A Season of Loss

This isn't a very pleasant story.  I'm sorry.  Please stop now if you're sensitive.

Sixteen years old.  I was working out five times a week and had just begun experimenting with anabolic steroids.  I also began experimenting with women and took on my first girlfriend, who was more than just "do you want to go steady?"

I enjoyed the experiment so far.  I had someone to talk to, someone to focus all these crazy teenage emotions on.  Someone I could hold up as proof that I wasn't alone, even though I still felt very alone.  

School let us out on Wednesday for Thanksgiving, in case we had to travel, and Friday off, too, so we could drive home.  The dentist for my shiny new girlfriend wanted her to have her wisdom teeth taken out on Wednesday so, by Monday, she could go back to school.  

With her wisdom teeth out, she wouldn't be able to partake of much of the Thanksgiving feast.  She mostly took painkillers and remained in bed.  I was allowed to visit after my family finished their dinner, as long as we kept the door open.  My girlfriend wore the prettiest nightgown and robe she could find, but the sides of her face were swollen like I'd punched her.  

This was my first real test as a boyfriend.  I had to be compassionate and responsible but also respectful and gentlemanly and still somehow romantic, which I had no real experience in.  It was a challenge.

I sat and talked on the foot of her bed, with her family a few steps away in the living room.  We held hands and talked about passions we didn't understand.  A body passed by quietly in the hall.  "Hey, Daddy."  She said but got no reply.  The door to his bedroom closed, then locked.  We didn't talk for fear he'd hear us trying to be romantic.

Pop.

I'd heard that sound before.  My brother accidentally discharged his .22 once in his room while getting ready to clean it.  I recognized the smell.  

A mother's cry.  She called his name over and over and banged her fists on the locked door that wouldn't budge.  In an immediate crisis, the wheels in my mind spin, but find no purchase.  Another consciousness takes over my body that somehow has a plan of how to respond.

"Let me," I said and guided her to the side.  I shook the doorknob and pushed with no effect.  Although still drugged and very confused, my girlfriend stood at the door to her bedroom.

"Get back," I said and pushed the door again.  "Stay back," I said to both of them, with fear but mostly panic in their eyes.  My body had a plan.

I planted my feet shoulder-width apart and drew my open hands back, level with my shoulders.  After spinning up as much resolve as I could, I focused my eyes on a spot on the door and slammed my open hands there as hard as I could.  The privacy lock in the door handle snapped, and the door burst open.  Nobody moved.

Inside, I could see his legs sticking out of the bathroom door inside the bedroom.

"Stay there,"  I said.  Her mother froze, but my girlfriend made a step to see inside herself.  "STAY THERE!"  I said.  And she did.

I'd met this man maybe three times.  We shared maybe fifty words together.  A puddle of black-red grew on the bathroom floor.  An expanding circle of life and death.  One arm was twisted back in a strange way holding a pistol.  I won't tell you the rest of what I saw.  For years, I had no visual memory of some of it.  My brain was merciful to my mind, I suppose.  Eventually, it all came back to me, though.   A horrible image saved for a day when I could handle it, I suppose.

The police left around midnight.  I drove home to get a change of clothes, as I'd promised to spend the night on the sofa in my girlfriend's living room.  My mother and father were still up in the den waiting for me.  "Will you call my friends and tell them what happened?  I don't really know how to do this."  I asked.

"Of course."  Mother said.  After that, nobody really said anything.  I expected them to have something brilliant to say that would help me navigate these strange and treacherous waters, but all they could do was be there, which is what I was about to do.  I was going to my girlfriend's house to sit in her living room and say I was going to sleep, but not sleep, and just sort of be there as if my body would somehow fill the hole in their lives long enough to arrange a more permanent patch.  It took a while, but they did arrange a more permanent patch, and I could extricate myself from this trial without causing any further damage.

My mother insisted that I see a psychologist.  She'd done this before.  He was a pretty good guy; by then, we'd become pretty good friends.  He was instrumental in helping me resolve recurring panic attacks in my twenties, but beyond that, I don't think he was ever really able to heal me.  That I did myself.  Sometimes well.  Sometimes poorly.  

For the next twenty-five years, my mother would ask at thanksgiving if I was ok.  I was ok, generally.  I felt no pain or panic or regret.  All I felt was cold and empty, but that's better than pain.  Eventually, as other deaths passed and other losses were sustained, that coldness spread to Christmas and Halloween, and eventually, I quit celebrating the holidays altogether.  It was a season of loss, and I chose to endure rather than celebrate.

This week will be the first thanksgiving I've celebrated since before some of you were born.  I'm at peace with the past and look forward to the celebration.  I am, in time and in deed, thankful.  

 

The Great War

From childhood, I've been reading, in the bible, in comic books, in novels, in songs, in video games, in movies, and television, that I should prepare for and fight in a great war between good and evil.  To be honest, the idea thrilled me.  I prepared and waited, ready to spring.

But, I never encountered anyone or anything that was evil.  Everything and every one had another side to whatever they were doing.  The great war between good and evil, turned out to be a war between what is good and what is evil.  Everyone thinks they're on the side of good, and anyone who opposes them is evil.

There actually are works that tried to prepare me for this.  Books like The Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and sometimes Punisher, but those came fairly late in my comic book reading cycle.  The Greeks sometimes addressed these issues.  Stories like the moral dilemma of Electra or Philoctetes fascinated me, even though I never really faced those issues.  

I depend on the bible a lot; it's my cultural mythology, but between the first word and the last word is a span of as many as a thousand years, so the bible often has conflicting and contradictory points of view on issues.   I have issues with the first parts of the Bible, written by Levite priests but attributed in antiquity to Moses, even though I'm convinced Moses never wrote a word himself, and it's unlikely Aaron did for him.  The commandments, I'm convinced, were an entirely oral tradition for hundreds of years before anyone wrote them down; that's why there are sometimes differences in their order and wording.  

Instead, I focus on the words of Jesus.  Not the words of Paul, or the words of Jerry Fallwell, or the words of Pat Robertson, but the words Jesus himself said.  While Jesus himself never spoke to some of the issues, we have today, like abortion or gay rights, or gun control, the words he did say were general and wise enough to guide me in forming a position.  That's the problem, though; they guide ME, and someone else may read the same words and come to a completely different position.

There is a great battle coming, and it is over good and evil, but the greatest trick Satan ever did was making both sides believe they stand for good.  You never had that problem with Orcs or Sentinals.  In the end, this great mind full of words cannot guide me.  I have to go with heart, and that's a gift from the women of my childhood.  

We may meet.  We may cross swords in battle, a battle of good and evil.  I will still love you, but I fight for the good of the world and the oppressed and the wounded and the ostracized as Jesus taught me to, as Jesus did himself.   I'm in the battle to win.  Not for me; I'm old and have no real needs.  I'm in it for them because they have my heart, and they deserve a life of light and days without pain.

seeds in the dark

A child in my crib

I saw my brother move around the world freely

creating dreams and monsters and missions from paper and clay and the space between his eyes

I wanted only to be like him

in time, bad luck, bad drugs, bad choices, bad timing, bad stars, stubborn thinking, all the shit that happened in his life scared me away from monsters and missions and making things from paper and clay.

Finance! I thought, marketing, administration. That's for me.  I'll sit on boards and chase debutants.  I'll play golf.  I'll join the country club.  I'll do anything except be an artist.  

a world not made for me, and I not for it

that world was a desert around me.  oceans and oceans of sand, without a leaf of life to be found

Then the day he died, I thought: "where are we now, brother?  Where are we now?  

You're dead; I'm broken.  Neither of us are creating anything.  Where are we now?"

a failed experiment.  I thought.  and I closed my eyes on the world.

The world doesn't work that way, though.  

Seeds sprout in the dark.  They push. They strain.   Their tendrils break through anything to find the light.  

A tree grew in me.  Its boughs and branches broke down every wall I built around them.  

a life tree.  a world tree.  Stronger than I ever imagined.

A tree, from a seed, given me by my brother, when I was a baby in the crib

The Gates

 When I again opened the gates of my heart

I found waiting outside:

my family, my friends, my home

my art, my strength, my love

I found

the wounded, the broken

the dying, the abandoned

the fearful, the tearful

the hopeless, the hopeful

I found

allies, brothers, companions, sisters

warriors, engineers, artists, architects,

poets, singers, painters, acrobats

I found 

doctors, healers, pastors, shepherds

I knew that they were there all along

but I was afraid

to live among them.

now that I'm here, 

all I want is to give away all that was hidden inside me

and hope that it is enough.

choices

I'm older than the gnarled trees around me My body is broken from bad choices and bad experiences I remember when these trees were planted Songs of change Songs of protest songs of regret call to me... we did our best didn't we? didn't I? I'm tired. I want to rest call to me there are new voices new bodies call to me it's their future now. not mine call to me my sword call to me my sword is BROKEN call to me I don't even know where the pieces are call to me if I do this call to me IF I DO THIS, will you leave me alone call to me will I find peace? call to me Love? love never left you. If I do this, will we win, will it last? there are no promises you're not calling from outside of me, are you? come to me you're within me, aren't you? come to me that's why I could never escape this you never could my hands are already there come to me let this be the hour. let us fight together. for the future we will never see.

