Them Folks Up North



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 It is a long way from Detroit to North Alabama. We left the north with no thoughts of ever returning. I have, but my little brother never has. After we got here there really were no emotional reasons why we did not visit our grandparents, honestly. It would be dramatic to say we would have to stay is why we didn't go back. Really I think we just didn't, because of the trouble. Buy bus tickets and such. My little brother as an adult had his reasons. His reasoning for never going back stems from the worship of the dear southern people that rescued us from being hungry, wet and cold. That was forty years ago. He never has talked about the north much. The mentioning he did was that he had no need for none of our relatives that lived in Michigan. He wants to give the impression that he does not remember much about living there. This is possible.

I must have the best long term memory of just about anyone. He may vaguely have some memories that are not pleasant ones. He may not remember the wet and cold as well as I, because he was not much out of diapers when we got on that Greyhound bus, to Pulaski Tennessee... The bus was taking us to Tennessee not Alabama. At seven years old I did not sit down the whole seven hundred and something miles. How could I sit down? These brilliant parents of mine were taking me to the wrong place.
He did have a discussion with Uncle Buddy. He was married to Mama’s sister. Uncle Buddy said that if Daddy would have manned up Mama would have a home when Daddy died. All this was going on because, Grandmother sent Mama to Michigan when Daddy died, on the Greyhound Bus. When a not so tacky amount of time had passed the northern kinfolk would put her on the bus back to Pulaski Tennessee. I learned after standing for seven hundred miles was the right bus stop, after all. It was ok to leave going up north. It was also the right place to get off the bus for Alabama.
I returned when my grandpa died. I did this mainly to travel with Mama to her father’s funeral. Her mother had died the same day my twins were born. An option that was not a given at all for me. Mama did ride the bus to attend her mother’s funeral. She would not stay with her sister and nephew for a visit. She was too anxious to get back to Alabama to see me and her new grandchildren. The impression that the rest of the world had of my mother was different for the one I had. To the southern family she obtained by marrying my father she was far from normal. To me she was anything that I could get her to do for me. The excuse I stole from my little brother; was that she had never done what she should as a mother for me; This was to rationalize that it was ok to make her do the things I did not want to do. To the southern kin Mama may have not been all there; to me she was my mother.