Thursday September 30, 2004 Brooklyn Mississippi

Thursday September 30, 2004 Brooklyn Mississippi

Brooklyn, Mississippi, now if that name doesn’t conjure polar opposites in your mind nothing will. Perhaps, that accounts for the split personality in me and my father as well. He was born by midwife on the family homestead just outside of Brooklyn, a small, I mean really small, town halfway between Gulfport, right on the Gulf of Mexico, and Hattiesburg, just under 100 miles north. I spent my adolescent years on that farm. Well actually on the farm and in a place we rented in Biloxi.

My earliest recollection was of my grandmother and some of our neighbors in Biloxi arguing politics during the campaign of Dewey and Harry S. Truman. Back then, the south was a bastion of the democrats. When I put my mind to it, I can clearly see both our home in Brooklyn and the rental house in Biloxi. The farm was remote and I can remember some wonderful times there. One recollection is of a pig that I would ride for fun until he grew up and made it plain that his days of service as my horse had come to an end. Another was of gathering the eggs early in the morning and bringing them to my grandmother to make breakfast.

Breakfast in that time was a pretty substantial meal. Eggs and bacon or sausage purchased at the small grocery store in Brooklyn or in the larger store in Hattiesburg. I remembered the store in Hattiesburg because of the wonderfully aromatic smell of coffee that came from the coffee grinder that produced half or full pound bags of coffee. My grandmother loved coffee and from a young age, I was given half coffee and half condensed milk every morning with breakfast. Besides bacon and eggs, breakfast came with a big plate of grits—ground up hominy boiled until soft with the consistency and appearance of cream of wheat, but with a more savory flavor than the sweeter wheat cereal. The way you ate grits was to salt and pepper the glob on your plate then mix them with a good measure of butter—a couple of heaping tablespoons. Now you were ready to mix in your eggs and eat the mixture. From the time I can first remember eating at the breakfast table, that’s what I had for breakfast.

Living in Brooklyn in the middle of the last century was not the convenience-filled existence we enjoy today. Our water came from a well that we pumped by hand—we later got an electric pump. We had an outdoor toilet located walking distance from the house. Baths were once a week affairs as it required a large galvanized steel tub filled with water heated on a wood-burning stove. Baths happened Saturday night so that you were clean and presentable for going to church on Sunday, a small Baptist church a few miles from our place. The cemetery of that church is the final resting place for a number of my family including my lovely grandma. The church is gone and the cemetery is slowly being abandoned. I’m reminded of a Thomas Hardy poem but for the life of me cannot remember the title.

During the day, the one sound that echoed through the house was a radio tuned to a station broadcasting out of New Orleans playing Billie Holliday, and the big bands of that era. It was magical for me, hearing the sound of someone that far away, hearing the beat of music streaming though the house making you want to jump up and dance, something my grandma would do at the drop of the hat when the mood struck her. The nights though were scary for me. The one thing about that little farm was its isolation. It was nearly a mile from our closest neighbor. When there was no moon, the night became completely black. You could not see your hand in front of your face. And all around you were the sounds of nocturnal creatures.

That was home until my 7tth year when I joined my mother and father and three sisters in Texas and Mississippi became a drive of three or more days that happened between moves from one army assignment to the next. My father was in the service and we moved about every three years. A few years back, my father sold the small farm to his cousin and he hasn’t been back since. For me it’s been nearly 40 years since I’ve been back. The farmhouse that was once home to my family and me burned down 15 or so years ago under mysterious circumstances. Our 90-plus year old aunt was found dead outside the smoldering structure. My father was sure it was a robbery and homicide but there was no investigation and my aunt went to her final rest at the little church cemetery shortly before the little church joined the fate of those in the cemetery. God I wish I could remember that Thomas Hardy poem.