Every time my great-grandfather spoke, the imprint of his life story returned. Papa spoke with a thick Yiddish accent, the sound of his childhood in Poland and the Tsar’s army, untouched by seven decades in Mississippi. “Vat is it you vant?” he would ask and kiss me with his brushy mustache before settling into his reading chair with his paper, “de veekly Forvard,” his only reliable source of information.
This weekend, I was reminded of these lasting imprints of childhood as I returned for my 50 high school reunion. I grew up in the Delta, the rich soil south of Memphis where the blues were born and cotton was king. The region was dotted with small towns like mine, vibrant places until they were wiped away by cotton-picking machines, superhighways, and Wal-Marts.
My family owned a clothing store, as many Jewish families did. When Mom wasn’t working, she played bridge or sold flower bulbs for charity. Dad worked six and a half days a week, volunteered for the fire department and belonged to every other club in town. He led a Boy Scout troop and was a 32 Degree Mason. From time to time, he was president of our Temple, about thirty miles away, in the big town of Clarksdale. My brother Bob and I sold clothes on busy Saturdays and before Christmas. Our younger brother, Steve, did the same a decade later.
When the last coffee shop closed, all the men—farmers, insurance salesmen, lawyers—used to gather at the Ford place for coffee. Doc Vincent had a spare showroom—actually both showrooms were spare—and he told the guys to brew their own coffee. They did it every day at 10 am and 2 pm and would sit in a circle of rocking chairs, sharing stories. Now, those rocking chairs, those stores, and those clubs are gone. Our elementary school and high school are long-since abandoned. The buildings tumbled down and the bricks were finally hauled away. My friends have moved to Batesville, Oxford, or Memphis, or perhaps New Orleans or Atlanta. I live in Chicago. Our parents are now rows of headstones. Only the stories linger.
They get sweeter with age. As we gathered this weekend, I saw everyone I played baseball with on the courthouse lawn, everyone who joined me on Saturday afternoons at Mr. Langford’s movie theater to watch cowboy serials, everyone who drove in endless loops around Main Street and Riverside Drive on Saturday nights, stopping only to get a burger at Inman’s or see who was hanging out in the other cars.
It is a mark of small-town life that everyone knows the same stories. It is a mark of Southern life that we never get tired of hearing them. They are the sinews of our common life. My wife, from Boston, enjoys many things, but listening to the same stories over and over is not among them. As I launch into another one, she sometimes says, “I’ve already heard that.” I can assure you that phrase has never been uttered by natives of Mississippi, South Carolina, or Tennessee.
These stories are not one person’s possession. We unspool them together, like a chorus. We might have been there when the event originally happened or, more likely, when something vaguely like it did. So, Claudia will start a story about that time they all drove out to West Marks to steal watermelons, and Linda will finish it. Iris remembers a farmer running out of his house to protect his crop, but Val wouldn’t jump in the car without lugging off her watermelon. “Of course Val couldn’t really carry it,” Vernon concludes. “That melon weighed 52 pounds!” Vernon was not one of the girls stealing melons. But he knew exactly what it weighed.
The stories we swapped included two of my favorites. One was about Pam’s new Miata, a convertible she purchased many years after high school. Delighted with her new car, she piled in all her friends to celebrate. With so many passengers, Val had to sit on the trunk, her feet wedged onto the back seat. In this prominent position, she decided to imitate Queen Elizabeth and start waving. All that waving reminded her of wishing she had been Homecoming Queen. That was good enough for Pam, who drove home, got her old tiara, and crowned Val. They started off again, with the newly-crowned Val waving away. A kid ran up to them on Main Street and asked, “Why are you wearing that crown?” And Val answered, “Because I’m the Queen of Menopause.”
It’s hard to top that, but my Dad told me one just as good. It’s a true story, and I was eager to share it with classmates. A preacher in our town, let’s call him Rev. Franklin, had died in church. He was in one of the pews and, as it happened, atop a female member of his congregation. This being a small town, the circumstances of his untimely passing rippled down Main Street before his body temperature reached 94 degrees. A couple of days later, his bereaved widow came into our store to buy a suit of clothes for her late husband’s burial. When Dad offered his condolences, Mrs. Franklin responded, “Well, he died in church, doing what he loved doing.” My Dad, unable to look at her, ran straight out the back of the store.
I was well satisfied with telling this fine tale. Then, Vernon looked over at me and said, “And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story.” Turns out that Reverend Franklin was a huge man and his lady friend, “Louise,” was a small woman. At some point during this religious ceremony, the Rev. Franklin seemed to become a lot less active. Louise, sensing the good times had slowed down, asked the Reverend to move so she could get out from under all his weight. “When he didn’t answer, she figured he must be asleep,” according to Vernon. “So she tried to push him off. No luck. That’s when she looked into the good Reverend’s eyes and realized he was dead. She fainted. After a while, she woke up in a daze, looked into Rev. Franklin’s eyes once more, and fainted a second time. When she finally woke up, she still couldn’t move him, so she had to wait, squirming, until someone happened to walk into the church and offer to help.”
Stories like that bind old friends forever. They make a community.
