Sunday, October 11, 2009

Legend of the Free State of Jones, by Dr. Rudy H. Leverett

In Legend of the Free State of Jones, the first scholarly account of events in Jones County, Mississippi before and during the American Civil War, Dr. Leverett definitively put to rest the myth that Jones County, Mississippi, seceded from the Confederacy.  Even so, having little stake in slavery most Jones Countians did indeed oppose the policy of Southern secession from the Union on the eve of the Civil War.  Nevertheless, once compelled to pick a side, Dr. Leverett shows that most residents of Jones County aligned themselves with the Confederacy as they battled bands of Confederate deserters hiding in the swamps of their home turf.

One such Jones County resident was Major Amos McLemore, my great- great-grandfather.   Although opposed to Southern secession, once war was inevitable Major McLemore volunteered to raise a company, the Rosin Heels, and became its commander.  He was shot dead by deserters after returning home on a mission to round them up and return them to service in the Confederate army.  (The family's struggles following Maj. McLemore's untimely death -- his widow, Rosa Lavinia, was left to raise five children under age 12 -- is the subject of this blog.)

Dr. Leverett's book, originally published in 1984, is now available in reprint.

http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Free-State-Jones-Leverett/dp/1604735716/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255272635&sr=1-1

Monday, October 5, 2009

Memories of the Eastabuchie McLemores in the 1930s and 1940s

Last week I drove to a trailer park in Petal, Mississippi to speak with Bill, a cousin of my father's. Bill is 84 years old and lives with his wife, both of them ailing but managing. Like most of the Eastabuchie McLemores, Bill stayed on the margins after leaving the Old Place.

Bill's father was one of the McLemore brothers who ran the still. Bill's parents and their six children lived in two rooms on the left side of the dogtrot cabin originally built in the 1830s by Major Amos McLemore's father, John. My grandmother Elma, her sister Lessie lived in two rooms on the right side with their collective children, seven or eight in all, and their mother Mary Etta Lee McLemore. Leroy McLemore, Elma's and Lessie's brother, lived in a back room. The kitchen was also in the back. The dogtrot had no front door, allowing air to cool the two halves of the cabin.  During the rural electrification campaign in the late 1930s, two rooms got wired for electricity.

Bill remembers Major McLemore's Confederate sword hanging beside the cabin's mantlepiece (my father remembered it atop the mantlepiece).

Bill knew about the McLemore brothers' still, which moved to four or five different locations over the years. They had eight to ten barrels of mash ready at a given time. "Distributors" would buy about five gallons at a time from the McLemores, then sell the whiskey out of their houses. Bill said he "helped sample some of it." According to a cousin of mine, my aunt and the other children stood lookout for the distilling operation; if someone unfamiliar showed up, they were to ring a bell.

The McLemore brothers ended the whiskey operation at some point in the 1940s when Leroy and Howard opened cafes/beer joints (each of them had his own). Ed Payne did not find my great-uncles' names on any lists of inmates at the state penitentiary at Parchman at any time during the 1930s and 1940s. As Ed observed, those omissions raise questions. The McLemores had been sentencied in the late 1930s to hard time in the state penitentiary for Possessing a Still and Possessing Liquor offenses. Did the McLemore brothers agree to shut down the still permanently in exchange for some sort of reprieve? Rough justice like that would be more or less unthinkable today, but it certainly would have been a common-sensical proposition, one I surely would have accepted had I been Howard or Leroy McLemore.

Bill's memory of my grandmother, Elma Rose McLemore, was very scant, or so he let on. He did say that Elma was close to a particular female McLemore living at the Old Place. I know that my own aunt, Dad's sister, forbade her kids from associating with several of her and Dad's female cousins in this line for their reputed laissez faire dealings with men, and my mother recalls my father's recounting that "the women" -- meaning these particular women, his mother Elma, and possibly others -- went to New Orleans to "go bad."

Bill did remember that the land that my father's father's family tenant-farmed adjoined the McLemore property near the cemetery and that Elma would hop the fence to talk to my father's father, Rudis, as he worked. Rudis's family grew watermelons according to Dad's sister. She told me Rudis was big and handsome and played the guitar. "This was all too much for Mother," according to my aunt, and before long Elma married Rudis and moved him into the Old Place. He stayed there only sixteen days. My September 16, 2009 post quotes my aunt's recounting of the night Rudis slipped out. The McLemore brothers gathered in the wide hallway of the dogtrot with kerosene lamps and shotguns before going out after him, without success. Elma kept fainting and being brought back around. Rudis's family left the area soon after that. By all accounts when Rudis left, Elma lost whatever innocence she had left.

Bill remembered the death several years later, on December 17, 1937, of Shirley, my father's eight-year-old sister. Bill didn't witness it, but he learned Shirley had run off the school bus towards the house across the road because Uncle Leroy was supposed to have bought a radio that day and she was eager to see it. A drunk was at the wheel of the car that struck her, which didn't immediately stop. Shirley's sister, my aunt, then thirteen years old, accompanied Shirley's dead body to the hospital, where she waited for hours alone for a familiar adult. Elma was eventually found in a bar.

If Elma was an alcoholic, the condition seems to have been predetermined. According to Bill, two of her sons and at least one of her brothers all had drinking problems, and by the time Elma was thirty she had had five children by five different men, had been abandoned by two, one of whom she adored, had lost one child to a tragedy and, with her large extended family, including about thirteen children, was living in an unplumbed dogtrot cabin in the Piney Woods firmly in the Great Depression's maw.

Maybe not surprisingly given what reality had dealt the family, Elma's mother, Mary Etta Lee McLemore, was not a religious person, despite being a charter member of the Eastabuchie Baptist Church. In fact, Mary knew about her sons' still and even mixed the whiskey with camphor and used the mixture for -- Bill didn't know what. Possibly a salve that Dad remembered "Grandma" would continually rub onto her legs. She'd also use the moonshine to make herself a "toddy" before bed.  Bill knew about the leg problem but didn't know what it was. Grandma used to sit on the porch a lot. She would make switches out of gallberry bushes and switch the children for "fussing." Still, Bill somehow remembers her as a kind person.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Howard McLemore's letter to the Hattiesburg American about his contempt citation

Hattiesburg, Miss.
May 8, 1939.

Editor, The American:

Since there has been so much comment on the charge of contempt of court filed against me in circuit court Friday, May 5, I wish to make this statement:

To begin with I wish to state that I made no loud outburst in the courtroom as some of the county officers would have you believe. I spoke the word “amen” in a very low tone, and not in a deep tone and certainly not with the intention of causing a disturbance or being disrespectful to the court.

M. Hawkins was being cross-examined by Attorney Earle L. Wingo and the question co-incided so perfectly with what was in my own mind at the moment that I spoke on an impulse.

Deputy Cubley was standing near where I was sitting and asked who spoke; and when I told him it was I he walked over to Judge Pack and said, “A man said ‘amen’ back there.”

Judge Pack said “bring him around.” Then Mr. Cubley called me around and took me before the judge where I asked what I was being charged with, a thing I had a perfect right to do.

Instead of telling me what the charges were or giving me any information Mr Cubley grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me away, saying: “Judge Pack said put you in that room.”

