SATURDAY, JULY 3, 2010 10:00 pm EST


Well, I didn't make it to the Eudora Welty house in Jackson, Mississippi today. And I didn't make it to the Vicksburg seige site / battlefield, and I didn't see the Mississippi River at Natchez.

All these things I had planned to do -- but I was so overwhelmed by my experience with Medgar Evers that, once I left his house, I just drove West to Beaumont, Texas, where I am staying the night.



You may recognize the house in this photo if you have ever seen film clips of Medgar Evers or if you have watched (I have begged you to watch :-) ) the series, Eyes on the Prize. (Actually, this series is currently being shown again on Monday nights -- PBS. )

The house is the site of Medgar Evers's assassination. He was killed in the driveway as he arrived home from a late-night meeting. His pregnant wife, Myrlie, and his three children were inside the house as someone shot Evers from across the street.

My GPS device, housed in my cell phone, is sometimes my friend and sometimes my enemy. I had entered the address of this house (on Margaret Walker Alexander Drive), and it took me through a labyrinth of streets in a rather delapidated section of Jackson. The GPS told me, "Your destination is on the right" -- but all I saw were houses that did not look like the Evers site, a couple of gas stations / convenience stores with bars on the windows, streets with potholes (a la Highway 240 in Asheville), empty lots with lots of concrete and no grass.



Several times I have found my White face in places where I saw only Black faces around me, but in those circumstances I have usually been with a friend. Today was different.

I drove for miles through small Black neighborhoods, carefully following the GPS instructions to "Turn right. Turn right again. Turn left, then prepare to keep right." I thought if I heard "Recalculating route" one more time I would throw my cell phone out the window into one of the grassless lots. Not only that, but I was very quickly running out of gas.

I stopped at one of those convenience stores to fill up. You couldn't use a credit card at the pumps -- cash only -- so I had to go inside to pay. I was going to ask the man behind the counter where the Evers house was, but he hardly spoke English, and I didn't want to spend time asking and explaining. My day was getting away from me, with all that turning right and preparing to keep left and recalculating routes through the neighborhoods for the past hour.

I almost decided to stop looking, but then I stopped at another gas station where a gentleman was putting gas into his car. I approached him, introduced myself (offering my hand to shake -- a habit I have learned from my job, I guess), and asked my question. He knew the Evers house was "over in that direction" but he wasn't sure of the street name. He asked another man who drove up in a pickup truck -- and who looked a lot like Taj Mahal -- if he knew the exact location. They gave me good instructions, and as I left them, the first gentleman said, "If you get lost, just go up there to Freedom Corner. Anybody standing around up there will know where it is, for sure. And they won't bother you none."

I didn't know what to say to that. I was embarrassed. Had I done something, indicated somehow, that I was frightened? I didn't think so. My embarrassment made me stumble over my response, "Oh, I didn't think anyone would bother me!" -- which seemed to embarrass him.

Why should such a simple exchange -- asking directions -- elicit such feelings from us both?

I pondered that as I drove back toward Freedom Corner -- which I couldn't find. I finally pulled over into a lot near a school and tried the GPS device again. This time it guided me directly to the house.



The Evers house was several streets from the neighborhoods I had been cruising. This neighborhood was neater, with lots of same-style houses surrounded by grassy yards and flower beds and trees. I recognized it immediately from film clips, from photos in magazines and books, from Myrlie Evers's book , For Us, the Living, which I had read in my mid-teens.

This street wasn't busy. I guessed that these houses were air conditioned and that their residents didn't have to sit on porches or in yards to try to escape the heat.

I parked across the street from the house. The internet had told me that the house was now a museum, but that it wasn't open except by appointment. I didn't have an appointment, but after searching all that time I didn't intend to make this a drive-by looking.



Then I noticed a woman at the house. She was sweeping the carport and driveway.

Minnie Watson is her name, and she is the curator of the house/museum. She told me that the only reason she was there today is that she expected a group to come for a tour -- a family reunion group. They were expected at noon (it was now about 11:45 -- Central Standard Time :-) ), and I was welcome to wait and tour with them, if I wanted.

She swept, we talked. The group didn't arrive.

"Come on in," she said, at about 12:10, "Let's get out of this heat."

