Pilgrimage II

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.

Pilgrimage

Penny was off work Friday. That meant Buddy Bones and I would have to postpone our next adventure run at least one more week. Last Friday I was working on that tree.

We discussed several things we might do. One was to drive to Crenshaw, MS. That is the last town my great-grandfather lived in, and I have never been there. She also mention going to Louisville. My cousin's wife has a shop there she enjoys frequenting. Three guesses what we did.

I didn't mind because there are a number of reasons I like going to Louisville. I still have family in the area, and visiting aged kin is becoming more important to me the older I grow. It also gives me another reconnaissance trip to scout out things for the Great Noxapater Journey Run. On my first attempt, I was pretty much flying by the seat of my pants. Not this time. Another reason I like to make that trip is I recently found out where George Henry Quinton is buried in Louisville, and I have been wanting to visit his grave ever since. George, if you remember, is the great-grandfather who died in Crenshaw and whose tragic life inspires the long desired journey run I feel compelled to make.

Picnic at Choctaw Lake

I slept until 9:00 am Friday morning, and I believe that is the latest I have lounged in bed for maybe twenty-five years or more. Wow. We finally dragged out of the house sometime around 10:00 and began our journey east. When we got to Carrollton, we exited Highway 82 and went through the old town and out Winona Road the scene of so much suffering in December of 2013 when I hobbled along with a stress fracture. On this drive, I measured the distance from Four K store, where I will sup on the first evening of the journey run, to Seldom Seen, where I will sleep on the first evening of that run. Only two miles. Nice. I can walk that on a full stomach provided my bones remain unbroken.

After we drove to McCarley, the scene of my surrender in 2013, we left the pavement and began to wind our way through a maze of gravel paths seeking a route to Winona that will give me the freedom to stay off Highway 82. We found one. Yee hah!

Choctaw Lake, the scene of my
paternal grandfather's death

We then made our way through Winona, on to and through French Camp, and then to Ackerman. Just outside Ackerman, we turned off Highway 15 and into the Choctaw Lake Recreation Area where we looked around and enjoyed our noon meal.

We stopped at a nondescript picnic table and dined on bologna sandwiches, bottle water, and Snickers bars. The weather was mild and just being there was relaxing as we gazed out over the graceful waters while sitting under a canopy of oaks and hickory trees that housed hungry squirrels. This lake was where my dad's dad died while in a boat trying to catch fish. A fitting finish for a Hodge: died trying to catch a fish. All Hodges are fishermen. I no longer catch fish myself, but I think about fishing often and I swim frequently with my aquatic cousins.

After our meal, we headed on to Louisville and there we found the cemetery by the library. That's how it was described to me: "the cemetery by the library." Since Louisville is not that large, we found it with relative ease, but once there finding the grave so not so easy. I was sure I had looked at every tombstone there. Some were buried in the mid-1800s. There were two rows of "Unknown Solder CSA." 

After our failure to find, I walked over to a nearby funeral home to seek some intel. The elderly lady there told me to try city hall. I did. At city hall, they found George's grave on a plot map, and made me a copy of the map. Penny and I went back and found the tombstones marking George's and Lou Ella's (my Great-great grandmother) graves. It was a moving moment for me. On the journey run, I plan to return to that spot with more leisure and the freedom of solitude so my emotions can be unhindered. 

We left the cemetery and drove to Noxapater where I dropped Penny at Lisa's shop, and I went to Mary Darby's and visited with my favorite aunt. I shared with her the plans for the next attempt. Then I went to Uncle Paul's place, a sort of a store where he sometimes sells stuff and often times works on broken down clothes dryers. He and his partner were working on one while I was there. We visited until Penny finished her business next door and joined us.

Before we left town, we went by the boys' (Paul and John) place of business and chatted a few minutes. Then we went back to Louisville and found a little place called Market Cafe where we stopped and had our date night meal. It was nice. I had blackened catfish over a pile of grits. Penny had some sort of chicken dish. While there, Forrest texted his mom that it was raining in Greenwood. I was incredulous. When we drove home, we found he had told the truth. Life is good. 

Reenacting

I don't really know how long it has been on my mind. In 2009, when I rode my bicycle from Greenwood to Louisville, Mississippi, one of the reasons for doing so was to scope out a route. I know the dream was not new even then. I made my initial plans, I think, somewhere around 2005 or 2006. Year after year, however, something, usually a running injury, prevented me from making the attempt. I did the bicycle ride once more in 2010, again checking out roads, stores, and potential overnight places. 

Then in December of 2013, I possessed my best prospects in several years to make the trip, so I set out for a planned four-day run to Noxapater, Mississippi. You can read all about my miserable failure on this blog at "Pulling the Trigger" (12/16/2013, "And Shooting Myself in the Leg" (12/19/2013). I knew then I was marginally trained and totally inexperienced at multi-day runs when I left the house that Tuesday morning almost two years ago. But 2013 was still the best running shape I had achieved in years. 

I tried. 

I failed. 

I want to try again.

