When We Remembered Zion

 I had lunch on Zoom today with a friend who's thirty-two and lives in Seattle. She's Ashkenazi, a descendant of grandparents who immigrated from Russia in the twenties. She made a joke about how a Jew like her must seem very alien to people in Mississippi.

So, I told her Jews aren't aliens here at all. They came in fairly large numbers during the cotton boom and settled all over the South. I told her about Beth Israel Cemetary, where we told ghost stories when I was in college and how it was the most immaculately manicured cemetery in Mississippi.

Then I told her about what happened to Rabbi Nussbaum when I was a little boy. How the klan had bombed the Beth Israel Temple and Rabbi Nussbaum's home, and she had a look of confused pain on her face.

Then I showed her a clip of Driving Miss Daisy, which she'd never seen and didn't know was about a Jewish woman. I showed her the scene where Houke tries to drive Miss Daisy to temple, but the police turn him back because someone had bombed the temple, and he tells Daisy a story about a man who was lynched.

I explained that the scene in the play was inspired more by a similar bombing in Atlanta in the fifties, but the impact was the same as the one in Jackson. To preserve their closed culture, men in the South would destroy places of worship.

A tear rolled down her cheek. In her young life, where she lived, the persecution of her people never really seemed that real. Somehow, me telling her the story made it feel real, and she wept.

By the waters of Babylon, we sat down, and we wept when we remembered Zion.

Men will do terrible things if you make them believe their culture is in danger, and there's great political power in making people believe that danger is real, even when it isn't.

I wish bigotry and hatred of the other were only limited to race and religion, but it goes so much deeper than that. There's always somebody willing to say, "They are dangerous because THEY are different," and someone will do something terrible because they believe it.

When I was a child, about the same time as the Beth Israel Bombings, even my church split apart over race and culture; now it's happening again over sexuality. Nobody's set off any bombs yet, but it's not a far journey.

You don't have to be "woke" to be afraid of what bigotry does to your community. You just have to be good at history.

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Sleeping with Feist-Dog

Sleep has always been optional for me. Part of ADHD is living, knowing that the slightest sound or change in light or temperature can keep you awake for hours.

Your mind starts pulling at the loose threads of the world, and once it starts to unravel, it's very difficult to stop. I would have made a great hermit monk with no possessions but a bowl for kind people to put rice in while I ponder the eye of God.

I'm certainly not qualified to make this assessment, but I often wonder if ADHD isn't aligned with, or perhaps an entry into, Autism Spectrum Disorder. My frontal lobes work; if anything, they sometimes overwork, but it's actually impossible for me to experience life the way you do.

I used to share a bed with a woman who would ask: "why do you hold your arm up in the air?" and I would say, "I do that when I'm thinking." and she would say, "What does your arm have to do with your thinking and why aren't you sleeping?" and I would say, "I don't know."

Fortunately, a woman can still love you when you're completely fucking weird, and I've experienced that. Loving someone with a complicated and conflicted mind can't be easy, though. So far, they've all found a way to say, "I can't do this anymore." and I don't blame them. My mind tortures me, but it's ok because it's my mind. It's not fair to let it torture somebody else.

I have feist-dog. I've had him since I was a little boy. I stole him from a man on the radio. Like our governor, Feist-dog has an uncomplicated mind. I can read my strange sentences to him, and if he turns his head to the left, I know I'm onto something. If he lays his head down and closes his eyes, I know I'm not.

Jim Neal sounded like a country fella on the radio, but he was pretty learned. He served in the legislature and made literate references all the time. I'm pretty sure he stole Feist-Dog from William Faulkner. Although he changes the spelling several times, Faulkner puts a feist-dog in several of his books, but none more famously than in Go Down Moses, which includes the story of The Bear Hunt, which includes two famous feist-dogs.

The first dog he gives no name. It's a smaller dog who has no sense of fear and manages to track Old Ben, the legendary massive bear, but can't corner him. Sam Fathers finds a new dog, a muscular feist-dog with some airedale mixed in him they call "Lion." Lion is savage and dangerous, so Sam starves him until he can be pet, then shares a bed with him until Lion imprints on Sam, and they go after Old Ben, together.

Both in metaphor and in reality, dogs are our companion animals. They become eyes for the blind and comfort for the shell-shocked. An infection made my Uncle Robert's leg grow shorter than the other one. When he was very young and his bad leg very weak, my Great Grandfather, Old Cap, trained a dog to pull a cart to take Robert to school. Old Cap had only one arm, and I don't know where the dog came from, but this was a famous story in the farmlands outside of Kosciusko, Mississippi, in the twenties. The pictures I've seen show what looks like a golden labrador mix, but I'm pretty sure he's part Feist-Dog.  That dog carried Robert long enough for him to give his life trying to save soldiers in France in World War I.  Sometimes dogs are your companions, but the journey isn't very long.

When I was little, my dad's best salesman was a man by the name of Doby Bartling. Doby had a fine springer spaniel who carried a belly full of pups.  Daddy had a baby girl in diapers, and our previous dog got run over, so Doby figured to give Daddy one of these prize pups along with the papers to file with the American Kennel Club.

What Doby didn't know was that his prize Spaniel bitch had been carrying on with somebody other than the Spaniel stud he intended for her, and by the time these pup's hair started to grow out, it was obvious that their daddy was a feist-dog and not a Springer Spaniel. Since their daddy wasn't who he was supposed to be, those AKC papers would have to wait for another litter.

We named him "Mugsy" because my grandfather thought it sounded funny, but called him "Puppy" because that's all the baby girl in diapers could say. Puppy was a feist-dog, and he was my companion from short pants until college. One day he hid under a chair in the living room, and Puppy was no more. Houses had living rooms back then, a variation on the Southern Parlor, where parents drank with their friends and children had to wait for an invitation to enter.

You'd be surprised how many of my friends are anthropologists. Is that weird? Anthropologists will tell you that sometime in the dim past, a wolf began to share a camp with men, and that's where dogs came from. I have no idea if that's true. It sounds true, but you never know. What I do know is that God sent feist-dogs to men because men need a companion with an uncomplicated mind to help them navigate the world.

At the party celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Saint Andrews School, a friend cornered me while I sought refuge from the noise in the parking lot. "Is Feist-dog real?" They asked. That's a tricky question. Everything I write is real, and everything I write isn't real, and a lot of it used to be real but isn't anymore--some of it might yet become real someday. Farmer Jim Neal was real. Puppy was real. Doby Bartling was real. Go Down Moses was real and available on Amazon if you're looking for a book that offers you an entry into the difficult world of William Faulkner.

I can't limit my writing to what's corporeal at the moment. That's not how my mind works. Feist-dog is, was, and always will be "real." Can you see him? No. I'll try to let you get to know him, though. He's a part of nearly everything I've ever written. He's been my companion since the first day I tried to say a word but came out with only stammers. He's been my advisor since the first day I tried to read but couldn't. When the teacher yelled at me because I couldn't sit still, feist-dog sat silently beside me. Nothing can hurt me because I have my dog. I'll always have my dog.  

Dinner On The Grounds

 I can't sleep.

Actually, I can sleep. Feist-dog can't sleep, and he keeps kicking me.

There's a lot going on in life right now.  In American. In Mississippi. In my life. In Jackson. Boy, there really has been a lot going on in Jackson.

A lot of it is very good. Arts and education, and development in Jackson are all very strong. Government in Jackson is an actual quagmire right now. I look to the left and to the right and up and down, and I don't see a clear way out of this. That doesn't mean I'm gonna give up, but it might mean I'm just gonna pick a direction and start digging there in hopes of seeing open sky sooner or later.

We have some brilliant folks on the council and in the House and Senate, but they find themselves butting heads against roadblocks in several directions. I may not have that much faith in the Mayor or the Governor, but I do have faith in the Jackson delegation, so there is hope.

We had dinner on the grounds at Galloway today. "On the grounds" at Galloway means the lawn of the State Capitol, our neighbor. They're gracious in allowing us to do it, and it's incredibly convenient for us. Bathroom facilities and a full kitchen are just a few yards away, across the street.

Music for the dinner on the grounds was provided by the Galloway Bluegrass string group, which is really very good. Their first number was performed without any amplification but still sounded great.

At any event that happens at Galloway, I always count heads of the second and third generation. Young couples and children are the future of our church, and our church is tightly woven into not only the past of Jackson but the future, so I like to keep tabs on them. I'm happy to report that there was a pretty good crop of little ones in attendance today. There were at least three different cultures represented among them as well, which is important because the face of Mississippi is changing, and it's important that Galloway be a part of that.

While Galloway has a healthy and growing Hispanic contingent, I learned today that St Peters has a one o'clock Spanish mass that was really very well attended. Historically, Hispanic immigrants were a transient population in Mississippi, moving across America with the harvests, but now they seem to be taking up residence, and I think that's very good for us.

For our lunch, Brad Chism brought a pretty great smoker/cooker made out of an old propane tank. While he was just cooking burgers and chicken breasts, that's a great setup for a pig roast.  Aficionados of cooking outdoors would recognize this offset cooker as a real work-horse.

Whatever happened in the past, Galloway, in this generation, has taken to the principle that we don't turn any people away. Being a downtown church, that means citizens of the street are regular parts of our congregation, and today, they were a part of our meal.

