THE APPIAN WAY

   Rome in all its splendor lay before me. Never did I think I’d ever make a trip to Europe. In the summer of 1975 I  accompanied a group of students and faculty from my school on a plane-bus trip with several other schools from Georgia and Mississippi. Rome was one of our main stops. I didn’t realize at first that I’d keep this ancient city in my life forever.

   

The morning after our arrival and a typical touristy breakfast of coffee and hard roll, a group of ten wanted to see the catacombs our two enthusiastic college teacher/guides suggested. These were underground burial grounds for the poor and many middle class people because of the lack of land surface for burial. Early Christians had no money to bury their dead on the surface, so underground necropolis or catacombs were dug under the property of the few Christians who owned the land.

  

Like elementary school children afraid of getting lost, we tourists held hands by twos and imitated our guides who hopped onto a metro train from the center of the city. A quick transfer to a local bus took us along the Appian Way, a roadway lined with tombs of ancient notables. I was unaware of the fancy tombstones along the roadway paved with  original stones and bricks the Romans used in building.  Somehow I missed the landscape as I hung onto the inside pole for stability on the lumbering bus.

We arrived at the office of the Catacombs of San Callisto. We entered a dark hole via steps leading deep into the underground. Our guide led us through narrow aisles of burial sites with a flashlight. When there was something worthwhile to see, he turned on strings of lights along the way to show bodies preserved openly as they lay on shelves against the wall displayed like wares for sale.  The cool of the underground aided in preserving the white dresses, over the nuns' frail skeletons. We marveled at the sight of fingernails still seen on their bony fingers. In this particular burial place many Catholic hierarchy were hidden during the time catholicism was frowned upon. So much information to remember. I missed any mention the apostles Peter and Paul were buried in this place or another one down the road. The thirty-minute tour ended not too soon to return to light and fresh air. No time for souvenir shopping as the next bus was due any minute.

   

As we regrouped outside the visitors site, we heard the grumbling motor of the metro bus. Everyone dashed across the street, because in Rome no bus stops, but rolls along slowly while passengers embark or disembark.  As I followed across the Appian Way,  I tripped on one of the stones and went down on my knees. Dazed, I saw the corner of a stone dug between my left knee.  While I thought hours passed as I shook myself to realization,  they were only seconds. I heard voices. And a motor roar.

“Hurry, Vivian, you’ll miss the bus! Come on, hurry!” I picked myself up with extreme pain in my leg, limped across the street —thankful no traffic was in the area. The bus rolled a bit faster. I hobbled alongside wondering why I hadn’t taken up power walking earlier in the year. The back door of the bus was open and three pairs of hands reached for me and as I rushed along trying to match my stride with the bus. I thrust my left hand towards the saving hands inside and gathered enough strength to throw my right hand up to reach another that pulled me inside. I was exhausted from the strain. No one realized I wounded my bloodless knee. 

   

Missing the bus would have put me in the “lost tourist” category. I trusted my guides to get me from one place to another. I didn’t remember the names of the hotel nor its location. I had little money with me so hailing a taxi was out of the question.  I learned a lot about what not to do that single afternoon. 

Today my left knee is more arthritic than any other part of my body. I call it my “Appian Way knee.”  In no way is there beauty untold in the pain this knee experiences.

LIFE AT THE "P"

When my family of two sons and a daughter made our quarterly trip to New Orleans, we traveled by car south on Mississippi Highway 51.  Forty miles south of Jackson we passed a sign: SANITORIUM.  No one paid attention, but I’d mumble, “I know that place,”  or “I lived there once.”  As the kids got old enough to show interest, they asked why I remarked about the area. I told them the story of my six months stay there.

I was seven years old in 1940 when my mother carried me to the Sanitorium campus. I remember I didn't protest, I was that obedient to do whatever she chose for me. We passed the main building housing adults with tuberculosis.  Two blocks down the road lined with perfectly mown lawns, dotted with flowering trees and beds of blooms was the Preventorium, where children from four to eleven years of age had their dormitories.  I joined forty-nine children to live, eat, play in a near-perfect setting. What was lacking was our families.

