July Fourth

As is our tradition, we spend the Fourth in northern Mississippi with Clyde’s family. This year’s festivities include a trip to First Monday in Ripley, Mississippi: a sprawling open-air market loosely organized around a network of muddy trails.

First Monday — a problematic name, given the fact that this local market is also open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — draws merchants of every stripe. The proliferation of sheds, tents, and makeshift booths with tin roofs transforms what was once a pasture into what looks like a refugee camp. Most of the merchandise amounts to junk … but determined shoppers (our friend, Jeri, was one) will find bits of treasure hidden in the trash.

This year’s excursion marks my first time at a First Monday. Some random impressions:

– Caged hounds bay at passersby: “Rah-oooo! Rah-oooo! Rah-oooo!” My nephew claims dognappers roam Tippah and Union county the week prior to First Monday, scooping up any dog worth selling. Stories of owners buying back their own dogs abound. In addition to the dogs: chickens, rabbits, turkeys, parakeets, doves, goslings, iguanas, kittens — every animal you can imagine, with the exception of fainting goats. (Sorry — inside joke.)

– From a battered, rusty trailer, a rail-thin man in a NASCAR t-shirt hawks a new delicacy: deep-fried Twinkies. He struggles with the wrappers, hand-dips the confections in funnel-cake batter, and drops the glistening result into a vat of hot oil. “They’re incredible!” he says, licking batter from his fingers. “You just gotta watch that creamy filling — it’ll sear the meat right off your tongue!”

– Clyde’s mother buys a collection of four CDs — songs from the Fifties and Sixties. Back home, I hear these tunes streaming under her bedroom door: Roses are red, my love … violets are blue. These are the songs my mother would sing as she dusted furniture, cooked meals, and dressed for church. I’m swept up in an unexpected wave of nostalgia, and fight back tears.

The rest of the weekend passes too quickly. At Walls, a local discount and damaged goods store, I pick up an electric blue suit (not a natural fiber in the thing) with matching electric blue faux alligator shoes (“Perfect for when I’m reading Tarot cards on Jackson Square,” I explain). We spend happy hours with the family: John, Jeri, Phil, Thomas, Clyde’s parents, Clyde’s sister, the nephews, local friends. We shop downtown. We play Scrabble and Monopoly and Mah Johng. We watch a slideshow of the eldest nephew’s trip to the UK.

The weekend ends, as it should, at Darden Lake, where we stuff ourselves on fried chicken, Phil’s tomato pie, chocolate-covered strawberries, and cheesecake. After an afternoon chatting on the porch and playing cards, we find ourselves on Butch’s pier, where the young men (and a few of the older ones) gather to set off this year’s fireworks collection.

This year’s highlight: Ben, a family friend who joins us each year, puts one of the biggest mortar shells into the launcher upside down. The resulting explosion shakes neighboring cabins and sends people running in all directions. Red, green, and blue sparks streak through the air, and those of us on the shore find ourselves standing in a thick cloud of white smoke.