Recently I came across a long conversation I had some twenty years ago (I don’t do numbers — can barely remember my own birthday) with husband Willard, son Bob, his wife Gail, and their son, Brent, about being born and reared in the south. All of us agreed, there’s something about being raised in this cotton country of ours that just won’t let go of us - -good, bad, or indifferent.
***
“California’s got a little bit of everything, but I miss the south,” Bob had said. “And I’m relieved and happy. We’re heading home for good.”
Like a bunch of homing pigeons, the Boggan family sat down for breakfast at the Worleybird Café in Savanna, Tennessee, at the same table we had eaten at yesterday morning.
Born and raised in Jackson Mississippi, Bob, Gail and Brent had traveled and lived from east to west in this great country of ours.
“Everything down here is so connected. So mannerly. A lot of ‘you go first’ way of thinking,” Bob said. “And I’ve missed that.”
A cherry-cheeked waitress handed us a menu. “Y’all was in here yesterday. And lemme guess. Bet y’all want things same as you got then.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders, as if shaking off a load. “Four orders of grits, one of scattered hash browns, country ham, and red eye gravy all the way around. Eggs over light for everybody.”
When we had come in the morning before, the way the locals had looked us over--they could have been judging some kind of livestock at the county fair--then they went back to chewing on sausage links, pouring sorghum molasses over homemade biscuits, or lighting cigarettes.
On our return today, we got a few indifferent waves and head tilts.
I knew if we put in an appearance one more day they’d be stopping by our table, talking about the weather, using that as a grease to slide into politics, and ending with the guessing game, “Mississippi, huh? I bet you know a distant cousin of mine from Pelahatcher, Bernice Pucker? Or, lemme see. Was her name Queenie Crumby?”
On this day, a few minutes later the waitress had poured our coffee. Yesterday she told us about her youngest daughter who had moved to Los Angeles to work in a Sears lingerie department. “By the time that girl got back home she was so beaded, pierced and fluff dyed she looked like last year’s Christmas tree. But then, that there last one, Lucy Lee, she finally done come to her senses.
“‘That fast lane was too fast for me, Lucy Lee said.’
“So, praise to the Lord. She’s back here to home again.”
Now that we knew each other better, cherry-blossom went on to describe her recent gallbladder surgery, where she didn’t even have to go, ‘under the knife’, and her long time problems with bunions, and varicose veins.
“Why is she telling us all of this?” Brent had asked grandfather Willard when the mouth-challenged waitress left the table. “Where we live in California, people mind their own business. And did you see what her name tag said? Peaches Phrungbun. That’s weird.”
“Well,” Gail said. “Think about it. You’ve got friends named Dagmar, Moreau Moreau, Candi-Kane, Brandywine. I think a Rolex even came to the house once.”
She finger-fluffed her hair. “Here a lot of people—their names often make a little sense. Hunk. Booger. Shorty. Big Dog. Squatsy. Baby Sister. Almost everybody you meet claims some kind of kinship; you’re a third cousin, twice removed to a Bernice Pucker or Queenie Crumbie, that nobody can remember.”
Brent shook his head. “This place is backward.” He folded his lips together.
“I’d call it, just a mite slower walk around the block,” Gail said.
“You can say that again,” Brent said. “They talk so slow it seems as if they’ve been hypnotized.”
Daryl Worley, a country western singer owned the restaurant, and before we finished eating, one of his songs began playing through the overhead speakers.
“Sometimes it hurts me to remember
Just how long I’ve been gone.”
“That guy,” Bob said. “He’s known as the Wordsworth of country music, and Worley’s saying it better than me. There’s an old southern thought. You can leave the south, but it won’t leave you.” He waved his hand in an upward motion to all of us at the table. “Let’s finish up our breakfast now. Just down the road aways from here sits, Olive Hill, Tennessee.”
“And I’m here to tell you,” Gail said. “I’m glad we went ahead and bought that land. Just signed the deed. And, when we build us our house, the first thing- it’s gonna have a front porch. “
“Amen.” Bob leaned back and took a final sip of his coffee. “I’ll be working here in town, but I also plan to be farming up here in this Tennessee hill country.”
He waved his hand in an upward motion to all of us at the table. “The family’ll be pleased to know that we’re heading back toward home. We’ll all be doing Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other special days together. It makes me feel good to think about it. “
“You got that right, son.” Willard’s dimples were deep enough to plant a flower bulb in.
***
Some years later, my dear husband Willard had passed away and I was visiting Bob and Gail. We were sitting out on the porch at the home they’d built, their Villa, at Olive Hilla, sipping our evening cocktail. The sun was just settling below the horizon, splashing the treetops with a faint orange backdrop.
“How are things going with y’all?” I asked.
Wearing a pair of faded Levi’s and a worn shirt, this former Marine helicopter pilot who had been chopping trees, had just finished washing dirt and wood shavings from under his fingernails and was now drying his hands on a paper towel.
Growing up, Bob, who, like most teenagers, used to fast-drive cars, now loves mowing, his tractor, and chopping wood.
They live on the edge of a steep hill. Trees fall over. Bob cuts into the thick wood with a chain saw, and splits it with a log splitter. The house is heated with two, wood-burning stoves.
“I’m satisfied to be out here in the hills of Tennessee,” my son answered. “Some things are just in our blood, and I haven’t been able to slip the surly bonds of where I came from.”
Someday, for special customers he plans to design, make and sell fireplace mantels and table tops, and sell his works to the Nashville Flea Market.
“You’re not exactly in them old cotton fields back home,” I laughed.
“Yep, that’s so, but you can do lots of swing-rocking, reminiscing, and problem solving, on a front porch.”
Gail stared off into the distance, and looked toward a long, gravel drive that curved away from their, ‘Villa at Olive Hill.’ Then her voice rang out across the hills as she began humming the words to an old Darrell Worley song, ‘Back to where we belong.’
