The Summer of My Greatest Content

My parental roots were formed in the clay packed soil of small towns in the Deep South. From Cuthbert, Georgia to Marks, Mississippi to Booneville, California some of my adult sensibilities also were shaped by small town America. But it was the Summer of my greatest content that formed another essential dimension of my character.

In 1955, Oxen Hill, Maryland was a place where the sacred silence was occasionally broken by fighter jets from Andrews Air Force Base roaring across the skies or a tractor sputtering along Oxen Hill Road. Once part of small town America, Oxen Hill now is a toney, sprawling suburb just outside Washington, D.C.

Mornings began early that Summer of my eleventh year. I eagerly rose with the sun that seemingly covered all the sky in Oxen Hill. I gathered with my three younger brothers in my Uncle Terrys bedroom, standing in awe of him as he sprang from his bed to his wheelchair. From there, Uncle Terry pushed himself outside to the porch and bounced from his chair to the tractor.

Although his legs had been decapitated by the crushing tonnage of a freight train, his spirit never wavered. He tended and nurtured thirty acres of land with a passion and devotion usually lavished on ones wife. For me, that farm was the town and the Universe, too.

According to family my father, the land was given to him by a man for whom my uncle worked as a valet and driver. Allegedly, the man was the president of a Midwestern company and secret Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. On that land were trees that produced the best bing cherries Ive ever eaten, and snakes that slithere d through cornfields or dangled from walnut trees, scaring my kinky hair straight. There also was a dump filled with what I now realize were priceless antiques that city-people rid themselves of to modernize their lives.

Occasionally, while traveling through the corridors of my mind, I land in Oxen Hill and recapture the joys of time spent rolling around in dirt and chasing imaginary people. From the antiques filled dump to the big red barn and chickens roaming everywhere, I created my own countries--Zelpha, Contigua and Oxonia; dug imaginary caves where I hid from bug-eyed creatures trying to capture me and even tried to fly from the tops of trees. I was foolish and fearless.

I snatched green, blue and brown eggs from beneath chickens who tried to pluck me to death. I chased rabbits into holes and collected enough terrapins to make an entire species extinct. My brothers and I played on every acre, constantly running from just a few minutes past dawn until t he moon crested and danced with the star filled night. I doubled over in hysterics listening to the birds, drunk with the juice of fermented cherries, chirp off key. As the world seemingly began anew each day, I eagerly arose effortlessly each morning, for I discovered something new about life in what was then a small, seemingly remote town that I thought mainly consisted of the farms along the road.

Even without legs, Uncle Terry was a tall man. His skin looked like he got up every morning and painted it obsidian. But out from its darkness radiated a light that still shines in my heart. He could look into your soul and deflect any attempt to even form a lie. I was mesmerized by his tall, endless as the crow flies, tales about listening to corn grow, hobos jumping box cars and brave people crossing mighty rivers. I used to stand in the cornfield at high noon and try to hear it grow, but never mastered that skill.

Uncle Terry enriched my life much like he di d the soil in which his lush, abundant crops grew. Joining him in the fields thumping melons for ripeness and examining vegetables to ensure bugs werent chomping them away gave me such a sense of purpose. On those rare visits into town, Oxen Hill felt like a different planet from the real town made up of the farms where the smell of freshly turned dirt, ripening melons and overripe fermenting cherries abounded in the air.

I discovered a boy across the road named Shelby. Some days, Id wave at him and the three or four cars that passed by on any given day. My car waving game included creating stories about the people in them, who I thought they were where they were going.

During the Summer of my great content, Oxen Hill became a sanctuary where my imagination ran wild and my spirit soared on t he wings of Uncle Terrys reassuring tenderness and gentile manner. At the end of that Summer, a raucous and truly delightful gathering of my brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins and my parents, whom Id not seen for three months, filled the night air with jazz, the Jitterbug, jokes and jook joint jive talk. Our plates runneth over with mounds of freshly boiled corn picked ten minutes before the party, barbecued chicken fresh from the yard and buckets of bing cherries Id climb trees to pick earlier that morning.

In a small town surrounded by big sky and fertile land, I was nurtured and guided by a man who stood so tall in his life, despite having no legs to stand on. I now realize Uncle Terry, his land and this once small town opened my eyes to incredible new possibilities. Like my uncle, my husband Davi d also tells tall tales and has that same gentle spirit. I love a man whos spent sixty-three years navigating much of his life from a wheelchair. Davids sensibilities and vision were formed by growing up in Yellow Springs, Ohio, still part of small town America. In awe, I also watch David bounce from his wheelchair to the bed, seemingly as effortlessly as my uncle did.

Daphne Muse is a writer, social commentator and poet. In 2004, she was selected as a Forever New Frontiers Radio Essayist and commissioned to write Poetry was Her First Language, a piece on 1950 Pulitizer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Muse is the author of four books. Her most recent is The Entrance Place of Wonders: Poems of the Harlem Renaissance (Ages 4-12, Abrams 2006).

Author:: Daphne Muse
Keywords:: Summer, My Greatest Content
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