My Southern Journey (30 page)

But what makes New Orleans special to me this time of year is not the howling of October 31 but the traditions that unfold, peacefully, quietly, in her cemeteries the morning after. Much like
Ash Wednesday settles, usually, calmly and quietly after the insanity of Mardi Gras, the day after Halloween reveals one of the sweetest traditions I have seen in my rapidly changing South.

All Saints’ Day in New Orleans is a day to honor and visit the dead, not in some philosophical way by thinking about them while on the living room sofa or in line for café au lait at Café Du Monde, but by traveling to the place of their interment and sitting with them. Perhaps the oldest holiday on the Western calendar, it dates back to 837, when Roman Catholics began honoring all saints, known and unknown, on the first day of November.

I am not saying there are caravans of people thronging through the Cities of the Dead, backed up six deep at a crypt, but if you pass by these old cemeteries you will see people, one or two or whole families, sprucing up the crypts—the water table requires that most New Orleans residents who can afford it be laid to rest in stone or concrete crypts above ground—and just generally being close to the loved ones who have gone on.

I will never forget, years ago, driving through the city one November 1 and seeing a family, dressed as if for church, filing through a cemetery gate with what appeared to be a picnic basket and an Igloo cooler. Later, I saw people eating oyster po’boys and drinking root beer in the shade of a crypt. I saw fathers and sons toast grandfathers and great-grandfathers with a clink of Abita bottles.

As I walked between the rows of stained granite and crumbling brick, trying not to look like a ghoul or an armed robber, I smelled something on the breeze that seemed odd here in such a holy place, a smell harsh and sweet at the same time. Only one thing smells like that. “Bourbon,” I said. I watched two middle-aged men, brothers, I guessed, take a drink from a pint bottle of brown liquor, pour a swallow into the grass and dust, and shuffle away, not drunk, but apparently feeling better than when they shuffled in.

What a lovely notion, I remember thinking, that no matter what your faith, you really do live on and on, as long as someone, anyone, is willing to come see you.

One fall I went to Holt Cemetery, a resting place for the poor, where generations are buried not in stately crypts but in this almost liquid earth, and watched old men get down on their knees and smooth the dirt the best they could in a place of wooden crosses and tinfoil angels. One old man could not remember the name of the little daughter he had buried there, but came to see her, anyway.

WHEN FIREWORKS GO SOUTH

Southern Living
, Southern Journal: July 2014

S
outherners, I believe, should not be trusted with fireworks.

It is not in our blood. The North had most of the artillery. The South, which does not always think things through, entered The War believing its officer class could merely hurl mint juleps at the encroaching Yankees and glare insolently. The Gallant John Pelham, Robert E. Lee’s vaunted cannoneer, may have been the last Southerner to be truly trusted with a lit fuse. Since him, there has been a long line of Southerners who light bottle rockets with a Camel Non-filter and shoot for the moon, only to see the projectiles blaze ankle-high through the Johnsongrass, scorching cats and burning worms.

I love my people, but you know there is truth in this. Even when we are sober, bad things happen. Even when we do everything right, things can still go wrong.

Take the case of poor Rob Roy, a suicidal, wirehaired Jack Russell terrier in Valley Head, Alabama. He had a short tail. On the Fourth of July about 10 years ago, it got some shorter.

“Mammaw named all her dogs Rob Roy,” said Elizabeth Manning, a graduate student at the University of Alabama. “I’m guessing this was Rob Roy number two…”

This Fourth began, like most, with the lighting of short fuses.

“At dusk, all the women would sit up on the porch, and all the
men would go into the field in front of the house and shoot off fireworks. My Uncle Jeff was firing off one of the prettiest ones, and he had it lit and they backed off. Rob Roy, who had a reputation for biting wheels on cars, ran to it, and it shot off right before he got there.”

A spark got caught in his tail, which began to smoke. Rob Roy ran in wild circles, as Jack Russells are bred to do, so fast that the flock of grandkids on his tail could not catch him to put it out.

“He finally just sat down and dragged his butt through the grass,” Elizabeth recalled.

“Mammaw just watched.”

She is 88.

“Well, goosey gander, goosey gone,” she likes to say.

