Month: January 2025

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Jumping Chicken

The Warehouse in Oxford offered frog legs and the kitchen made damn sure we had them prepped, because if someone came in for frog legs, by God, they wanted frog legs, they’d drove all the way from Pontotoc, and raised Cain if we didn’t have any.

The legs came to us individually wrapped and block frozen from—of all places—Pakistan (actually, East Pakistan, aka Bangladesh). This might seem puzzling because we do have a frog season in Mississippi, but the Warehouse operated in the 1980s, a considerable about of time before all this half-harted emphasis on local sourcing.

Though the frogs were from Asia, they were undoubtedly American bullfrogs, the frog of choice for their large, meaty hind legs. If you’re going to fry them–you’re on your own any other way–soak overnight in buttermilk.

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A Note on Cornbread

My Choctaw ancestors–and other peoples across the Americas–made bread from maize long my other forbears were run out of the British Isles for debt and insurrection.

Choctaws made what is called shuck bread (bunaha) by mixing water and cornmeal into a stiff paste, forming the paste into balls, wrapping them in cooked corn shucks and boiling them for about an hour. They stored well and were reheated by boiling before serving. European expatriates made a similar bread by mixing meal, water, salt and lard into a batter and cooking it on a flat metal surface like a pancake. These are called hoecakes or dogbread. Much later came what we know as cornbread.

(Or at least what I know it as.)

When it comes to cornbread, I labored long under the impression that I was a confirmed orthodox. Yellow corn meal? A quarter cup of sugar? Nuh-uh, no way. That’s not cornbread, that’s corncake. A recipe using yellow meal, sugar and even (horror of horrors) butter just has Yankee written all over it. A Michigan-born hostess once served me such bread, and I’m sorry to say I pointed out what a culinary abomination it was. She set me in my place by being quite gracious about my gaffe, which made her a lady, and after dinner her husband offered to punch me in the nose, which made him a gentleman. (We still exchange Christmas cards.)

I once ran up on a California recipe for cornbread using vanilla flavoring that confirmed a whole slew of suspicions I’d long harbored about the frivolity if not to say instability of the West Coast mentality. I’ve also come across recipes with dill, cheddar cheese, yogurt, skim milk, blue corn meal, creamed corn, and even (I swear to God) tofu. What passes under the name of Mexican cornbread is subject to all manner of atrocities, the most bizarre of which I’ve found includes beef jerky and cactus flowers.

As a confirmed orthodox, I thought I was sitting on the front pew with my recipe, which has only white meal, just a little flour, eggs, buttermilk, salt and baking powders. But I found out that there are those who would cry, “Backslider!” at the thought of using bleached meal or even eggs. I just had never considered making cornbread without eggs, then I found that among the recipes you see printed on most meal packages you see this is called “egg bread,” and my faith began to falter. These no-egg purists, I began to believe, were true cornbread devotees who enjoyed a more chaste form of elemental Southern sustenance. I felt horribly decadent, which was not such a new sensation for me, but a cornbread recipe certainly was a novel indicator of my moral turpitude (more official records exist).

I got over it. After all, I had learned how to make cornbread at my mother’s knee, and she was a queen among cooks: “Honi soit qui mal y pense”, you wretched peasants.

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Old Airmount

The following excerpt comes from Elmo Howell’s wonderful Mississippi Back Roads (Langford: 1998). This old church deserved a far better fate.

In the beginning, all Baptists were Primitive Baptists. Following the Reformation, the Anabaptists, along with Calvinists, Waldensians, Mennonites and other radical groups, departed from Church and State to live a holy life according to the Gospels. Today most Baptists in the South belong to the giant Southern Baptist Convention, but the small scattered congregations in the hill country who still have no Sunday School, no foreign missions, no paid clergy, and who still wash each other’s feet in solemn ceremony—in keeping with Christ’s example and an ancient Maundy Thursday rite—are the true descendants of the original Baptists. They are the Primitives, the Hardshells.

Baptist worship began in Mississippi in the 1780’s when Elder Richard Curtis came out from South Carolina and settled with a small flock on Cole’s Creek above Natchez. Spain ruled the country, Roman Catholicism was the state church, but for awhile all went well with Protestants in private worship. Then word got out that Curtis was performing marriage ceremonies, taking in converts, and even talking about building a church. In a government crackdown, five or more persons found together in a religious capacity were subject to arrest. He ignored the warning—but escaped, it is said, through the offices of a half-Indian convert, Aunt Chloe Holt, who roused him in the night with a horse and saddle and provisions for his journey. At the end of Spanish rule, Curtis returned to Mississippi and spent the rest of his life with the Baptists in Adams County.

In the half century following this rude beginning in Mississippi, a great revolution swept over Baptists everywhere, the “Fuller Heresy,” as the Primitives called it, or the advent of the “missionaries” with their charge to evangelize the world. Baptists began with a stern predestinarianism, which among “Southern Baptists,” organized in the 1840’s, gave way to prevalence of grace and open communion. The old remnant held on to “total depravity” and man’s incapacity to restore himself to favor with God. They rejoiced in Election, God’s choosing “whom He would,” and left it to the mystery of love that some are saved, some lost. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you.” This heady doctrine provoked an extraordinary reaction in both life and literature in England in the 17th century. “O Eternity! Eternity!” cries John Bunyan’s Man in the Iron Cage. “How shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with in Eternity!” Men lived on the edge, some went mad—while others lived gloriously and preached like Bunyan. The Primitive Baptists today are a fragmented part of this experience.

