What If Jesus Wasnt Real

Every Christian must answer the big question in their own mind: what if none of it is real?"  Absolute faith is incredibly difficult.  I believe no one who professes faith can navigate this life without ever facing the possibility that it was all wrong.

Let's consider Occam's razor.  Paul and the other apostles say Jesus came back from the dead and made eternal life possible for all of us.  Historians and politicians contemporary to Paul said the followers of Jesus stole the body to keep their movement alive after the death of their founder.  Which opinion is more reasonable?  Which is more logical?  

Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba The Greek, faced these issues in his novel The Last Temptation of Christ.  In it, he faces the problematic issues of the Jesus story by presuming every fantastical and miraculous element of the story is very real but explores the possibility that Christ falters and accepts Satan's last temptation and uses his powers to come down from the cross and live like an ordinary man.  

As you might imagine, this proposition didn't sit well with many Christian readers.  In 1988, Martin Scorsese struck out to make a film adaptation of Kazantzakis' book, with the result being one of my most loved films, both as a cinephile and as a Christian.

In it, he cast Harry Dean Stanton as Paul.  Stanton plays Paul much as I imagine he was in real life: a charismatic evangelist trying to share this fantastic story with the people trying to survive the sometimes difficult path of the first century.

Jesus, in his post-crucifixion life, confronts Paul during one of his sermons.  "None of what you're saying is true!  I'm alive. I didn't die!"  I cannot write Paul's reply nearly as well as Stanton portrays it in the film.  Please take a moment to consider what he says:

The Rocky Springs Tiger Trap

Forty burgeoning adolescents, four parents, one teacher, and one bus driver, in the woods, with a ghost town and a graveyard overnight; what can possibly go wrong? 

The tiger trap is a device said to be of Indian origin, consisting of a deep pit dug in the ground, then covered with enough vegetation to hide it.  Tigers would walk on the leafy covering, and fall into the pit below where they couldn't escape.  The Viet Cong used the tiger tap with some success against our forces in Viet Nam.

Antebellum Graves in the churchyard

Rocky Springs is a ghost town attached to the Natchez Trace in Claiborne County, Mississippi.  The State of Mississippi maintains a popular semi-primitive campground there.  

My Scout Troop used the site a year before, and I learned you could use a burning ember from the fire to light your own farts.  There's no merit badge for that, but there should be.  

My Junior High Class had a very loving and very optimistic parent group who got the idea that we could manage a co-ed camp-out there and make it back home with everyone intact.

Mr. and Mrs. Lyle were itinerant and experienced campers.  They would keep us alive.  Mrs. Seargent was our young history teacher.  She was who all the boys dreamed about, and all the girls wanted to look like.  She must have loved us because she took us to Washington DC by bus the following year.  I hope someone reading this can remember the name of the school's Haitian bus driver.  He was a super sweet guy who also drove us to football practice every day.  Rounding out our team of fearless leaders was Mr. and Mrs. Jones.  They tried to get me to call them Tim and Sarah for forty-five years.  It's still not happening.

The plan was to take the bus from school to Rocky Springs, make camp, have lunch then explore the old trace.  We were to have dinner while the sun was still up, then visit the ghost town at dusk, come back to camp for the night, have breakfast the following day, and take the bus back to Jackson.  That was the plan.  We were never that great at sticking with the plan.

Early on in life, I recognized there was something about Mr. Jone's eyes telling me he was a fellow member of my tribe.  He must have noticed the same thing because we had a few adventures together.  

In the little abandoned town of Rocky Springs was an old church with an ancient graveyard.  The plan was to hike as a gang from our campsite to the old cemetery at dusk, have a spooky adventure among the antebellum graves, and return to camp with flashlights in the dark.  That was the plan.  

Mr. Jones had the idea that he and I would sneak ahead of the bunch and hideout so that as they were hiking back in the dark, we could jump out and scare the bejesus out of them.  It would be so funny and so cool.  That was the plan.

On the way there, we spied a circular split-rail fence with a placard saying "Old Homesite"  with some bushes and kudzu overgrown in the center.  That would be my hideout.  This was a great plan! 

The old church and graveyard among the Spanish moss dripping trees was a pretty great adventure, with lots of giggles and dares as we awkwardly tried to figure out the best way to navigate inter-gender conversations in the dark surrounded by confederate ghosts.  

With the sunlight fading, Mr. Jones and I sprung our plan into action.  We quietly slipped away from the rest and headed toward the fenced "old homesite" to set our trap.  "Hurry!" he said before the rest of the class began their way back.

