The Segregated Landscape

Jennifer Baughn says of her seminal work, Buildings of Mississippi, that the goal “from the start was to integrate—and I use that word purposely—black and white landscapes.” In this splendid essay (presented as a sidebar on p. 313), Baughn explains how the components of Mississippi’s landscape came to reflect the divisions of the state’s closed society.

Before the Civil War, enslaved blacks were discouraged or prohibited from congregating without white oversight, and although blacks and whites interacted on a daily basis, it was in the context of owner and owned, powerful and powerless. For a brief period following emancipation this power relationship eased, but after 1896, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional, all manner of places and spaces began to be segregated.

As blacks began to move to urban centers around 1890, new neighborhoods of narrow streets and alleys lined mostly with shotgun houses were developed, as for example the Henry Addition (see DR54) in Greenwood. Dense populations, limited employment opportunities, and widespread poverty characterized many of Mississippi’s black neighborhoods, even as they gave rise to an African American middle and upper class. Towns with large black populations–notably Jackson, Greenville, Meridian, Hattiesburg, and Clarksdale–often developed a separate, self-contained African American community with its own business district, hotels, churches, cultural center, schools, and funeral homes. Although often located adjacent to industrial or flood-prone areas, these districts gave African Americans relative security to form their own institutions without white interference. Because churches were one of the few institutions owned and run by black leaders, they became the anchors of such neighborhoods, but public and private schools also provided focus and space for community events.

By the early 1950s, a rising African American middle class began to embrace suburban living, moving out of the old mainstays such as Jackson’s Farish and Greenville’s Newtown neighborhoods into new black subdivisions lined with small ranch houses, such as the residence of Medgar and Myrlie Evers. By 1960 many black congregations with modest newfound wealth began replacing their older churches with new buildings. Such projects often allowed black architects (e.g., DeWitt Dykes and Clair M. Jones) to make their mark in such churches as Laurel’s St. Paul Methodist (pictured below). It was in this complex landscape of neighborhoods dotted with bungalows and shotgun houses and modern schools and churches that the civil rights movement formed and activated around the state.

St. Paul Methodist Church, Laurel, Mississippi

Cucumber Lime Sorbet

This recipe comes from my pal David Odom. Puree two peeled chopped cucumbers, one cup simple syrup, 1/4 cup of fresh lime juice, a pinch of salt and 5 basil leaves in ta blender, then press through a fine screen. Pour the mixture into a container, and float a cleaned egg in the mixture . If a quarter sized portion of the shell is showing you are good, if not add more syrup. Chill mixture then run in ice cream maker.

R. Crumb’s Five Joint Soup

1⁄4 cup mung peas
1⁄4 cup azuki peas
1⁄4 cup lentils and/or split peas Cranberry beans – enough to
cover bottom of kettle
1⁄2 bunch celery
1 lb. carrots
4 large yellow onions.
1 bunch bok choy
1⁄2 cup chard
1 medium potato
Any vegetable to taste – solid ones first, leafy ones last
1 tomato
4 lb. sliced mushrooms
2 cubes of beef or chicken bouillon
1-2 cups red wine (any cheap, dry red goofy)
Grated Parmesan cheese

Use a large kettle (can be picked up for about a quarter at most thrift shops) of 1 gallon or more capacity. Put enough water in the kettle to reach 2-3 inches up the sides. Pour in cranberry beans and other beans and peas, I sliced onion, and 3 stalks chopped celery, including leafy part.
Season with liberal/radical amounts of salt, black pepper, celery salt, thyme, oregano.
Season conservatively with bay leaves, allspice.
Season fascistically with cayenne or curry powder.
Season piggishly with chili powder.

1. Let this first part cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour. As it comes to boil, stir occasionally.
2. Now during the first hour of cooking, get away from the stove, sit down, roll one, have some tea, look out the window-relax.
3. After one hour begin adding vegetables-hard ones first-celery, carrots, potato, etc.
4. Put in leafy vegetables after the second hour.
5. Add mushrooms and tomato in the last 20 minutes, wine in the last 5 minutes. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese before serving.

Play It Again, Boys!

Buried deep in my album is a photograph from the hot summer of 1979, of the boys playing music on a flatbed trailer. We appear to be laying down some pretty hot licks, going for the big $100 purse in the band contest on the Oxford square. Old John Bradley is thumping the stand-up bass; Mr. Cragin Knox frails the banjo. Randy Cross, staring off into the flaw- less summer sky, is on rhythm guitar; the immortal L. W. Thomas is playing lead; and I am sawing on the fiddle.