To which I replied: “I don’t give a damn what Judge Pack said; I want to know what I am charged with.” As a citizen I had a right to make this demand.

In the course of a very few minutes I was brought back before the judge, where I asked for time and opportunity to procure an attorney and was told that I had already had a chance to get an attorney; I think my rights as a citizen were denied again.

In about five minutes they had questioned the states’ witnesses which constituted all the testimony that was offered in the case since I was locked in the room alone without a chance to prepare my case.

Results: One hundred dollars and thirty days!

I take this opportunity to thank the many good citizens who have offered me assistance.

HOWARD McLEMORE, sr.

Monday, September 28, 2009

McLemore orneriness in action

My previous post set forth a rap-sheet-in-progress for my McLemore great uncles, who were moonshiners in Forrest County, Mississippi. The rap sheet included the following entries:

May 5, 1939: Howard charged with "Contempt of Court committed in the presence and hearing of the court. Adjudged to be in contempt of court." Fined $100 and sentenced to 30 days in jail. A margin note indicates "certif. of appeal 5/16/1939.
* * *
December 9, 1939: Hearing on Howard's motion to set aside verdict/for new trial for Possessing Still and on his motion to set aside judgment on his contempt conviction. His motion is overruled, but judgment is modified. The $100 fine stands, but his 30-day sentence is suspended pending good behavior.

From a September 28, 2009 email message to me from Ed Payne:

Contempt citation for HOWARD MCLEMORE is an interesting story. A police officer named M. Hawkins had confronted 3 Creel brothers outside the Downs Cafe on Mobile [Street, Hattiesburg] and said that they were drunk and should get off the street. They responded (in typical peckerwood style) "We're running things down here" and jumped him. He pulled his gun and in the melee shot and killed Homer Quick, a farmer, and wounded at least one other person. It was the Creel brothers who were charged with manslaughter, which no doubt did not sit well with the Mobile [Street] regulars since, in the peckerwood view, Officer Hawkins should have kept his nose out of their business.

Howard attended the jury selection and, when a lawyer asked aquestion of Hawkins that he felt was to the point, he said, "Amen." A deputy heard him and reported his exclamation to the presiding Judge, by the name of Pack. He was hauled before the Judge and Howard asked what was the charge. The judge (by Howard's account) did not bother to respond and so, as he was being led away, he damned the judge. Three days later (May 8, 1939) Howard wrote a Letter to the Editor that was published the same date giving his version of this. As it happens, Judge Pack is a relation of mine--being, if I recall correctly, an uncle of my grandmother.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

My great-uncles' rap sheet

My father's uncles, Amos, Howard, and Leroy McLemore, were moonshiners. They ran a still on the Old Place in Forrest County, Mississippi, just outside of Eastabuchie. My father remembered watching them make whiskey. He said they would toast wood shavings and put them into the clear distilled alcohol to give it a nice whiskey color. He also remembers that one night an uncle tore out in his car towards the still at the back of the property with "revenue men" in pursuit -- the bolting car mowed down one of the front porch's supports en route and the porch collapsed.

Here is my great uncles' rap sheet so far as I have been able to assemble it (it's a work in progress). Except as indicated, the following rap sheet is assembled from entries in the Forrest County, Mississippi, Circuit Court Minutes, which appear to be incomplete.

* * *
Fall 1917: U.S. charges Howard with bringing five quarts of whiskey to Mississippi from New Orleans, Louisiana in violation of the Reed Act. (From squib in Biloxi Daily Herald on November 8, 1917.)


[To be done -- research to determine any additional federal charges, i.e., during Prohibition.]

1933: The states ratify the 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition. Ratification is effective on December 5, 1933. From Ed Payne email message to me dated September 24, 2009:

You might want to note for your readers that Mississippi was the first state to adopt prohibition in 1907 (went into effect in 1908) and, following the repeal of national prohibition in 1933, remained dry until 1966--when it became the last state to repeat prohibition. Thereafter the state adopted local option. A map showing the current division of wet / dry counties (and cities within counties) can be found here:
April 27, 1933: Leroy charged with, and pleads not guilty to, Intoxicating Liquor [need to clarify nature of this charge]

December 5, 1933: Leroy pleads guilty to a charge of Having Whiskey; matter continued as to Howard. (Note that December 5, 1933 is the date on which the 21st Amendment becomes effective.)

December 23, 1933: Leroy sentenced: $300 fine and 90 days in jail (on Having Whiskey charge). Leroy was given an opportunity to speak but "had naught to say." Half of his sentence -- as to both fine and jail term -- is suspended.

December 27, 1933: Leroy is issued an unspecified citation (likely relating to the next entry, below).

January 17, 1934: Leroy's suspension of sentence is revoked; full fine of $300 and full jail term of 90 days is imposed.

June 11, 1934: Ruling on Leroy's appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirms the revocation of suspension of his sentence.

April 20, 1936: Amos and Leroy indicted for Possessing a Still.

February 1, 1937: Mississippi Supreme Court affirms Amos's conviction arising from the April 20, 1936 indictment. From the court's decision:
The evidence against appellant was obtained by agents of the Federal Government. They, having previously ascertained the location of a still, went up north of Hattiesburg, where the still was located, about 5:45 in the morning, to some point in the edge of a swamp on Leaf river, and saw there Leroy McLemore and another bring certain parts of a still. They again went to the place and found some mash almost ready to run. They again went to the place, on the day the appellant was arrested, and found a regular still for distilling whisky set up, and Leroy McLemore was building a fire around it, but they did not see any vessels in which the whisky, when made, was to be placed. They arrested Leroy McLemore, and one of the federal officers went to a point above the still, and between that and the McLemore residence, where there was a path leading to the still, and secreted himself. Shortly thereafter, Amos McLemore appeared with an empty keg on his shoulder and was walking toward the still; the federal officer followed him, and when appellant noticed this, he threw the keg down, whereupon the officer told him to go on to the still. When they reached the still where Leroy McLemore and the other person were, Leroy McLemore was asked to whom the still belonged. He stated that it belonged to him and the appellant. He was then asked upon whose land it was situated, and he stated that he did not know; that the McLemore estate had not been divided. These statements were made in the presence of appellant, were not denied, and thereafter appellant confessed ownership of the still, and requested the federal officers not to talk about the matter, as he (appellant) had a job on the G. & S. I. Railroad and feared he would lose it, and he also asked that they be taken to some jail other than that at Hattiesburg. The officers refused to do this, and Leroy McLemore and the appellant were placed in jail at Hattiesburg.

The appellant offered no evidence at all, and asked for no instructions, and the court admitted the above stated evidence.
McLemore v. State, 172 So. 139 (1937).

May 10, 1937
: Amos charged with Manufacturing Liquor.

November 10, 1937: Howard charged with Possessing Liquor and Possessing Still, enters not-guilty plea. Case set for trial "3rd Wednesday."

November 30, 1938: Leroy receives a jury trial on a charge of Possessing Liquor. Jury finds Leroy "guilty as charged, and recommend the mercy of the court." Leroy is given an opportunity to speak but declines to do so. He is sentenced to one year of hard labor in the state penitentiary [presumably at Parchman]. (Based on the June 5, 1939 opinion by the Mississippi Supreme Court, I deduce that Leroy was also charged and, on November 30, 1938, convicted with Possession of a Still.)