This was going to be SO COOL!  They were gonna be SO SCARED!  With a hop, I was over the split rail fence.  One step, two steps, one more, and I'd be hidden in the bushes, ready to pounce!  This was such a great plan!

By "old homesite," they meant this was the site of an old home as part of the little town of Rocky Springs.  The wooden structure was long gone, but the root cellar remained.  Nobody told Mr. Jones or me about the root cellar.  That eight-foot-deep root cellar lay completely hidden among the bushes and kudzu.   The split-rail fence was supposed to keep us out of it.

One step!  Two steps! Three... WHOOSH! and I was in total darkness with a thud.  I can only imagine the look on Mr. Jones's face as I vanished into the greenery.

"Boyd?"  I could see him looking over the edge down at me with his flashlight.  "Are you ok?"  I was absolutely unhurt.  The bushes and kudzu vines themselves cushioned my fall.  It took a few seconds for my brain to process what happened, then I bust out in uncontrollable laughter.  So did Mr.  Jones.   

Moments later, the rest of the class caught up to the site of our misadventure.  I could see their shocked and amused faces peering down at me over the edge of my pit with a dozen flashlights illuminating my predicament.    

I was already over two hundred pounds by junior high school and bench-pressing over three hundred.  Getting me out of this tiger trap wasn't going to be easy.  As we had no rope, a human chain made by nearly the entire class was chosen as the best option for rescue.

Soon, Mrs. Seargent's hand reached down for me.  In her twenties and deeply tanned, Mrs. Seargent was just about the prettiest thing I ever saw.  Touching her hand was way out of my pay grade, but I had no choice.  

With a solid tug in unison, my class rescued me from my antebellum dungeon.  I plucked kudzu leaves from my hair, pants, and shoes on the way back.  The plan was to scare the class, but in the end, the only ones who got scared were Mr. Jones and me.

And, that's the story of how the eighth-grade class saved me from my own eagerness and an ancient tiger trap. 

Photo By Kim Wita

photo by Kim Wita

The Pearl River Reservoir

I don't use the phrase "Ross Barnett Reservoir."  I don't use it because Ross Barnett was an asshole, and I"m embarrassed of him.  It's difficult to convince people Mississippi is changed and evolved beyond our racist past when they hear the largest body of water in central Mississippi is still named for our most famous racist.

Ross Barnett wasn't a great man and certainly no great leader.  What did he ever accomplish as governor other than fighting to keep Mississippi segregated?  The only reason I can imagine that anyone would want to name anything after him is that there must have been some guys in the legislature who were still pissed off about Washington forcing Mississippi to integrate, and this was their "fuck you" to the Kennedys.

Barnett approved the plan to send Freedom Riders to Parchment, ordering them strip-searched to humiliate them and taking their beds away to intimidate them for the crime of sitting in a bus station. Barnett hated the black-and-tan Republicans and fought any development of a two-party system in Mississippi.

Barnett would have you believe he fought integration with every fiber of his being. If you listen to the recordings of him and John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy's recollections of the Meredith affair after the fact, it's clear that Barnet knew he couldn't win.  He hoped to use the whole matter to ingratiate himself with the anti-integration factions in Mississippi.

It might be a legend, but the story goes that after the court order to admit James Meridith to the University of Mississippi, Barnett stood at the door to the registrar's office at Ole Miss, with scores of white protestors and even more white national guard troops beyond.  Meridith ascended the steps to complete his court-ordered registration, flanked by white guards and white lawyers.  When he reached the door, Barnett reportedly said, "Which one of you gentlemen is James Meridith?"

Showboat, all of it was a showboat.  Barnett had no intention of leading Mississippi; he only wanted to ride the wave of our hate and cultural shortcomings to enrich himself and inflate his legacy.  

After his term as governor, Barnett sought to rebuild his previously successful plaintiff's law practice.  He sued my dad when a fella ran into a truck making deliveries to the Crystal Springs furniture plant.  We made a fair offer to settle, but Barnett refused.  "While I was serving the great state of Mississippi, my law partners stole every bit of my practice, and I need a big victory to restore my reputation," Barnett told the judge.  The judge advised Barnett to reconsider and settle because Bill Goodman was making a fool of him in court.  Barnett settled.

I've heard noises through the years of re-naming the reservoir, but nothing ever came of it.  I don't know if there was ever a bill to rename it.   None are pending now.  I've heard the opinion that the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District board could rename the reservoir without legislative action, but I have no idea if that's accurate.  If they can do it, they should just do it quietly one day and let that be that.  Until someone makes an official name change, I will continue to call it "The Pearl River Reservoir" because it's accurate, and there's no adverse history associated with that name.  

