The Place I Call Home

When I tell people I’m from Mississippi, many of them are quick to tell me about all the bad things associated with my home. Yes, we have our problems. Like many other places, we still struggle with race issues. In many economic studies, it’s easier to find out how we rank if you start from the bottom and work your way up. Our state bird, in my mind, should really be the mosquito. And we have a hot season that runs generally from early spring until just before Thanksgiving. People point out that parts of the state have run-down areas; these are rearranged every few years by tornadoes and hurricanes. So, yes, we do have some problems. But I’ve found that most of those folks who point out all the problems in Mississippi…have never lived in Mississippi. They have never called it home.

Having lived all my life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I want to brag a little…or a lot…about the place I call home.

Every so often, there are studies published that focus on charitable giving as a share of income. Mississippi has a long history of ranking among the nation’s most charitable states when giving is measured as a share of income. That’s pretty impressive for a state that so many people look down on because of our economy. Take that, Wall Street.

Let’s think about that for a minute. Mississippi historically ranks at the bottom or near the bottom in average household income. Giving someone $100 when your paycheck is big is much easier than giving away money when you are trying to keep the lights on and food on the table. But we do it anyway.

Mississippi generosity isn’t just tied to cash. Giving sometimes comes as a casserole, cutting a neighbor’s yard, having a fish fry to help someone who is sick and needs a hand, or simply stopping on the side of the road and helping someone whose car is in revolt…because someone helped you when you needed it.

This is the place I call home.

Part of this charitable mindset comes because in most places in the state, you can’t swing a pair of white shrimp boots without hitting a church. The church taught us to give, because we had been given much. The church allowed us to see what generosity looked like when people were hurting. In some places, you can’t look up without seeing a Starbucks. In Mississippi, we have more churches than Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Dollar General combined.

This is the place I call home.

Mississippi is also packed full of culture. I used to have a Mississippi T-shirt that said, “Yes, we can read. A few of us can write.” It then listed Mississippians such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, John Grisham, Willie Morris, Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy.

Yeah, I think they might have known their way around a sentence.

Mississippi has produced more than its share of great writers. The same holds true for music. Musicians such as Elvis, Jimmy Buffett, Jimmie Rodgers, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Faith Hill, and even Britney Spears have called Mississippi home. Add to this long list people like Jerry Clower, Medgar Evers, Morgan Freeman, and Jim Henson.

This is the place I call home.

And there is more…

Mississippi has also given the world Barq’s Root Beer, Pine-Sol, the soft toilet seat, and the first bottled Coca-Cola. Mississippi is also where the teddy bear story began, after President Theodore Roosevelt famously refused to shoot a bear during a 1902 hunting trip in the Mississippi Delta. And Mississippi’s Dr. James Hardy performed the first human lung transplant and the world’s first cardiac transplant using a chimpanzee heart.

Somewhere today, someone will devour a plate of hot, crisp catfish…and there is a good chance it came from Mississippi, and they don’t even know it. We supply so much of the nation’s chicken that I feel like it should replace the mockingbird as the state bird.

To the rest of the world, “You are welcome.”

This is the place I call home and the place I love.

I was recently talking to my brother, who traveled for much of his career. He said that he has been all over and he hasn’t really found anything in other places that he misses. He said a Wendy’s in Ohio tastes about like a Wendy’s in Mississippi.

I love this place.

I love the smell of the Gulf. The Gulf is part of my internal compass. No matter where I am in the state or when I’m out of state…I know where the water is. I know that’s where home is.

That’s where you find oysters, shrimp po-boys, and some of the most beautiful sunsets God ever painted. That’s where some of the most generous folks in the country live. That’s where I enjoy good food, good books, and wonderful people surrounded by moss-draped live oak trees. That’s where I worship. That’s where people I love are buried, and I will probably be buried one day. That’s where my girls were born. That’s where I met my favorite person in the world and coerced her into marrying me.

I’ve traveled enough to know there are beautiful places all over this country. There are places with better weather, better roads, better economies, and probably fewer mosquitoes. But when I’m away from Mississippi, some part of me is always looking for the water. I don’t have to see it. I just need to know which way it is.

That’s the place I call home.

And if you enjoyed this little trip around the place I call home, I hope you’ll come back and spend some time with me here at The Notebook. I’ll be sharing more stories, devotions, and quotes from time to time. If you’d like to have them sent your way, consider subscribing to The Notebook.

I’d be glad to have you along.