December 5, 1938: Howard receives a jury trial on a charge of Possessing Still. Jury finds Howard "guilty as charged." Sentencing is deferred to July 5, 1939.

December 6, 1938: Howard sentenced to two years' hard labor in State Penitentiary on Possessing Still conviction.

[Note that the dates for the preceding two entries are reversed in the Forrest County Circuit Court minute books. Needless to say, Howard couldn't possibly have been sentenced before he was tried, so I restored the dates to their logical chronological order.]

December 9, 1938: Howard moves to set aside the verdict and for a new trial.

May 5, 1939: Howard charged with "Contempt of Court committed in the presence and hearing of the court. Adjudged to be in contempt of court." Fined $100 and sentenced to 30 days in jail. A margin note indicates "certif. of appeal 5/16/1939."

June 5, 1939: Mississippi Supreme Court issues decision on Leroy's conviction for "possession of a still," presumably on appeal of his November 30, 1938 conviction. The decision recites in part:
The evidence in regard to the still was procured by United States officers, who, discovering the still on certain lands, with mash ready for distillation, secreted themselves nearby. When LeRoy McLemore came upon the scene early in the morning, dipped some of the mash from the barrels, placed it in the still, and lighted the fire under the distillery, one of the officers approached and placed him under arrest. According to their evidence he made a voluntary statement, to the effect that the still belonged to him and his brother jointly, and was jointly operated by them. There was ample evidence to show that the confession was voluntary, and that no promise or threat was made to secure it.
The still was located upon land formerly owned by the appellant's father, who had died, and which his mother occupied as her home. There was no proof to show that the appellant occupied the property as an heir, or that he was occupying it at all, any further than to operate the still upon it. The federal officers had no search warrant, but under the law of the state the widow of a homesteader is entitled to use the homestead during her lifetime, and consequently she has the right of possession to the exempt homestead, and to its proceeds, for her support, during her lifetime or the period of her widowhood
McLemore v. State, 189 So. 525 (1939).

November 28, 1939: Leroy charged with Manufacturing Liquor.

November 29, 1939: Howard charged with Possessing Liquor.

December 9, 1939: Hearing on Howard's motion to set aside verdict/for new trial for Possessing Still and on his motion to set aside judgment on his contempt conviction. His motion is overruled, but judgment is modified. The $100 fine stands, but his 30-day sentence is suspended pending good behavior.

January 26, 1940: The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issues its decision in an appeal from a judgment of forfeiture of a two-door Ford sedan that had been found to have been used by Leroy in the unlawful manufacture of liquor. From the Fifth Circuit's decision:
The district court found that Howard McLemore, who bought the car, had a record for handling tax-unpaid liquor, having been previously convicted of violating the internal revenue laws with reference thereto, and that this reputation was known to appellant [the Federal Credit Company] before it acquired the paper evidencing the unpaid purchase price of the car, but that the Credit Company had a conversation with Howard McLemore, and from this conversation reached the conclusion that it would be safe in buying the paper, as he would not use the car for handling such liquor, but would keep it for use principally by his wife as a family car; that thereafter Howard lent the car to his brother, Leroy McLemore, who at the time was engaged in the unlawful manufacture of whiskey, and who placed two kegs in it that were intended to be used for the purpose of depositing and concealing whiskey, upon which the tax had not been paid, with the intent of defrauding the Government of the revenue thereon.

The car was seized by federal officers as Leory [sic] McLemore drove up in it and stopped in front of a house in the rear of which an illicit still, in which Leroy had an interest, was located. The officers had previously seized the still, and were awaiting the arrival of the owner or operator, as they observed no place to store the daily output thereof and expected some one to come who would haul away the whiskey that had ben run that day. It was early in the night when Leroy drove up in the car, stopped, left his lights on for a while, and sat there a few minutes to get his bearings; then turned off his lights, threw a ten-gallong [sic] keg on the ground, got out and walked around the car, flashed an electric light, picked up the keg, put it on his shoulder, started toward the path leading to the side of the house, and whistled. One of the officer [sic] answered the whistle, and arrested him. Upon searching the car, they found the rear seat completely gone, and another ten-gallong [sic] keg and particles of rye, sugar, and charcoal in the back of the car where the seat had been. Both kegs had the odor of whiskey in them, and were of the type commonly used by men engaged in the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor.

Purchase slips and receipts were found on the person of Leroy McLemore at the time of his arrest, which listed articles and equipment similar to those found at the site of the still. Some of the slips listed rye, sugar, charcoal, and other materials generally used in connection with the operation of a whiskey distillery. These and other circumstances in evidence convinced the court below that the kegs and other materials in the car were used and intended to be used in the manufacture and sale of tax-unpaid intoxicating liquor.
Federal Credit Co. v. United States (1940).


WPA Life Histories, courtesy of the Library of Congress. Cool.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/american-life-hist/

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Backwoods Scot anti-authoritarianism

Here's Ed Payne's take (email sent to me on September 23, 2009) on the distinction between the seemingly upright, lifelong Baptist Walter Scott McLemore, my great grandfather (son of Maj. Amos McLemore), and Walter's sons Amos, Howard and Leroy, who were moonshiners/"beer joint" owners.

* * *
But after finding the 1917 arrest article, I've been mentally stepping back somewhat from too much reliance on the "blame it on the 1920s" hypothesis. Let's go back to the analogy of conventional families who spawned drug dealing baby boomer children. In this case let us say that said family lives on a farm. Now we have to imagine the adult children continue to live on the farm with their supposedly conventional and upright parents. But these parents permit their children to continue living on the farm even after they have been busted numerous times. And the parents would have to at least suspect that their brood are growing pot right there on their property. At this point one has to wonder exactly how conventional the parents really are. If not in sympathy with their children's activities, they are at least very, very tolerant of them. Or maybe we need to question what "conventional" means.

So I have to return to your original multi-generational idea. I'm not so sure it has to do with family poverty, which you've heard was the common condition of the Piney Woods, so much as with some branches of the family going peckerwood. "Peckerwood" is a derisive term but one I will use here to denote those hard nosed, ornery, feisty and usually poor plain folks who some scholars (Grady McWhiney chief among them) have strongly equated with the Scots-Irish (aka Celtic) line. A peckerwood is suspicious / defiant of legal authority and will demonstrate a strong tendency to take the side of his or her kin--regardless of the transgression involved. I made passing noted of this mentality in my Sarah Collins article.

Now I think McWhiney went way overboard by seeming to associate peckerwoodness with genetics rather than cultural heritage. That said, I concede that peckerwood characteristics originally appeared most strongly among Scots-Irish immigrants. Take a peckerwood out of the Piney Woods and put him in Appalachia and he is a hillbilly. Put him in a more agricultural setting and he is a redneck. Put him in the oil fields and he is a roughneck. Put him on Fox News and he's Sean Hannity / Glenn Beck. You got a small dose of stereotypical criticism of blacks in Hattiesburg. Yet I can refer you to articles in which McWhiney characterizes Celts as lazy, ignorant, amoral, and indolent compared to their Anglo neighbors. Those terms sound familiar?