If you delve into the Jesus story, that's very much something he would do, and like in his day, after the meal, there were several baskets of loaves and fishes left over. Nothing goes to waste, though. We have an active ministry to the homeless, and that food will be distributed there.

From today's service, you couldn't tell there was turmoil in the United Methodist Church. Part of that is because, among us, there is so much love for each other, for our homes, and for our church. We may worry about this turmoil, but I don't worry that it will hurt us. I do worry that it might hurt others, though. I worry about that quite a lot.

Me and Feist-dog, we were born in Jackson. We live in Jackson. We love Jackson. We've seen a lot, a lot that's gone, a lot that's new, and a lot that's eternal. This is not always an easy place to rest. My entire life, and before, there has been inner turmoil of a very great temperature, and that continues. You could say it's more in the open now than it's ever been.

Culturally and physically, we've built our home on top of a volcano. Its peak is just under the city Colosseum, at least the physical volcano. Our challenge now is to find ways to work around the cultural volcano and do it somehow without oppressing anybody as we did in the past.

The church, not just my church but all the churches, might be the key to doing this. When I was little, the churches of Jackson saw that nobody was tending to our citizens of the street. They saw that they were suffering and hungry, and the churches banded together to do something about it.

Acquiring a gas station across the street from Central Presbyterian Church, they called this fledgling effort "Stew Pot," and my mother applied for the job as the first manager there. Mother applying for that job meant that my brothers and sister and I (and even including fiest-dog) were automatically enlisted to convert this gas station that was abandoned decades before into a place clean enough to serve food from.

It wasn't an easy job. There were decades of layers of engine grease on that floor and decades of layers of pigeon poop on top of that, and we had to dig down through it all to find the concrete floor beneath it and then seal that so we could safely serve food there.

What I learned from that was not physical labor for your mom. That I'd learned turning our two-acre wooded lot into a garden club home. What I learned was there was a whole different world outside of the northeast Jackson conclave of doctors and lawyers, and stock brokers I grew up in. I learned that while mental illness had struck my family, there was a whole other layer to it for people who had no family to soften the effect. I learned that there was a whole other face to addiction than David Hicks sending rich kids off to Atlanta for rehab. I learned what Jesus meant about feeding the hungry and tending his sheep.

I'm really proud of what Stewpot has become. They don't use that gas station for much anymore. It's decorated with Murals, and it is mostly locked up, but it still stands across from the church that bore it. Inside are floors that I used kerosene and heavy scrapers with a hammer to clean so hungry people could eat. Not "hungry" as in "I skipped breakfast," but hungry as in "I haven't eaten since Thursday, and I believe the government wants to take my brain, and I slept under a railroad culvert where some bastard stole my shoes, hungry."

As a child, dinner on the grounds meant fried chicken we picked up from KFC on our way from Jackson and served on an ancient picnic table at the Bethel Independant Methodist Church in Hesterville, Mississippi.   A church where my grandfather was baptized and my great-grandfather built.   A church that separated itself from the United Methodist Church so they could remain segregated as long as it was legal, a decision much against the wishes of every Boyd and every Campbell I knew, but none of us lived in Hesterville anymore, so none of our votes counted.   Dinner on the grounds also meant macaroni salad at the Presbyterian church in Learned, where the Brady side of my family is buried, although all the Bradys and Harrises I knew were buried in Greenwood cemetery, not far from my beloved Jackson Zoo.  You can see my grandmother's grave from the top corner of the rainforest exhibit if the grass is cut.

Dinner on the grounds means we'll band together and feed whoever is here.  It doesn't matter if it's in hesterville or the Stewpot or on the keenly manicured lawn of the Mississippi State Capitol; we have food for the hungry.  We will tend our lord's sheep in the most basic and most important way possible, with loaves and fishes, well, hamburgers actually, but you get my meaning.  This isn't just a party.  It's a deeply symbolic act that expresses what we were taught.  "Are you hungry, my friend?  We have food.  Come and eat with us."

Leave me alone, feist-dog.  I wrote what you wanted.  Now, I want to rest.

I Lied

 I lied.  Of course, I lied.  I said it didn't matter.  I said I didn't mind.  I said I knew it was coming, that wasn't a lie, but I said I was prepared, and that was.  I said I recovered quickly.  That was a lie.  I said I was strong enough to take it.  

I never mentioned the nights when the emptiness swept over me.  I never mentioned all the baked things I ate because feeling more than full meant I felt something.  I never mentioned the doubt, the regret, or the loss.

I took a chance because something about her reached inside me.  I took a chance because her needs were greater than my own.  I took a chance because other lives depended on her, and it wasn't her fault.

I lied because I'm supposed to be stronger.  I lied because I'm supposed to leave a positive impact.  I lied because I always had everything handed to me, and if I showed any regret at this loss, then it might mean that I didn't appreciate the things I had when so much of the world didn't have even that.  

I lied because telling the truth wouldn't make any difference.  Telling the truth wouldn't make it hurt any less.  Telling the truth wouldn't fill my arms again.  Telling the truth might make her feel guilty, but it wouldn't make me feel better, and this whole thing was painful enough already.

I'll cut the rope and set you adrift, and where you go from there is under your power, not mine, and if you look back, I'm just a shadow on the water, and your path lies ahead.  I lied because sometimes a gentleman shouldn't tell the truth.

The Stone Moved

It's Easter morning, Feist-dog.  Of course, I can't sleep.  I'm listening for sounds of rain that might slow down my going to everything at church.  It's quiet so far.  

Two thousand years ago, before the sun came up, the followers of this man Jesus rolled away the stone and stole the body of their rabbi so they could tell people he was Immanuel, the Messiah, the Son of God, a lie, a scam, a fraud that lived down through the centuries--or something amazing happened.  

I can't tell you which is true.  No one can.  I can tell you what I believe, but I'm just a man, and you're just a dog.  What I can tell you is this idea, this promise that death cannot hold us, that new life from the ashes of the old is possible, even inevitable, became the foundation of our culture and has inspired millions of hopeless people around the world for two thousand years.

My people had gods of the trees and gods of stone, and gods of the sea, but the Romans came and gave us one God of the sky.  It wasn't even their God.  They had even more gods than my people did, but the idea, the seed planted by a people they conquered, a people they defeated so completely that they burned their city of Jerusalem and destroyed their palatial temple to the point where no stone lay atop another, they dispersed those people to the wind, they killed their practitioners and anyone who spoke the name of this Christ could die on a cross like his--that idea, that seed of an idea, that tiny bit of faith grew and grew and converted the entire empire that tried to destroy it, and that empire converted the world, and now, people on every continent, call this man Jesus, Adonai, Lord, and Master.

This idea, this Easter, this power of rebirth lives in me, Feist-dog.  I went into a cave and waited for death.  I stayed there for many years, but this man from Galilee, this humble rabbi who spoke a muddled form of Aramaic and barely knew a few words of Greek, wasn't done with me.  I was reborn.  I was as dead as a man can be while his heart still beats, but today I return to the bosom of my church to celebrate Easter.  

I can tell you everything that was said of this man Jesus.  I can tell you everything he said.  I can talk to you for days about the generations upon generations of men, wiser than me, who discussed him.  I can tell you how I feel, Feist-dog, but I cannot tell you what is true.  That's something you have to work out for yourself.  

I'm a terrible proselytizer.  I speak with no authority, no drama, and no force.  I mumble out stories and theories and books I read and men I knew, but I won't grasp you by the hand and look you in the ey and say, "This is the truth!" because I don't know the truth; I only know what I feel.  I cannot make this journey for you.  I'll go with you if you want me, but I cannot carry you.  I can't even clear the way before you.  I'm sorry, Feist-dog; I would do these things for you because I love you, but they're not within my grasp.  They are, however, within yours.  

It was forbidden to do this work on the Sabbath, so the women went to the tomb with oil and herbs to dress the body of the rabbi the next day, but when they got there, the stone was rolled away, and a man greeted them who said: "why do you seek the living among the dead?"

The historian Josephus said the testimony of the women was insufficient because women tend toward hysteria.  I can imagine how that sat with his wife.  The women went to attend the body of Jesus because the men who followed him were in hiding, fearing the same sort of prosecution Jesus suffered.  As he predicted, they denied him.  One betrayed him.  Only the women, Mary, his mother, and Mary, his companion, were left to attend his body with four other women who were followers and the mother of followers.  

The sun's coming up Feist-dog.  Someone rolled away the stone.  I can't tell you who.  I can't tell you what became of the body.  That's a walk you'll have to make, but I can tell you, do not seek the living among the dead.  Do not seek rebirth unless you believe it's possible.

Away from the Party

I snuck away from the party.  I mostly always sneak away from the party.  We've snuck away from some of the best parties in Mississippi's history together.  She showed me pictures of her first grandchild on her phone; she was tiny and pink and beautiful and had her turned-up mouth but twinkling brown eyes like a doe.

Do you remember that time when you called me from your prom to bring you a cigarette, and we smoked it in the parking lot and never went back in?  I always thought your date would be mad at me for stealing you away that night, but then he married that guy from New York, and I figured it was ok.  

