Drawn to the Delta

Why would anyone love it here?  It's flat, it's hot, and it harbors mosquitoes the size of a baseball mitt.  Historically, and now perhaps even more than ever, it harbors poverty juxtaposed by sometimes extravagant wealth.  It is a land of unforgiving extremes.

My mother's family migrated here long before my memory.  Down through Appalachia, down through the foothills of Alabama, where they settled for a while near Mentone, into the anonymity of a small bayou community called Pace.  They scratched a living by being salesmen and homemakers, contracting tuberculosis in the case of one grandparent, and mothering 12 children in the case of the other.  My mother was one of the 12, born in the year of the Great Flood of 1927.

The older ones--of which there were many--shared their resources and their love with the younger ones.  They took each other in.  They took nieces and nephews in.  They worked hard.  They studied hard, valuing the benefits of a hard-fought education then denied to many.   They passed on a musical talent that runs through generations, a reverence for education and industry, and a strong pride of family.

The two youngest of the 12 are now approaching 80, the cousins have scattered, and the third and fourth generations in many cases are strangers to each other.  Our lives are busy, but we decided on a whim to convene as many cousins as we could.  It was time to reunite.

And so to the Delta I went.  A cotton boll towers over the landscape, but the fields now are just as likely to be full of rice, often guarded by the hovering skeletons of irrigation systems designed to thwart the blasting temperatures.  There are more vacant buildings and more abandoned, once-thriving roadside businesses.  There's less activity than I remember.

The Delta is now also home to a chemical industry, a high-end manufacturer of commercial-grade cooking appliances, at least two institutions of higher learning, and, a casino.  "The Help," a best-selling novel set in Mississippi, will be filmed in Greenwood beginning this summer.  None of these places, however, are in the wide open spaces between towns that are shrinking to no more than a couple of convenience stores.

But family is there, shrinking to only a very few of the original 12.  So we gathered to reconnect, meet the children--and sometimes grandchildren--of cousins, tell stories, share our music, remember our past. 

There, in the middle of it, were the "babies" of the original 12, reveling in the cacophony of voices and laughter and discovery.  Here's the life of the party, who will be 80 on her next birthday. 

So much has changed.  But so much continues through what they all gave to us.  We are a rich family beyond measure.  And from California, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, and points around Mississippi, the Delta draws us, always, back. 

The eye of the beholder

H.L. Mencken may have called the South the Sahara of the Bozart, but we beg to differ.

Where others see a weathered brick wall, we see the possibilities for a pebbly palette.  Art can spring from even the driest wells, as Faulkner brilliantly proved.  In our town, built around trains that long since left the station, creativity springs from the familiar and commonplace.

And we didn't need a marketing firm to survey, develop graphs, and give us the plan.  Some enterprising, anonymous paintbrush thought for itself.

The Coca-Cola mural has been a part of my landscape for so long I don't remember why it's there. Not to advertise the business on whose wall it resides.  There once was a grocery store on that corner, and it perhaps dates from a time when groceries were, in fact, within walking distance and not a five-mile drive to the nearest Wal-Mart.

Lest you not feel welcome as you enter our small community, we've also got the art to tell you how happy we are to see you.  And, by the way, you can park in the rear for a commercial enterprise that no longer exists.  

Making efficient use of the space, we also advertise the annual Labor Day arts festival, letting no one forget we're an oasis of the bozart.

But perhaps my favorite wall mural in our town is one I can't really explain.  My cloudy and possibly faulty memory recalls that a class of high school arts students used their talents to give us these images, ostensibly capturing the symbols of our life in small town Mississippi.  Make of it what you will. 

I see the windmill that has become a city trademark; a blues guitar that no dobut represents one of our city's most famous citizens, Howlin' Wolf; children pointing in wonder at something far beyond my ken. 

The fact that I don't understand it is of no concern.  That, too, is a symbol for life in our town. 

Endangered Receipts

There was a time when salads almost always started with gelatin. Lime, orange, strawberry, or just plain.

You could top with whipped cream and nuts if you were really extravagant. If you didn't use gelatin, the next choice usually had something to do with fruit cocktail and mayonnaise.

We've come a long way to arugula.

This is on my mind today because I've been cooking all weekend, and because I've just stumbled on an old cookbook hiding amongst the Cooking Lights.

