Adam's Story

I was born Monday November twenty-seventh, 1916 in the small town of Magee, Mississippi. My mother christened me Adam Benjamin Calloway then died when I was three days old. No one knew who my father was, so I was taken in by Sister Mary Williams of St. Augustine’s Cathedral. She had cared for my mother when her family had disowned her because of her condition.

Sister Mary was a strict woman who wore the constant face of someone that had just tasted a lemon and looked older than the hills to my child’s eyes. She didn’t like me much and I honestly can’t blame her. I was a holy terror in my youth and she took the liberty of reminding me of it every chance she got. Sister Mary carried around a wide wooden ruler everywhere we went. If I got smart, she would whack me on the ear with it. That happened more than a few times in a day.

It was my firm belief that an old crow like Sister Mary had no business raising a young boy and I was determined to get away from her and Magee as soon as the opportunity arose. I was destined for New York where my fortunes lay in wait for me. I think I had dreams of finding my father there. I am not sure how I would accomplish this since I didn’t even know my father’s name, but I dreamed of our reunion every day until I was six years old. A dream Sister Mary considered foolish because I would never get out of Simpson County much less Mississippi.

The answer to my years of prayer finally came in the spring of 1927. I was almost eleven years old when the Mighty Mississippi River flooded, leaving thousands of people without homes. Simpson County was too far east to get the high water, but we sure got the drifters. Dozens of people wondered in and out of Magee going to or coming from one place or another. It was the most excitement I had ever experienced and I would have enjoyed it more if Sister Mary had not made me help in the church where a shelter was set up.

During all the commotion, I was able to sneak to the depot where I hid aboard the northbound train a few minutes before it departed. I smiled as the scenery of the town I hated most swept by at a hundred miles per hour. I had no clothes, no food, and no money. All I had was a fierce determination. For a boy of my age that was enough.

*****

The first time I stopped outside the Mississippi state border was in a town called Middleton, Tennessee. I stood with pride at my accomplishment of what Sister Mary had deemed I would never do. I had escaped the harsh, firm grip of my hometown and looked beyond toward the city of New York.

I had been traveling for about a month at that time. Hopping trains, hitchhiking and mostly walking. I was dirty, smelly, and my body yearned for a home-cooked meal.

In my quest for food, I entered a small, whitewash store on the corner across from the train station. It was my great fortune when I was caught trying to steal a moon pie by the proprietor. His name was Mr. Turner, and he was in need of a young man to help around the store. Why he took pity on me gave me the job I’ll never understand, but will always be grateful. The pay was room and board plus fifty cents a week. I gladly accepted.

Mr. Turner lived in a small apartment behind the shop with his wife. They were a kind elderly couple whose four sons had grown up and gotten lives of their own. Their oldest son, Elroy, had stayed in the country to care for the family farm while the two middle boys, Curtis and Frank, joined the army. John, the youngest, had gone off to college with dreams of becoming a lawyer.

Though I was anxious to get to the city, I was in no hurry to leave the Turner house before the holidays were over. I contented myself to stay until warmer weather and with excitement accepted an invitation to join them for Christmas dinner. It turned out to be one of the best days of my life thus far. The food was incredible, and I even got a couple presents. A tradition that was new to me as Sister Mary never gave me anything for any holiday.

It was also the day I got my first kiss. Her name was Louisa. She was Elroy’s oldest child and one year my junior. Louisa was such a tomboy it never really entered my mind that she was a girl. We had loads of fun that fall and winter climbing trees, exploring the woods, fishing the creeks and causing mischief. Before that I had never known what it was like to be a child.

It had snowed for Christmas that year and Lou and I would not be kept inside. We ran around all day throwing snowballs, trying unsuccessfully to skate the partially frozen creek and building lumpy snowmen. We were in the middle of a third attempt to build a snow fort when I remembered Lou was a female. I looked down at her as she flopped to her knees and began scraping snow in a pile. Her nose was bright red from the cold, there were clumps of wet brown hair stuck to her face and tufts of white clung to her like cotton.

Lou looked at me with shocked anger when I quickly brushed my lips against hers. “Whatcha do that for?”

“Just wanted to.”

I saw Lou’s face struggle to achieve the same shade of red as her nose before she turned away from me and back to her mound of snow.

I was sorry to have to leave Middleton, my childhood, and Louisa. I promised Louisa before I left that someday I would come back and take her to New York to live with me. Breaking that promise is one of the only regrets I have had in my long life.

I made more stops on my road to the city but none stand out in my mind like that one, even though some lasted longer. I consider Tennessee the end of my innocence.

*****

In the fall of 1929, I made it as far north-east as Athens, Ohio. I didn’t stay there long, only until after my thirteenth birthday. It wasn’t the town I was opposed to but a group of boys a few years older and twice as big as I was that picked on me nonstop from the time I arrived in late October until I left in early December. I spent that Christmas shivering in a rundown barn somewhere on the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border dreaming, of Mrs. Turner’s homemade biscuits.

A few days after the start of the new decade, I found myself in Philadelphia. It was a hallmark in my adventure, a turning point one city closer to my dream. But I could find no work there. The economic collapse of Black Tuesday had left thousands without work and there was no room for a drifter like me.

The state of The Depression hit me with the force of a sonic boom. I had left Mississippi in a dream where everything went forward to emerge at what I hoped to be a solid step in my victory yet was nothing more than a cold, bitter taste of reality. I began to give up hope. I was never going to make it to New York, and I was too afraid of the disappointment I would face there to try.

That’s when I met Mr. Sullner. Or rather he met me.