Did I have TB? I thought so at the time. In my family the rumor circulated my grandmother had it and  “ Vivian may have caught it.” This was reaffirmed later during weekly examinations when a panel of doctors looked at my chart, cluck-clucked at my weight, examined the X-rays, and nodded in affirmation. In my chest was a knot they thought was TB.  I weighed thirty-six pounds at the time, the lowest-weighed kid in the group.  This embarrassed me and I tried often to be at the back of the line waiting to step on the scales, so I didn’t hear, “Ooo, look, she’s not even at forty!”

Classes lasted a several hours. We sat at small desks studying geography, history, math and English. We second-graders practiced our handwriting. With mother’s postcards she sent daily, I worked to imitate her style. In tiny cursive she put more words on a card than anyone else. Those  beige-colored cards with their permanent green stamp comforted me at lonely times.

 Our dorm held twenty-five beds for girls, and same for the boys in another dorm room.  Our uniform featured one item:  white cotton bloomers.  We looked cloned, as the photo shows. The lasting memory of most of these little residents was those bloomers! Nothing attractive about them. Our shoes and clothes we arrived with hung in a metal closet  until our discharge.  I spent the spring and summer on this beautiful campus.  Sunshine was our staple, besides delicious meals and free haircuts (everyone had same “bowl-type” hair styles.) We played and napped. We slept at least ten hours a night.  A temporary home with a taste of stern leadership. Only we didn’t know that at the time. The regimen overshadowed the pleasure.

 The playground had equipment seen only in upscale country clubs.  The well-kept area featured a duck pond and a swimming pool. Rainy days kept us in an area called the “round room” because of its shape. We sat on the floor while Miss Effie, our away-from-home mother, read us stories. There were dolls, trucks, puzzles, books for individual play. The furniture throughout were scaled to our comfort.

Our relatives visited on second Sundays. This exciting time of happiness switched to crying when our visitors left. My mother wrote in her diary every time she visited with a few words: “Saw V. A. today. She seems so happy.”  She didn’t understand it was  my seeing her that made me content. By Monday I felt good having seen her.  The routine made me forget my loneliness.

I left in mid August. The reunion with my family, especially seeing my new sister, was joyous.  I never told my friends where I’d been for fear they’d think I had TB  During that one trip to New Orleans did I reveal for the first time that hidden part of my life. Forty years later.

Sixty years later I found a FaceBook page devoted to “kids from the ‘P’”. It is a happy reunion of adults once innocents trapped in a world largely unknown to the public. The page gives them freedom to express their hidden lives.

NO DIGGING, NO FOSSILS

I walked into the “Archeology of Mexico” class not knowing what to expect. Maybe a trip to an open site already probed? Maybe learning the basics of brushing away dirt from tiny bits of pottery or bone? Maybe learning how to “see” a pyramid as a big hill? I was excited.

   

This was my second summer at Monterrey Tech, as we American students called Instituto Technologico de Monterrey. It was a new year-round university located in the first large Mexican city south of Laredo, Texas. Hammers and drills interrupted our otherwise daily peaceful surroundings. Concrete buildings for dorms and classrooms rose like fertilized bean sprouts. Summer courses opened up for non-citizen students, many who came with their professors from American universities. Today it is a leading university for technological studies with satellite classes throughout Mexico.

Tired of grammar courses, I selected a literature course and one in archaeology to make an exciting six weeks in 1952. Since most instructors taught their classes in Spanish, relief flowed in quiet ahhs when this professor spoke English. 

  

Our class began in June and consisted of fifteen persons of various ages. I was nineteen years old,and the oldest, fifty, I learned later.  None of us knew the other. At first glance  we saw your teacher as a construction worker with his brown face and rough hands.  His voice was authoritative for a short, stocky man. He introduced us with saying, “I serve presently as the active chief archaeologist for the country of Mexico”. He said MEH-hee-ko.

“I have led discovery teams searching and uncovering pyramids of earlier civilizations

for twenty years.” That statement impressed the class.

  

We met daily from 11:00 P.M. to 1:00 P.M. Student discussions in the cafeteria after class showed our enthusiasm for our subject.  During classes our professor didn’t tell us how to prepare a site once discovered, or to grid an area to find chards of pottery. He enthralled us with tales of discovery of the still-existing unexplored wilds of Mexico  He emphasized none of the native Indians found deep in the forests knew anyone lived outside their area. He revealed how his workers made friends and learned necessary words and signs to help one another. Many of his discoveries are still displayed in  the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Mexico City.