Things have brightened since. For the entire year of 2014, I ran 934.35 miles. This year, I am currently at 690 which is 306 over this same time a year ago. Now, I am not only scheming of a rematch with The Great Noxapater Journey Run, as I have named it, but I have started specific training and planning for another attempt. My excitement is becoming palpable.

Maybe a little back story will help you see why this dream refuses to die.

In the summer of my fourteenth year, I packed a little handbag with some clothes, tied it to the handlebars of my red, high fender 90 cc Honda, and headed for Louisville, Mississippi. It was a grand adventure, permitted by reluctant parents, and one that set the tone for much of my subsequent life: rambling. I rode that little Honda over 8,000 miles that summer. The next year, I went a long way towards wearing out a pickup truck (we were licensed to drive at fifteen then). I wore out a homemade wooden boat just a few years ago, running it up and down the Yazoo and Tallahatchie Rivers. Ensuing years saw me slowly transform my rambling from motor powered to body powered. The year 2010 saw me complete 37 bicycle rides of 100 or more miles. My wife complained that I was "obsessed with seeing how far you can push yourself." 

Guilty.

It has become an obsession, a compulsion, one that comes as naturally to me as breathing air. Due to running injuries (I had four straight years of Achilles problems), I swore off running time after time. I could no longer endure the emotional turmoil of my physical limitations. But every time I quit, I found myself outdoors with running shoes on and attempting to do it again. Without even thinking about it, I would get home from work, redress, and head out the door. Finally, my health and fitness started coming back to me.  

I have a friend who is big into reenacting. You know-- or maybe you don't-- around here there is a dedicated band of grown men who dress up in Confederate and Union uniforms from the 1865 era, camp out in open fields, and play army. I get it, I think. They find it interesting, fun maybe, and they learn about history in the process. Not only that, but in a way they get to participate, to relive, to experience a past they find fascinating. War may be ugly, but it is full of drama, of bravery and cowardice, of the best and worst of humanity. I think there may be something else going on. I asked my buddy what percentage of the reenactors have an ancestor who was in the war. He said all of the Sons of the Confederacy and all the Sons of the Union do. It's a requirement. He told me that maybe half of the others just like to camp out and play army.

I have come to realize that at least part of my obsession with The Great Noxapater Journey Run is sort of like that. The GNJR is an adventure run, something I have grown to love; it is a goal and a physical challenge, something I seem to need for my physical and mental health; but beyond that, it is a reenactment of my great-grandfather's epic foot journey, something I became fascinated with many years ago (see "Wonder" 5/2/2015). When George Henry Quinton was twelve-years old, his family abandoned him in Utah and he walked from the Utah Territory to Mississippi. I can't go to Utah and spend six months walking back. I can, however, run and walk from my home to his hometown in Louisville and then beyond to the little hamlet of Noxapater. 

George Henry Quinton

I need to do this, and although I have attempted to put into words why, I am aware of the profundity of my failure to convey the power this idea has over me. There is an inner impulse that will not die and will not let me rest.

I wish I could locate his parents' home at the time of his return, but that information, like so much of his story, is lost to the past. What a fitting conclusion that would make for ending the journey. What I can do and plan to do is locate his grave site in Louisville before moving on to the next town. I know the cemetery where he is buried although I have never visited his grave. I want to change that after several days of foot travel, in some small, oblique way, redoing a tiny portion of the amazing journey he was tough enough to survive thus allowing my grandfather, my mother, and me to be born many years later. Maybe it is too late to honor him. But maybe not. Maybe God will allow him to look down from heaven and watch is great-grandson attempt a symbolic parallel, a stab at replicating, at reenacting his struggle. Maybe.

Wonder

I wonder.

That’s all I can do. Three photographs, a few anecdotes, his father’s death certificate, a tiny New Testament, and a story are all I have. It’s the story that intrigues me, haunts me, drives me even.

Momma remembers him. More than once she has told me that “he was the sweetest, kindest person” she ever knew. Recently, we were in her living room after he had once more taken over my consciousness. He does that from time to time. “Tell me everything you know about him,” I pleaded with her. She did, and I wrote it all down. But it wasn't much.

“We loved him,” she said getting that wistful look in her eyes. “He was very sweet. He paid attention to us, talked to us. And flowers,” she said after a pause. “I remember he always had a beautiful flower garden he took care of himself. One time he gave a bunch of us each a fly swatter and paid us a penny for every fly we killed. He married a Pentecostal lady preacher after Granny died. He was head of the engineering department of something. When he was young. When he got old, he worked on the garbage truck. Granny had five children when he married her. They had two more boys together. He put them all through college except the last one my daddy, Zane. He was too old and made too little money when my daddy came along.” I sat patiently while she searched her memory for any scrap of information. “And the journey,” she started back. “That was something.”

She had told me of the journey before, several times, and it was that which captivated me, caused me at times to lose sleep, to wonder.

But that’s about all she could tell me. And the death certificate and the New Testament. She gave me a copy first of his father’s death certificate. His father, Thomas Napper Quinton, according to the official record, lived to the age of ninety and died at Mill Creek, Oklahoma from some sort of “trauma.” The ancient paper is difficult to decipher. Even then, it seems, doctors didn’t write legibly. Momma said she thought he was injured by an animal.

