Walking the docks of the Galveston Bay area, you’ll find most boats registered in Texas, with a good representation from Florida and Louisiana. There are always a few vessels from the East Coast and the Caribbean, with an occasional hailing port of San Diego or Seattle. But now and then, something truly unusual appears. One day I noticed a pretty sailboat with ”Oxford, Mississippi” painted on its stern. I’d never seen Oxford used as a hailing port, and it caught my attention.
In the first place, Oxford is a town in the red clay hills of Mississippi. It lies on the Holly Springs, Grenada, and Lisbon geological formations, which are characterized by high rolling hills, deep, densely wooded ravines and river bottoms. The hills lie at the very edge of the Appalachian range, rising up from the plains to the south. Not only is Oxford without ocean access for a deep-draft sailboat, with its hills, pines and red sandy clay soil it’s the very definition of “inland”.
As these things happen, I met the owner of the boat on the dock one day. “Are you really from Oxford?”, I asked. “Well, yes and no,” he replied. ”I live in New York, but I registered the boat in Oxford because I’m from Yoknapatawpha County.”
After I stopped laughing, I looked at him and said, “Faulkner fan, huh?” He was, indeed. He’d been reading and studying William Faulkner, Oxford’s most famous resident, since his youth. We spent the next hour talking about the Snopes clan, the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the importance of time and the past in Faulkner’s work, Quentin Compson and Yoknapatawpha County itself, the place created by Faulkner as a setting for his work.
I had been to Oxford – and, thus, to Yoknapatawpha County - only once. The year after I graduated from high school, my parents asked me to choose our summer vacation destination. We knew that it might be the last vacation we would take together, and they wanted it to be special. I already had started reading Faulkner, and there was no question in my mind. Oxford, Mississippi had to be the choice.
Bemused but willing, my folks agreed. We gathered up maps and books and tourist information and headed off. For the first time in my life, I was a pilgrim, bound for the Holy Land, filled with all the intense fervor that pilgrimage entails. When we reached Oxford, the first thing I wanted to see was the house. Since it was 1964, only two years after Faulker’s death, and the Chamber of Commerce hadn’t yet figured out they had something worth promoting to within an inch of its life, things weren’t always obvious. We drove around a bit, trying to find Faulkner’s home, and finally pulled into a gas station to ask directions.
Two boys, about high school age themselves, were working the pumps. “Say,” my Dad asked, leaning out the car window. “Where can we find William Faulkner’s house?” The first fellow stood for a minute, then turned and yelled to his pal, “These folks’re lookin’ for Bill Faulker. You know ‘im?”
“Bill Faulkner?” the other replied, “Don’t believe I do. Can’t remember that he trades here. You folks kin or somethin’?”
No, we weren’t kin, and yes, we did find the house – eventually. Whether the boys ever found out who Bill Faulkner was or where he bought his gas, I can’t say.
But the irony is delicious and inescapable. Two years after Faulkner’s death in 1962, a couple of kids working the pumps at a gas station less than a mile from his house didn’t have a clue who William Faulkner might be. Forty five years later, a man from New York registers his boat in Oxford, Mississippi and anchors himself in Yoknapatawpha County, a purely “literary” construction if there ever was one. In the end, the imaginary world Faulker built became as real as the house in which he lived, and the truth is that, for many people, Yoknapatawpha County is as real as Oxford, Mississippi.
Faulker would have loved it. After all, he’s the one who said, “Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”
© Text copyright Linda Leinen 2008
I’ll bet that sailboat owner grins every time he sees “Oxford, MS” on the stern, wondering just how many folks will stop and wonder, as you did.
That’s a great description of the geography of Oxford – I can just imagine the area.
Hi, NumberWise ~ I’ll be he does, too. As he told me himself, if there’s anything better than being smart, it’s being a smart smart-aleck! But he wasn’t obnoxious about it, just having a little personal fun.
I’ve not yet checked, but I’m curious about the red soil in MS. When I lived in Liberia, there was a good bit of laterite that gave the dirt its red color. I don’t know if the composition is the same, but you surely do know when it’s time to dust!
There is a small protected bay on DeCourcey Island called “Pirate’s Cove”. The entrance is marked with a red bouy and a fixed day marker. At high tide the marker and the bouy are some hundred yards from visible shore but between what the skipper sees and the marker is a string of rock less than a fathom at the deepest line. Most of the ridge is less than a fathom. This is a popular anchorage for cruisers in B.C. Gulf Islands and numerous U.S. Flags following the “Inside Passage”.
We built a number of recreation cottages there in the ’80′s and ’90′s and ran our crew boat (weather permitting) fairly regularly for many years.
We always ran in and out between the markers but a few locals would run over the reef at high tide.
One afternoon we were climbing in to the ride home and noticed a large Pontoon houseboat heading in over these rocks. We yelled and waved but they proceeded straight in. As they cruised over the reef the lookouts reacted and maybe the helmsman raised the outboards – anyway they cleared and we headed out.
As we passed the stern we read: “Des Moines, Iowa”.
Ken,
Luck takes over when local knowledge runs out! And don’t you know those folks from Iowa were having the time of their lives? Boats are meant to go places, and they found themselves a lovely place. I presume they’d just hung out their “Des Moines” sign – I haven’t quite gotten my mind around how you would navigate your way there. Probably a rental boat – but no less fun!
Linda
We did help to pull another Rental off the reef some years later. They said:”The sun was in their eyes. It happens, I guess.
Can’t remember the name of the big boat we visited but the name on the skiff stuck with me: “Tender Behind”
Ken,
I do love the creative ways folks link their boats and their dinghies. I’ve been trying for sometime to persuade the owners of a lovely trawler named “Biscuit” to call their tender “Gravy”.
But my favorite was a pair I saw down in the Bahamas. The big, beautiful was was named “Fantasy”. The beat-up little boat they towed behind was named “Reality”. That’s a sense of humor!
Linda