 The drive from New Orleans to Chicago is a little over 1,000 miles. That's fifteen or sixteen hours of driving with stops for gas, food, and bathroom breaks. If you've ever driven long distances before, you know that a drive that length can go by like a dream, or it can stretch out into an eternity. Carolyn and I left New Orleans at noon on Wednesday, tired from our romp in New Orleans, our heads spinning from the feeling of rootlessness, from contemplating our future together with no fixed data points. We are both jobless, both in search of a higher calling and a steady paycheck, both looking for the perfect place to settle down. Both both both...
The drive through Mississippi felt slow, uphill. The road is straight. I have brakes in my car now, but still now a/c and no stereo. The sun beat down us. The air pouring in the windows was hot. I was tired by the time we got to Jackson. We were hungry and couldn't find anywhere to eat so we ended up at a Wendy's and a little later I was in the same spot in my car with a low-grade stomach ache. There is a glamorous side to the long road trip, and it contains past and future without present.
North of Jackson, the land gets more and more heavily wooded. Mississippi is a big big state with only a few people. Most of those people live near where the rivers are. Otherwise you need to farm cotton or raise horses or something, and not too many people are into that anymore. Carolyn and I talked about our plans. We'd started the conversation back on the causeway crossing Lake Pontchartrain. By the time we reached Yolabusha County there was hardly anything left to say. We don't have enough money to buy a large broke down Victorian in New Orleans from which to start two companies, so we'll send our resumes out and try to get the perfect gig. If it happens to be in New Orleans or Boise or Kalamazoo, so be it.
As we passed Enid Dam, the road felt so slow, my lower back was so sweaty, that I was desperate to get off the interstate. I realized we weren't going to get much past Memphis, so I asked Carolyn if there was a good way to get to Somerville, TN, about forty miles east of Memphis. Yes.
We hung a right on MS 4 and I was happy about the decision. Off the interstate, the sun mercifully lower, we cruised through the rural wooded farmland of North Mississippi. A church every mile. Kudzu hanging in curtains. Then we turned left on MS 7 and we were pointed north towards West Tennessee, where my father's family comes from.
My grandparents are buried in Somerville. My great great grandfather built a house there in 1836 and named it Etowah. It's still there. My second cousins live in it I think. My great aunt lived there her whole life, and died at age 100. Her older brother, my great Uncle John, lived across the street and died at age 101. He fought in World War I. Was the town doctor. Had seen the ages past. When I knew him, he was in his late 90s and liked to watch the Vols and the WWF. The last time I was in Somerville was in 2001 when we buried my grandmother Caroline, whom I loved with my whole child's heart.
We reached Somerville at dusk. I wanted to visit the family graveyard but I couldn't remember where it was. It's off the highway, through some fields, at the top of a hill in a stand of trees. We drove up and down the highway east of town and I looked for the right road, but couldn't be sure. I called my dad and he wasn't home. We turned up a gravel drive, wound through fields, through a treeline, across a wood plank bridge that stretched over a shady run, and ended up in a chopped down cottonfield. Carolyn picked up a piece of last years fiber. Jump down turn around pick a bale of cotton. Jump down turn around pick a bale of hay.
It was getting dark so we went back into town and got a room at the Traveler's Inn. The lobby smelled like a rich curry. India Hotel . Room for $52. For dinner we drove up the street to The Hut, the old white BBQ joint in town.
Then next morning we got up and went to Etowah. No one was home. I think my cousin Anne Freeland lives there. Maybe one of her daughters. I can't remember. No one was home. I went to Uncle John's and took a picture there also. Then we headed to Memphis. I was sad as we drove through Oakland so I called my mom to see if she remembered where the graveyard was. Oakland TN is the next town west, and it has already become a commuter suburb to Memphis. Somerville is next. It will not be like it has been for a hundred years for much longer.
My great grandfather Big George, Uncle John's brother, grew up in Somerville. He became the editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. In my family there are Georges and Johns. My dad and I are Johns. My uncle is a George. Johns are soulful. Georges are men of the world. My grandfather was a George who should have been a John. He fell in love with my grandmother, Caroline, and moved to the hick town of Sheffield, AL to live with her and her mother. My dad was born there, the son of the local newspaper publisher. He was a small town hotshot. Smart and ambitious. He went to Princeton. Ended up in DC. Was a newspaper editor, magazine publisher, Congressional press secretary. He met my mother, and Irish Catholic girl from Baltimore who defied expectation to become a reporter. The South was a place to visit for me. The home of my family's legend. My connection to an age-old story. But not a real place to live in. Not where I'm from. Still, when I'm in Somerville, I feel comfortable. My family's bones are in the ground there. Maybe mine will be.
We made good time on Thursday. It was hot again and we had nine hours to cover. The stretch of Northern Arkansas on I-55 is hot, sun-baked, flat farmland. It runs right into Southern Missouri, greens up some. And then you reach the River. We stopped to get lunch in Cairo, IL. Cairo is at the point of the state, between the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, a place of great strategic import in times past. The place where Grant started the campaign of the Western Army.
What happened to Cairo? It looks like it has been bombed or flooded or both. Huge Victorian homes crumple in on themselves. The river street is derelict save for a lone biker bar. The main street has only restaurants, liquor stores, to stand beside the two grand churches and the old stone custom house, built in 1866. There is no money in rivers anymore I guess. Mark Twain's Cairo is a ghost.
Southern Illinois is beautiful. Hilly country, with woods and rivers and lakes. When you come out of the hills, the land flattens into prairie and stays that way for five hours. We decided to stop and have a swim at Rend Lake. It's a fishing resort built around a fish and wildlife preserve. We swam off the end of a boat dock. The lake was empty and smelled faintly of fish when the wind slacked. The water felt cool and the clouds towered white in the blue sky.
We resumed our conversation about the future as we hit Urbana-Champaign. You have to stay in a place to build anything. You never get anywhere if you keep moving. Jobs are easy to come by in big cities. But you could buy a brokedown palace in Cairo, IL for a song. The country we live in is so big. But there are only a few places to live. I want to be a writer. You are a writer. I know, but you know what I mean. What do you want to be?
Add Comments |