She told me that Myrlie Evers (who was pregnant at the time of the killing but who lost that child) had sold the house after the assassination and moved with her three children to California. The house then fell into in disrepair -- and was getting worse every year -- until the producers of the movie, Ghosts of Mississippi, wanted to use the house in the film. They repaired it -- new roof, new floors -- and redecorated it much as it was when the Evers family lived there.

I stayed there, talking with Minnie Watson (age about sixty-seven?), for at least an hour and a half.

She had actually known Medgar Evers, and she knows Myrlie and Charles (Medgar's brother, who still lives in Jackson). She knows the ninety-five-year-old lady who still lives in the house next door, and whose husband it was who fired his gun into the air when he heard the gunshot in the driveway next door.

Minnie was a freshman in college when she met Medgar Evers. He often spoke to groups of young Black students about education, jobs, about the importance of registering to vote. "This is your country, too," he told them.

The first time he ever really thought about being Black -- about being different from Whites -- was the day his father seemed especially sad. When young Medgar (about nine or ten at the time) asked him why he was sad, his father answered, "Because they hanged one of my good friends last night." They.

The family reunion group never showed up. I toured the house, we talked.

I recommended a book I have been listening to on CD as I drive: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett -- and of course Minnie has already read it. Stockett grew up in Jackson, Mississippi and has written this astonishing novel about the relationships between the Black "help" and their White employers in Jackson in the early 1960s. A strange coincidence, that just last night I listened to the section in the novel about the killing of Medgar Evers and the effect it had on Jackson's Black citizens.

Seeing this site was worth the driving, worth the time, worth missing the other sites I had planned to see today. Except for seeing Amity and James, I think that seeing this house and talking with Minnie Watson mayh well be the highlight of this trip.

Saturday, July 3, 2010
7:34 AM

That is CENTRAL Standard Time, so in God's time it is really 8:34.
My body shrieked at me as I fell out of bed an hour ago, "ARE YOU CRAZY?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!! IT AIN'T NOON YET, SO GET BACK IN THAT BED!!"
Nope. I have miles to go today, and many things to see before reaching Beaumont, Texas tonight. (That is, "If nothing happens." My grandmother used that phrase in regard to almost any future plan -- a certain way to guard against hubris.)
I staggered out of the elevator and felt my way along the walls to a booth in the hotel restaurant. There are small television screens at each booth, and all the tvs are muted until a man sits in the booth next to mine and turns the volume up. WAY up.
I prefer reading the captions scrolling across the screen, as this is quieter and less invasive this early in the morning and I have no newspaper.
"BAR ATTACK IN COLOMBIA KILLS AT LEAST EIGHT . . . . ." Oh my god! Eight people killed by a bear in Colombia?! I didn't know they even had bears in Colom . . . . . . . Oh. It was a BAR attack. Not a BEAR attack, as my brain initially signaled me. Is this mis-firing of electrons (or neurons or w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r) in my head a result of the early hour, or what? Too tired to think about it now.
It's beginning to get busier here now -- more folks coming in for breakfast. Occasionally -- and this is NOT a misfiring -- I hear just the beginning strains of "Dixie." (And it isn't a custom-made car horn on a pickup truck, as I have sometimes heard near Canton.) Where is that coming from?!
I hope my head clears before I pack my car and start out toward Jackson.

Oops. Let's try that again.

Here is a photo of the strong supports around Chaney's grave marker.

(I will get the hang of this Uploading Images thing.)

Well, this blogging is new to me. Val, I didn't mean to put the story of our visit beside the picture of Chaney's grave. Here are more photos, I hope . . . .

Friday, July 2, 2010 8:45 PM

It is good to have a long-time friend who not only allows me to stay at her place on my road trip, but who insists on getting up early -- on her day off -- to make coffee and chat with me before I start out again. Not only that: she even loaned -- and packed with leftovers from our dinner last night -- a cooler for me to carry along the road. I did not share with her that I have a car full of snacks -- most of them chocolate-covered -- to keep me alive as I travel.

Val is an optimist, a great listener, and she laughs at my jokes. The only thing I think could be improved in Valerie is her neck, which -- due to an almost fatal car accident last December -- is full of hardware and doesn't serve her well when she tries to twist her head around really fast to look at something behind her. No matter. I am able to overlook this flaw most of the time. In the future, she and I are going to take a Road Trip together and it will be my job to look behind us when necessary.