Loosascoona Primitive Baptist Church at old Airmount east of Coffeeville is a remarkable survivor, in both church organization (still with regular services) and in an old building perhaps a century and a half old. No one knows when it was built. In 1839, the Yalobusha Baptist Association in central Mississippi split in two in the controversy between old and new. Five churches broke away to form the Loosascoona Primitive Baptist Association. “I am not of you,” one elder spoke out at the meeting, “and that it may be manifest that I am not of you, I now go out of you.” And so it was in Yalobusha County, as throughout the state, that the old Baptists withdrew to their hills and hollows, a small but sturdy remnant to carry on in their own way.

The church organization at Airmount lasted for a century, but with membership down to only four families in 1938, services were discontinued. The doors were closed, the house was given a new tin roof, left to itself and forgotten. Undergrowth moved into the clearing. Then in 1965, one surviving member had a dream—he dreamt of going to church again in the woods with his father. Under the leadership of William Tyler “Dub” Wortham and Guy Shaw of Coffeeville, Loosasaoona was brought back to life. The Murphree family, old settlers of the county, joined in. (David Murphree who died in 1838—Yalobusha County’s only Revolutionary War soldier and grandfather of Dennis Murphree, Governor of Mississippi in 1927—is buried beside the church.) Thanks to the tin roof, the old structure was still sound. The road was cleared, a tree removed from the church door, and a pastor called. Today Loosascoona has a regular service on first Sunday afternoons and an annual homecoming and Old Harp singing on the fourth Sunday in September.

The Primitives, overlooked in the bustle of “new Baptist”. brothers, are an instance of survival and retention of character through centuries of change. In simplicity of life and in the old songs and sparse dignity of ritual, they approach the Mediaeval and mystical. “Godliness is a matter that cannot be understood by the carnal mind,” says church historian Benjamin Griffin of Holmes County. “It is a mystery, a great mystery-impossible to communicate except to those whose hearts have been circumcised, ears unstopt, and eyes opened by the power of the living God.”

John Bunyan, a 17th century Baptist, conceived of man’s life as a pilgrimage. “I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of,” says Mr. Standfast at the end of his journey, “and wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot too.”

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Jackson: A Neighborhood

In addition to their numerous charitable endeavors, the Junior League of Jackson has issued two quite remarkable publications. The first, in 1978, was their landmark Southern Sideboards, a truly luminous work that has since gone through fifteen printings, five of those Southern Living Hall of Fame editions. The recipes in Southern Sideboards altogether comprise nothing less than an exhaustive tutorial for home cooks in the Deep South, and if that weren’t enough also includes a heart-felt introduction by Wyatt Cooper.

Their second, more important work is Jackson Landmarks (1982) dedicated to the Manship House, one of Jackson’s most beloved architectural treasures. Jackson Landmarks is important not only for the wealth of detail and historical data, but also because Jackson’s urban landscape has changed significantly in the 35 years since its publication, and an estimated 25-30% of these historic structures have disappeared.

Jackson Landmarks also includes an essay (“The House”) by Jackson native Charlotte Capers  whose name has become synonymous with historic preservation across the state, as well as this one, “Jackson: A Neighborhood” by another Jackson native, Eudora Welty, one of America’s grand dames of belles lettres.

Welty’s essay is a charming memoir of a fragile time long past when little boys and girls pulled steamboats made of shoe boxes and tissue paper illuminated by stubby candles down sidewalks in the lightening-bug dusk, thrilled to cliff-hangers on silver screens in spacious movie theaters and endured lectures on distant lands and dramatic duets from another time on rough plank seats under a dusty Chautauqua canvas out West Capitol.

Jackson: A Neighborhood

It seems, looking back, that everything that went on in Jackson was done in the unit of the family. When Livingston Lake opened, it was the family that responded. They went out in the family car every morning, and took a dip before breakfast. In that first onrush of enthusiasm, you rode out from home in the rising sun, already in your bathing suit and rubber cap decorated with rubber butterflies, singing “Margie” all the way (that was the summer the lake opened) to learn to swim the breast stroke in a harness of water wings. As they went methodically splashing around you, their heads rising out of that warm brown water, it was neighborly; you saw all the same people every morning, much as you do at the supermarket now.

When you and I look back at Jackson, doesn’t it seem that everyday life then easily gravitated to the personal level? When the postman arrived with the mail (twice a day) at your door, he blew a whistle. It seems to me that the mail itself was all composed of letters. Could it even be true tht junk mail had not then been invented? We children, of course, would have loved it, but I remember nothing coming that would qualify except what we sent off for ourselves—orders for signet rings in return for wads and wads of Octagon Soap coupons.