You went away for college, but you came home for the summers.  Do you remember that night we got a belly full of good whiskey and climbed to the top of Sullivan Harrell and did unspeakable things in the moonlight?  I drove to Oxford to hold you when that boy cheated on you, then again when she dumped him, and we laughed. 

When my father died, you called, and we talked all night.  When I got divorced, you called, but I didn't answer.  I sent flowers when your child was born, and now that child has a child.

The moonlight reflects the silver in your hair.  You're as beautiful now as you were at sixteen.  We always hid from the spotlight together, but between us, a great garden of life grew and grew.  I've held you. I've loved you.  I've kissed you.  I held your hair when you drank too much.  I wiped away your tears, and you made it ok for me to shed my own.  You found a boy you liked and asked me if you should go away with him, and now you have a grandchild.  

May her heart be as full as yours.  May adventures blaze through her lifetime like a comet.  May she find a friend to sneak away from parties with.  May she continue the garden her grandmother and I planted.

Washing The Feet

 As a child, I saw the pope washing the feet of people lined up in the Vatican. It was such a strange thing to do.

In the middle east, feet held a special meaning. There were no cars or trains. No carriages and very few horses. Chariots were a weapon of war, not a means of transportation. If people moved, they did it with their feet, so having their feet touch the soil of the earth had significant meaning, and as a practical matter, their feet got very dirty.

At the last Passover seder before his death, Jesus took a towel and began washing the feet of his disciples. Peter, his second disciple, refused, saying he should wash the master's feet.

Jesus said, "You don't understand this now, but you will. If I do not wash your feet, you can have no part of me." To which Peter said, "Wash not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well." and Jesus said, "If you are clean, then your feet are enough. But, not every one of you is clean." He said this because he knew one would betray him.

According to the law, sacrifice absolves you of sin. If you sin, then you can offer a lamb or a dove on the altar, and its blood absolves you of your sin. It's an ancient ritual. Far more ancient than Jerusalem or Rome, or even Egypt.

Before Passover, thousands of Jews come to Jerusalem to offer a lamb or a dove for sacrifice so they may be cleansed. Rivers of blood flow in rilles cut into the stone surrounding the altar in Herod's temple. Some of it is gathered to put above the door during Passover to signify the covenant between the Jews and their God.

Jesus washes the feet of his disciples so they may be clean of sin, but they had yet to offer a sacrifice. When they went to the temple, their master overturned the money changer's tables and challenged the priests. They didn't know it, but he would be the sacrifice. His blood would run from the table, and at supper, they would drink of his blood so that the blood of the lamb is inside them, not painted over their door.

Washing the feet is an odd ritual, but it portends the crux of why Jesus came to earth. Your sins are washed away. His blood absolves you. His blood in you signifies the new covenant.

The Donkey Died

Along with music, food, art, and dance, we use religion to transmit the memes that create the culture that binds us and defines us.  Dawkins, who created the term, defines memes as the fractious anatomical parts of ideas, communication, and representation--the occupation of our higher mind.  It is part of how our genes seek to replicate themselves.  I've tried a thousand times to prove him wrong and always failed.

We provide our children with religious stories to arm them and populate them with the memes we use to bind them into our society and our families.  Despite being downtown and ancient and moderate and all the things to suggest that Galloway wouldn't have much of a youth program, Galloway is busting out with babies, toddlers, and young couples.  A welcome sign of continued growth.  That some of these tiny creatures in pastel color cotton easter dresses are third and fourth-generation Jacksonians with eyes that I recognize as the color and shape of their great-grandmother gives me considerable hope for the future and the survival of my own cultural memes.   

Today was Palm Sunday.  The day Christians celebrate Jesus entering Jerusalem during Passover. Zechariah prophesied that the Messiah, the seed of David, would arrive on the back of a colt moke so when Jesus arrived at the gates of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, the people spread palm fronds before him and covered the rough road with their cloaks singing "Hosanna!" Their lord has arrived to deliver them from all the false kings of the world and establish the Kingdom of God.  That's a lot of pressure.

When I was a child at Galloway, there were different versions of a procession with palm fronds through the sanctuary to celebrate Palm Sunday.  I rarely participated in these because, for twenty years, we celebrated our cultural Messiah in the choir loft of the chapel at eight-thirty in the morning, where nobody but Clay Lee and God knew the Campbells attended church at all.  

In time, this procession evolved to a small army of children with palm fronds following a live donkey in a parade around the church, now an entire city block, from the great steps before our columned Greek edifice, down Yazoo street, across West street, up Mississippi street, then back down Congress street to the courtyard between the sanctuary and the chapel.  Since today was Jack's last day in Jackson until Christmas, I invited him to join the parade today with me since I missed most of his days in church when he was a child.  

The plan was to make some sort of reference to his father sharing some connection with the actual live donkey leading us, but when I got to church this morning, I found out that the celebrated equidae who led Galloway children on Palm Sunday for so many so years had expired and was now an ex-jackass.  I felt the sting of promising an entertainment to the fourth generation and not coming through.  We had a painted cut-out of a donkey, though, and with all our ministers, we joined a parade of a dozen young families and their pastel-colored progeny waving palm fronds in the downtown breezes.  Nobody sang Hosanna, but several commented on the prospect of rain.  I was the donkey.

Back in the sanctuary, Meg Hanes delivered the children's church part of the celebration.  Meg has a challenging job.  She's to infest our children with the stories that provide them with the memes that bind them into our culture.  This is huge; she's a gateway guardian into our society.  There are two primary schools of thought on this.  You can Disneyfy the entire concept so that children see our religious narrative as soft and inviting, like a toy or a cartoon, or you can make the entire process terrifying so that they are afraid to step beyond the boundaries of the stories.  Meg takes a less common third route.  She tries to relate the stories in terms of things already in the children's lives.  She makes the bible understandable in their own terms, making every effort to create something called a "thinking Christian," which some people say doesn't exist, but Galloway has been producing since before the Civil War. 

Meg's challenge on Palm Sunday is particularly complex.  It starts with the colorful pageant of palm fronds and singing and donkeys and little baby Jesus, now a triumphant man, but moves at a frightening pace where, the next Friday, the same people singing Hosanna shout, "CRUSIFY HIM!" Meg doesn't pull any punches, but she delivers the message at a sturdy, steady pace.  People are complicated.  Four-year-old eyes ponder the idea for a moment, then begin searching for Momma's face in the crowd again.  The meme is registered in their memory banks, but it's too soon to fully contemplate what all this means.  Maybe when they're twenty.

So many people I talk to immediately write off Galloway and Millsaps and Downtown and United Methodism and anything in the borders of Jackson and nearly everything in the borders of Mississippi as dead or dying or not worth it anyway, but at Galloway, there are green shoots pushing through the ancient scales on the streets of Jackson.  We are making new Christians out of ancient stock, and they are amazing.  

Mrs. Maisel In Smith Park

 In season four of the Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Midge decides that since she's never seen Susie mention a man in her life or a man that she likes, then she must be a lesbian, so she makes a trip to a park on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village where she asks every man she sees wearing a carnation in his lapel if he knows of an establishment where a lady might meet another lady.

This episode touches on so much that's a genuine part of American history in the sixties, even here in Mississippi.  In 1969, six years ahead in the show's storyline, homosexuals in New York rioted to protest police raids on the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, a known homosexual gathering place.  They rioted because, in 1969, police could arrest men for soliciting sex from other men, even if it wasn't prostitution.  They could be arrested for being gay.  

Midge is rebuffed by every gentleman she meets because they all think she's trying to entrap them and might be a cop until she meets an elegant, silver-haired creature with a pencil-thin mustache named Lazarus with a yellow carnation in the lapel of his tan linen suit.  Lazarus is played by seventy-four-year-old director John Waters.  If you're aware of Waters' body of work, this is a remarkably understated role for him, as he gently provides Midge with the location of lesbian bars in the area.

In 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi, it was also illegal for men to solicit sex from other men.  There was an incident at the old City Auditorium, where Capitol Towers is now,  where a sting operation was set up to catch the men who had taken up meeting in the lower level men's washroom.  Several businessmen, church leaders, teachers at Central High School, and Professors at Millsaps and other institutions were arrested.  Their arrests appeared in the paper but were buried in the back because one of the men arrested worked for the paper.  

After the raid, men stopped using the Auditorium as a meeting place, and the city managers made sure the lavatories were locked up when there wasn't a performance.  In a few years, they would begin construction on the new city auditorium, which we now call Thalia Mara Hall.  Before openly gay bars began appearing in the 1980s, a new location where gentlemen could meet other gentlemen opened up, and they began using Smith Park at night.   After the Stonewall riots in New York, the new Jackson Police chief sent out unofficial word that unless these men were openly soliciting for prostitution or having sex in public places, his officers had to leave them alone.  An uncomfortable state of stale detente existed between the police and the gay community, and they were allowed to exist in this lovely small park between the Governor's Mansion and Galloway United Methodist Church.

