Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (8 page)

That portion of Arkansas was known as “Tornado Alley.” In those parts, nearly every home had a storm cellar. With new construction, they usually pour the concrete for the cellar at the same time they pour the foundation for the house. It seemed like most of the stories we heard around there had something to do with a tornado of a particular year.

Like the tornado of 1962 that tore up Oil Trough. A local woman got sucked up into the vortex and was conscious as it whirled her around with the rest of the debris. While in the cloud, she collided with a bull that was wrapped in barbed wire. After the storm, both the woman and the bull were found in a farmer’s field. The bull died, but the woman lived to tell the story.

In 1995 a twister completely destroyed the Haigwood farm. Barns, silos and the three houses on the property–everything was demolished. Stan’s wife, and five family members, took shelter in the middle hallway of their brick home. Not only did the tornado blow away all but one corner of the house, it literally sucked the carpet out from under the people kneeling on it. No one was seriously hurt.

With the help of family, friends and neighbors, the Haigwood’s completely rebuilt their farm. Three years later they were voted Arkansas’s “Farm Family of The Year.”

After repairs to the cart were finished, everyone went home. So Patricia and I were alone at the shop when the wind began to pick up from the southwest. Sunset was shaded by a sullen sky with ashen colored clouds that boiled up into huge dark thunder heads. Within minutes, the wind turned into a gale that rattled the metal building and wailed through power lines. Ugly clouds churned toward us with gray and silver festoons that twisted up and down. The air was wild with the scent of storm.

In the shop doorway, as I watched all this turbulence, I couldn’t help but wonder about those who had narrowly survived all those past tornados. What must they be thinking and praying at that moment?

Suddenly, jagged lightning bolts ripped in all directions as thunder cracked, boomed and reverberated throughout the heavens. Then the wind began to howl as if it was in pain.

In the 1970s, when I walked across America with my pack pony and dog, I was struck by lightning. It’s not something I want to go through again. So we closed the shop door as fat rain drops pelted the sheet metal. Quickly it turned into a downpour that vibrated the entire building. The steel roof sounded like it had a thousand buffalo stampeding across it.

Eventually the storm settled into a steady pitter-patter. The prayers of the farmers were being answered. Soon, we all fell asleep to the sounds of a sweet summer shower.

Today in the bottoms–across the Delta–farming is king. But it hasn’t always been that way. The Delta used to be a vast forest growing in a swamp that stretched west from the Mississippi River to the Ozark Mountains. It was more than a hundred miles wide, with trees so big around that it took a family of four to hug one. In some places the oak, cypress and other hardwoods were so dense their canopy kept sunlight from reaching the ground.

The first white men to harvest the Delta were loggers who waded through snake infested mire with cross-cut saws and axes. Back then, because it was so shaded, mosquitoes ruled both night and day. To fend them off, the timber companies usually had a barge with a man who tended a fire to keep the sawyers and logging mules engulfed in smoke. As for the water moccasins, the loggers and mules were on their own.

By the 1890s, most of the timber had been cut down and hauled away. Left behind was perpetually soggy ground, but under that water was soil that had been enriched by centuries of decay. So they dug trenches and built dikes that drained the swamp to make way for farms. Today there are drainage canals all across the Delta. And every highway is bordered by deep ditches that always seem to have water in them.

The Delta is so flat, that some highways go for miles before they curve. It was on one of those straightaways that two motorcycles stopped in the other lane about sixty yards ahead of us. Traffic was so light, that whenever
we saw a speck on the horizon, we would guess out loud what was approaching. Patricia was the first to figure out that this speck was motorcycles. Now as they idled in the southbound lane, she asked, “What do you suppose they’re up to?”

“Probably want to visit with us.”

Those words were barely out of my mouth when the engines revved and both bikes charged in our direction. One was a crotch-rocket that was reared up on its back wheel in our lane headed straight for us. With the deep ditch to our right and the other bike charging down the southbound lane, we had nowhere to go.

Patricia screamed. “Oh my God!”

The crotch-rocket roared to within twenty feet of us, then its front wheel came back down onto the pavement. Both tires squealed as the bike leaned to its right and swerved. The noise drowned the driver’s sinister laugh, but as the bike screamed by I could see it on his face. Smoke from skidding tires and exhaust engulfed us as both bikes sped away.

My wife yelled, “Ass-hole!”

I was outraged, too. “Shit-heads!”

Of the three of us, Della was the least shaken. A few minutes later the bikes screamed by from the rear and cut in front of us as close as they could. Again, Della could not have cared less, but Patricia and I were really shook up.

She said, “I wish I’d had a handful of rocks.”

“Where’s a cop when you really need one?”

My wife vowed, “If they come back I’m really going to let them have it!”

We never saw them again. Patricia didn’t get to “Let them have it!” And Della just kept plodding along.

