able to, which took me through the years of four, five, six and seven.

Up to the age of eight. That afternoon she fell.

And, for all intents and purposes, never really got back up.

She’d had to turn more and more to the walker, which she hated with a relish usually reserved for those who didn’t vote or attend church regularly. She despised having to rely on the walker, this daughter of  sharecroppers who’d on more than one occasion picked cotton until her fingers cracked and bled, this woman who had gone without electricity, and sometimes, fresh water.  Buried under twisted cartilage and arthritis, shrouded in folklore and faith, eaten up with cancer, she was still bound and determined not to lose the ability to take a step on her own terms.

I don’t blame her for that one bit.

But, at the age of eight, I did. At least, at first.

I came in the front door and there, somehow, in the den, she’d managed to scoot the couch up to the bar, called such because of its shape not its use, and had taken an old broomstick, missing the broom-part, and was attempting to roll it along, half of it on the back edge of the hard-ridged couch and the other half on the bar, as she guided herself along behind it.

I can’t imagine the purpose of this other than sheer rebellion. There was no definite destination in sight: your choices were either the right side of the couch or the left.

“Or,” as she said, in her typical wit and fashion (one that U.L. has inherited), “the right foot in front of the left.”

Some destinations are meant to be nothing more than the journeys in and of themselves.

I stood at the door, coming in from the carport and watched as she looked up at me; she was smiling at what she’d done, halfway down the length of the back of the couch, and then, letting go of the broomstick, took a brief, solo step and then fell forward into it, breaking the stick in half on her way down to the hard floor.

I was devastated. Terrified and frightened. It was at that moment, I believe, that the fear of Choice and Living, that fear of Striking Out On One’s Own, that is so inherent in my family’s history, took root in my own soul.  (It was also then that my own fight, consequently, began).

I ran to her, crying. All eight years of my existence in each wet drop.

She was crying, too. Smiling, but crying.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I remember her saying to me. She hadn’t hurt anything but her pride and the broomstick. I think that’s what she was really crying about. With it broken, her shot at freedom, at independence, was also.

I helped her, as best as I could, to the arm of the couch. She sat there, perched, for a long, long time. When you admit defeat, I guess, it’s really a quiet thing. True loss is nothing but putting the memory of winning in its place. But, keeping your head held high, regardless.

That is, I believe, the very definition of dignity.

I called U.L.  He left work and came home, stayed the rest of the day with her.

I looked toward the kitchen, but there were no fried dill pickles on the table, that afternoon.

 And there never were again.

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There’s a reason people get sick—the attention. But, I’ve discovered as of this morning, there’s a reason good friends drive their sick friends to the doctor and then spend the next two hours in the waiting room having their patience tested—the neighborhood.

Of course, this requires explanation.

It’s 10:03 AM, and I’ve brought Amanda to the Student Health Center. She’s been very sick to her stomach, and I felt she needed better attention than my telling her to “take it to the toilet” every hour or so.

Little did I know the call to action that I was unwittingly engaging myself in.

I found a seat, in the corner, and began my determined sit. I flipped through all the magazines twice. I checked my Twitter, my Facebook, my email.

Thirty minutes pass, and still—no Amanda.

I drew the line at Highlights.

After nearly forty minutes of pretending to re-read Diabetes Living and Prevention, I was left with my nothing to occupy me but my old standby: the Imagination.

That is, until other patients started wandering through the automatic double doors.

Everyone carefully chose their seats, and unpacked their belongings. Sort of like setting up their respective houses: jackets came off, laptops pulled out, backpacks emptied. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t in a waiting room.

I was in a neighborhood.

The rows of seats, were roads and streets. The people in their chairs, homes of single-parent households and displaced migrant workers.

What I was witnessing was a community in the making. The birth of a neighborhood.

Communities, I think, are made every day in thousands of small ways. Some last a long time; but most are temporary. Like this morning’s community. This one was built entirely on stress, and was destined to become a community in constant danger of eviction.

And this neighborhood, like anywhere else, had as much to like as dislike.

I appreciated, for instance, the severe economy of conversation on my particular street. A Hello here and there, a respect for personal space, and then that’s it. No more. I turned to my neighbor on the right to ask him where he got his shoes.

I wanted a pair; I really liked them.

“Don’t know.” He never even looked up from his iPhone.

No filigree, no dragging it out. No pretense.

More neighborhoods should be like this, I think.

And even though you might argue that it borders on the rude, I should remind you that despite the fact that most communities are driven by what I would term “self-interest,” at least in this community, we were given the option of a Suggestion Box.

It’s also a very clean neighborhood.

And to top it all off, most of us get validated parking and pills, when it’s time to “move on.”

II

It’s 11:36 AM and eight new people have moved onto my street. I should say three, since one is a family of five. If I were having to guess, out right, I would say that I think at least three of them are here to be surgically removed from their cell phones.

Or, perhaps, to discuss the cost of having smiles sewn back onto their faces, and, if there’s enough money left over, an extra neck muscle that would act as a reflex to force you to make eye contact.

Two of the new neighbors are children. What joy.

They immediately engage themselves in a contest of who is the best jumper; their shoes skid from tile to tile, between the sitting area and the water fountain.

They whisper, how well-trained,  until the boy decides he’s the winner. The girl then hits her head on the water fountain and begins to cry.

Gutsy move on her part.

The mother takes all the children with her as she bravely crosses to the “wrong side of the tracks.” In other words, the doors that stand directly behind a large free-standing sign that reads, “No cell phone usage past this point.”

Connecting you everywhere except Bangladesh and Nova Scotia.

Who would ever want to go to that side of town? The whole point of having a cell phone is to keep connected to the world around you without having to be connected to the world around you.

The father stays at home…three seats down from me. This is, I imagine, equivalent to his being on vacation.

How well-trained.

III
Returning from the bathroom, I see that my nicely shoed friend has moved. Disappeared. It was inevitable, I know, but I was hoping to ease him back into a conversation, enticing him to offer me at least three shoe store options for my own research.

I really wanted a pair of those shoes.

In his house now, sits a young woman, blonde and covered in what I would assume was every sweatshirt she owned.  She was patiently sitting, reading a book. I couldn’t see the title of the book and so therefore, it must have been a book about Scientology.

