My Life is like the sea,
From “The Sea and Me” by Alice Young
Sometimes it is rough –
And sometimes calm,
Like the sand, I am lost in the tide.
I met Alice Young when I was a teenager working in my father’s building supply store. She was in her late thirties then, but it wasn’t until many years later, long after her death and after my uncle had died, that I learned who she was and how she had touched my life.
Walking into Buckner Home Care Center one afternoon to fulfill my after-school bookkeeping duties, the acrid odor of cigarette smoke hit me, stinging my eyes. Through the haze, I saw Alice’s dark eyes, coiffed auburn hair, and a Marlboro between her ruby red lips. She was tall for a woman, almost six feet. Though broad-shouldered with a husky physique, she wore tasteful dresses, matching pumps, and adorned herself with over-sized, colorful jewelry and red lipstick.
She began hanging around the store after her father died in 1975, in an era when lollygagging around a local business to socialize was common for people of a certain generation in a small town. Alice had no interest in plumbing fixtures, roof tar, or the latest wallpaper design, nor carpenters and house painters. She was, however, hopelessly infatuated with my father’s brother, Uncle Bill, who managed the store.
I get misty eyed when I think of him
From “Misty Eyed” by Alice Young
Oh, how hard I’ve tried
His love to win
I get misty eyed when I see him on the street
And I think oh why
Did another did he meet?
Dedication: To Billy Buckner, my last love
Before my uncle privately gave me the universal finger-circling-at-the-temple sign for “she’s crazy,” I didn’t know Alice had a mental illness. Later, I learned about her bipolar disorder and how Uncle Bill helped manage her daily medications. Making sure she had food in the refrigerator, her pill box organized, and a ration of cigarettes, he was single-handedly responsible for keeping her off the streets, out of the psychiatric ward, and alive for the last half of her life.
My uncle had his own unique personality, as anyone who knew him could tell you, but one of his better traits was his compassion for the elderly widows in town who no longer had their husbands to take care of them. He drove the ladies, my grandmother’s friends, to doctor appointments, to shop in Monroe or Vicksburg, or to socialize with friends at their camps on Lake Bruin. And he took care of Alice.
One afternoon at the store, while Alice leaned on the counter, Uncle Bill held out his hand to show me a large gold and diamond ring on his finger. Alice had given it to him. He only wore it when she was around, and it wasn’t long before he stopped wearing it altogether. I suppose he returned it to her, no doubt breaking her heart in the process. Still, out of gratitude and love, Alice bequeathed to Uncle Bill her modest but sufficient estate, which her father had left upon his death.
When Uncle Bill died in 2020, seventeen years after Alice’s death, my siblings, cousins, and I inherited his estate which, much to our surprise, included the untouched funds she had willed to him.
I felt compelled to know more about her.
Amidst our ninety-one-year-old uncle’s plethora of unwanted stuff, we found a few boxes of Alice’s papers. I was saddened when I read her poetic scribbles on random scraps of paper which had been tucked in bags, boxes, and folders for decades. Some poems were typed, but most were written in long-hand, printed or script, her varied handwriting a reflection of her manic highs or depressed lows.
Alice’s life was one of those painfully tragic stories you read about and feel sorry for, wishing you could have helped in some way. Plagued by mental illness, family members who died too soon, and a workaholic father who didn’t know what to do with her, she found crumbs of happiness and managed to leave bits of good for the community.
Alice Lorraine Young was born in Tallulah, Louisiana in 1938 to Martin and Lorraine Young. Five months later, her mother died at age 34. Martin’s sister, Lavinia, moved into his brick house on South Lincoln Street to raise baby Alice and her thirteen-year-old half-brother, John Beverly Stone III. When Alice was five, Beverly died. He had enlisted in the U. S. Navy on June 1, 1944, after graduating from Tallulah High School, but returned home on August 11. He worked at his former job for a few days, resigned, then died on August 23. Beverly was nineteen.
In Alice’s biographical notes, she wrote, “something was wrong with me when I was born” and she was thought to be “retarded,” but services for students with learning disabilities and special needs were inadequate or non-existent. After quitting Tallulah High School in the eleventh grade, Alice moved in and out of mental institutions for years and stayed on and off with paternal relatives in Mississippi. By the time she turned twenty-one, she dreamed of becoming a published author and songwriter, spending most of her time writing poetry. Alice moved back to Tallulah before her father died, and in her late thirties, around the time I met her, the Madison Journal, a local paper, began printing her work. For several years afterward, her poetry was published under the column, “Alice’s Corner.”
