Late Covid American Sojourn: Day 9
By: Sandy Tolan
Tags: Covid 19, Sandy Tolan, Roadtrip, Covid Diaries, Mississippi

Broken clouds and pale blue hung above us as we fueled up, got some gas station cookies to serve as breakfast (oh, yum) and pointed the Subaru east toward Louisiana. It had already grown humid by the time we arrived at my brother Yam’s in Austin, and even moreso in Nacogdoches, in far eastern Texas — a completely different landscape from the parched lands of just a few days ago — ocotillo and prickly pear around El Paso, Marfa and Big Bend. We’d spent nearly a week crossing Texas, its deserts, high plains, hill country and now the thicket, where dense clumps of trees emerged from spongy swampland. Now we were heading into the bayou, and the Louisiana border.

Andrea, master navigator, had routed us around the storms of the Gulf Coast, and guided us north toward Hattiesburg. She drove so I could catch up on schoolwork, magically online due to the “Glocal Me” mobile modem she’d purchased.

By late morning we were crossing the last miles of east Texas under a brooding but unyielding sky. Traffic was light, and we were skirting the rain. The road was open, and songs started flowing. Creedence Clearwater Revival would carry us through the South.

And I can remember the fourth of July

Runnin’ through the backwood bare

And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin’

Chasin’ down a hoodoo there

Born on the bayou…

Now the dry washes of West Texas were a fading memory. Bridges forded brown-running creeks and streams every few miles. We followed a cement truck and its rotating cylinder. An old Texaco station flashed past, Big Momma’s Seafood and Steaks. A giant billboard read, “Jesus heals a broken heart.” Distant clouds dropped tentacles of rain on the horizon.

“Yesterday and days before, sun is cold and rain is hard

I know, been that way for all my time

’Til forever, on it goes through the circle, fast and slow…

I wanna know, have you ever seen the rain?…”

We passed country graveyards, more trees standing in swamps, rusted tin-roof sheds. Meandering rivers.

“Well, take me back down where cool water flow,

Let me remember things I love,

Stoppin’ at the log where catfish bite

Walkin’ along the river road at night

Barefoot girls dancin’ in the moonlight…”

A bridge rose before us, over a long stretch of water. The Toledo Bend Reservoir, Louisiana on the other side. Water lapped at the edge of humble shacks. We passed miles of Christmas tree plantations, a topsoil farm. Logging trucks, a lumber yard with long stripped logs, ready for market. More and more, American flags and Trump signs. Then, the occasional Confederate flag, one with a rifle across it. On the lower end of the FM dial, we searched for NPR, but found only preachers and Christian rock. We were deep into Trump country — poor country, too, with auto parts shops, pawn shops, Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, hardly a grocer in sight.

“It ain’t me, it ain’t me

I ain’t no senator’s son, son

It ain’t me, it ain’t me

I ain’t no fortunate one.”

On two-lane highways, we just weren’t in a hurry. For one thing, all we needed to do was get to Mississippi in time for me to make a Zoom faculty meeting in the late afternoon. For another, we didn’t want to go even one MPH over the speed limit, lest we give a local Louisiana or Mississippi sheriff’s deputy a chance to make life more complicated for us. So we found ourselves, for many miles, behind a white prison bus — LA SALLE CORRECTIONS TRANSPORT — filled with men we could barely detect through the darkened, barred windows.

Well, you wake up in the mornin’,

You hear the work bell ring

And they march you to the table

To see the same old thing.

Ain’t no food upon the table,

And no fork up in the pan;

But you better not complain, boy,

You get in trouble with the man.

Let the midnight special

Shine a light on me.

Let the midnight special

Shine a ever-lovin’ light on me.

CCR’s southern-fried rock may have been the perfect soundtrack for our Texas-to-Louisiana journey, but it can’t be mentioned without also pointing out how much John Fogerty and his bandmates often made their substantial living from the musical creations, rooted in the blues, of Black men and women who preceded them. For example, Heard it Through the Grapevine was originally a Motown hit (Norman Whitfield and Barry Strong, then Marvin Gaye). And Midnight Special was written (or, some say adopted from a folk song) by Lead Belly, who was “discovered” in by WPA-era early ethnomusicologist and recordist Alan Lomax during the Great Depression in 1933 in Angola prison. One story says the song originated at Sugar Land prison in Texas:

“From their prison cells, the prisoners of Sugar Land prison would hear the siren calls of the train around midnight, and the light from the train shining in the night (The “ever-loving light”) gave them comfort and hope. According to a sort of superstition, if you were in the light of that train you would gain freedom. Therefore, the prisoners saw that train as a symbol of freedom and hope in the dark despair of their incarceration. Its light can be considered as the light of salvation, coming from an agent that could take them away from the prison walls…”

We crossed into Mississippi, finally passing that prison bus. Fogerty sang on.

“Yonder come miss Rosie, how in the world did you know?

By the way she wears her apron, and the clothes she wore.

Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand;

She come to see the governor, she wants to free her man.

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine an ever-loving light on me…”

Soon we crossed into Missisippi, already planning our feast of po’ boys and gumbo. We found our Airbnb guest house on a piece of land outside of Laurel. I got on my call and Andrea took Rascal out to the pond.

Tonight, it’s Florida. And tomorrow we see Wyatt!

Photo by Andrea Portes: Pond, rural Mississippi.

Late Covid American Sojourn: Day 8

Late Covid American Sojourn: Day 10

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