I was mentally preparing her a Welcome to the Neighborhood casserole when she began to cough without covering her mouth.

A nurse pops out from behind the No Cell Phone Usage sign and calls, “Emily?”

The blonde girl closes her book and coughs her way over to the nurse and slips behind the wooden doors.

The nerve.

It was going to be a really good casserole, too.

IV

12:00.

I feel fairly certain than Amanda has, at this point, decided to give her body to science. I’m going over What Steps To Take Next, in bringing this to the attention of her family when a rogue wheelchair carrying, magically, a large woman in it comes hurtling around the corner, down my street.

Closely behind it, lumber two equally large children hollering that they were “sorry, Momma! But Chelsea wouldn’t hold my Coke!”

I don’t know how that adds up to a runaway heavyweight, but it did.

I only stopped laughing because an emergency then occurred: a young man had been hit by a car, while making a left turn on his bicycle and didn’t know who he was, or where he was. He all but crawled up onto the receptionist’s desk while he waited to be admitted.

He was immediately ushered away.

I was glad for that. That kind of neighbor really depreciates the value of the whole neighborhood, you know.

I checked on him. He’s going to be just fine, so there.

Do you suppose if he never remembers his name that he’ll still have to pay?

V

Fifteen minutes after twelve, and Amanda finally emerges. Diagnosis: severe stomach bug, which if I had to draw a picture of it, would have the pinschers of a praying mantis, the head of a dung beetle, and the body of a lion.

Also, a beak.

She’s going to pull through. Thank goodness.

Opinions are like...oh, you know the rest.

As I start to pack things up, Amanda traipses over to the pharmacy to wait for her medication. I pass the Comment Box on my way out and decide to leave them a suggestion myself:

With the flu season on our heels, it might behoove you to consider creating a gated community within the waiting room.

Because the sick people are really needy.

Signed, Emily.

Oh, now. Don’t look so chagrined.

Every street has an Emily.

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On the outside looking in, I had a tragic childhood, I know, I’ve read that…but that’s only the way the story goes. It has a whole different feel, when it’s told. The truth is I had a very conventional upbringing, for the most part, and it included a lot of church.

"On a hill far away..."

I was brought up by a great uncle, who was also the church organist thank you very much. And not just at any church; it was one his father built. His next-door neighbor was his sister with her two daughters, much, much older than I (mostly, anyway) that I merely told everyone were my sisters. And good old Uncle Moon, that was Nana’s husband, Uncle Larry’s brother-in-law.  He worked for the county, drove bulldozers and backhoes to work every day of the week and on the weekends they just sat in the driveway and I got to crawl all over the bulldozer like a retarded ant, and make mud pies in the lift of the backhoe. I secretly had always believed heaven to be made of metal, most of it anyway, and Uncle Moon proved it to me, so of course I loved him with every bone in my body.

He also had no toenails due to some unfortunate accident that involved a cement truck and a visiting evangelist from somewhere down south of Hattiesburg, Ellisville or Lumberton, if people even lived in such places. It was a wonderful story, too, full of a long Sunday dinner, a cursing mynah bird belonging to my great-grandmother Tigi, and a dire need to have a paved driveway. All of which converged on a certain given Lord’s day back in 1978, the result of which were the smoothest-edged toes this side of the Mississippi, and a little to the left of the Tombigbee. 

I envied those toes.

Rumor has it that I was left on a washing machine, at the smart age of two, in my uncle’s utility closet.  Seems I’ve always been in and out of closets, by choice or abandonment. Then again, maybe it was just plain forgetfulness.

It tends to happen.

More likely, I was simply brought to his house and left under his careful and inexhaustible eye, right in front of him, like a drooling bargaining chip. Thank God he kept me. And if I was left anywhere, it was probably either on the kitchen table or at the most dramatic, on the hearth in front of the buck stove. Which I suppose has its dangers.  At least during winter. Wherever I was left, I still managed to grow up, limbs intact.

Until I was eight, my biggest bragging right was that I’d never broken any bones, could eat a stick of butter without taking more than three big breaths, and that I’d never been bitten by a rattlesnake.

I also, at an early age, began a love affair with books. You write it, I’d read it, even Helen Steiner Rice and her bunch of poems. I read with the diligence of a Baptist minister with a Catholic secret.

I read as if everything were sacred, as if I expected to discover some deep and wide truth about, oh, anything and everything from the purpose of grasshoppers to the importance of jelly shoes.

And I read constantly: I read at breakfast, I read in the bathtub, I read on the way to school, I read in my sleep, I even attempted to read during church (and I don’t mean just the Bible, but I had to be about the sneakiest spy in the world to get away with anything else because Uncle Larry played the organ, as you know, and because of this, God had given him one-half of His Own Right Eye.

I’m not sure how that could possibly be considered fair. But, believe me…no one wants to be stared down from the church organ.

This is where the sheaves sit. After they're brought it, so to speak.

Every time a chord swelled, the whole congregation would turn, as one – just like Jesus said the church should do somewhere in Galations, and become one body – and look me square in the face. I like to think Jesus meant become one body by doing good or taking communion or cleaning the church, which some grown-ups I will not say who (initials of M.D. and H.F.S.) wriggled out of every month, but Jesus being Jesus, I was, I guess, happy to help out anyway I could…and so I stared right back, grinning as wide as the pew I sat on.

Naturally, because of my place of importance in the church hierarchy of the children of preachers, deacons, song leaders, and such, PK’s (preacher’s kids) had nothing on me.  I was beyond special because I wasn’t a wanted child, first off, which you can’t shake no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are to animals and the elderly. So, there was that. And besides Uncle Larry being the organist, John Robert was the song leader (a cousin), Marsha was Director of Vacation Bible School (a sister/cousin; also Vacation Bible School, as you may well know, is the only triple oxymoron in existence); Nana was a Sunday School Teacher; Joey, a deacon…you get the picture.

Plus, Uncle Larry and Nana had been at the church longer than the preacher, so you can see how I was pretty much in charge.

I didn’t take advantage of it, though.  I knew that with having power meant responsibility, or something like that, and responsibility was the last thing I wanted. It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in my life when I didn’t want attention, nor did I want to be within fifty feet of its center. Unlike today, where I’m bound to carry it around in my pocket.