The scale of life was personal and manageable—manageable for children. There were a lot of three-digit telephone numbers. You gave your number to Central, and Central was a person—a lady, who said “Number, please,” and “Sorry the lion is busy.” If you wondered what time it was, a normal thing was to use the phone and ask Central to give you the Fire Department. Nobody in the world had an answering service: you got them; not a recording, a fireman. Their line was doubtless often busy with people curious to know the time, but never mind: if you had a fire, there were fire alarm boxes fixed to the light poles on convenient street corners, little red iron boxes with glad doors. Any alarm would bring the whole fire department out on the street. This included, in my earliest memories, a wagon called “the steamer.” There was a clanging bell mounted on the front and a kind of brass boiler filled the back, with white stream rolling out at the top. It was always a little late, behind the hook-and-ladder truck and che Chief; but the steamer alone was pulled by a pair of matching white horses, out from under whose calloping hooves live sparks flew. S it thundered up the street, it was something glorious, worth waiting for and running after.

When you think of your childhood, there are many people who seem to have gone by in a parade: the old familiars. Many Jackson familiars were seasonal; and they were punctual. The blackberry lady and the watermelon man, the scissors grinder, the monkey man whose organ you could hear coming from a block away, would all appear at their appointed time. The sassafras man at his appointed time (the first sign of spring) would take his place on the steps of the downtown Post Office, decorated like a general, belted and sashed and hung about with cartridges of orange sassafras root he’s cut in the woods and tied on. They were to make tea with to purify your blood, and quite cheap at the price, something like a nickel a bunch. And when winter blew in, out came the hot tamale man with his wheeled stand and its stove to keep the tamales steaming hot in their cornshucks while he did business at the intersection of Hamilton and North West.

On a day when my mother had taken me to the Emporium where Mr. Charlie Pierce was making some suggestions for a party dress for me, he suddenly said, “My dear Mrs. Welty—the gypsies,” and without further warning, the flower spray and sash—he’d been showing us how they would go—were swept out of sight and beneath the counter. And there the Gypsies ambled, down the aisle. You could count on Gypsies in Jackson, coming with the first hint of fall. Gypsies were seasonal too, like the locusts and katy-dids.

Entertainment was easy to come by. First of all there were the movies. Setting out in the early summer afternoons on foot, by way of Smith Park to Capitol Street and down it, passing the Pythian Castle with its hot stone breath, through the one spot of shade beneath Mrs. Black’s awning, crossing Town Creek—then visible and uncontained—we went carrying parasols over out heads and little crocheted bags over our wrists containing the ten or fifteen cents for the ticket (with a nickel or dime further for McIntyre’s Istrione. At the Majestic we could sit in a box—always empty, because airless as a bureau drawer; at the Istrione, which was said to occupy the site of an old livery stable, we might see Alice Brady in “Drums of Jeopardy” and at the same time have a rat run over our feet. As far as I recall, there was no movie we were not allowed to see until we got old enough not to see “The Shiek”.

At a time when the Century was still a live theatre, a third movie house came along on Capitol Street. This was an open air theatre which opened after dark, on the Town Creek bottom. The creek itself was straddled by an enormous billboard, which in my mind’s eye I will always see pasted with an ad for a coming attraction with Annette Kellerman. It portrayed Annette in a long white drapery, standing on the edge of a cliff, blindfolded. Her arms were straight out in front of her, and one toe already pointed over the abyss. At my urgent pleas, our family attended. And when we did, Annette never went anywhere near a cliff, and made not a single appearance blindfolded, or even in draperies. She just kept on her usual bathing suit, and if there ever was anything after her, she outswam it. I attributed the early folding of the Open Air Picture Show to this gyp, but was laid officially to the heavy attendance of mosquitoes at all performances.

But once a year, and another part of summer, live entertainment came with the Redpath Chautauqua. The tent went up on a vacant lot somewhere near the West Capitol Street Methodist Church. My father always took tickets for the full week’s performances. This meant we could ride on the street car at night, which only began the excitement; holding on to wicker seats by open windows and smelling the scorching rails as we made what seemed a sizzling speed through the calm of nighttime Jackson. “Where Will YOU Spend Eternity?” was even then a landmark sign looking down from under a light bulb onto the I.C. Station, from just beyond Mr. Tripp’s Furniture Store.

Within the Chautauqua tent: the smells of newest sawdust and oldest canvas, plank benches down front for the children to sit together on, stage with green rep curtains fastened together in front, while you wanted with your heart in your throat for them to be rattled back. Until then you could only keep reading over and over the hopeful sign that hung on a tent pole, “Kimball Piano Used.”

The show might be an educational lecture on a distant part of the world, or a concert by a musical trio (generally all ladies), or the performance of a play such as “Turn to the Right” or, more blessedly, “The Bat.”

The on the final night, a play was performed one year with a cast of local children; we were encouraged to try out. I did, for a role that where all you did in try-outs was sit with your ankles crossed in a folding chair in the middle of the stage with all the others around you and singing to you. It didn’t appear that there were even any lines to speak. Another girl, with naturally curly hair, beat me to the part. Imagine my surprise when, on the night, this character turned out to be Joan of Arc and what she was doing at center stage was being burned at the stake, while the rest sang to her (this was during World War I): “Joan of Arc! Joan of Arc! May your spirit guide us through! Allons, enfants de la patrie! Joan of Arc! We’re for you!” (I’d had a close call.)

