Charley Pride - Roll on mississippi

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Roll On Mississippi

This photo brings back such bittersweet memories of days gone by.  All the males in this photograph are gone.  Only me, the oldest, and my two younger sisters are still here and just as this photo is fading, so are our lives.

Those were happy times.  Dad was on vacation.  We'd all pile into our old family car, with no seat belts, no air conditioning, and no radio in the middle of summer and make the long, hot trip south from Indiana to my dad's home state of Mississippi.  He loved it!  He was headed back home to the cotton fields and the farm where the sun beat hot, the chicken was southern fried, and time slowed down to a crawl.  How we all looked forward to seeing our loved ones, who we only saw about once a year.

I especially liked playing with all my cousins, the farm animals, making mud pies, catching fire flies, drinking water from a pail with a dipper and sitting around in the evening with grandma telling stories in her long, southern drawl.  Then, the ghost stories would start.  When I got good and scared it was time to go to bed, but I was so sleepy by then I just sank down into that big, white feather mattress and drifted off to sleep.  About the time I was asleep, it was time to get up and run to the storm cellar, because it might be a tornado coming.  This was long before weather radar, so any time the wind started blowing hard, it was off to the cellar.  How I hated that cellar!

We'd stay and visit about a week, then it was time to head back north, until next summer.  It was goodbye to those good old purple hull peas, cornbread, tomatoes, and that southern fried chicken.

Driving home from the mountains a few weeks ago, my husband and I were listening to Charley Pride singing, "Roll On, Mississippi" and all those memories flooded my mind, just like the Mississippi River, old Charley was singing about.