Back in the day, I was happy just sitting on the pew, minding my business, coloring in my He-Man coloring book, until getting caught…but as fate would have it, I was smart. I started to read too early, and learning how to string words together to create ideas piqued my interest, and so I started trying to read the hymns along with the choir, and then I accidentally sang out loud one time on “Because He Lives,” and Miss Ada Lee heard me and told everyone (she should have been a police scanner, honestly) after services, and the next thing I knew, I was on the marquee every Sunday for Special Music.

A solo.

For a long time, I just suffered the fools gladly right through the Tag and the Chorus of every song I had to sing for the glory of God and Uncle Larry.  I spent most of my time singing as if church would be over when I finished, which came across as divine inspiration, I imagine. 

I wanted to be through with church and outside so I could be playing There’s No Ghosts in the Graveyard, a game I think maybe Clay made up or Shannon…maybe Melinda, she was smart, too. It didn’t matter, it was too fun, and we played it constantly, Sunday Best or not, even though, truth be told, it was more of a nighttime game, usually played between Discipleship Training and evening worship.

"When the roll is called up yonder..."

It didn’t matter when you played it, though.  Ghosts plus church was just barely under the Too Evil To Say Near the Church Doors Line, and that could really get your blood going.  

On those days, those halcyon-kid-friendly-ignorant days, church was near about wonderful.  The time I hated church the most was when everyone got chicken pox, and I was the only kid there for what was, without a doubt, almost the length of forever.  But, then, I got them, too, and had to stay home for nearly two weeks, so everything was fine again, and I’d forgiven them all.  I was twice as nice to Bart because, deep down, I figured I’d caught them from him. So, I thanked him by letting him shoot the red birds in our yard without telling Uncle Larry, who, hand to God I guess, knew anyway.

[...]

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There’s no rush to this ritual. We enjoy a long dinner with the rest of the family; we gossip, we share news (even the made-up News, an old habit we used to do when I was younger, that’s found some way to stick, even to this day).

What you do is, you mute the TV, you guess at what’s being said by looking at the graphics, and then you tell your version. It was quite a shock, for instance, when I realized that Bush had actually been re-elected, and even greater still, when I found out that Navratilova was an honest-to-goodness lesbian who barely got the rights to animal visitation; I’d thought she was trying to sell her dogs on national television and had been arrested for it. I hadn’t realized that what I’d been watching was a court trial, of a “divorce,” per se.

This will be the death of me.

It’s not that there’s all that many places to see or drive by in my small, Haven Kimmel-sized hometown. It just gives us time to ourselves, to draw out the necessary conversations that seem to be so much a part of this post-Sunday Dinner ritual.

I always have to do the drive, in his Cadillac, while he sits in the passenger side regaling the same stories, world without end, that he does every Sunday.  Mrs. So-and-So used to live there in that house until her nephew got high on “the drugs” and broke in and bludgeoned her to death, and then dug up that gorgoues purple clematus, for no reason at all and left a big hole in the yard; or, that house is where Old This-and-That caught fire and burned to death when lightning struck his hot water heater, he was asleep, which you shouldn’t do in an electrical storm; you know, stories like that.

It’s too, too painfully southern.

I love every minute of them, though, I really do, despite the nature of this blog. I truly relish these drives.

And every now and then, he recalls a new story, a new moment shared, a story stolen, either at a funeral home, or at Piggly Wiggly, a grocery store that he affectionately refers to as The Pig, when writing his checks there. He used to concoct grocery lists in an aisle-by-aisle fashion, so familiar was he with their layout. It certainly maximized shopping time. Gave you more time to socialize. 

I’ll have to tell you later about an incident that involved a church scavenger hunt, a cucumber, and Miss Ada Lee.

Yesterday, though, as we drove past the sod-soaked fields and yards of our neighbors, the rain has truly been remarkable and of legend, here lately – I keep anticipating animals, approaching two-by-two, gathering on the carport, staring eagerly at the Cadillac, trying to figure out how to get into it. It’s a large Cadillac, and so, somewhat similar to an ark, at least, I’d think, to present-day animals, who I imagine are about as intelligent as the rest of us in the 21st century - yet, we found ourselves taking a new road, a different route, this time.  It was only new because we usually just drive past it and not down it, it’s a dead end, but we didn’t do that yesterday. No, sir.

We drove down it, to the cul-de-sac, and there at the end was a hearse.

U.L. told me that it was an old one, from Nowell’s. And that the man who lived in this house (the one we were practically in the driveway of , so I began to turn the car around before we aroused too much suspicion), had bought it. Because he wanted it. He did not, in fact, work at Nowell’s.

He’d just always wanted a hearse, he said. 

This, U.L. discovered while purchasing some Cool Whip and fresh coconut shavings at Piggly Wiggly, preparing to make his celebrated Coconut Cake, and this man, we’ll call him Frank (because that’s his name) was standing behind him, bragging about the fact that he’d gotten a good deal on that death trap of a hearse at Nowell’s. It only had 40,000 miles on it, and they took six grand for it, as is.

To which U.L. registered surprise. The town indeed must be smaller than he thought. People died all the time around here; it was a hobby. To have only amassed 40,000 miles didn’t seem right. It should have higher mileage on it than that.

I'd rather not know what's in the back.

The man, Frank, now enjoyed driving the hearse down Highway 397, fast as he could (right up to 60 mph, he said), with his two dogs, part-Beagle/part-Yankee, he’d gotten them off a cousin in Chicago, a shovel, and a plastic tarp. He’d drive up and down 397  until he happened upon some version of roadkill, and as a free service to the city, he’d stop the car, pull the shovel out from the back (it had not come with the purchase of the car, as I’d thought) and delicately carry them off to a final resting place, one less likely to be continuously mowed over by Broncos…and Cadillacs.

I trust he had very well-behaved dogs.

U.L. said a hearse was the last thing he would want to ride in. Frank told him not to worry, it would be.

Every Sunday, we do this. Dinner, small talk, a car ride, the same stories, sometimes new ones, and I love it.

And…I also hate it.

All at the same time, I amass these feelings in my bones, in my blood, my knuckles, and it’s usually with a fork of mashed potatoes, or butterbeans, or peach cobbler on its way to my mouth. It’s a saturating, obligatory, exhausting, and lovely wont.