The Worst Thing I Ever Did At Millsaps

Occasionally, younger people will ask about my career at Millsaps.  Apparently, some of the stories have been exaggerated over time, so I had probably better set the record straight.

Once, sometimes twice a year, I'd be caught after hours in Sanders Dormitory, but never in Franklin or Bacot.  I preferred women who were a bit more seasoned.  Still do.  As I recall, the punishment for this was you couldn't go back for like a month, which was probably a good idea.

You might have heard tales of the things I did with Doug Mann.  Many of those are true.  Doug and I were sometimes able to break into and always on top of every building on campus.  We excluded the Physical Activities Center because we considered its rounded roof too dangerous to climb without more equipment than we were willing to commit to the endeavor.  I kind of regret that now.  We were occasionally accompanied by a raven-haired vixen, who is now a respected community leader and a mother, so I'll leave her name out of it.  There was also a slightly younger gentleman from Chile who sometimes accompanied us.  He was good at climbing but complained that we'd get caught far too much, even though we never did, somehow.  I have to count on @janet.h.mann or @sydney Mann to read this to Doug because, in his wisdom, he refuses to subscribe to social media.  He'd probably still be willing to climb something if I asked him, though.  Maybe something with stairs this time.

There were more than a few nights, drunken beyond reason, on the back porch of CS's trying to convince Elizabeth Dean we belonged together, or on the front porch of the KA house at four AM plotting to take over the world, or at least find more tequila, but I don't know if those count.  It wasn't even me who put so much powder in the cannon at midnight that it broke out the windows to the TV room and set the curtains on fire.  But I was there.

Because they were reasonable people, there were times when the KAs would tire of me, and the Pikes would tire of Bonehead, so we would logically do things together instead.  There came a night when the Lamba Chi Alphas wanted to have a barbeque and keg party at their house.  The Chops suffered under us far too often for reason, but they did it without much resentment.  

I can't remember if it was Bonehead's idea or mine, but at some point, it was decided that we should have a barbeque party of our own, so he stole the Webber grill full of chickens, and I stole the keg of beer, and we walked over to the steps of Ezelle dorm with the chickens and beers and commenced to eating and drinking.  For their part, the Chops never really confronted us or complained.  I think they were possibly in profound shock that we would do such a thing.

There was probably something like thirty chicken pieces on that grill, and they had another grill still at the Lambda Chi house.  We had the intention, and the capacity, to eat them all.  Into our third piece of chicken each, a wisened member of the security team arrived on his golf cart.

"You gotta take 'em back, boys."

So we did.  We very politely took the keg of beer and the barbeque full of chickens back to the Lambda Chi house, picked up whatever garbage was in the yard to make up for the eaten pieces, and went on our way while the Chops continued their party as they had originally intended.

The amazing thing about that story is that we probably should have gotten in trouble, but, to their credit, the Lambda Chi's never reported us.  They didn't even make a security report.  I don't think Dean Good even knew it ever happened.  They got their chickens back (we continued to turn them on the grill) and made some friends, and that was that.  

I don't know what student life is like these days at Millsaps, but according to some blogs I read last night, they're holding up the traditions fairly well.  The cannon was eventually filled with concrete and made inoperable.  We weren't able to insure it if we didn't.  Probably a reasonable outcome.  The climbing upon of buildings ended one night when another gentleman decided to take a dive off the Christian Center bell tower the night before he was to be wed.  I don't think he meant to, but getting married can be pretty intimidating.  If he'd gone with Doug and me, he wouldn't have fallen.  We got all our guests home safely.  

As far as fraternities and chickens and intermural shenanigans are concerned.  I feel like not much is changed.  I can look in some of these boys' eyes and know they're just like me, maybe not as ambitious, and they can't possibly have a friend as epic as Bonehead, but the traditions continue.

My Hands On The Rope

When I was young, I played football, but I loved strength sports.  I loved them for their simplicity.  With the possible exception of running, strength sports are the simplest of all.  You move a piece of metal from here to there, and that's it.  Whoever moves the heaviest piece of metal wins.  Sometimes there's no competitor.  It's just you and the metal.  Can I move four hundred pounds from here to there, or no?  There is no other person.  If I do it, I win.  If I don't, I curse and try another day.  The possibility of failure makes it a sport and not an exercise.  Exercise is doing things you know you can do.  Sport is doing things you may never be able to do if you don't commit yourself.  

Nearly all strength sports are solitary affairs, which suited the younger version of me because socialization was often difficult and usually only possible with those I trusted the most.  There was a communal or team strength sport, though: tug-of-war.  Tug-of-war is deliciously simple.  Two teams grab hold of a rope, and whoever pulls the most rope to their side of the field wins.  That's that.

Nearly everyone grips the rope with their hands in tug-of-war, and if things go badly, everyone can just let go except one.  The anchor had the rope tied around his waist.  If his team lost, he would be dragged bodily through the mud pit or pool or whatever lay between the two teams.  He would be singled out as the loser.  That job, more often than not, was mine.

Tug-of-war works because, while I may be the only one tied to the rope, my friends have their hands on it too, and they pull as hard as they can and commit as much as they can to try and prevent the team from losing and me from going into the mud.  While there were a few times when I went into the pit, more often than not, we won.  We won because my friends wouldn't give up and kept their hands on the rope despite the challenge.

I like applying metaphors from strength sports to life's challenges because life is complex, but strength sports are simple, and simple metaphors can make the most difficult challenge less threatening and more surmountable.  Right now, many of the things I care about the most are struggling.  My country, my state, my city, my school.  In some ways, they struggle more now than ever before.

Long ago now, I was hurt, and tired, and frustrated, and felt very alone, so I untied myself from the tug-of-war rope and hid in a place of solitude and stillness for a very long time.  "My friends can win without me," I thought.  Whatever strength I had was spent long ago, I thought.  If they don't win, I don't want to be dragged through the mud, I knew.  I feared.

One day a voice said to me, "you can no longer stay in the in-between place.  You must choose.  If you die, you will be quiet and still forever, or you can return to the world that's been calling for you since you left, but you must fight."  I opened my eyes and saw that the tug-of-war continued.  New men were in the anchor loop, but the war continued, and it wasn't looking good for my team.  

I'm old now...and broken.  I'm no good for the anchor loop anymore, but I have hands.  I've been in this war before.  I can pull.  I can pull harder than you would ever imagine.  I can commit, and I don't care if I go into the mud, and the strength I lost is coming back more every day.  I'm back on the team.  Now, all I need to know is where to put my hands on the rope.

Writing At Waffle House

This morning, my body is over-trained.  I can feel it.  It's not bad, but I can feel it.  The problem is, I just don't have time for it.  The world is calling for me.  I can hear it, but my body is on a clock.  At fifty-nine years old, I know the usable life of my body is not infinite, so I have to push, but I also have to be careful.

When I was twenty and felt like this, I'd work harder, then get drunk at Scrooges so I would sleep well and forget about whatever was making me work so hard. My relationship with my body is and always was, I would say, strained.  In truth, it's an unhappy but long-lived marriage.  

There is infinitely more written about the relationship between women and their bodies than there is about men and theirs.  Part of that might be that we've hung this millstone around their neck called "physical beauty," a burden rarely shared by men.  If you look at what's going on in Persia today, the idea of feminine beauty is probably the creation of men wanting to contain and limit women.  I'm probably as guilty as any of them, but I do try to at least admit it.

Physical beauty is not something I ever really considered myself a part of.  Overweight with thinning hair and a smile that looked like I was going to kill someone or just had, I always figured the best I could do was to make a useful body, so I learned to move heavy things and climb things I shouldn't.

Lucy Millsaps once assigned us to draw four self-portraits.  Which I did.  In private.  Always in private.  I turned them in, and Lucy said, "the drawings are very good, but you don't look like that.  The likeness is very good, but you've emphasized all the wrong features.  You're better looking than that.  Is there something wrong?"  I love Lucy.  I miss her.  For someone so small, she could see very far.

The over-training isn't bad.  It's just there.  I think if I get proper sleep and get good nutrients, I should be fine.  While I have to train, and I enjoy it, all I really want to do is write.  Just typing it makes the water come to my truth eye.

I think I'm going to treat myself and get a nice leather bag for my laptop.  I think I'm going to be the kind of asshole who writes in cafes.  For forty-five years, I wrote in secret, both the process and the result.   Lately, I've been letting people see what I write, which has gone surprisingly well.  Maybe letting them see the process won't be so bad.  Hearing the sounds and voices of people going about their business helps me concentrate.  I know that sounds crazy, but it works.  Maybe I go into some sort of sensory overload, and my body shuts down that input channel and lets me focus, where less input would otherwise interfere with my thinking.  

When I was married, I would wait till my wife went to sleep, then take a laptop to Waffle House to write.  I told my wife I was going to smoke, which she hated, so she never questioned it.  You could smoke in Wafflehouse then, and nearly everyone did, including the guy on the griddle.  The people at Wafflehouse are usually too busy to notice if you're writing, or sleeping, or overdosing, or stabbing your neighbor, so my activities could be completely anonymous there.  

