Excerpts from Ribbons of Highway: A Mother-Child Journey Across
by Lori Hein
Reader comments:
- “My hat is off to
the author. Thanks for some very
thoughtful and pleasurable hours.”
- “The writing is
exquisite.”
- “I traveled America with this trio, and I
feel like I was there.”
- “This is so much
more than just a travel book. The
personal touches are fantastic.”
- “I am happy to
recommend this lovely book.”
- “As a mother of two
teens, I applaud the author for her desire to share the road with her
children, and I thank her for sharing the goodness of our country with all
of us.”
- “The writing is
lovely and evokes all the sights and sounds of the journey.”
- “I’ll tell you, I
was on that journey every page of the book. It was amazing. I’m right there in the third seat,
riding along with these people, waiting to see what happens to them next.”
- “May this book serve
as a reminder that all events, large or small, will shape your
relationship with your children as well as their view of the world around
them.”
From the Introduction:
Although
my kids and I didn’t climb into the van and drive off until nine months later,
our 12,000-mile American road odyssey began on September 11, 2001.
Where
I was and what I was doing when the planes ripped through New York are part of
my life’s fabric. I was outside painting
the fence brown, telling my neighbor Donna that I’d plenty of time now to do
the job my 13-year-old son was supposed to have finished because I’d just been
laid off. We groused about the economy’s
sorry state and mused over whether things could get any worse.
In
the next instant, they did. The kitchen
phone rang. It was my husband calling
from the car to tell me one of the twin towers had been hit. Mike was on the road, making sales calls, and
hadn’t seen any pictures yet. He’d only
heard the radio reports.
The
paintbrush hardened outside in the sun, pieces of cut grass sticking up like
spikes in the brown mess.
When
Adam and Dana came home from school, we gathered around the table on the deck,
and began, as a family, to sort through facts and feelings and fears. The kids’ teachers had done a good job
dispensing comfort and assurance before sending them home. By the time they got to us, we’d decided we
had three things to communicate: they were safe and loved; America was strong;
the world’s people were good.
To
our family, this last point was as important as the others, because our kids
have been traveling the world since they were babies. Respect for the world’s people is part of
their upbringing. This is a gift, and
we’d allow no senseless act, however brutal, nor any retaliatory distrust or
intolerance, to steal it.
My
mind’s eye called up images: two Turkish
teenagers kicking a soccer ball with a 5-year-old Adam on the grounds of Topkapi
Palace; Adam joining a group of Bolivian boys in tabletop foosball during
recess at Copacabana’s school, Lake Titicaca shining at the end of the street;
the kids building sand castles with Javier and Daniel, two Belizean brothers
who’d pass our hotel each day on their way to class; Dana setting off for a
bird walk, in the shadow of Kilimanjaro, with Mike and Masai chief Zapati. These experiences enrich life and must
continue.
As
the painful, numbing slowness of the weeks immediately after September 11 yielded
to something approximating normalcy, I regained enough focus to give the future
some thought. That future had us
traveling again, but this time, we’d get to know our America.
From
Chapter 4- FROM MEMPHIS TO THE DELTA: Mississippi and
“Boiled and Green Peanuts.” “Home Grown Peaches.” “Fresh Catfish and Pantrout.” “Crawfish Boiled or Live.” Route 61 rode us all the way through Port
Gibson, too beautiful for Grant to burn, to a small piece of a long stretch of
road I’ve wanted to ride since I was a kid.
The Natchez Trace. Trace. Not road or highway, but trace. A whisper of something fleeting and gone
past.
We rode 40 miles on the Trace to its terminus at
Natchez. Deep green New Paint blended
into the primal moss forest, dark and rich.
Speed limit on the Trace is 50, “but nobody does,” according to the lady
in the Port Gibson tourist office. We
did that and less, wanting to feel the soul and pace of the Indians and
trappers whose lifeline this old road used to be.
We
met National Park Service ranger Daniel Kimes, who’d just been stationed at
Emerald Mound, a 700-year-old ceremonial mound built by ancestors of the
Choctaw. I’d targeted Emerald Mound as
consolation for missing Cahokia. Like
other very old American places, scattered and sometimes hard to find, this
sacred, grass-covered earthwork reminds us we’re a new land in an old
land. As its builders did centuries
before us, we climbed the green, conical hill, surveyed the encircling forest,
and thought about the land.
