Memories in Mississippi

My grandmother lived in an old, slanty house in the middle of the middle of Hotchkiss, Colorado for more than 40 years. Mamaw’s house was small and hot and dusty, and I spent the happiest summers of my life there. Days were made up of walking the dogs, reading, playing cards, reading, doing a crossword puzzle, walking to the P.O. to pick up the mail, and more reading. Once a week there was laundry needing doing. Once a week she got her hair fixed at the beauty parlor, where I’d sit under an empty dryer and listen to the hairdressers talk as Mamaw listened to them, avidly.

Eudora Welty's house in Jackson, Mississippi.

When Paul and I stopped by the southern author Eudora Welty’s home in Jackson, Mississippi last month, I was moved to this flood of memories. Good English major, I read Eudora Welty in college, and again in preparation for this road trip, but she never really made me think of Mamaw until I went inside her house. They shared some traits, Eudora and Mamaw did. Though Mamaw and Papaw had relocated to the West from Georgia in the 1930’s, Mamaw’s Southernness never left her. Like Mamaw, Eudora was Southern to the core, warm, social, humble, and literary… well, it’s the love of books that really stands out. Like Mamaw’s house, books everywhere. Built-in shelves in every room, plus piles on end tables and spread across coffee tables. (Most people I know say they love to read books, but books as furniture? How many of us have so many that we use stacks of them as nightstands?)

Eudora’s house is the one on the Southern Literary Trail that’s set up to look like she just walked out the back door a few minutes ago (as opposed to preserving it circa 1915). Even though she lived there from her childhood throughout her nearly century-long life, the kitchen and furnishings and television set are all from the 1980s, when she still hosted lots of company on the back porch there. The chenille bedspreads reminded me of Mamaw's fondness for that tufted fabric. An empty bottle of Maker’s Mark reminded me how Mamaw enjoyed a cocktail in the evenings. Even their kitchen sinks were identical.  

It was a fitting end to the Southern Literary tour. The next phases of our month-long road trip would take us to Texas to see Paul’s family and Colorado to see mine. Mamaw and her house have been gone for more than five years now, but I can’t drive through Hotchkiss without going past that empty lot and staring at it for a little bit. It’s like pinching my own arm to make myself cry, but I can’t not do it.  I wish I could stand at Mamaw’s sink and look out the window at Papaw’s old shed. Instead, I satisfied myself standing at Eudora’s remembering Mamaw pouring a glass of water from the tap.

One of my favorite facts learned about Eudora is that all the literary awards she earned – and there were many – she kept in a dusty box in a downstairs closet except for one. It wasn’t the Pulitzer, either. It was this funny little ceramic crow that she won, late in life from the local library, for reading the most mystery novels in a year.

Now that’s something even my humble Mamaw would’ve been proud of.