A Goose Hollow Memory

The Beginning

Photos from author’s collection.

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The Beginning

How far back in one’s life a person can remember is an interesting subject. I think most people can consciously remember back to somewhere between the ages of three to five. I have felt that an understanding of word meanings and concepts is needed to form coherent memories. Yet, language may be an instinctual element for us humans. What we call language that we learn could just be a learning of the symbols and sounds of the culture we are born into. Subconsciously, a few individuals may have memories going back farther. Maybe they can even remember their birth, and the shock and trauma of being forced out of a warm, safe place into a blinding cold, and struggle for their first breath of life; maybe even the pain of circumcision. I thank God that that is one memory I don’t have!

But my earliest memories were of my playmate. She was a dirty-blond-haired beauty named Deborah. She was a little older than me, and her sister Diane was a little younger. Mom had photos of Diane and me still in diapers. Something I surely do not remember. Deborah may have been ahead of the curve in undergarments in those pictures. Deborah was my best friend and playmate. Of course, she was the only other kid around who was near my age, who was walking and running around and not toddling like our two younger sisters.

There was a group of five, or maybe six, rent houses on the north side of Erin Street where it dead-ended in Goose Hollow at Asylum Creek. They formed a sort of horse shoe compound with a gravel, cul-de-sac drive turning off Erin Street. They were small to medium size houses, of varying floor plans. All were wood framed, with crawl space and pine ship lap siding; all painted with the same gray paint with white painted window and door trim. The old, lead-based paint seemed to peel easily from the resinous pine siding.

These houses are all gone now. A winery now occupies the property between Erin Street and Highway 10, the main road through Jackson, and named Charter Street. Between the winery and Asylum Creek is a narrow-gauge railroad track. The railroad is for The Old Hickory Railroad Museum. The museum is on College Street, and occupies some of the remaining buildings of the school I attended from first grade through twelfth. I did ride the train once when our sons were young, but the train has been an on and off attraction whenever there are enough funds to maintain the system. It was a fun ride, but the kid in me thinks any train ride is a fun ride. The museum now is mostly a model railroading attraction. I think it has fared well in this, and events bring in quite a few model railroaders.

Mom and Dad told me that we first lived in one of the smaller rent houses in the back against the hill that rose to the main highway. I do not recall this place. This may have been where we were living when my sister Sharon was born. I believe it was from here that we moved to Pearlington, MS, for a short while; Mom’s hometown.

There we lived in an old, cypress, shotgun house with twelve-foot ceilings, and ubiquitous peeling paint. Cypress is rather resinous, too. The house belonged to Mom’s parents, George and Estell. Our house faced the main road, while my grandparent’s house was on a dead-end side street, off the main road. The two homes shared a large back yard, with a storage shed and chicken coop between them. Grandpaw owned the land on both sides of the dead-end street except for the corner lots on each side by the main road. The dead-end street, now named McArthur Lane, is about two hundred yards long.

I do remember this move. Dad’s oldest brother James, and brother-in-law B. T. Lee, helped us move. I recall them using two cars to move our belongings. They made two trips. After depositing Mom and us two kids there was more room for the other few belongings we had.

We did not stay in Pearlington long. This part of the story I learned later in life. We moved there because Dad had taken a job at one of the ship yards in New Orleans East. I do not think he worked a year there because the conditions were not to his liking. He was carpooling to work with a couple of other men from the Pearlington area. The day he quit, it was about noon; so, he had to hitchhike back home. Some friends Mom went to school with recognized him and picked him up.

As a child I loved living in Pearlington. Though Grandpaw was not around much, because he worked on a tug boat, my grandmother spoiled me rotten. There was one thing about the place that I hated though. Mosquitoes. Being located on the Pearl River where it emptied into the flat marsh land made these nasty vampires a year-round nuisance. I can remember dad stuffing towels under the bedroom’s closed doors and misting the room with a Black Flag aerosol pump before going to bed. I would get completely under the covers until all that foul spray had dissipated and settled.

In less than a year we were back in Jackson; and soon back in Goose Hollow. Back to where my memories begin. Back to the Leonard sisters.

Ike and Marie Delee, the property owners of the Erin Street rent houses, also lived in one of these houses at one time. Their oldest, a daughter Nell, would baby sit with me and the Leonard girls. Her brother Ike, Jr. had a wagon that they would ride us in. They were good people, and our family would have a lifelong friendship with them. They eventually obtained a nice, old farm property on Miller Road about a mile or so north of the town city limit. There was a red-brick, ranch style house on the property on which they would later add a second floor.

Mr. Ike would let me and Dad fish the pond across the road from their house. When I was around ten years old, I hooked my first large-mouth bass in that pond using a rod and reel and blue-plastic, worm bait. It was no wall hanger, but it was a nice keeper. That was an exciting event etched into the memory of my young life.

Even though Mom told me stories of Ike and Marie living in Goose Hollow, these are far beyond my recollection. They had already moved to Miller Road before our move to Pearlington.

Anyway, sometime before I started school (that would be first grade) the Leonard’s moved away to Zachary. This put the mother and father closer to their work, but took my playmates a million miles away. When Mom told me they were moving, and I would not be seeing them anymore, I was heartbroken. By this time, we were all out of diapers, probably ages three, four and five, or getting close to four, five and six. The two girls were about two years apart, and I was bracketed between them. I can remember crying to my mother, “Why did they have to move.” I literally cried. I remember that.

A long time after they were gone, some months at least or maybe after almost a year, I had a dream that I went on a long journey, through many obstacles, and met and played with Deborah. I awoke reeling with the realism of, and sadness that the dream ended. I told my mother about it, but do not remember what she told me. That dream has a permanent place in my Psyche, and has stuck with me for nearly 55 years (I am 60 as I write). This dream has had a powerful affect, and over my lifetime such dreams that have shown me my deepest desires, sometimes desires I would never admit to in my waking moments, have caused me to pause and examine my direction in life. Many times, they have mired me in a baffling melancholy for days, maybe weeks. I find it strange now that some of my life’s most momentous courses of action may have been affected by a dream that I had when I was five years old.

I do not ever recall seeing Deborah again in my life. I suppose I might say she was my first true love; but what do children that young know about love! The brain chemistry that tells you that you are in love can happen at any age. Our bodies change as we grow up and grow old, but do not truly reflect the intellect inside. Our culture pigeonholes us into stereo types as we pass through the phases of life. Yet, we are who we are from birth to death. Our souls reject what our mirrors reflect.

When I was around sixteen or seventeen, I did happen to see Diane at the public swimming pool behind the Zachary High School one summer. She was quite a looker at the time. We did not talk. We would not have known each other. My cousin Rodney pointed her out to me. He lived and went to school in Zachary. I believe he may have tried asking her out, but without luck. Of course, through my teenage mind ran all the what-might-have-been, that surely would never have been like what I imagined. Life goes on.

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Photos from author’s collection.

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