I left Val's at about 9:00 and drove straight to Scottsboro, Alabama. Not only does Scottsboro have the largest Unclaimed Baggage Center in the world --which I visited first thing -- but the town is also the site of the "Scottsboro Boys" trial, which took place in the courthouse there in March, 1931.

Nine Black men, ages thirteen-to-nineteen , were accused of gang-raping two white women on a train just outside of town. They were caught, shackled, and taken into Scottsboro, where the first trial took place just two weeks after their arrests. Eight were convicted and sentenced to death; jurors couldn't reach a verdict for the youngest defendant. The case is much too complicated to write about here. There were several trials, the NAACP became involved, and the case is called "the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement," though I'm not sure I agree with that one.

There is a small church in Scottsboro -- 132 years old and built by former slaves -- which houses the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center. Unfortunately, it was closed today. I did examine the courthouse and the historic section of town, however. Scottsboro is typical of so many Southern towns during the Depression years, which is one thing that makes it so interesting to me (besides the trial, of course). Judging from photographs and film clips I've seen, the historic section is much the same as it was in 1931.

Trivia Question: What was the site of Ricky Nelson's last concert? (First of all, younger ones, you have to know who Ricky Nelson was.) The answer: Guntersville, Alabama, which I nodded to as I drove by today. Val had told me that Nelson performed a fundraiser concert there and was killed in the plane crash the very next day as he left the area.

Highway 431, between Guntersville and Gadsden is the ugliest stretch of road I have ever seen -- and this includes Russ Avenue in Waynesville. Actually, picture Russ Avenue, but with about six lanes of traffic and going on for miles and miles. Think of any fast food restaurant you've ever seen, and there are dozens of them along that stretch of road -- along with hundreds of bargain furniture stores, pawn shops, tattoo parlors, auto repair shops, and Lord Knows What All. There was no grass, and if there were trees, they were hiding.

I arrived at the Holiday Inn Express in Meridian, Mississippi at about 5:00 PM-- and it is first class, open for only two months.

Immediately after I checked in a drove out to see the James Earl Chaney Memorial. (Here's another history lesson for you, Todd! You asked for it. :-))

During Freedom Summer (1964) scores of folks (many Northerners, mostly white, mostly young) moved into Mississippi to encourage Blacks to register to vote. (African Americans all over the Deep South were being murdered for trying to register.)

Briefly (because I know you've already stopped reading, anyhow): In the summer of '64 three young men, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman (both White) and James Earl Chaney (Black) were stopped by "the law" near Philadelphia, Mississippi, kept in jail for a few hours, and then released. Somewhere along the road, as they tried to get back to headquarters, they were stopped and driven to a remote part of the county and murdered. Schwerner and Goodman -- Goodman had been in Mississippi only one day -- were shot. Chaney was brutally beaten, tortured, and then shot. Their burned-out car was discovered after many weeks, and even more weeks went by before an informer told the FBI where the bodies could be found.

Chaney could not be buried in a white cemetery beside Schwerner and Goodman -- segregation laws and all -- and he was buried here in Meridian.

I don't know what I expected in visiting his grave and "Memorial." I left the hotel and was soon out in the country, driving along a small, two-lane road toward the gravesite. (I asked the Black receptionist at the Mississippi Welcom Center how to get there. She was able to tell me, but there was no printed information available. When I got to the hotel and asked the White desk clerk where it was, she had no idea, nor did a couple of the Black (younger) clerks with her.

The "Memorial" is about six miles out of town, and sits closer to the small, sandy dirt road than the other graves there. It sits apart from the others and is surrounded by woods -- no houses, no cars, not even many other graves there.

There had been one of those small, round "photo holders" on the Memorial/grave; it had been broken out. And something I have never seen before: the gravestone/marker was supported by large pieces of iron -- put in place, no doubt, to keep the stone from being vandalized. (I'll post a photo if I can.)

On the marker: an engraving of two hands clasped in friendship (reminded me of the Building Bridges logo); "James Earl Chaney: May 30, 1943 -- June 21, 1964"; and "There are those who are alive, yet will never live. There are those who are dead, yet will live forever. Great deeds inspire and encourage the living."