That's where I come in.  I was a member of Galloway United Methodist Church in the seventies.  Although I was not very active in the Galloway Youth Ministry, my sister was, and as there were three years when I could drive, but she could not, I was often tasked with picking her up after youth activities or rehearsals in the Galloway Drama Ministry, which meant parking beside the church, across from Smith Park at night while gentlemen glid back and forth in the shadows of the parks ancient live oaks, discussing each other.  Smith Park was also where I would meet a gentleman who worked for the Hinds County Sheriff's Department and sold me anabolic steroids.  Sports drugs weren't considered a very serious crime at the time.  It might not have even been a crime when we began, but it was always shady and always a bad idea.  As a teenager, I specialized in bad ideas.

I knew what was going on in the park.  I know what these men were and what they were doing but it never filled me with shock and revulsion like it did a lot of people.  My main interests as a teenager were weight-lifting, performing arts, (especially special makeup and special effects), graphic arts, and dimensional arts; I was comfortable with homosexuals because they abounded in the fields I was interested in.  Having met them, I new they were no threat to me.  

Even before I could drive, I was starting to have my parents drop me off at the Downtown YMCA, where I could spend the entire day lifting weights, getting steam, and swimming.  At my mother's insistence, my father sat me down for a talk about the men who also spent the entire day at the YMCA.  I assured him that I already understood this and I was aware of them, and so far, none had approached me, which they hadn't.  I don't know if it's because I was underage or if maybe I just wasn't very attractive, but I was never approached by another man in all my years in the gym.  They existed, and I existed.  Sometimes we were friends, and sometimes they ignored me.  It simply wasn't an issue or a consideration.  

At Galloway, I would sit in my Ford LTD in the dark with a sketchbook or a novel, waiting for my sister to finish her practice in the Mikado or Carnival while gentlemen took a chance on romance in the dark across the street.  Every so often, somebody would say "hey" in the dark, and I would wave back at their shadow without really halting my reading or drawing.  They never approached.  

Almost never approached.

"Hey, I'm Ryan."

Ryan was remarkably small.  Neatly dressed in polished shoes.  If he was older than me, it wasn't by much.  I wore old jeans, a ripped sweatshirt, and leather gloves with the fingers cut off so I didn't get callouses gripping dumbells.  I thought they looked cool in Rocky, and they became my trademark for a while.  

"You like to draw."  He said.  "Can I see?"

I showed him the sketches in my book.  Mostly figure studies, some taken from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, others taken from Muscle and Fitness magazine, and some skeletons from a book in the library.  There weren't actual figure study classes for sixteen-year-olds in Jackson at the time.  There weren't really drawing classes at all.  I had to teach myself.  My brother was teaching me for a while, but he lost his way, and I was on my own.  I never quite forgave him for abandoning me while he was alive.  

It never occurred to me to say, "I'm straight, fuck off." or do anything rude to Ryan.  He was being bold, but he was also pretty scared.  I could be a cop.  I could also be a guy who picks up young gay guys and then takes them somewhere for my friends to beat the crap out of them or even kill them.  These things happened, and he was risking them by talking to a stranger in a car that looked exactly like a cop car but without the decals or the lights.  

To me, he seemed a gentle frightened creature, almost like a fawn stepping out of the woods to see my sketchbook and sniff my hand.   I was aware that he wanted something from me that I couldn't provide, but I was also aware that I could ruin his night and make him feel really bad about himself with a word.  I had friends, peers...acquaintances, I guess, who excelled at destroying people's sense of self with their words.   I'd already exhibited an ability to do the same.  I could move four times Ryan's weight in iron plates, but my real weapon was the words that came out of my mouth, but I withheld them. 

"Do you come here much?"  Ryan asked.

"I come here a lot.  I go to church here."  I said, motioning to Galloway's massive edifice with my thumb.   "I have a girlfriend.  Her name is Monica."  That was actually true.  I had an official girlfriend, who was a source of many and unexpected adventures.  She also provided me with a way to say to this skittish creature who was ready to disappear into the night like a frightened bird at the first sign of violence that I wasn't gay, even though I appeared friendly.  

Ryan smiled.  "I'm gonna go talk to my friends.  Thanks for showing me your drawings." And he slowly drifted back into the dark among the ancient trees and the ancient buildings, not fleeing danger like he could have, but returning to the world he knew, not as interested in the world I knew as he thought he might be.  

By the time I got to college, there were established gay bars in Jackson.  The most popular, just a block or two from Smith Park, and meeting in the park became more of an event for the city's growing homeless population than the city's gay population.  

I knew men who had their lives ruined by the raid on the City auditorium.  I'm not going to write about them like some people, but I knew them.  I knew Millsaps professors who had their livelihoods threatened by the event, but neither my father nor Dr. Finger, nor Dr. Graves had any desire to press the issue with anyone with tenure or on the tenure track, although there were professors at other institutions who did lose their job over it.   I was born into an era where it was very illegal to be gay and matured into an era where going to Jack and Jill's was the hip thing to do at Millsaps.  You'd be surprised how many eligible young women required a gentleman like myself to escort them there, partly to prove a willingness to bend to their will but also because it was the best place to dance, and they didn't want to wander around downtown at night without an escort.  

I never saw Ryan again.   I thought about him sometimes.  To be small and shy and gay in Mississippi in the eighties wasn't an impossible task but not an easy one either.  I imagined him to be a sort of Dill Harris from To Kill A Mockingbird but in color.  Would he grow up to be the Trueman Capote I saw on television?  I'll never know.  

There are people who wish nothing more than for homosexuals to return to the hidden world they used to inhabit.  They could survive there.  They did before.  It would make me sad, though.  Finding a companion can be a remarkably difficult thing under the best of circumstances.  Forcing men to do it in the dark, under the threat of losing their job or getting beaten to death, is cruel.  I don't want to live in a society where we have to be cruel to cover up a vulnerability I'm not even sure exists in the first place.

In a way, the gentlemen on Christopher Street in 1963 had an advantage over me.  All they had to do to find someone who was lonely and looking for a companion was go to the park and look for someone with a carnation in his lapel.  I suppose that's what Tinder is for, but meeting people in the park is ever so much more gentile than smudging filtered photos right or left with my pudgy thumb on my phone.  At least in the park, I'd have to smile and nod and acknowledge their existence before I swiped them out of my universe.   I'd rather live in a universe where people can meet and congregate civilly without fear of death or suffering.  They don't want anything different from what I want.  They just want it in a different way.

Dark Clouds Sunday Night

We tell ourselves that we're significant and important, but the clouds roll over us without noticing any of this.  Sometimes they send down fingers of God that destroy our homes and our fields, but they mean no offense; they're settling some argument among themselves and just don't notice the industry of the less-than ants below them.  

Dozens dead in the delta.  Homes and crops destroyed, lives ended, and the gaseous giants roll on over us without a word.  They can't see us.  They can't conceive of us.  They can sure kill us, though.  At any moment, they can send down a spinning finger of death and take everything, then return to the sky unaffected.  

Our place in the universe is a lie we tell ourselves because we need to feel important.  How many thousands of years did it take before we could even touch the clouds, and now, now that we can touch them, now that we can use our satellites to track their every move, we still can't do anything, not even a tiny bit to control them.  They give us life-providing water or not.  They send down tornados or hurricanes or lightning storms that kill us and destroy what we make or not.  Either way, we have no impact on what they do.  

We push many tons of carbon into the atmosphere so we're not inconvenienced in travel, carbon that would kill us straight away but only seems to make the clouds more active in their normal activities.  More floods, more droughts, more tornados, more hurricanes, and in return, we get bigger cars.  Doesn't seem like a very effective trade on our part.

The clouds pass over me.  Blotting out the sun.  Sending bolts of unimaginable electrical power between them, occasionally down to earth to destroy some massive tree on earth with me.  It's hardly the first time something incredibly powerful didn't acknowledge my existence.  I acknowledge theirs, though.  I paint them, I draw them, I write about them, and I make colorful lights to imitate their effect on the land.  I am in awe of their vast power and capricious nature, so much greater than anything we ants have ever created.  

I was going to be light and joyous and carefree this weekend, but my gaseous overlords chose to put on a display that soured my mood, storms then sunlight that blistered my ears but not my crown, then storms again to make me think twice about driving to town for church.  

Bottled water they need.  Everything in the past few years seems to depend on bottled water.  A few million pounds of plastic that won't bio-degrade should help things.  It doesn't matter to the clouds; they'll just roll over mountains of plastic like they roll over us.  Nothing we do impresses them.  I hear them speak now.  Words like I heard my father say in my crib before I knew what words mean.  They're not talking to me, I know.  Talking to each other, I suppose, I wonder what they're saying.  We call them non-sentient with the vain idea that only creatures like us have thought.  I doubt that's true.  All things have thought.  Thought creates reality and the reality is that I'll write about the clouds, but the clouds will never write about me.

Doubt and Success

I love writing about feelings.  I hate having them.  Fear, doubt, guilt, pain, more guilt, I can wax large about these all day, when I have them though--when I have them, it's like a swollen boil somewhere uncomfortable and impractical and waiting to burst, but stubbornly not, frozen at that point of not bursting and relieving the stress for what seems like the foreseeable future.  

I can plan my way out of any conflict, but then time becomes a factor.  Each step has a yes-no transition that leads to the next step or to another alternative step, and I feel like giving up before every decision, but I don't because the only way to relieve the pressure is to move on.  Failure, pain, suffering, and embarrassment are always an option but not a preference.  

