We are Clay and Calvin. Our property in rural Pike County, Mississippi, was left to Calvin long ago by a benevolent grandmother, and when the house on it became vacant in 2015, we moved there. We had lived in Houston and Chicago, and most recently spent 15 years in Los Angeles. Calvin had spent his early youth in Mississippi, but our move to the rural South was a cultural shift for us both.
Calvin is an artist, gallerist and arts administrator. He founded and directs Pike School of Art-Mississippi, a nonprofit designed around exhibitions, artist residencies and public programs. In Clay’s circuitous life path he has been a shoe salesman, chef, newspaper reporter and editor, writer, and a public employee in California state and county governments.
Our existing house began life as a U.S. Army barracks at Camp Shelby, an army training post about 90 miles away. After World War II, many of the barracks were sold, given away or otherwise disposed of, and it is one of those in which we now live. A plain wooden box that’s probably well past its life expectancy, it wouldn’t make sense to throw money at treatment of its many geriatric deficiencies.
Clay will retire first, in the fall of 2026, and we set that as our goal to have a new place to live, a place to take us through our Golden Years. But what place?