Homesick (4 page)

That might sound elitist today, but there’s something deeper at work here. Like all good Southern women, Mama believed in the secret power of manners—that they are the great leveler of social class. Good manners have the power to ennoble a poor man; they enable all who possess them to become, in the Southern writer Florence King’s phrase, “aristocrats of the spirit.” They are the means and proof of grace. And grace my mother had in spades.

William Alexander Percy, a turn-of-the-century Mississippi writer, wrote that “manners are essential and essentially morals”—a neat summation of Mama’s philosophy of life. It would have been nearly impossible for my mother to separate a neighbor’s code of manners from the quality of his character, the state of his soul. To her, crude or indifferent manners were not simply a matter of ignorance; they were a signal to the world that you were dishonorable, uncouth. Good manners, on the other hand, made social discourse pleasant under the best circumstances, and possible under the worst.

As with everything Southern, this devotion to social custom is steeped in history. “Rules of etiquette are not created—they are evolved,” notes the 1890 edition of the
Blue Book of New Orleans,
a social registry. “The gentleness that marks modern social customs is the outcome of the wildest of passions.” The bloody echoes of the Civil War, in particular, left Southern families grievously wounded in both body and spirit, investing future generations with a heightened sensitivity to feelings of wounded pride or humiliation. “War,” the
Blue Book
observed, “the cruelest of sentiments, has given us every usage of etiquette which implies tender consideration for others, and makes modern social life more charming.”

My friend Jill Conner Browne, the author of the
Sweet Potato Queens
books, has a simpler way of putting it: “Manners,” she says, “are just the grease that keeps things running.”

Even children of my generation were made sharply aware of the importance of manners, of their role as a moral compass to guide you through life. From our earliest years we were half-consciously aware of the discipline grown-ups showed around each other, and we knew we were expected to follow suit. Our parents, and the parents of our friends and neighbors, lived within well-defined boundaries of behavior. And as we grew older, and began holding our own in social settings like school and church, we came to recognize the practical value of manners. If you knew how to be courteous and considerate, it became apparent, you could enter into any social situation with confidence—and you were much more likely to get what you wanted. A charming manner, in other words, could often get you that second helping of pie.

In the time and place where we grew up—Mama was fortunate in this, I now realize—the wider community shared her demanding standards. It seemed as though everyone had agreed in advance on the basic rules governing children’s behavior, and there was an unstated bond among adults to enforce those rules wherever a child might be. The South was one big in loco parentis zone. You didn’t dare act up around strangers, because you knew a grown-up wouldn’t hesitate to correct you. And you knew that if this stranger happened to tell your mama what you’d been doing, your mama would not only thank the stranger for caring enough to set you right, but see to it that you were punished when you got home.

I’ve since learned that the South didn’t have a monopoly on this kind of thing. My husband, Howard, who grew up in Los Angeles, remembers in his childhood neighborhood parents calling a community meeting, gathering together to decide what to do about one troublemaking kid who was a bad influence on their children. The parents brought their complaints as one to the bad kid’s parents, who were shamed into taking action to rein in their misfit son.

Try to imagine that happening today, anywhere. The kid’s parents would hire a lawyer in a heartbeat. I wish the South were all that different, but I’m not sure it is, not anymore. A friend of mine who teaches sixth grade in a small Southern town tells me she pines for the days of our youth, when teachers and other adult authority figures were assumed to be in the right unless proven otherwise. Nowadays, when she calls a student’s parents in to discuss a problem, more often than not they show up indignant, demanding that the teacher prove the case against their innocent angel.

“You see how this younger generation reacts to everything?” Daddy said the other day. “It’s all about
me, me, me.
” And I hate to sound like an old fogy, but I can’t help thinking he’s right. There was more true freedom for kids when authority was respected, and a just order was in place. Manners are all about creating a society in which people can feel safe. If you grew up in it, you never lose your craving for that feeling of security. To some, Southern manners may seem quaint, even archaic. But I wonder if anyone really prefers the selfishness and crudity we see in so much of life today.

The geography of my childhood is mapped in the streets and yards of a green little enclave called Lakemont. Carved out of a beautiful old 1920s recreational area called Echo Park, Lakemont was a perfect natural habitat for the packs of wild young baby boomers who would soon be prowling its crew-cut lawns. My parents had settled there comfortably in 1954, moving first into a single-story ranch house, and then into a new brick-face split-level next door. The houses were tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac with a few other sparkling new flat-roofed modernist homes—which, to anybody who was looking, might have revealed something about their inhabitants. My father was one of a loose collection of engineers and architects who’d entered the Meridian workforce at about the same time, and in the postwar years a handful of them colonized this little corner of Lakemont, just a stone’s throw away from their offices on the main road.

On the surface it may have seemed like a typical suburban subdivision, but there was something about the connection among these families that gave the place a sense of real community. “We all knew each other,” Daddy remembers. “Had the same background, education, worked on the same jobs.” They all seemed to have so much fun together. I remember the weekly card games my parents and our neighbors took turns hosting: our house would fill with friends and laughter, the men arguing philosophically as the evening grew late. Mama always knew just the right thing to say; I marveled at her natural social graces, and wondered how I would ever learn what she knew.