I loved my wife more than anything, but she had no interest in my writing, or my painting, or my sculpting, drawing, or theater.  I'm pretty sure she thought she was getting my dad.  It's not her fault; I do a pretty good impression of him and almost always do.  Because I would have done anything for her, then or now, when she said she wanted to marry, I did, and that was that.  Knowing that she couldn't really see me wasn't an issue because I never let anyone see me.  My wife is still one of my favorite people in the world.  What happened between us was entirely my fault.  I should have been more honest and open. 

Her dad, that was a different story.  Besides Brent Lefavor, nobody who didn't share genetic material with me ever taught me as much as Cecil Jenkins or see me as clearly.  We continued to talk after the divorce.  I'm sure he never really separated from anyone.  I miss him.  I wish I could talk to him now.

I don't know where this writing thing is going.  I'd love to publish, but if it never happens, I'm satisfied just knowing that even one person read my stuff.  For many years, I didn't allow that many.  Actually working while other people go about their lives around me has a really satisfying ring about it.  If you see me typing in a coffee shop or a pizza joint, check on Facebook in a couple of days, and you'll most likely see whatever I was working on.  My body will heal itself, and the over-training will go away.  I just have to stop being such an asshole to my limbs, and it'll work out.  

Not Winning

Sometimes my sister worries that I'm too bold in my efforts to become part of the world again.  Somehow she's noticed that I've been stepping in front of cannonballs since the day she was born.

"It's like raising children."  She said.  "You'll try.  You'll push.  You'll put everything you've got into making things turn out well, but you're not gonna win every battle."

Sometimes, she's too clever for me.  Not delivering the goods for the people and things I care about is why I removed myself from society in the first place.  In truth, no matter how much effort and love, and time I put into something, its success or failure isn't dependent on me, even though it sure feels like that.  Knowing that, and feeling it, are two different things.

My theory was that removing myself from the world would remove this feeling of responsibility, and even if someone or something did fail, at least I wouldn't know about it.  Loving people and things that turned out to be, basically, mortal was killing me, and I lacked the perspective to accept the wounds without fear and self-loathing.  I was too close.

My plan wasn't working.  In my cave, I would still hear that so-and-so died, or such-and-this was closing.  The wounds came fresh, and the blood flowed freely, so I dug into the granite more.  Going deeper didn't silence the sounds of the world; it only muffled them.  Muffled cries of pain are still cries of pain.  When the cries come from someone you love, it's brutal.

Coming back out into the world means I have to accept that, no matter how hard I try, not winning is always an option, and no amount of caring or loving can change that.  Baby sister is wise beyond her means.  This will not be easy.  Failing for me, I don't care about.  Failing for the people I love flays the skin from my bones.  To live though, to LIVE, I have to accept this possibility.  There will be times when I do not win, no matter how important it is.

I'm ready to accept that possibility.  Not winning will hurt, probably a lot, but what choice do I have? I will fight.  I may lose, but I will fight.  Living in a cave wasn't protecting me like I thought it might.  If I do not win, I will simply try again.

Because She's A Woman

 There are very few people on earth  I can talk freely at a truth to the gut level with.  My sister is my most valuable and oldest association that way.  Tonight we were both trying to pour whatever energy we could into a Millsaps event, and we started talking about a position that was opening up at a company we've both been associated with for a long, long time.  

"I guess they're gonna move Mary into that position,"  I said.  Naming the most logical, most competent person I could think of, who just happens to already be working at that company.  I really didn't put much thought into it and considered that part of the conversation pretty much done.

"They'll never give Mary that position."  My sister said.  "Because She's a Woman."

I made a face and let my brain process what she had just said.  The weight of it and the truth of it hit me pretty hard.  This woman, who we both knew, who we both had done business with, would be denied an opportunity she earned in life--because she's a woman.

Once upon a time, I took an oath to defend womanhood, but I've always interpreted that differently from how the oath writers intended.  I tend to do things my own way.

I'm old.  Despite my expectations, I've survived until the third age of men.  In those many days, I've romantically loved maybe fifteen women and non-romantically loved maybe five hundred more.  I have two stepdaughters who carry a silent piece of me wherever they go.  I have a niece, who, quite frankly, I would cut you for.  And many millions more who I am honor-bound to care for.  Because she's a woman, is the world I've left for them.  I'm not satisfied.

Before Daddy died, I was having a drink with a lawmaker at Scrooges.  The old Scrooges, when they were still in the same building as the Rogue.  Even though he was on an education committee, this was purely a social call.  I liked the guy genuinely and enjoyed talking to him.  He told me how much he liked my sister.  She had just gotten out of college and just started associating with the fella she would eventually cleave to.  A thousand times, people have said how much they admired my sister, and they meant it.

"It's a shame she'll never get to do the things your daddy did."

Driving home, I regretted not punching him and getting thrown out of Scrooges for the first time ever.  The weight of what he said stunned me, though, and it took a while for the wheels in my head to put that information where it needed to go.  I'm old now.  My beard is mostly white, and that sentence still doesn't have the proper home in my brain.  Maybe it's for the best.  Because she's a woman was putting an unfair cap on my beloved baby sister and closest friend.

My sister could have and, by rights, should have done everything my father did and more.  She's smarter.  She's kinder.  She works harder.  She's a better athlete.  She's better looking.  (My dad had a tragically large nose.)  By rights, her fame should have dwarfed his.  Because she's a woman, got in the way.  I hate it.  

Before I cross over to the new lands, I'd like to do something about Because she's a woman.  I think it's time.  Technically I've already taken an oath to do so.  Maybe it's not what the oath writers intended, but it's what I intended.  I am stubborn, and I am honor-bound.

The Return of Ayers

 It was a long day, and I probably need to sleep, but there was one thing I wanted to get out.

Bennie Thompson has ordered an investigation into racial inequity in how Mississippi distributed federal infrastructure funds, and the NAACP and others are saying they're preparing a civil case with the same claim.  

All of this reminds me of the Ayers case, which Thompson was also involved in.  Like the Ayers case, I believe the plaintiffs are correct, and there was racial inequity in how these funds were distributed.  Like the Ayers case, I believe the state of Mississippi may have followed the letter of the law, but perhaps not the spirit of the law.  Having spoken to some of the players involved, I feel confident that Mississippi did follow the letter of the law, but that doesn't mean they aren't still liable for the plaintiff's claims.

So far, so good.  Here's my problem, though, and it's a pragmatic one.  It took over thirty years for Ayers to reach a conclusion.  While the plaintiffs got some of their demands, they didn't get them all, and there were some very, very lean years for the HBCUs in Mississippi, waiting for a verdict in Ayers.  Jackson can't go thirty years without reliable drinking water.  There won't be anybody left living in the city to rebuild the infrastructure for.  

I don't know the answer.  Racial inequity in the handling of federal funds has to be addressed.  But my city is dying, and while this may help Jackson in the long run, if the long run is thirty years, I very worried about the short run.  Ayers had a very liberal Supreme Court tipping the scale in the plaintiff's favor.  That situation no longer exists.  

Jake Ayers died in 1986.  The Ayers suit didn't close until 2004.  I don't want Jackson to be dead when the water treatment suit finally settles.  

Men Without Faith

When considering the issue of crime in Jackson and other areas, a lot of people see a lot of things; what I see are young men who don't believe the American dream applies to them, so they take what they can get.  They may not believe they can work hard, obey the rules, and get anywhere in life, but they know they can be a thug and get an iPhone and maybe some gold chains, and it becomes a bird in the hand situation.

Doing the work and making the dream happen is on them, but this country spent generations making sure the American Dream didn't apply to people like them, so now it's our job to somehow make sure they believe things are different.  Making them believe is on us.  Reparations and transfer socialism won't solve anything long term.  If you can't change a man's heart, you won't change anything.  

I'm probably the worst person to be talking about this.  I had every advantage in the world, but I still didn't believe in myself or in the system.  That doesn't mean I'm giving up.  Having been there myself, I know men can change.  A young man can be the most powerful creative force in the world if he believes.  He can be the most destructive if he does not.  

There's nowhere you can run from this.  There's no suburb you can move to, there's no gated community you can hide behind, America is split in two, and one half doesn't believe there's any hope and doesn't believe in themselves or us, the other half believes they can outrun the problem, and it'll go away, so they move further and further away from their home.

The answer to me is quite clear.  We can only take these two broken halves and somehow meld them together.  I don't exactly know how to do that.  I wish I did.  I know they will have to give up a bit of their culture, and we'll have to give up a bit of ours, and together we'll have to forge a new culture, a new history, and a new future.  Two broken cultures must become one whole one.

I hate having this conversation because it always comes out as the same bullshit people have been trying to sell us since the sixties, and however we've been trying to make it happen, it obviously hasn't been working.  I do, though.  I do.  I do.  I do believe.  I just don't know how to do it. 
It is the only way.  I know that.  I don't want to leave this problem to my grandchildren or great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren like it was left to me.  