   

He related how the curious Indians approached the traveling group. Bird whistles, broken limbs clearing the way, colorful bits of material wrapped around limbss, feathers dribbled among leaves. We listened daily to these wonders, all the time imagining our traipsing behind the professor, our hearts beating loudly enough to reverberate as drumbeats. Few of us took notes, as this course was not teaching but entertaining.

  One story I vividly remember he related concerned his mother-in-law who traveled as a companion to his wife on numerous excursions. The woman, after an arduous trip into the deep forests complained how her back ached with arthritis. The curandero, or shamen of the tribe,  saw her drawn face. Through hand signals and the bit of native language our prof had picked up,  the curandero insisted he could cure her.  The professor was enthusiastic, but not his mother-in-law.

   “I’m not drinking stuff he’s made out of animals or whatever, no way!” Her son-in-law persisted.

You’ll disappoint him and who knows what will happen to us. The ingredients are from plants,only. No animals.” The curandero brought a dark, thick liquid in a gourd and grunted as he handed it to her. She gagged when she smelled the contents. Her son-in-law instructed her to leave a small amount in the bottom of the gourd. He wanted to take back a portion to find out the herbs the curandero had used. “ The university scientists can figure out what the liquid contains,” he added.   With more effort than she’d use drinking Milk of Magnesia, the Mexican woman swallowed the liquid and lay down.                                                                                                                                                      

The next day she felt better, and six months later as the crew were ready to leave the area, his mother-in-law was free of back pain. “And, since then,” he boasted, “she’s never had a problem with her back.”

  

Monday morning of the third week the prof surprised us students after everyone was seated. He said one of the students unknown to us at that time, had approached him after class the previous Friday afternoon.  “I don’t believe a word you’ve said about undiscovered people in Mexico. I need more proof than a bunch of stories,” he smirked that Friday. The Prof then proceeded to

repeat what had happened from the time class finished last weekend to class time that moment.

  The Prof, not to be outdone with this Korean veteran who had seen more misery than most, thought a moment, then said, “Ok, Son, throw together a backpack with a change of clothes, some items to exchange with the natives, like small combs, ribbons, small trinkets, and meet me in front of the school at 4:00. There’ll be a lot of walking.” The time was 2:30.                                                                                                                                      

The Vet unintimidated by this  middle-aged man, said he could walk any distance without trouble. To which Prof replied, “Well, you’ll have to walk hurriedly at least 100 miles, so we can be back here by Monday morning. If you can’t, I don’t want to take you. Decide quickly, as I have to call my wife and mother-in-law to get ready for the trip.”

The young man asked the ages of the women in the party. “My wife’s forty and her mother is past sixty.

  

“If your mother-in-law is going, I sure can beat her walking,” the young man boasted.  Prof smiled, remembering his mother-in-law had walked many a hundred miles on previous trips but                                                                                                                                           

said nothing.While the Vet packed a backpack, the Prof gathered three men who always accompanied him, picked up his wife and mother-in-law and met the student at the appointed time. 3

   

They began the trip in two 1945 army jeeps from Monterrey and headed south. After a hundred miles of turns and twists on the highway and secondary roads, they came to the end of the road. “Get out, we walk from here,” announced the prof. This was the beginning of the long hike into the thick jungle. The Prof instructed the student to listen and not talk during the trek.  The trip into the dense foliage began to wear on the veteran. After fifty or so miles inland the Prof began to point to signs of natives’ presence. He whispered to Joe (whose name we learned later) to notice the trees. Indians hide behind them and follow the group. “ I’ll point out signs on trees and sounds you’re to listen to as we delve deeper into the forest. Take no interest, no speaking, and act unafraid.”

  

Often the group stopped to let Joe rest. He noted the women were in better shape to hike the long distances. Hours later they arrived at a clearing. On the ground was a display of strange food.                                                                                                                                    

Even when Joe hesitated to eat unfamiliar food, the party sat down and ate without worry of poisoning. Then they arose and proceeded deeper into the wilds.  The Prof whispered to Joe, “The food represents their acceptance because they recognize most of us from previous trips.” 

