Milepost 1: Too Late To Turn Back Now

“Fat Mama’s Sign Post, Natchez, MS, I”

charcoal & acrylic on canvas

10” x 10”

2018

I’m not supposed to be here. Natchez, Mississippi was never part of the plan. It just wasn’t our intention, neither Mama’s nor mine. I should be on a campus somewhere teaching drawing and painting to the masses, earning the greys in my hair. It’s what I trained for (and am still working to repay), but alas, I’m here.

When folks ask me how I ended up in Natchez, the short answer is, “Mama died.”

I’d just finished school, her house was empty, and my first job was teaching Art Appreciation online for a college in Alabama, a job I could perform anyplace with a reliable internet connection.

But the follow up question, “Why did/do you stay?” has been more difficult to answer.

By way of an explanation, it makes the most sense to begin here: My family is from Natchez, Mississippi, as in ALL of my family - my parents, their parents, and on and on.

Mama’s family, the Junkins, arrived at this river landing via steamboat after leaving Ireland, crossing the Atlantic and following the eastern seaboard down and around to the mouth of the Mississippi, finally disembarking upriver in Natchez. My Aunt Ellen, Mama’s youngest sister, once pointed out the house where they spent their first night in America (on land). It still stands just around the corner over on Main Street. 

My father’s family, the Hudnalls, is a bit more mysterious. We know they had been in the area for a couple generations, ultimately being flooded out of their homeplace across the Mississippi somewhere along Lake St. John in the flood of ‘27. Evacuating via rowboat from a second floor window, they made it to higher ground and, eventually, built a home atop the bluffs of Natchez. 

But I didn’t grow up here. I’m a native Atlantan. My father worked for Southern Bell there, so my brother and I were reared in Georgia. Consequently, multiple times a year my parents would load us into their Volkswagen van and trek eight hours across Interstate 20 through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, back to their hometown. 

As a boy, Natchez is where I spent my Easters, Summers, Thanksgivings and Christmases playing with cousins, surrounded by family. It was a world completely unlike the one I knew at home; the historic architecture, the chiming church bells and paddlewheel steamboats, it all fascinated me. As a teenager, Natchez became the place five hundred miles away from my home, my friends, my world, and although being there meant fun times with family, as the “city” cousin I often felt out of place amongst my rough and tumble country kin. As a man in my early thirties trying to begin a life post-graduate school, I was the outsider just marking time until my opportunity came along. 

So why stay? Why not start over somewhere else?

It’s certainly not for lack of trying. The challenge of supporting oneself in this particular place, regardless of profession, cannot be minimized. Geographically, it’s quite isolated, and I’ve had to wear many, many hats to help keep the lights on in Mama’s house — teaching online, teaching in the classroom, doing yard work and odd jobs for generous aunts, “mannying” for a cousin, diapering her baby, giving art lessons for the children of generous cousins, and eventually hitting the road marketing products for a local business all the way from Dallas to Atlanta, New Orleans to Gatlinburg.

I often found myself in the midst of a job wondering how exactly I got there. What had I done (or not done) that led me to that moment? Escape fantasies became my norm, and after years of working these various jobs and visualizing leaving a place I never intended to end up, I finally attempted my escape. 

After saving for months I gave my employer a ten-week notice. I budgeted for five to six months without income and set about putting together a portfolio that would aid in securing a teaching position at Any College Campus USA.

The great irony of this plan is that I had not created art for more than eight years since my mother’s passing - the person who championed my creativity - despite having spent my entire twenties training to do only that, make art. 

In the sleepless nights of those first months, I worried endlessly about the plan, my finances, and where I would end up if this whole endeavor were to backfire. How would I survive with no job prospects or opportunities to follow? What would I do? Where would I go?

The stress and anxiety of facing the unknown led me to take comfort in the simple pleasures around me that had gone unappreciated, pleasures that I might lose — Mama’s roof over my head, a full belly, and a warm bed. But in the fifth month when an opportunity to leave Natchez finally presented itself, I packed my belongings, said my goodbyes, and drove out of state, searching for an apartment and a new beginning. 

After two days and a dozen apartments later, nothing felt worthwhile. Though I had secured employment opportunities, uncovered a handful of potential apartments, and reconnected with old friends in a town I once loved and adored, I felt only emptiness. I tried to convince myself that the feeling just couldn’t be right, but there was no joy in my efforts. The search felt pointless. Astonishingly, I kept thinking of how things might work out if I were to try in Natchez again, and in that moment it became the only feeling I trusted. So I took the remains of my savings, returning to Mississippi with a renewed purpose. 

Now two years since that great leap of faith, I am still chipping away at this challenge of supporting myself with my work, but my challenge has become my adventure — working for myself at this time in my life under my mother’s roof surrounded by her treasures, (with the lights still on) in a warm bed, and a full belly.

And though I still find myself thinking of far off places, the church bells of downtown Natchez chime the hour, reminding me of how special this little historic town is perched two hundred feet above the Mississippi, much secluded from the rest of the world with its endless festivals, parades, and celebrations, and its calliope concerts performed by visiting steamboats. 

My extended family is here, and I am blessed to be within a few miles of them. Most significantly, it is the privilege of helping maintain my mother’s Natchez home so that my nephews, my brother’s children (also native Atlantans) will have the opportunity to get to know their Mississippi kith and kin from the warmth of their grandmother’s victorian cottage that keeps me grounded. 

This is the place that shaped my parents, where they hoped to one day return after spending thirty years in Atlanta, and where we ultimately spread and interred my mother’s ashes just five short years after she finally made it back to her beloved hometown.

Unintentionally, I have become a part of our story here. Natchez just happens to be the spot upon this earth to which we belong, Junkins & Hudnalls, and being here, making art here is my current adventure for better or worse.

For even if all of my efforts prove fruitless, I’ve tried, and you know, God loves a trier. Maybe I should have kept searching, kept driving, taken one of those jobs, but I believe that my being here is more than the result of coincidence or happenstance -- it’s sacrosanct – and I’ve given myself up to it.