CAROLINE'S CORNER: COMING OF AGE ALONG THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE II

To continue my coming of age along the devil's backbone episodes, several years ago, late at night, Boulware and I headed north along the Natchez Trace from Jackson to Tupelo.

As our engine began to over-heat, we thought it best to exit and find help. Much to our surprise, about three miles off the Trace, we found a garage in the middle of nowhere. Several men were "hanging out" there, working on cars, and we stopped to ask for help.

The proprietor informed Boulware that being the good Samaritan he was, for $30 he would allow someone to drive Boulware three miles to town to get the necessary part for the car. I'll never understand why I chose to stay and let Boulware go, but so I did.

The "nice man" took me on a tour of the building. "There's the boots they let me have when they let me out of Parchman," he boasted.

New I knew that Parchman is the Mississippi State Penitentiary and believe me, I spent some anxious hours until Boulware returned. I imagined myself as the next victim of the ex-convict and the reason for his second pair of bounty boots. For once Boulware truly looked like a knight in shining armor when returned from his expensive trip.

Today, when one travels on the Trace, about 20 miles north of Tupelo he can see the home where I spent my first 20 years. That section of the road was not completed in my childhood days.

Mr. Jim Nanney's cornfield is now part of the Trace. Cousin Connie and I went there to pick ears of corn and transform them into beautiful dolls. We chose them by the color of the silk. We could have a blond, brunette, or a redhead. We then painted faces on the lovely ladies and gave them exotic names such as Philomena Ursula Urbanek and Azalea Avalon Alvarez. Their names perfectly matched their personalities.

As few of the pine trees we planted for my college education can be seen from the Trace. I grew faster than the trees, my parents found another way to pay, and pine beetles ate most of the trees.

The road to the home of the "Whitehead old maids" now runs parallel to the Trace. The "Whitehead girls," as they were called well into their 80s, are now all gone. The little road, grown over with kudzu and wild roses, is no longer in use. That road holds stories not told in history books about the Natchez Trace.

The Tabler Hills, the forest where I took long walks with my friend, Paulette, are visible from the Trace. The average sightseer notices a fairly typical scene, with pine trees and in the spring an occasional dogwood. I see an area where I know every gully and every old home place with daylilies still blooming for no one to enjoy.

Crossing under the Trace is the road where my tribe lived for five generations. Big Jim Nabers moved from Alabama to this neck of the woods in Northeast Mississippi in the 1800s. Big Jim, my great-great-grandfather, was quite tall and weighed 375 pounds. We "big-boned" Nabers women all seem to have inherited his genes, and we all share the same syndrome - a pattern of behavior that is characterized by the desire one time in our lives to fit into a size 5 petite.

The tribe is scattered from Oahu to Omaha now and tourist could care less about Big Jim.

On a table in my living room is a "coffee table book" about the Natchez Trace. Included in the photographic travelogue are wondrous photographs and the story of the Trace.

Maybe someday I'll write "The Untold Story of the Natchez Trace - Growing up a Big-Boned Girl, Between Twenty Mile Bottom and Donovan Bottom, in the Flatwoods."