by Bud Kenny
While in Jonesboro we put on a show at Uncommon Blends. It was a coffee house on Main Street that had opened only two weeks earlier–this was their first event. More than thirty people showed up, and half a dozen participated in the open mic session. Ginna was one of them. She kept a weekly reading going there for more than a year after that.
North of Jonesboro, we spent three days camped at Crowley’s Ridge State Park. The forecast was for temperatures near a hundred and five. Our shady campsite was near a spring fed lake, which was a great retreat from the heat. But there was no escaping the bugs. At night the mosquitoes were as bad as down on the Delta, and during the day the horseflies were horrendous. They didn’t bother Patricia and me very much, but poor Della. Some of those flies were almost as big as hummingbirds. Patricia called them “B-52s.” And bug spray didn’t faze them. Even when we sprayed it on their bodies, they’d just fly off, make a circle, come back and land on Della. Then the blood would start to ooze.
The horseflies were worse just before sunset. That’s when they’d swarm her, and the only way we could help was to kill them with our hands. Let the bastards land and smash them before they could bite. Patricia and I took turns smacking Della’s flies. And when your turn was up, the first thing you’d do was go to the hydrant and wash the blood off hands and forearms. We soon learned it was best to hit them with the center of our palms. That kept the blood from spraying up between our fingers and into our face.
Della quickly go got used to the nightly fly-smacking. She would stand completely still and not even flinch as we flailed away. She actually seemed to enjoy it. For Patricia and me, it turned into a contest to see who could kill the most in one smack. Patricia was the champion. She got three with one blow.
One evening, while I was smashing flies on Della, I couldn’t help but wonder about the horses out in the pastures around there. The ones who didn’t have someone to smack their flies. They must dread summer sunsets.
When I was a kid on vacation and riding in the back seat of our family car, every time we crossed a state line it felt like such a big deal. It seemed to me that we should have stopped at each one and commemorated the occasion. But I knew that idea wouldn’t fly. So I simply celebrated those state lines in my own mind.
The St. Francis River separates Arkansas from the Missouri Boot Heel. I was standing at the Arkansas end of the bridge when I started to feel that same old state line excitement. Patricia was excited too. “Honey, I can’t believe it. We’re finally leaving Arkansas.”
These may be the United States of America, but they are all very different. The contrasts are often obvious the moment you cross the state line. When we crossed the river into Missouri, we found the Delta to be just as flat as it was in Arkansas. But the dirt was redder, and the highway shoulders were much wider than in Arkansas, which made walking a lot easier. But the roadsides in both states had one thing in common–litter. Both had plenty.
August in the Show-Me-State was as hot as it had been in Arkansas. The day we walked up Highway 25 through Malden the temperature was near 100 and so was the humidity. North of Malden, the surface of the highway had been ground off to prepare for re-paving. The road was rough and rutted, and in some places, only half of our lane had been ground off. So we had to walk with one foot on a surface that was two inches higher than the other. We stumbled along that way for nearly ten miles as traffic flew past us churning up grit that landed on our sweaty bodies. And because there was no wind to blow it away, the exhaust hung above the road in a suffocating haze.
We walked nearly twenty miles that day before finding a place to camp. It was a wide spot where a county dirt road intersected Missouri Highway 25. On that spot were huge mounds of pavement that had been ground off the highway–mounds that would eventually be melted to make a smooth new road surface. This place didn’t have much grass for Della and barely enough room for our camp. But it was late, and down in the Delta we needed to be in the tent before the sun touched the horizon. Because–as you know–after dark mosquitoes rule.
“You left the pee jar in the cart?” Patricia was outraged. “Now what?”
“I’ll just have to go out and get it.”
My wife was exasperated. “As soon as you unzip that door, half of the mosquitoes in the Delta will fill this tent. They can’t wait to get in here!”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I have an idea.”