By nightfall they arrived at the natives’ community.  They prepared their beds at one side of the clearing and began to chat quietly. The Indians kept to themselves until daylight. The next day the small group mingled with the entire tribe and began trading. The return trip began Sunday early morning. The prof and the vet had to be in class.When the jeep dropped off Joe, he turned to the professor and said,  “Sir, I’ll never doubt what you say in class. I’ve learned my lesson.”

As the prof related the weekend adventure to the entire class, Joe behind me squirmed and beamed.  We hadn’t noticed him in earlier 

class discussions.  Joe displayed his treasures and explained his side of the story. He became an enthusiastic student from then on. He proved to any doubter in class we had a real archaeologist for a professor.                                                                         

   

IN THE BEGINNING . . .OF SCHOOL

The first week of school in September my fifth period students of Spanish wiggle into their seats in language lab booths. Their books reverberate with thuds as they hit the floor I step onto the small podium in front and open the roster.
 
"Attention, please," I say first in Spanish, followed by English. I'll do it every day until I drop the English altogether.  "Quiet while I call the roll." I call the names, often having them correct my mispronunciation.

 I'm halfway finished when the metal booths clatter. Chairs scrape and feet brush back and forth on the wood floor like brooms.

A curly head pops above the partition. "Everything's OK, Teacher, I got it. Tamara passed out again."

I scramble off the podium and head to the fourth row to see who Tamara is. On the floor is a slender girl, her skin, a caramel color. She is curled like a fetus, unconscious. Some students huddle in the aisle while others sit still and crane their necks. Tamara writhes and moans without opening her eyes.

"Ooh," the curious utter in unison like a chorus in an ancient play. My insides squeeze with each whine that comes from the body. I hear shuffling as students close in for a better look. Instinct tells me I can't help her. I'm seeing epilepsy in action for the first time.

"Billy, get the principal!" I yell to the boy on the first row by the door.  I return to the podium and finish calling the roll while the principal and the coach arrive and carry the ill student out of the room.

 Tomorrow has to be a better day.

MOTHER'S TALE

 Mother's mind was always tinkering with somewhere to go.  If no one accompanied her on some wild chase or if she had no personal transportation, those reasons failed to stop her.  I love telling this one adventure.

My sister and I were privileged to attend summer camp in Montreat, NC in 1944 and 1945, During the second summer Mother decided she needed a vacation, put her job on hold and moved temporarily to Asheville to be near us. She found a job in a small hospital as a telephone operator.  She loved being in a different place, without the hassle of her husband.  She'd take my sister, seven-years old, and twelve-year-old me out to lunch, after chugging to the camp up the mountain side in a taxi. Some days she took us to a movie.  We never let on that we missed the camp's activities. We loved our mother too much to complain. 

At the end of the summer she rode the train with us back to Mississippi.  During that time, and many times later to different audiences, she told us of her famous taxi ride.  She hopped a taxi when she first arrived in Asheville without a hotel reservation. She asked the driver to ride around so she could check out the hotels.  He did, and during that ride looked through the rear view mirror and said, "Where are you from, Madam?" (Now I must remind you in those years women felt very comfortable alone in public.) Mother said Mississippi, to which the driver replied, "I was stationed in Jackson, Mississippi, a few years ago -- at Hawkins Field." Mother then added, "I was switchboard operator at Hawkins for six months." He introduced himself, as did Mother and they realized they had shared one incident together.

Mother went to work at midnight at the field. She drove her car down the paved road leading to the sentry.  A short distance from the entrance, she saw four servicemen getting her attention with waving hands. She stopped and they breathlessly asked, "Can you give us a ride through the sentry? Otherwise we'll be late, and that can't happen." Mother agreed and they mushed themselves into the small car, she sailed through the sentry with her pass, and the guys unloaded down near the barracks.

"I've never forgotten you. Your name's Ann, isn't it?" She said yes.  "Well, this ride's on me. I'll show you a good place to stay while you're here.  In fact, anytime you want to see the sights of the city, I'm at your service."  Mother, not wanting to lose an opportunity, said, "I want to see a still." I'm not sure if this announcement surprised the driver. He answered, "Give me a few days to find one rather safe for you."

In due time Mother tromped through tall grass and around bushes to see a whiskey-making still in action. She was thrilled when she took a taste, and even more thrilled when the makers gave her a jar of their famous liquid.  