“I
grew up on the Trace,” said Kimes. “This
is a dream come true for me.” He’d be
going up to Philly or Boston or D.C. in August for a stint watching the
historic sites, Park Service practice since September 11, but he was savoring
his time at Emerald Mound, deep in the ancient woods of the Trace.
When we got to Natchez, we sized it up as a good place to
fish, and we drove to Bailey Park early one morning so Adam could spend some
quality river time before the day’s high heat and humidity set in. He looked under the seat for his rod and
tackle box. “Where are they, mom? I gave them to you to hold.”
So he did, back in Vicksburg, where I’d laid them down to
take a picture. I felt worse than bad.
Adam had been looking forward to this.
Up in town, there was a K-Mart next to the Natchez Market, where the day
before we’d spent a few fun minutes watching red plastic shopping carts roll
through the downhill-sloping parking lot and bump into shoppers’ cars. I told Adam I’d replace his equipment as soon
as K-Mart opened. But that was over an
hour away, and I had ruined this perfect fishing morning. Adam was decent about not rubbing it in, but
did utilize his keen eye for opportunity:
“Since I’m so devastated, can I have a root beer for breakfast?”
Two men in a pickup backed down the cement boat ramp
pushing a Bass Tracker. “How you doin’ today?” asked the driver.
I
pointed at Adam, sucking down his 7 a.m. root beer. “Well, right now we’re trying to get over the
fact that mom left his fishing rod in a park back in Vicksburg.”
John and Mac immediately became everything good about
Mississippi that we needed to know. Our
chance meeting meant they couldn’t solve the rod problem (“If I’d a known these
kids was gonna be here, we’d a brought some rods – Mac’s got about ten,” sighed
John), but they found other ways to show the kids a fine Mississippi River
time.
They hoisted Adam and Dana into the bass boat and opened
coolers holding yesterday’s catch. Three catfish, a whiskered one and two
flatheads, each about six pounds, sat on ice.
They looked huge to me, but Mac dismissed them as small, unprofitable
fry he hoped he’d be able to sell. “The
best eatin’ catfish are about eight to nine pounds.” Size matters in catfish. “Caught a 76-pounder once. Too big.
Bad eatin’. Too much fat. Nobody’d buy it.”
Mac told of the “evidence” of a 110-pounder capable of
turning the who-eats-whom tables. “River’s got stories.” He pointed to a spot
in the river. “Right out there. Eat a
man whole.” As Adam listened to the fish
tales, I imagined him wanting to get to K-Mart as soon as possible to retool so
he could reel in one of these leviathans. He probably also fantasized that I’d
empty the Thule and fill it with ice, so we could haul the thing around for a
while.
Mac did most of the talking while John got ready to
launch. He was going to cross to Vidalia
on the Louisiana side to check some catfish lines he’d sunk near a spot where a
new hotel was going up. He offered to
take us along for the ride. It was
tempting to go out on the Father of Waters and watch a Natchez fisherman at
work.
But I couldn’t.
While intuition sounded the all clear, I needed to err on the side of
too much caution when it came to decisions about safety or vulnerability. Keeping my guard up wasn’t something I could
compromise on this trip, even if it meant missing some experiences. I had a fitting, but truthful excuse.
“Thank
you, but I’m afraid of the water.” Mac,
either sharp, sympathetic, or both, said he understood my fear. “So’s John’s
girlfriend. She won’t get in the boat.”
Then he added, “This river’s taken a lot of my friends.”
But
he loved it. “I been on every inch of
her. I’ve camped on all these sandbars,
me and my wife. We got a generator and
TV.”
The signature steel bridge that connects Natchez with
Vidalia began to shimmer with heat as the sun assumed its position over the
Mississippi. Mac and John told us that
about four years back, the water level was so low you could stand on the bridge
and look down on a pile of cars and trucks, dumped into the river when a barge
hit the bridge in 1945.
By now, John had an overdue date with some catfish lines,
and K-Mart was open and ready to sell us new fishing gear. We shook hands. John looked at Adam. “Take care of your
mama.”
We felt happy as we drove away. The whole day and the whole country were
ahead, and everything we’d left behind was good. “Just think, Adam. Some kid in Vicksburg is catching catfish
right now.” Adam smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
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Enjoy the journey
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© Lori
Hein, 2008