The World Trees and Vacation Bible School

Before my mother produced a girl-child and we ran out of bedrooms, we lived in a nice little house on Northside Drive.  My mother's childhood friend Betty Wright lived around the corner.  When I was a teenager, she was instrumental in apprising my mother of my adventures and making sure I survived them.  Behind our house was Martha Hammond.  The woman who made me want to read, even though I couldn't.  She was dear enough to me that she became simply "Hammond," not Mrs. Hammond or any other method we're taught to address grown-ups.  Being a stutterer, I sometimes had trouble saying anything at all, so adding supernumerous words like "Mrs" sometimes meant I stayed silent.

My mother's firstborn and Lee Hammond had access to and helped build a treehouse.  Getting up to the treehouse meant reaching and stepping on two boards nailed to the trunk of the tree, then to a limb, then into the forest green painted house.  My brother and my other brother, and Lee Hammond, gained access to the treehouse and moved about it as I imagined monkeys might be in the wild.  Being too small, I couldn't reach that first board nailed into the tree.  Without that first step, all the other steps were irrelevant.  Life in the trees was not meant for me.  Not yet.  The message was clear, though.  Trees meant vantage and perspective.  Trees meant fun, but most of all, trees meant freedom.

Because our house had no more room for another child's bed (and a girl's bed at that), my father bought two acres from Mayor Speed in an area that became known as Eastover.  The recent death of my uncle meant that I would take his name, and my father got a pretty serious promotion to replace him.  It meant the family would have more money.  It also meant that for the next thirty years, I had to be clever if I wanted to spend any time with my father.  He made an attempt to be my companion at Indian Guide's meetings, but I was sent to Indian Guides fatherless often enough that I would start refusing to go.  

Eventually, I would gain the favor of Charlie Deaton and Robert Wingate by learning to fish, which meant my father could take me fishing with them.  I also learned the names and committee assignments of every Mississippi House of Representatives and Senate member and learned to mix drinks.  One made me interesting, and the other made me useful.  Knowing how to fish and clean fish gave me the potential to be both interesting and useful, but only Ross Bass could cook them properly.   It was a sound strategy.  I told you I had to be clever.

Behind our new house, Warren and Elsie Hood bought about a twenty-five-acre lot.  They built a house and manicured about three acres of this lot; the rest they left Mississippi wilderness.  That he earned the money for this purchase with Mississippi timber made it a logical choice.  Warren Hood was a gentle, sometimes quiet creature.  You wouldn't suspect him as the kind of man who rode a helicopter to work.  He would eventually give up the practice.  Too loud and too expensive, he complained.  I believe he kept the helicopter to inspect timber properties, but I don't think he rode it very often.  

Elsie Hood was a powerful country girl with square hips and strong shoulders.  She had kind eyes and a mind like a steel trap.  Eventually, she would acquire a major stake in Mississippi's largest bank and would be instrumental in its sale.  In the sale, the foreign investors (from outside of Mississippi) promised her to keep on the majority of the bank's employees.  A promise they didn't keep.  Elsie took a special interest in my sister and Lee Kroeze, our neighbor.  Sometimes Mrs. Hood had tea parties for the girls and had an interest in them all their lives.  She was there the day we buried Lee before she had the chance to pick a college.  I don't like to talk about that very much.

Sometimes, Mrs. Hood would catch me adventuring in her woods.  

"Hue! Boyd!  What'ya doin'?"

"Jes climbing trees.  I saw a snake over yonder."

"Did ya kill it?"

"No'm.  It were just a king snake."  

Then she'd leave me to my wanderings.  In the middle of the Hood's Woods was a wild southern live oak.  Domestic live oaks were planted generations before and meant your family had been part of Mississippi stretching back to the civil war days.  Their limbs were carefully trimmed and sometimes braced to create the most impressive possible display.  A wild live oak was something different.  It was dark and sinuous.  Some limbs were steady as stone, while others lured you out on them, only to crack and give way if you ventured out far enough.  Fortunately, I was young enough to take a pretty good fall without much event. 

This was Yggdrasil, my world tree.  Adventuring into its limbs made my own young limbs stronger.  It gave me perspective and vantage and fueled my budding imagination.  At its base was Nidhogg, the dragon that chewed at the roots of your resolve and reputation.  Nidhogg would follow for the rest of my life.  We did battle many times in my efforts to find another world tree.

Soon, I was old enough to attend Vacation Bible School.  In those days, what would become known as VBS was held at the McRae farm.  Each class would meet under a different live oak tree for crafts and singing, and fellowship.  Fellowship meant playing with other kids, which was hard for me to do because I stuttered.  At school, I learned that if I said something inappropriate, the other kids would laugh, so it didn't matter if sometimes I couldn't get my words out the way I wanted.  Sunday school was different, though.  That was the domain of my mother, and my grandmother and I had to behave, so I was usually just quiet.  

Vacation Bible School was run by the same people who ran our Sunday School, which were usually mothers of somebody or another, and they were assisted by the members of the United Methodist Youth Fellowship, which meant teenagers and included such notable persons as George Patton, Bill, and Gail Gober and more.  They wore blue jeans and played guitars, and generally ignored us, spending their time together trying to figure out the rules on the young end of the teenage experience.  Soon, they'd be on the far end of the teenage adventure and going off to college and I began my own teenage matriculation.

The live oak trees at the McRae farm weren't like the wild Yggdrasil of Mrs. Hood's Woods.  They were trim and tame, and their limbs were decorated with scampering young methodists learning songs about Jesus.  Unable to speak properly, I was mostly quiet and sought out the higher branches, where I could watch the others learn.  This wasn't my world tree, but it was a good one and a place to grow.

I hadn't yet made the connection that the McRaes who sat near my grandparents at church were the same people that owned the store where my mother bought my clothes.  We shopped in the "husky" section, which was a polite word for fat.   I struggled with fat most of my life.  For a while, fat thought it had me beat, and soon the referee would count me out, but in the last seconds, I pulled a surprise move and vanquished fat forever.  I risked my life in the process, but I wasn't going to die that way.

I would always find a tree to climb in.  They were my refuge and my cave of wonders.  In college, there were two live oak trees beside the KA house and a massive one in front of the Chi-O house.  Many times would find me in their limbs.  Sometimes nobody knew I was there, which was perfect.  I'd been given therapy for my speech impediment, so by college, it was much better, but there were still times when my words wouldn't come out right or wouldn't start at all.  Even now, if you see me quiet, I might be thinking, I might be bored, I might be sleeping, or I might just be frustrated that my words won't come out, so I shut my mouth and let it have a temporary victory.

In college, I met a willowy beauty who was a friend of my sister's.  Her speech patterns matched my own.  Speaking together triggered the speech impediment for each of us, so, of course, we became friends, even if our conversations were unintelligible to others.

"Hey....b...Boyd!"

".....H.Hey Laryn!"

"Have you s.s.s.een your s.s.sister?"

She would eventually marry a young man who had already impressed me before he met her.  I think of them often.  Sometimes the trees I found refuge in were people.  Eventually, I made a kind of peace with my voice and the trees and the dragons chewing at their roots.  

The last time I drove through my old neighborhood, I noticed somebody had cut down my Yggdrasil and built a house there.  You truly can never go home again.  The tree lives in me, though.  Its roots and limbs are tendrils connecting me to the people and places, and events of history.  The world tree is time itself, and the dragon chewing at its roots, my own mortality.  One day the dragon will win and take me like it took my father, and his father, and his father.  Wherever it takes me, I know I'll have friends; and maybe I'll be able to speak freely.    

The Potato Queens Were Pretty Sweet Actually

 I joined the first St. Patrick's Day Parade because Inez said I could.  You'd be surprised how many of my stories start that way.  She was Merlin, and I was Wart in the peculiar Camelot of Millsaps in the 80s.  At nineteen, I wore a suit to work because I was trying to impress upon my father and grandfather that I could make something of myself, despite myself.  

I didn't change clothes after work because I was in a bad mood.  The plan was to buy twelve beers, kept cold in the ice chest in my trunk that had been there since the ninth grade, for just this purpose, get an Inez Burger and Cheese Fries to go and drink myself into oblivion, listening to U2 on the porch of the KA house.  I was in a bad mood because a pretty blonde girl, with a french name, from the delta told me we couldn't do again what we had done before because her heart belonged to another, and she wanted to be free in case he noticed her.  While I respected her position, I was in a sour mood because I was tired of being confused by women, but burgers and beer and music were never confusing, so I had my agenda set.

Only, when I got to CS's to place my order, it was already packed.  Packed by an unusual crowd and surrounded by cars and trucks and convertibles, who weren't parked, but in line for something.  

"It's a parade, baby.  Get in!"

That's all the invitation I needed.  I suspect Inez meant for me to get in one of the convertibles or pickup trucks lined up for the parade.  I had other ideas.  "Boyd's in the tree, again."  Was a pretty common phrase in those days.  Something about alcohol (and similar devices) inspired a desire in me to rise above the common man, usually by way of a tree, a wall, or a ladder.  It may have been related to my watching King Kong over 100 times by then, but it more likely began with the massive magnolia tree in front of my Bubba's house on St Ann Street.  Sometimes I would take a co-conspirator with me.  William Douglass Mann was the perfect companion on these missions, but he wasn't there that day.

