In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices

In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices.

My piece, "In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices" won 3rd place in the non-fiction category of the Alabama Writers' Conclave annual competition. I Attended the awards banquet in Huntsville, AL where the AWC conference was held July 15-17.


"In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices" is also in the online journal, Alalitcom 2011.
The web address is Alalit.com.

In Search of Enduring Alabama Voices

When at the age of 39 I became a student at the University of South Alabama primarily to study creative writing, I had no idea I was a ready poetry-writing student. I had begun to publish articles in religious publications, but I was not into poetry and knew next to nothing about finding one’s voice as a writer— let alone as a poet. But as they say, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” In my case the “teacher” was Walter Darring, an accomplished artist and poet in his own right—and to think I signed up for his poetry writing class thinking it might be a breeze. As it turned out, it was, indeed, a breath of fresh air.

Mr. Darring was so passionate about poetry and the craft of writing poetry I came to think of him as an apostle of poetry. I had never heard of James Dickey or his poems. But listening to Mr. Darring read Dickey’s poem, “Falling” based on the experience of a 29-year-old stewardess falling out of an airplane through an emergency door that suddenly sprung open, was a spiritual experience.

            Studying poetry writing with Mr. Darring, (I took every course he offered) stirred to life a an emerging poetic voice I didn’t know I had. By the time I earned a BA degree with a
concentration in Creative Writing in 1978, writing poetry had become a viable form of expression for me. Even so, not all of my poems, then or now, pour onto the page. Some of my would-be poems turn out to be vocal warm-ups. A good many poems I wrote to fulfill an assignment were off-key and out of range. But now and again an assignment brought forth a poem like “Inner Resources” that sang itself.

                                                                   Inner Resources

When the impulse came

To spend myself

I held nothing back.

Spent…

It’s gone now,

All means of exchange.

Unless,

Unless a hidden coin

Lies buried

                                                                   In a second purse.

                                                                                 *

           

     To be sure, studying creative writing at USA exposed me to different fields of knowledge that put me in touch with the voice within. One threshold moment occurred in the listening library where I came upon a recording featuring street cries and work songs collected and vocalized by Julian Lee “Judy” Rayford, a noted Mobile writer, poet, artist and folklorist. Peddlers’ songs rising, falling, and breaking into falsetto resonated with me.  

     I couldn’t imagine an acclaimed Mobile literary figure celebrating folk ways of peddlers

and their kind and for the first time I knew “their kind” included me. I came from a long line of peddlers of one sort or another. Both my grandfathers peddled as did my daddy—Raymond D. Smith, alias Banana Man, Green Man, Watermelon Man. While my forbears’ street cries, field 

hollers, and work songs had not been recognized among my kin as folk art, Rayford’s renditions accented with florid syllables and melismas put words in my mouth.

     Shortly before “Judy” Rayford’s death, I got his permission to use his strawberry street cry in a poem about my grandpa Smith who in his day peddled fruit in and around downtown Mobile.

Strawberries

  Over cobblestones,

   Round Bienville Square,

  Papa Shep peddled

    Old Mobile, singing,

    Strawberries, Straa…berries,

      Stee…raa…berries.

 

      I’ll be glad

    When grapes git chere.

 Before I became

A peddler of thought

 I yearned for a

Legacy other than,

   Strawberries, Straa…berries,

Stee…raa…berries.

    I’ll be glad

 When grapes git chere.

         But now that age

          And reflection

          Sweeten berry and vine,

            I am content.

