I was young and impressionable and very green and full of the angst that hits so many at that crucial turn into adulthood. I was at last out of the South, a citizen of the world, where everything was modern and progressive and moving at a faster pace than I had ever known. I was ready to shake the dust of what I considered the decadent old state of Mississippi off my feet and tread on brave new territory.

Truth to tell, I wasn’t very proud of my home state and its neighbors around that time. It was 1960, and some folks back home were portraying themselves in a manner that smacked of white trash doings, of ignorance and bigotry, a far cry from the land of Faulkner and Welty and two Miss Americas back to back, of which I liked to brag. And what was worse, they were doing it on national television, embarrassing me in front of all my newfound Yankee friends.

We were planning to move back home after my husband’s two-year Navy tour was over, and although I talked fancifully of wanting to live out there permanently, I knew I had no choice. I also knew down deep that I could not stay forever away from the greenery that was home.

We did live in a truly beautiful setting on a high cliff at the edge of the Pacific where the days were bright and sunny, the scenery a daily dose of the spectacular, and the susurration of rolling waves our lullaby at night. My husband’s working hours, except for Officer of the Day duty every couple of weeks when he had to stay overnight at the base, were those of an average work week with weekends off, so we had plenty of free time in which to explore the area.

San Diego was a jewel of a city then, set snuggly on the side of a huge bay formed by the Coronado peninsula and the Silver Strand, which was perfect for ocean swimming. Our apartment was located only a couple of blocks from a beach and a nearby stairway down the face of the cliffs gave us easy access to it. A walk of less than a mile would take us to a small shopping area, and the Old Town itself was rich in Spanish history, particularly the legend of Ramona. In Helen Hunt Jackson’s story, Ramona, of mixed Scottish and Indian blood, elopes with her proud Indian lover Alessandro, who is later killed as a result of harassment by whites.

Above our area, to the north, was Mission Beach, where the artistic types gathered on a slender strand between the ocean and Mission Bay. Beyond that was and is still the residential area of Pacific Beach, and then farther still is La Jolla, truly a jewel of a spot.

Within a couple of hours, we could be in the foothills of the mountains or taking in Walt Disney’s fascinating new theme park, Disneyland, or over in the desert within viewing range of that strange, salty inland lake, the Salton Sea. In a few brief hours on a Sunday afternoon, we could be in one of several vastly different worlds. It was quite a change from rocking on the front porch back home.

And yet, when the day was done and the California sun sat briefly poised above the horizon just before its headlong plunge into the ocean, which is what passes for a sunset out there, there would arise in me a longing for some nameless something, a feeling so intense as to be almost like grief. I puzzled over it for a long time. What was there in this beautiful place to make me sad? And at the same time almost every day?

Then one evening as I crossed the room to close the curtains and shut out the darkness after the sun had disappeared, I knew. There was no afterglow, no rosy pink fingers stretched across the sky, no dusk to close the day down gently. Just daylight one moment and dark the next.

And I realized too that it had been months since I’d heard the croak of a frog or the buzz of a cicada or a cricket’s chirp. Or eaten a fresh tomato sandwich spread with Blue Plate mayonnaise. I’d forgotten how boiled peanuts taste and sweet water from a real artesian well. I missed the incomparable softness of a Southern night with stars so bright as to make you breathless and drifts of honeysuckle and sweet olive floating through the air. I was, in a word, homesick. For the South.

I guess those old Mississippi taproots go a whole lot deeper than you think.

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A resident of south Mississippi, Dawn Dillon Barrett writes for the Magnolia Gazette.

Read many more great stories listed on our USADS Articles pages.

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