Challenges build character.  Working through them makes you stronger, but does it really?  Failure makes you feel weaker even if you gain knowledge, smarter, but weaker; life's energy spent on a path that led nowhere.  I hate this feeling.

Life is a series of transitions.  The cogs turn, and the clock ticks, and you move from one state to another, or you fail and fall back on the previous state, but with less optimism and less hope for the future--all of it is up in the air until it is the past. Victory or failure, you move on because the past is falling away under your feet, and the future is the only option.   The future can turn in any direction, and that is why we suffer such crushing doubt; although we pretend we don't, it's always there.   

It's waiting for me now.  Prove yourself, little man.  Pass or fail; it's your turn.  I hate this.

Breakfast at Old Tyme

I'd sell some of you into hard labor for lox and bagel at Old Tyme with a conversation with Irv over the counter one last time. He'd come around and fill my coffee sometimes, but most of the time, he manned the register and talked to me over the glass case filled with cheesecakes and eclairs. While doctors and lawyers, and professors, and old gay men made up most of the early-morning crowd.

In those days, I would buy a Clarion Ledger going into Old Tyme, and read all the signatures. I had a trick for folding the newspaper that alleviated some of my dyslexia so I could read and try to understand what was happening around me. Uncle Tom sold the paper a few years before, and the new editorial staff changed the entire outlook of the paper. It was more literary, more educated, and more liberal. I traded knowing everybody who wrote for the paper with liking everybody who wrote for the paper and never looked back.

My nights were rarely alone but rarely with the same person from one week to the next. When someone did catch me on the repeat cycle it was usually because some aspect of their life had gone to shit and they weaponized the "les dames" part of "dieu et les dames," but breakfast, breakfast was when I connected my head into the community.

At six-thirty, I met my father and grandfather to open the mail. Coffee for twenty minutes, then breakfast at Old Tyme. Lox and Bagel. Jewish food, the Jewish experience in Jackson, was centered at Old Tyme.

In many ways, the American Jewish experience defines the second half of the twentieth century. The Jewish experience in Jackson was hardly My Favorite Year or The Education of Duddy Kravitz. Jews here could get bombed out for speaking their minds. Living here, there was always a road back to Kristallnacht; only half these rednecks couldn't identify a jew on sight, so they'd have to reference each other on who to hate.

On my street, the Jews and the Arabs lived next to each other in peace. The Freemans and the Meena's and the Crystals spoke and attended standing cocktail parties together, and there never was a conflict, while down Ridgewood road, some good ole rednecks planted a bomb in Rabi Nussbaum's office. I was a kid then, but it doesn't matter because I remembered, and nobody ever let us forget. Living in Jackson, any one of us could become a monster. That was the lesson. It's still that way. Different reasons, same monster.

Old Tyme was gentile. It was neutral politically, but everyone was left of center. We just didn't discuss it much. The educated were always left of center, and at Old Tyme, nearly everyone was working on a book. A book that usually came from Lemuria, which was in the same shopping center before they moved across the interstate. They served slices of tomato with the lox and bagel. Fresh, ripe, Mississippi tomato with the red onions and capers, and lox imported from New York.

There were other places that served breakfast in those days. Governor Waller ate breakfast most days at the Mayflower, then again for lunch. Primos number two had a very regular Belhaven breakfast clan. Sometimes daddy and I ate with them on Saturdays. Lefleur's had breakfast. When Sonny Montgomery came to Jackson, he'd stay at the Jacksonian and eat at Lefleur's. Sometimes daddy would have a breakfast meeting with him there. A few of those times, I was invited along as sort of daddy's attache but also his protege. He would have been better off taking my sister. She was much more likable and much more interested in that trajectory of life. I wanted to do absurd things like make movies or write about nothing.  The eggs were good, though, and knowing Sonny Montgomery was a pleasure.

Due to poor design choices, Old Tyme ended up windowless. Once inside, you had to focus on your book or your paper or your food, or, god forbid, you come with a friend, which almost nobody did. It probably would have made more sense for me to find a place closer to my office in West Jackson, but there wasn't anywhere that great, and Northside Drive was a direct route to Industrial Drive; you just had to drive through a growing spot of urban decay before you got there.

Lunch was usually at the Office cafeteria. When I was little, the cafeteria food was fantastic, but as Annie Ruth retired and women who worked under her retired, we ended up with cooks who weren't nearly as talented, and food costs started going through the roof, so quality suffered.

Many lunches would find me at the Zoo with a hot dog and fries. The Zoo was my special place. I wasn't Boyd Campbell II there, I was just Boyd, and even the animals knew me. It's a strange feeling when an elephant recognizes you and walks toward you, and turns her head so you can make eye contact. If only she should talk. Marre would reach out her trunk, and I would reach out my hand. We couldn't touch, but we could almost, and contact was made. You're my friend, my old friend, and I miss you when I'm not here. I wish you could speak.

Old Tyme was a terrible place to take a date. There was no bar and even fewer pretensions, and the servings were enormous. There was a girl from Memphis who was miserable in Memphis and miserable everywhere else, too, and would visit me because I'd spend all weekend trying to make her less miserable, and she loved the food at Old Tyme and Mayflower. Her, I could take to Old Tyme. She was blonde and bright-eyed and didn't read and hated my movies, and was everything I said I didn't want in a girl, but she had all of my attention, and making her smile, even knowing it wouldn't last, was all I thought about. Not many women could finish an open-face Reuben sandwich with potato salad and a pickle, but she could.

Irv wanted to retire, so he brought in a guy I knew from Creative Crafts and Hobbies across the street to run the store, but it crashed and burned, and he ended up with a fifteen thousand dollar phone bill and back taxes, so Irv went back to work himself. For a while. Not a very long while, though. He shut the place down and sold off the cases and settled the debts, and retired while he was still healthy enough to enjoy some of it, and an era ended. We have breakfast places now. Broadstreet has a very devoted crowd and really good food, but it's not the same.

Jackson never got another Jewish restaurant. Nobody ever talks about Greek restaurants, run by actual greeks, or Italian restaurants, run by actual Italians. Chinese restaurants and Thai restaurants, and Sushi restaurants are all run by Viet Namese immigrants, but nobody has a Viet Namese restaurant, which is actually excellent food. We have lots of cuisines but no cultures.

I miss Jackson the way it was. Obviously, we made mistakes because look at where we are now, but in those days, breakfast at Old Tyme, Lunch at the Zoo, and tickets to the symphony at night with some raven-haired creature I was afraid to even speak to made me feel like the world was on the way up and there would only be good things in the future. It didn't work out that way. There were much more than just good things in the future. The future held decay and pain and loss unimaginable. Maybe I miss the days when I didn't know that. Maybe I miss the optimism of youth, but I'm pretty sure it's the Lox. And Irv. I miss Irv.

Steve Azar - "One Mississippi" (Official State Song of MS) Cameo Version

Tall Girls In Heels

The fates returned me to a world occupied by twenty-year-old women, despite my attempts to avoid it.  My long absence makes my observations that much more vivid.  Among other new growth, I've marked the distinct development of a phenomenon where the tallest girls wear the highest heels.  To make up for past sins, we spent forty years on confidence exercises and esteem-building on our daughters to create a new race of being, of which these may be the new model.  

Fun-sized cheerleader models still exist, but they're no longer the unchallenged queens.  Girls of every shape and size are embraced and celebrated now with an almost intimidating confidence.  I've heard these memes discussed for a while now, but seeing them in action is still very new.

The trope of a shy, tall girl in flats is no longer.  They not only wear heels now, but they wear extreme heels.  The kind that's probably not safe to wear for men.  The points of their stilettos are microscopic now, actual weapons on each foot.  I've even seen a pair shaped like scimitars point down.  Their chunky heels are immense.  I've seen the felter shoes worn by Boris Karloff, Glen Strange, and Fred Gwynne to play Frankenstein, and they aren't as high or as chunky as these.  Daring hemlines are back, too; along with the shoes, the combined effect being enough exposed flesh to make another person. 

I always preferred tall girls.  They changed the rules enough to make things very interesting.  Most lacked romantic confidence, though, but mine was worse so that usually killed any spark of connection.  I usually needed the extra push from a fun-sized cheerleader type, either telling me what to do or begging me to rescue her before it's too late.

Boys are different now too.  I think it's more internal than external, though.  Maybe there wasn't this concern about correcting past mistakes.  I suspect we have a way to go with girls yet, though.  Younger beasts learn early to hide their doubts or get consumed by their peers.  I'm more than pleased with the progress, although seeing it makes me laugh.  I keep it to myself, though.  I love you.  Go!  Be Tall!  You earned it!  I'll tell Mr. Karloff he ain't gettin' his shoes back.  

Wednesday Haiku

Peanuts are good food

boiled tastes better than roasting 

my father said so

Duel of the Fates

Should I not survive, I've left money in my will for someone to read this either at the wedding of Jack Cooke or the funeral of Jay Cooke, with an extra stipend if they are concurrent.  