The pages are brown, and the edges flake when I turn it. In its fragile pages are handwritten recipes my mom wanted to keep: a white cake recipe with three tablespoons of B.P. I take that to mean baking powder, something we rarely use today if we can get a self-rising mix. There's a congealed salad recipe that starts with orange jello, also written in her hand. And in the hand of Aunt Lou, long dead, a recipe for Mama Finch's chocolate pie.

My mother was a wonderful cook, and I've inherited her love of food, if not her talent and time. This well-used paperback cookbook, now without its covers, reminds me of the smells and industry of her busy kitchen as she cleverly--and economically--whipped up meals for five hungry kids.

For the young who read this post, who vaguely remember a time before Iron Chef and Hell's Kitchen, here's an ironic reminder of the past. I leave you with a recipe from this venerable book:

To serve 100 guests (by special request)

Three and a half pounds of coffee

Six gallons cocoa made from three gallons each of milk and water and one pound cocoa

Four pounds of loaf sugar

Five gallons of oysters

260 sandwiches made from 16 loaves bread and four pounds butter

30 pounds ham to boil and slice

10 medium-sized cabbages for cold slaw

20 pies

18 quarts ice cream

10 four-pound chickens and 30 heads of celery for salad

Five quarts of dressing for salad

Bon appetit!

What can you do with an English major?

Good question, liberal arts fans.

You can teach. If you have patience. Plenty of patience. Tried it. Not a calling.

You can work in publishing. Tried it. Worked for two regional magazines. Loved both, but moved on.

You can hit the political trail. Very few people, it seems, can read and write. Tried it. Loved it. My candidate lost and I was left jobless.

You can become an adult student. Tried it. Loved it, but never finished the Ph.D. (of course, in English). And I so wanted to be hooded. For some reason, people kept thinking I was a lawyer.

You can work for universities or a nonprofit. Tried it. At this point, I think it's pretty much stuck.

And if none of that works, you can become a pretty good sign-holder. For engineering, where there are altogether different opportunities.

Season of wishful thinking

The calla lililes are blooming in our side flower bed, pure and elegant in their simplicity. They're spreading this year. They give me hope.

We're on the cusp of a very hot summer, with spring fast becoming a tantalizing memory. The temps are creeping into the mid-90s. Summer is bearing down on us with its noxious, humid breath, its squishy arms ready to soak the sap out of plants, animals, and especially humans.

But we start the spring with much greater optimism. Blooms 'n Blossoms, the county co-op, Wal-Mart, and Lowe's have all of us lined up with buggies of ambitious plantings. In those very few days when the humidity is low and the sun still slants across the horizon, we convince ourselves that a botantic garden is within our reach.

Spring is a time of great plans. This summer, I will read more books. I will visit my Delta relatives. I will spend more time with family and less time at work. I will plan a real vacation. Isn't that what summers are for?

Instead, greedy time gobbles up the days in front of it , the calla lilies fade, my brave spring plants droop. Before I even calculate it, another summer is nearly past.

The calla lilies remind me to enjoy the fragile beauty while I can.

The lost are found

There's nothing like a happy ending.

Ethel went missing yesterday and created a mystery.

We left for an hour to run errands. The house was locked, as always. The gates to our fenced yard were locked. We double-checked, as always, to assure ourselves all was secure.

Our six-month Boston terrier pups, accustomed to these human forays into the unknown, eyed us nonchanlalantly as we departed. They know the routine. Use the doggy door; enjoy the freedoms of fenced-in yard while the humans are away.

But only one puppy greeted us on our return.

We searched the house, high and low. We searched the yard for possible escape routes. With the help of our neighbors, we canvassed the surrounding streets and interviewed everyone we met. We called our local police department.

No Ethel. We played with Lucy, her sister, and wondered. What had happened? How did she disappear ? Where in our small town could she possibly be?

Over coffee early this morning, we discussed the wording of a "lost puppy" ad in our local paper. We scoured the great outdoors once again, just to be sure there hadn't been a miraculous return. We walked through an empty house, calling her name.

And then, just as our thoughts turned to the business of a new week, when our attention was distracted by intruding realities, suddenly there were two. Both standing together, as though they'd never been apart. As though Ethel materialized out of thin air.

I wish dogs could talk. But since they can't, I'm sure there's a parable here somewhere.