Not having many actual floats or other parade accouterments, Malcolm and Pat arranged for two or three beer delivery trucks to be in the parade.  I'm not sure why they don't have beer delivery trucks in every parade.  It seems like a natural choice.  Inez wanted me to get in one of the convertibles, but I noticed the nice wide, flat roof of the beer truck, then I noticed that its bumper led to some nicely arranged footholds leading to the roof.  I knew what I had to do.

The Roof!  Despite wearing my Allen Edmonds oxfords and my navy, chalk-striped suit, I made short work of ascending the back of the beer truck, and I did it holding a Budwiser long-neck.  Beat that, King Kong.

"Boyd!" My friend Bonehead shouted from below.  "How did you get up there?"  I pointed to the rear bumper, and soon there were two.  "Boyd!"  It was my brother this time.  Somehow he had gotten prior word of the parade and wore appropriate green attire.  I pointed to the bumper, and then there were three.

Whoever designed beer trucks knew that streetlights and powerlines hung at a certain height above the street, and they had to design their trucks to go safely under them.  What they didn't account for was three drunk boys standing on top of the truck.  Fortunately, my brother was alert enough to shout "Duck" in time to prevent Bonehead or me from getting our heads knocked off by a street light as the parade got underway.

A few cars ahead of us were a bunch of girls I knew dressed as floozies, throwing what looked like actual sweet potatoes to the crowd on the sidewalk watching our spectacle.  They would soon realize that throwing quarter-pound sweet potatoes out of a moving car into an unsuspecting audience might carry some danger and liability, so actual sweet potatoes didn't make another appearance in what would become the yearly St. Patricks Day parade.  

The Sweet Potato Queens were always fascinating to me.  In any other capitol city, they would have become an icon of the gay and drag culture, but in Jackson, Mississippi, they became a model for girls on the rubicon of turning thirty, who were Sorority girls and Debutantes, and trying not to become their mother, while becoming their mother.  Having known some of their actual mothers, that wouldn't have been such a bad thing, but these women wanted to have a more unique experience in our culture.  

Some of them were actually the older sisters of boys I knew.  I recognized them from CS's, Poets, Cherokee, and Scrooge's, which pretty much summed up the under-forty social world of Jackson at the time, unless you were wearing cowboy boots.  In those days, there wasn't that much to offer young women besides the Junior League, The Garden Club, and motherhood.  Most of these girls would go on to participate in each of these roles, but every one of them would also make their mark in some new and unusual way that enriched Mississippi and Jackson.  I cannot think of one I do not love and admire.

In the years that followed, I would design and build and paint many St. Paddy's day floats, whether I rode in them or not.  Even in my years in self-prescribed exile, I watched the parade from my window, remembering the parades of the past.  It's not often you get to witness the birth of a cultural touchstone, but I was there the day the Sweet Potato Queens stepped out into the world.  

The parade ended at the parking lot by George Street Grocery.  Having not planned to be in the parade, we hadn't arranged for a ride home, so Bonehead, my Brother, and I hoofed it back down West Street to Millsaps, despite our less-than-sober condition.    "That was cool!  Let's do it again!" And we did.

I Followed the Moonshadow

"Teaser, I have an idea."

"Yes, Firecat?"

"I want you to give up your plow, your land, and even your hands."

"I don't understand, Firecat."

"Then, I want you to give up your eyes, your legs, and your mouth."

"I don't understand, Firecat; what will this get me?"

"If you do these things, then you won't have to work, or cry, or walk, or even to talk no more."

"What sort of man will I be if I cannot work or walk or talk or cry?"

"You can do these things now, Teaser.  Are you happy?"

"No.  I am very unhappy, Firecat."

"You are my closest companion.  Come with me, child, and we will follow the moon's shadow and leave all these things behind."

And so, I gave up my work, my hands, my legs, my eyes, and my mouth, and I followed Firecat and the shadow of the moon.  We went further and further into the wood of forgets, trying to be happy.

One day, I woke and knew that I couldn't work, I couldn't walk, I couldn't talk, and I couldn't see.

"Firecat!  I have to go back!  This is death!"

"The carpenter's son said, if you go back now, your father will have a feast and serve the fatted calf and welcome you as his lost lamb."

"I don't want a feast.  I don't want a fatted calf.  I just want to be in the world again."  I said.

"I know, child."

"I would like to see my father again, though."

"I know, child."

"Are you my father, Firecat?"

"I am your friend."

"I'm leaving now, Firecat.  I'm going into the world again--Will you go with me?"

"I'm always with you, Teaser.  I've never left you."

"What will people say--when I find the world again?"

"They will say Welcome Home, Teaser.  You are our lamb."

Working For My Dad

Sometimes people wonder how I could have screwed up working for my dad.  That seems like such an easy and obvious gig.  My job for my dad was to find and hire and work with very talented people to do very creative things and pay them to do these things for Missco.  That was my job, and I was paid well.

That my dad gave me that job told me he was trying pretty hard to hear when I talked about what I wanted from life but that I might be doing a pretty crappy job of explaining what I meant.  I knew what I wanted to say.  Even in those days, words were my weapons, but I felt like I needed to keep that hidden.  It made me too different. 

I was meeting and working with people who knew and understood all the things that were important to me in life, and I was spending a great deal of time with them, but I was getting more and more lonely because I was a bird paying other creatures to fly for me.  I used a twelve thousand dollar computer to arrange and organize and execute other people's work, and occasionally use chatrooms to try and find people who understood me.  

My dad loved me and thought he was offering me a way to be happy, but whatever gifts God gave me were dying from the inside out, and I didn't know how to make it stop.  I was in trouble and I knew it.  He did too.  

"What are we gonna do buddy?" he would ask.

"I don't know pop.  I really don't."

My other problem was that I inherited a trait from Jim Campbell that whenever I heard the cries of anything or anyone in trouble, I'd jump in with both feet to fix it, acting like I was more invincible than Superman.  That I wasn't actually invincible was immaterial.  This was the Campbell way.

The problem is that, when you're twenty-five, there are a lot of people with a lot of problems you can't do a goddamn thing about.  Whatever time, money, or effort I was spending was immaterial because what I wanted to accomplish wasn't happening.  I was failing over and over at something that was very important to me.  To make matters worse, in the eighties and nineties, these voices of people in pain were often ladies, and as a Kappa Alpha, I had literally sworn to protect them with my life just a few years before.  Most were sincere and genuine, nearly all, but there were a rare few who saw this as an opportunity, one I felt like I had no right to deny them.  I felt like companionship wasn't meant for me.  I was a different sort of creature.  Those were difficult days.

I ended up in a situation where many people knew about me, my picture was in the paper, and my name was in print, just everywhere, and I was invited to everything, but there were maybe five people who knew anything about me, and even if they didn't understand why, they knew I was in trouble and sinking fast.  When Dad died, and the control of Missco went berserk, I felt really bad because I knew this was my escape plan.  

Escaping from Missco meant I had to spend a few years in the belly of the whale and a few years wandering the desert after that.   Seeking out wise men, I found Brent Lefavor, who became my Chiron, and he taught me I could slowly break away the plaster covering my own wings.  Now, I'm old, but I'm free, and I CAN FLY.  

What Happened To My First Three Books

 When "The Secret History" came out in 1992, I read it.  Then, I threw out about a dozen 3M 3.5-inch data disks containing three books I'd been working on for about ten years.  Tartt's work was so clear, powerful, and self-assured that I felt there was no point in trying to make anything of the confused assembled scribbles I was working on.  

I was already a little nervous about Beth Henly being from Jackson and just eleven years older than I was.  Tartt was six months younger than me and from a house just a few streets over from my cousin Robert in Greenwood.  Did the world really want to hear from an over-privileged white boy of my generation when there were so much clearer and more interesting voices to choose from?  Then "The Help" came out from Kathryn Stockett, who's just six years younger than me and from the same neighborhood.  I'd visited her Grandfather often, who mainly only wanted to talk about my namesake, who was his peer.  

After that, this writing thing, I figured, just wasn't for me.  I was surrounded by it.  It was in the air I breathed, but they were so good, and I was barely able to read books with chapters before I was thirteen, and even now, without computers, it's very difficult for me to put a sentence together properly.  

The creative process, I learned, was wrought with self-doubt.  If it's not, you're probably an asshole, and eventually, it will show in your work.  Comparing my work to others isn't fruitful or helpful.  My goal is not to compete with someone else's work but to get these ideas in my head down on paper so they'll leave me alone.  

The ideas I was working on when I threw those disks away are still inside me.  They probably will be until I make something of them.  I don't feel like anything was lost.  I just had a tantrum because I was scared.  That happens sometimes.  It happens to me a lot.  I'm learning that if I tell people I'm working on something, I can't destroy it in secret when I have moments of self-doubt or frustration that my vision hasn't focused itself yet.  It's a little trick to keep me disciplined and hopefully prompt me to keep moving forward, even when the doubts start to creep in.

Mississippi Women Are More Durable Than I

Everyone called her Babe.  I'm not going to tell you her real name.  I didn't know it myself until her funeral, and I don't remember anyone ever using it.  She was a Brady girl.  Politely called a "maiden aunt" in Mississippi parlance because she was never married, Babe was one of my favorite people in the world.  