I never have heard of another mom desiring a visit to such an operation. She remembered that experience the rest of her life.

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PARK MEMORIES

Long before there was a fictional Disneyland, before tennis courts invaded green space, before
kids were immersed in electronics, there were public parks scattered around our hometown in Jackson, Mississippi.

 Poindexter Park was located in West Jackson at the edge of downtown. I lived within walking distance of this beautiful play land. As a child my parents brought me out on Saturday mornings to play before the summer heat drove us indoors. Most Sunday evenings we listened to music played by live musicians. Mother took pictures of my playing in the sand box, sitting on the baby swing, leaning against Daddy on a bench. A wide expanse of area, three city blocks wide and two city blocks narrow held swings, see-saws, and sand boxes.  Tall trees provided shade in the humid summer months, hide-aways for lovers, benches for the weary, cross walks for strollers.

 One area of our own grassy knoll sat a brick and stone gazebo called the Band Stand. There during elections stood candidates who'd promote themselves the only way other than through newspaper articles and advertisements. There during spring and summer nights the city band played while families spread picnic supper and kids ran squealing with delight.

For the little ones, the concrete sandboxes filled to the brim with sand got dug and filled in pails, poured over kids' heads, pee'ed in, spilled over into the grass.  All kids knew what having sand in their hair, on their faces, in their clothes felt like. Yet, every visit the allure of the sandbox began again for the return visitor.

 Two sets of six swings each sat at one area near the sidewalk that bordered the park.  Big kids pumped their swings into the air to feel the exhilaration.  There's no feeling like being airborne without a parachute.  Repeatedly,  swings flew higher and higher,  fingers holding tightly to the chains that held the seat in place.  You were lucky if someone --your dad, your mom, your older brother or sister, anyone, would push you into netherland.  No better sensation swelled in your body. No one thought in the 1930s of a man on the moon, but some kids were often heard to say, "Push me to the moon!"

The park was popular with students who attended Enochs Junior High School, a giant of a three-story building guarding one side of the street.  Mornings found kids scribbling their homework at the last minute, gossiping, and eating an ice cream cone for breakfast bought from the popular Seale-Lily store across the street. Afternoons students sat waiting for their buses, or short cut across the park to reach a nearby house or apartment. Six streets were in proximity of the park.
 
I have no reason to be in the vicinity of Poindexter Park anymore.  The city has expanded in other directions. Original families have found other parts of the city to live. The surrounding landscape has changed. No more Seale-Lily, movie theater, or Greco's Spaghetti House.  No sandboxes, no swings carrying shrieks of joy, no music from the gazebo which still stands as a silent reminder of its popularity when I was a kid.
 

MOTHER'S PRECIOUS POSSESSION

Sis and I never knew what Mother kept inside her hope chest.  When she opened it to add  or view its content, we asked no questions. This was her special box.

As Mother grew older and her mind weaker, she opened the chest often. She’d thumb through the contents, then lock the peeling faux-mahogany box with a brass key as old as she. She once told us her mother gave her the chest to collect items for her future marriage.  I imagine she carried it to Greenwood, where she attended business school. On to Jackson to sit in her rented room at the YWCA . In a few months hence she moved the chest to her new apartment when she married our daddy.

By the time she was in her eighties she and her chest had moved into my home.  She struggled to remember from one opening to the next where she had laid the key to the aging lock. Often Mother would wail, ”Help me find the key,” as though it were made of a precious metal. Daddy,  Sis and I pretended we were on a  hunting expedition to humor her. After too many hunts, Daddy removed the lock from the chest, leaving a small round hole large enough to spoil some of her precious belongings.

A short time after her death in 2002, we opened the chest. What seemed, at first invasive, became a tour of our Mother’s youth.  We reveled in the1900s postcards written by her mother, photos of her high school days, tissue-wrapped carnival glass, embroidered dish towels and pillow cases, a baby ring,  her high school boyfriend gazing at us from a filigree frame, a 1920s diary written in pencil.

The real prize  sat hugging the bottom of the chest. A stack of telegrams Daddy, a telegrapher, sent Mother from his first sighting of her  in 1930 on the city streets, to twenty years after their marriage. Despite their age, the messages were legible. The words were humorous and poetic.They revealed to us daughters what a love-struck young man our daddy had been.