Before my mother produced a girl-child and we ran out of bedrooms, we lived in a nice little house on Northside Drive. My mother's childhood friend Betty Wright lived around the corner. When I was a teenager, she was instrumental in apprising my mother of my adventures and making sure I survived them. Behind our house was Martha Hammond. The woman who made me want to read, even though I couldn't. She was dear enough to me that she became simply "Hammond," not Mrs. Hammond or any other method we're taught to address grown-ups. Being a stutterer, I sometimes had trouble saying anything at all, so adding supernumerous words like "Mrs" sometimes meant I stayed silent.
My mother's firstborn and Lee Hammond had access to and helped build a treehouse. Getting up to the treehouse meant reaching and stepping on two boards nailed to the trunk of the tree, then to a limb, then into the forest green painted house. My brother and my other brother, and Lee Hammond, gained access to the treehouse and moved about it as I imagined monkeys might be in the wild. Being too small, I couldn't reach that first board nailed into the tree. Without that first step, all the other steps were irrelevant. Life in the trees was not meant for me. Not yet. The message was clear, though. Trees meant vantage and perspective. Trees meant fun, but most of all, trees meant freedom.
Because our house had no more room for another child's bed (and a girl's bed at that), my father bought two acres from Mayor Speed in an area that became known as Eastover. The recent death of my uncle meant that I would take his name, and my father got a pretty serious promotion to replace him. It meant the family would have more money. It also meant that for the next thirty years, I had to be clever if I wanted to spend any time with my father. He made an attempt to be my companion at Indian Guide's meetings, but I was sent to Indian Guides fatherless often enough that I would start refusing to go.
Eventually, I would gain the favor of Charlie Deaton and Robert Wingate by learning to fish, which meant my father could take me fishing with them. I also learned the names and committee assignments of every Mississippi House of Representatives and Senate member and learned to mix drinks. One made me interesting, and the other made me useful. Knowing how to fish and clean fish gave me the potential to be both interesting and useful, but only Ross Bass could cook them properly. It was a sound strategy. I told you I had to be clever.
Behind our new house, Warren and Elsie Hood bought about a twenty-five-acre lot. They built a house and manicured about three acres of this lot; the rest they left Mississippi wilderness. That he earned the money for this purchase with Mississippi timber made it a logical choice. Warren Hood was a gentle, sometimes quiet creature. You wouldn't suspect him as the kind of man who rode a helicopter to work. He would eventually give up the practice. Too loud and too expensive, he complained. I believe he kept the helicopter to inspect timber properties, but I don't think he rode it very often.
Elsie Hood was a powerful country girl with square hips and strong shoulders. She had kind eyes and a mind like a steel trap. Eventually, she would acquire a major stake in Mississippi's largest bank and would be instrumental in its sale. In the sale, the foreign investors (from outside of Mississippi) promised her to keep on the majority of the bank's employees. A promise they didn't keep. Elsie took a special interest in my sister and Lee Kroeze, our neighbor. Sometimes Mrs. Hood had tea parties for the girls and had an interest in them all their lives. She was there the day we buried Lee before she had the chance to pick a college. I don't like to talk about that very much.
Sometimes, Mrs. Hood would catch me adventuring in her woods.
"Hue! Boyd! What'ya doin'?"
"Jes climbing trees. I saw a snake over yonder."
"Did ya kill it?"
"No'm. It were just a king snake."
Then she'd leave me to my wanderings. In the middle of the Hood's Woods was a wild southern live oak. Domestic live oaks were planted generations before and meant your family had been part of Mississippi stretching back to the civil war days. Their limbs were carefully trimmed and sometimes braced to create the most impressive possible display. A wild live oak was something different. It was dark and sinuous. Some limbs were steady as stone, while others lured you out on them, only to crack and give way if you ventured out far enough. Fortunately, I was young enough to take a pretty good fall without much event.
This was Yggdrasil, my world tree. Adventuring into its limbs made my own young limbs stronger. It gave me perspective and vantage and fueled my budding imagination. At its base was Nidhogg, the dragon that chewed at the roots of your resolve and reputation. Nidhogg would follow for the rest of my life. We did battle many times in my efforts to find another world tree.
Soon, I was old enough to attend Vacation Bible School. In those days, what would become known as VBS was held at the McRae farm. Each class would meet under a different live oak tree for crafts and singing, and fellowship. Fellowship meant playing with other kids, which was hard for me to do because I stuttered. At school, I learned that if I said something inappropriate, the other kids would laugh, so it didn't matter if sometimes I couldn't get my words out the way I wanted. Sunday school was different, though. That was the domain of my mother, and my grandmother and I had to behave, so I was usually just quiet.
Vacation Bible School was run by the same people who ran our Sunday School, which were usually mothers of somebody or another, and they were assisted by the members of the United Methodist Youth Fellowship, which meant teenagers and included such notable persons as George Patton, Bill, and Gail Gober and more. They wore blue jeans and played guitars, and generally ignored us, spending their time together trying to figure out the rules on the young end of the teenage experience. Soon, they'd be on the far end of the teenage adventure and going off to college and I began my own teenage matriculation.
The live oak trees at the McRae farm weren't like the wild Yggdrasil of Mrs. Hood's Woods. They were trim and tame, and their limbs were decorated with scampering young methodists learning songs about Jesus. Unable to speak properly, I was mostly quiet and sought out the higher branches, where I could watch the others learn. This wasn't my world tree, but it was a good one and a place to grow.
I hadn't yet made the connection that the McRaes who sat near my grandparents at church were the same people that owned the store where my mother bought my clothes. We shopped in the "husky" section, which was a polite word for fat. I struggled with fat most of my life. For a while, fat thought it had me beat, and soon the referee would count me out, but in the last seconds, I pulled a surprise move and vanquished fat forever. I risked my life in the process, but I wasn't going to die that way.
I would always find a tree to climb in. They were my refuge and my cave of wonders. In college, there were two live oak trees beside the KA house and a massive one in front of the Chi-O house. Many times would find me in their limbs. Sometimes nobody knew I was there, which was perfect. I'd been given therapy for my speech impediment, so by college, it was much better, but there were still times when my words wouldn't come out right or wouldn't start at all. Even now, if you see me quiet, I might be thinking, I might be bored, I might be sleeping, or I might just be frustrated that my words won't come out, so I shut my mouth and let it have a temporary victory.
In college, I met a willowy beauty who was a friend of my sister's. Her speech patterns matched my own. Speaking together triggered the speech impediment for each of us, so, of course, we became friends, even if our conversations were unintelligible to others.
"Hey....b...Boyd!"
".....H.Hey Laryn!"
"Have you s.s.s.een your s.s.sister?"
She would eventually marry a young man who had already impressed me before he met her. I think of them often. Sometimes the trees I found refuge in were people. Eventually, I made a kind of peace with my voice and the trees and the dragons chewing at their roots.
The last time I drove through my old neighborhood, I noticed somebody had cut down my Yggdrasil and built a house there. You truly can never go home again. The tree lives in me, though. Its roots and limbs are tendrils connecting me to the people and places, and events of history. The world tree is time itself, and the dragon chewing at its roots, my own mortality. One day the dragon will win and take me like it took my father, and his father, and his father. Wherever it takes me, I know I'll have friends; and maybe I'll be able to speak freely.