Because my uncle became the Boyd Campbell you've heard about, most people in my life told stories about the Campbells and the Boyds up in Attalah county, but I was equally and sometimes more interested in my Mother's family, the Bradys of Learned Mississippi, in Hinds County.

That my Grandmother and her sisters loved me was never in question, but learning to drive increased my utility where they were concerned considerably because they could not.  Having my own car, no matter how old, changed everything in my life and theirs.

"Can you take me and Babe and Edith to lunch at Primos?  I'll buy you a hamburga."  I'm not sure why "hamburger" had no R, but it was common for people of my grandmother's generation.  My grandmother was "Sistah," but we called her "Nanny." Babe was "Babe."  I'm not sure why Edith wasn't assigned a sobriquet.  She was generally considered the more fancy of the three, mainly by the other two.  

My cousin Robert set his mother Edith up in a nice apartment over by Parham Bridges' Park, where I had swimming privileges any time I wanted and was told some pretty girls lived there, but I never saw any.  Nanny lived with us, so she sat in the front seat with me driving the Ford LTD, and we picked up Edith and headed to Babe's.

Babe lived in a duplex apartment behind the laundry on North State Street, what we now call Fondren.  You could tell it had once been a pretty fine home, but at some point, an owner converted it into a duplex, and it was becoming a bit threadbare.  One advantage of a home that old was that the Oak and Magnolia trees in the yard were enormous and mature.  

Once at Babe's apartment, I was asked to move the refrigerator and stove so they could sweep under them, hang two pictures, replace four light bulbs, tack down the carpet in the hall and move some of her livingroom furniture so she could navigate her home with a little more ease.  Besides me having the ability to drive, which none of the three had, it was becoming clear that this adventure had the primary purpose of getting me to help maintain Babe's apartment.  There were advantages to having a nephew with shoulders like mine.  I didn't mind.  Being useful made me feel safe and wanted.  For a shy kid, these are pretty important qualities.  Besides, I loved Babe and would have done anything for her.

With my chores accomplished, it was time for "hamburgahs", so I drove the three sisters north down highway fifty-one to what was then known as the new Primos, but hasn't been called Primos at all in a while now.  Lunch was pleasant.  I told about football, my classes, books I've read and when asked about girls, I had nothing to report, other than that the girls I knew were all very nice and polite, every one.  

Never married, Babe's career was babysitting children, which didn't make very much money, so her sisters made sure she was cared for, which nobody minded because they loved Babe.  I did too.  When I was an infant, she accidentally poked me with a diaper pin, which traumatized her, even when I was sixteen, and had no memory of it besides her telling me about it.  

Dropping Babe off at her place, I headed toward Edith's apartment to drop her off.  I'm not sure why they picked me, but there were times when Edith and Nanny had me alone; they would burden me with family secrets.  A lot of it, I thought, was more like gossip, but some of it was pretty tangible and difficult to hear.  The Brady clan endured some pretty rough times, quite a contrast to my generation.

"Babe sometimes doesn't like to drive with men alone.  When she was thirteen, a man took her on a buggy ride and didn't bring her home."

I was stunned.  It took a moment for my brain to work out what my Nanny was suggesting.

"Pappa and Uncle Joe went to see him and straighten it out,"  Edith added.

Sometimes my brain doesn't know what to do, so the wheels just spin, and I don't say anything.  I didn't say much else after that.  Sensing I didn't want to talk anymore, Edith and Nanny discussed what they saw in people's yards and how it compared to the yards in 1937 until the car trip was over.   

Back home, I went to my room to draw and listen to music.  After supper, when momma had the kitchen to herself, I asked her:

"Did Babe get...Was Babe molested?"

"Something like that."  She said.

"She was just thirteen?"

"Something like that." She said again.

"Pappa was my great grandfather?  What did he and Uncle Joe do?"

"I don't really know.  I never asked.  Handling it their way was better than going through the sheriff they thought."  

I had images of them beating, maybe even lynching the man with the buggy.  I'm almost sixty years old and don't know the full story of what happened and probably never will.  Whatever it was, they saw it as better than going through the sheriff.  I suppose that saved Babe from having to say what happened in court or really ever mention it again.  I doubt if she ever knew I knew.

"Babe's so gentle and sweet.  I can't imagine anything like this ever happening to her."  I said.

"Bad things happen to good people.  You pull together, and you get through it.  Babe's family made sure she was taken care of and had a good life, even though her life ended up being different from her sisters." Mother said.  "I don't know why they told you."  She looked annoyed.

My broad shoulders and ability to move heavy things maybe made my grandmother believe I was stronger than I was and could bear more burdens than perhaps I really could.  I've wept many times over what happened to my Aunt Babe.  Writing about it makes me weep now.  Writing often does.  

Learned Mississippi bred some pretty durable women.  They were little old ladies by the time I knew them, but their stories betray a strength under the powder and lace.  They had a history very different than mine.  It taught me a lesson, though.  Weak doesn't mean weak.  Frail might be strong if you stick together, and pain doesn't matter if you endure.

In three weeks, Aunt Babe would be one hundred twenty-seven years old.  She was born on Halloween.  She survived the end of reconstruction, the beginning and the end of the depression, World Wars one and two, Korea, Viet Nam, the Spanish Flu, Cholera, osteoporosis, Theodore Bilbo, Ross Barnett, Richard Nixon, and a man with a buggy.  She held me as a child and changed my diapers and fed me, and read to me when I couldn't read for myself.  She survived without ever giving you a hint of how much of a survivor she really was.  Knowing her helped make me what I am.

  

Breakfast at Millsaps

From the day I was born until the day he died, my dad was intimately involved in the Millsaps College board.  In retrospect, he was probably too young for the responsibilities given him.  He paid a price for it, and so did we kids, but that was a different time, and he felt a genuine calling for it.

Of Millsaps College presidents, I heard about Ellis Finger my entire life (and still do), but I don't remember meeting him.  If I had, I would have been in diapers.  Dr. Graves, I only know by name.  He wasn't there very long, and I don't recall ever meeting him.  Again, I would have been pretty small.  

The president I remember the most in my youth was Eddie Collins.  He and my dad were about the same age, and his kids were about the same age as my brothers and me.  My most constant playmate and classmate was his son, John.  John had similar but less intense learning problems than I had.  That was something we shared, although most of our classmates knew nothing of it.  

Besides Millsaps, Dr. Collins and my dad had a lot of similar interests, so they became close friends.  When my parents had dinner parties, Mr. and Mrs. Collins were there.  Johnny Gore had me running drinks to the grown-ups I knew and breaking up ice bags for him.  

There came a time when the school wasn't doing so well.  In fact, we were in trouble.  The board decided to replace Dr. Collins, and the job fell on my dad to tell him.  It couldn't have been a pleasant task.  We never discussed it, but I never again saw him socialize with somebody he might have to fire one day.  

I don't remember any of their names, but I know there was a parade of guys vying for the open spot at the top of Millsaps.  From early on, George Harmon distinguished himself.  He had an idea to develop a program modeled on the Harvard Business school that would give Millsaps something to offer that no other school in the state offered.   I'm sure, at the time, the idea sounded audacious.  Millsaps, even then, called itself "the Harvard of the South," but everybody knew that was a reach.  Trying to actually do something Harvard was already doing was quite a stretch.  

Now, some forty-five years later, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every college in Mississippi would eventually copy the success of the Else School of Management.  Just the other day, someone asked me why Millsaps was trying to imitate Belhaven's business school.  I thought, "Brother, you got it all backward."

I don't know if I'd say this if he was still alive, but George Harmon was known for two things: being short and being stone-faced.  I'm not gonna lie.  Just a few inches taller than my Mom, George was pretty short.  He was also one of the best athletes I ever knew.  We both used the Downtown YMCA, and except for a few larger muscle group exercises like squat and deadlift, he could outdo me at just about every exercise.  I used to watch him play handball.  He'd invited me to play with him a few times, but I wasn't that dumb.  He regularly buried men half his age, to the point where it got kind of difficult for him to find somebody to play with.  

As to being stone-faced, he socialized differently from most folks.  Because nobody got up that early, most students never knew that Dr. Harmon ate breakfast every day in the cafeteria at the biggest round table, he could find in hopes that students would come to sit with him, which they almost never did.  

I tried to eat with him fairly regularly because I genuinely liked him and because the KA table was pretty much a ghost town in the morning.  Conversations with Dr. Harmon were pretty formulaic.  "How's your momma?"  "She's fine." In those days, her health almost never changed.  "Where's your daddy?"  "He's in Washington on Chamber business."  "Where's he eat when he goes there?"  "There's a little greek place across the street from The Madison, where he stays."  Inquiring as to one's relatives is a staple of Southern social interactions.  Despite his reputation for coldness, Dr. Harmon was well-versed in our customs and niceties.  That the answers never changed was immaterial; it was the asking that was important.

He had absolutely no interest in the fraternity life that dominated Millsaps.  He recognized I was involved in it, but that's about it.  Every so often, he'd see somebody and say, "Is he one of yall's?"  "No, sir, he plays baseball.  He's a Sig."  In those days, sports were pretty evenly divided by greek-letter affiliation.  The Pikes dominated soccer, The Sigs baseball, and only football was fairly well divided between the greeks.  Unless you counted sports betting and pool, the KAs never really dominated any sports.

