It was hot. Lord it was hot. It felt like it was never wintertime when we traveled to see our relatives in the Delta. I would press my forehead against the glass of the car windows and watch the fields rush past like pages turning in a book and then get carsick. Every time, I would pull my head away from the window with a churning belly and a headache from the setting sun and I would wish, oh I would wish hard, that the Delta wasn’t so terribly and inexcusably boring.
My mother, born and raised in Greenville, obviously disagreed with me. She would point out flocks of nesting blackbirds that would rise as one out of a field of cotton into a swirling mass hovering just above the snowy tops of the plants. Once, she stopped the car and let us sneak up on a flock of geese in a field so that we could startle them and listen to them rustle up into the sky. Looking back, those were some of the most beautiful drives I’ve ever been on.
Because of our (often) vocal reluctance to enjoy the sights of the Delta and our inability to quit messing with each other in the car, we would pass a lot of the time listening to audio books. I will never forget the first time my mother popped in the cassette tape of Eudora Welty reading “Why I live at the P.O.”, all of us sticky from gas station Sprites and Skittles, pausing our fighting to listen to the old voice draaaaaawing out the vowels.
“Papa-Daddy,” she says. He was trying to cut up his meat. “Papa-Daddy!” I was taken completely by surprise. Papa-Daddy is about a million years old and’s got this long-long beard. “Papa-Daddy, Sister says she fails to understand why you don’t cut off your beard.”
So Papa-Daddy l-a-y-s down his knife and fork! He’s real rich. Mama says he is, he says he isn’t. So he says, “Have I heard correctly? You don’t understand why I don’t cut off my beard?”
“Why,” I says, “Papa-Daddy, of course I understand, I did not say any such of a thing, the idea!”
He says, “Hussy!”
I says, “Papa-Daddy, you know I wouldn’t any more want you to cut off your beard than the man in the moon. It was the farthest thing from my mind! Stella-Rondo sat there and made that up while she was eating breast of chicken.”
But he says, “So the postmistress fails to understand why I don’t cut off my beard. Which job I got you through my influence with the government. ‘Birds nest’- is that what you call it?”
Not that it isn’t the next to smallest P.O. in the entire state of Mississippi.
I says, “Oh, Papa-Daddy,” I says, “I didn’t say any such of a thing, I never dreamed it was a bird’s nest, I have always been grateful though this is the next to smallest P.O. in the state of Mississippi, and I do not enjoy being referred to as a hussy by my own grandfather.”
But Stella-Rondo says, “Yes, you did say it too. Anybody in the world could of heard you, that had ears.”
“Stop right there,” says Mama, looking at me.
So I pulled my napkin straight back through the napkin ring and left the table.
So sassy. Oh man, she was the sassiest! We learned quickly that our parents thought it was extra funny when Papa-Daddy said, “Hussy!” so we took to that word pretty quickly, for better or worse. Eudora was a hit.
That was the first time I ever remember hearing the name Eudora Welty, and I immediately felt at home with her. She talked the same way my Grand-daddy talked, slow and looping, like did they care if you were in a hurry to get somewhere? Well, too bad. She was one of our people, not particularly unique for having so many stories to tell; but utterly like no one else in her ability to put those stories to paper.
I never got to meet her, which is a pity as it seems that Grand-daddy knew practically everyone in the state of Mississippi and I feel that he should have introduced us. She would have gotten quite a kick out of him and me, us prank calling each other and poking fun at everyone around us. For years and years he would call me on the phone every single day and would make me pick up my violin and play him “Ashokan Farewell” from Ken Burns’s Civil War documentary. I really learned to hate that song, and years later, I would do almost anything for a chance to play it again for him, at least once more.
See, the thing about Eudora Welty is that you can’t help but think about your people when you listen to her speak or read her stories. This blog was supposed to be about her, and in the end it was about my mother and her father. I cannot separate my connection to her writing from my connection to my Mississippi roots.
I think she would have liked that, and I think she would be proud that I grew up and went to work in her favorite bookstore.
Eudora Welty’s bedroom and writing area
Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com.
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