Tarzan Not Talk Like Frankenstein

 Tarzan not stupid.  Tarzan learn English and French from book before Tarzan meet Jane.  Movie Tarzan very different from book Tarzan.

Seriously, I don't know how Johnny Weismuller became so popular.  Besides the jungle setting, Weismuller's Tarzan is nothing like the character in the books.  Come to think of it, the creature in Shelly's Frankenstein didn't talk like that either.  Maybe audiences in the 30s had a thing for mute strongmen.  

Tarzan of the novels was very articulate and possessed almost super-human intelligence.  He learned to read and write from the books in his father's treehouse, without any other human interactions.   When Tarzan visits America in the first novel, he behaves like an exemplary English gentleman, a far cry from Weismuller's nearly wordless interpretation.

Besides the fake ears they made for the Indian Elephants to make them look African, the best thing about Weismuller's first Tarzan film is Maureen O'Sullivan in her 1932 costume.  (Much more leather was added to her buckskin bikini by the next film.)  Subsequent films ended up almost a parody of the character from the first film.

Weissmuller's Tarzan introduced the trope of the chimpanzee sidekick, which actually isn't in the novels.  Although several chimpanzees have been reported as the original Cheetah through the years, they likely used several throughout the different films, as chimps get pretty dangerous to work with as they mature. The Cheetah you see on screen never seems to grow, even though sometimes a few years pass between productions.  Chimps are notorious poop-throwers and biters.  Many trained chimps had their canine teeth removed to make them slightly less dangerous.  Training methods often involved dramatic beatings and occasional drugs.  They solved this problem for 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, by having Rick Baker create all the apes using human actors.  Even today, Baker remains Hollywood's greatest gorilla man.

 Tall, attractive, and an Olympic athlete, Weismuller looked the part, but any resemblance to the Tarzan in the books ends there.  Much has been made of the lengths MGM sound designers went through to develop Weismuller's famous Tarzan yell, but Weismuller insisted it was his own voice, and in later life, he was able to perform it live.  It can't be too much of a stretch to believe it was his own voice; after all, even Carol Burnett could imitate it. 

I'm not sure what I would have thought of Tarzan if Weismuller was my first exposure.  Willis O'Brien's Skull Island certainly made an impression on me, so maybe the MGM jungle would have been as memorable.  My first Tarzan, however, was Ron Ely.

Ely's Tarzan was in color.  He was articulate and educated like the Tarzan of the novels.  He's why I picked up my brother's copy of Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1932) and never looked back.  

Ely's Tarzan was set in the modern-day (the 1960s) and sometimes featured very modern concepts.  One episode even had computers.  There was no Jane for his Tarzan, (but I was six, so who cares?) He did have a son character, who was written as an orphaned Mexican boy.  They never explained how a Mexican orphan ended up in Africa.  Manuel Padilla Jr. played several television roles before Jai on Tarzan.  He could deliver his lines, and child actors you could work with were pretty hard to find, so he got the job I guess.

There were 57 episodes of Ron Ely's Tarzan.  He performed most of his own stunts, and he had the scars to prove it, including more than one lion bite.  After the initial run, they played in a re-run every Saturday afternoon until I was twelve or thirteen.  By the time I did see a Weismuller Tarzan, I was already under the spell of King Kong and obsessed with 1930s adventure cinema, so I soon saw all of them.  (Thank you, Ted Turner) 

After Tarzan, Ely was never out of work very long.  The next time he caught my eye was George Pal's, Doc Savage.  I loved the Doc Savage novels and had about ten of them.  Pal intended to do a straight version of Savage like in the books, but the finished product was pretty campy and did poorly with audiences.

Pal originally wanted Steve Reeves to play Doc Savage, but he was too old and unavailable.  Ron Ely was only too happy to get the role. Initially, Pal and Ely hoped to make several Doc Savage films and end Pal's storied career on a high note.  Fate had different plans, though. Doc Savage was released in 1975 and bombed.  It never played a first-run theater in Jackson, so I had to get someone to take me to the drive-in to see it.  

Ely never stopped, though.  He even ended up taking over the job of hosting the Miss America Pagent in 1980 when Bert Parks retired.  

There would be many more Tarzans after Ron Ely, but he was my first, and when I read the novels now, it's his voice I hear.

What Is The Mississippi Delta

The good Lord made some people to heal us.  My new friend Jennifer gave me a copy of Delta Hot Tamales by Anne Martin.  Jennifer's mom runs Sollys in Vicksburg, so she knows a thing or two about Tamales.

