Mississippi Trial, 1955

“I followed Grampa to the truck and climbed into the cab. He handed me a thermos of Gramma’s cold lemonade. Hot from the time I’d spent in the sun, I gulped it down, no longer thinking about the black men and their backbreaking work out in Grampa’s fields.”

As a young boy in Greenwood, Hiram would accompany his Grampa when he went to check on his fields. He remembers the black men working hard with no relief under the hot Mississippi sun. In this one instance, he offers to help one of the men, who playfully gives him a tool to break up some of the earth. When Grampa sees this, he is furious. He explains to Hiram that black men are made for this type of intense labor because they are not affected by the heat and sweat. Hiram is too young to really understand this, and this moment is easily wiped away when the men are out of sight and he is enjoying his Gramma’s refreshing lemonade.  

“Behind those morning smells lingered the mellow scent of mildew, wood, and Ivory soap. To this day, if you dropped me blindfolded at my grandparents’ home, I’d know I was there as soon as you opened the door.” 

Memory plays a big role throughout the text, but there is also the danger of false memory. These warm, comforting smells bring back a certain childlike happiness for Hiram the first morning waking up in Greenwood over his summer vacation. However, he comes to find that Greenwood is not really how he remembered it: the people and places he knows are there, but the character, actions, and social environment are revealed to him much differently as an adult. This passage also highlights just how transporting the senses can be, and, in this particular case, scent becomes a means of triggering for Hiram the memory of how significant his upbringing in his grandparents’ home was for him.