Picking Dewberries by the Railroad Tracks

I talked my sister, Linda Ann, in to going up to the railroad tracks to pick berries.  “Come on, go with me!” I’d said.  “If we don’t go now, they’re gonna spray that stuff all over and kill the berries.”  I was referring to the "stuff" the Railroad sprayed right from the trains to kill all the vegetation around the tracks every year.  Our house was right by the tracks in McNeill.  We were used to the whistles, the shaking of windows and the wrecks up by the crossing. 

Linda Ann finally agreed to go with me.  I loved to pick those berries by the tracks because they were the biggest and juiciest!  However, Mama had one strict rule, “Never go anywhere near the tracks!”  So we had to sneak up there with our buckets and then go a little further down so she wouldn’t see us from our back yard. 

We had our buckets about full, when we decided to cross the trestle.  It was a long trestle and as we approached the middle, we heard the sound of a streamline train.  It was the fast one, so we had to jump down to the banks of the trestle and hang on for dear life.  As we hung on to the sides of the trestle, the briars from the dewberry vines pierced into our skin.  When the train roared over the tracks we shook.  Straight over our heads, “baboom, baboom, baboom” went the train and it seemed to be endless.  Finally it passed and we dug our way back up to the top of the trestle to the tracks, bruised, scratched and half scared out of our wits.  Then we heard it, “Linda Ann!  Elizabeth Pauline!”  Mama was yelling both our full names.  “Holy hell,” I thought, “She’s gonna kill us!”

So we dragged our bleeding bodies back up to the house as fast as we could.  I could see the peach tree switch already perched in her hand as we came in the back gate.  She was pissed!  It didn’t matter that we had survived the train, or even that we had picked almost two full buckets of dewberries!  No!   We had scared her to death.  Mama had pictured us lying smashed under the train as it went by.  She told us so much as she was whipping us with the peach tree switch.  She wanted to teach us a lesson and it worked. 

From then on, we never went up to the railroad tracks to pick berries.  We just let the Railroad spray them with the “agent orange” or whatever they used and then they’d turn brown and die.

Hurricane Camile

Mama’s friend, Delphia had just died after a long battle with cancer.  Mama had helped take care of her for about a year.  She’d bring Delphia’s family’s clothes to our house once a week and wash them, dry them and then fold or iron them.  I would go out with her to take the clothes back,  but Mama would make me wait in the car.  She didn’t want me to see how sick Delphia was.  They buried her on that Sunday as everyone was scurrying around getting ready for the hurricane.  Mama, Linda Ann, Junior and I went to church that morning as usual.  Daddy went with us that Sunday and took us to lunch at Hank’s Snack Bar in Picayune after church.  As we sat eating our burgers, watching the weather become more and more tropical, we were talking about the hurricane they’d named Camile.  “It’ll probably wash her body right out of that grave,” Mama said, dwelling on the funeral that was taking place that very hour.  “It’s gonna be a bad one!” Daddy replied.  Although listening to their conversation, they actually thought it was going to hit New Orleans like Betsy (the one before Camile).  I remembered Betsy.  We stayed home and the wind blew down Daddy’s shed he had been building (for a long time!) .  He had the foundation and the framing for the walls up, but nothing else.  Mama had told him it was just as well.  My cousins Bridget and Pam and their family lived in New Orleans.  They had gotten water in their house during Betsy.  Worried for them again, we called them later that Sunday afternoon and urged them to get out of the city and come to Mississippi.

Bridget and Pam’s parents decided to stay in New Orleans, but our relatives from Slidell began to arrive that afternoon to stay with Grandma Polly and Grandpa.  I laughed at my sister, who suggested we stay over there too.  We were at the dinner table at the time, and the thought of staying anywhere but our house was funny to me.  We went to bed at our usual time, only to be awakened by Mama at midnight.  The power was out and the wind was really loud.  She moved us all into their room, where we stayed and listened to the little transistor radio.  At some point, the radio announcer said that the eye of the storm was about eight miles north of Picayune.  “That’s right on us!”  mama exclaimed.  Daddy was sitting on the side of the bed ringing his hands.  Mama began to cry, and we did too.  We all prayed together, harder than we had ever prayed, there in the floor holding hands.  The walls of my parents little room were literally breathing and we could hear the snaps of the trees as the wind bent them to the ground.  It seemed like hours that we were confined to their room.  I didn’t think we were going to come out of the storm alive and I don’t think Mama and Daddy did either. 

Then all of a sudden a “hush” came over us.  No wind, no rain beating against the house, not a sound at all.  Our ears strained to hear a single noise.  “It’s over!” I said.  “No, it’s just the eye,” Mama answered.  Then we all went into the living room where, according to the flashlight Mama was holding, there were leaves all over the living room floor and it was soaked.  We looked out the front door to my Grandma Johnson’s house to see if there were any signs of life and they signaled with a flashlight and called out that they were okay.  Then we looked to the left and saw that there were similar lights and sounds coming from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. 