I, myself, am careful when it comes to fireworks. Before inserting an M-80 into a bed of fire ants, I follow careful safety protocols.

1. Twist together two M-80s, for more “Holy smokes!” potential.

2. Giggle.

3. Run.

I am qualified to opine on fireworks because The Gallant Pelham, killed by the Yankees as he tried to rally his troops, is buried in my hometown of Jacksonville, Alabama. His statue gazes down upon us—and on the loading dock of the old TG&Y. I have always believed the Fourth—because of all the booming that goes on—is also a celebration of his life, though he was fighting to dissolve the Union and all. But every year, as the sky fills with fire, I wonder what he is thinking.

Probably:

“Duck.”

I know fireworks safety is a serious matter. That is why I now leave the shooting of them to professionals. In my hometown, we go to the field beside State 204, set our lawn chairs up in the back of my brother’s pickup and watch the falling dusk transform through the miracle of gunpowder. Or, if I am on the Gulf, we watch the colors rain into Mobile Bay.

I think, some years, I would like to shoot one last bottle rocket into the dark, though I am too old to run away.

But at least if my tail were to set on fire, I would be easy to catch and put out.

O CHRISTMAS TREE

Southern Living
, Southern Journal: December 2011

T
he Southern landscape, let’s face it, is not intended for Christmas, at least not the storybook Christmas we cut out of red and green construction paper and taped to the windows at Roy Webb Elementary School. Most of the snowflakes I saw, until I left home, were frozen in place on a cardboard sky with Elmer’s glue.

I do not love snow—I lived in Boston and New York and came to regard snow as a hard-packed, car-obscuring, finger-numbing, gray and dirty substance—but it was nice at Christmas till the snowplow came along and shoved it over the top of your Subaru. Down here, I ride the highways and gaze out on the grass that has finally, grudgingly gone dormant, as the voices on the radio—Bing, Elvis, and them—try to assure me that it is indeed a time of white Christmas, and roasting chestnuts, and sleighs. And then a big ol’ boy in a tank top and a Santy hat waves at me from his mailbox, and I am more confused.

That’s when I see it, there at the side of the road: a single, perfectly shaped cedar or pine, not too short, not too tall, and I think, for just a second, that I wish I had a saw. And I know that, for me and mine, it is truly Christmas, after all.

There is no nice way to say it. We are Christmas tree thieves, or used to be (though I am not ruling it out if I see just the right one outside a rest stop near Tupelo). I know that larceny has no place
during Yuletide, and before you think badly of me, let me explain. It is not like we were rustling sheep from the manger scene in front of the city auditorium, or absconding with the Three Wise Men, which I think would be hard to pawn anyway. It was just trees. And in that we had scruples. We were not skulking through the lot at The Home Depot at three o’clock in the morning, or robbing a Douglas fir from the Knights of Columbus. It was just that we were less than particular about property lines.

When I was a child, we never bought a tree. We got an ax, or a handsaw, and went into the woods. It would have been a scene straight off a Christmas card, if we had actually gone hunting for one on our own land, which we did not have. I guess it was poaching in a way, but it seemed harmless. In the deep woods, it was more like we were just thinning the herd, rather than stealing.

And, I doubt if a landowner ever walked up to a stump and said, “I’ll see them Bragg boys swing for this.” But we knew, my brothers and I, that there was something wrong about it. So we decided to steal them from the State of Alabama. We would cruise the bigger roads and highways until we saw one on the state right-of-way. Sliding to a halt in the loose gravel, car tires smoking, I would leap from the truck with my ax. Three to six whacks would do it, unless I saw a car coming. Then I froze, trying to look innocent—with an ax in my hands.

That was a long time ago. I have not stolen a tree, from Alabama or anywhere else, for 35 years. We buy our trees now, and pay what feels like $900 for a tree cut last Fourth of July, a tree I am afraid to shake too hard, lest it look like something Charlie Brown would have. You got a much better quality of tree, when it was stole.

But I am too old and stiff now, too fat to jump a ditch or climb a bank. The police would get me, sure. Still, I see the trees there, at the side of the road in that balmy air, and it makes me happy.

I guess, to be truthful, those stuck-on paper snowflakes did, too.

WHEELS OF TIME

Southern Living
, Southern Journal: June 2014