LITMIR.BIZ

      I grew up during the 1950's in what's called the Deep South, which is not like Virginia or those other uppity states; it comprises the lowest row of Southern states, namely, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. It is a place where only sweet tea is served and there is plenty of gravy at every meal.

      Some people would say the Deep South obviously should include Florida, but the presence of so many Yankees down there automatically disqualifies it. Besides, everyone knows that nothing good comes out of Florida except I-95.

      The State of Georgia was created as a buffer between the rich folks in South Carolina and the Spanish devils and pirates down in Florida. If those bad guys attacked America, they would have to fight on St. Simon's Island, Ga., instead of in South Carolina.

      Sure enough, the Spanish attacked us and promptly lost the Battle of the Bloody Marsh, thereby saving South Carolina from ruin until Gen. Sherman came blazing through. The Spaniards eventually cut their losses and traded Florida to the United States, in order to get permanent ownership of Texas.

      When King George let some English prisoners settle in Savannah in 1732, everything south and west of South Carolina became part of Georgia, making it the biggest state in the union, and all that land was controlled by ex-convicts.

      After a misunderstanding called the Yazoo Land Fraud, the United States demanded that Georgia be split up. In 1800, Georgia sold the land comprising Alabama and Mississippi to the U.S. government for the gigantic sum of $400,000, most of which ended up the governor’s bank account. Over the course of some 200 years, the Deep South didn’t change much until the 1950's.

      That decade was a great time to grow up in. It was an era of prosperity and progress for most of the United States, schools were busting at the seams with young baby boomers, and it seemed that every family owned a house, telephone, car, and a television set.

      The economy was booming everywhere except in South Georgia. It lagged behind because it had stayed the same for years, mainly producing only tobacco, cotton, peanuts, and whatever else could be raised in bad soil.

      I was reared in the very bottom part of the Deep South, in Waycross, Georgia. Only history buffs know it was originally Tebeauville, and no one seems to know for sure why it was renamed Waycross. Most people say it was because the railroad lines crossed there, and I've heard that the local Baptists said it was the “way of the cross.”

      Regardless of the name's origin, it's appropriate for the town that's way across the swamp: Waycross adjoins the vast Okefenokee, which -- at some 400 square miles -- is larger than many states. It's so huge that no one has ever explored it all and lived to tell about it.

      Waycross is the county seat of Ware County, by geographic area the largest county in Georgia, which gives the locals bragging rights to being the biggest city in the biggest county in the biggest state east of the Mississippi.

      Across the country, most folks didn't hear much about Waycross until the early '60's, when the classic "Miller's Cave" became a hit song for both Hank Snow and Bobby Bare. It was about a jealous lover who caught his unfaithful girlfriend out with Big Dave, "the meanest man in Waycross, Georgia," and killed them both.

      Waycross had everything that nobody likes about Florida, including swarms of mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds, but it offered none of its tropical neighbor's attractive features, such as beaches and ocean breezes. We had two seasons -- hot and hotter -- and every afternoon about 4 o'clock it rained for half an hour.

      On some nights, the mosquito-killer spray truck would come down our street. Good thing our windows were open so the buzzing blood-suckers in the house got poisoned. I’m sure the chemicals that killed them couldn't harm us humans. My younger brother, Moose, liked the smell of the stuff, so he would run outside and wave at the truck, but when the driver saw a fat kid chasing him, he'd speed away.

      With the railroad tracks crisscrossing Waycross, it seemed like 200 trains a day rolled through downtown. One line went right down the main street, backing up traffic and, at the end of the growing season, aggravating farmers who had truckloads of tobacco to be sold at auction.

      Late one summer when Moose and I were hanging around out behind an auction shed, I encouraged him to make us a cigarette out of some stray tobacco leaves that had fallen along the way.

      When he lit the rolled-up weed, a tongue of flame immediately raced all the way up to his lips. “Damn!” he said. “Next time, I’ll just swipe one of Dad’s cigarettes.” Good thing I let him smoke first so I didn’t get burnt.

      When it came to taking advice, I was usually on more solid ground than Moose. My older brother, Wiz, once informed me that if I'd put a penny on a railroad track, the train wheel would squash it and make it as big as a half-dollar. I never tried it, though. I saved my coins for the Coke machine, which demanded a penny and a nickel for a 6 ½- ounce bottle. For a dime more, we could buy salted peanuts, which we'd pour into our drinks and munch on as we sipped. We would check the bottoms of the bottles to see where they were filled. Some of our Cokes came all the way from Rock City, Tennessee.

      There are no rocks in Waycross, and the soil is not the red Georgia clay of song and story. It's white sand that once was ocean bed, and because it's below sea level, water flows north after a hard rain. In our front yard, we could dig a hole about six inches deep, it would fill with water almost immediately, and before long a frog would jump in it. Moose would then skillfully gig the croaker with a knife stolen from the kitchen. Early on summer evenings, we'd sit on a blanket in the yard and watch the cloud-to-cloud lightning. But only if nothing good was on TV.

      In our little town, we could go wherever we wanted, usually on our bicycles. I had a nice red one that I learned how to ride after just one lesson. Dad put me on it, gave me a big push, and yelled, “Start pedaling, damn it!” So I did, pedaling until I was out of sight so I could avoid any more lessons.

      Most of the men in Waycross worked for the Southern Railroad, whose local operation included a huge repair shop and a switching yard. It employed only white men, most of them for such complicated jobs as cleaning and painting boxcars.

      Like all the Deep South towns, Waycross was strictly segregated in the '50's. Black people lived in older houses across the main railroad tracks from white folks, and we were told not to talk to them.

      They attended their own schools, shopped at their own supermarket, bought used cars from their own dealership, and got their haircuts at their own barbershop. The black undertaker and the black preacher drove Cadillacs, but none of their neighbors had much money. They were hired as cooks or maids but couldn't get professional jobs, such as smoothing out wet cement.

      Black folks had their own taxi service, too. Our part-time nanny, Viola, would arrive at our house in a Walker cab to care of my little sister, Tootle, so that Mom could work as a bookkeeper at the local Ford dealer.

      Viola was a great cook who dipped snuff and spit in a soup can while she watched soap operas, and she didn’t put up with any backtalk from little white kids. After a spanking she gave Moose, he shaped up. Sometimes he and Tootle would sit in her lap while she would hum them a melody.

      I've always wondered why so many black people stayed in Waycross instead

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