Then she started rummaging through the stuff next to her side of the bed. Suddenly with a flourish she pulled out a can of Raid and said, “I’ll count to three, you hold your breath, unzip the door, go out and zip it back up. Don’t breathe until you get away from the tent.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to cover you with this.” She shook the spray can at me. “When you come back we’ll do the same thing. Out there, you’re on your own, buddy-boy!”
“Oh great.”
Patricia snickered, “Hey, you’re the one who forgot the pee jar.”
Across the highway, about 150 feet from our tent, were two sets of railroad tracks with a crossing for a county road. Every locomotive blew its whistle several times as it approached. That night, at least once an hour, a train would barrel down the tracks.
“I’ll never forget this campsite.” My wife smacked a mosquito on her face. “Got ch’ya, you little bugger!”
Patricia said, “I’m not sure we should do this.”
From where we stood on top of the levee at Tootsie’s Landing, the Hickman Ferry looked like a toy in the churning brown Mississippi River. It was the only ferry still crossing the river, and we had just walked forty-two miles out of our way, down the Missouri Bootheel, to ride it.
“It’s so small,” my wife said. “What if Della freaks out and jumps off?”
The ferry was a small barge with a steel parking deck that had a tugboat attached to the downstream side. It had a low railing on the sides and chains across both ends. If Della freaked out and bolted, she could easily go overboard. I shared Patricia’s trepidation.
She said, “I’ll stay up here with Della, you go down and check it out.”
Right then, a man in an orange life jacket stepped out of the tugboat onto the deck of the ferry and motioned for us to come down. That’s all I needed. “Let’s go.”
Patricia yelled, “Wait a minute!”
“For what?”
Her voice wavered. “Well, I just think we need to check this out first.”
“If we don’t cross here what are we going to do?”
Patricia looked down at the ferry, then turned back to me. “It looks scary.”
“It’s just part of the adventure. Let’s go! Get in and work the brake.”
My wife grumbled as she climbed into the cab of the cart. “It’s just part of the adventure. You and your ‘It’s just part of the adventure.’ ”
The ramp down the levee to the river was concrete with ridges that ran perpendicular to the hill to give vehicles traction. With the tungsten-carbide cleats on Della’s shoes, and the concrete ridges, she had good footing. But there was loose sand on the surface that made the cart’s tires skid when Patricia applied the brake. So Della’s butt was hunkered down in the harness as she struggled to hold the load back. But our big girl had traction, so it all went well.
That is, until she stepped onto the ferry’s steel ramp. Then all traction was gone. The deck sounded like a stage full of tap dancers as her hooves scrambled for purchase on the smooth steel. I was scared that at any moment she would fall down. But within seconds she got her footing and we were standing solid in the middle of the ferry. Della was shaking, and so was I. From inside the cart, Patricia clapped and cheered. “What a good girl! That’s my girlie pie!”
The deck hand was raising the ferry ramp as I locked the brake and blocked the cart wheels. I asked, “Are we the only ones going across?”
“Yep. We’ve been expecting you. The captain said he’ll take it slow so we don’t scare
your mule.”
The diesel engine on the tug revved up, black smoke swirled above the river and the barge slowly began to move. Della took a couple of nervous steps to the left as she turned her head to look at the tug. The stern of the boat swung away from the barge churning up a wake of frothy brown water. While the tug turned around to face Kentucky, I could feel Della tense up–her legs were quivering.
I stroked her neck. “It’s all right, Big Sis.”
After the stern of the tug was secured to the side of the barge, we slowly sailed away from Missouri. That’s when Della began to relax. Soon she was looking up and down the river sightseeing. On her face I saw the same fascination she had for the marching band. But instead of music and twirling majorettes, it was boats in the roiling brown current that enthralled her. Several tugs pushing barges came close because our captain got on the radio and said, “Wait till you see what I’ve got on board.” Then reading from our flyer, he told them about us.
