One Thousand Words

A picture is worth a thousand words -- but sometimes a thousand is not enough. On October 1, I had the opportunity to travel to Leland, Mississippi to conduct an interview. The interviewee was a Mr. Robert Hitt Neil, author, radio personality, and general southern character. Mr. Neil invited JR and myself out to his home for the interview followed by a "Jungle Lunch". JR was given driving directions, but once again, GPS did not save the day. We stopped at a Mennonite woman's house for directions. She graciously met us in our vehicle, so as her grizzly bear-sized dog would not attack us, then pointed us approximately one block up the street -- a point we had passed previously. Mr. Neil asked us to meet him at the swimming hole which was the first thing JR and I spotted on our back peddling trek. We pulled off the main road into a scene unrepeatable for any cinematic set designer. Mr. Neil resides on the farm his family has owned and managed for generations. The swimming hole, replete with a dock and a knotted rope attached to a tree from which divers could dangle through the air over the water, sat adjacent to grand house where Mr. Neil, with his wife, now live. The doorways in the home seemed to stretch well beyond conventional 10 and 12 foot ceilings. Directly behind the house was Mrs. Neil's workshop -- the former commissary for the sharecroppers who once helped work the land. Inside, an old money vault along with boxes and bottles of the probably-common household items of sharecroppers, silently told stories of a past. Of course, none of these stories compared to the ones Mr. Neil actually told -- stories of escaped convicts, the building of levees, baseball, Lyndon Johnson, the toll of mechanization on southern farmers, the reasons he shoots computers -- as opposed to clay disks-- on his range, and egg-sucking dogs & angel food cake. After the stories, the tour, and the interview, Mr. Neil treated us to lunch at a table next to the swimming hole. Our "Jungle Lunch" consisted of sardines, Vienne sausages, smoked clams in the can, crackers, Pringles, and cheese. Though I've never eaten a sardine, to avoid Mr. Neil's chants of "you're such a girl!", I took the challenge. I can't say the same for JR -- but he's a big boy -- I'm sure he can endure Mr. Neil's accusation of "sissy". At the end of the afternoon, Mr. Neil insisted that we take a look at his miracle tree. According to Mr. Neil, lightening struck the tree decades ago leaving the top half of the tree in the yard and the bottom of the tree hollow and dead. As a kid, he and his friend would climb the tree looking to tap the honey of nesting bees. A seed soon embedded itself in the honey and proceeded to grow. The branches of the new tree entwined with the old tree. The roots of the new tree attached itself to the root system of the old tree extracting water from the nearby swimming hole. Without knowledge of their pasts, one would find the two trees indistinguishable. Mr. Neil explained that this was analogous to man's relationship with God. I went to the car, completely enthralled with the surreal sights and experiences of my day, to grab my camera from my bag but it was missing. JR and I said our goodbyes and headed back to Cleveland. Upon our return I headed home for a real lunch. I searched my apartment for my camera, but could not find it. I looked again in my bag and found it. I had moved it to a different pouch in order to protect the lens. I'd had it the entire time. Initially my disorganization frustrated me, but as I thought more about it I realized that I hadn't missed anything. Though a picture may be worth a thousand words, sometimes a thousand is not enough. A picture can only capture what is within its frame. My experiences in Leland were too big to be framed, too big to be captured. The best vault for their storage is the film of my own imagination.