Adam David Miller Poet - Excerpts from Ticket to Exile Winter storms were preceded by high wind, summer ones by stifling stifling weather. I remember rain, the early heavy separate drops whipped up by the wind, then the incessant drumming on the tin roof as the rain gathered force, the staccato hail balls, pounding, pounding water falling in sheets off the shed porch roof, the slap of the wooden window someone left unlatched, the shriek of the wind in the chinaberry tree outside my window. There was a chill in the house despite the roaring fire, fire that sputtered when water collected at the top of the chimney and drained down. Water collecting and standing in the yard. Chickens coming onto the front porch and nesting on its railing. The worried looks of the adults, their talk in whispers though the wind was screaming. The house always leaked, sometimes water dripped on my bed. There was the musty smell of dampness. The darkness, the kerosene lamps being lit, casting weak yellow flickers. The orange flames from the fireplace with its red background, flames curling around the logs, the wet wood steaming until dry, steam pouring out both ends of the logs. People huddled in front of the fire. A dog in a corner near the fireplace, allowed in because of the storm. The house shuddering. from Ticket To Exile: A Memoir by Adam David Miller (Heyday Books, Bay Tree Division, Berkeley, CA: 2007).

ADAM DAVID MILLER

Keep Sending Love Out

Adam David Miller Poet
P.O. Box 162
Berkeley, CA 94701-0162
eshuhouse@yahoo.com

Excerpts from Ticket to Exile

Winter storms were preceded by high wind, summer ones by stifling stifling weather.

I remember rain, the early heavy separate drops whipped up by the wind, then the incessant drumming on the tin roof as the rain gathered force, the staccato hail balls, pounding, pounding water falling in sheets off the shed porch roof, the slap of the wooden window someone left unlatched, the shriek of the wind in the chinaberry tree outside my window.

There was a chill in the house despite the roaring fire, fire that sputtered when water collected at the top of the chimney and drained down. Water collecting and standing in the yard. Chickens coming onto the front porch and nesting on its railing.

The worried looks of the adults, their talk in whispers though the wind was screaming. The house always leaked, sometimes water dripped on my bed. There was the musty smell of dampness. The darkness, the kerosene lamps being lit, casting weak yellow flickers. The orange flames from the fireplace with its red background, flames curling around the logs, the wet wood steaming until dry, steam pouring out both ends of the logs. People huddled in front of the fire. A dog in a corner near the fireplace, allowed in because of the storm. The house shuddering.

from Ticket To Exile: A Memoir by Adam David Miller (Heyday Books, Bay Tree Division, Berkeley, CA: 2007).

General Sherman crosses the Edisto River on his march through the south.

Orangeburg

Orangeburg was the seat of Orangeburg County, an agricultural region between Columbia, the state capital, and Charleston, once the largest port on the East Coast. Cotton was king. Not far from where we lived was a cotton gin, where farmers brought their wagons piled high with the freshly picked stuff, to be turned into bales for market.

Orangeburg had a population of about ten thousand, evenly divided between blacks and whites. In addition to several Jewish families, there were a few Eastern Mediterranean families, who owned small businesses, and one Chinese family, owners of a hand laundry.

County seat. County jail, county courthouse, county library, into which neither I nor any other known black was ever to set foot except to clean it and the county hospital. A few miles outside of town was the county farm, home of the prison chain gang. Men from it were used to clear roadside brush, repair roads, and do other maintenance work the county needed. This while wearing chains on their ankles, long enough so they could walk but not run. A white guard with a gun accompanied them at all times.

Orangeburg, founded 1704, was well situated on the Edisto, once a partly navigable river. A crossroads, it was served by two railroads, the Southern Railway and the Atlantic Coast Line; two highways, one route from Charleston to Columbia. General Sherman came through the town on his historic March to the Sea during the last days of the Civil War. There is a picture of him crossing the Edisto River. It was rich farming country, between the Low Country and Piedmont.