If you grew up in Tallulah, as my siblings and I did, near the railroad tracks, you can hear Alice’s inspiration.
Listen to that lonesome train
From “Lonesome Wail” by Alice Young
It’s calling my name
Listen to the wheels a turning
Smell the coal a burning
Listen to that Lonesome train!
I can hear it calling my name.
Listen. It tells me where I’m bound.
I hear it over and over, oh that sweet sound!
Alice Young wrote about love, loss, and loneliness. Of her Christian faith, death, and salvation. She wrote about being committed to “the funny farm,” and of coming home to Tallulah, a town she loved. She wrote about enduring hurtful remarks and harassment concerning her appearance, her incurable mental illness, and rumors of sexual indiscretions.
Tallulah’s a mighty fine town
From “Tallulah” by Alice Young,
I’m on a train homeward bound
I’ve been away much too long
Please come listen to my song
Tallulah’s a town of familiar faces
And interesting places
Court House Square, Grant’s March and The Indian Mound
I’m mighty glad I’m homeward bound.
Tallulah’s the place I want to be
So many people I want to see
I hope they want to see me…
written upon her return after fifteen years
Published in 1986 in the Madison Journal “Farming” Section, Alice wrote about her father, Martin Trantham Young. In her article, “Is there intelligent life in Tallulah?”, she describes her father, the son of a poor Mississippi farmer attending Mississippi State College in 1913. He studied agriculture and wanted to be the best farmer in the state. In 1917, he was turned down as unfit for army service “because of his flat feet.” With no farmland and no available teaching positions, he found work as an entomologist at the Tallulah Laboratory, Bureau of Entomology and began fighting another kind of enemy, the boll weevil. With the U. S. Department of Agriculture, he researched and helped develop methods to eradicate the highly destructive menace to Delta cotton growers.
Anthonomus Grandis
This is one I wrote in 1975. My father was an entomologist. He taught me Latin words at age 5. This is one I like. It means “Boll Weevil.”
Have you ever seen an Anthonomus Grandis?
They cover cotton fields south and west.
They eat until they say: “Dear me, Dear us.”
In the cotton bowl they find eating the best.
“Bring in the D.D.T,”
says farmer Jim.
“There are Anthonomus Grandis for as far as I can see.”
“We must get rid of all of them.”
In addition to his work at the Tallulah Laboratory, Martin T. Young was a horticulturist and active gardener. When I was a child living on the opposite side of the bayou from Mr. Young, I had admired his yard on South Lincoln Street, filled with colorful roses, daylilies, and irises.
He liked to work in the garden and plant seeds
Untitled by Alice Young
His garden was a beautiful attraction
Every day he went out to chop the weeds
His garden gave him much satisfaction
He was a big man, tall and strong
He loved his work and was a hard worker
In my eyes he could do no wrong
He loved books and was a avid reader
Now he has grown old and is gray
He doesn’t talk often or have much to say
His mind and thoughts seem far away
Maybe he’s thinking of another time, another day
After selling the family home, Alice lived alone on East Askew Street in a white cottage with green faux shutters. From her modest collection of glassware and bric-a-brac, I kept a modern Murano glass basket, its rich red color accented with a hint of green. Handcrafted by skilled artisans, every Murano glass piece is a singular work of art with visible flaws in symmetry, color, and texture. It reminds me of Alice – beautifully unique and lopsided.
One spring day in 2003, when she was sixty-four, Alice walked out of her home for the last time. Feeling ill and needing help, and with my uncle out of town for a few days, she walked to a nearby business where the employees knew her. She fell in the parking lot and an ambulance was called. A few days later, she died in a Vicksburg hospital.
Alice Young is buried near her parents and half-brother at Silver Cross Cemetery in Tallulah, Louisiana. Though her poetry has been forgotten by most, she left a dusting of her precious soul upon our hearts.
When I came out to see the flowers today,
“My Dutch Iris” by Alice L. Young,
The birds I’d fed all winter flew away.
Delightful fragrance filled the air.
Misting rain settled in my hair.
The flowers – white, yellow and blue
Like graceful dancers in every hue,
Looked so proud in their stalks of green –
If you love flowers, you will know what I mean!
I’d waited all winter to see them bloom –
For me the blooms didn’t come too soon!
Looking at them, made a smile come to my face –
Because now I know, I’ve found my place.
April 7, 1973
October 27, 1938 – April 3, 2003