One that I’ve often felt suffocated by, and I don’t like admitting that, but it’s true, because it seems too rote, rhetorical to matter.  I’d never been able to put into anything other than a simple series of words…maybe I wasn’t able to give it better context, or maybe I wasn’t supposed to, because it was of a higher order of thinking than I was able to get to on my own…

…until this morning.

Amanda, having been gone this past weekend to a wedding (yet another one!) in Memphis, had finally returned home, laden with Pottery Barn accessories for the den and bathroom, and this morning, she was starved for my attention, as best friends often become when separated (I starve for hers, as well, and we both ache and starve for Siciliana’s, Erin’s, and vice versa…would that we could all be thinner from such friendly famine – which is just slightly less oxymoronic than friendly fire, to the soul, anyway), she came bounding into my bedroom and woke me up.

It was noon, so I, now that I’m fully awake, have forgiven her. But, in her usual way, she had a passage she wanted to share with me.  This is something we all do, and constantly, this sharing works with each other. Usually, Amanda has more profound (and, also, published) pieces to share with me: cummings, Yeates, Hurston, et al. She is, I’d argue, far more well read than any of us, especially me.

Despite being famously non-auditory in almost anything I do, I humor her and listen. It’s a selection from Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men. From page 35, she read:

The child comes home, and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be hasn’t got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in a chair for a couple of hours and then go off to bed under the same roof. It’s not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. [...] But this thing in itself is not love. It’s just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation.  

I heard every word of that.

I had to look at them, actually, I had to take the book and look at the words, themselves, I was that bothered by the accuracy of his prose. Once, during my first tryst with graduate school (in English), I took a Fugitive Poets class under the remarkably affable, fatherly, likable, and slightly off-key Dr. Phillips, and had read of Warren’s poetry, along with Davidson’s and the tragic Jarrell’s, which struck me less for its poignancy and more because he stepped in front of a bus and was killed, perhaps on purpose. I’d decided, as a poet, Warren’s work was soft, if terse, and what prose we read of his, I found suggestive of needing a closer editor…I felt that way about this piece as well, but somehow it didn’t matter in this context.

The original electric chair.

I was absolutely struck by the meaning, and remembered that meaning is what the reader gets to do, gets to fiddle around with…at least, ultimately.  (I’m a Fish advocate, Reader-Response, etc.). Critics, theorists can say whatever they need to (everyone needs a job, right?), but what resonates is if the reader takes up the mallet and strikes the gong.

Nothing else matters at all.

And this passage was so captively southern, so perfectly southern, so bitterly southern, that …it finally upset me. Warren had, all those years ago, in his novel about a corrupt politician, written down so clearly what I’d been trying to say myself. I guess that’s why I couldn’t: he’d already used the words. 

And had done so, so irreproachably.

I guessed then, after the reading was over, that the only way for me to climb to this higher order, is to do what he did, what they all did…

…just, take off for the open road, and find a quiet, muted place and live out the rest of my days, a fugitive.

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But, and here’s where we may differ, my response to it is to laugh. Maybe it’s a nervous habit, maybe I think it’s a deflection on my part to make it less real. I don’t know why I do it, but I laugh. And loudly.

See, what you might not know about me is that I am the world’s most foremost expert at inappropriate laughter.  It just seems easier to laugh at everything, for me.  I get tired of crying. (Though, I’ve done my share of that, too).  Let’s not dwell on that, yet…that’s not today’s focus.

This man is thoroughly enjoying his laugh.

This is: what I’ve been noticing lately is that my conversations, and by this I mean those that I happen into, like around the dinner table, out with friends, after rehearsals, etc., not ones I instigate, necessarily, I’ve noticed that they have become almost exponentially more violent in content.

That amuses me.

I wonder if we think that’s entertaining. Sure, sure, in a movie, like Die Hard or Scream or that dreadful imposition of a film called Forrest Gump, ok, that’s one thing, but in the every day? When we’re face-to-face, are we so worried that silence is too disconcerting that simply enjoying another’s presence isn’t enough, anymore? 

Either way, it makes for good conversation, I guess.

Before rehearsal, yesterday, I met a couple of friends at Old Venice, an Italian restaurant within walking distance from my house, as is the theatre. It’s terribly convenient to have them both so close, and I worry that at any moment someone will come and tell me I’ve had it made for too long, to please move.

I was a bit late, and they were already there, drinks in one hand, menus in the other, and as I sat down, Jene turned to me, in that wonderfully comic way of his (everything’s a big, fat joke to him and I like that), and announced that he’d hurt his ear. Burst the drum. He’d poked a Q-tip too far into the canal. I reminded him that the box, of course, carries a warning to the effect of: Don’t stick this Q-tip in your ear canal.

That wasn’t the point, he said.  It never is with Jene. That’s what makes him delightful company. That story, however, led us immediately down a long, winding path of physical incidents in Jene’s life. Like the time that he got hit in the left eye with a stick and for the next eight days had to go to the emergency room, before school, and meet his doctor there to have his eye scraped.

I found this irresistably funny. So, I laughed.

Jene paused. Assured me that it really was quite painful. Then, he laughed. So did, Chris. (Another one).

As is the way in the Deep South, Jene expected equal disclosure. The whole gambit of “I tell a story, you tell a story.”  We are a culture of story-telling people.  Also, we are called liars. But, we’re good ones. As Mark Twain has famously written, There’s an art to lying, as anything else. Forgive the paraphrase.

I was prepared, naturally. So, I regaled them with my most recent horror: wisdom teeth extraction. I waited late in life to have it done. For one thing, I didn’t really, really know I had any. Secondly, when I couldn’t eat for three days because my back teeth hurt, I realized then, that Yes, indeed, I had wisdom teeth, and they’d shown up just in time to be taken out. Much like an evangelist…they spoke with a vengeance.

The dentist was, how can I say it?, frankly appalled.  He took one look at my X-rays and loudly sighed. How could I not know that these monsters were in my mouth. I liked that phrase, though…don’t you.  I told him they’d never bothered me until that weekend.  He held no restraint in telling me that I was almost too old for a safe surgery.