I feel we were highly entertained as children, and quite well versed in ways of entertaining ourselves. Our play was unscheduled, unorganized and incessant—in our backyards, our friends’ backyards, in the public parks, and especially in summertime, we ran free. (Our mothers, however knew right where we were.) At the same time, it seems to me, we read all day. We might read all day in a tree.

Summer nights, we “played out”. We made “choo-choo boats—steamboats—out of shoeboxes with windows in the shapes of the moon and stars cut out of the sides and tissue-paper pasted over, and a candle inside lighted to show through, and at first-dark, down the river of sidewalk, pulling our shining boats on a string, we met other boats, and passes each other.

“Choo-choo.”
“Choo-choo.”

Summer days we went to spend all day with each other. You might play paper dolls. You went carrying all you had in a bulging Bellas-Hess catalogue in which the dolls, families and families of them, and their outfits were filed flat between the pages. With paperdolls and your friend’s paperdolls, the thing to be desired was number. The combined batteries of your paperdolls and your friends paperdolls spent the day visiting and dressing for each other. They acted out exciting scenes we thought up. Though a certain number of the fathers of these families had nothing to wear but long underwear, or if clothed at all were obliged to carry a second pair of pants over their arms (they all came out of the mail order catalogues), this didn’t cloud our day.

A child quite naturally thinks his own world—his house, his street, his town—is going to stay forever the way it is, in the same way that he thinks his own family will always be where he sees them now, and exactly the same. We of my day may have kept an unusually strong and reassuring conception of Jackson; for most of our childhood, the look of Jackson did indeed remain essentially the same. Buildings seldom came down, streets didn’t get widened—or rezoned. Not only the streets and houses and “downtown” kept being just what they were supposed to be. Trees too seemed permanent. Trees you were growing up with remained where they were and you knew them in all their seasons. They just got bigger, still lining the same streets where you walked. In those days, the sidewalks yielded to the trees and went around them. The big tree in front of the Carnegie Library at Mississippi and Congress took over the prime parking place in the street itself, and the curb ran out in a big half-moon to take care of the roots. Downtown traffic went around it. The tree at the Central Fire Station was given similar respect in Pearl Street until we, ourselves, at our age, let it be cut down.

I believe the Jackson of my day was really scaled for children. And then, in its very confinement to small and intimate size, it suggested the largeness of the surrounding world—you could see Jackson end and the country begin. This child’s imagination could take this in with the use of his won eyes. The family car ride showed it to him—our relationship with the surrounding world. When it was night, there was another sense of greatness. This lay in our view of the night sky. Jackson’s night sky, then, was not a blushing reflection of a neon city, but its own clear black—the perfect opposite, as it ought to be, from day. You could live anywhere in town and keep up with the stars. A child ordinarily could point out the constellations and name them, because they shone. And closer to hand, you could get the effect of lightening-bugs, too—flashing from backyard to backyard, street to street, field to field along country roads, then so near home.

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Howard Bahr: Three Poems

Novelist, scholar, humanitarian and gentleman, Howard Bahr also has a poet’s hand and ear, eye and heart.

For A Girl I Know, That She Might Not Grieve

When I am dead,
you must not think me dead,
but gone ahead on a two-lane desert blacktop
road, doing eighty with the top down
in a cream-colored ’40 Ford coupe
stroked and bored in Tucumcari.

Route 66 is a blue arrow to the mountains,
and the desert no dead place, but strewn
with flowers only Indians have the names to;
hawks aloft, and lizards legging it
over the hot sand, bellies raised; roadrunners
racing the hopped-up Ford through the Creosote
brush; shrikes perched on the telephone lines; and
an SP freight train running fast westbound–
a flat plume of smoke, all signals green.

Then mountains passed, the western slope kissed
with morning shadow, the fir trees dusted with snow.
The pastel desert towns lay behind me now,
and below a green valley, orange groves,
the distant glittering sea.

Now, after dark, in a bungalow in Elysian Park,
I labor as of old, trying to find the words to tell
of why we do the things we do: why we love;
why we strive in vain; why we let the rain beguile our hearts
with longing and desire.
And here, from time to time, I rise, go to the window,
pull the curtains by and raise the blinds,
and gaze upon the palms and Oleander
and the haze around the moon.
All is well. My heart’s alive.
I watch for your twin headlights in the drive.

 

Flamingo Arms

In apartments stuffed of furniture no one wants,
where children grown and gone
smile down from every horizontal place,
the old ones listen for the mail.

And when at last the postman brings the mail around,
he creaks the boxes open, creaks them shut again.

The old ones peer into the hall, then shuffle in their slippers
to the boxes on the wall: church bulletins, bills,
catalogs from a world no longer theirs.

But how is Judith faring in the city?
And Donny on the oil rig in the Gulf–
is he safe? Did he marry the girl from Lafayette?
What of young Alyssa at her college in the North?

Those lives are silent.

