Hitching a Ride to a Dream
This Natchez Trace business has morphed into a series. A lost girl brushes the Trace today. If this is your first visit to the blog, or if you’re catching up, please go back to this post and read forward to digest it whole.
Hitchhikin’ ain’t for sissies. Unless you’re a sissy like me, a stringy-haired hippie chick with a dream of actin’ in New York City. In Natchez, nobody cottoned to my dreams, my as-pir-a-tions. They tole me to settle down. To grow up. To do my duty to my momma and marry a good ole boy, pop out a coupla runts, visit Momma’s house every Sunday for lunch after church. Since the good ole boys worth marryin’ are being shot up in Viet Nam, and the good ole boys whose daddies bought ‘em out of that place are too rich for me, and the hippies I hang out with usually all just want to live in sin, it looks like I won’t be gettin’ married any time soon in Natchez.
And, here’s the other problem with Natchez. My momma lives there. Whores act. That’s what my momma said. My actin’ was like being a hussy. Teasin’ people into believin’ I’m somethin’ I ain’t. Gettin’ them to caress me with their lustful eyes and thoughts of sex.
Even when I played Holy Mary Mother of God in the nativity scene at church, she said this. The first time I said a cuss word in a part, she cried and had to go home and take a shower because my performance made her feel so filthy dirty.
I said the word ‘dang.’ A slang word, I know, but my momma thinks the slang words are just as wicked as the real thing, because the real thing is what everybody hears in their minds.
You understand why I had to get out of that place. Run away. I’m seventeen and everything.
I’m hitchin’ a ride up the Trace to Nashville. Walkin’ through a stinking cypress swamp. Trees risin’ out of their roots in black water. Spanish moss reflected on the still surface. Gators honkin’ a powerful angry background tune against the brush of the wind. This place. This Trace. It gets in your skin, gives you the guts to tread over it into anything.
Even to walk all the way to your dream.
This just gets better. Wonderful prose and humour; what a great series, (just caught up with yesterdays) a fascinating history lesson. Do you know what the contraption round the tree is?
That’s a “Dinner on the Grounds” table in a church yard. Once a year at some country churches in the South, there may be what called “Homecoming” where all those who grew up in that church come visit for the day. There’s a big “covered dish” dinner or potluck. They are usually held either at sheds built on the church grounds expressly for that or they are held on temporary tables set up just for the occasion. Lots of churches rather than go through the set-up take-down go ahead and build permanent tables in or out of sheds. I suspect that is what this is. Under the shade tree and all…just perfect for Dinner on the Grounds (BTW-dinner is a mid-day meal in the South.)
There wasn’t a church around this cemetery, though there probably was at one time. I thought that might be what this was, but I wasn’t sure.
Maybe they had Memorial Day events next to the grave yard–and neatened the graves before dinner. Kinda like a Southerner’s version of Día de los Muertos.
Thank you. What a great way to get together. In these parts: dinner is also at mid-day.
Helen, thanks for your comment. It’s been quite a history lesson for me, too, and I’ve lived in The South all my life. (I always call the Southern US “The South.” I don’t know why…….)
Cheryl’s answered your comment below. She has a poetry blog as well. You two would probably enjoy each other’s blogs.
Just brilliant Andra!
Thanks Jim.
And who did the 17 year old become?? A country star, an Academy Award winner?? We shall see….
Perhaps you shall see…….
Whatever she shall be… she is free.
For lack of a more erudite contribution, fabulous
Thanks, Linda. I hope you’re having a good week. I enjoyed our back and forth on Twitter the other day.
This made me think of this Vanity Fair song which was popular when I was a teen. http://youtu.be/B3YY83uUW3w. Of course your character was not headed home…she was headed to herself. Which when you think of it is kinda like going home…You keep exploring and finding all types of characters on that Trace!
That was ACTUALLY the song I was looking for. I couldn’t remember what it was called. I could just hear a blipping bit of it in my mind. Thank you for posting that link.
The only way to go home is to be true to oneself. You know better than most what that means to me.
Yes, being true is going home. Funny that was the song you were seeking!
Hitch hike–lots of memories there and probably a few dreams come true (but only in retrospect). I didn’t remember Marvin’s version, but after the first few notes, I heard the early Stones sinking the song in my head. Thanks.
Here are your Stones.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5417740002451094918
Thanks again.
I want to hear more of this character’s story. This series is truly amazing.
Ha. Have a drink with me sometime. This character is more drawn from me than any fictional one I’ve ever done.
I’m feeling right at home.
Enjoying your stories and LOVING your pictures.
Thanks, Lori. It’s hard to choose the pictures every day. We didn’t do the whole Trace, so I don’t have pictures from the swampy portion.
First of all, I want a bench with a tree in it. That is so cool!
And this brought back a flood of memories about the things people say about different occupations – from acting to singing to writing. How so many of those occupations are just so much whoring yourself out. But then they go off to their factory jobs that they hate and sell their souls for a paycheck. Which is prostitution? Doing something you enjoy and maybe getting paid for it? Or doing something you don’t care about, for people you don’t care about only for the reason of getting money. Seems pretty clear to me.
And seems pretty clear to you hippie chick hiking the Trail. Shade of Janis Joplin echo after reading about Elvis yesterday.
I think being true to oneself is never prostituting oneself, if that makes sense. And, I really don’t understand the people who have those viewpoints about different occupations anyway. Whatever you do, you do.
You are a veritable dreamer! That’s what writing is all about; taking the reader and the writer (one’s self) on the metaphorical “Trace.”
“You may say I’m a dreamer
but I’m not the only one …”
Thanks for letting us hitch a ride.
Being a California girl with family roots in Mississippi, I have a real love for the stories you’re telling and the “flavor” you’re providing is completely true to what I go to in my memories when I think of “The South.” That’s what I always say, too…The South! I have made several trips to May “Memorials” where we all gathered at the church and the family cemetery…row upon row of family members and the older generations always spoke of each person as though we all knew each one personally. The region is unique anyway, but almost a foreign country compared to the lack of hospitality and connection more representative of California life. Your writing makes me very “at home” and I can almost feel the humidity and hear the buzz of those “giant flying bugs”–whatever they are
You could easily spin these stories into an anthology of regional stories. You have a gifted voice for capturing the character of a very unique region.I’m loving it–can you tell? Debra
I’ve spent my whole life in The South, so capturing the voice is easy. I’m immersed in it every day, though there are thousands of variants on the voice across that broad swath of land, aren’t there?
I’m glad people are liking this series. I’m enjoying writing it.
Debra says it very well: you almost sit inside these people and become them. Powerful again, Andra: my heart quakes for this young woman but that Trace – I can see how it draws people…
She followed a different path in a different place, but she turned out all right.
Very good, I read this and the Elvis one twice each. I have never really cared a great deal for fiction, but i really do enjoy your style.
Thank you. I write a mix of things on my blog, but this series just wanted to be mostly fiction. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes.
Dang, girl! That’s sem mighty purty writin’
And, I normally cannot stand writing that’s written this way………..the characters insist………
More than one chunk of my adult life has been spent in The South and I know many of these people you write about. . . Sadly, I didn’t have to live in The South to recognize this gal today. The one I know wasn’t quite so brave at 17, but her brother was…..
We all know someone like this, don’t we? I wasn’t brave at 17. I still wonder whether I am.
You’re on a tear this week. Wow!
This has been a lot of fun.
Love those images at the end — not beautiful, but so strong!
Somewhat scary, too, especially for a person like me who’s spent some time in swamps. They’re pretty places, in their own way, but also creepy.