You have to be careful with Delta girls.  They'll steal your heart, and you'll never get it back.  Lord knows, there are pieces of mine from Memphis to Natchez. I don't regret a minute of it.  Lightning can strike the same spot many, many times.

It begs the question, though, what exactly is "The Delta."   In season six, episode one of Andrew Zimmerman's Bizarre Foods about Delta cuisine, he covers Sollys in Vicksburg, but he also includes Jackson and reviews The Big Apple Inn and Walker's Drive-in.  Lord knows I love Big Apple Inn and Walkers, but is Jackson The Delta?  I never heard such, but The Food Network seems to think so.   

A geologist will tell you the Mississippi Alluvial Plain includes parts of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.  Flooding the Mississippi River as it goes into the Gulf of Mexico creates it.  It only looks like a triangular delta when it gets to New Orleans.  Is New Orleans The Delta?

Fay Wray with Debbie Reynolds
Tammy and the Bachelor (1957)

You've probably heard that The Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and runs to Catfish Row in Vicksburg.  Sometimes, it's the duck-pond fountain in the Peabody to Under the Hill in Natchez.  These definitions have been used so long that I"m struggling to find out who said it first.  It's often attributed to Twain, but I'm not ready to plant my flag there just yet.  

Fay Wray once told me she made a movie about The Delta with Leslie Nielson set in Natchez, so as far as I'm concerned, Natchez is in The Delta.  I'll take Fay Wray's side on anything. The film was based on the book Tammy Out of Time, written by Cid Ricketts Sumner, a Millsaps Alumni, and produced the hit Tammy's In Love, sung by Debbie Reynolds.  

Why the Peabody Hotel, though?  Before cotton was king, The Delta primarily grew tobacco.  Cotton was easy to grow but difficult to process. Ely Whitney changed all that with his Cotton Gin.  Once Mississippi started growing cotton, they had to get it to market.  The river flows north to south, so all our cotton and tobacco went downstream to New Orleans for many years, with growers cashing in there and making their way home with the profits as best they could by the Natchez trace.  

When the steam engine came to the Mississippi,  up-river was as easy as down-river, so the Cotton Exchange in Memphis became the financial center of the Delta economy, with the Peabody just scant blocks away.  Planters traded their cotton for coupons at the Cotton Exchange and spent them at Beal Street and the Peabody.  Don't ask what they spent it on.

So, does cotton define The Delta?  My great-grandfather grew an awful lot of cotton and corn outside of Kosciusko in Hesterville.  Is Attala county The Delta?  Many farms in The Delta don't even grow cotton anymore; soybeans are easier on the soil and often more profitable. What about catfish and rice?  India and China grow almost twice as much cotton as the United States. Are they The Delta?

Maybe The Delta is political.  Despite being yellow-dog Democrat for many years, the Mississippi Delta was one of the most conservative places in the United States.  Florida passed them years ago, and now the Mississippi Gulf Coast is far more conservative than The Delta.  

What about culture?  If you go by country of origin, Mississippi Delta citizens include African, American Native, French, Spanish, English, Scottish,  Irish, and Italian.  Toward the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, Jewish, Hispanic, Chinese, Indian, and East Asian peoples started populating The Delta.  Religiously, you'll find Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Methodists (united and independent), and don't forget about the Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, and Buddhist congregations.  

Shelby Foote is from Greenville, but some of the most famous writers about The Delta aren't even from there.  Eudora Welty is from Jackson, and William Faulkner is from New Albany. Is that The Delta?

If you're from here, you know many parts of Mississippi aren't The Delta if you're from here. There's The Coast, The Piney Woods, The Golden Triangle, and more.   But, If you're not from Mississippi, you probably think it's all Delta.

Maybe, The Delta is what you say it is.  Andrew Zimmerman and his producers seem to think so.  Try telling people not from here that Elvis was born in Lee County, not The Delta.    I don't want to start any arguments, and I'm not one to tell you how to think, but if you're from here, you really should have an opinion on this.

The Kidnapping of Annie Laurie Hearin

 This story is pretty hard for me to tell.  Those are the stories worth telling though, so bear with me.

July 1988.  I still worked for my dad at Missco and lived at Pebble Creek Apartments in Jackson.  I opened the mail with my dad at six-thirty that morning.  He was uncharacteristically silent. It was the busy season, and the company was doing well.  Usually, I'd have coffee and chat with Mrs. Jeffreys, Mrs. Noel, and him after finishing the mail until eight am when the workday started, but he went straight to his office that day.  I began to suspect something was up.

