John Pritchard

I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, but that does not make me a Tennessean, for I was raised in Tunica, Mississippi --in the Mississippi Delta . . . that "Mississippi" Delta of legend and song -- which more accurately may be the Yazoo Delta. But, most important, it is the strange and fertile, alluvial, literary plain of Tennessee Williams and of Moon Lake and of Amanda, in The Glass Menagerie . . . Blanche in Streetcar, and Maggie the Cat.

I was born in Memphis only because the road, Highway 61, was paved in 1937, the year before my birth; and my mother decided to go to the hospital in the big city rather than stay in Tunica, a decision which turned out to be fortunate for both of us because I was a high-forceps delivery, pulled from my mother by force in an attempt to save her life and to perhaps forfeit mine.

I survived and so did she. As a result I have no occiput at all, am exceedingly high-strung, and have led a desperately neurotic existence. All in all I seem to be quite fine.

My mother never got over it. The event, itself, and, later, having to deal with me was all a bit too much. I bear survivor's guilt and have never found philosophy to be the consolation it was to Marcus Aurelius.