LAUREL SMOKE

LAUREL SMOKE

When I was growing up in Meridian MS, it was a family tradition to make occasional trips to Laurel to spend the day with Grandmama Stainton and whatever aunts, uncles and cousins were on hand. By the time I came along most of Highway 11 was at least graveled. It was a long trip to Laurel, over two hours to cover the 60 miles. The highway wound in and out of Enterprise, Pachuta, Vossburg, Heidelberg, Sandersville and several other named settlements along the way. In the winter Mama and Papa sometimes heated bricks in the kitchen oven to take along and keep our feet warm. In wet weather our car got covered with red mud . In dry weather the dust blew and covered us whenever we met another car. The road was not bad in some places, but most of the way seemed to be over a washboard surface. (For those who don't know what a washboard was, I had better explain. Before the day of washing machines clothes were washed by rubbing the wet clothes against a framed piece of corrugated metal, called a washboard. The surface of the road became like that washboard by the constant bouncing of the traffic.)

Mama and Papa had a time keeping all the kids entertained, so along the way we played games like counting cows and horses. As some of you remember, when the car came to a cemetery on our side of the car, we had to bury all we had counter. But after a while we were tired of games and became restless as children are prone to do. In response to our nagging questions about when we would finally get to Laurel, Papa told us to look for the Laurel smoke. Now Laurel was a sawmill town in those days, so the tall smoke stacks with the black smoke bellowing out defined the skyline of Laurel. As we grew more tired of the dusty trip and more eager to get to Grandmama's I thought we would never see the smoke. But before long there it was—as black as ever! What a thrill. We knew we would soon be at Grandmams's where we would be smothered with love and kisses.

But sawmill smoke was not the end of the story. After all the greetings were exchanged I was soon off to the back yard to check on the trains that might be switching cars in the big GM&N freight yard that backed up to Grandmama's place. I could sit for hours on the back fence watching those freight cars being switched from track to track, while the smoke from the coal fired engines covered me and filled my nostrils. What a wonderful smell that was to me! If I was lucky, the scupernongs were ripe in the garden and I would enjoy that special flavor of sweet grapes after I wiped most of the coal soot off. I still get a thrill when I think of Laurel smoke!