Our faces are solemn masks, the de rigueur expression of the old-time string band. WOOR Radio is flashing us out over the airwaves; the shirt- sleeved judges lean on their elbows; and in the foreground Mr. Jack Cofield himself is snapping our picture as if we were very big dogs indeed. It is a satisfying image, for it fails to mention that we were not big dogs at all but mere dabblers in the music trade. Moreover, it omits the dubious harmonies we sent aloft that day to the old arched windows of city hall.

And to look at it you would never guess, any more than the “bored judges” or the listeners scattered on the green, that our faces-so cool, so self-possessed-are in fact rigid with fear, and in our hearts a secret voice bargains with God to only let us live through this set and we would never, never, never play in public again.

What, then, were we doing there? It was a question we often asked our-selves when the pressure, largely self-induced, was on. It was not really all that bad, playing music-we had our good days, even a triumph now and then. But there was always the suspicion that sooner or later the People Out Front would rise up in their scorn and drive us from the stage. hey never did, of course, and we lurked on the fringes of the business for years.

We were known by picturesque names-The Waterford Road, The Eighth of January, The Horse Stealers. Friends came and went: Uncle Frank Childrey and his Gibson mandolin; Gathal Runnells, a great fiddler; young Les Kerr and Mike Burduck, a fine bass player. We played all around, turning up like rented palms at parties and banquets and wedding receptions, even at wine-and-cheese affairs where our repertoire nearly always clashed with the decor. We worked the Watermelon Festivals in Water Valley, the Faulkner Conferences in Oxford, and Ole Miss pep rallies.

And always there were the taverns: Abbey’s Irish Rose, Cajun Fred’s, The Warehouse; all gone now but lively enough places once upon a time. In the taverns we met all the usual roadhouse foolishness. People grabbed at our microphones and spilled beer on our instruments. Combatants arrived at our feet in a spray of broken glass. It was a rare show that we didn’t get 10 requests for “Rocky Top,” a song we all hated and couldn’t play very well anyway.

But in our travels, we knew also the good bright sun, the faces of friends, pretty girls dancing, free drinks, and the smell of barbecue in the air. It was a colorful pastime, and there was nothing quite like walking into a job with an instrument case and having the public mistake you for a musician.

We fooled them for a long time, though we never amounted to much more than a bunch of boys playing music on a flatbed truck. We had none of the professional apparatus, like matching shirts or our own sound equipment, and our showmanship was… elemental, you might say (“Now it’s time for the boys to innerduce themselves,” L. W. would announce, “and we would turn and nod and shake hands with each other, and sometimes the People would get it and sometimes they wouldn’t.)

Yet in time we gained, to our everlasting astonishment, a following. Not just our girlfriends and cronies, understand, but people we never knew before. To the Ole Miss students we were a novelty beyond words, to the older folks perhaps the half-remembered voice of a simpler time. And in spite of our fears none of them ever seemed to care if we were very slick or not, if we broke strings or forgot the words. All they wanted was a joyful noise, and we could give them that. Through the old songs, we touched something solid and authentic in the heart that all of them could recognize, even if they didn’t know why.

And for ourselves – when we were rolling along and hanging on to the steady thumping of the bass, we were in high cotton indeed. So in the end it was worth it, and if we had to ask what we were doing up there, we need look no further than the music for an answer. We would do it all again, I think. And when the house lights came on for the last time, and the boys closed their cases and went away into the world, they took with them a long memory, and the old songs – to be broken out in the parlor now and then, or suddenly remembered in the ruin of night. And in my album the boys are captured forever, having a bad day but trying to do their best just the same.

We won the $100, by the way-not for being top band in the contest, but for being the only one to sign up. “That’s show biz,” as the feller said.

–Howard Bahr

Remember the Alamo!: Howard Bahr on the Woke Movement

Almost 200 [sic] years after the battle which killed 200 [sic] Americans at an old Spanish church outside San Antonio, the essential argument remains the same: were these settlers fighting for their “freedom” against the oppression of a Mexican tyrant, Antonio López de Santa Anna, or were they mostly interested in preserving the slavery recently independent Mexico opposed, but [which the settlers] considered essential [sic] for the success of their burgeoning cotton farms? Burrough, Tomlinson[,] and Stanford leave no doubt [italics mine] about the correct answer. Slavery.
–The Guardian, August 30, ‘21

Praise for Forget the Alamo (2021), a celebrated revisionist history which, according to The Guardian, has laid to rest once and for all, with no room for further discussion, an argument of almost two centuries’ duration! Well, thank goodness, I say.

