And There Were Ducks

 

2024-07-05 “And There Were Ducks”  by  Merritt

I’m not going to lie. If it gets any crazier, I might… go crazy.

It’s 2024. I’m 24, born in 1960. No, the math doesn’t work. Jenn is 25, born in 1972. No, the math doesn’t work. Emma is 19, born in 1861. No, the math…

Needless to say, the drive from Omaha to Memphis was… interesting. I skipped ahead 40 years. I saw things that blew my mind. Jenn skipped 27 years, and she was amazed more than once. Emma… literally cried a few times.

We passed through Kansas City.

In the 1880 Mississippi delta, there was nothing to compare to the highways, cars, and trucks she was seeing. The skyscrapers of Kansas City terrified her.

“People go up in them buildings?”

Jenn was very patient. “Sometimes, there are apartments in them, and the most desirable ones are on the top, called penthouses.”

Emma’s grandmother’s sister was a school marm who made it her duty to teach all the family how to read. That was both a blessing and a curse for Jenn and me. Emma could, as she said, “work out” most of the words on most of the road signs. Meaning we had to fill in the blanks for words she couldn’t work out.

I’ll skip all the discussion about covering 600 miles in a day. That was unthinkable for Emma. To be honest, I think it was a bit too much for me, too. But we did it.

Coming into Memphis, Emma lit up. Seeing the Mississippi river seemed to give her great comfort.

“It’s like in Vicksburg,” she said.

Emma had hopped a train to get to Memphis, so I took a risk to ask if she wanted to try and find out if her parents had jumped time with her like mine had. She figured if they had some equivalent of Shamus would have jumped too, so she decided to just keep going as planned.

Emma had heard of the Peabody Hotel, which opened in 1869. Jenn thought it would be a good idea to spend the night there. Traffic in downtown Memphis was not too bad and we made it to the hotel and checked in.

Then, we met on the roof to take in the sunset. I think there was something very settling for Emma to be in a place she was familiar with—despite all the high rise buildings—and in view of the river.