A Lonely Night in Luxara

It was a lonely night in Luxara, Arkansas.  Luxara is a small town on the Mississippi River.  There was the levee--the river side flooded now and then, but the river side was where the gambling was.

I was a Vista volunteer, me in my 20’s on the cotton side.  They had found me a place, $5 a week, and I remember one night crawling under the bed as shots were fired in the adjoining area known as “The Alley.”  At the time I was on the phone with my mother.  She will always remember that conversation somewhere in heaven.