Nevertheless, nagging questions remain. Is the “essential argument” about the Alamo really such an antique, or is it freshly sprung from the collective conscience of the Third Millennium? Were the defenders of the Alamo really such moral paupers that they would sell their lives violently and irretrievably for nothing more than cheap plantation labor–Would you, dear reader?–or is it possible they chose to fight and die for some higher purpose? Is it conceivable that soft, comfortable, well-fed scholars whose entire lives have been spent in school–is it conceivable such persons are suddenly able to remove all doubt about the motives of men–white, black, red, or brown–who lived hard lives no contemporary person can imagine?

 Forget the Alamo is a landmark document of The Woke, a populist movement of seemingly boundless authority whose acolytes seek Righteous Truth and, like Christopher Columbus, believe they have discovered a New World. However, and also like Columbus, they are mistaken, for many persons less objectionable were there long before they arrived. In any event, one quality–their first principle, in fact–renders The Woke unique: i.e., their universal condemnation of persons from the past who, through no fault of their own, were born free and white. The Woke have decided, all by themselves, that Western Civilization–from the Vikings[1] to just yesterday–is irredeemably tainted by oppression, suppression, deception, cruelty, corruption, and lies promulgated by the white race. At best, this assumption is a grave discourtesy; at worst, it slanders people whom The Woke never met, who are conveniently dead and thus no longer around to speak for themselves.

Ironically, because The Woke have little chance–and less desire–to participate in a cause that demands physical courage and sacrifice, they have raised an Alamo of their own, a bastion of morality whence double-shotted rhetoric may be fired into the national conscience. Their Alamo is unique: being virtual, no one is able to assault it! Ambrose Bierce might have anticipated The Woke Movement when he included this definition in The Devil’s Dictionary:

Discussion, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.

Theirs is an egregious fallacy. It is Presentism, a tendency by which citizens of a distant and far different time are judged in the light of contemporary morality–judged by, in G.K. Chesterton’s words, “the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”[2]

For our purpose here, let us limit Chesterton’s “small and arrogant oligarchy” to, first, The Woke themselves, and second, those whom they have “awakened[3].” To the latter, we might well apply a cliched (but hard to improve on) simile. They are like sheep who must have a shepherd to protect them from the wolf. Tragically, shepherd and wolf are often one and the same: an entity who has understood since the days of Eden that, when it comes to control, nothing works like fear and guilt. The Great Assholes of History (including, in our time, Putin and Trump) rallied their flocks with fear–of Jews, of negroes, of Communists or Capitalists, of Armenians, of Catholics or Protestants or Democrats, what have you. The Woke, however, choose to invoke the specter of guilt. The Woke speak with the iteration of the sadistic nun in Game of Thrones–“Shame! Shame! Shame!”–and white people everywhere respond, “But what are we guilty of?

 Well, there’s Texas Independence for one, and slavery, and Jim Crow, and the Confederacy–and how about old Christopher Columbus? The Italian navigator, bold and ambitious and under Spanish patronage, set out in three primitive caravels in the belief that, by sailing west, he would discover the East. His primary motive was to open the Orient’s riches to European trade; at the same time, he would illuminate blackened pagan souls with the light of Christianity. As everyone knows, Columbus did not reach the Orient–too much geography was in the way; instead, he stumbled upon something almost as good: a world new to him, filled with possibilities for exploitation and populated by heathens ripe for conversion. Columbus and those who came after took advantage of the opportunity and set about exploiting and converting with the brutality common to Renaissance life. I was not around in the Renaissance, nor do I know a single person who was. I’ve never been rich, have exploited no one, and converting the heathen has never engaged my interest. Yet for me, for you, for the white boy pumping gas at the Shell station, The Woke have a stern admonition: For this, for the cruelty and excesses of European adventurers, are you guilty. White people–how dare you continue to celebrate as heroic, as consequential, this man Columbus! Raze his monuments! Erase Columbus Day from the calendar! Teach your children the Truth: Columbus was a piece of shit[4], and you all white motherfuckers are responsible! Wake! Wake to the shame!

 I decline to feel responsible for Christopher Columbus, and I hope you do as well. Meanwhile, “Who’s Columbus?” asks the white boy at the Shell station.

