My grandfather, my father’s father, was born in Mississippi. I don’t know what town or village in Mississippi. I don’t think anyone knows. Maybe he and his eight siblings just appeared from another dimension one day in the 1920’s and began tilling the land. Interdimensional farmers run out of time and luck and land.
They say they were sharecroppers. Poor white folk looking for a fair shake. Nobody knows much about those days in Mississippi. There is a cold, cute tale they would tell, but that is for another day, I think. It’s a tale about picking up and moving on—the Great American Chase. For there is always a rabbit at the end of stick and we never learn.
So, they end up, the eight of them, nine counting their dad, in the neighboring state of Louisiana, looking for a better life. But I don’t know if anyone ever goes to Louisiana for that, unless they’re from Mississippi. Maybe they were running from something or someone. Everyone moves west in this country—it’s just the law.
Some families make the big leaps west; coast to coast. My family took it state by state. Baby steps since the 1700’s. Starting in Virginia and creeping across Tennessee before dropping down into Mississippi, and over to Louisiana. That took about two hundred years. Another fifty years and we’d nudged over into Texas, thanks to my father.
My brother and I would bounce around before taking bigger leaps to California and Europe. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My grandfather found a step up in Louisiana, from working in a field to working in a mill. I’m not sure what he thought about working in a paper mill for forty-plus years but I’m sure it beat picking cotton.
Josh Mayhall 