Goodbye Friends

 I'm no good at obituaries, so let me tell you a story.  I had kind of a rough week.  My best friend was out of town, and I lost two women who featured heavily in my youth.  I had a loving family and the best friends in the world, but I was a painfully shy kid.  I had a significant stutter that made it difficult for me to talk in front of people unless I was cutting up, and a reading deficiency kept me in constant fear of being moved to special education classes.  Finding a way through that prickly shrubbery made it difficult for most adults to reach me, but there were two who made it effortlessly.  

If you're on my list, there's a good chance you knew both of these women.  The first was Sarah Jones Nelson.  Sarah was our perennial class mother.  When you're small, most grown-ups treat you like children, but Sarah treated us like friends, like somebody she knew, and that made a huge difference.  She was with us on field trips, camping, and cross-country journeys by bus to the nation's capital.  She helped us through the rough years between childhood and the universe of teenagers.  Sarah ended up moving next door to my sister and her family, where she spent her final years.  I'll be there Friday when we say goodbye to Sarah.  I probably won't say much, but I'll be there.  

I never met the other woman, but I saw her every Saturday night.  Her name was Annette Stutzman, and every Saturday night when I was a kid, she drove to the WAPT studios between Jackson and Raymond, where she played the role of Scarticia on Horrible Movie.  In 2009 I wrote an article about her on my blog that, even now, is the most viewed page on the blog:  https://boydslife.blogspot.com/2009/01/jacksons-horrible-movie.html

I was a devoted Scarticia fan, even though she was something of a mystery in those days.  Through people who read my blog, I would learn that her name was Annette, and she was the secretary for the station manager at WAPT.  She was a few years younger than my mother and involved in what was then known as Hinds Junior College.  She loved music and participated in coral music most of her life.   Annette retained several friends from Jackson but made her way to California, where she made a living in television production and raised a family.   I never knew her, but she has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.  

I commit these friends to the hearth of memory.  You made life much better for a frightened little boy, and you live in the hearts of my generation.  

Packed Off

 Because he was a jock, some people might have thought Neil Brown was a bit dim, but before college, he was the best word-smith I knew, and in the disjointed band of misfits we called a high school, that made him a leader.  He found or created a phrase we ended up using a lot: Packed Off.  It meant getting so injured that you couldn't continue in the athletic event you were in and had to be taken off the field.  Packed Off.  

It only happened to me once.  I didn't know it yet, but this would be the last game I played at St. Andrews.  My relationship with the headmaster was bad and getting worse, and soon I'd be off to other adventures away from the class I'd been with since second grade.

It was cold.  A late fall rain made our field an ugly mud pit for the last game of the season.  Coach Clark developed a play just for me.  Pulling guards were pretty standard in those days, but I was a tackle.   I couldn't maintain it, but for short distances, I could develop fairly good speeds, and with my size and leg muscle, his thought was I could pull around the end and build up enough momentum to take out pretty much any defender in our way.  Nobody expected a tackle to pull around the end, plowing the field before a runner.  We'd tried it a few times, and against some defensive formations, it was devastating.  We were behind and needed to put points on the board badly.  It was my time.

Ours was a natural grass field, the cold and the rain made the sod something of a paste.  Down!  Set!  Hike! I pulled out of my position, turned toward the end, and planted my foot to turn back into their defensive end...  My foot was supposed to pivot, and I would direct that considerable momentum and bulk into their defensive end, but my foot stuck in the mud.  I could feel the pop.  I connected with my man, but without much power.  We made a few yards, but not enough.  Second down.

I knew I was in trouble.  I also knew this was our last game, and I and every kid and coach, and parent I knew wanted to end the season with a win.  Third down.  For me, it was a regular play.  My job was to stay in my position and move my defensive counterpart toward the end enough to create a hole for our man to go through.  Four yards and a cloud of dust, Coach Clark called it, but we needed six.  

I was in considerable pain and starting to limp.  Down! Set! Hike!  I connected with my man and pushed for all I could.  Three yards.  Not enough.  Fourth down.  Special teams, my job was to protect the punter and then make it downfield as fast as I could to block the way of the receiver.  I blocked, I started to run and collapsed.  The pain was intense, and my right leg could no longer support me.  I was packed off.  Coach Myers (now Doctor Myers) put my arm around his shoulder and crutched me off the field.

On the sidelines, my pants wouldn't pull over my knee, so he cut them.  Coach Myers had his eyes set on medical school and knew more about anatomy than anyone I knew.  My knee was the size of a cantaloupe and turning purple on one side.  

"I can go back in!"

"You can't go back in."

We were losing.  It was our last game for the year.  We needed this game to have a winning season.

"I can go back in!"  I stood up.  I wouldn't be denied.  Michael Mitchell hid my helmet.  I wasn't going back in.

