I don't remember how I found out he died in Crenshaw, Mississippi. It hasn't even been that long since my discovery, and I didn't even know where Crenshaw was despite having spent my entire life in this state and despite the fact that map gazing is one of my favorite pastimes. I looked the town up on Google Maps.
To my surprise, Crenshaw lies in the Delta. It seemed odd to me for him to move to the flat lands after living in the hills. Few people do that, especially folks born in this state but raised elsewhere.
Maybe the alluvial plain that has been my home for fifty-nine years has impacted my psyche more than most people's. But I exaggerate not one bit to say that for me I feel like a visitor, and traveler, whenever I leave this little area of flat earth that measures 200 miles from south to north and is barely seventy miles across at its widest point. That widest point, by the way, is along Highway 82 where I live and which some people say is the best thing to ever come out of the Delta. The fact that Greenwood, my lifelong home, is a mere eight miles from the Carroll County hills, doesn't change the fact that when I leave the Delta I feel like I enter not a different state but a different country. Simply put, there is the Delta and then there is everywhere else.
I'm not bragging nor am I complaining, it's just that I have trouble understanding it myself, understanding how this topography can have had such an enduring influence on my thinking and feeling and outlook. To learn that George Henry Quinton moved from the Louisville area to the Delta and died here caused me to sit open mouthed and amazed. I drank coffee (closing my mouth long enough to swallow) cup after cup after cup, and pondered how it could have happened. Would anyone else respond the way I did?
Basically, people born in the Delta leave as soon as they can. This has been going on for decades and all counties in our little subarea of the state are losing population. Few people move here although I know some who have. My dad was one who did, but of a brood of six boys, and a few girls he was the only one to move here doing so for a job. One of his sisters moved here with her husband, but when they got the chance, they left and now live in the great town of Noxapater where my upcoming journey run will end if I am successful. As soon as he could afford it, however, Dad purchased land in the nearby hills where the country boy in him, the hill boy, could find solace through hunting, gardening, fishing, and using an outdoor toilet.
One of my current friends was born in South Carolina and came here for a job with Viking Range Corporation. Viking brought in a lot of outsiders into the Delta, people who otherwise would have never even driven through this unique country. We, my friend and I, have never discussed this strange land we live in although I think I will broach the topic at my earliest opportunity.
After my discovery, I knew I had to go to Crenshaw. Since he died in 1951, the town no doubt has changed in ways I can never discover. It was one of the places Penny and I thought about going last Friday. But instead, we visited Louisville and found his, my great-grandfather's, grave. This Saturday, October 17th, we made the trip to his final town.
On the way, we drove over some of my old biking range where I pedaled literally hundreds of miles during my cycling craze of 2009-2010. We drove out Money Road, went east on Highway 8 and then north on Tippo Road to Highway 32 where we turned west and made our way to Highway 49. At Tutwiller, we hit Highway 3 and continued our journey north. When we drove through the town of Marks, we were on a road I had never ridden. It was typical Delta and it really does all look the same. Nevertheless, I still get a thrill out of seeing new sights even if they do look like ones I have seen before.
Penny asked my why he came to Crenshaw. I has no answer to her query only a couple of guesses. His second wife was a Pentecostal preacher. Maybe she took church there. Another possibility is she had people in the area. Like so much of his story, all I have is the barest of an outline without the supporting details.
We drove through Sledge, the hometown of Country Music star Charlie Pride. When we approached Crenshaw, I saw something that made my new knowledge less puzzling. On our right, the hill line suddenly appeared and it looked like the hills and the Delta were on a collision course somewhere near the rusty water tower up ahead which signaled our destination. We drove into and through the tiny town ,which took only a minute or so to go all the way through and out the other side. We took special note of the old downtown buildings that would have been extant when George was here. The town, I learned from the Internet, has a current population of approximately 900 people. In George's day that was almost 800.
We turned around, came back, and this time noted that the row of old downtown buildings was only about three blocks long. We turned onto Highway 310 which goes through all three blocks of the residential section and then enters the hills and makes a bee line to Como, another small town. The last street in Crenshaw runs at the very foot of the hills. My great-grandfather never left the hills after all. Now things made more sense.
I wish I had parked the truck and walked around a bit before driving out of town on 310. We should have strolled the sidewalk and looked more closely at the old buildings. If I am not mistaken, a few of them had occupants and a few of them were empty. The town, according to the Internet, hit its peak, in terms of population, during the early 1960s and, like most Delta towns, has been in slow decline ever since. Still the little hamlet had a little charm and I thought, I could be happy here. I hope George was.
I still don't know why he came here, but it doesn't seem so strange anymore. I'd like to see if I could get an address and find his last house. Maybe it still stands. To do that, I would have to find the Panola County Courthouse and ask questions. Be that as it may, in the last two weeks I have visited the last town he lived in, and I have visited his grave. Now it remains for me to reenact his epic journey which I plan to do in November.
The training continues.
The planning proceeds.
The dreaming never stops.
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