Dust Tracks on a Road

In this chapter, Hurston recounts her family history. John Hurston, her father, came from a family of poor Alabama sharecroppers and was rumored to be the son of a white man. Lucy Ann Potts came from a prosperous family that owned its own land. A strikingly handsome man, John Hurston began courting Lucy when he was 20 and she was 14. Despite strong opposition from the Potts family, the pair married and settled down in the plantation cabin where John lived. Lucy was exiled from her family’s land because of their disapproval of the marriage.

Eager to establish himself now that he was married, John Hurston left his wife behind for several months to find opportunities to better himself. He found his chance in Eatonville, Florida, where he eventually served as mayor for multiple terms and helped to write the laws of the town. John moved Lucy to Eatonville a year after he left Alabama. As a young couple the two sometimes struggled, mostly because John was at times unfaithful to Lucy, who threatened to whip her rivals. Hurston nevertheless concludes that “Papa and Mama, in spite of his meanderings, were really in love” (11).

The Hurston homestead was covered with flowers, fruit, crops, fish, and game that assured that the Hurston children—all eight of them—never went hungry. Lucy Hurston kept her children close by, refusing to let them play with some of the poorer African-American children.

Lucy always demanded that her children “‘jump at de sun’” (13) by being ambitious, but John was so fearful of what whites would do to black people who refused to be submissive that he frequently threatened to beat Hurston, who even then was known for her boldness. Lucy, unfazed, would stand between her husband and her daughter, confident in the thought that her husband, unlike some men, would never lay a hand on her. John ignored the advice of Jim, Lucy’s brother, to hit Lucy, but then, Jim was the butt of ridicule in the town because of the antics his enraged wife engaged in when she caught him cheating.

Hurston closes the chapter by describing her home as a place that was the center of social activity in the town of Eatonville. When guests came to the Hurston home, they got the best of everything and were always well-treated.

In Chapter 3, Hurston recounts the story of her birth, which her mother told her when Hurston was still a child. Hurston writes that she was born in January, when everyone was away butchering the hogs and digging sweet potatoes. Lucy Hurston was alone that day as a result. She gave birth to Hurston so quickly that there was no time to call the midwife.

Lucy was so weakened by the hard labor that she couldn’t even cut the umbilical cord, a task that fell to a white man who just happened to stop by with food for the Hurstons that day. The midwife arrived later and complained about the job the man had done. In subsequent months the man checked on Hurston from time to time. Hurston was named by Mrs. Neale, a friend of Lucy’s. John, who already had one daughter, was disappointed that he now had another.

As a baby, Hurston refused to walk for the first nine months of her life. She finally walked one day after a sow attempted to steal a piece of cornbread from her. “[O]nce I found the use of my feet, they took to wandering,” writes Hurston. Emulating her father, Hurston would “wander off in the woods all alone, following some inside urge to go places” (22).

As a child, Hurston constantly asked questions, much to the irritation of the adults around her. Hurston was a quick, curious child who was always looking for adventures. After failing to convince her best friend to go find the end of the horizon with her, Hurston asked her father to give her a horse for Christmas so she could go on her journey (he declined and threatened to beat her for her brazenness). Hurston was unusual in other ways as well. She preferred the company of boys to that of girls because boys didn’t mind if she hit them hard, and they seemed to like that she didn’t run to her parents when they hit back. She destroyed her dolls by sending them on dangerous adventures.

Hurston's friendship with the white man who cut her umbilical cord also continued. The old man would take her fishing and teach her lessons about life: never lie, because it showed fear; don’t “let your head start more than your behind can’t stand”(31); pay back in blood anyone who spat on you or kicked you; don’t make threats you don’t intend to enforce; and understand that someone will always be displeased with something you do. The old man died when Hurston was 10. He had been a rough, drinking, cursing man, and thus well-respected in the town.

Hurston’s other pastime was to sit on the gate post at her house and watch people driving down the road to Orlando, especially white people, who fascinated her. The adults in Hurston’s life warned her that her open staring at whites would lead to trouble, but Hurston ignored them. One of her favorite hobbies was to ride a short distance with white travelers passing through.

Hurston’s childhood took a decisive turn when she was 9. Two white, Northern women who visited the all-black school in Eatonville were impressed when Hurston gave a spirited reading of a Greek myth. The two women invited Hurston to visit them the next day at their hotel, where they gave her tea and sent her home with a gift that turned out to be a roll of bright pennies.

The women also sent Hurston gently-used clothes, a hymnal, and—best of all—books. Hurston imagined the Norse gods around her, decided to go on quests like Hercules, and eagerly read adventure books by Kipling and Stevenson. She discovered the Bible after being locked in her mother’s room for using foul language. She admired King David, who was a killer and an adventurer, and was gratified to discover the many forbidden practices outlined in Leviticus.

Hurston writes, “In a way this early reading gave me great anguish to all my childhood and adolescence. My soul was with the gods and my body in the village. […] I wanted to be away from drabness and to stretch my limbs in some mighty struggle” (41). Hurston was happiest when she was in the woods.

The most vivid memories Hurston has of this time in her life is of a series of visions that started when she was about 7. These visions were “a preview of things to come,” prophetic visions that foretold that Hurston would experience the loss of her family and home, undergo a time of suffering, be betrayed in love, and finally come to a large house where two women would welcome her (44). The visions made Hurston feel alienated from the unsuspecting people around her. Hurston writes that each vision eventually came to pass. Hurston considers that her childhood ended with the visions. They made her feel self-pity and a “cosmic loneliness” (44) that set her apart from others.

According to Hurston, the front porch of Mr. Joe Clarke’s general store—not the churches—were the heart of her hometown. Men and women alike would gather on the porch to gossip about passersby, flirt, share gossip about who was having an affair, and engage in explicit talk that Hurston struggled to overhear before her mother forced her to move along.

Hurston most enjoyed it when the natives of Eatonville engaged in what she called “lying’ sessions” (48), African-American folk tales about characters like Brer Rabbit or God himself, whom the storytellers called “Old Maker” (50). Hurston overheard how Sis Snail left her husband because he was too slow, and how African Americans got their skin color when they mistook his command that they “‘Git back’” into line as “‘Git black’” (51).

Overhearing the porch talk lit up Hurston’s imagination. The tales confirmed what she has long suspected—animals and objects could talk and had their own voices. Hurston talked to—and imagined that she listened to—a pine tree near her house, and she looked on fearfully every evening when one frightening tree seemed to come closer to the house as night fell. Hurston made characters out of ears of corn and fine soap and took them on many adventures that fully absorbed her for a time.

Hurston cannot remember when she began to make up full-blown stories. Her mother would listen “indulgently” (54) to these stories, but Hurston’s maternal grandmother, who had grown up during slavery, would get angry and insist that Lucy beat the tendency to tell such lies out of Hurston. Lucy never did.

Hurston eventually began making up stories about real people who lived in the town. She shared them with her friends, including one about Mr. Pinder. Mr. Pinder lived by himself on the edge of town, and the porch teased him one night by telling him he would go wild if he stayed single much longer.

Hurston transformed this chance comment into a complicated tale that transformed Pinder into a lord of the alligators. When a local woman had a stroke while fishing near Pinder’s home, Hurston told her friends that the stroke was really the result of a battle between Pinder and the woman, both of whom occasionally practiced hoodoo. The tales Hurston created clashed with reality. Mr. Pinder, for example, died while working in a field one day, notwithstanding Hurston’s assertion in her tale that he was immortal.