           *    

     Like Papa Shep, Daddy was a born peddler. Mama, too. But she had a soul above peddling. She had her fill of peddlery as a child. When she was a girl Grandpa Tillman ran a fruit stand on the corner of Old Shell Road and Tacon Street in Crichton, Al. Her family lived on Tacon and early of a morning she had to run up to the stand to help Grandpa set up, which often made her late for school. Embarrassed at being tardy, she found excuses to stay home. Mama had a bright mind but with no encouragement to get an education, she only finished fifth grade. Even though Daddy managed to make a good living for Mama and me and my two brothers, Mama loathed his business. Nonetheless, by the time I was around 10 years old Daddy had become a successful tradesman who bought bananas wholesale at the at the Banana Docks at the waterfront in Mobile and fresh produce at the Farmer’s Market. Being ever a lover of the green road; the verdant field, Daddy hauled his produce “up the country”  to retail markets in the vicinity of Thomasville, Al.

     That day in the listening library brought to mind going as a little girl sometimes to the docks with Daddy to wait for the banana boat to come in. A poem of Rayford’s featuring a work song heard around the turn of the century on the banana docks in Mobile, inspired a poem of my own.

                                                      Song of the Banana Man

Awakened by some inner clock,

You move by memory

Through the sleeping house

Of childhood dreams.

In the stillness

You sing your song.

Git ‘em green there, Johnny git ‘em green!

Come on here, boy!

Pick it up! Pick it up!

Tote ‘em on down, son—on down the line.

For you, song-singer

Whose hands and back

Made a living conveyor track,

I take up a refrain

Tote ‘em on down a long time, sweet daddy!

a long time, sweet daddy!

Tote ‘em on down the line—take ‘em away.

     Some time before Daddy stopped hauling produce he built a small grocery store in the edge of our front yard on the corner of Springhill Avenue and Page Street which Mama operated. She

had a good business head and knew how to turn a profit. In the early 50’s, however, poor health forced her to retire from full time work. Later, when Daddy quit hauling he turned the concrete block store building into a stock room and curb market which he ran until his peddler’s heart began to fail in his green old age.

            With only a 7^th grade education Daddy worked for himself, possessed a venture, and assumed accountability for the outcome, yet he was an unsung entrepreneur. In Mama’s eyes

Daddy would forever be a peddler. One of the things Mama detested was that Daddy’s stock was perishable and if he didn’t have a quick turn-over, he had to absorb the loss. I can still see Daddy at the kitchen sink paring away dark spots in over-ripe Chilton County peaches—sweet yellow juice flowing between chapped, work-strutted fingers. In the summer we always had big bowls of luscious culls in the refrigerator.

            In 1981 a picture of daddy’s curb market painted by Mobile artist, Kathy Whitinger

was one of 11 original paintings of Mobile landmarks which appeared in the Junior League

of Mobile’s “One of a Kind” cookbook. Daddy ran his “one of a kind” curb market into his late 70’s. Following Mama and Daddy’s deaths—they died within eight months of each other in 1998, the home place was sold and the dilapidated fruit stand with its walk-in coolers and storage rooms was torn down. Today, if not for the lay of the land, you wouldn’t know the place. What

went for real is clean gone. All that’s left is what daddy fashioned out of air… and to think Mama had no use for words that make more sound than sense. She begged Daddy to save his

dying breath. But she might as well have saved her own. For having outlived the cold and

and caution of decline, his songs—and mine,  go on and on:

Got turnip greens and mustard greens;

White velvet okre for yo butterbeans.

Come to think of it, perhaps I sound most like myself when I sing in a voice I didn’t choose, but which chose me—the challenge being to speak authentically, sincerely from the heart. Perhaps my true voice emerges when I try to imitate the rumblings of long, narrow display tables on wheels Daddy called “gondolas.” Or sound the jingle-jangle of dangling silver-blue pan scales Daddy didn’t need, to tell how many Sand Mountain tomatoes make a pound.

Please Ma’am, don’t mash the tomatoes!

Fifty cents a pound, Ma’am, three pounds, a doller.

Acknowledgments

            Thanks are due to the editors of the following magazines, in which the poems cited in this

article appeared: Inner Resources, Channels, Encore, Looking South, Sampler; Strawberries,

Negative Capability, Rhyme and Reason, Song of the Banana Man, Mobile Bay Monthly.