But, that he’d try. (Of course, he would. It cost $1200.  Heck, in this recession, I’d try to take your wisdom teeth out for $20).

I signed waivers saying that I wanted to be “put under,” and that if I died, I wouldn’t sue, etc. etc.  (They didn’t ask me to include family members though. If something happened, I felt I’d be avenged.  Hell hath no fury like my Mother).

The day of the surgery came, bless Erin and Amanda for the week of torture they’d have to endure on my behalf, and I took the Valium. The nurse asked me if I had any last questions. In retrospect, this is not necessarily what you want to hear on your way “down.” I asked her if anyone had gone on to meet God from the chair I was in.

She said, “No. Not that one.”

I was out in under ten seconds.  That part is not Hollywood fiction; it’s very real. When I came to, I was drowsy and packed: cotton, gauze, my mouth was free of monsters and full of Proctor & Gamble.  The dentist said that despite my age (again with this age business) it was a textbook operation.

I asked him which edition.

He laughed, as was his social responsibility. And two days later, I had a massive nerve infection. Not a dry socket, a nerve infection. So painful that I almost committed a crime: vandalism. I didn’t though. I wasn’t able to drive to his office without assistance, and I just wasn’t willing to incriminate anyone else.

These are happy teeth. They are also fake.

I had to go, for a solid week, at the hands of mercy belonging to Erin and Amanda, God bless them, every morning back to the dentist’s office to have my “holes packed.” It is as painful as it sounds. They would stretch my jaws as widely as they could, no anesthetic, no being “put down” for this, no, no…I watched the atrocity with every last ounce of awareness one is offered by being fully awake.

The nurse took, what I imagine were Guiness Book of World Records award-winning tweezers – they were a foot long if they were an inch – and while another nurse, unseen, held my jaws open (and anytime your jaws are held open, it is always against your will), drying out my throat, the first nurse took two awful-smelling strips of yellow gauze, soaked in kerosene and castor oil and also Ipecac, I think it was, and proceeded to force them into the space previously occupied by God-given teeth.

Every morning for a week I endured this.

I could hardly speak, the taste of those stips was like having two creosote poles (crisoak, as we say down south) jammed into your gums because any foreign object put in your mouth shames it instantly; your mouth becomes offended – it begins to feel inadequate, as if it’s not doing its job. Your mouth knows what should and shouldn’t be there. I’m pretty sure that’s one of Newton’s laws, oh, and that taste, ick….nothing could get rid of it. Nothing.

I finished my story, and turned back to Jene, who stared at me. That was nowhere near as painful as having your eyeball scraped. I had to agree.  No matter how I twisted the facts around to make them more violently presentable, just merely saying the words “eyeball,” and “scraped,” in the same sentence trumps everything else.

He then rounded out the evening, at least for me – I had to get to rehearsal – by telling the embarrassingly tragic story of his 12th birthday. Having grown up with horses, in the stables not the house, he’d invited all his friends to the ranch to show off his precious, tame horse named Cantalope.

He’d been practicing and practicing pulling off a Trigger routine, which as you may recall, I believe, involved Roy Rogers jumping over the back of the horse to mount him. I think. At any rate, I’m sure it wasn’t Dale. Jene had reheared this routine a thousand times, he said, and was eager to show his friends what he could do with a horse.

And I mean, come on, the horse’s name was Cantalope. What harm could that cause.

I wouldn't trust this face, at all.

A lot, apparently. The horse panicked and kicked Jene in the genitals four quick and nearly lethal times. His mother, desperate to save him, should a fifth and sixth kick be imminent, immediately jumped the fence, grabbed her son, and tore his trousers off to inspect the damage, much to the wild-eyed amusement of all of his friends, who stood there, a mute audience.  At least until school started back, at which time they introduced to the student body a new nickname for Jene which was…

…and, that, I’m afraid is where the story ended.  He didn’t say another word, and wouldn’t.

Don’t you just hate when people do that?

I’m sure it had something to do with blue jeans, that’d be a first and obvious choice, and of course, balls.

It’s crass, I know, but then, so are most twelve-year-olds.

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The first involved a childhood pet, Scruff, who had gone to live with my grandparents at Fish Camp, a family compound surrounded my cabins, ponds, a basic swimming pool, and a torturously long vegetable garden, where we gathered each summer for a fish fry and the annual task of grading blueberries and other such fruit; several on my father’s side were in the fruit farm industry; after an afternoon of grading blueberries, there is no child on this planet who wouldn’t rather be doing math.  All in all, I enjoyed these summers with a relish heretofore unknown to a child that age.  That is, until Uncle Joef decided to install an octagonal-designed farmhouse for emus.

Emus, I’m sure you know, are the opposite of all things pleasant.

Anywany, the dream: I was back square in the middle of eastern Mississippi, tucked away cozily in my bed, when there, in my blue bedroom, appeared Scruff jumping into the bed with me, and curling up above my head, whining. 

The next morning, Ya-ya called to tell me that Scruff had died.

She’d been poisoned, allegegly by some evil hunter who had been trespassing on the land and was irritated at her barking; my grandfather, suspicious as always, still arriving too late to make amends. It seems an awful thing to do to any living animal, especially for such a ridiculous reason – and it is.  Sadly, it is not that uncommon in the small-minded backwoods of Mississippi. I stay angry at men like that. But, I suppose, it takes all their thinking skills to carry the rifle, upright, barrel away from their own faces.

The second such dream involved a man I’d never met before. The father of a teacher my sister worked with.  I only nominally knew the teacher, herself, Mrs. Bell. A sweet woman, who, on the few occasions I went with my sister to her classroom – mostly before the school year started to help her clean her room – and Mrs. Bell, when she was there would always give me a Vernon’s Lemon-Lime Soda. I’m not sure why, but like any child would, I took it, and drank it as if it were holier than Coke.

She was a giving woman; still is.

And then one night, I dreamed I was on the edge of a high red hill, a small cliff, many of which dot the “famous” Winston County landscape. Our annual crafts festival is called the Red Hills Arts Festival, for instance.  It’s a type of clay and it’s a dense, earthy material full of possibilities for a kid. It, and the poprocks.

God, I loved a poprock.

They’re hard but breakable. You throw them on the ground, and they pop open revealing a soft collection of dusty, dry dirt inside. The Choctaws, native to the area – truth be told, it was their area – would mix this dirt with water and create war paint.