At one point–mid-river–the ferry slowed so a parade of them could pass in front of us. Every one of them blew their horns with all hands on deck waving and shouting. We couldn’t understand them, but it was obvious Della was a hit with the river folk.
For that half hour on the Hickman Ferry, Della was Queen of the Mississippi.
CHAPTER 4
THE STATE OF AMERICA IN KENTUCKY
IN KENTUCKY, THINGS WERE DIFFERENT. Instead of the plainness of the Delta, there were rolling hills with oaks, elms and hickories–some of which shaded the road. And as we trekked through Kentucky’s farm land, we started seeing a crop that we hadn’t seen before–tobacco. Big green broadleaf plants that were being cut down at ground level with machetes, then hauled to a barn and hung to dry Whether the barns were wood or metal, they all had their doors open so fresh air could circulate through the hanging plants. When the wind was right, we could smell a tobacco barn long before we got to it. It’s a fragrance like no other. Although I’m not a smoker, I’ve always found the aroma of non-burning tobacco pleasing. Especially when it’s in clean country air.
Back in the Delta, we didn’t see many people out in the fields, because crops like corn, soybeans, rice and cotton were planted, cultivated and harvested by machine. In places like Grubbs, Arkansas, and Morehouse, Missouri, people blamed the mechanization of farming for the demise of their little towns. A visitor to our camp in Grubbs said, “One man on a tractor can do the work of dozens of people with hoes.”
But tobacco was a hands-on crop. It still had to be planted and harvested by people. And the one’s we saw wielding those machetes were mostly Mexican. Short, brown-skinned men, with jet black hair, who lugged the floppy crops on their shoulders across the fields to trailers. While we walked through rural Kentucky several small green school buses, packed with Mexicans, passed us. On the driver’s door was usually the name of a corporate farm. And most of those buses had brown arms stuck out their windows waving.
“That’s what happened to the jobs here. The Mexicans got ‘em.”
James Robert invited us to camp in the vacant lot across the street from his house in Crayne, Kentucky. He was born in 1926, and lived in the same house he grew up in. When John Robert asked us to stay in his lot, it was more like he insisted. He was a pasty little man who spoke in short nervous sentences. “The Trail Of Tears wagon train camped here in 1988. You heard of it? It was the 150th anniversary. They followed the Indian’s route. They camped here. You should too. It’s part of history.”
Crayne had a few buildings that looked like they must have had a business in them at some time. But it had been quite a while and most were boarded up. It had a couple dozen homes, some were in good repair but others were not. And there were ruins. Concrete foundations with tall weeds and saplings growing in and around them.
“It used to be different,” James Robert said. “We had three stores, a hotel and a train station. But they closed the mine.”
Up until the mid 1980’s, Crayne had a fluorspar mine. Fluorspar was a fluorite crystal used in making steel. “Still plenty of it in the ground around here. But they found some in Mexico. So the company closed the mine here.” James Robert shook his head. “Mexicans work cheaper than folks in Crayne.”
The train quit coming to town in 1990. Then, the hotel shut down and eventually so did the other businesses. James Robert said, “I kept thinking they’d start running the train again. Then the town would come back.” He sighed. “But they pulled up the tracks. That was two years ago. Now we’re done for.”
Most of the ruins in Crayne were the result of a tornado that ravaged it in 2000–a year after they pulled up the tracks.
Lots of folks paid us a visit in James Robert’s lot, and nearly all of them had a story about the storm. But it was the twins, Bonnie and Connie, who really put that storm and the fate of the town in perspective.
I figured the twins to be in their late forties. They, too, had lived in Crayne all their lives, and both had worked at the same factory for thirty years. TYCO made electronic relays, and the plant was just three miles away. When the tornado hit they were at work. It was Bonnie who said, “Nearly half the families in Crayne had someone working there. We all had our faces pressed to the windows watching that storm.”
