After I wrote a memoir about growing up in Poplar Bluff, my kids suggested a visit to see some of the Old Man’s stomping grounds. We drove down to “The Bluff” one June weekend.
For me, the highlight of the trip was touring my old home and walking over the grounds (courtesy of the current owners), something I hadn’t done in close to 40 years.
As I stood silently in my old bedroom, it slowly rearranged itself as I remembered it: the twin beds, the dresser, the sturdy table on which I conducted my chemistry set experiments, dissected frogs and marveled at protozoa under the microscope; the space on the wall where my relief map of the world hung.
There was the window out of which Dickie Phillips and I dropped our cap pistols, holsters and gun belts one morning in preparation for a day of playing hooky. We were caught at it, of course. Dickie was a very bad influence on an innocent 12-year-old boy.
The 40 acres of land our house sat on, of which I knew every square inch, is now a housing development. The tall tree that I used to climb to survey the countryside had to be cut down.
Louie, my father’s black “hired man” who lived on the land, looms large in my memoir, having helped raise me in numerous ways. He was buried in a mass, unmarked grave in the city cemetery reserved for Negroes, as things were done back then. I later had a stone marker placed there with his name, lifespan and the inscription, “A boy’s companion,” for that he was.
We also visited my parents’ graves and the building downtown where my father opened the Kneibert Clinic in 1939. I worked there in the summers, mainly carrying urine specimens up to the lab.
We ate lunch at Hayden’s World Famous BBQ, and I was pleased to see the pulled pork sandwiches were still as good as I remembered them. We also made a stop along Black River where a pal and I had a great houseboat adventure one unforgettable summer long ago.
Downtown, which was a thriving commercial center when I was growing up and before we heard of shopping centers, is now mainly a sad succession of boarded-up storefronts.
But when I shut my eyes and reopened them, the downtown I knew came back into focus: I saw Garfinkle’s Department Store there on the corner where my mother purchased my clothes; and there was Belknap’s Drug Store, where I bought my comics before catching the last bus home at night; a block north the Jewel and Criterion Theaters were still doing a good Saturday morning business with their cowboy double features and serials.
The city dump where Dickie and I stomped and clubbed rats is long gone. But the water tower where my buddies and I spread out our sleeping bags one night atop the tank still stands.
Poplar Bluff had no claim to fame, nobody famous came from there, it wasn’t a place you went out of your way to visit. But it played a significant role in shaping the man I would become. My sentimental journey home made me appreciate that all the more.