Need I say more? Does an adventurous child, to the point of earning a raw switch to the hind legs, need anything else in this often, too-great-big-of-a-world than access to bona fide Indian war paint?

Take a look at my hind legs and you tell me. (Just don’t be jealous of my calf muscles – I played tennis for years).

Now, in this particular dream I was peering over the edge and in the bottom of the small valley there I noticed a 1970s Lincoln Continental. It was a dull mint-green color, and very long…surely, you recall how long those cars used to be. All that was missing were goal posts. 

And in this car, with the driver-side window rolled down, a leg resting through the open window, was an aging black man, with a cane/fishing pole, a genuius of an invention for a senior citizen who requires a cane and a fishing pole combo, napping.   I watched him for several solid minutes, and then it started to rain.  Heavily.

It rained so fast that I began to worry that he wouldn’t wake up and he’d drown. And that is exactly what happened to him.

I yelled and yelled and screamed and it hit me: I knew this man, after all, even though I’d never seen him before. It was Mrs. Bell’s father. I called after him, again and time and again, and nothing. He drowned. And I was powerless to help him.

I saw Mrs. Bell the next day and told her, so sure was I that it was going to happen. She smiled at me, in that teacherly way, and assured me her father was too crippled to drive, and had never owned a Lincoln Continental. And something else about the power of the adolescent’s overactive imagination. She gave me a Lemon-Lime Vernon’s Soda, and then took it back: perhaps it was the sugar in the soda that gave me such dreams. She was concerned, I guess, that she might be aiding and abetting me in my overactive imagination.

I went on my way. Less than eager to help my sister re-arrange her classroom; it was fun until the school year started. Her kids were awfully messy to be the gifted students. I dreaded being picked up from the other school and dropped off at hers. 

Despite being Mississippi, she did have more than one gifted student.

I’m not sure how much time passed, a week or two, but one day Mrs. Bell was absent. She wasn’t in her classroom when I passed by it on the way to my sister’s. I asked Marsha when I got to her room and she told me that Mrs. Bell’s father had died.  He’d ridden with a nephew, last Sunday, to do some fishing, which he hadn’t done in years, and the boat tipped over…and he drowned.

When I did finally see Mrs. Bell, I was terrified she’d blame me for it. She didn’t at all. She hugged me and told me it was all right. Not to worry. Who knew her cousin was even coming to visit. He rarely did, but had a special reason for this sudden visit:  He’d been unemployed for a good while, and finally had found a job; he’d saved up his money to come down south to see the family, and was most proud of his recent purchase: a new Lincoln Continental. He wanted to show them all.

It wasn’t mint-green, but now we’re just splitting hairs.

The third dream, about 9/11, I’m not ready to share yet…it makes me nervous. So, instead, to change the nature of this blog, I’ll share this last one for my third dream. Even though it’s not about anything that’s happened (not yet anyway), and even though last night I had a perfectly frighteningly delicious dream I could tell you about being caught up in a tornado and thrown across the street and into a neighbor’s house…we’ll go with this other dream for now.

We’ll say it’s about destiny.  Because I like to think it is.

[...] I’m on a trip of some sort that has taken me to the woods, a retreat if you will.  I’m waking up, feeling this charge of potential, does that make sense?, feeling renewed.  I gladly get out of bed, which rarely happens for me, and I’m grabbing my towel and toiletries and leaving my cabin.

It’s a cold morning, but I feel rejuvenated.  I head for the communal showers, which are housed a few cabins down, a wood structure situated in the middle of this camp, for lack of a better term.

There’s a tall flagpole to the left, flying a blue, purple, and orange fabric.  The sky is intense and clear.  There’s no one else around.  I seem to be either the only one awake, or the only one at this retreat, this camp.

I step into the bathroom, and I’m immediately awed by how large it appears on the inside, as if it might have once been a gym facility, lockers and all. I pull aside the shower curtain and turn the water on, to steam the cold tile.  I remember putting my glasses on a distressed, amber-colored chair made of pine; I think it was pine, anyway. I step into the shower and feel the warm water.  It’s arresting.  I’m washing my hair when I hear it.  Crying.

I think at first it’s just the shower, you know, how old shower heads can whistle?  But, somehow, I can hear the difference, and I turn the water off. I call out to see who’s there.

The crying stops.

I call out again, Who’s there?

I step out of the shower, pull the towel around me and begin to walk towards the back of the bathroom. I turn the corner at the end of the sinks, there’s a long row of white porcelain sinks, and there against the wall, on a swollen cot, stained with urine, and that smell, in a beautiful copper dress, is Billie Holiday.

And one day, I'll be in this picture, too.

Her face is a mess; her breath stinks. Her eyes are yellowed. And this is what she says to me: ”It’s about time. I thought you’d never come. We all sorta mad at you, Kris. You better get on back and start singing. We’re all in your hands; you’ve been picked. You chosen.”

And she put a tear on the tip of her finger and rubbed it on my eye. And I finished her crying, while she turned over on her other side and disappeared into the swollen cotton.

So, you tell me: what would you do next? 

I hardly think telling this story would open recording studio doors to me, but heck, I guess anything’s worth a shot, huh? 

At any rate, that dream was a lot better than last night’s. I never did recover from being a tornado survivor, in last night’s dream, a dream than went on and on and on: I moved away, I bought a house, had an entire career, aged, had children, the Whole Nine Lives of dreams.

But anytime I thought about that tornado, I cried.

No wonder I can’t get out of bed in the morning, dreams like that – they just exhaust you.

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I’d never taken a trip with Kim and Amanda, at the same time; I’ve certainly spent time with them separately, and had a wonderful time with each, but I wasn’t sure the casserole would take, so to speak, when all the ingredients were added.  We all have a certain amount of spice, and god, let me just stop with this…suffice it to say, it was an experiment.

And it was a success.  The trip was lovely, the weather was gorgeous, the ride entertaining. (Actually, at the moment, I’m still at the beach, sitting here debating on the absolute merit of a mimosa…I, at least, have to be honest about that). And as is the ritual, we drove straight to the beach house, hastily threw things into the rooms, and tore off our clothes: we wear our suits on the ride down underneath the most loosely fitting clothes we can legally wear in public. We worry about food and the like, afterwards.  What’s important is the beach.