Because the Campbell boys chose mates based on sentimental rather than logical reasons, the Campbell Clan remained childless for a quarter of a century after the birth of my sister.  She would be the one to break the drought when she announced at family Sunday dinner that a child was on the way.   Katie Aiken had pioneered the process a few months before and declared it safe, at least the child-bearing part; the child-rearing part remained undetermined.  Months later, my boy Jack was born without any hope of escaping a wicked mouth or a mind on his own, as he inherited it from dozens on either side of his genome.  

Sixteen years after his last space epic, George Lucas presented The Phantom Menace to revive his most successful franchise.  I had seen it at a theater that's now closed for the very first showing with some Millsaps kids.  Jay, despite his deep-abiding love for genre films, had not.  At Sunday dinner with grandmother, Jay declared that his firstborn would not survive this earth without a love for Star Wars, and, although he was but four years old, Jay and I should take our young padawan to see The Phantom Menace at the Northpark multiplex cinema.  

Having already seen the movie, I knew it kind of sucked.  Completely sucked, actually, except for one part where the two good Jedi had the greatest lightsaber duel yet with the evil Darth Maul.  Tickets were purchased, popcorn and cokes for three, and we entered the theater only to find that the only seats together were on the third row from the screen.  

As a child, I loved sitting in the front row as it made me feel more a part of the action.  As an adult, I learned that was actually a terrible place to sit because you have to look straight up, and it distorts your perspective on the screen.  We didn't have a great deal of choice, though, so seats were procured with Jay to the left, me to the right, and Jack nestled safely between us, or so we thought.

With Jack being in the first round of children in our social group, none of us were prepared for what it might be like.  The women seemed to have a handle on it, but we men were still determined to carry on as before, but occasionally carrying a tiny mascot with us.  It was still our practice to visit the Cherokee every Thursday for beers and sandwiches and rounds of mutual defacing and sometimes pool or video poker.  

In those days, a pretty dreadful man from Memphis decided to bring topless entertainment to Jackson, and our Thursday night adventures began to end at Tiffany's Cabaret, mere blocks south of the Cherokee.  Jay's contribution to these side-quests usually involved him asking the dancers if they ever regretted not finishing high school and why they wanted that godawful tattoo.  This practice came to an end when one member of our retinue forgot he was borrowing his wife's car on a night when he had the misfortune of winning a Tiffany's Cabaret T-Shirt in a lapdance competition.  When she found the T-shirt he drunkenly left in her car, or rather smelled it before she found it, on her way to work in her car the next day, our visits to topless joints soon came to an end.  While we may have been ready for adult entertainment, we may not have been ready for the adult responsibility of taking a four-year-old to the movies.

Although it had been nearly twenty years since the last Star Wars movie, George Lucas didn't do such a great job writing the script for his return to that universe.  Far too much of the film centers around a frog-like creature who talks like an idiot and has the unfortunate name of Jar-Jar Binks.  Jay was making the best of it, though.  Nobody ever called him Jay Jay Binks, but they could have.  He'd waited so long for more Star Wars, he was going to make the best of it, and even if the movie sucked (which it did), his progeny, the fruit of his loins, his firstborn, was there with him, experiencing this "masterpiece" with him, and that made it worth-while.

Once you're introduced to the character of Darth Maul, you know there's a pretty good chance that at least one cool scene might be ahead.  At some point, this (very cool-looking) Sith knight must do battle with the two Jedi.  I'd already told Jay how cool it was.  After enduring what seemed like days of Jar Jar Binks, Boss Nass, and a teenage Natalie Portman phoning in her lines, you could tell the one cool scene in the entire goddamn movie was coming soon.

Much of the success of the first three films was due to the score by John Williams. Returning to the Star Wars universe, he was determined to come up with something new and impressive.  Knowing in advance that there was just the one cool spot in the movie, he saved his considerable talents for that and composed a moving piece called The Duel of the Fates for the fight between the Sith Darth Maul and the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Qui-Gon Jinn.

With the two Jedi facing off against the horned Sith, I could see Jay's knuckles grow white as he gripped the armrest.  This was it--the only cool thing in the movie.  The Lightsaber Duel was about to commence.  Williams' score begins with an ominous choral note.  The light sabers light up with the now famous swisssssh sound.  

Among people I know, there's something of a rule that the more you want something, the less likely you are to get it.  Jay had waited sixteen years for another lightsaber duel.  He wanted so much for it to be cool.  I had told him it was cool. He'd heard the music on the radio and seen video snippets.  This was it!  The moment was now!

Just as the lightsabers first clashed with an electric spark and a bit of smoke, at the bottom of the screen, away from the considerable action on the screen, was the unmistakable figure of a completely naked four-year-old running in front of it.  Jay looked at me.  I looked at him, and we both looked down at the spot between us where Jack was supposed to be safely nestled, now an empty bucket of popcorn.  With a pained look on his face, Jay seemed to plead that, since I'd already seen this part of the movie, I might field this crisis for him.  I mentally ran down my inventory of how to handle social situations and found there was no entry for how one handles a naked four-year-old at the movies, and I turned my hands up.  

We were indoors, and there's every reason to believe that Jack would have survived unharmed had we ignored him for three minutes until we get to the part where Darth Maul gets cut in half (spoiler alert).  I would survive, and Jack would most certainly survive, but if his mother found out we let him run naked through the theater unhindered while we watched the movie, there's every reason to believe that Jay may not survive, and if he did, Jack would be an only child because Jay would spend the rest of his life sleeping on the sofa. 

Regretfully, painfully, Jay motioned, "I got this," to me and left his seat in pursuit of the naked child.  I'm sure there were times when Jay got to see the entire sequence unhindered on television.  The movie wasn't really that great, anyway.  There's just one chance to see the first Lightsaber duel in sixteen years, though, and my brother-in-law sacrificed it for his firstborn.  There would be other times and other opportunities to screw up, but for this one, Jay did the right thing.  

Do Say It

 In several parts of the country, including Mississippi, there is a movement to eliminate any mention or suggestion of homosexuality from undergraduate education.  In Florida, it surfaced as the much talked about "don't say gay" bill.  Their goal here is to protect children from ideas and influences that can harm them--without any proof that these ideas or influences actually do harm them.

I am a product of that kind of education.  Until I went to college, there was never a mention of homosexuality in any of my educational experiences.  We learned that Pangloss lost the tip of his nose due to syphilis, but there was never any mention that a man could love another man in even the most remote fantasy.  I was a product of that kind of education, and at sixteen, I tried to use it to ruin a man's reputation and destroy his career.

I've written before about the troubles I had with my headmaster, David Hicks.  David called us dolts, degenerates, and worse.  He was making, what seemed to be, a specific effort to push half my friends out of the school on charges that could have applied equally to others but didn't because David Hicks never touched the kids who he imagined had fathers who earned more than the rest.

My efforts to discuss the situation rationally with David went nowhere and were evidently irritating him.  By the spring of my tenth-grade year, it was clear we were headed for a collision course, one that I would lose.  My dad agreed to sit in on one of my meetings with our headmaster.  It was generally his policy to let me fight my own battles, secure that his reputation was enough to help aid me along the way without having to show his face.  That he went in person to this meeting was most likely my mother's influence.

Although my father had little to say, David Hicks was not impressed by him, by me, or by anything either of us had to say.  I could tell by the look on my father's face that even if David Hicks didn't kick me out of St. Andrews, I wouldn't be returning the next year.  He had had enough.  

Desperate to turn the tide of this battle and give me something to use against Hicks, I blurted out, "Professor X is a Gay!" hoping to prove to my headmaster that the true degenerates were on his side of the field, not mine.  It's not important that you know who Professor X is.  More than forty years later, I haven't any idea if he was actually "a gay" or not.  I do know that my friend had said he was and I should be careful, or he'd look at my butt.  He said it often enough that, in my moment of desperation, that's what came to mind.  

Keep in mind, this is the same friend who said I should put my "mule" on the overhead projector in the hall and shine it into Peppermint Patty's classroom because it'd be funny. When I pointed out that it'd be just as funny if he projected his own "mule" into Peppermint Patty's classroom, he told me to shut up.  I should have remembered that before using his reference to try and smear another man's reputation, but I didn't.

The truth is, at sixteen, I had no idea what homosexuality meant.  It was in none of the books I read, none of the movies I saw, no teacher ever mentioned it, and I had yet to meet a single person who was willing to say they were gay.  I was as shielded from the concept as Ron Desantis wants the students of Florida to be, and I tried to use my ignorance as a weapon.  

The truth is, I was actually surrounded by homosexuals, but nobody ever said it.  A fair number of my classmates would come out by the time they were thirty.  Several of the shows I watched on television had people like Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Riley, Rock Hudson, and Raymond Burr in them, but it'd be another fifteen years before I had any idea of this.  Paul Lynde even sued a reporter who said he was gay once and won!

All I knew about homosexuality was that it was something you really didn't want to be, and this Hicks character was endangering us by forcing a teacher on us who might look at our butts.  Of all the times David Hicks ignored what I was saying when he shouldn't, this is a time when I'm glad he paid me no mind.  Accusing a teacher of being a homosexual in 1980 could have been a career killer.  A few years later,  there was an extremely popular professor at another school who made the mistake of admitting to his students what he was and was shortly thereafter shown the door with no recourse.