* * * * *

Though secular in intention, The Woke manifesto gives off a strong whiff of Calvinism. The concept of Original Sin–“In Adam’s fall, we sinned all”–is revised and updated so that contemporary white people must answer not only for the disobedience of Adam and Eve[5], but for the collective misdeeds of their ancestors. No other ethnic group has been thus burdened, nor has any such burden been so joyfully embraced. As it turns out, The Awakened are happy to dismantle their own culture, ignoring its virtues while simultaneously ignoring the vices of all the others. The physical vandalism and destruction of monuments is an expression of a spiritual zeal not only self-indulgent, but perfectly safe. In marked contrast to those whom they condemn, The Woke make no sacrifice, face no peril, suffer no hardship. Like Medieval flagellants (but absent the pain and gore), The Woke and The Awakened revel in guilt, robe themselves in the sins of others, and spew curses on their fellows–the white ones, anyhow. The result, for them, is a warm sense of moral superiority and, even better, the happy knowledge that a culture’s entire narrative is crumbling under their hands. They do not care to create, nor do they build; they only destroy. This is their sole accomplishment and will be their only legacy.

I have said The Woke frame their judgments from Presentism, a fallacy that is itself framed from ignorance–which, I hasten to add, is not to be equated with stupidity. The latter is a mental vacuum common among those who, for whatever reason, cannot or do not wish to think, who view the world without complexity as it presents itself in the moment. Ignorance, on the other hand, is a conscious choice by persons who refuse not to be stupid. The Woke demonstrate ignorance in two ways. First, they seem to have no understanding of the ambiguities of history; second, they apparently know very little about its realities. Taken together, these deficiencies should disqualify The Woke from judgment. Instead, they form the cornerstone of the movement.

* * * * *

The principle of ambiguity, as I use it here, is hardly complex–anyone not a psychopath should find it already familiar. It begins with an unassailable premise: everybody you know, including yourself, is totally fucked up[6]. That goes for your mother, your grandma, your best pal, the lover whom you believe hung the moon and the stars–everybody. This hard truth, once accepted–and accept it we must, soon or late–proves useful as we ponder why the world itself is so . . . well, you know.

A useful truth no doubt, but one that harbors a dangerous possibility. Should we allow it sole governance in our conduct toward others, no human relationship could endure. Indeed, it is unlikely we could endure even ourselves. Lucky for us, this first premise is only half an equation, made complete by a second equally unassailable: we have the innate, perhaps evolutionary, ability to acknowledge universal human frailty and at the same time continue to love and admire, or at least like, or at least tolerate others–and ourselves–in spite of it. Not everyone, of course, gets a free pass. Only a fool would ignore evil or dismiss injustice or excuse one whose only guide is a malignant nature. Every person is weighed in the balances, and some, in the end, deserve neither forgiveness nor mercy. In my view, however, the Total Depravity of Man, perhaps the most significant Calvinist doctrine, is, like Original Sin from which it derives, a wholly artificial concept contrary to reason, contrary to evidence, and offensive to every decent impulse of the human heart. To believe without exception that a man’s worth cannot transcend his inevitable folly is nothing less than nihilism and denies the value and purpose of existence itself.

Nevertheless, it is through the lens of Total Depravity that The Woke view history. They are merciless in their appraisal of historic figures great and small. Should a man[7] be brought to judgment before them, his conduct in life, however honorable, is dismissed as irrelevant. In the court of The Woke, higher virtues are inadmissible evidence, and nobody gets a free pass.

Unless, of course, he is a man like George Floyd.

The Woke represent Floyd’s brutal, needless murder by Minneapolis police as emblematic of the abuse of power and authority; in this, at least, they are correct.. Floyd was a felon, a dope-head, and a thief–a troubled soul struggling to overcome his demons. He needed help, but what he got was death at the hands of an officer sworn to serve and protect everybody. However, extensive media coverage elevated Floyd above the myriads who have suffered a similar fate and made of him a symbol which The Woke were quick to seize upon for their own purposes. Now they are able to demand, and demand we accept, that men who acted in the past be replaced in our admiration by persons who are acted upon. And while the Woke ignore the egregious flaws and ambiguities surrounding a man like Floyd, they refuse to tolerate the same qualities in those they put on trial and condemn to oblivion. Like Columbus. Like General Lee and Walt Whitman. Like the defenders of the Alamo.

Hard evidence has revealed William Travis to be a cad of the first order. James Bowie, a cold killer, has always been difficult to romanticize: the knife he designed was not meant for whittling, but to cleave an opponent from stem to rudder-post. David Crockett was neither cad nor killer, but a genuine legend in his own time; his principle flaws seem to have been political ambition and his role in the “heroic Anglo narrative.” These three, and the 180-odd men who died with them, were not mythic heroes, nor were they models of Christian virtue–this, no one can deny. Still, they were possessed of humanity: like all men, like George Floyd, their souls were of light and darkness, fraught with ambiguity.

Here, however, the similarity ends. The Alamo’s defenders were nothing like us; in fact, I would argue they have no parallel in modern culture. Like the principle of ambiguity, this is an element of history The Woke cannot seem to grasp as they hold men to account and judge them by a moral standard that did not even exist in their time.