Midway through the drive, however, we, naturally, had to stop for gas. Also I was gung-ho about purchasing a ridiculous pair of sunglasses. Our stopping point was Waynesboro, a sad and confusing little town in the eastern depths of Missississippi, right on the state line.  It’s a confusing town for several strange reasons. First, you enter the town, at least from the highway we were on, through a cornfield, scarecrows and all. It was very a la Jeepers Creepers, a movie that has scarred me and convinced me that of all the futuristic inventions possible that Hollywood and the Sci-Fi Channel have all but subliminally persuaded us are capable in our lifetimes, my vote is on memory erasing.

Upon entering the city, if we call it that, in the middle of corn, as you will, there sits a Western Sizzlin’, a restaurant so intent on ”steaks and a good country buffet” that it cannot afford a “g” at the end of the word “sizzling.”  This restaurant is by nothing, except, of course, corn, which I pretend was a smart, corporate business decision – a product placement of sorts.  Generic brand, (I mean, it’s just plain corn) but, as the argument goes, the quality is just as good. And if you have enough elbow grease, you can have cornmeal which down south means cornbread, which down south means manna.

Naturally, the next thing that comes into view is Wal-Mart, and in a twist of fate that must make the very ground of Bentonville, AR, quake with continued profit and pride, across the street – excuse me, the road – is the high school, the War Eagles, as they’re called.  That, in and of itself, is an interesting name for an athletic department, and I’m sure, warrants research.  I love the idea of research. The logic would suggest that there must also be a Peacetime Eagle, but having visited Yellowstone National Park, at the tender age of 13, I can assure you, all eagles are graceful and vicious. I saw one eating a field mouse just for kicks. I could tell; it was all over his beak.

Still…

A few “blocks” past this arrangement of retail and education, sat a unique display of fast food conjoined triplets – KFC was attached to Taco Bell which was attached to Long John Silver’s, all in the same building – and an array of gas stations with names like Hack’s Hot Biscuits and Bait. It was square in the middle of this “plaza” that the only thing that brought us any small amount of comfort stood, a Chevron.

Caveat Emptor.

A no-name, average, 1984-esque Chevron. (I mean both the year 1984 and the Orwellian idea that it was blandly branded, at least considering the names of the other gas stations).

Two things happened at the gas station, besides getting gas, that I filed under Strange.

The lesser thing was a snippet of a conversation I overheard while perusing the hanging-from-the-ceiling “stand” of faux-designer sunglasses.  An elderly woman was regaling to an elderly man, not her husband I could tell, about how she, in a quick pinch and fix, would mix mayonnaise and ketchup and sugar and make her own Thousand Island dressing.

I was both engaged, instantly, and disgusted and also: Where was this Thousand Island, anyway?  Was the original dressing some sort of community effort among all 1,000 of these nameless islands; was it in an attempt to create better relations among them because, perhaps, up until this point of culinary discovery, they were warring tribes hellbent on island domination?

And would they be offended, to know that despite their secret history of war and peace and civilization, they had been reduced, in the 21st century, to a simple recipe of ketchup, mayonnaise, and sugar, according to an elderly woman in Waynesboro, Mississippi? 

I put my sunglasses back on the upside-down-tree of sunshade options, and decided to get a Gatorade.  At this point, Kim was about to come in the gas station to search for a bathroom (it’s a trait we all three share – this need to know restrooms), when she motioned for me, through the thick glass wall, to come outside and she meant right then.

I obliged, curiously.

I stepped through the doors, and there she stood pointing. Amanda stared out from the backseat, sleepy but interested. 

And there, taped up onto the door, on 8.5″ by 11″ white typing paper, was the following Notice:

If you are wearing a hoodie or a mask, of any type, please remove it before entering the store. Thank you.

What immediately interested me is that such a sign has found a need to be displayed, at all, but those are just the times we live in, I suppose, post-911…but what affected me about this assumed admonishment is that it’s taped up on a window at a gas station in Waynesboro, in a town that can’t possibly hold more than 2,000, if that, in Mississippi.  Forgive the constant repeat, but if such a sign is necessary here then I am worried for the rest of the country. The sun was shining, the sky clear, but I shivered.

You don’t put a sign like that up unless there’s a reason.

And then, I thought of that sweet, elderly woman at the counter, eagerly offering recipes.  What if she’d been here that day, the day that the reason for this sign occurred. It broke my heart to think she might have been a Victim, instead of a faded Victorian. (We’ll have to talk about the remaining styles of Victorianism in this state, in another blog, but it involves several great aunts and  GamVa, my grandmother Virginia, who like the state itself, remains dedicated to its cultural heritage and at times, unnecessarily, Latinate in speech and monologue).

I told Kim to take a picture of it, both for posterity and also, so we could show it to Amanda, and she tried, but it wouldn’t take. The picture didn’t come out.

That was odd, until I decided to focus on that part, instead; maybe it was a sign.  

Maybe the camera couldn’t focus because the fear itself had diminished (I can justify anything – just watch); I told myself that since the sign had been posted, it had worked; it had deterred would-be thugs and such from stealing and potentially hurting elderly women.  Which is a crime all on its own, in my opinion.

We got back in the car and kept toward the beach. Tank full, humor abetted, concern registered, although…I still didn’t have sunglasses.

And I have to be honest, besides gas, that was the whole point of stopping.

This “learning lessons about life,” well, that was just a fun, free and unexpected gift…at best, merely a footnote.

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It’s gotten a little better now that he’s on his “nerve pill.” Which took every preacher south of God to convince him to take.  This side of my family is very old, very superstitious, maybe a little Christian Scientist but registered as Southern Baptist…

And it never fails that each night our phone conversation goes a little something like this:

U.L.: How was today?

ME: Fine. You?

U.L.: Fine.

ME: You asleep in the chair?

U.L.: Yeah, I need to get to bed. What time is it?

ME: About 10:30.

U.L. The Lord…that late already?

ME: Yeah.

U.L. (sigh) Ok. Oh (pause) Miss Mildern was found dead today, in the bathtub.

ME: Really. What happened?