Three or four times during the day, he asked his secretary to close the door to his office.  That rarely happened.    I knew something was up, but what?  That night, I brought laundry to my mom's house.  There were machines at Pebble Creek, but I had a bad feeling, so I used hers.  My brothers were at their homes, and my sister was with her college friends.  

My dad watched television in the den without making a sound.  I made a fried egg sandwich in the kitchen while my laundry cycled.  Mom sat in the kitchen, watching her little television and drinking her scotch and tab (I know that sounds gross, but it was her drink of choice).  She held the plastic glass in her hand but didn't sip it while the ice melted.  She didn't want a sandwich.  My dad didn't either.  

The doorbell rang.  It was Leon Lewis.  Leon Lewis in the middle of the night, without Mrs. Lewis.  Something was up.  Dad and Mr. Lewis retired to the living room, not the den.  The living room we never used. They spoke quietly.  I began to worry in earnest.  Dad came to the kitchen and gave me a ten-dollar bill.  "Get me a couple packs of Viceroy, buddy."  My dad wanted two packs of cigarettes in the middle of the night.  That had never happened before.

I went to the gas station next door to what used to be the Tote-Sum at Maywood Mart, now converted into one of Jackson's first Subway franchises.  I got the two packs of Viceroy and added one pack of Merit Ultra Lights and a pickle in a napkin for me.  I put his smokes in a bag with the change and ate my pickle on the drive home.

Brum Day joined dad and Mr. Lewis in the living room when I got home. Whatever was going on, Trustmark was involved.  I loved Brum, but his appearances carried weight.  I was very worried and gave my mother a look.  She said she'd tell me later.  After delivering the bag with the Viceroys, all three men left silently but together.  I still don't know where they went.  They looked horrible.

That night, Mayor Dale Danks went on television to say that Annie Laurie Hearin, wife of Bob Hearin, Trustmark Chairman, had been kidnapped the day before.  Danks was a pretty good lawyer in his own right and often took a leading role in bigger police affairs.   The FBI took over the case from JPD.  It was that big of a deal. 

The press agreed to a 24-hour news blackout while the FBI began its investigation.  My dad agreed to a 24-hour don't-tell-Boyd blackout for reasons I completely understood.  That's why he behaved so strangely at work.  After the news, my Mom went to bed.  I waited for daddy to come home.  "Can I do anything for you?" I asked.  "There's really nothing you can do," he said, "I wish there were," and went to bed.   Seeing my dad that sad and that powerless shifted the foundations of the universe for me.  

Bob Hearin was my dad's mentor, and my dad loved him.  He was the principal stockholder for Trustmark National Bank, Mississippi Valley Gas, Lamar Life insurance company, and Yazoo Big Wheel Mower Company.  As I understand it, Yazoo made the best mowers in the world but couldn't compete with the less expensive Snapper versions.  Besides Trustmark, Mr. Hearin got my dad involved in MP&L, Bell South, Lamar Life, and The PineyWoods Country Life School.   He also could tell you about every barbeque place in central Mississippi.  For Mr. Hearin, the best was near Pocahontas, where he had a farm.  He was friendly and spoke kindly, but he still terrified me.

The first time I ever met Bob Hearin was at the Trustmark/Deposit Guarantee joint Christmas party.  Every business person in Jackson filed through these parties as a strictly held tradition.  We started at Trustmark, then used a (semi) secret passage between The Trustmark building and the new Deposit Guarantee building (now Regions).  I wonder if it's still there.

In his office, Mr. Hearin smoked a cigar the size of a big carrot.  His still dark hair was arranged neatly with pomade.  Everyone else was doing Christmas party things, but he was working.  I was nineteen at best, maybe eighteen.  "You were named for somebody," he said to me.  I'd heard that about a million times before.  By "somebody," he meant my Uncle Boyd.  I was flattered but dumbfounded.  He knew who I was.  Twenty years before, my uncle died at the Walthal Hotel across the street.  They used to say, "the only thing separating Trustmark from Lamar Life was Capitol street.  Eventually, the feds stepped in and made Trustmark divest most of its Lamar Life stock, but the boards were still tangled as a bird's nest.  

Some Saturdays, Mr. Hearin came by Missco to visit with my dad.  "Tell Mr. Hearin the story about the gorilla," My dad said.  I honestly cannot tell you the story about the gorilla here.  It was filthy, and I stole it from a Redd Foxx album.  Pretty funny, though.  Mr. Hearin laughed, my dad laughed, and the pattern was set.  From then on, I had to have an equally inappropriate joke for Mr. Hearin every time he visited.