In the catalogs: plush counterpanes, support hose,
baths to sooth the feet, and means
to keep the patio insect-free.

The water bill is high this month.
Behind their curtains, the old ones open checkbooks,
calculate, despair.

Next day, the mail comes round again.

 

A Parable for My Students

Last night, my neighbor Pitts
Set out a Havahart for cats
That fell his birds. No luck.
Instead, today by early light,
I kenned a possum caught.

Unkempt he was, and fat, and pacing
To and fro. He rose to press his paws
Against the wire, then paced again: a turn,
And turn, and rise, and turn, and rise,
And turn, and rise to naught.

A ghostly, wedge-faced possum,
Rat du Bois, no good in stir to anyone
Except himself perhaps, or Johnny Cross
Who fattens one each year to bake
With sweet potatoes–God forbid the thought!

Anon, I rambled out and crossed
The dewy grass, took hold the door
And lifted it, and propped it with a stick.
“Now, scram,” said I. But, no, he hunkered down,
And bared his yellow teeth, and curled his tail
Just as his mama taught.

Thus he remained, like unto Death,
A mockery of Life, when all the while
The door stood open, beckoning him quit
The bars, and flee, and brave the morning
As a creature ought.

In early afternoon, old Pitts came out
And puzzled at his prize, and scratched his head,
And gazed suspicious at the stick. He shrugged at last
And took his snub-nosed .22 in hand:
Pop! Pop! it said, and so the possum bought.

Take heed, my Little Ones: the gate is raised;
Go hence and seek the morning. God be praised!

–Howard Bahr

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Sea Lord Faulkner: A Nautical Memory by Howard Duvall

If memory serves me correctly, the expedition to locate and raise Mr. Faulkner’s sailboat took place in the spring of 1953. For some reason Mr. Bill had left the boat at anchor at Cole’s Camp on the Sardis Reservoir during the winter months; and in the early spring, it was discovered to have drifted out into the cove and sunk in about eighteen feet of water. The recovery of the boat would not have presented any great problem had Mr. Faulkner called Memphis for a professional diver and rig; however, this would have been too conventional and commercial for his adventuresome mind. Therefore, he chose to make use of local talent, which I’m sure he felt would provide for a much more interesting day on Sardis Lake.

On the appointed morning Billy Ross Brown, a neighbor and close friend of the Faulkners, and I reported for salvage duty at Mr. Bill’s home. Also along was the Browns’ houseboy, Isom Cillum, who would act as all-round handyman for the project, as we were sure that we were in for some heavy work ahead. Upon arriving, we were surprised to find that a new member had been added to the party. His name was V. P. Ferguson; he was a student at Ole Miss, and I think it would be safe to say the “Veep,” as he was locally known, was something of a character. Billy Ross and I were quite familiar with the kimono-wearing, Koran-reading orchestra leader from the University, but we were admittedly quite surprised to see him here primed for the occasion. We were later to learn that V. P., upon hearing of the sinking of the sailboat, had called Mr. Faulkner and offered his services in recovering it. He explained to Mr. Bill that he was preparing for a summer excursion to the Caribbean to dive for black pearls, and that the Sardis outing would be good experience. I’m sure Mr. Bill discounted much of this story, but I’m also sure that he saw possibilities for an interesting day on the lake, and so invited him along. (Whoever says Faulkner had no sense of humor should have been along that day.)

The chief preparation for the outing seemed to have been the securing of enough food to satisfy the appetites of the would be salvage crew. Miss Estelle was in charge of this department and she had already sent Norfleet, the Faulkners’ Negro houseboy, out into the side yard with a large picnic basket of food. With the picnic basket safely secured in the Faulkner family station wagon, the five of us set forth to the Sardis Dam to begin salvage operations, To look over the crew-a Nobel Prize-winning author, two young college friends, a would-be pearl diver, and the faithful Negro houseboy—one could wonder about the prospects for the success of the mission. The route carried us through the University campus out Highway 6 West some eighteen miles, and then about seven miles up a gravel road to Sardis Dam. Our plan was to board the houseboat anchored at the dam and then to travel up the reservoir about five miles to Cole’s Camp, where the sailboat, as has been previously mentioned, lay some eighteen feet below the surface.

I think it would be well to pause here to say a few words about the houseboat which would be our base of operations for the day. Contrary to the general principle of shipbuilding (or in this case, boatbuilding), this vessel was built in the side yard of Colonel Hugh Evans of Oxford, many miles from any body of water. Being a neighbor and friend of Colonel Evans, Mr. Bill became inter ested in the boat and soon was a full-time partner in its construction. Two other families were involved in this venture, namely the Ross Browns and the Ashford Littles. After the completion of the boat came the problem of getting the rather large craft through the narrow streets of Oxford and out the main highway to Sardis Lake without tying up traffic for hours. It was decided to hire a professional mover from Memphis to undertake the task, and at the appointed time the boat was transferred by night to the lake. That morning the owners, their families and interested friends gathered at Sardis to watch her slide down the ways, and down she went, only to bob like a cork on a fishing line. It was quite evident that the boat was riding much too high in the water. The propeller screw did not reach the proper depth. Mr. Bill and his friends put their heads together and the solution was soon reached: put concrete in the bottom of the boat. Concrete was then placed in the hold, and the Minmagary set forth on her maiden voyage to reign as queen of the Sardis Reservoir for many years.