The only student who would regularly join us was David Biggers, who was as tight-lipped as Dr. Harmon.  My pledge trainer, David, was one of my favorite KAs.  He would go to Johns Hopkins after Millsaps.  He was that smart.  Another regular breakfast eater was Jack Woodward.  Deeply involved in both Galloway and Millsaps, I can't really remember a time when Dean Woodward wasn't a part of my life.

Dean Woodward and I had a relationship that transcended business, Millsaps or Galloway.  There were a few times when I knew somebody was in trouble, and I'd sneak him some money to apply to their tuition, with the understanding that he'd keep it a secret, both from the student and from my dad.  Anybody who would help me keep secrets from my Dad, even when I was doing the right thing, was in my good book for life.  

His youngest son, John, was socially involved with my sister and distinguished himself from some of her other boyfriends by actually being likable.  John was there the night my sister's best friend and neighbor died.  One of the worst nights of my young life.  That next week, his dad made an effort to spot me on campus a few times, just to make sure I was alright.  I can't tell you if I was or not.  By that time, I had learned to bury my feeling so deeply nobody knew what they were.  

My dad's last major project at Millsaps was constructing the Olin Science building.  He almost lived to see it open. Not many years after that, both George Harmon and Jack Woodward would retire.  I stayed involved for a while, but the school was beginning to falter again, and I couldn't take it, so eventually, I drifted away.  This wasn't by design or by choice, but I felt like I couldn't do a damn thing to stop what was coming, and a lifetime of self-denial was beginning to make pretty serious cracks in my personal foundations.  Soon, I'd go into hiding, where I stayed for many years.

I'm back now, even though I feel like Rip Van Winkle, and Millsaps is again on the front of my mind.  Whatever adventures they have on deck, I'm in one hundred percent.  I might bring some ghosts with me if they're not already there.  

Pinocchio Premier 1940

 February 23, 1940

Little people have been a part of the motion picture business since the earliest days.  Often feeling undervalued and dehumanized, little people actors developed a reputation for rebellion and rowdiness that made Barrymore look like a boy scout.

For the 1937 premier of Snow White, Disney hired little people to dress as characters in the film, which began the company's long history of costumed actors playing their animated characters for live performances.  For the 1940 New York premiere of Pinnochio, Disney executives thought they could use the same gimmick, so they hired eleven little people actors and provided them with costumes and porcelain heads to match the look of the animated Pinocchio to stand on the theatre marquee waving to the assembling crowd of children, awaiting the opening of the film.     

Being entertainment veterans, the actors negotiated to have food, toilets, and drinks available for them during the long day standing on the marquee waving to the crowd, including gin and wine.  By noon, the actors were visibly drunk and began fighting with each other.  One found his wool costume so uncomfortable that he took it off, which amused the others so much that they followed suit.  One actor accidentally dropped his puppet head over the side of the marquee, where it made a loud explosion hitting the ground below.  Soon the others were tossing their heads overboard as well to enjoy the spectacle of them hitting the ground.  

Soon, parents concerned about what their children were witnessing called the police.  Since the only access to the marquee was by ladder, New York police had to awkwardly climb up to try and calm the ruckus, only to find eleven drunk, naked, little people actors playing craps and swearing at the crowd below.  Wanting to cover their nakedness and unable to find the costumes they had thrown over the edge, police used pillowcases as togas to both cover and help restrain the rowdy actors.

Despite this experience, Disney continued to use and develop costumes and actors to portray their animated characters, which now has become standard practice among companies holding animated characters as an active franchise.  

Watchin' The Ships Roll In

 I'm drinking tea and watching the Jackson City water lawsuits sail into port. After the judgment in Flint, they're becoming a popular hole to fish in. Jackson never had the resources of Flint, Michigan, though, and doesn't now.

We should offer t-shirts and barbeque for some of these guys because even if they win, that's all they're going to get. We should get one for Mayor Lumumba that says, "My daddy wanted to be mayor, and all I got was this lousy lawsuit." He could literally save orphans from a burning building now, and he'll still be known as the water crisis guy. It's not really fair. It was that way when he got here.

Most of these suits only list the last two mayors as defendants, which doesn't seem fair. They didn't create this, even if they did lowball how bad it was. Neither has very deep pockets, and I'm curious if their professional liability insurance covers this.

I have mixed feelings about class-action suits. I was part of involving Trustmark's auto loans once from a loan I co-signed with a girl (bad idea, huh?) and was awarded a massive $80. The money lasted longer than the girl. She never picked up her portion of the booty.  The firm in the delta who filed the suit couldn't tell me why I was in the class even though I never asked to be.  After arguing with him on the phone for over an hour, I asked what his billing rate was and informed him I had no intention of paying for the time I had just consumed.  

Like the suit I was in, none of this will provide much tangible benefit for the members of the class, and it certainly won't help the city of Jackson in any meaningful way.  It should help a few lawyers pay their rent though, while they hunt for more lucrative fishing holes.  

You Never Listen

 Southerners love to read, but sometimes they don't listen very well.

One of the first stories in the Bible tells of how enslaving a large population of foreign people ends up with a city full of frogs and the death of the firstborn.  You'd think that'd be a pretty good lesson, but the moment we saw the Spanish making some money on this African slave thing, we wanted in on it.  

Even after Nat Turner said he was inspired by Moses and operated on messages from God, we embraced slavery and believed we were righteous.  In the end, nearly three-quarters of a million of our firstborn lay dead, our homes and farms burned, our business destroyed, and our stores of treasure depleted or emptied, but the slaves were free.  We read, but we don't listen, and it costs us.

individuals of sacred worth

Responding to an increased awareness of the inequities visited on homosexuals, in 1972, the United Methodist Church proposed a statement in  The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church (the UMC official statement of law and doctrine) reading: "homosexual persons no less than heterosexual persons are individuals of sacred worth." meaning, homosexuals are loved by God as much as heterosexual peoples.

Some feared this was a step too far and might be interpreted as the church condoning homosexuality, so the phrase "though we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian doctrine" was added, making it clear that homosexuals would not be eligible for clergy positions and the UMC would not condone homosexual marriages.  That is where we stand today.

Some in the church, myself included, would like to retain the "individuals of sacred worth" statement as written but delete the "we do not condone" language, giving individual pastors the leeway to make their own decisions about homosexual marriage as they see guided by their own enlightenment and understanding of scripture. 

I tend to see pastors the same way I do doctors.  We require them to do significant work to develop the judgment necessary to accomplish their job, and I think we should let them use it.  The most likely outcome is that some UMC pastors will perform gay marriages, and some will not.  I think that's fair. 

Even discussing this change means that some want to leave the UMC and slander it.  In the twenty-first century, I don't see how an American or European Methodism can survive if homosexuality is gonna be a third rail.   In my heart, I know Christ would not want that.  I avoid using the phrase "I know" with anything regarding Jesus, but I feel strongly about this.  Jesus would not deny a sacrament to anyone that loved and, in his life, celebrated love, food, and fellowship with everyone, even those rejected by the church leaders.  

Unwelcome immigrants

 In a nation made of immigrants, this current hate for immigrants confuses me.  When my ancestors came here, there were no signs saying "Fàilte Dhachaigh!" (welcome home) or "Is breá linn an Ghaeilge!" (we love the Irish).  Nobody tried to send us to Martha's Vineyard either, although I would have gone.  It's pretty cool there.  There's an awful lot of folks in the Choctaw nation who can attest to the fact that we weren't invited.  English speakers already here considered my ancestors vermin.  People were still calling the Irish "broom pushers" when Kennedy was elected, and some afterward.

I get that the number of immigrants is intimidating.  Their backgrounds are questionable.  They're beyond poor, and they don't speak English.  How different were the ships filled with desperate souls from Glasgow, Perth, or Aberdeen?   I'm Irish, Scottish, and Ulster-Scott, and I stand against this.  It's not right to deny others what was given to us.

Millsaps and HBCU

Before it even began, there was a bond between Millsaps and Mississippi's historically black colleges.  Major Millsaps arranged a land swap between the Jackson College For Negros and some land he held, putting what would become Jackson State University in what was the center of the city, and Millsaps' idea for a new Christian college, on the outskirts of town, dangerously near the insane asylum.  The larger piece of land allowed Millsaps to later construct the first golf course in Mississippi history.  It also put the gates of the new college at the entrance to what was then called "Silk-Stocking Row."

After the debacle of what happened at Ole Miss, Millsaps would be the first white Mississippi college to voluntarily open its rolls to non-white students two years later.  During the same time, a period of understanding and cooperation between Millsaps and Tougaloo opened up.  It was not universally well received.  This was the first real test of my dad's young leadership.  

Dad's perspective on race was formed at a young age when he met Ivan Allen, Jr. at a National Office Products Alliance convention.  Besides being a fellow stationer, Allen would run for and win the mayorship of Atlanta on the basis of his philosophy that "there are simply too many negros in Atlanta for us to prosper unless they do too."  This idea that beating down the black man kept everybody down became part of my early diet.  

