I once looked so much like my father that one of his former school teachers had a hissy upon seeing me! Boy, that cant be you! You look 20 years old when I know you must be 45 or 50! I have written several books about life and times in the Mississippi Delta but here is an excerpt from Memories of My Father on this his 98th birthday: Daddy Died When I Was Five… Daddy was sick; suffering from an “ulcerated stomach” is what Mama called it. I vaguely remember some of the symptoms but they have become melted together with my own experiences with the same ailment. I think I remember him eating and then going out back and throwing up. Strangely, we used an Ebonics term for regurgitation, “heave up.” Neighbors were always giving advice about how to cure an “ulcerated stomach” including drinking goat milk. I remember once a stray goat happened along the road near our home and a passing tractor driver, I believe Eric Green, turned aside to hail the good omen. “God has sent a goat for Hilbert,” he exclaimed. I don’t recall what happened after that except the goat’s owner from Barksdale or some nearby plantation recovered his property in a day or so. Daddy began going to the doctor in Marks seeking a remedy for his ulcers. One day, the grown-ups were talking and I overheard them say that Daddy was going to go over to Water Valley, Mississippi and get his ulcers cut out. Okay, listen to those words: “go,” “strange place, get “cut.” That’s enough to blow the mind of any five-year-old. I had to stop it. Never mind how, but this ought not to be. My Daddy, going somewhere to be cut? Gaps exist in whatever conversation I had with Daddy and his leaving for the hospital. I have only the faintest idea of how he got from Marks to Water Valley. Maybe, a relative or friend drove Mama and Daddy over there in Daddy’s 1946 Chevrolet sedan. What I do know and what is etched in my memory as if it were yesterday is what happened when Mama returned from the hospital. My siblings and I were at the home of our maternal grandparents (Jerry Frank and Matilda Mumford Anderson) about 100 yards from our house. Each house fronted the main gravel road but a side road separated the two large houses. In addition, two acres of cotton was planted between the houses. We had made a trail through the cotton field from the back porch of grandma’s house to the driveway of our house. The black Chevrolet came up the east road and swung into our driveway under the pecan tree where Daddy always parked it. Several of the sisters, cousins and aunts were on grandma’s back porch and hollered out “Daddy’s home. There comes the car!” Surely, I was playing in the yard with cousins and having a good time as usual. So they had to say it again for me to hear: “June, Daddy’s home. The car just pulled up.” I became besides myself. I looked towards the gravel road but it was too far. I needed a shortcut. I lit out across the field. The cotton had been picked once but the stalks were still tall, especially midway across where erosion and drainage had made what we termed “bottom land.” There cotton was the tallest. I was maybe one third the way along the path leaving head high cotton stalks going to taller stalks in the bottom when I heard furious yelling from the porch behind me. “Run June, don’t let the calf get you. Run boy, run, and run, run.” I looked back at a 45-degree angle to the porch trying to figure what in the world are they talking about? “What you say?” “What?” I never did look immediately behind me so I cannot attest to what they thought they saw gaining on me. Afterwards, there were long discussions and debate about what was chasing me across the field between the two houses. Eyewitnesses claim to this day that a red and white calf was behind me and I was scared out of my wits and running from it. No calf was ever found. No calf tracks were found. It became a mysterious and unexplained phenomenon. Some have postulated that it was a sign from my father. I saw nothing. I was not running from anything. I was running to my Daddy. Or so I thought. I was running all I could so I resumed fighting my way through the tall stalks until at last I emerged to the side road near our house. In a moment I was on the porch and ready to burst into the house to see my Daddy. That’s when my Mama met me in the doorway, grabbed me in her arms and told me in the kindest tones that Daddy won’t be coming home. He was sleeping at the hospital. He was going to heaven and sleep there. Confused. Confounded. Bewildered. Pick a word and then add a million more. This was all messed up. My Daddy was not coming home? Ever? I was not exactly sure what die, dying and death meant. But it (they) had to be bad and somehow good because everybody was crying and yet making a fuss over us. They were trying to explain that Daddy was gone to heaven and wouldn’t be coming home again. Then, they would embrace and cuddle us while making promises like if you ever need anything…. Well, I wanted some cookies and candy like my Daddy used to buy for me on our trips to the store. Nobody could understand my descriptions (Of course, I ate my loot before returning home to keep from sharing with five brothers and sisters) and Mom didn’t know either. The solution was to take me shopping at Garmon Farms Sabino plantation store. Sure enough, there was that big jar of cookies and down the counter a bit was the nectar of the gods orange slices. My Dad may not be coming home but in his name came more cookies and orange slices. It would take me years to understand that my Daddy sleeping in that bed on wheels they called a casket would not be coming home.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 20:56:41 +0000
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