Mr. Bill was indeed master of his ship as we pulled out of the inlet onto the main body of water. After estimating the time of arrival at about an hour, and with Mr. Bill at the wheel, Billy Ross and I settled back in the deck chairs to enjoy the spring morning, I think we were doubly enjoying it because we were cutting classes at the University in order to make the trip. I know, too, that Mr. Bill was relaxed in his khaki pants and military-style khaki shirt, sitting at the wheel and smoking his favorite briar. In sailing and boating on Sardis, he seemed to find the peace and privacy that was more and more of a struggle to obtain after receiving the Nobel Prize.

V. P., always the nervous type, soon tired of watching the shore line go by and asked Mr. Bill if he could take over the wheel. Offering no objection, Mr. Bill let him have it and then joined us on the back deck to relax and discuss the problems of getting to the sailboat. Presently we were interrupted by the clanging of the deck bell and sharp commands being issued by the “Veep” sitting hard by the wheel.

“Full steam ahead; we are approaching the salvage area. We must have more steam,” he shouted into an imaginary tube that led to an equally imaginary engine room. The only person available to heed his commands was Isom, our houseboy turned cabin boy for the occasion, and he was thoroughly mystified by the whole proceeding. I’m quite certain that Isom thought Mr. Ferguson was “tetched in the head,” for he came back to me and said, “Mr. Howard, you know we don’t have no engine room down there, only that 75 marine engine and there sho ain’t nobody down there to hear him.”

It seems that V. P. had just finished some popular novel of the day concerning the rescue of a British submarine down in the South China Sea with all hands aboard, and through his imagination we were the crew pushing full steam ahead to make the res. cue. I believe Mr. Bill thoroughly enjoyed the fantasies of the “Veep” and he was soon resting again in his deck chair, probably assuring himself that he had made the right decision in bringing along Mr. Ferguson.

As we approached the entrance to the cove that led to Cole’s Camp, Mr. Bill took over the wheel again and steered us into position near the sunken boat. There was no real problem in finding the boat because of a safety line that was still attached from the sunken hull to a tree on shore. The plan of action was for us to take down a steel cable attached to a winch on the bow of the houseboat and hook it through an iron ring in the bow of the sail boat. After securing the hook, the idea was to crank the winch, thus pulling the boat to the surface. When this was accomplished, Mr. Bill planned to move the houseboat with the sailboat in tow to a nearby boat ramp, where we could wade in to maneuver the sailboat onto a boat trailer which would be backed into the water, The station wagon would be used to pull boat and trailer out and to Mr. Bill’s backyard drydock for repairs and overhaul.

All of this seemed relatively simple except for the fact that V. P. began complicating things from the start. For example, after his first dive he came up on deck, bowed in true Arabian Night style before Mr. Bill and exclaimed, “Oh, Captain Ahab, there is an octopus down below guarding the boat. Do you happen to have a machete aboard that might afford me some protection?”

Much to our surprise, Mr. Bill, with his usual composure, dis appeared below deck, came up with a machete and gave it to Ferguson, who immediately dived over the side with the weapon and disappeared below the surface while Isom stood by in wide-eyed wonder.

Just before noon, the hook was finally secured to the sailboat, but “Captain Ahab” decided to wait until after lunch to bring it to the surface. Isom broke out the picnic basket and began serving the food, keeping one eye, I’m sure, over the side for any sign of the octopus. Snakes were no problem for Isom, but an octopus was something else!

About halfway through lunch we heard the sound of someone on the other side of the lake trying to get our attention, and before any of us could answer, V. P. jumped upon the top deck and began wigwagging signals with a couple of towels. Before anyone knew what was going on, we observed an appreciable number of slightly disreputable looking fellows approaching, and within a short time the houseboat was boarded by what turned out to be the entire membership of V. P.’s dance band. It seems that V. P. had made slight mention of the expedition to his colleagues, and had in fact invited them to join him for lunch. They made short work of the contents of the picnic basket, and then they spread out all over the boat for an afternoon of sunbathing. I must say, at this point, that for a man who enjoyed his privacy, Mr. Bill seemed to take the whole affair in a very calm and understanding manner. The taciturn Nobel Prize-winner, in quiet and sly fashion, maintained his aplomb while V. P. all but took command of the situation.

The rest of the afternoon went by somewhat uneventfully with only the routine of securing the sailboat to the side of the houseboat and loading it on the trailer as described earlier. At dusk the sailboat was placed on the trailer and towed to its drydock in Faulkner’s backyard.

Some several days later Mr. Faulkner invited the group down to his house for a lawn supper, and I remember that the highlight of the evening was Mr. Bill’s dancing the soft shoe with Paul Pittman, one of the Ole Miss students.

William Faulkner spent many hours of sheer pleasure in the little sailboat that went to the bottom off Cole’s Landing and that was raised to sail again by Faulkner and a group of college students on that happy and carefree day. He usually referred to it as “the sloop.”