My ignorance could have really hurt somebody.  I wasn't a mean or vindictive kid, but the kid underground told me these people were bad, and they were bad for us, and nothing in my experience gave me any positive information about homosexuals to counter that.  

Let's amplify this situation a bit.  At the same school, there were several kids who would eventually tell the world they were gay.  There was even one of us who was transgender.  Neither society nor our school gave us any way to conceptualize this situation as anything but negative stereotypes.  One woman I know who eventually told us she was a lesbian was one of the meanest kids I knew.  I never understood that at the time.  She was so pretty.  Now I understand that she was mean to protect herself from us.  We were unintentionally being really very cruel to kids we didn't mean to hurt simply because we didn't know any better.

Psychologists tell us that up to ten percent of the population doesn't fit into the traditional heterosexual description.  In the late seventies, our upper school was around two hundred kids.  That means that twenty of them weren't heterosexual.  That means that, had they been found out, twenty of them would most likely have been bullied by my friends and me because we didn't know any better.  We were told they were aliens.  We were told they were this odd combination of very weak but also very dangerous.    It means that there were at least twenty kids at our school who couldn't tell us a very fundamental thing about themselves for fear of how we would react.  

That's a dangerous and painful situation, and it could easily have been avoided by an education that treated homosexuality as a human condition that should be discussed at least as much as the Syphilis that Pangloss died of.   That's the world these "don't say gay" bills create.  Children who are ignorant and uninformed can be vicious and hurtful.  I was.  People say they're very tired of having the "gay agenda" rammed down their throats, but I lived in a time when nobody said gay, and there was a genuine cruelty about it, cruel because homosexuality does exist and it exists without taking any victims, but without guidance, people can easily fall into victimizing them.  

Myopia

Many people choose to see nothing in the world beyond the tip of their nose.

It's a matter of self-preservation.  Blinding yourself to the troubles of the world gives you more time, energy, and resolve to deal with your own.

Shortening our vision creates a deficit because we can't see threats as they approach, so we pay people to go out into the world and report back on what they see.  There once was a time when we could rely on these reporters to simply tell us what they saw.  Men learned there was money to be made by reporting back what they saw, but from a particular perspective, and then the reporters became unreliable.

Because we cannot see who our enemies truly are, there's money to be made in telling us who to hate and who to trust.  Telling people they have enemies to fear makes them very loyal and their generosity very dependable.

Finding things out for yourself is a difficult path, but in the end, who else can you trust?  In the world there are many more people who are afraid then there are people to fear, but the only way to know who is who is to find out for yourself.

The Face Of Erasmus

When I tell these stories, there will be times when I will not name all the names or tell all the details.  I'm sorry if this offends.   My objective is to illuminate a time, cause a smile, sometimes a tear, not to stretch the reputation of anyone who was probably too young to be held responsible for what they did anyway.  If you know the names of any of the people in this story who are not named, please keep it to yourself.

I love my old school.  My experience there didn't end the way anyone thought it would, but I loved my time there and the people who travailed and matriculated with me and especially the poor souls who taught us, fed us, coached us, and sat with us while we waited to see the principal.  

St. Andrews aimed to provide small-classroom instruction on a classical liberal arts method, offering advanced education as far as the student could stretch.  Early on, they provided special attention to students with communication and reading issues like mine, long before the public or other private schools did.  For an example of how advanced, in our ninth-grade literature class, we were taught Beowulf (both translated and untranslated) and Candide (translated) and the historical placement and environment of each.  We were one of the first high schools in the state to offer Advance Placement courses, although my learning disability meant I wasn't ever a candidate for them.

Trying to do all these things in the 1970s in Jackson, Mississippi, wasn't without challenges.  There were cultural sea changes happening in every area of life, in many ways equal to those after the Civil War.  Some have called the years between 1960 and 1980 our Second Civil War.  

At its heart, St. Andrews was a parochial school, and as such, its board generally appointed Episcopal Priests as our headmasters.  There was a steady stream of fathers such and such leading us, and nobody ever really thought much of it until one day, a student in our newly created high school was arrested for selling drugs, to wit, marijuana.  Not enough to get him sent to Parchman or the Raymond School for Boys, but enough to cause a tailspin in the adult community guiding St. Andrews.  Our priestly headmaster was replaced by a layperson who himself was almost immediately released two years later, and the school's dean, also a layperson, was assigned as Acting Headmaster while the board searched for a permanent headmaster.   

There were adventures in those years waiting for a new headmaster that I've written about before.  At the time, I thought we were fairly well-behaved and normal kids until one day, the board was to present us with a gentleman who we understood was seriously being considered as our new headmaster.  In his address to us in the courtyard of the second upper school building, this new man said to us something I'll never forget.  

"It's my understanding that you have a problem with drunken degenerates." 

Others would, in time, call me both drunken and degenerate, but at fifteen, nobody ever had before.  We all thought there was no way this guy would get the job after being so rude to us upon our first meeting.  He didn't even know our names yet.  We were wrong.  Come the next fall, David Hicks was our new headmaster.  Apparently, there were members of the board who agreed with his assessment of us and thought he was the perfect solution to changing our wanton and degenerate ways.

Before school even began, several boys were expelled.  They were expelled before they even met the new headmaster.  I'm not even sure how this process happened.  Were they given a hearing?  Was there testimony brought against them?  I really don't know.  What I do know is that if he was seeking to cut off the source of the drug and alcohol problems at St. Andrews, he picked the wrong guys.  The boys he expelled were no saints, but they also weren't the source of the problem.  He also hadn't yet proven (to me, at least) that we had a drug and alcohol problem that was different from any other private or public school in Jackson.    

Once Hicks was installed as our headmaster, several boys were given the choice to either be expelled summarily or attend an experimental drug rehabilitation program in Atlanta.  This was not too many years after Betty Ford had made international news for receiving rehabilitation for her alcoholism; dependency programs were still pretty rare.  Again, if Hicks was trying to attack the problem at its source, he was picking the wrong boys.   These boys were troubled, for sure, but they were hardly the cause of the problem that I wasn't even entirely sure we had.

At sixteen, I decided it was up to me to try and talk Hicks out of this course of action for the good of the school.  I began regularly meeting with him to discuss these matters.  While he never refused my meetings, he was clearly getting irritated by them.  Our relationship began to become adversarial.  The more his actions troubled my classmates, the more I was compelled to confront him about it, and the more irritated he became with me.  By Christmas, we were clearly adversaries.  I've written before about how that didn't end well for me.

Small and large acts of protest began to spring up.  A newspaper was formed.  We were allowed one printing before getting shut down.  Whispers, coughs, and dress code violations became common.  The teacher's lounge mysteriously burst into flames one night.  The war between David Hicks and the students continued.  It became clear that there was an income threshold beyond which Hicks would not question any of your actions, but should your parents not earn enough--boy, were you in trouble.

One morning, we came to school, and the greatest act of protest I'd ever witnessed was revealed.  I won't say who did it, but I know it was two people, and the fact that two people had done all this in the middle of the night, by themselves, without getting caught, amazes me even today.

Every flat surface on the upper school held some level of spray paint.  I've used Krylon spray paints many times.  I know how far a single can will spread.  The culprits must have purchased a case

Most of the school's faculty, staff, and administration were much loved by us all and were spared any comment by our midnight sign painters.  But, those few who were considered traitors to the cause found themselves immortalized and pilloried by teenage wit, presented in letters large enough to be painted by a spray can, all over the upper school walls along with David Hicks.  Every upper school wall.

During this year of our discontent, a phrase had sprung up.  Every student from the fifth grade on up knew it.  It was scribbled on desks and book covers and shouted from cars.  Someone even wrote it in ballpoint pen on the back of my blue jean jacket while I piddled in my sketchbook on the bleachers one sunny afternoon.  Hix Sux.  It became our war cry.  The heroes of our story, on their midnight run of protest and spray paint saved the large brick wall to the right of the gated entrance into the upper school building for the last.  There, in letters several inches thick and seven feet tall, they painted:

                                                            HIX
                                                            SUX

I'm not even sure how they did it.  Maybe they brought a ladder with them.  Somehow they painted what we were all thinking as a two-story protest sign on unsealed bricks for us all to see when we came to school the next morning.

By the time I got to school, Jessie and the other janitorial staff were already at work trying to wipe away the graffiti that was literally everywhere.  By the end of the school day, our three janitors and one coach had either scrubbed away or painted over all the evidence of our midnight revolutionaries, all but one.  Remember the unsealed bricks I mentioned before?  Attempts to scrub the paint away from the surface of the bricks just drove the paint deeper into the grain of the brick.  HIX SUX was slightly dimmer now but wider and still very, very visible from the lower school playground.  Several chemicals were tried, and none worked.  St. Andrews closed out my tenth-grade year, my last year, with HIX SUX still quite visible on the upper school wall in two-story letters.  

Over the summer, the decision was made to paint over the offending remark with the same paint used on the metal gates.  Now we had a giant, windowless wall painted flat gray.  Hicks entertained suggestions, which included painting a large mural.  The students were consulted about what the subject of the mural should be and given several suggestions.  I wasn't there, but it's my understanding that Erasmus, who I had never heard of, was chosen democratically to be the subject of the mural.  The school's art teacher, Mrs. Mitchell, suggested Lawrence Jones, a former professor at Jackson State, to head the project, which he completed using students from her class. 