Mrs. Hearin was in her seventies.  She was very involved in Jackson becoming a vital patron of the arts, especially the symphony.  The Hearins lived humbly but well in Woodland Hills.  Despite their vast wealth, the Hearin's never led what you would call a flashy life.  They maintained their membership at their Capitol Street church long after everyone else in town moved to the one on North State Street.  He was a fan of West Capitol Street, maintaining the Mississippi Vally Gas offices there long after everyone else moved northeast.

Everyone loved Mrs. Hearin; she was friendly and very much a lady.  The day she disappeared, she had a bridge party at her house.  The idea that anyone might do her any harm that way is still disturbing.  

In the late sixties, Mr. Hearin purchased a company called School Pictures Inc.  They sold franchises to photographers who took student portraits and then sold the prints to the parents.  If you're my age from the South East, you probably had your pictures taken by a School Pictures franchise.  I still think it was a pretty good business model.  Considering how much gross profit they made on the photos, it should have made a mint.  My dad had stock; lots of people in Jackson did.  The franchisees took the photos, School Pictures developed the negatives, made the prints, and packaged them for parents.  It was slick.

The company ran into problems when some of the franchisees weren't paying the company their processing fees.  Hearin sued the franchisees that were in arrears.  That proved fatal.  The ransom note for Mrs. Hearin demanded Mr. Hearin repay the people he sued.  

The FBI soon made a case that Newton Alfred Winn, a School Pictures franchisee in Florida, conspired to kidnap Mrs. Hearon.  Two of his co-conspirators made a deal to testify against him.  At trial, he was convicted of conspiracy, but not murder.  Mrs. Hearin's body was never found, and Winn never confessed or gave any information on what happened to her.  Winn left prison in 2006 and died six years later.  After the kidnapping, School Pictures collapsed in on itself.

Before the kidnapping, Mr. Hearin seemed like Agamemnon, vital and legendary to me.  After the abduction, he was a broken man.  He continued to visit some Saturdays.  I continued to tell questionable jokes, but it wasn't the same.  He lost weight, making his suits hang on him.  His eyes lost that fire that paralyzed me on our first meeting.  

Two years after the kidnapping, Robert Hearin died, never knowing what ultimately befell his beloved wife.  The courts declared her legally dead the next year to help settle his estate.  Her fate is still a mystery and an FBI open case.

The Easter Flood Taught Me To Drink Coffee

Easter weekend, 1979: I get a phone call to help John Robinson because his house flooded.   That made no sense to me.  Flooded?  How bad could it be?  It was late afternoon, so I took my old Ford to John's house.  I met Johnny Kroeze at the top of the street.  I had to park there because the rest of the road was under three feet of water.

This was a bad dream.  I knew some of these people, and their houses were knee-deep in water.  In the Robinson house, water was already two feet deep.  They had a second story, so we moved as much of the furniture as we could up the stairs to wait out the water.  Surely it wouldn't get any higher.  

After we moved as much as we could, Mr. Robinson asked if we would help his neighbors.  One neighbor was out of town, and the water was up to his car's engine, and no one had a key.  I met Joe and Johnny Iupe, sports rivals from St. Joe.  Seeing them hip-deep in flood water instead of the sports field was surreal.  Joe strapped a four by eight sheet of plywood over two canoes which we dubbed the "flood barge," and moved as much furniture to high ground as we could.  

One man gave us bottles from his bar as payment for saving his grandmother's piano.  In the dark, in the water, boys our size probably didn't look sixteen.  We worked into the night, not knowing any of these people but doing our best to help.

Each time we landed the barge, women we didn't know gave us hot coffee to help counteract the chilling, brown Pearl River water.  I wasn't a coffee drinker before that, it was for old people, but  I learned to appreciate it.  To this day, I associate hot coffee with kind strangers trying to warm a very cold and very frightened Boyd.   

I knew exactly where the river was.  In better times, we camped and fished and rode the rope swing four or five hundred yards away through the woods.  All of that was underwater now.  Nothing was familiar anymore.

Around ten o'clock, the national guard said we had to go home.  They were afraid of looting.  The water covered the wheels of my old Ford.  When I parked, it was dry.  I drove by Mayor Dank's house on the way home.  All his lights were on, and many cars were in the driveway, but he was at city hall, on television.  I don't know if he slept or even came home that night.