Chaney's mother is buried beside him.

I don't feel like writing anymore tonight.

Thursday/Friday, Julyl 1/2
12:30 AM

It doesn't seem fair, somehow, that after leaving the car dealership at around 11:30 (three hours after I had planned to set out), and going home to pack the car that I was unable to pack last night, I should go down into my basement to unplug the dehumidifier and find the basement flooded.
It was not a huge flood -- just enough to soak some cardboard boxes near the dehumidifier and to threaten electrocution from the extension cord lying in the water.
I chose not to deal with it -- just threw several rolls of paper towels in the water, unplugged the cords, packed the car and left. I wasn't even in Georgia yet and was choosing to "think about that tomorrow."
Following Michael's directions (he is my younger brother who knows how to get to places), I drove to a plot of land near Toccoa, Georgia. which has been in our family for many, many years. In the 1920s and 1930s the land was pasture and soy bean fields, and cotton grew there. I imagine that it was a sort of Depression-era compound, with several family members owning houses within shouting distance of one another. All the houses (except one very delapidated one) are gone now.
To reach the land I drove through Toccoa, turned onto Highway 17 and from there to Highway 106. Between two small country churches I turned down an overgrown lane and drove back to The Property -- now grown over with weeds, scrub pine (is that the correct term?), and especially blackberry bushes. I saw at least 6,498,278 blackberries today.
I am not fond of blackberries, but these are small and very sweet and turned my fingers purple as I picked 479 of them to give to my friend, Valerie, at whose Rome, Georgia home I am staying tonight. Val is an old friend -- a strong woman who survived an almost-fatal car accident in December. When I forget that I, too, am a strong woman, she reminds me.

When I arrived at Val's about 7:30 PM, I jumped out of the car, shoved the container of berries at her, and shouted, "Quick! Point me to a shower!" I had found a tick in my hair as I drove from Toccoa to Rome, and for many miles I imagined that his family and friends were attaching themselves to my skin under my perspiration-soaked jeans and tank-top. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to pull over to the shoulder of Highway 365 and disrobe, but I didn't.
I caught the wayward tick and wrapped him in a tissue and closed him up in a cup of salsa, lid tight. I must remember not to dip tortilla chips in that cup tomorrow.
I have no doubt that tonight, out in my car parked in Val's garage, there are angry, disease-bearing ticks waiting for me in the folds of the carseats, under the mats, between the pages of my road maps, in the bag of chocolate-covered almonds I had planned to eat on the drive to Scottsboro, Alabama in the morning. But it seems foolish to fret about that at 1:36 AM. "I'll think about that tomorrow."

Thursday, July 1 at 10:30 AM

This morning before our Yellowbook staff meeting my "gud frind"/co-worker gave me a copy of an article from Southern Living: "Monroeville's Mockingbird: 50 Years after the debut of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's Alabama hometown celebrates the book that made it famous."
What is that word again? Serendipity?
I have read the article as I sit here at the car dealership -- after the staff meeting and after my 50% benchmark review -- waiting for my car repair to be finished so that I can Head South and West.
The article is primarily about the town and author -- how much the town has changed and how much Nelle Harper Lee (Nelle to her friends) disdains the celebrity that has surrounded the town since the publication of her only completed novel. (The Monroeville bookstore doesn't stock Charles J. Shields's 2006 biography of Harper Lee because she doesn't like it. )
Harper, now eighty-four, has lived in Monroeville all her life.
The beauty and feel of that novel may be one small part of what I would like to capture on this trip, though I know with the practical, realist part of my brain that this will be impossible. I haven't looked at my Alabama map for some hours, but I don't think Monroeville is even on my itenerary. Just didn't think of it until Lisa gave me this article.
One sentence from the article stands out: "You can't put the past behind you without understanding what it was like." I strongly desire to understand what it was like, but I have no desire to put the past behind me. I'll keep it beside me, if I can.
I had originally planned to be miles down the road at 11:00 on Thursday morning, I sit at the car dealership writing this blog. He says the car is ready to go. "The paperwork is ready." I fear I know what that means.
I didn't pack the car last night because we were apart from one another. Now from the dealership lobby to home, to some of my own "roots" near Toccoa, Georgia.
More soon.