Playing hurt is part of the American Male credo.  Sylvester Stalone literally made a career making movies about guys who played hurt.  "Are you a pussy?" "Get back in there!"  If you're a man, you feel it, even if nobody says it.  We're forged into believing we are disposable men, I suppose, in case we're ever needed in a war.  Once you get to be around thirty, you can start living for yourself without this burden of playing hurt hanging over your head.  It takes a toll too.  Every boy I know has scars on his face, and seventy percent of them have profoundly damaged knees.  I don't know anybody who had any of these micro-brain injuries you hear about that come from getting your bell rung too many times, but I don't know anyone who was tested, either.

I never had sons, so I never got to put it in practice, but I decided if I did, we'd have a talk about sports and steroids and playing hurt and not making the mistakes dad made.  For young men and boys, the message is pretty clear: your life, your health, and your well-being aren't as important as the game.  Know your place.  Whatever cultural forces make young men believe being disposable is honorable are wrong and possibly evil.   I got packed off.  Mike Mitchell hid my helmet, so I couldn't go back in.  I'm glad he did.

The Day My Mother Lied To Me

 Sometimes in my youth, a mother's desire to shield her child from the unpleasant truths of our condition meant that sometimes I had to be lied to.

By the summer I turned ten, I taught myself to operate our eight-millimeter film projector and often would, with and without permission.   Being the third of four very active children and far too shy to do anything performative worth filming, I wasn't in very many of these films, but I loved them nevertheless. 

That this unlikely-looking machine could turn thin strips of plastic into a show, tantamount to a time machine, was nothing less than magic to me.   I would eventually learn that some years my father sold more Bell & Howell film projectors than Sears and Robuck.  

One reel I particularly enjoyed showed my brother Jimmy when he was five or six, playing in the wading pool at Riverside Park with my cousin Libby.  They looked to be having such fun, and the pool was packed.  I recognized the structure.  That's where we sat and had bag lunch in the summer when I was in Y-Guys.  Riverside Park was a great place for a summer day camp because it offered the occasional visit to Dead-Mans Gulch off near the nature trail.  

By the time I knew and used the wading pool, there was no water in it, and the paint was faded and peeling off.  It seemed a relic of some bygone civilization.  But here in this film, just a few years before, it was filled with water and happy kids.  What happened?

"That looks like fun.  Why don't they put water in the pool anymore?" I asked.

"It leaked."  My mother said.  

That was a lie.  It was a lie to cover up a truth about living in Mississippi that she believed I wasn't ready for yet.  There would come a time when she would tell me the truth about this and many other things, but that summer, she hoped to let me hold on to my innocence a little longer.

In truth, Riverside Park and every other city-owned pool were closed because Jackson lost a court case forcing them to integrate the parks and pools, and rather than dealing with white and black kids swimming together, the city closed them all, no matter how much money they invested in building them.

I was always very interested in this part of our history.  Jackson abandoned several really nice facilities to spite the courts trying to force us to integrate.  The biggest were Livingston Lake across from the Jackson Zoo and Lake Hico, which rested on the sixteenth section land and served to cool the production facility for Mississippi Power and Light.  

I asked a man involved in the Lake Hico decision about it once.  "My job was to provide electrical power to the people of Mississippi and deliver a dividend to my shareholders, not worry about whether or not some negras wanted to go swimming."  He told me.  That seemed harsh, but not wanting to deal with "the troubles" became a common refrain in Jackson.

Whatever reason Hico was initially closed, it remained closed to leisure activities because MP&L had no desire to deal with the insurance and liability of keeping it open.  It cooled the water used to operate their natural gas-powered electric dynamos, and that was that.  

In Mississippi, a film-strip time machine sometimes opened doors and initiated discussions nobody wanted to have.

The Sharks Are Laughing

 Mississippi floats like a lifeboat on a vast and friendless ocean.  Because it's Mississippi, we divide ourselves into halves, despite having no place where we may retreat in this ancient and poorly equipped craft.  Because it's Mississippi, one half is mostly pink, and one half is mostly brown.

Because we believe the other side is untrustworthy and insane, we hoard what few crackers and potable water we have, not trusting the other to share in them fairly.  Occasionally one side will steal crackers from the other and build a volleyball stadium.  (Sorry, I had to bring it up.)

Both sides know real help isn't coming, although we beg passing liners for more crackers and water.  "Salvation is to the North," one side says and paddles like mad in that direction.  "Our only hope is the South," the other side believes and devotes all hands toward pushing us that way.  

There actually is an island to the East, but nobody wants to go there, and nobody will tell me why.  I've spent years in the north side of the boat, years in the south side, and more than a few years in the middle, waiting for the boat to sink.  Occasionally, a wise soul will jump over the side and swim for it.  They often are never seen again.  Sometimes they'll send us postcards telling us they survived and how great their island is.  Rarely do they ever send us more crackers and water.  Thanks, Oprah.

So, here we sit.  Despite considerable effort on both sides, our boat hasn't moved in years.  Our population of deserters increases, including the next generation of my generation.  I love them, and I miss them, but I can't blame them.  Meanwhile, the sharks play cards and wait patiently below us, knowing they'll eat soon enough.