One afternoon while he, Miss Estelle, Hunter Little, and I were cruising, dark clouds appeared in the northwest and it was soon obvious that a squall was imminent. Fishermen, we observed, were scurrying shoreward. Faulkner calmly dismissed the idea of a squall and was maneuvering the sloop down the lake when a gust hit the craft and almost upset it. Life preservers were passed around. Faulkner declined his. Another gust took his hat, and Hunter went overboard to retrieve it and was almost drowned. After he was pulled aboard and matters were as much in hand as circumstances allowed, Faulkner called to me, “Howard, hand me a preserver. I am getting a bit chilly.”

In looking back over the years to the event just related, it becomes more apparent that the people who knew Faulkner best, outside of his own family, were the young people who grew up around the Faulkner home, as children playing with Jill, his daughter, later dancing and eating at her parties, and sharing many carefree moments with the man we all knew as Mr. Bill.

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The Free State of Calhoun

The following article, written by Col. M.D.L. Stephens, appeared in Calhoun Monitor in 1900, was reprinted June 18, 1931 and on in July 6, 1972 The Monitor-Herald. It later appeared in the newsletter of the Calhoun County Historical Society MS, First Quarter, 2000. This colorful account of a traveling circus touring north central Mississippi at the turn of the last century gives you a stiff dose of Colonel Stevens’  wry humor.

In 1856, Old Dan Rice, the celebrated clown and circus showman, made a venture through Calhoun County, striking Benela first, next day at Pittsboro and thence over to Coffeeville. Being a man of extraordinary abilities and sagacious comprehension by nature as well as the experience of extensive travel, it took him no time to discover the prominent characteristics of the denizens of that inland county.

Really he did not expect to find so far out in the interior a class of people so intelligent and independent. Calhoun’s citizenship made no pretensions in those days at style rather on the grotesque order. Such a combination, Old Dan, in all of his travels, had never struck before. Evidently their mark made its impression upon his mind as the independent sovereignty he had ever come across in all of his travels, so much so that at his next performance in Coffeeville the next day, he got off some laughable jokes at their expense, which were heartily enjoyed and applauded by her sister county-men attending the circus that day.

The first one the writer remembers was by Old Dan on his little trick mule in the grand entry, which always captivates the audience into an enchanted trance. I may say as they emerge from the dressing tent, indeed there is a charm about the “Grand Entry” of a circus; irresistible, even with the most stable-minded—the beautiful horses of varied colors, the riders in their dazzling costumes, will surely product the same effect that it did upon St. Peter, when that panorama of four-footed beasts descended to earth from the heavens.

After this parade, leaving the ring-master with his whip in hand, Dan Rice and his mule made possession of the ring to round up this initial act with something ludicrous. He made many circuits around the ring, imitating each round some laughable incident real or imaginary. Finally to close the scene, he humped himself as awkwardly as he could, at the same time remarking, “This is the way the Schoonerites rode into Pittsboro yesterday, coming to see Old Dan.”

Of course this brought forth a yelling applause from the Yalobusians. About the same time, however, the little mule was nearing the exit gap in the ring, apparently tired of the game all at once as if imitating his rider, got a vigorous hump in his own back, and just at the gateway, made a sudden stop, sending the clown forward like a flying squirrel, spreading him out in good shape in the dirt, instantly darting in to the dressing tent.

After a few seconds of suspense, Dan rose, hobbling about as though he was disjointed and a fit subject for the hospital for several weeks at least. At this juncture, the ringmaster in way of reproof said, “Oh, yes, my laddie, see what you get by making invidious comparisons?” To which the clown said pathetically, “Master, do you reckon that dang little mule was taking up for them hossiers in Calhoun County?”

“Why, sir, of course he is; he knew every word you said, besides he has relatives over there, didn’t you see them?”
“Dad drat it, them was the fellows I saw riding that way?”
“Yes, sir,” said the ringmaster.
Cogitating a moment, Old Dan came back to his master, “Say, Mr. Ringmaster, if you wanted to get out of this world without dying, where would you go to?”
“That, sir, is an impossibility; no man can get out of this world unless he dies.”
“No! I know where to get out of this world without dying,” said Dan.
“And where would you go, sir?”
“Why, just over the Schooner, into the Free State of Calhoun!”

The rebel yell followed this enunciation. Many Schoonerites present and their generous natures added in the eclat of that day. In this tour of Dan Rice of Mississippi, The Memphis Appeal had accompanied the show, and reporter and solicitor, and this joke upon Calhoun County seemed to be enjoyed and relished with such tenacity that this reporter sent it to the office and a few days after I read in the humorous column of that paper a verbatim account of Dan’s act in Coffeeville. Afterwards, I heard Old Dan kept the joke all through North Mississippi, which gave the county that notoriety as “The Free State of Calhoun”, and will no doubt follow her through the decades to come. Thus Calhoun County bears that name and is amply able to take care of herself amid exigencies of any sort.

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Hood

The heat in the room was stifling, and the smell of stale incense, feces, and decay as well as something sharp and acidic, was overpowering. If it weren’t for the open window in the back of the room, Hugh knew that a thick haze of stench would have kept them out until a fan had been brought in. As it was he felt nauseous.

