Journey of 60 years, Day 1

A 10-day journey into what will soon be 60 days of living, through song and memory.

  

              At our core, we humans want to be wanted as much or more than anything.

            An unknown soul once said, “If you hide, I'll seek for you. If you're lost, I'll search for you. If you leave, I'll wait for you. If they try to take you away from me, I'll fight for you, cause I never want to lose someone like you.

            Longing, Needing. Someone to care about us, for us. Someone who won’t turn us away when the days are dark and lonely. That's a basic human need.

That’s the feeling I think most of us desperately desire. The key, however, is who we long to have care about us because if we worry too much about other humans loving us, there’s a grand and glorious possibility that we will be hurt in the long run.

It’s not good to start out life feeling unwanted, but it happens. And it’s important. Mother Teresa said that “even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted …”

HOT SUMMER DAYS
            July 27, 1953 was a normal hot summer day in the Queen City, Meridian, Miss. Ninety two if it was a degree, 89 in the shade. The kind of humidity that seemingly sends sheets dancing across paved roads in modern-day mirages. In a much different atmosphere in Asia, the People’s Republic of China, South and North Korea, and the United States put to rest the three-year war we called a conflict.

            In Memphis, about a month earlier, a young, long-haired for the times, high school senior graduated from Humes High School. He was poor, shy, and fitting in was a mystery to him. He dressed “funny” by early 1950s standards. A year before graduation, he won a singing contest with a country tune called Til I Waltz Again With You.

            But that wasn’t really him. He had sung it merely to hope to win the contest, to take one last chance at fitting in, at being wanted. But his true ambition and heart was for what was called at the time “race music.” His predilection for gospel music or what would become called rock and roll had gotten him beaten by fellow teens in his hometown of Tupelo before he and his family moved to the Lauderdale projects in Memphis, Tenn.

            But July 27, he was working at a new job at M.B. Parker Machinists. Soon, though, we would hear from him again in another capacity.

            In Meridian, history hadn’t been kind. A town that was once the capital of Mississippi, Meridian was more known for chords of railroad tracks that passed through the town. At one point, in a precursor to his march to the sea, Union General William T. Sherman spent a week destroying the town during the Civil War.

In the 1930s, Jimmy Rodgers, who might just have invented a little thing called country music, came from there. It also was a hot bed of the civil rights battles that were to come in the years ahead.

The railroads rebuilt, and until 1953, the tracks went right through the center of the shopping area of the town. That year, the 22^nd Avenue bridge was opened over the tracks. It was a such a big deal that Sears and Roebuck built a new building right there on the avenue.

That day, a baby was born at the red-bricked hospital on 12^th Street and 29^th Avenue, St. Joseph, ironically a mostly black Catholic church in the town. The infant was two months premature, born with out patience it seemed to unmarried parents. Rumor has it that the mother was from Georgia, perhaps even a teacher. Rumors also link the child to a more prominent male in the town. The parents did not want the child at worst, did not keep the child for other reasons at best.

For three months, the child went by the name Peter as nuns fed, clothed, bathed the little one. Then a 27-year-old native of Lauderdale County (Meridian’s county) and her 32-year-old husband adopted the child despite what they were told would be rather extreme costs for medical procedures because of problems associated with the premature birth. He was given the name William for his adopted father and Vise for the doctor who helped saved his life at birth.

A NICKLE BIT OF LOVE

The kid grew up in a tiny brick two-bedroom  home in Meridian’s Oakland Heights, a sub-division that was born after World War II as a place for veterans to find housing cheaply. When he was five, he spent time with a very old guitar, hauling it around the neighborhood and singing for 5 cents a pop. He was never certain whether the patrons paid because he was cute and sang well or they simply wanted him to go away.

The desire to please was born early. The desire to be wanted was there. Isn’t it always. What we want is someone out there that we can trust through it all.  God wants that, too, ironically enough.

The first time the grown child read the Bible cover to cover, he was shocked to find that adoption was a constant theme.

Joseph’s youngest sons Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted by Jacob; Moses was adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter; Queen Esther was adopted; Jesus was essentially adopted by Joseph, his step-father.

Then the boy-man found he was not only not alone, but he was in fact part of a huge, huge family.

The Apostle Paul says of this notion of someone loving enough to take us in permanently, joining us to an existent family, “But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.”

ELVIS IS DEAD, AND I’M FEELING PERLY

As the late Lewis Grizzard once wrote, “Even as late as 1962, the world still made sense. Elvis was still singing, Kennedy was still president, Sandy Koufax was still pitching, John Wayne was still "the Duke," Arnold Palmer was still winning golf tournaments, and restaurants still served hand-cut French fries.

But then assassinations, war, civil rights, free love, and drugs rocked the old order. And as they did, I felt frequently felt lost and confused. In place of Elvis, the Pied Piper of his generation, we now found wormy-looking, long-haired English kids who performed either half-naked or dressed like Zasu Pitts. Snarling lips would never be the same, really.

Part of the progression was the move of music from Elvis to, uh, everyone else.

The first time the kid heard the young singer from Memphis, he was changed. Down the howling of the winds of time came music, splintering, becoming acoustic, then becoming electric. The first time he saw a local band featuring a brother of his friend playing “Ferry Cross the Mercy,” he was hooked. Peter Paul and Mary sang folk tunes and his cousin played the piano. On and on the music went.

And always out there, was Elvis. James Brown said Elvis taught white America to get down. Buddy Holly said that without Elvis, none of them (sings, songwriters) would have made it. John Lennon said that nothing really affected him until Elvis.

At eight, the kid sang a solo in church, Amazing Grace, primarily because Elvis could sing. At 15, the kid sang from Elvis’ first greatest hits record and finished second in a contest at school.  At 17, the kid sang Elvis songs to his first girlfriend. At 18, he saw Elvis in Tuscaloosa begin the song Polk Salad Annie, “Some of ya’ll never been down south,” before remembering where he was and breaking down in laughter. At 20, the kid sang Elvis gospel songs in church, with partiality to Crying in the chapel.

Through his life, always there was Elvis. Never missed a dreadful movie, 33 of them. Never missed an album of mostly mundane songs in the middle of his career.

At 23, the man from Meridian was working at a newspaper in Starkville, Miss., when he heard that Elvis had died. They were playing Elvis songs on August 16, 1977. After two or three on the radio, they mentioned the reason. Elvis was dead.

And the world was achanging.

 

I CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I can't help falling in love with you

IF I CAN DREAM,

We’re lost in a cloud
With too much rain
Were trapped in a world
That's troubled with pain
But as long as a man
Has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and fly