The Red Clay Hill

The Red Clay Hill is an actual spot on our land in Long Creek, Mississippi.
For over a hundred years, the little rise just before you drive into our yard
has been known as the red clay hill. When my husband's family describe
locations on the property, it is often somewhere in relation to the red clay hill,
just past it or just before it. In the horse and buggy days, it would get slippery
when it rained. My husband, Wesley, says he's seen days when even cars
couldn't get up it. Over the years sand and such have been added to the
surface, so we don't slip and slide in the rain anymore, and use has worn the
hill down where the driveway goes through. There is, however, a hill of red
clay right there where it has always been.

I can only imagine what the hill looked like when Wesley's mama was a child
and cotton fields stretched out around it. I love to hear the stories of life on
the farm. I suspect the living of the stories wasn't quite as romantic as they
sound to me. There was a lot of hard, hot, hurting work in picking cotton.
They haven't forgotten that it was difficult, but still they remember it with a
deep love. Memories of eating peanuts and watermelons, swimming in the
creek, all intertwined with recollections of the toil of harvest. I envy them their
country childhood.

I am trying to get Wesley to tell some of the old stories and you can find them
on the Miscellaneous Meanderings page. He's the storyteller in this family!