cleveland

When Cleveland was about 8 years old, he was working out in the cotton field doing some hoeing, and when the lightning hit him “Cleveland went one way and the hoe went the other way.” My dad is telling me this on the phone, on Father’s day. During the story I learned that Cleveland is a black man, “a very black man” from Mississippi. And that he has white hair, he’s in his eighties, and the contrast looks “very cool.” Cleveland, a friend of my dad’s whom I will very likely never meet, is moving back to where he’s from, back to where he grew up, somewhere in about the middle of Mississippi. He’s the only person my dad knows that has been struck by lightning. I don’t know anyone else that has a friend that’s been struck by lightning, and lived or not.

He introduced this arc by saying “here’s a thing that might happen,” and after quite a few other details I learned the “thing” is that next April he might help Cleveland drive a U-Haul down to Bonita, Mississippi. Why is he moving back to Mississippi? Cleveland’s wife has passed away a year or two ago, and his children have too. There isn’t as much of a reason to stay in the Pacific Northwest anymore. Cleveland has relations in central Mississippi, and being near them is better.

But why does my dad want to drive Cleveland to Mississippi? It’s the “Bonita Blues Festival” in June.¹ My dad loves the blues. He loves the blues so much his picture has made it into the local paper not once, but twice. He loves it so much that I’ve driven hundreds of miles out of the way to meet a distant cousin and catch a night of blues in some local festival in Upstate New York. It was good music, that night. The drive to Mississippi however, is in April, and the festival, which is in June, are a couple of months apart. This is obviously not a deterrent for my father. He could just fly back home for that time, but knowing my dad he’s got something else brewing to fill the time.

My dad tried to get his friends to go with him to the blues festival. They won’t because it’s in Mississippi and in June. “It will be too muggy,” they say. Cleveland is going to muggy Mississippi with his U-Haul, and one way or another, my dad is too.

jg

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