Not many things bothered Della. Not traffic, sirens, horns or speeding trains. But fake yard geese–the plastic kind you see on front lawns–they really got to her. When she saw one, Della would snort, pick up her pace and try to veer out into the road to get away from them. Real geese didn’t bother her. Just the fake ones.

But what upset her the most was road-kill. Deer were the worst. Most of the time Della knew we were coming to one long before we spotted it. She’d pick up the pace, her ears would be aimed straight ahead and she’d start to shake. If the carcass was close to the road, the Big Sis would pause and just stare at it for a few moments–as if paying tribute. Then with quick steps, she’d give it a wide birth and drag us away. One time, we came to a dead fawn that was so young it had spots. I thought we’d never get Della past it.

And we kept discovering new things that she liked. Little kids fascinated her. When they came up to her, Della would bend her head down so they could pet her face. A face that often was bigger than the child petting it. And she adored babes in arms. When a mother holding one was near, Della would stretch her neck so she could smell the baby.

But her favorite thing was vanilla ice cream cones from Dairy Queen. Della’s big flapping mule lips and long slurping tongue would send geysers of white cream spewing out all sides of her mouth. If you were the one holding the cone, you did so at arms length. We soon learned to have water and a rag handy to clean ourselves and Della. A few times we took her through the drive-up window. By the time we got to southern Indiana, Della had come to recognize the Dairy Queen sign, and she was always ready to stop.

Then west of Jonesboro, Arkansas, Della saw her first marching band and has been a fan ever since. We had pitched our tent in a small roadside picnic area across the highway from Westside School. It was late in the afternoon of August 2
^nd
, and I was gathering wood for our dinner fire, when the band members began to amble onto the football field. Patricia had just set up our cook stove when the first trumpet played a few scales. Della’s head bolted up from grazing and she whirled around to face the school yard. Then a flutist shrilled through a set of notes. The Big Sis strutted in that direction until she came to the end of her rope. Then there was a toot or two on the tuba, thumps on a base drum and other assorted sounds in un-orchestrated warm-up. Della was all ears, and they were pointed that way. A large clump of grass hung out the side of her mouth, but she wasn’t chewing.

Then someone blew a whistle and all of the sounds stopped. Still staring that way, Della started to chew. But a couple of minutes later a whistle blew four times, followed by the crash of cymbals, a roll of the drums, then the band began to play and march across the field. Majorettes were out in front twirling batons and flags, as the afternoon sun reflected off the tubas twisting back and forth in unison at the rear of the band. Della was mesmerized. For the half hour they were on the field, she never took her eyes off them. She just stood there with that same clump of grass dangling from her mouth. After the band quit, she just stood and watched as they wandered off the field. She didn’t start chewing until the last band member had disappeared. Then she simply went back to grazing. But every once in a while, Della would stop and stare in that direction. It was as if she were wishing they would come back.

Before the swamps were drained, all the towns in the Delta were built on high ground. In the Arkansas Delta, the highest spot was Crowley’s Ridge. A narrow range of hills that runs 150 miles south from the Missouri border down to Helena, Arkansas–the home of the Delta Blues.

One of the oldest and largest towns in the Arkansas Delta is Jonesboro. In 1859, it was settled high and dry on Crowley’s Ridge. Like the other older towns, it was originally a logging camp. But today, farming drives the economy of this city of 55,000. At a distance, the Jonesboro skyline looked like a metropolis–complete with skyscrapers. But they turned out to be huge grain elevators. The tallest belonged to Riceland Foods.

Although they cut down all the trees in the flat lands, they didn’t up on Crowley’s Ridge. So after a week of sweltering across the unshaded Delta, it sure felt great to be among trees again. It was just as hot in the hills as it was down in the bottoms, but at least the hills had spots to rest in the shade.

Jonesboro was our first big town. That Friday afternoon it was hot and sticky as we walked along Highland Drive toward the county fairgrounds. Rush hour was in full swing, so we were walking in heavy stop-and-go
traffic. The exhaust and the heat that reflected up from the pavement was stifling. Still, it was a grand experience as horns happily honked, and people with smiles waved and gave us thumbs up. Several times I heard “Good Luck!” yelled at us from open car windows. It felt like we were in a parade.

With the rest of the traffic, we were at a standstill on Highland Drive near Caraway Road, when the passenger window of the car to my left rolled down. A woman with long blond hair, who could have been on the cover of
Cosmopolitan
, was in that seat with a pretty pink smile across her face. I didn’t notice the man behind the steering wheel until he said, “Hey, we saw you on the news the other night.”

Channel 8 interviewed us down in the Delta a couple of days before we got to Jonesboro. I replied, “How did we look?”

“Great! This is a wonderful thing you’re doing!”

Then he pulled something out of his shirt pocket and handed it to the woman. “Here take that. It’s just a little something to help you get down the road.”

She handed me a twenty dollar bill as the man said, “Buy the donkey a sandwich.”

I was thanking them when the traffic began to move. Their car was pulling away when the woman winked and said, “You look good in person, too. Good luck.”