U.L.: Nobody knows. She was reading the Bible, Jermiah, Chapter 6. For what that’s worth. Oh, and Frankie Mitchie’s dead, somebody dragged him, tied to the backend of a pick-up off down in Lobutcha Swamp, out way past the cemetery.

ME: Who’s Frankie Mitchie?

U.L.: Uh, it’s (searching for names) Janine’s youngest, what’s his name, Charlie, it’s Charlie’s half-brother, you know his mother, Brenda, she married, what’s-his-face, had that other boy, at the Academy with you, John?, anyway, on the Roberts side.

ME: Oh, ok.

U.L.: Probably drugs. (pause) Ok, good night, love you.

ME: You too.

I’ve never entirely understood this fascination with who died and how. But, it’s as common to hear on the phone as hello. It’s macabre, but it’s how it is. And there’s comfort in it, somehow. 

Where I grew up, people paid attention. They talked about you, and that kept you alive, even in death.

I like knowing that. We’re obsessed with death, with its mystery and its sting.  And it’s near-misses. That’s where the superstitions lie and breed, and I revel in the supersitions that have divined my upbringing.  The home remedies, the croup cure, the p0ultices, the peppermint brandies, the horse-tail stems…any and all of it. 

It seems that most of our superstitions, the ones I remember anyway, were always about health and longevity and fixing what “ails you.”  That can’t be that bad, can it? It’s a rich past, though, having some herbal concoction to ward off evil or bend the knees of a cheating lover backward would have only made it richer.

When I was eight or nine, my great-grandmother, who was referred to as Tigi (ti-gee), passed away, moved on – as we tend to say.  I was young, of course, but I have her firmly planted in my mind; she was bewitching and irresistible, born in the middle of the last decade of the 19th century, in the Delta, I believe on a cloud.

It never ceases to impress me, to this day, that I knew someone like her, so ”fixed” and yet, transfixing; I feel I live here, in the present, too stolidly.

She always had a plate of fried dill pickles and cut cheese and chocolate milk, when I got home from school. (I have a rather amusing pallate, I know).  One morning I woke up and told her I wanted to cook with her that afternoon, so could she please wait until I came home before she cooked the pickles? She agreed.  At some point, that afternoon, when she was in the bathroom, I suppose, I decided that a jar of pepper jelly needed to be placed on the stove with the frying pickles. It was after that happened, that she calmly told me this story:

A simple wooden church for simple wooden people.

Way out in the woods past Beth-Eden Church, there was a family, one that’s lived back there for years and years, and they grow all their own food and rarely come into town but they never miss a revival because God gave them a gift, what some non-believers would call magic, but it isn’t:  they’re healers.

But now, God, gives what He wishes to whom He chooses, and He never gives any one person everything. They couldn’t heal a broken leg, or a shot-gun wound, according to Jack McKay, or make you get rich…no. 

All they could do was ”talk the fire out.”

The summer of 1944, Tigi was pregnant with her last child and was peeling potatoes for a skillet fry. She’d put the bacon grease from that morning’s breakfast in the skillet, and it was popping, eager for a scald. (The grease was hot, in other words). She wasn’t finished with the potatoes, so she went to move the skillet off the eye and it was heavier than she’d expected. She reacted by spilling the burning grease down both of her arms to the elbow. Her oldest son was of driving age, had himself a car of his own, can you believe that?, and so she sent him off for Pub Jerning, the head of the healer household.

When he arrived, he sent all the children out of the house and spoke in silence to Tigi; it’s a secret prayer with holy, unknown words and according to God’s directions, I guess, can only be passed down to one member of the household, at a time. He wrapped her arms, and in the morning, not a burn, not a scar was visible. No discoloration, no pain.

At that point, she lifted her sleeves to show me how honest the story was, and of course, I was only a child…heck, I believed that Mr. Rogers was talking only to me, every afternoon at 3:00. I thought I had complete mind-control over the entire PBS station, for crying out loud. Naturally, I believed my great-grandmother.

She died in 1984. I’ve missed her ever since.

Fast-forward to 1992. One of my older sisters is cooking dinner for the family, boiling chicken, recently divorced, unsure of why she feels this pressure to prove to everyone else that she can do this on her own; two small children, under the age of 2, and what happens?  

In an almost-identical incident to Tigi’s, she goes to lift the boiler off the hot eye and spills every last drop of oil and broth down both her arms to the elbow.  We were sitting in the den, talking, enjoying our own company, as we tend to do, watching the babies…and then a horrible scream.

We rush into the kitchen, and there bubbling on her arms is her own flesh, her eyes are nearly bloodshot from pain. Daddio, the grandfather, heads off in the car with my sister towards Beth-Eden Church. We follow behind. Pub Jerning’s granddaughter, in her late 40s now, possessor of the secret prayer, takes my sister deep into the house, leaving the rest of us on the carport.

Half an eternity passed. Finally, my sister is brought back out, arms wrapped in thinning towels. Panic seems to have abated; we all pile into our respective vehicles and return home, hungry, but thankful.

The next morning, the towels are removed, and her skin is as smooth and clear as ever. A miracle.

I can’t explain it, and I don’t want to, really, I love just knowing it, owning this information, and having even a small part to play in its lifetime. And what a lifetime it’s had, already, in my family alone. I can only imagine the day the gift was given to the Jerning family, what they must have been doing, how they heard the call: a dream, a vision. It’s delicious and spellbinding.  And the more I learn about the history of Christianity and of my own family, I must admit, the more this absorption of pagan ritualism resonates. The Church has such a colorful pre-history.  But, old eyes can’t read old truths; at least, not in the Deep South.

I graduated high school with the only Jerning great-grandchild; it’s a little like having things come full-circle. Sadly, the Jerning granddaughter, now in her early 60s, has developed terminal cancer, and so I imagine the torch will soon be passed. Pun intended. But, the Jerning great-grandchild has moved away, far from the village and its drawbridge. No doubt, what little magic was left in my hometown will soon be gone as well.

I mean not magic, the gift.

But God is still there in the village; I can see His reflection every Sunday from my Nana’s kitchen window, the top pane of which is still just within the shadow of the steeple. 

Maybe He’ll see fit to offer someone else another gift, a different gift; maybe this time He’ll ask what we need the most. 

My guess would be a microwave.

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