usadeepsouth.com
by Don Drane
I had never seen them growing anywhere else before, and I’ve only seen them growing in one flowerbed since. We called them canes. They were dark green, skinny, and they shot straight up about four feet high. They seemed to rise up on their own, overnight, like unwanted shoots around the base of a seasoned mimosa tree.
My brother and I would slip around to the east side of the white frame house and pop ‘em off. We could grasp these things at a joint and pop off a whole section, and then we could pop that section again and again, as many times as there were joints left.
These wonderful plants grew at Grandma’s house on Mulberry Street in Durant, Mississippi. As soon as we piled out of the ‘55 Ford, we could smell the green pecan shells and the old black ones she had shoveled around the backyard flowerbeds. That was half a century ago, but I can still sense that smell and I can vividly remember how we popped canes. Of course, I was the only one Grandma ever caught.
Grandma went to sleep forever some years ago. Just like anyone else in a similar situation, I will always have my memories of that yard and that house on Mulberry Street.
After Grandma was gone, it was hard, almost impossible, for my daddy to go back to the house. He had lived there from the time he was born until the day the Air Force sent him overseas during World War II. My memories are few compared to what must be millions of memories he has. Catching snakes in the backyard, crawling under the house, getting to sleep out on the screened back porch when the breeze was just right, toast coming out of the old gas stove in the morning--those were probably his memories.
When the decision, a hard one, was finally made to sell the house, Daddy hated to make that trip over to Durant. I went with him. I watched him fight back tears fifty times that day.
The house, almost empty, was somewhat deteriorated. The canes were still where they had always been, but they were forced to compete with Johnson grass and assorted other weeds that would have caused Grandma to have a fit. The porch screen had more holes in it than it did screen. The hardwood floors looked as if they could use a month’s work. There were wasp nests under all the eaves. Daddy probably remembered how he used to knock them down, heat them up, and use the grubs for fish bait. The house had been vacant too long.
About a year after the house sold, he and I were driving back from a funeral in Canton and I decided on my own to ride by the house. Neither of us said a word as I turned down Mulberry Street, which was still one of the prettiest streets in Holmes County. Without asking Daddy, I turned into the driveway. There had never been anything before but a hard, grass-covered place to pull in, but there was concrete now.
The new owner had spent a considerable amount of money on improvements. The coats of white paint that had built up over the past half-century or so were masked and carefully hidden beneath a color that was not on the hardware store shelf back when Grandma bought paint. Nothing was the same.
After introductions and inviting ourselves in, we were almost blinded by the gleaming hardwood floors and the glare from the recently Windexed windows. The one thing that really seemed upsetting to Daddy was the “Home Sweet Home” needlepoint hanging right where his old family pictures had once been carefully arranged. How in the world could they have the nerve to put that there? But, of course, they had every right. They were starting a new life in Grandma’s house. It was indeed their “Home Sweet Home.”
As we looked south, out the kitchen window, the new owner showed us the stump where he said he had just cut down the “elm” tree behind the kitchen. Daddy quickly pointed out that he had climbed that tree a million times and he argued there was never an elm tree in their yard. The owner, who obviously didn’t know one tree from another, contradicted him. The subject was dropped.
Back inside, our eyes jumped from room to room, from corner to corner. There were childhood memories of old iron beds, pull chains dangling from ceiling lights, overstuffed pillows, dressers with oval mirrors, wicker rockers, the upright radio in the corner with chairs circled around it, huge hanging ferns. There were memories -- but none of these things were really there.
Maybe it was a mistake to stop at the house. I’ll never know.
On the way back to the car, I reached down and popped off a section of cane.
Write Mississippian Don Drane at: Don's addy.
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More stories at USADEEPSOUTH by Don Drane:
Chief Dempsey’s Cold Plastic Couch
Jim’s Duck
Southern Fried Turkey
A Not-So-Fond Memory
Bottletree: Out Of Nowhere
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