“Let’s get y’all over to Polly’s,” Daddy said.  “I can’t tell how much structure damage we have had over here and their house is on a slab, so I think we’ll all be much safer over there for the backlash.”  So we all proceeded out the back door.  There were trees everywhere.  We had to climb over them and the fence that was now down and partially covered by trees.  It seemed like a really long trek for what was only a few yards to Grandma Polly and Grandpa’s house. 

Once in, Grandma lay quilts on the floor in her living room for us, beside the many kids that were already sleeping on other blankets and quilts.  But we wouldn’t get much sleep, because the winds had already started howling outside again.  I had lain awake until nearly dawn, making sure that the storm had passed and only then had I finally gotten a little sleep. 

I know what they mean when survivors of tragedies explain brightness and clarity after their events, because the next day was the brightest I had ever seen.  I don’t know if it was because of all the trees that were now either gone or void of leaves, or if I was just thankful to be alive.  That morning after Camile had hit, we gazed at the huge fallen oaks and pecan trees in our yard.  We realized then that they all had fallen just beside the house, missing our roof and the very room in which we had hunkered down the night before.  Had any one of the trees fallen on our house, it would have been a devastating tragedy for our family.  So we were indeed thankful to be alive. 

The task of cleaning up was an arduous one by itself, let alone the fact that we had no power for air conditioners or even fans.  Our freezers that were filled with the vegetables Mama and Grandma had been canning all summer were slowly thawing out and the food had to be cooked.  Thankfully, we had a gas stove, so Mama cooked and cooked.  We were very ill prepared, however, soon the batteries in the transistor radio had weakened and we had no outside communication with the world.  The last we had heard was that it would be weeks before we would see power in our area.  This meant that our pump could not operate to give us water and more thawing and more heat. 

In the evenings before dark, we took bath cloths, towels and soap and went down to Stanfield, the small stream near the house, where we bathed in our swim suits.  It was cold and refreshing.

But night seemed to come really early in McNeill.  There were no lights other than those of Mama’s antique kerosene lanterns, and that fuel had to last, so we used them sparingly.  Though we were tired from all the work in the yard, our nights were spent battling mosquitoes, who were drawn to us by the sweat on our bodies.  The screens on the windows had been destroyed by the storm, and there was no way to keep them from coming inside.

Hurricane Camile was a life-changing, humbling event for everyone in South Mississippi.  We realized just how little we really needed to get by.  And it was weeks before we got the news that the Gulf Coast, only about thirty minutes away, was completely destroyed by the hurricane.  Once our power came back on, we were able to see pictures of the slabs that were left where beautiful beachfront homes once stood.  Hearing that, we realized again, just how fortunate that we were to have our homes, even though they were damaged, and how fortunate we were have each other.  We took care of each other.  There was no FEMA or MEMA coming to our rescue, just the goodness of folks who sent food and clothing by way of the Red Cross.  There were no big trucks showing up with ice and no water given out.

When I think of Camile, I am reminded of similar words from Scarlet O’Hara, when I say that “I will never be unprepared for a hurricane again.”

Dinner on the Grounds

Mama got up earlier than usual to make her famous Banana Pudding.  That's how I knew it was “Dinner on the Grounds” church day because that’s what she always did.  As was the tradition at all the Baptist Churches in the south, when it was time for “Dinner on the Grounds” every family was required to make a “dish” of something.  I hated those Sundays because I would rather go home after church and play.  Daddy didn’t always go to church with us, but on those days he went.  I hated the “Dinners” (they were actually lunch, but everyone in the south calls lunch dinner).  I hated them because as soon as we got outside to where the ladies had the tables set up with the food on them, my great aunts Minnie, Effie and Beedie along with a slew of other people I didn’t know would come over and have to kiss me like they had never seen me before, right on the mouth!  They wore way too much “old lady” perfume and way too much hair spray.  Kissing and hugging all the little kids was something of a ritual for all of them.  I guess because they were so old, they were genuinely happy to see us young ones.  And they were a gossiping group!  My grandma (Daddy’s Mama), “Ma” was included with the best of them.  Ma didn’t go to church every Sunday either.  She was usually “down” with something, but on these Sundays she relished the thought of bringing her potato salad and throwing in with all the ladies for a good old time of fellowship and eating.  Everyone ate way too much and it was all good old Southern food that was probably bad for you.  Afterwards, they had singing in the church.   Thankfully, we didn’t stay for that. 

I liked the other Sundays better, when we would just go straight home from church and Grandma Polly would have “dinner” for us at her house.  Grandpa always bought the Sunday Times Picayune and I’d lay across the cool concrete floor of their front porch and look at the funny paper section.  Grandma and Grandpa (Mama’s Parents) never went to church, although I knew they were religious in their own way.  Their church was the Church of God Church (an actual church).  I had been there for funerals and such. 

After we ate grandma’s good cooking, I could go play.  No kissing, no hugging, no singing.