Long before he died, however, when he was still living in Louisville, Mississippi, Thomas Napper shot a man who, according to Mother, was “trying to court” my great-great-grandmother Liza. My cousin Sylvia, who has taken up the mantle of family historian after her mother’s death, told me the shot man did more than “try to court” her. “Liza was loose,” said Sylvia. “Thomas killed the man and then fled first to Texas and later to Oklahoma to evade the law. About Liza,” she continued while I picked her brains during a phone conversation, “we don’t know what happened to her. She just disappeared and George was basically an orphan.”

George Henry Quinton, the subject of my obsession, was the eldest of Thomas and Liza Quinton’s three children and my mother’s paternal grandfather. Momma and Sylvia both tell me that when he was a little boy the Mormons came through Louisville, MS preaching, telling about the Promised Land in the Utah Territory. The Quintons believed, sold everything, and went west.

Once there, instead of the Promised Land they found a country in the midst of a drought. But still, the Quintons bought land, planted a crop, and managed to get a stand of wheat out of the ground before a locust swarm wiped them out and ended their dream in the Promised Land. Thomas and Liza sold everything, but only money enough to buy four train tickets back to Louisville, Mississippi.

I wonder how it could happen. It couldn’t today, but America, the world, was a much different place in 1895. Did they debate, struggle over what to do? How long did it take to make a decision? A day? Two days? A week? What was Thomas Napper’s attitude? What was George’s? Was he brave, did he tell them it would be OK? Did he try to comfort them or they him? Did he think he had a chance?

I can only wonder.

They left him.

When George Henry Quinton was twelve years old, his parents abandoned him in a strange and struggling land, a land that couldn't even support its own.

Momma says he walked. Walked. Twelve years old and he walked from Utah to Louisville, Mississippi. “It took him six months, and when he showed up, his mother was shocked. She thought he was dead,” Momma said.

Shortly after George made his epic journey, Thomas shot Liza’s lover and ran off. About the same time Liza disappeared. Did Thomas kill her? Did she die of natural causes? Or did she run off with a man? My aunts for years tried to find out, but inquiries to other family members were always met with silence. No one would say a word about her. Now both the aunts and the other family members are all dead, and Liza’s fate remains shrouded in silence, lost to the past.

But it’s the journey I want to know more about. I want to know how he did it, what it was like. Did he get cold, hot, wet? Did he sleep outdoors any or did he always make it to a town, a farm? How many miles did he walk per day? How many pair of shoes did he wear out? How did he get new ones or his old ones repaired? How did he know which way to go? Did he ever cry, was he frightened at night, did he have encounters with dangerous animals, dangerous men? Why did he come all the way back? Surely people along the way helped him. Why not stop somewhere and make a new way for himself among people who hadn’t left him to die? How did he cross rivers? Was he hungry often? Did he catch fish, kill animals, pick berries? Was walking into Louisville a joyous event? Was he glad to see his mother? Did he dread to see Thomas Napper?

I can only wonder.

He survived his journey and then he was alone again. Sylvia says his grandparents, Liza’s folks, took him up after Thomas and Liza vanished. They were named McGee, and that is why he went by the nickname Mac. His grandchildren called him Daddy Mac.

I also wonder, but I think I know, why when he was still a very young man, he married my great-grandmother, a woman eleven years his senior, a widow with five children the eldest almost as old as he. I wonder, but I think I know, why he was “the sweetest, kindest person” my mother ever knew. I wonder, but I also think I know, why he grew flowers, why he talked to his grandchildren, why he remarried after my great-grandmother died. I asked Mother if he liked cats. She couldn’t remember. I wonder, but I think I know.

It is a typical Friday morning and while my wife is preparing to go to work, she notices me pulling on my biking shorts. “I guess you’re going to get on that bike and stay gone all day,” she snaps.

“I reckon so,” is all I mumble in return. And I wonder. Of all the things men do that piss off women, how does riding a bicycle make the list?

“One of these days you’re going to get hurt, and I won’t be able to find you,” she starts back on me. I say nothing. “You shouldn't be out there all alone.”

But she doesn't know. I ride out Money Road, into Tallahatchie County, up Cascilla Hill. I am not alone; I never am. As the crank turns and the sweat drips off the tip of my nose, someone is there keeping me company. He walks, sometimes trots beside my bicycle, but he never says a word. When I look at his face, the sadness in his eyes makes me cry. I want to hug him, to tell him I love him, but he is always just out of my reach. His jet black hair blows in the breeze and his dark eyes gaze up the road looking east. His eyes always look east. The road we travel is lonely, rocky, and dry. He is hungry and very tired. How far to the next creek, the next town, the next farm?

I wonder.

[To the reader: This is a posting of something I wrote a couple of years ago. It is a true story and something I really want to research if I can every make out to Utah. My computer file has a picture of my great-grandfather, George. I wrestled mightily but was unable to get the picture into  the blog. He has such sad-looking eyes. Often I look at his photo and cry. Also, sorry about the initial line. ??? I couldn't fix that.]