Just a River Rat

I grew up in an area where most people in our neighborhood had come from the farms and the mills of the upper Mississippi River Delta lands in Mississippi. They were all good, decent, hard-working people that loved their community, their children and they worked to make their communities a strong and loving place for their families. Because they came from the river deltas, they had these ethics instilled deep into their souls. I know this because I, too, am what I consider a “river rat”.

I want to take you back to the late 50’s, early 60’s, driving down Highway 78 to MS-15 to 64 South  to MS-346 West, in a ‘55 sky blue Plymouth, to a very small town called Hurricane, Mississippi, where my mother's family is from. I remember the first house I ever saw my grandparents in and, it may be strange to some of you, because it was built like a standard A-frame house with a roof over the bedrooms to the left and the kitchen and living room to the right, but there was no center part of the house. It was as if you put these rooms on the big huge deck and never built walls for the front and back. There was what we call in the South the breezeway right through the center. The bedrooms were fully enclosed and so were the kitchen and the living room and there was a big porch on the front and a similar porch on the rear of the house.

You have to understand that when these houses were built there wasn't any such thing as air conditioning and even if there was, they were sharecropper and they could not have afforded it anyway. The house was a stick frame house and the outside was sheeted with roofing material that looked like bricks, you know, just like a roofing shingle but all one big huge sheet that was made to look like bricks. The inside was sheet rocked, or at least stuccoed or some type of material that was paintable and wallpaperable.  The old potbelly stove sat in the middle of the living room and it was the only source of heat in the living room. None of the other rooms had heat other than propane standing space heaters with open flames. I don't even know if those type of heaters are allowed in today's society with all of the safety regulations that we have. I used to have a blast running all over that porch as a small boy with this old mangy Collie dog.

I remember family get-togethers that had all the men, brothers, brothers-in-law  and my grandfather sitting around the living room or out on the porch talking. All the sisters and sisters-in-law, my grandmother and all of the daughters and daughters-in-law were in the kitchen preparing some of the best food you could ever imagine. My grandmother made the best most moist pecan cake you could ever eat. It melted in your mouth and no one to this day makes frosting like she did. The women would start off fixing breakfast for all of us. The men would sit down at the table in the first setting and then all of us cousins would sit and eat after our fathers had eaten and lastly our mothers and our grandmother would sit and eat. This was the tradition for every meal that goes back to the days when men worked the fields and ate first, then the children came second and the women would eat last.

There would be arguments, there would be laughter, there would be all kinds of commotion going on in the kitchen as they washed the dishes from breakfast and started to prepare lunch for all of us. I remember it so well because of the smells and the tastes and they would run all us kids outside and tell us to go play. Most of the kids were either older or younger than I was, so I would take my cap pistol and my transistor radio and that old Collie dog, and go big game hunting in the pastures that were next to my grandparent’s home.

As that Collie dog and I ran as hard as we could into the pasture, I could hear my mother screaming out off the back porch ”you watch what you step in young man” , after all it was a pasture full of cows, don't you know. But I made sure that I didn't wander so far that I couldn't hear my uncle Jimmy yell “dinnertime”. One thing this little boy was, was never late when my grandmother was cooking dinner. I guess I really didn’t have to listen for my uncle Jimmy because the smells would come wafting up the hill of that pasture and I would know it was getting close to dinner and so did that old Collie dog because he knew there would be some biscuits and bacon fat and his dog food waiting when we got back.

It seemed no sooner had we gotten out there and started hunting big game that it was time we turned around and went back just as hard as we could go. What I'm getting at is the whole social interaction of my mother's family was wrapped around the kitchen and the appreciation of good food. The women of her family never passed on to me the secrets of what it took to make that food so special, but after years of trying, I got the secret of those old biscuits and that ultra-moist pecan cake, as far as the ingredients go, down pat. The one thing that I wish I had the secret to, was hearing the joy and, yes, sometimes the anger that they put into making them the most loving meals a family could ever have.

The river was a lifeline to all of these families because they needed the moisture to grow their crops and  because they needed to get their crops to the big cities and the markets that would pay the best prices for what they grew along the river.

That's why they needed to live near the river. These wonderful folks that I call “river rats” raised wonderful children and they, in turn, raised wonderful grandchildren, but we were all “river rats” because we needed the river to exist. All of the communities that grew up around the Mississippi River Delta at one time looked after each other and made sure that they at least had food and a warm place to sleep. It was this kindness and the strength of community that the families that made up the community that I grew up in, in Memphis, Tennessee, a loving and wonderful place to have a family.

When my family and I started out in this community it was known as Charjean because of the elementary school that we all went to and the park nearby that we all played at. My father was a member of the Charjean Civics Club, along with many of the other fathers from this community. They kept a close eye on what the planning commission had in store for all of us and they fought hard against the things that they did not want in their community and, also, just as hard for the things that they wanted in their community. The Charjean Civics Club sponsored baseball teams during the summer and tried to make sure that school supplies and things were gathered for the coming year of school.

Our mothers ran the PTA and had bake sales and anything else they could to make sure that the educational needs of their children were met. This was the norm until ground was broken on a brand new junior high school that would not only service the Charjean area but two other major areas known as Bethel Grove and Cherokee. For those of us now in our late 50’s and early 60’s this would combine those neighborhoods into a homogenized group known as the Airways Jets. Yes, I obsess over those years because those years were the years that I met Nancy, Sheila, Debhora, Debbie, Ricky, Mike, Donnie, Sidney, Eddie and many others that would take too long to mention, but they were all some of the most important people in the world to me in those days.  These kids that I grew up with were absolutely like family to me, not just because of my family’s strong family ties, but because all of their parents were also so dedicated to making our neighborhoods like a huge family.

I told recently the Superintendent that is in charge of the school system today in Memphis that we came from blue and brown collared workers and that our parents had pulled themselves’ up out of the fields of the Mississippi Delta to a community that they had worked lovingly hard to build and to be proud of, even though most of Memphis looked down upon us and that this school that was built just for us was our chance to show the city of Memphis that we could be a beacon of cooperation in education, in a city that was struggling to find how to educate its children and I think we succeeded to make ourselves an example for students to come.

I believe that I am a proud “river rat” who has accomplished much in his life but, without the help and love of so many people that I grew up with and the help of my God and my parents, I would never have achieved any of what I have achieved.

My loving wife has been my guiding inspiration and my light of love throughout the latter half of my life. When I have been so angry at someone that I wanted to tear their head off, I could see myself looking into her loving green eyes and all of that anger and hate would just melt away.

When things would get hard and I didn't feel like I could take that next step or lift that next heavy load, I would remember a man that was adorned with a crown of thorns and carried a heavy cross as he was beaten along his path to his death and my burden became light. I can still hear the women of my family talking and laughing as they talked about their old men. It's that love of life that they brought from those old houses with the breeze way through the center to keep them cool on the most extremely hot, muggy Delta days that gives me strength to carry on today.

All of this instilled in me a love of history that always made me want to have a piece of my history that goes back in these United States to the 1620’s. So, when I moved back to Tennessee, I decided that the perfect house for us would be a log house in the hills of the Great Smoky Mountains. This house was dedicated with the love and the blood of all my ancestors that came before me to make their house loving family homes.

That is what I want to have, the love of all those that made themselves a part of my family to make this Appalachian style log house our home.

Believe me, it is the memories of the love of my family and friends that has influenced me to do the right thing my entire life.