Not only did the women look alike, their voices were the same. They both dripped with that honey-sweet y’all sort of accent. The kind you’d expect from a woman born and bred in Kentucky. It was Connie who said. “It was terrible. We couldn’t see what was going on. All we knew was that it was coming right through here, and there was nothing we could do about it. We were stuck in that plant just watching and praying.”
Bonnie said, “I swear the worst part was the drive home. Remember that?”
“Oh lord! How could I ever forget it?” Connie turned to us and said, “Y’all just can’t imagine what it was like. Usually, it takes five minutes to drive home. That night it took more than four hours. So many trees and power lines were down on the highway, we couldn’t go anywhere. We had to wait for them to clear the way. It took forever.”
Bonnie said, “She drove me nuts. Kept trying to get out of my car and walk home.”
“I’d got here faster.”
“If you didn’t get electrocuted.” Bonnie shook her head. “When she tried to do it, the police told her to get back in the car and stay there. They had live wires down on the road and it was raining.”
Connie said, “When we finally got here the whole town was dark. Just car lights and flashlights, and debris everywhere. It took forever to find my husband and kids. I never did find my house.” She clapped her hands together above her head. “But praise the Lord, nobody in our family got hurt.”
A few days after the tornado, TYCO announced it was going to shut down the plant and move to Mexico. “And if we wanted our severance check, we had to teach the Mexicans how to do the job.” Connie sighed. “What a week that was.”
When Patricia and I met the twins, they were both taking computer courses. Bonnie said, “Maybe it will help us find a job that won’t get sent to some other country.”
Another thing that was different about Kentucky was its highways. Most had no shoulder, and the pavement was usually less than three feet from a deep ditch. The edge of the asphalt was notched so that drivers who fell asleep would be awakened by the thumping of their tires. It was a bad situation for us. We couldn’t walk on the edge of the pavement because the notches tripped human and mule feet. And when the cart wheels rolled over them it sounded like a stick being dragged across a picket fence. It jostled the cart so much I was afraid it would vibrate to pieces. With no room between the pavement and the ditch, we had to walk in the lane of traffic.
Such was the situation on the west side of Paducah when ominous clouds began to roll in. It was a Thursday, in the middle of the afternoon. That morning on the radio, they said we could have severe thunderstorms later in the day. And as fast as those thunder heads were moving, it looked like their forecast was correct. Near the inte
rsection for the road to the Paducah airport was a wide gravel spot where we pulled off the highway. I mounted our orange rotating beacon on the back of the cart, while Patricia pulled our rain gear out. She was handing me my yellow raincoat, when simultaneous lightning and thunder exploded overhead. A heartbeat later, the sky let loose with a deluge. It was so fast and furious, that both of us were drenched before we got our slickers on. I was shoving my arms into the sleeves when I said to Patricia, “Get in the cab!”
“Why?”
The rain was so intense, I had to yell. “No sense in both of us being out in this!”
It was such a fierce rain that it hurt our faces. But Della ignored it. The traffic, thunder and lightning, none of it phased her. She just tucked her ears back and plodded through the storm. I squished along beside her in my flooded boots, saturated socks and frayed nerves. The rain intensified, and so did the traffic. Rush hour was on, and we were in the way.
When we came to a place where we could pull off the road, we did. Usually it was someone’s driveway where we would stand and let the traffic behind us get by. But those places were few and far between. Each time we pulled over, it would be several minutes before we could get back out on the road.
While we stood in one of those driveways, a car stopped and the driver motioned for me to get out into the lane. Through the storm, I motioned for him to continue on. But he kept waving for me to pull out. Finally, as I saw him roll down his window, I yelled, “Go on sir. It’s OK.”
He stuck his head out into the storm and yelled back. “No it’s not! I live here!”
A couple of driveways later, we had just gotten back into the lane, when I heard a big truck pull up behind us. As the motor babbled down into low gear, I looked to my right at the ditch. It was overflowing and sending rapids across the pavement. I couldn’t see the edge of the road–or the brink of the ditch. It was all covered with water.