At some point the likely Anglo-Scots cultural moorings of Amos McLemore must faded in the midst of the surrounding peckerwood culture in which he and his descendants lived. Frontier necessity probably caused the shift from Episcopal to Baptist. Meanwhile, in the post Civil War period the tension between the rebellious, fiddle playing, whiskey drinking elements of that culture and the portion that sought to rein itself in by becoming teetotaling, dance-prohibiting Baptists grew more pronounced (and played itself out on a national level with Prohibition). Yet the Old Testament Baptist God of the teetotalers can himself be viewed as Supreme Ornery Cuss who created the Universe just so he could enjoy the satisfaction of tossing 97% of humankind into the eternal fires of hell--as the logic of full blown predestination doctrine demands. Once Baptist theology began inferring that being among the proper folks suggested you were among The Elect of God, Jasper Collins got disgusted enough to risk eternal hellfire by becoming a Universalist.

The point is that thus far your visit has been among the Baptist relations. But the peckerwood side of the McLemore family (and the Piney Woods in general) is still out there. It is living in mobile homes and less fashionable suburbs of Hattiesburg and it even shows up on the balcony of the Brownstone. It cusses and fusses and gets in family fights that smart folks know never to step in the middle of. And among the most outlaw of these peckwoods, moonshine has given way to meth labs.

Maybe the question is by what increments some members of the family became peckerwoods. Walter did not have to be a full blown peckerwood--just enough of one to side with "his boys" against the law. . . . [H]ow defensive could Walter have been concerning his moonshining sons and loose living daughters? Whatever his own feeling, no one else had better say a damn word.

Now consider one other element: Elma's brothers must have known about her affairs with Holmes and Bethea. Holmes was the county lawyer and thus a member of the hated legal authority and Bethea, though not Sheriff until 1948, was among the respectable people who certainly looked down upon the peckerwood, moonshining McLemore brothers. And they, in turn, despised the well-heeled social set of Hattiesburg, a goodly number of whom they knew had occasion to consume their products on the sly. No wonder they took their class hatred out on poor Jimmie French Moore. No wonder that he would have taken his own life if he felt that his efforts to lift himself up were in vain--that was and always would be a peckerwood like them. (Great mostly unknown movie on this theme is "Flesh and Bone" http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE5DB113DF936A35752C1A965958260 )

But I am back to the question of the transitional role of Walter S. McLemore. Was he only a passive "stand by your kin" peckerwood or had he himself ever been a peckerwood moonshiner? Or did William, Howard, and Leroy find their roll models among their neighbors and older cousins?

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

It's just me

I'm going to post something meaningful about the family history as soon as the storm of data flying at me from the Mississippi State Archives, interviews with old-timers and local historians, snippets from the living family members, criminal court minutes, obituaries, articles, deductions and inferences all settles into its proper place. Beyond a bare chronology for Elma that includes delivering five children by five different men and losing two tragically and untimely, and beyond getting the point that Prohibition and the dawn of the Jazz Age turned a respectable, religious family inside out, I don't really have a narrative yet. My brain orders chaos quite nicely if I go away for a while and leave it alone. When I come back, I find nice patterns, or at least stacks of information organized by category.

I'll take the time out to record a few disjointed observations about this place, i.e., the Mississippi Pine Belt, including Hattiesburg, aka the Hub City.
First, I have to acknowledge the truth of some stereotypes: the place is hyper-churchy and dismayingly right-wing (I was told that the Bay Area has a bad reputation, you know, for being so liberal, but, well, we're not all so bad, really); many, many fat -- not just overweight or plump or sporting forgivable middle-aged avoir du poids, but FAAAT -- people trundle the earth here; every courthouse has a statue of a Confederate soldier out front.

But the surprises are more interesting, and they include seemingly better race relations than in California, i.e., better in that there are meaningful relationships between blacks and whites. I'm staying on the University of Southern Mississippi campus, and I see black and white students intermingle far more than I've ever seen on any UC campus, or at Bryn Mawr for that matter. Black and white kids walk with, chat with, kid and banter together regularly, routinely, constantly. It's humdrum. They share lingo, churchiness, exaggerated politeness, Southern-ness. They have almost everything in common -- I'm the outsider. The same easy black-white collegiality is evident at restaurants and other business establishments. I've even seen a few multiracial couples, as well as white folks who evidently had adopted black children. I'm told that both are trends and becoming more common. Hattiesburg is mostly white but has a black mayor and various black officials. I'm not feeling anything like the racial tension that no one likes to acknowledge permeates daily life in the San Francisco Bay Area, maybe because we have nothing to compare it with.

Other revelations: the earthy, rootsy, neo-Hippie elements in Hattiesburg and Jackson (cool music stores, restaurant/music venues, health food stores, book stores); the mini-Met museum in Laurel; the lack of hellfire at the Baptist church service I attended on Sunday with my cousin; the fact that Ed Payne's ancestors started a progressive/populist newspaper in Jones County (in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries?) and became Universalists. More to come I imagine -- I've only been here two weeks.

Oh, and in the spirit of the place I've discovered McDonalds' milkshakes are awful, but Dairy Queen's are perfect.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Bizarre synchronicity in two seemingly unrelated deaths

Ed Payne's wizardry continues. In an email message from him I received today -- excerpted below -- he describes the coincident circumstances of the unrelated deaths, years apart, of, respectively, a daughter and her likely father. The daughter was my father's half-sister, Shirley, the fourth of Elma Rose McLemore's five children. Shirley was killed by a drunk driver while she was getting off a school bus when she was eight years old. The father was presumptively Shirley's, one of Elma's five baby daddies.

From Ed's message:

"[F]ound an article describing the accident that took the life of Elma's daughter, Shirley Moore. And this is where it gets weird. Shirley was killed by a drunk driver on December 17, 1937, as your father noted in his chronology. I decided while I was at it to look for a grave inscription for David W. Holmes, the lawyer / county attorney who your father's chronology suggests might have been Shirley's father. His grave was listed in "Forrest County Tombstones" so I looked for a newspaper obituary. I missed it the first time because it wasn't in the back pages; it was a big story on the front page. The newspaper reported that Hattiesburg mayor David W. Holmes died when his car was involved in a head on collision with another vehicle containing "six drunken negroes." The date Mayor Holmes died was December 17, 1950--13 years to the day after the death of Shirley Moore."

Thursday, September 17, 2009

January 27, 1944 letter from Jimmie French Moore to his mother, Elma Rose McLemore Dearman

Dear Mother,

Received the telegram Boy was I worried I came back from the Show and in Runs a Boy and Tell me I have a Telegram I didn't know what to think. I haven't heard from any one else. They told us to have our Bags ready at 7:30 tomorrow don't know where we are going Probable [sic] to another unit for training to wait for our Ship. we may go to new orleans or Texas or California after it or it may be in Boston or new york. If I find out it is in new orleans I will let you know and you all can come to N.O. to see me. I like the Ships like we go on. they have Some thing on them that Really take care of Sub!!!!! I wish you could See them. Did Rudis get the Pictures of the Ships I Sent. or at Least I think I Sent them I address [sic] them and dont know what I did with them. "I was not drinking." we really have good chow up here Better even than Pensacola. I haven't Been up town yet and don't intend to go. I may go to the Hospital for a while up here with my ____ [ears?] I had the Doc. look them over there aren't Bothering me But just to make sure he Says Come Back one day next week it will keep me over here a little Longer but I can't help it. Do you ever See Wilma? She told me you Said, I Said Something about her it is a mix up Somewhere why can't you two get along
I heard Some thing about you if it it [is] true you have Broken your word to me and I would hate to know you hadn't changed after all well will close & wait for ___ ____ So write Soon

Love
Jimmie

(Emphasis mine.)