Once home, I got a hot shower and dry clothes.  Some of us met at Mr. Gatti's for hot pizza and maybe sneak a beer.  The staff at Mr. Gatti's was pretty understanding that way, as we were all underage.  They had the first big-screen TV I ever saw; it was tuned to the news.  Burt Case came on.  Mayor Danks made an announcement.   The levee and spillway to the Ross Barnett Reservoir were in imminent danger of breaking.  They had to open the spillway and release pressure.  John Robinson's face fell.  We thought the worst of the flood was over. With the spillway open, it got much worse.

We went home confused and afraid.  There was a pretty tall hill between my house and the river, but were we in any danger?  Nobody knew.  Once home, I learned that Mississippi Power and Light came to my brother's dorm at Millsaps, looking for volunteers to sandbag their facility downtown to preserve electricity to the city as long as possible.  They worked all night.  It kept their communications center and computers working, and Jackson never lost power.  My dad was at Trustmark with Brum Day and Bob Herron. I have no idea what they talked about. He was silent when he got home.

Just about dawn the next day, I get another phone call.  Stuart Speed's house was in pretty big trouble.  Off I go again.  Johnny Kroeze brought his dad's johnboat.  We needed it.  Mr. Speed was organized and focused, and very intense.  He had a look in his eye I seldom saw in anyone.  Mrs. Speed was crying.  We rescued what we could, but their beautiful home was in bad shape.  When we'd done all we could, someone asked if we could help Mr. Palmer down the street.  

John Palmer said he cared nothing for the furniture, but could we rescue some clothes for his daughters.  They were my age, and I knew them.  The idea of girls from my school with no clean clothes to wear made all this shockingly real.  I have no idea whose room I was in, but I got as big an armload of closet clothes as possible and made my way to the waiting johnboat.  After dumping off the load, I made my way back for another.  The water was just below my chest now.  We made jokes about alligators and snakes in the water, only in the days after did I learn how real that threat was.

I don't know if it was Mr. Palmer's house or one of his neighbors, but somebody had a pool. I had no way of seeing it walking through unfamiliar yards in chocolate-colored water up to my nipples.  Suddenly the world went away.  Water that was four and a half feet deep was suddenly six feet over my head.  It took a few moments for my brain to comprehend what had happened.  I swam to the surface and continued my work, giving the hidden pool a wide berth.  

We had a makeshift harbor on Eastover drive where the water ended.  Again, mothers, I still don't know the names of, had coffee, some even had donuts, but I couldn't eat.  The higher the water got, the more frantic and frightened the homeowners became. I continued on.  

The National Guard let us work through the night that night.  Before dawn, I rested in some stranger's yard, only for a moment, I thought, but exhaustion set in, and I slept in the grass.  A few hours later, I woke with the sun, still in someone's front yard but wearing clean pants and a clean shirt.  They were my clothes.  I have no idea who dressed me or who got the clothes.  My mother swore it wasn't her. 

I began work again.  Some people had given up.  Their homes were in eight feet of water by then. At three o'clock that afternoon, the radio said the floodwaters crested.  I went home exhausted and unbearably sad.  A hot shower and another set of clean clothes later, my Mom asked if I wanted anything.  "Coffee," I said.  She never questioned it.

Many of my friends lived in hotels, fishing cabins, or whatever they could find and rebuilt their homes in the days that followed.  People with flood insurance were the lucky ones.  Most didn't.  The rest took out second mortgages and lived with them.  

Workers stripped the carpets and drywall from their homes, leaving great piles of mud-smelling debris on every flooded street for the city to remove while Jackson rebuilt.  My friends were sad but alive.  Eventually, life got back to normal again.  

Shortly before my birthday that year, I got a letter from John Palmer, thanking me for rescuing his daughter's clothes from the alligators in his living room.  I still have it.  Southerners often respond to tragedy with comedy.  Outsiders say it's an attempt to mask our feelings, but sometimes it's the only thing that makes any sense.   I still drink coffee.  To me, it means someone's love, despite adversity.  

Flooding Downton

What I'm Reading - May 10

Greenlights 

My dear friend (and former football trainer) gave me a copy of Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey.  I met McConaughey briefly when they were shooting A Time To Kill and had no clue he would be such a powerful and charming writer.  

Part autobiography and part philosophy, McConaughey gives a very frank and candid review of his life and how he managed and interpreted it all.  Greenlights is a very Southern book, both in his experiences and attitude.

Although I primarily use kindle to read now (mostly a matter of storage), some of you may know I'm something of a bibliophile snob, especially when it comes to the physical book.  This first edition of Greenlights (my copy came from the fabled Square Books) is a joy to touch and leaf through.  They use heavy rag paper, almost like expensive drawing paper with a substantial tooth.  It switches between different colors of ink and shades of paper so often that I wonder if this book was printed on a web press at all.  Some of the signatures may be from a sheet-fed press, which is unusual.  