There were no mountains in Lakemont, just hills. But there were two small lakes—ponds, really—and in the spring and summer they became weekend gathering places for the entire neighborhood. Like most people, when I recall my childhood what I am usually remembering are the weekends—warm and breezy, they all seemed to be, and spent in a blur of tireless activity and blissfully uninterrupted leisure. So many afternoons I spent sitting on the bank of one of the lakes, with a cane pole in my hand, waiting for a bream to take the worm on the hook. The little red and white plastic cork would disappear under the water, and I’d give the pole a little upward tug, and haul in the fish, as big as Daddy’s hand. You’d see everybody there, Aunt Sara and Uncle Boots and neighbors and friends, with their coolers and lawn chairs and picnic lunches, talking and fishing, fishing and talking. When they drained one of the lakes, everybody—and I mean everybody—came to catch and eat the fish. It was like a communal feast. This was not in the country, mind you, but in the heart of a modern subdivision. Most of the men and women who lived there were Depression kids like my parents, and they weren’t about to let those fish go to waste. Besides, there isn’t a Southerner alive who doesn’t love fried fish fillets.

Nowadays the neighborhood has aged, and there aren’t many kids around. The levee we played on isn’t often busy anymore, but I like to think that somewhere Mississippi children are still doing some lazy cane-pole fishing on a Sunday afternoon, not wasting their day in the mall or in front of a computer screen.

Not far from the lakes were a few scattered remnants of Echo Park, which for us children retained the mysterious aura of things long gone. By the time of my childhood they were largely grown over with brush, but you could still see the entrance to the concrete cave that had once been home to a bear named Chubby. chubby bear’s cave, as the faded lettering still reads, was a neighborhood landmark; we’d crawl in, casting flashlight beams into dark corners to make sure no snakes were lurking, and then we’d scare ourselves to death holding miniature séances by candlelight. There was a persimmon tree hanging over the entrance to the cave, and when the fruits were ripe, we’d collect them as they fell. There were blackberry briars along the roadside by the cave, and we’d stain our hands purple picking the ripe ones.

When we weren’t gathered around the lake with Mama and Daddy, we kids loved playing in the woods behind our house. Jenna, Berry, Brock, and I would build forts, sweeping the ground bare so we’d have soft dirt floors. We’d cut trails through the woods, and Berry would hunt birds with his BB gun. When somebody told him you could catch a bird if you put salt on its tail, he came up with a scheme in which he’d take a fishing pole with a purple plastic worm dangling on the end, dip the worm in salt, and try to touch birds’ tails with the worm. I don’t think the Lakemont birds were ever in danger.

Our neighborhood had a tennis court, and a swimming pool, where you’d see all your friends every day in the summer. There was an annual Lakemont picnic, with a potluck lunch spread three tables long, and all of those simple, old-fashioned games—sack races, bobbing for apples. When we weren’t in the park itself we’d play flag football and whiffle ball in nearby fields with our pals, ride our bikes up and down the streets, spend the night at each other’s houses, and do all the things neighborhood kids did in the days before the invention of the scheduled play date. The only rule was to be home for supper before dark.

On a summer night there was no better adventure than to stay over with my grandmother Annie Raye, the only one of my grandparents to survive into my childhood. She didn’t have much money, and until her last years (when she moved in with us), she lived in a small apartment in a housing project in town. She smoked cigarillos, and read magazines like
Movie Mirror
and
True Detective Stories
with boundless appetite. I was never allowed to have coffee at home, but Grandma was always glad to sneak me a cup; she and I would sit at her little kitchen table, share a pot of coffee, and start our day together. I’d watch her forever, embroidering doilies and pillowcases, or working away at the old-fashioned, pedal-driven Singer sewing machine in her apartment. (I’m having all the little things she embroidered cut up and reassembled as a keepsake quilt for her namesake, my daughter, Anabella Raye.) I miss the hum of the oscillating fan at the foot of her bed; at night it would fill that quiet apartment and lull me to sleep.

My grandmother was also a wonderful cook. She made the most delicious fudge, dense and thick and rich. I’ve never had any like it since she died. She wrote the recipe down, but Mama always said she must have left an ingredient out, because it’s never turned out quite the way it should. She also made
the
best corn-bread dressing for the holidays. The other day my Aunt Nancy and I were remembering her leaning up against the stove on that crutch of hers, her long cigarillo hanging out precariously over the stovetop. “If you’re looking for a missing ingredient,” Nancy says, laughing, “you better think about that cigarette ash.”

I was by nature a bashful child, and I rarely felt more secure and at home in the world than when I’d go into my grandmother’s backyard, climb up into the mimosa tree, with its fuzzy blossoms the color of pink lemonade, and talk to it. I don’t remember what I said to the tree, and it doesn’t matter anyway. The important thing is that I felt the tree listened and understood me, achingly timid as I was, too fearful to pour out my heart to a living soul.

But I wasn’t melancholy all the time. Most days I was happy to go look for something exciting to do. And I didn’t usually have to look too far, because my father was always bringing something home that was way too much for us to handle. Once he gave my seven-year-old brother Berry a go-cart that must have gone twenty-five miles an hour; Mama almost had a heart attack watching Berry whipping around the driveway, his little head just barely visible over the steering wheel. On Saturday mornings we’d pile into the car and Daddy would take us chasing trains from intersection to intersection, blowing the horn and waving to the conductor.

If that sounds a tad dangerous, consider the other harebrained way we passed the time: chasing the bug truck. In the summer, the city would send a truck equipped with an insecticide fogger around town, spraying for mosquitoes. As soon as we heard the “fog machine” coming we’d go chasing it down the street, playing in the sweet-smelling cloud of insecticide smoke it left in its wake. It was probably aerosolized DDT, and it’s a wonder we haven’t all dropped dead of lung cancer. But, I’ll admit it sure was fun at the time.