Figuring out Elma: key perspective from Ed Payne

From an email received from Ed Payne on September 15, 2009:

"But what struck me after we parted yesterday was what my aunt has emphasizing to me. When I asked about who had the (black) Chatmon family band play at their houses, she pushed me to understand the generational divide in the 1920s. The generation born ca 1865 ~ 1895 clung to more strict codes of conduct. Yes, there might be frolics on Saturday night, but generally life was hard and grim and people stoic in the face of it. There was a huge change after WWI. The war supercharged the economy and there was a sense of breaking off old chains. Automobiles, illicit booze, and jazz were to that generation what birth control pills, illicit drugs, and rock and roll were to mine. Think of how many parents in the 1960s with conventional values gave birth to children who dealt drugs (= moonshining) and otherwise turned respectability on its head. And, yes, both the impact of the jazz generation and the rock generation filtered down even into Mississippi. The jazz generation the impact may have even more direct for the McLemore children because New Orleans, epicenter of jazz and easy morals, was close by and the Piney Woods had not entirely shed its rough and tumble timber boom rawness."

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Part 1: Elma Rose McLemore chronology (courtesy of Rudy H. Leverett, Wilma Moore Dyar and supporting documentation)

Background:

1830s -- John McLemore emigrates to the Piney Woods from South Carolina. He builds a log cabin along what is now Hwy. 11 in what became Eastabuchie, Mississippi, more or less on the border of Jones and Forrest counties. Our family calls this property the "Old Place."

October 5, 1963 -- Major Amos McLemore, John McLemore's son, is murdered by Confederate deserter Newt Knight while McLemore is back in Jones County from the front in order to collect Confederate deserters. Maj. McLemore's widow (and cousin), Rosa Lavinia McLemore, is left to raise 5 children under age 12 on her own during the remainder of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She never remarries. Her eldest son, John C. McLemore, dies unmarried at age 34 on April 3, 1888. His grave marker reads "How many hopes lie bured here."

Elma Rose McLemore

September 18, 1907. Born to Walter Scott "Bud" McLemore (son of Maj. Amos McLemore) and Mary Etta Lee McLemore on the "Old Place." Youngest of eight children.

December 27, 1923. Described as a "pretty" blonde with a bob, Elma elopes with J.D. (Jefferson Donald) Moore in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Walter Scott, her father, swears out a warrant for J.D. Moore's arrest for alleged abduction. Law enforcement in four states becomes involved, and the matter makes local front-page headlines for two days. One or two of Elma's brothers depart for Baton Rouge upon learning the couple is there. Family members later said that Elma wasn't in love with J.D. and had eloped with him to make J.D.'s brother Walter jealous after Walter dropped her. Elma leaves Moore about six weeks later and ultimately divorces him.

October 5, 1924. Gives birth to Wilma Jefferson Moore.

1925.  Is seeing J. Emmett Bethea, a pharmacist in Hattiesburg. Bethea is 12 years older than Elma. He lives with his parents and grown siblings, and his family is reasonably well to do.

June 7, 1926. Gives birth to Jimmie French Moore, idolized by his siblings. Jimmie enters the U.S. Navy at age 15. Presumably while in the military, he is diagnosed with what was then called manic depression and receives electroconvulsive therapy. While in the military he tries to persuade his mother to live a respectable life, offering to buy her a house if she does. In 1948, he buys her a house at 606 N. 25th Avenue in Hattiesburg. He commits suicide on April 29, 1950 after being put off a train for drunkenness in Trinidad, Colorado. He had just been accepted to medical school.

February 1, 1927. Marries William Wallace.

February 16, 1927. Walter Scott "Bud" McLemore, Elma's father and Major Amos McLemore's son, dies at age 54.

November 26, 1927. Gives birth to Harold Hugh Wallace. By no later than May 1928 William Wallace has deserted Elma, who has taken up with D.W. Holmes, a Hattiesburg lawyer who later becomes the Forrest County Attorney.

February 23, 1929. Gives birth to Shirley Irene Wallace. Shirley is killed by a drunk driver at the Old Place on December 17, 1937. The driver is sent to the penitentiary. Elma eventually signs a petition for the driver's pardon and release.

May 12, 1933. Marries Rudis Henry Liverett in Petal, Mississippi. Liverett deserts Elma after sixteen days of life together at the Old Place. Wilma Jefferson Moore's recollection of that event: "I was also there the night 'he' skipped out. She kept sobbing, she was hysterical -- she fainted several times. That night lives in my memory! The hallway was filled with people -- several holding kerosene lamps. My uncles (Mother's brothers) getting their guns together. They went out after him -- they were going to kill him. His family had gotten him out of town. They soon moved away. My Aunt Inez (wife of Amos, Mother's brother) always took charge if anyone in the family was hurt or sick because she had the 'big' doctor book and was very smart. She was bathing Mother's face and bringing her around when she would just faint away. Someone stood by her holding a lamp. Everyone was out in the hall -- all members of the family, children and adults. I recognized that my mother was hurt beyond repair. I learned to hate that night. I was nine years old."




Tuesday, September 15, 2009

2nd 1923 front-page article re my grandmother's "kidnap"

Hattiesburg American, December 29, 1923

RUNAWAY BOY AND GIRL REPORTED IN BATON ROUGE, WED
______________

Pretty 16-Year-Old Ella [Elma] McLemore and J.D. Moore Missing From Hattiesburg Since Sunday Night, Said to Have Been in Louisiana Capital -- Brothers of Elopers Rush to Investigate -- Warrant for Lad's Arrest On Kidnapping Charge, Still Held by Forrest Officials
______________

MARRIAGE MAY BE ANNULLED BY FATHER, GIRL UNDER AGE
______________

The parents of Miss [Elma] McLemore, pretty 16-year-old bobbed-haired blond, who disappeared so mysteriously from in front of the Methodist Hospital in this city last Sunday night, this afternoon are awaiting confirmation of the reports coming from Baton Rouge, La, earlier in the day, that the girl had become the wife of J.D. Moore, with whom she is alleged to have eloped.

Reports from the Louisiana capital state that the youthful pair were married on Christmas Day.

A married sister of Miss McLemore, resident in Baton Rouge, has not yet been heard from.

Walter Moore, elder brother of J.D. Moore, whom W.S. McLemore has charged with kidnaping, and a brother of the girl, left for Baton Rouge last night to investigate the reports coming from there that the couple had been seen earlier in the week.

