Take Me Back to Old Yazoo

May 10, 2004

In the early 1930s, the Boswell Sisters recorded a song, “Old Yazoo”. It started out, “Take me back to Old Yazoo.” This week, I get to test Thomas Wolfe’s axiom, “You Can’t Go Home Again”. I am returning to Yazoo City, Mississippi, my hometown, for a brief visit to see my mother and extended family. In one way, Wolfe is correct, because the Yazoo City I knew as a child is not the one I will find. The town has changed, and so have I. But the places are still familiar, the people are wonderful, and the memories are unchangeable. Those of us who have the “privilege of place,” (that is, a geographic point of reference we call home) can test how far we have traveled, much as a sailor returns to the shore to see how far out to sea he has been. I’ve enjoyed quite a life journey. But there is nothing like going home.

I hope to see the beautiful Orioles eating at my sister’s bird feeder. I hope to eat some catfish, cooked only as Mississippians know how. I hope to hear rain on my mother’s roof. I want to see my mother and sister’s new church building. I hope to journey back to Calhoun County, a two hour drive from Yazoo City, to the small Concord Baptist Church in Calhoun County, where both my mother and father’s ancestors lived for generations. I hope to hear again the sounds of the old Sacred Harp singing, an ancient music form that experienced a brief resurrection this year in the movie sound track, “Cold Mountain”. Mostly, I want to rest and laugh and love and be loved, and get nostalgic for the good old days I took for granted while growing up in Old Yazoo. And when it is all done, I want to catch a Monday “red eye” flight out of Jackson that will get me back to San Diego by noon, so I can finish the day at my desk in Spring Valley. (That would have been unthinkable in Old Yazoo.)

And then, I will get to test Wolfe’s axiom one more time. Will I be able to “go home again”…my home in San Diego?