International Women's Day

For International Women's Day I thought I needed to celebrate in some big way. So I chose an adventure run, one I have made before but it has been several years. Five years to be exact. Really, I was not sure which way I was going when I left the Hideout. I had two routes in mind. Both went west and then north up Highway 49. One would turn back west and eventually come out at Itta Bena. The other would continue north until I could exit the highway and follow the river going through Bledsoe Plantation. Then I would follow the old highway to Money, cross the bridge, and head home.

I chose the later.

The levee road on West Claiborne Ext.

I did not leave home until almost 10:30. Yeah, I'm lazy like that. While I ran, I debated which way I should go. I pondered crossing the bridge at Poplar and running River Road. That way I would have more time to cross the Highway 82  and the bridge. Instead, I wound up running the levee on the north side of the river. That put me running a few blocks of Claiborne with no shoulder and going straight across 82. The 82 crossing, however, proved smooth and easy since traffic was light. Then I was on that old rough levee top road until I got back to the highway at Fort Pemberton.

Crossing the bridge there at Fort Pemberton has always been a bit hairy to me. This time, however, with light traffic, I made it across without ever getting on the catwalk, if you can call it that. Across the bridge, I made it to the north side of 82, then headed north on 49.

Running on the side of a busy highway has never been on my list of favorite things. When I got past that tupelo gum brake, I was able to get off the highway shoulder and onto the turnrow which was flat, smooth, and soft. I stayed on that until I finally came to the old boat landing where the Tallahatchie River comes very close to the highway. There, I crossed, and got on the turnrow there and ran it until I hit gravel at Shellmound Plantation.

I thought of Horace Greeley: 
"Go North, old man."

Shortly after Shellmound, I came to Bledsoe Plantation, and by then I was starting to feel like I was away from home, getting away from people, heading into the wilds.

The old commissary at Bledoe Plantation

At Bledsoe Plantation, after one passes the houses, the road angles off into the vast farmland. I always think of Siberia when I get here. Why Siberia? It is so vast, isolated, and in the past, cold when I have made it this far. This time I pulled my shirt off in the warmth. 

"He needed wide open spaces/
room to make his big mistake/
he needed new faces/
he knows the highest stake/
he knows the highest stake."

It was here that I began to think of an old man I knew when I was a young boy. When I was fifteen/sixteen, Dad and I used to dove hunt with an octogenarian who would talk incessantly about local history. At the time, I was not really interested, just mildly amused. Now I wish I could go back in time and hear it all over again. Some of his stories, despite my lack of intellectual curiosity at that time, have lodged themselves permanently into my memory.

He told of a Scotsman who took a Choctaw bride and raised five sons with her: Akir, Bairn, Camron, Edom, and Gilmat. Gordon Torey settled on the banks of the Tallahatchie River and eked out a living hunting, trapping, gardening, and selling moonshine. The old man had a bad disposition and took offense anytime anyone referred to him as a Scotchman instead of a Scotsman. He would demand an apology, and if the apology was not rapid and sincere, he would fight and often cut off the right ear of the offender. On his cabin door were nailed the partially mummified ears of twelve men. 

His sons, who were not only Scotsmen but half breeds, as they were pejoratively called at the time, like their father were not only mean, violent, and quick tempered, but had a "well developed capacity for mayhem." (The old man was a Southern aristocrat and could turn a phrase like no one I have ever known.)

In the summer of 1862, the 2nd Mississippi Cavalry passed this way headed to Chattanooga. Not yet having reached its full strength of 400 men, they were recruiting as they travelled. Some even say they stooped to conscripting any able-bodied man who had no wife and children, but that cannot be found in any history book. The then 100 plus strong cavalry stopped at Gordon Tory's house. At that time, besides Torey, the area has a small hotel, a store, his sons houses, and a few others homes, and a union church. Torey called the settlement Scotsdale. Most of the other locals derided it as Scotchhell. Since the 1920s, the settlement no longer appeared on the Official Mississippi Roadmap.

The commanding officer demanded Torey's sons, who were grown, married, and had children of their own. Torey told the officer that even if his sons were not family men, they were not entering this fight because "Ain't no Yankee ever called me a Scotchman." 

To make a short story long, when soldiers dismounted to take the Torey boys by force, guns were drawn and seven cavalry soldiers were immediately killed. Since there were only six Torey men, one of the wives must have been involved in the first volley of shots. The cavalry immediately retreated to the woods across the road while the Toreys retreated inside the old man's cabin. A three-day gun battle ensued which saw heavy casualties inflicted upon the soldiers. Finally, the Torey cabins were set ablaze killing all the men, women, and children.

See that greenery in the woods, that
is the site of Gordon Torey's cabin.

The commanding officer was so enraged at the licking his troops took, that he posted a wooden sign in front of the smoldering ashes of the Torey homes saying that if any of these cabins were ever rebuilt, or if any of the dead's remains were ever buried, whoever did such would suffer the same consequences when the cavalry returned that way after the war.

Since there were witnesses to the mayhem, word eventually spread to Greenwood where the Ladies Missionary Society heard the sad saga. They prayed, gathered help, and travelled to Scotsdale, where they buried the remains of the Toreys in an unmarked grave. 

I ran on with all of that bouncing around in my head. Eventually I made it to the pave road, crossed the Tallahatchie River, and stopped at my office in Money. I did not stay there long, but stretched some, added water to my pack, and consumed an energy gel.

Then I headed south on Money Road. By the time I made it to the Missionary Baptist Church where Robert Johnson is buried, I decided to text my wife for a ride. She was at work and I knew I would have to wait. I did not sit still, however, but continued to shuffled onward. But by now my shuffle was as slow as a walk, and my walk as slow as a crawl.

I looked hard at every vehicle that came over the Tallahatchie Bridge onto Money Road. Finally, when I was in front of the Wittingtons', Penny popped up in her SUV. Seeing me she pulled over onto the gravel road and waited while I shuffled the last quarter of a mile.

"You are so close, why didn't you just finish?" she asked when I climbed into the passenger seat.

"I forgot to put on my liner socks this morning. My feet are getting sore, and I need to train the rest of the week," was my honest answer.

So what does all of this have to do with International Women's Day? While I was out running, besides thinking of the Toreys, I remembered Katherine Switzer, the woman who in 1967 illegally ran the Boston Marathon. Illegally because women were not allowed to run marathons then. She proved that women could and should run them. I thought I would run a marathon in her honor. I did not quite make it, however, being picked up at 23.62 miles. Still, I honor her, a real American hero.