Neither Mr. McLemore nor Sheriff Edmonson, who has a warrant sworn out against Moore, has heard from Baton Rouge officially during the day.

The disappearance of the youthful pair has created great excitement throughout South Mississippi, and in certain sections of three other states. Charging young Moore with forcibly carrying away his 16-year-old daughter against her will, Mr. McLemore set in motion the wheels of the departments of justice of four states, with a view of apprehending the couple, returning his daughter to her home near Eastabuchie, and of prosecuting the lad.

Reported in Baton Rouge

The following dispatches came over the Associated Press wires to The Hattiesburg American this afternoon.

Baton Rouge, La, Dec. 29 -- J.D. Moore, of Hattiesburg, and Miss [Elma] McLemore, are here and are married, according to the police. An investigation is being made.

While officials of four states were searching for J.D. Moore, 18, and Miss [Elma] McLemore, 16, of Petal, Miss., who mysteriously disappeared from their home Sunday, the pair slipped quietly into Baton Rouge, stayed a day or two with a married sister of the girl, and, according to the police, left last night for Hammond.

Meanwhile the father of the girl has sworn out a warrant for the arrest of young Moore on a charge of abduction. It is said that the young couple were married before reaching Baton Rouge.

Today information was received that two brothers of the girl had left for Baton Rouge. The sheriff and police of Baton Rouge were notified, as the exact intentions of the brothers were not announced.
_______________

Miss McLemore, a mere child, light complexioned, light bobbed hair, wore a gray suit and a blue sweater when her mother and sister saw her for the last time in an automobile in front of the hospital in this city. As described in The American yesterday, the mother and a sister had entered the hospital to visit a patient, when the sister returned to the waiting automobile, to find Miss [Elma] McLemore in tears. She refused to be comforted, and a young Moore declined to give the reason for his companion's crying. The sister returned to the hospital to make a report to the mother, and when the pair returned, the automobile had disappeared.

Leaving no trace, the disappearance caused worry to the girl's parents, and the following day a warrant was sworn out at the sheriff's office, at the request of Mr. McLemore. The authorities of four states were asked to engage in the hunt.

That a kidnaping had occurred was doubted by close friends of Miss McLemore and of Moore. Both had been companions for some time, and, it is said, had planned marriage. Because of the girl's youthful age, however, the parents would not consent to this, and instructions were given the marriage license clerk at the Forrest county court house to refuse to issue a license to the pair, should they apply.

If the marriage ceremony was performed either in Mississippi or Louisiana, it is likely that it will be annulled by the courts, as Miss McLemore is still two years under the legal age whereby a license may be obtained without the parents' or guardian's consent.


Monday, September 14, 2009

From front page 1923 newspaper article about the "kidnap" of my grandmother at age 16

Hattiesburg American, December 28, 1923:

EASTABUCHIE GIRL BELIEVED KIDNAPPED; PETAL BOY SOUGHT
__________

16-Year-Old Ella [Elma] McLemore Disappears From In Front of Methodist Hospital, While Authorities of Four States Search for J.D. Moore, Two Years Her Senior -- Father Swears Out Warrant for Abduction
__________

RUMOR COUPLE WAS IN BATON ROUGE
__________

Wanted on a charge of kidnaping a 16-year-old girl on Monday night, the police and county authorities of four states today are searching for J.D. Moore, 18 years old, who resides near Petal, a short distance from Hattiesburg.

Missing from her home at Eastabuchie is Miss [Elma] McLemore, 16 years old, who is believed to be in young Moore's company.

The police and county authorities of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee, have been given a description of the youthful pair, and have been asked to apprehend either or both of them. Moore is wanted on the charge of abduction, a warrant having been sworn out for his arrest, and placed in the hands of Sheriff W.M. Edmondson of Forrest county.

The greatest mystery surrounds the disappearance of the pair.

On Sunday night -- the day before Christmas Eve -- young Moore drove to the Methodist Hospital in this city with Mrs. W.S. McLemore, the mother, Miss [Elma] McLemore, and a second sister, to visit a patient there. Miss [Elma] McLemore remained in the motor car with Moore, while the mother and the sister entered the institution.

GIRL FOUND CRYING

The mother remained longer in the institution than the daughter. The younger girl, returning to the car, according to the reports filed with the sheriff's office, found her sister in tears. She refused to answer any question as to the cause, and the male companion was equally as mute.

The sister returned to the Methodist Hospital to make a report to the mother. The pair immediately left for the street where the automobile had been stopped, but both the motor car and the occupants had disappeared.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Introductions: archives, Jackson, Ed Payne and Gaelic

The McCain Archives in at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg are electic. There are minutes from the Leaf River Baptist Church which various ancestors attended; Forrest County criminal records, in which all my McLemore great uncles' names -- Amos, Howard and Leroy -- appear repeatedly in connection with offenses relating to owning and operating a distillery; a vast collection of photographs donated by a commercial photographer who worked in Hattiesburg in the 1940s and 1950s; and, maybe best of all, a Hattiesburg "city directory," which is basically a phone book that also includes address, whether the person in question owns or rents, and his/her occupation. That alone is worth this trip.

Met the wonderful Ed Payne yesterday in Jackson. His ancestor, the principled outlaw Jasper Collins, presumptively was an accomplice to the murder of mine, Major Amos McLemore in October 1863. (Jasper was one of Newt Knight's lieutenants.) And yet there we sat in a hip little Jackson cafe, chatting warmly, exchanging ideas and sharing hypotheses. Tomorrow Ed's going to show me the inner workings of the Mississippi State Archives.

After Ed and I parted, I attended a Celtic Fest in Jackson.
Sat in on a workshop for fiddlers peopled by a surprisingly large number of amateurs wanting tips and guidance on their fiddling. Ate pink cotton candy. Learned from an Irish linguist that the correct, Gaelic pronunciation of the original McLemore name, Mac Gille Mhuire, is Mac-YILL-eh-Vwurr-uh. Yes, with a "v" sound. It means "son of a devotee of [the Virgin] Mary." The Mac Gille Mhuires, named as such, originated in the Celto-Norse regions of the Irish and Hebridean seas, including the Isle of Man, the Isle of Lewis, and Waterford. I.e., Vikings raided the lands ringing the Irish Sea and intermarried, if that's the right word, with the resident Celtic women, largely absorbing their language and culture.

Drove out Highway 11 today under a rain-laden sky past the McLemore Old Place -- the log cabin built in the 1830s by Major Amos McLemore's father. Dad was born and lived there on and off throughout his childhood. After only a few weeks of marriage to my Mommee, Elma Rose McLemore, my Dad's father slipped out a cabin window. My Aunt Wilma remembers her uncles and the other grownups gathering in the large cabin hallway with kerosene lamps and guns and Mommee "fainting" repeatedly. My uncles went out after Dad's father but never found him. Roughly nine months later My Aunt Wilma walked into the house one day when she was 9 years old and saw her mother sitting in bed with a new baby. She asked in dismay, "Where did you get him?" to which Mommee replied "Out of a hollah log."

The rain on the way home was so torrential my wipers couldn't keep up with it. I almost had to pull over.

