Viewpoint by Karen Gavis/se news editor
When I was a child, I loved to dig. And I still do. But now, instead of trying to find out if I can dig all the way to China, I look for answers to other things.
Research is part of college, something we inevitably have to do. Occasionally, though, I research just because I am curious.
As a child, I may have asked too many questions because my father continually said to me, “Curiosity is what killed the cat.” Well, curiosity has not killed me yet, but I have realized that some things uncovered while digging can haunt a person quite literally.
Several years ago, I began researching the area folklore of my hometown in Missouri. A light appears on rural farmland similar to the lights in Marfa, Texas. The most prevailing legend that attempts to explain its occurrence says it is the ghost of a Haitian slave hanged near the crossroads. I originally dismissed the stories as tall tales — all but one. My father said it appeared on the end of his tractor when he was plowing a field late one evening.
I knew he was not a storyteller, so I began investigating, recalling a tree in the area that locals referred to as “the hanging tree.” In the process of interviewing elders, I discovered that, although no longer in existence, there was once a town in that area named none other than Crossroads.
The research I have done on that subject haunts me so much that one night, I dreamed the corpse of a black man was buried in my front yard.
That is where some stories are — buried. You have to dig and pry to get them, and sometimes what you find is far from glamorous.
Recently, research on another topic led me to a cemetery in Arlington with rows and rows of tiny little gravestones for babies, many without names. The graves were identified by numbers or first name only.
It was a historic place, and the cemetery once belonged to a home for unwed mothers. I do not need to close my eyes for what I saw to haunt me.
Will I quit digging? No. Will I keep writing? Yes, because their stories and others wait to be told.
