GROUNDHOG DAY

Mary Libby Bickerstaff Payne, Class of 1954, is Interview Number 11 in the recently published Golden Days: Reminiscences of Alumnae, Mississippi State College for Women. In this essay, she recalls a special season of learning.

By Mary Libby Payne

Flowering quince! How many times have I passed that right of way between the funeral home and Foxhall Road on my way home? But this time I noticed it in bloom for the first time this year. My mind telescoped back to 1951 and back campus at MSCW (Mississippi State College for Women, now Mississippi University for Women). I hated science and had managed to avoid taking courses with those smelly labs on the East side of Gulfport High. Of course, it meant four semesters of Home Economics and eight semesters of math (1st Year Algebra, Plane Geometry, 2nd Year Algebra, Solid Geometry, and Trigonometry); but those were fun compared to dead frogs in formaldehyde.

Then what should happen? I chose a college that required all freshmen to take Botany and Zoology. The dead frogs' class I had just before lunch each Mon. Wed. and Friday. Unbelievably I made it through with a high A even though the smell lingered in my nostrils most of the afternoon. But Botany. That was a different matter. The wonder of creation mesmerized me, and the fragrance of the flowers didn't hurt either.

As I drove by that row of quince in Pearl, Mississippi, 58 years later I realized that every year I used what I had learned in Miss Maude Cheek's Botany class. It is February down South and the sleeping plants begin to explode with color: flowering quince, crab apple, and yellow forsythia announce the season, followed closely by the Japanese Magnolias which often get caught by a mid or late February frost. But by Spring Break time (second week in March) the daffodils, jonquils, narcissus, tulips, and hyacinths pop out to be joined by the glorious azaleas.

I learned intellectually to recognize and identify the names of plants and even to dissect and explain the growth patterns of flowers, shrubs and trees. All that to the contrary notwithstanding, I still have a brown thumb so that plants somehow know that coming to my house equates to death row at the prison. But not azaleas. They thrive on benign neglect. One year someone asked me what kind of fertilizer I used on them. "Fertilizer? You mean I have to feed them?" We have lived in this house for 37 years now and I did fertilize them that year someone mentioned it. The azaleas have never failed, however, to dress up our yard in spring. I need to admit, though, that they are really stupid plants that are easily fooled. The first warm spurt we have in December, they think it is time to awaken. Sometimes they get frostbite. But they are always rewarding.

Other things I learned in the Botany class to look for in the spring were the white and pink dogwood, redbud, and wisteria. Summer brings annuals, perennials and shrubs with yellow or red leaves. Then, of course, the crepe myrtle take over where the dogwood leave off, and someone's yard furnishes some color for the neighborhood until the spidery red "naked lady" lilies shoot out of the ground without any warning and tree leaves start to turn fall colors. Since then I have learned of Bradford pears which explode with snowy white blossoms in the spring and then reward us in the fall with beautiful gold to red to bronze leaves before they sleep bare during the winter.

I still go to the college campus often for alumnae meetings and literary weekends, but back campus is no longer the same. Growth during the 1960's and '70's demanded construction of dormitories, academic and PE buildings, tennis courts etc. Gone are the scale model of the Mississippi River and the treasure trove of floral beauty. The grounds are landscaped neatly, but those flowers are planned and planted, not naturally dominating the land. The library is crowded with books that tell all one would want to know intellectually about multitudes of flowering shrubs. I would not want to halt progress and go back a half a century. But the serendipity of having to study Botany remains a sheer delight for me each time the first spring blossom opens.

Thanks Miss Cheek. You know I didn't want to take your subject, but it captivated me and infected my memory forever.