Friday, September 11, 2009

May 18, 1937 letters from Velma Evans to my great-grandmother, Mary Etta Lee McLemore, and my grandmother, Elma Rose McLemore Moody

Velma Evans was a young African-American woman who took care of my aged and ailing great-grandmother, Mary Etta Lee McLemore. Mary was the wife of Walter Scott McLemore, Maj. Amos McLemore's grandson. My father remembered Mrs. Evans like this: "Velma was a very gentle and loving woman who must have lived nearby, but I can't imagine just where." (Letter from Rudy Leverett to Victoria Bynum, March 13, 1996)

* * *

Newton Miss

Dear Mrs. McLemore

I got here ok found all well But my Brother is mity sick oh we sure have the grass up here I will try to get back just ase soon ase I can. Mama. say she wash you hade [?] some of this pritty graden she sure have a pritty garden. I cant write for thank of this grass cotton tell all the chrildren hello also Wilmar and Mrs. Lee to Will be home soon ase I can Close with Love Velma

Dear Mrs Elma got here ok Sunday nite left hattiesBurg one 44 Sunday Monro [?] was feeling fine when I left I hads to come through Meridan [Meridian] to get home and it cost me [$3.00] to go home that way so I ant [ain't?] got my fair Back home I and [am?] trying to get through so I can come home Sunday nite if I can the cotton sure is grassy you and Mrs. McLemore please sen me [$4.00] and I will work it out when I get back home I hade to pay Milton Doctor Bill and I hade to help pay it my Brother to Love to All

Velma Evans

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Austin and San Marcos

I drifted into Austin late, after 100 miles or so on state highway that rolled through dreamy, live oak-studded Texas Hill Country. Wallowed in two Tex-Mex tacos -- barbacoa and carne guisada -- at a hip little taco stand patronized by UT students with stretched earlobes.

Met Professor Victoria Bynum and her husband, Professor Gregg Andrews, in San Marcos the following morning, where they took me for breakfast at an elegant, rustic local restaurant. Camaraderie was instant and the talk flowed. Vikki and my father both wrote books laying to rest the popular myth that Jones County, Mississippi seceded from the Confederacy: Legend of the Free State of Jones by Rudy H. Leverett, University Press of Mississippi, 1984, currently being re-printed (http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Free-State-Jones-Leverett/dp/0878052275/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252629707&sr=1-5); and The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War by Victoria E. Bynum, University of North Carolina Press, 2002 (http://www.amazon.com/Free-State-Jones-Mississippis-Longest/dp/0807854670/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252629768&sr=1-2). As Drs. Leverett and Bynum established and re-established in 1984 and 2002, it didn't.

What did happen was that a group of deserters from the Confederate army hid out in Jones County's swamps and battled Confederate forces sent to Jones County to round them up and press them back into service. Professor Bynum and my father differed as to whether/to what extent the deserters was acting on anti-Unionist principle versus cowardice and criminality, but they enjoyed a civil and mutually respectful correspondence on the subject, and both wholeheartedly agreed that the evidence kills the secession-within-secession myth.

A Hollywood producer recently resurrected that myth from the dead. In the service of a script which he hopes to develop into a movie at some point, he got a couple of folks -- a professional best-seller author and the Harvard professor he hired to consult for the movie -- to write a book (State of Jones, released in 2009). The producer's book contends that the leader of the band of Confederate deserters was an anti-slavery guerilla hero acting on his purported anti-slavery convictions. It's been criticized for misuse of source materials and errors in scholarship. (See reviews in the Wall Street Journal (see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204621904574248902001381462.html) and The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/books/review/Reynolds-t.html?scp=1&sq=rebel%20rebel&st=cse); as well as the blog Renegade South (http://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/the-state-of-jones-by-sally-jenkins-and-john-stauffer-a-review-part-one/; http://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/part-two-review-of-sally-jenkins-and-john-stauffer-state-of-jones/; http://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/part-three-review-of-sally-jenkins-and-john-stauffer-state-of-jones/).

Some of us feel that what actually happened was plenty exciting without the taking of liberties with the historical record and overlaying modern values and socio-political sensibilities on it. Most of the residents of Jones County, Mississippi, including my great-great-grandfather, Major Amos McLemore, originally opposed Southern secession from the Union. Jones Countians were not planters, and relatively few owned slaves. Most of them felt that the Civil War was a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight." They overwhelmingly supported the Confederacy, however, once war was imminent -- what they supported was not slavery or secession but rather resistance to coercion at the point of a Union bayonet. Despite his pro-Union sensibilities Major McLemore was murdered on his own turf by the anti-Confederate deserters' leader, Newt Knight, and local legend holds that his blood seeps up from the floorboards where he fell. Knight went on to lead his band in a number of skirmishes with Confederate forces and to father and live openly with a mixed-race family with a former slave of his father's. A pretty good story without added fabrication, if you ask me, but I'd probably have to admit that the producer's version would make the better popcorn drama.

I'm content with drama imbued with grey hues, which is what I see in my family's story. Major McLemore's death seemingly precipitated a familial decline. HIs wife, who was also his cousin, was left to raise five children ages 12 and younger on her own during Reconstruction. Rosie Vinnie's eldest son died unmarried at age 34. His grave marker in the McLemore family cemetery on the Old Place reads: "How many hopes lie buried here." Another son was my great-grandfather Walter Scott McLemore, who with his wife Mary Etta Lee raised seven (eight?) somewhat wayward children on the Old Place. Some of them made whiskey; "the women" found work of sorts in New Orleans. Walter Scott's youngest was my grandmother, Elma Rose. She came and went over the years, leaving her five children to fend for themselves out on the Old Place or in town or wherever they could be quickly stowed.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Las Cruces to Austin

I was relieved to vacate the vicious little motel in Las Cruces where I stayed last night. On checking in, the malformed clerk instructed me not to smoke or drink outside my room, nor to entertain visitors. It was the best I could do in a town seemingly without lodgings, as I discovered after a fruitless drive through town.

Frankly, the place wasn't different from the motels my father, sister and I stayed in on a trip in 1976 from the Mountain States to Hattiesburg. My sister was eight, and I was fourteen. Dad had a conference in New Orleans and took the opportunity to spend a cross-country road trip with his daughters in a small Toyota and introduce them to the South he knew. The song "Hotel California" played whenever we turned on the radio, and I think even Dad started secretly liking it a little. I spelled him occasionally as driver (in those days, you could get a driver's license at 14) but got caught speeding in Wyoming. After stopping us, the state trooper asked if we happened to be LDS (i.e. Mormon). Only after I got the ticket -- and drove into town to pay it, which I guess is how things were done in those days -- did Dad point out that the cop seemed poised to spare Mormon speeders. We spent each night in a cheap motel room, and dinner was Cup-A-Soup made with hot water from the motel tap. Whenever we passed a truck driver on the road, my sister pantomimed tugging an imaginary train whistle, which invariably prompted the trucker to blow his horn. Each time this happened left me bitterly annoyed with the most recent example of my sister's brilliance at manipulating men.