The idea that Millsaps professors and students should cavort with their counterparts at Tougaloo caused irritation in some quarters.  My dad, a few key players, and most of the church believed it should continue, even if they personally didn't see any sense in it. It would not be long after that Galloway would split into two churches over similar issues.  Ultimately, some disgruntled souls would take the issue to the bank, where official Trustmark sources said, "This liberal teacher bullshit doesn't really matter.  We're not getting involved."  With that, the issue was settled.

There were a few times when teachers would have to be reminded that Millsaps paid their salary, not Tougaloo, and a few students had to be reminded that Tougaloo awarded no quality points to Millsaps students unless they were enrolled in a class, but on the whole, the Millsaps-Tougaloo cooperation was a success and continues to this day.  

Building Millsaps to the north was probably the first big nudge to developing Jackson to the North East.  The Major's primary concern seems to have been that it was more than twenty percent bigger and had better drainage.  He would soon build a home nearby.

  

A Return To Darkness

Hello Darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again

When I said I thought I had the flu, I was being optimistic.  I have a pretty solid case of Covid 19.  My health doesn't seem to be in any danger, but my comfort is now a secondary concern, and my schedule is shot.  I'm in isolation for five days without ballgames, visitors, or coffee with friends.  It's pretty intense isolation too.  I won't see a human face without a mask until at least Tuesday. 

I'm no stranger to isolation or seclusion.  It was my chosen way of life for almost twenty years.  This is different, though.  It's prescribed rather than a retreat, and its purpose is to protect those around me, not allow me a place to bleed my wounds out in privacy.  Darkness may not be my friend, but he's not my jailer, either.  We have: an understanding.

There's power and security in solitude.  You control everything you see.  Any enemy entering your realm is immediately detectable.  If your kingdom isn't all that presentable, who cares?  You're the only one that sees it.  What I'm experiencing now isn't that kind of solitude, though.  I know it ends Tuesday at six P.M., and that gives my old companion no sway over me.  He seems to be begrudgingly accepting his new role.

My new companion checks on me when she's in-between mommy duty.  She makes sure I'm not lonely, which is important, and do as I'm told, which is more important, and something of a challenge.  I say that as I stare at my lonely exercise diary, wondering how much I can get away to make sure I don't lose any progress in my workouts without risking my recovery from Covid.  

I was hoping I had the flu rather than Covid because I was nervous about facing the abject isolation that comes with Covid, but sitting in the belly of the beast, I am not afraid.  We know each other.

V8

Why do they call it V-8?

Each can of V-8 contains juice from the following 8 fruits and vegetables.

1) Tomatoes
2) carrots
3) celery
4) beets
5) parsley
6) lettuce
7) watercress
8) spinach

I prepare it like this:
In a 24 oz tumbler mix:
1/4 tsp. Celery Salt
1/2 tsp. Parsley flakes
6 shakes of black pepper
6 drops Tobasco
12 oz can V8
Add ice to top
Drink with straw

Vodka/Tequila optional as desired

Tabasco and Eggs

 Don't be surprised if my first book isn't about breakfast.  Piecing together the words for this letter, I uncovered ideas for at least a dozen more.

When I was young, getting a private audience with my dad was something of a challenge.  There were seven of us at home, plus the maid and the dog.  At its peak, there were almost five hundred Missco employees, plus Millsaps, plus Trustmark, plus Unifirst, plus St. Dominics, plus Galloway, plus whatever else Daddy got himself roped into, so if I was going to see him, I had to be clever.  When he turned fifty, the Dominican Sisters gave him a two-by-four so he would have another board to sit on.  When they get together, nuns can be some of the funniest people you'll know.

Being a voyeur of other people's habits, I discovered that Daddy liked to eat and he liked to get up early.  That was my inside track.  Breakfast would be our time together.  If I could manage to meet him around six-thirty in the morning at either LeFleurs or Primos number two, I'd have my dad to myself for half an hour or more.  My sister had him for half an hour before that when they'd run together.  She's pretty clever about watching people's habits too.

My dad was never the kind to teach me things by saying, "do this, this way."  He was too subtle for that, and I was too stubborn.  To teach me, he performed the behavior he wanted me to learn when he knew I was watching (which was always) and waited for me to say, "why do you do that, Daddy?"

Fatty, sugary, creamy, breakfast foods are usually comfort foods.  That's not necessarily what you want to start a work day, though.  Daddy had a routine that turned fluffy scrambled eggs into a spirited wake-me-up to rival the blackest coffee.  

"Daddy, what are you puttin' on your eggs?"

"That's Tabasco Sauce.  They make it in Louisiana."

There are probably five thousand different kinds of hot sauce between Texas and Louisiana.  There are posters showing all the colorful bottles of Lousiana hot sauce, but I stick with Tabasco.   Tabasco chili peppers are filled with capsicum, one of the greatest gifts of the people we stole this land from.  As a young man, I took the Avery Island tour where they make Tabasco and saw an alligator, so that's maybe why Tabasco imprinted on me; plus, there were days when I shared a bottle with Daddy, Deaton, Wingate, Bass, and Taylor before we went to see if there were any fish in the water.  When it comes to tradition, the Jews in Fiddler on the Roof have nothing on us Southerners.  

There are a lot of health benefits to Tabasco sauce.  It adds virtually zero calories, is very low in sodium, and the capsaicin in it somehow raises your metabolism by almost ten percent for a little over an hour.  It quickens your mind and body at the time of day when you need it most.  It doesn't hurt if you miss the eggs and hit the bacon a little, either.

By this time next year, Daddy will be out of my life a few months longer than he was in it.  He taught me so many things.  Things that made me what I am.  Some lessons were very serious, some not so much, but my favorite (and his) was how and what to eat.  Sitting in a house Daddy helped build with Sister Josephine, trying to regain the strength I lost, there's a plate with the remains of scrambled eggs and Tabasco behind me.  If that doesn't make me better, nothing will.

  

Editor's Letter

Editor's Desk
Mississippi Free Press
Jackson, MS

Dear Editor,

I am not, what you would call, a supporter of Mayor Lumumba.  I try to be neutral on all politicians.  This is government, not football.  When he does something I agree with, I say so.  When he does something I don't agree with, I say so too, but either way, I put my name to my opinion.  I respect what few readers I have enough to say who I am and what I believe.

Recently, someone has been mailing flyers very disparaging of the mayor to what appears to be almost entirely residents of the 39211 zip code.  The flyers, so far, have been sent anonymously.  If you're from here or have been here any length of time, then you're undoubtedly aware of Jackson's often troubled history.  Many of these dark times involved anonymous political speech.  It was a favored tactic of the Klu Klux Klan.  These anonymous mailings remind me of that dark part of our history.

From a personal perspective, my father sometimes received anonymous letters and phone calls from people who didn't agree with the decisions he made or how he stood.  I know how threatening they can be.  I also know there is no effective response other than to stand up to them without engaging them.  Anonymous political discourse is meant to be intimidating.  It's the only reason to be anonymous.  It makes the speaker seem more powerful than he really is.  

Some of these mailings single out Donna Ladd, which I do not understand.  She's a writer, not a politician.  She makes none of the decisions you're upset about.  She also has multiple platforms where she not only accepts but welcomes your comments and challenges but not if you're going to whisper and hide behind a mask.  I don't think you're going to intimidate her.  Your tactics might motivate her, though.

Nobody on any side is happy about what's happening in Jackson right now.  The mayor is not above criticism, and I'd like to understand what happened as much as anyone.  These anonymous mailings don't help the situation in any way, and I honestly don't think they're hurting the people you want to hurt.  Whoever you are, you are invited to join the political discourse here in a stand-up way.  Whatever your opinion, I will fight for your right to have it.  Whatever your opinion, I may agree more than you realize.  Don't whisper anonymously in my ear, though.  That's bullshit.

Sincerely,

Alexander Boyd Campbell II
Jackson MS

Getting Published

 Everyone keeps telling me to publish.  I want to, and I am, but putting pen to paper and getting someone to publish it are two very different tasks, so bear with me.  It's coming, but I can't say when.  With the exception of my sister and brother, I've been secretly writing longer than I've known any of you, and I'm pretty sure my sister and brother only became aware of it recently.  

I owe my ability to Martha Hammond, my beloved neighbor, who knew I had trouble reading but continued to give me books anyway, and to my mother, who didn't give up on me and, instead of sticking me in a special education class, taught herself the Montessori Method so I could learn to read despite my dyslexia, and one day had the brilliant idea that if I couldn't learn to write properly, maybe I could learn to type instead.  I also owe a great deal to my teacher, Madora Mcintyre, who said, "Boyd's not stupid.  Something else is wrong." and got me tested for dyslexia.  

Writing is my strongest art, and making art is my strongest motive.  Writing is also my therapy.  Sometimes I have to write things down to get them out.  That means I sometimes write about painful, uncomfortable, or embarrassing things.  If it's about me, I'll let you read it.  I don't care.  You can look at my spleen if you want to.  If it's painful or embarrassing to someone else, you may never see it.  I'm not out to expose or exploit anyone.  I've seen writers who did that, and I don't approve.  Sometimes, I can't change the names or the details and keep people from knowing I'm telling their story, so those stories may exist in my computer somewhere, but you'll never see them.  No one will.