Greenlights earns its spot on the best-seller list, primarily on the strength of the writing alone.  This is a book of life, not your typical Hollywood expose.  It's a book that speaks especially to Southern men in a voice they'll find familiar.

The Screwtape Letters.

I tell people that I"m an agnostic because I am, and I believe everyone is; no matter if they claim absolute belief or absolute disbelief, everyone has questions and doubts.  I've read many Christian apologists through the years, and I can only call Lewis beloved, at least by me.  This is my third time through on Screwtape and probably not the last.  

Written before he lost (and ultimately regained) his faith, Lewis dedicates Screwtape to his dear friend and fellow scribbler, J.R.R. Tolkien.  It's a fictitious series of letters written from a supervisor daemon to his nephew, advising his efforts to collect the soul of an English "client" recently converted to Christianity.  

In this and other works, Lewis makes Christian apology entertaining and digestible.  Lewis has a pragmatic opinion on Christian practices and philosophies, which come through almost effortlessly here.

Like the Narnia books, The Screwtape Letters is a quick read and a staple of English-speaking Christianity.  

Meeting Big Bird and Kermit The Person

 Mine was a very loving mother.  She often found humor in taking advantage of our naivete,  "fooling" us, and getting us into more than a few adventures.

Using a congressional grant, the Public Broadcasting System went on air in 1969, bringing several local public stations into a national network.  Mississippi Public Broadcasting went on air the following year, with their studios located on 16th section land off Ridgewood Road in North East Jackson.  

My father had a Missco Employee come and install UHF antennas on the massive VHF antenna hidden in our attic.  Seven-year-old Boyd could then see the new hit show on PBS called Sesame Street.

Although Sesame Street utilized a generous grant from the Carnegie and Ford Foundations, they still needed money, so by 1972, they began doing roadshows featuring some of the show's cast.  Somehow they picked Jackson for a stop, and it was the biggest event for the short-pants set that year.  Bob, Gordon, Susan, Mr. Looper, and Big Bird were slated to appear.

I think the adults were more excited than the kids.  Somehow my mother had the job of picking up some of the cast at the Jackson airport.   I suspect it had something to do with the Junior League because other mothers had a similar task, and the Junior League was always up to something. 

Mom's task was to pick up two men from the cast in our Ford station wagon and deliver them to their hotel near the Coliseum. I saw the circus, the rodeo, and the Harlem Globetrotters at the Coliseum, so that was pretty much hollowed ground for little guys.

At the airport, we waited and waited.  Eventually, two bearded men hopped in the car.  One was older than the other and carried a large, oblong bag.  Mother introduced them to me.  One was Carrol, and one was Kermit.  "Kermit, the frog?" I asked.  "No, no," he said, "I'm Kermit the Person.  I make muppets like Big Bird and Oscar." 

Kermit Love was a Broadway designer and a long-time collaborator with Jim Henson.  He fabricated Big Bird, Oscar, Mr. Snuffleupagus, and Cookie Monster.  A gentle creature with a Santa-sized beard, he explained how "Snuffy" operated with two men inside.  The bag in his lap contained Big Bird's head!  He undid the zipper and showed me how to work Big Bird's eyes with the pinky of one hand. 

"Carrol is Big Bird!" Mother said.  Mother fooled me before, so I was dubious.  I wasn't rude enough to say it, but this fellow was clearly a young hippie and NOT Big Bird.   He must have met this reaction before because he raised one hand above his head, moved his fingers like a mouth, and said, "Hi!"  Suddenly Big Bird appeared before me.  I was a believer.

I wanted that drive to last forever, but it didn't.  We dropped the men off at their hotel, and that was the last I ever saw of Kermit The Person.  The show was great, featuring a few skits and songs with human characters, and Big Bird was the star.

After the show, I saw a cluster of even littler kids crowded around Carrol Spinney at the door to the Coliseum Green Room.  My sister and Lee Kroeze, her childhood companion and neighbor, were among the pint-sized fans. Spinney must have taken the heavy bird body off and only wore the Big Bird legs 

Carrol Spinney and Kermit Love
 on the set of Sesame Street.

working the puppet head above his own. Talking to his young fans in Big Bird's voice, I don't think they noticed his body was missing.  

My sister got his autograph and saved one of the dyed-yellow turkey feathers constantly falling off Big Bird's costume.  She displayed her Sesame Street autographs and her Big Bird feather in a frame in her room for many years. Hopefully, she still has it somewhere.  

Spinney and Love Shoot an outdoor scene.