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to find out more. I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Summer of my childhood, my cousins and I traveled to Tennessee for months long

visits to our extended family. On the way down we stopped in Louisville, Kentucky to visit my mother's siblings, whose accents

delight at me to no end.

Those hot days in Nashville, great Aunt Kitty were marked by long, langorous hours of watching TV until the heat broke.

Then we climbed her peach tree and chased her chickens. On the route back to

Philly we visited relatives in Richmond, Virginia who resided in a sprawling ranch home with land.

We played flashlight tag long into the blue-black evenings. One year, due to my grandmother's illness, we did not make the trip south.

I missed my aunt's amazing home-cooked meals that summer.

Our cousin, Mina, was sad not to see her favorite kin.

So she and Aunt Kitty ruled the Greyhound bus all the way to Philadelphia.

They stayed for a week.

She must have been about ten years old,

Lanky and the Spitfire. I remember this trip especially because none of us slept the first night.

Shortly after we all retired to bed, Mina screamed.

It was piercing.

My cousin Mark and I jumped out of our bunk beds and ran to her room. She was sitting up, begging we make it go away.

...