Uncle Ben's Death

  

I sat far enough out in the yard so that the thick black mop water missed me as the ladies swept it off the back porch of Uncle Ben’s old house.  I was crouched down digging in the dirt, looking for doodle bugs.  They were those little bugs you could find under pine trees.  Doodle bugs made a tell-tell inverted cone in the sand where they had gone round and round and buried themselves.  I sang the song as I stirred the hole with a pine straw.  “Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug, come to my wedding, Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug come to my wedding, Doodle Bug, Doodle Bug, come to my wedding, early in the morning.”  And after that if he was in the hole, he would appear.  He sort of “scooted” backwards and tried to bury himself again.  I was intent on occupying myself as the ladies were on getting the house clean for the mourners that would come.

I heard the phone ring and heard Mama talking to Grandma Polly earlier that morning.  I knew whatever it was, it was big!  We had gone over to Uncle Ben’s house as soon as the people had taken the body away, so that Grandma Polly and Mama and the other ladies could clean the house (which I don’t think had been cleaned for a while).  They were getting it ready for the wake, which I knew was where the funeral home delivered the body back to the house and people would come and sit with it all day and night for three days before the funeral. 

Mama had brought her own broom and mop and they stirred up some dirt that must have been there for years, because after they wet it, it was thick and black, almost as thick as molasses.  I had never seen anything so disgusting.  It smelled too!  Like old!  The house had no air conditioning and you could just smell the death in it too.  I guess that’s another reason I stayed outside. 

Wakes were a big deal in McNeill.  Everyone came and brought lots of food which sat out on a long table for the whole time.  They'd put a cloth over it to keep the flies out.  Thinking back, I wonder why people didn’t get sick from that food, but I guess they never did.  As they gathered together at these otherwise sad events, they would laugh and tell stories about the deceased person. 

 Yep, wakes were a big deal in McNeill!

Grandma Polly's Kitchen

One of the happiest places in my childhood memories is my Grandma Polly’s kitchen.  She was slightly heavy set (thank God she’s dead, cause she would have wacked me over the head with her iron skillet for saying that!).  She always wore the cutest little aprons, the kind that came from the waist down. Not those with the bibs.  But her hair was always done just so, with the lightest of makeup on her face and always some lip gloss.  She even went through a phase of wearing wigs, when it was close to her beauty shop day and her hair was not so cute. 

Anyway, Grandma Polly kept me while Mama worked.  Our day usually started in the kitchen, where she’d set a coffee cup in front of me with evaporated milk and sugar covering the bottom in anticipation of the coffee she was brewing.  I stirred it up to make what tasted like condensed milk and usually had eaten it before the coffee was done.  “I’m not gonna give you any more if you eat this!” she’d fuss, as she spooned more sugar over the evaporated milk she had replenished.  “You’re gonna rot your teeth out before you're ten,” she continued.  Then when the coffee was done, she’d pour the steaming hot liquid over the mixture in the cup up to half full.  I only got a half cup, ‘cause “coffee will stunt your growth,” she’d say.

Most of all I remember the smell of her homemade yeast rolls.  She would make enough for the whole town of McNeill, it seemed.  Grandma Polly’s yeast rolls were famous in McNeill!  The dough was usually on its way to rising when I got there for coffee.  Then she’d punch it and knead it some more and make little round balls, which she placed in baking pie dishes.  I’d watch those round balls rise until it seemed like they were going to spill over the sides of the dishes.  Then she’d placed them in the oven to bake and just before they were done, she’d brush real butter all over the top to make them shine a golden brown.  The smell alone made your mouth water for the delicious taste of buttery rolls.  I know the reason I am “slightly” overweight today, because on yeast roll days, we had sloppy joes on the rolls for lunch and then homemade jelly on the rolls for dessert!  Mmmm!  I can just taste that now.  Then Grandma Polly would send me out to deliver a half dozen pans to the people within walking distance.

Grandma Polly was always making something in her kitchen.  If she was at a loss for food items to make for dinner, she would combine leftovers in some flour and egg and fry them in her iron skillet and call them pea patties or potato patties or whatever the vegetable. 

She fried her catfish in lard and made her hushpuppies from scratch on the days that grandpa spent the day floating Boley Creek in his canoe.  He’d come back with ice chests that were filled with brim and catfish.  I never ate the brim because they had too many little bones.  I would always snag a coke from the ice chest (the little ones, that seemed to taste better than the ones in the big bottles).  The coke bottles smelled like fish 'cause he didn't separate them in the ice chest.  But they were ice cold and I loved the bite.

Although it would seem that it was often scarce, food was a large part of growing up in McNeill.  We lived right next door to my grandparents, Polly and Walter.  In the summertime, Grandpa would bring home watermelons and put them under the azalea bushes to keep them cool.  Then in the afternoon when it wasn’t so hot out, he’d yell, “I’m cuttin’ a watermelon!”  And we would all rush over for the cool sweetness, that wasn’t perfect without a dash of salt for contrast.  Some nights he’d call us on the telephone and tell us he was making root beer floats and we were there before the ice cream bubbled up in the Barq’s Root Beer! 

Yep!  Those were the good ole days!