“He’s over here, Hugh,” said Derek, the patrolman who found the body late that morning. He pointed to an overturned chair that once faced a computer desk. The screen glowed with the image of a rapper who was still hopping and gesturing, the music still audible in the headphones around the corpse’s neck.

Hugh stepped over and saw the body, that of a young white man, once muscular, once handsome, now swollen and blotched with purple patches. He wore a yellow t-shirt with a pattern of green palm leaves and a pair of long, loose shorts. His hands were at his chest, and his tongue protruded between white, even teeth. The desk was in a corner between two long tables, both containing two large rectangular glass tanks without covers, all except the one nearest the window, which contained a large piece of wood, a hollow rock, sawdust and a small pan of water.

“Looks like he had a lizard,” Derek said.

Hugh turned and looked at him. “A lizard?”

“Yeah, an iguana, one of those big ugly-ass lizards,” Derek said. “People keep them for pets. I wouldn’t have one of the damn things in my house, I’ll tell you that. Jesus.”

Hugh looked at the tanks. “Just one?”

“Looks like it to me. Must have been in that last tank, see? It’s the only one that has anything else in it, and there ain’t no water.”

“A dead man with an iguana,” Hugh said. “I’ve been chief of police in this town for seven years now, and this beats all I’ve ever seen. Call Moreno and get him to pick up the body so we can look at this place. And open another damned window! Bring a fan!”

…………

The body was found in a one-bedroom apartment in a small complex near the downtown business district on a street that ran parallel to the concrete-encased creek that still provided the nearby river with a venue for floodwater, but that didn’t prevent rampant development along the stream from downtown well into an old sedate residential district on higher ground upstream. The apartment complex had a variety of single and double bed apartments, and it was near a small shady park with picnic tables, a playground and two basketball courts that was always active with people, even in the hottest months in George, Mississippi.

Hugh didn’t have a forensics team in his department. Given the declining finances of the city, he considered himself lucky to have a secretary.  But he did have a county coroner, who was an exception to the general rule of limited experience when it came to coroners in the rural South. The coroner for Poindexter County was Abraham Moreno, who for one thing was a licensed physician. Moreno was also a man of parts, having served in the Peace Corps during the Sixties and traveled around the world with his late wife before settling the little city of George with his daughter. When Hugh asked him why the hell he’d come to this piece of backwoods to make a home, Moreno said, “To go fishing, of course. That’s what old men do, Chief. Well, that and grow roses, but it’s too hot here for roses.”

Hugh went back to the station and settled in for a long afternoon of complaints, most of which his secretary Kelly dealt with, but some had to be dealt with personally. One such call came from the mayor, the Honorable Claude Thompson, who by the generous rule of the town charter, had the authority to fire the chief at the drop of a hat, and was not above reminding Hugh of that.

“Hugh, I’ve been getting calls all afternoon about that body on Henry Street. What the hell is going on?”

“Claude, we’ve secured the scene and Moreno has the body,” Hugh said. “I’ll call you when I have more to tell you.”

“Jerry Wesson called me out of his mind. In case you didn’t know it, Alderman Wesson lives one street over on Olive. I also got a call from Reverend Alice Monroe, whose church happens to be on the corner, and just in case you didn’t know, the victim was her step-son.”

Claude looked at the ceiling and counted to three. “Hugh, do you want me to call them?”

“That’s the last goddamned thing I want you to do,” Claude thundered. “Just get your ass in gear. Do I need to call the coroner’s office and talk to that foreigner?”

“He’s from New Orleans, Claude.”

“I don’t give a shit. You tell him to get his ass in gear too.”

Hugh stared at the dead phone, then called Moreno. “Abe, I’m over a barrel.”

“That makes two of us, Hugh. You should come here and look at this. Do you have any men at the crime scene?”

“I’ve got a patrol car on the street, but that’s it.”

“Good. Get here as fast as you can,” Moreno said. “It wasn’t an iguana.”

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Squash and Limas in Sour Cream

Cut enough young squash into roughly 1” cubes to make four cups (about 4-6, depending on size) , boil until just tender, drain, and set aside. Make two cups of white sauce with whole milk and butter, add about a cup of sour cream, a half cup fresh-grated/shaved Parmesan, and a lightly beaten egg.

Stir in two cups cooked young limas and a quarter cup of minced white onion. Mix with squash, add salt and white pepper to taste, and stir gently. Top with more Parmesan, and bake at 350 until lightly browned and bubbling.

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Mississippi Sin

Yes, dear hearts, gluttony is a mortal sin, and is–along with the other six, I hasten to assure you–rampant in Mississippi, where Class III obesity is endemic. Incredulous as it may seem, you’ll find “low-cal” versions of this recipe, as if adulterating transgressions might mitigate the inevitable consequences.

Honestly. Some people.

Blend well a cup of sour cream with 8 oz. softened cream cheese, add 2 cups grated sharp cheddar, a half cup each chopped ham and green onion, and small drained can of green chilies. Spoon into a toasted bread bowl, wrap in aluminum foil, and bake at 350 until crusty, forty minutes or so.