Orangeburg was unique for Southern blacks in several ways. It boasted of not one but two black-run institutions of higher learning: Claflin, a Methodist University; and South Carolina State A&M, a state-owned agricultural and mechanical college. Reading promotional speeches by the white Young Men’s Business League, you would not know that a single black person resided in the town or surrounding area.

from Ticket To Exile: A Memoir by Adam David Miller (Heyday Books, Bay Tree Division, Berkeley, CA: 2007).

Wasn't Going to Let Her See Me Cry

Mr. Jones had always insisted that I share the toys, the skates, whatever we were playing with. Mrs. Jones had not. Though she never crossed Mr. Jones when he spoke, she did not share his feelings about me as a playmate for her children. One rainy day Ned, Freddy, and I were playing under the house when she called Ned in to clean up for dinner. Grime-caked, we three went up and proceeded to advance to the shower. I was called back.

“Not you,” she said. “I didn’t mean you.”

By this time Ned and Freddy were in the shower, with water running. I don’t know what Ned was thinking while I was waiting outside the shower, or what he had heard. I was stunned. Hurt and angry, I took awhile for what she had said to register. When I realized that I was not to be allowed to shower but that Freddy the dog was, I wanted to shed tears of frustration. But I was not going to let her see me cry.

from Ticket To Exile: A Memoir by Adam David Miller (Heyday Books, Bay Tree Division, Berkeley, CA: 2007).

First Whites

Uncles Ben and Johnny were out in the yard with Mama’s driver, admiring the Studebaker, which was a curiosity not only to them but the farm animals. One cat leaped on the hood, then off when he realized how hot it was. A hen that settled on one running board was shooed away. The dogs, after initial growling, settled down in the shade of the chinaberry tree. Uncle Ben was later to just escape breaking his arm when the engine he was trying to crank bucked before it started, wrenching the crank out of his hand. Only his instinctive jerking back saved him.

That was our only auto incident except for a flat tire halfway to Orangeburg. While the flat was being repaired, I saw my first white people up close as they drove by. My other sighting had been the distant ghostlike figure of the mailman as he put mail in our box, Route 1, Box 26, out on the main road. If the Sunday-dressed couple and three children tooling along in a shiny black Model T Ford noticed us, they didn’t show it. They did not stop to offer help. If my relatives around our car noticed them, they didn’t show it either. It was as though two universes, known but not recognized, separate and unequal, were sharing the same space for a brief moment.

from Ticket To Exile: A Memoir by Adam David Miller (Heyday Books, Bay Tree Division, Berkeley, CA: 2007).

Swimming Hole

At the bend in the river where we swam, the river split briefly, with a swift straight channel and a meandering backwater that formed an island. We swam on the near shore, where we had created a makeshift beach. Those among us who were strong swimmers crossed over to the island on occasion. Most of us, and all the girls and younger children, stayed in the backwater. One day two girls joined a human chain we had extended out into the river. Somehow we got too near the channel, the girl at the end lost her footing, and the girl holding my hand panicked and let go.

Before I knew what was happening, I found myself being yanked into the channel, under a struggling girl who didn’t know how to swim. I remember seeing a green-brown translucence and being straddled by a flailing girl, who snapped the strap of my bathing suit. As I pushed her to the surface, I heard her sister screaming on the shore, which at the moment seemed far away. Reacting, not thinking, I took a deep breath and, frog kicking, pushed us towards the island. Two of the bigger boys had reached the island and were running towards us, one of them holding out a branch that was long enough for me to grasp. All the while our ears were being pummeled with the lamentation of the girl’s sister. “Oh, Lawd, what am I gon do? My sister done drowned. Mama gon fix me . . . My sister, oh, oh, oh.” Once safely on shore, we discovered that, except for a little water, the girl would be fine. Satisfied that her sister was all right the formerly lamenting sister made a complete about-face and lit in to her. “What you mean by goin out there?” And more that I didn’t wait to hear. With my bathing suit on its way downstream, I headed to the bushes for my trousers. No one but me seemed to notice my pristine state.”

from Ticket To Exile: A Memoir by Adam David Miller (Heyday Books, Bay Tree Division, Berkeley, CA: 2007).

Adam David Miller Poet
P.O. Box 162
Berkeley, CA 94701-0162
eshuhouse@yahoo.com