Forty years later, the painting of Erasmus still presents on the wall of the now primary school building, but its history was seemingly lost in time.  Underneath the philosopher's intractable visage remains evidence of a sixteen-year-old revolutionary fighting for the honor of his friends who were called degenerate.

 You've probably heard about a lot of Southern chefs; most were from New Orleans, and some were from Savannah, but the biggest innovator among Southern chefs and the one with the longest shadow was Bill Neal.   Neal elevated the status of Southern food that wasn't from Galatoire's or Commander's Palace to the rare air Southern food appreciates today and makes places like Dooky Chase's and Elvie's eligible for consideration for Beard Awards.  (One day, I'll tell you the story of who James Beard was and why he was important.)

Of all the dishes Neal cooked and all the dishes Neal wrote about, none were as famous or as far influencing as Shrimp and Grits.  Like most of Neal's recipes, shrimp and grits find its origins in the Afro-Caribbean influence of the Tidewater region and feature two of the Southland's most famous ingredients, shrimp and grits.

For Southern chefs of a certain generation, Shrimp and Grits is a dish they simply must get right or not offer at all.  Damien Cavicchi, formerly from the Country Club of Jackson and now the much-talked-about new owner of Hal and Mals and Campbell's bakery, is a chef, I'm convinced, will at some point be a Beard nominated chef, if not a Beard award winning chef.  

The menu at Hal and Mals is iconic and delicious, but it's also almost forty years old.  Chef Cavicchi is tasked with the considerable challenge of updating the menu, making it his own, but also keeping the flavors and experiences Hal and Mals is known for.  

One of the dishes he added to the menu, to accomplish these goals, was Shrimp and Grits.  Hal and Mals is famous for Southern staple food, and Shrimp and Grits is a perfect match for that.  It's not an elevated, gold-rimmed plate version of the dish you get at some places, like City Grocery (which is fantastic) but maintains the Hal and Mals blue plate, meat, and three level of cooking, while seriously raising the stakes with the flavor.

Shrimp and grits are three elements that must balance and must be right.  Plump gulf shrimp, which are more difficult to cook correctly than most people realize, creamy and flavorful grits, cheese, and garlic are preferred, and perhaps the most important element, the sauce.  Cheft Cavicchi nails all three, especially the sauce, and he does it with hearty portions that you could easily share with a sweetheart if you wanted to pair with their famous gumbo or seafood bisque.  

If you think you've eaten at Hal and Mal's a million times, and it offers you no new experiences, you're wrong.  There's a new chef in town, and he's bringing it on home while keeping the favorites you've come for, for the last forty years.  

The downtown renaissance is happening, and a vibrant young chef at an established classic location can't help but anchor the effort.  There are several other exciting elements of the new Hal and Mal's menu, but the Shrimp and Grits is my favorite.

Dogwoods and Turkeys

 A faint Mississippi dogwood blooms, hidden among its giant wild neighbors.  It's wild too, but wild in a secret, deceptive sort of way.  The mass of his neighbors creates a world where he can thrive.

A flock of wild turkeys lives in these woods.  They've lived there since before the Englishmen came, before the French, before the Spanish, and even before the Choctaw or the Chickasaw.  These were their woods before a bunch of weirdos from Jackson decided to build a retirement community here.  If you try going to your car at dusk or dawn, they'll remind you these are their woods by chasing you down like a New York street gang.  Don't feel sorry for the bird in your croissant sandwich.  On their own, they're meaner than you and me put together.  

Feist Dog and The Farm Report

An hour and a half before the alarm clock goes off, I'm giving up sleeping through the night for Lent. When I was little, this was the only time I was allowed to sneak into bed with Momma and Daddy. Around five, I'd hear him sit up, then see the cherry orb of his first cigarette move up and down in the dark. He never sat up until the last minute when his radio started.

In the silence, I hear momma breathing and his tobacco burn as he inhales. I'm pretending to be asleep. His alarm clock told the time by rotating a drum and flipping little cards with numbers painted on them. In the silence, I hear them flipping fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, then a bigger flip and Five a.m. Good morning, feist-dog. It's time for the farm report. The cigarette goes out, and daddy gets up to pee. I watch him shave, and momma stirs and makes her way to her bathroom. One of the luxuries of moving from the Northside drive house to the Honeysuckle Lane house was that Momma and Daddy had separate lavatories. Daddy's lavatory was spartan, but Momma changed the wallpaper on hers regularly. Mother had a thing for walls. When Martha moved out of the house, she insisted on texturing the feature wall in her dining area. She didn't do a terrible job, either. I wonder if the new owner kept it.

Being alone in Momma and Daddy's bed meant I could get up and watch TV in the den. Sleeping in didn't become part of my life until adolescent depression started sinking in. Even then, I'd still wake up before Farmer Jim came on the radio, much like I did today, but I might not stay up. Sitting up in my own bed, sneaking my own cigarette in the dark, I'd consider whether or not the day was worth it. My wife hated it. "Go OUTSIDE. You're supposed to go outside." then she'd lay back for a few more precious sleeps.

Where I am now, the nurses change shift in an hour. I hear them gossip as they gather near the door. I'm not the only resident awake, but only a few of us who are awake are aware. The light is on under Dr. Amazing's door. She's probably reading.

She went to the Methodist service in the chapel yesterday. I normally do, but yesterday I went to a poetry reading instead. I met coach Culpepper's wife. We didn't recognize each other at first. It's been forty years. Once she explained who she was, it all came back to me. I remember when they were just dating.

Listening to guys read their poems, who not only let other people read their poetry but manage to get people to print them in books. I write free-verse poetry. Nobody ever reads it. I don't know if I'll keep it that way. This piece is kind of free-verse, but it's more of an exercise I usually describe as cracking open the egg and seeing what's inside. The words slip out of my brain shell onto the skillet and begin to fry. This isn't precision cooking. It's catch-as-catch-can.

If only I could travel in time as easily as my mind does when I write. What would the nine-year-old me say to the fifty-nine-year-old me? Farmer Jim's been dead a while now, but feist-dog is still with me. He's been more loyal than all the women I've loved. Probably too many. I try not to think of the number, but I remember their eyes, every-one. Their hands. Holding hands and looking into a woman's eyes while you talk in a restaurant is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in public, even though the communication through my fingertips into the well of her hand can be absolutely filthy. It's a secret. Feist-dog looks away. "Not this again."

The sky is purple now.  Trees stand out black against it.  I'd like to finish my painting today.  I haven't had the urge for the past three days.  That's annoying.  Soon blues and grays will creep into the sky and cars will begin to move.  

Today, I begin the process of closing one apartment and moving to another.  My beloved Standard Life building is for sale.  I was kind of expecting it.  Covid killed the viaduct end of Capitol Street renaissance dead.   I'm hoping Jerry will open the Mayflower for supper before I go to the Ash Wednesday service.  From what I understand, he doesn't open every day anymore.  I miss his dad.  I miss his cousin Theo.  I miss a growing, optimistic Jackson.  Maybe if I work really hard, I can leave that to the next generation.  The second generation after my generation.  Honestly, that's kind of fucked up.  About half the girls I held hands with in the paragraphs above are grandmothers now.  To me, they're still beautiful.  Their tiny hands still remind me of fairy's wings, but we're old now.  I don't feel old, even though my back hurts and I have to pee about a thousand times a day.  

I thought being old would come with a feeling of confidence, a calm reflection that I am the river's master.  It didn't turn out that way.  I'm as nervous and unsettled now as I was at sixteen.  The river laughs at me and changes its meanders while I sleep when I sleep.   This is my home.  I was made to think I could be its master, but all I can do is throw words at it.  Words, words, words, maybe there's an idea in my scribblings that will ignite a discussion that might change a heart.  Maybe changing a heart here and there as the river flows by is the only way.  I've seen guys trade tens of thousands of acres of real estate and have less impact than a properly placed idea.  

Feist-dog wants me to get up.  The alarm goes off in a moment.  My fingers race to type out the last words before it does.  Good Morning.  It's time for the farm report.

Elseworks At CS's

 I'm a pretty big Virgi Lindsay fan.  Tonight she was gracious enough to come talk to an Elseworks and Midtown Business Association meeting at CS's.  Growing up in Jackson, there were about six guys who could tell you everything that was happening anywhere in the city.  If you didn't go to church with them, your momma went to high school with them, or they were one of our cousins, and if all that failed, you could go to Dutch Bar or Geroge Street and find one of them to explain whatever you were interested in.  

That hasn't been true in a while.  Jackson is a very complicated city now.  Our water system is under federal receivership, our sewers are under a consent decree with the EPA, policing has been mostly taken over by the state, and the Mayor and the City Council are in a suit with each other that neither side can talk about until there's a hearing.  

It used to be that everybody trusted the Mayor, but nobody trusted the City Council.  Today, that situation has flipped.  Virgi is part of why.  Her credibility is pretty high, and you could tell it by how the gathering responded to her.  She made me feel better about a number of issues; there is improvement on the horizon, and we just have to dig it out of some of the crap left over from the past few years.