We stopped for gas in Trinidad, Colorado. I was experiencing stabbing menstrual pain and, worse, weakness, cold, sweating and a sense of dread. I got out of the car and walked to where Dad was pumping gas. Then I was hanging by the arms from Dad's giant,gripping hands, my knees buckled beneath me. I'd fainted, Dad told me, worry in his face and voice as I dangled in his solid grip. Somehow I slumped to the bathroom with my lower insides on fire. The feeling was of a stab wound inflicted by a rusty knife that had then been twisted clockwise and counter-clockwise many times before being yanked out again. For a long, long time I didn't have the strength to emerge, and I thought it likely that I was dying. Compounding my grief was that I could not satisfy my irrational compulsion to reassure my sister and Dad that all would be fine. Dad sent my sister to check on me and then even knocked on the door himself to make sure I was alive and responsive. Eventually the crisis abated. I managed to assemble enough of myself to return to the car, and we glided away from the gas station and onto the freeway again. Some time passed, and Dad said matter-of-factly that his idolized older half-brother Jimmie French Moore, the family's would-be savior, had killed himself in Trinidad after World War II.

Other memories of that trip: profoundly delicious dinner at a small roadhouse in New Mexico with fried chicken and corn bread followed by a completely blinding dust storm once we were back on the road; the heart-quickening torment of Louisiana, a gradual, thick sweetness filling the car as we drove through the night with our windows down.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Winslow, Arizona

After retrieving the car yesterday from the mechanic I drove some 800 miles, making Winslow at about 2:00 a.m. I am about to behold what popular song (two that I know of) made iconic. Enough tells me the place is brutalized by sun: this cheap motel's swimming pool is indoors, and the view from my window is a bleached beige, low-lying scrubbiness.

It was my parents who put every mile and then some between me and the Piney Woods on purpose. They left Mississippi in 1961 fed up with the Civil Rights movement's halting progress and everything that went with that. A photo taken before they drove away from Hattiesburg shows dad sitting on the hood of their new used car, mom resting against the car and him, cradled between his long legs, both clearly high on the plan they made and the coming adventure. Mom talks about craving oranges on that trip, me in her belly. Dad later complained the car was a dud and he'd been cheated.

They had picked the Washington town near the Canadian border for the very reason that it was as far from Mississippi as they could get. They'd given themselves a choice between Bellingham, Washington and someplace in northern Maine and had applied to teaching jobs in both places. The jobs in Bellingham came through. Their trip and mine now are two sides of a coin, both accomplishments earned by the mile.

I figure I can make Fort Stockton, Texas today (never heard of it). San Antonio or Austin are too ambitious.

Friday, September 4, 2009

I feel violated

Just as I set out today my clutch began slipping -- car refused to go into gear, began emitting horrible smell, an ominous, irregular "clunking" sound started up whenever the car idled. Am sitting in mechanic's waiting room slowly absorbing the news that fixing this will run me $1500 and require me to delay my trip by one day -- at least. Hard to imagine a worse time for this expense.

Plus all the bittersweetness and glory my departure may have engendered in my loved ones is now automatically replaced by anticlimax and annoyance.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

It's all about to happen

Feeling very what makes you think you can up and drive to Mississippi. It's 2200 miles away, your car has 150K-ish miles on it, you're alone, you don't have a clear picture of what you'll be doing there, you're being pretty self-indulgent, and you really should be begging and pleading with people here to give you a full-time job. Then I remember that my aunt -- the one who died last year -- did the reverse trip maybe 20 years ago, when she was well into her 60s. In fact, if I remember right, her immediate family tried to get her to see how risky it was for a lone elderly housewife in a not-new American car to be tooling across the U.S.A., which for this particular aunt had the effect of a turbo charge. Also, she was coming to visit our family despite the fact that, when I was in utero, my parents had deliberately moved as far away from Mississippi as was possible to do while remaining within the continental U.S. Plus she knew part of her itinerary upon arrival involved staying with me and my lesbian roommates in San Francisco, a trans-cultural adventure that might be analogous to me stopping over at the home of a New Guinean shaman or some such (do I take off my shoes? my clothes? offer myself up for trepanning?). So for her, reservations like mine would be to laugh. At least by going I don't have to be ashamed that I took cover behind an excuse that doesn't even fool me, all to avoid living with a bit of uncertainty.

Re the comprehension-defying task of packing for a six-week trip I can say only one word: Target. The consequence of forgetting something is the modest expense of its identical twin replacement.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Getting ready

My father died in 1999, leaving much unsaid about his past. The rough sketch he did leave only inspires more questions. Dad was a great-grandson of a Confederate officer killed by deserters he'd been dispatched to collect. The Confederate was well regarded. He'd been a schoolteacher, a Methodist-Episcopal minister and local merchant. He'd opposed Southern secession as necessitating a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, but when war became inevitable he volunteered to raise a company in the Confederate army and became its commander. The house in which he was murdered is rumored locally to be haunted; it's said blood seeps up through the floorboards near the fireplace where he was shot.

As far as I can tell, the Confederate's death precipitated a familial decline. The generation encompassing my grandmother -- the Confederate's grandchildren -- struggled as subsistence farmers on their ancestral property near the Pearl River, a dogtrot cabin in the Piney Woods. My great-uncles were moonshiners. My grandmother, Mommee to me, was more or less a transient who drifted in and out of the lives of her five children (each by a different man). Dad never liked to talk much about any of that, but he said enough to convey certain images: being taught to toast wood shavings to put in the whiskey so it would color nicely, being paralyzed with terror at having to go alone to the outhouse at night, the Confederate's dagger on the mantel, hitchhiking with his mother, headlights from an uncle's car swinging around the side of the house just as the car took out a front porch pillar before tearing back into the woods to hide the still from "revenue men."

For years I've wanted to know the story to which these images belong, despite having squandered the opportunity to learn more of it from the Confederate's grandchildren and great-grandchildren while they were alive. The last of the Confederate's great grandchildren in my line died last year. We family waited in torrential, tropical rain to bury her. As I sat in the humidity in my cousin's enormous American car listening to Crosby Stills and Nash and breathing cigarette fumes, all of us waiting for the rain to let up, every facet of the loss settled on me.

The Great Recession has left me loosely employed. For the first time as an adult I have large blocks of flexibly scheduled time, and I can meet the obligations I do have by way of a cell phone, a laptop and a wireless connection. That reality has merged in my mind with the propulsion to put the family story together.

Still, I didn't understand I was taking this trip until Monday, two days ago, when I told the University of Southern Mississippi's housing people that I'd take the apartment they'd described to me, a one-bedroom in early 1960s graduate student housing. It's even possible my parents lived in one of these units just after they were built. An even spookier possibility: I may have been conceived in the apartment where I'm about to spend the next six weeks. Will confer with Mom re this.

Anyway, I take off on Friday. I figure it's a four-day trip if I drive eight hours a day. I got the car serviced today.

From Dad's chronology of childhood events

"1940 -114 Short Bay Street [Hattiesburg, Mississippi]. Mrs. Ravelsied owned this house. This is where 'Chiefy,' the soldier with the knife wound in his stomach, slept in the dark on a couch. An English couple called the Prestons lived upstairs. Harold [my father's brother] took care of [my father]. Leroy [an uncle of my father's] bought Jim and Harold a peanut roasting machine, and they sold peanuts to help feed the family."