* * * * *

I alluded above to “citizens of a distant and far different time.” Here we will take a glance at how distant and how different their time actually was.

Persons living in the present are privileged to view the past as an unfolding series of complex and interrelated events. Patterns emerge that are obvious to us, but were invisible to those who took part in making them, just as we are unaware of the shape our own time will take in the view of those who come after us. And while we can gather data and facts and discern cultural shifts–while we can analyze and interpret events in a larger context–there is one thing we cannot do: we cannot now, nor will we ever, be able to enter or even begin to understand the minds of those who acted out their parts in a vanished time. A fundamental rule of science states that a thing observed is necessarily changed by the very act of observing. It is impossible, no matter how hostile or sympathetic we may be, to look upon persons of the past without interference from our own consciousness.

The defenders of the Alamo can only be viewed in the context of the 1830s, and thus are no more comprehensible to us than inhabitants of Pluto. It is easy to condemn their morality until we reflect that it was the product of their world, not this one. The same is true for any period in history, including that within living memory.

Medical science began to emerge from the Medieval around the time of the Great War. In all the long ages prior, a person who lived into adulthood was possessed of a constitution strong enough to survive; such a person, of whatever color, was an exception. In a moment, we will touch on some of the difficulties his survival brought down upon him, but here let us try an illustrative experiment. Choose a night in deep winter when the rain has turned to sleet, and the ground is covered in ice. After the temperature falls below freezing, take off your shoes and socks. No coat or thermal underwear allowed: only pants, a shirt, a hat, and a single blanket over your shoulders. Now walk out into your yard and see what happens.

If you can stand the pain more than five minutes, you are a better man than I. Ten minutes, and you are a masochist. Once back in your warm house, ponder this: it is impossible–impossible–for a barefoot (or rag-shod) human being, clad only in a thin coat and trousers and hat, to survive for weeks in temperatures below freezing. Yet, time and again throughout history, we find persons doing precisely the impossible!

As a specific example, consider the Confederate Army of Tennessee during their siege of Nashville in December, 1864. Many of the men were without shoes. Food was scarce. Firewood was scarce. They had few tents and few blankets; if a man had an overcoat, it was likely taken from a Federal corpse back in Franklin. Every morning, men would be found frozen to death. We can understand that. We are astonished the whole rebel army did not freeze to death!

How did they endure under those circumstances? The customary answer, “Well, they were tougher than we are,” is insufficient. It is too easy, glosses over too much, and fails to take into account the realities of human limitation and the demonstrable nature of Impossibility. What answer, then, can we offer in its place? Devotion to cause and country, however fervent, cannot overcome physical impossibility. Neither can the will to live, nor hatred of an enemy, nor love for one’s comrades, nor the memory of folks at home. We may salute the indomitability of the Spirit, but in the end, we must face an incontrovertible fact: the human body, unprotected against extreme cold, ceases to function. The heart stops. Death comes. There is simply no alternative.

Except . . . there was an alternative. Soldiers of the Army of Tennessee first endured the impossible, then gave a good account of themselves in the battle of Nashville. In headlong retreat–physically and emotionally exhausted, terrified, freezing, starving, debilitated–the majority not only continued to endure the impossible, but in many cases did so on their own initiative, without the support of comrades or the presence of any military discipline. They walked all the way to Mississippi, and when they stopped, they were still an army and still dangerous–individually dangerous and ready to fight again.

(In one personal account, published in Confederate Veteran magazine in the 1880s, the author tells of his experiences on the retreat from Nashville. These included wading the Harpeth River up to his armpits and emerging soaking wet on the far bank–and this at night under the same conditions as our experiment. His comment? “I walked fast to keep from freezing.”)

How did they do it? The answer is unlikely to be found, for it lies in a realm of human nature forever beyond our reach. So, too, is the answer to a parallel question: Why did they do it? To ensure the spread of slavery into the territories? To confirm white superiority? To keep the niggers in their place? These are among the responses The Woke might offer as they drive their kids to soccer practice.

When the noise, the frenzy, the fever of postmodern life grows unbearable, The Woke also drive their kids, and themselves, to therapy. When the darkness comes down, and that old anvil settles on the heart, a variety of nostrums–Paxil, Zoloft, Cymbalta–are on hand to ease the pain. Who is not thankful? The Woke are thankful, surely, but they forget that those whom they condemn had no recourse from a woeful mind, a troubled soul.

I have always believed that, for most of human history, people hovered on the brink of madness–and why not? Little in their world was soft–persons white and black and brown, rich and poor, were alike cold in winter, hot in summer, tormented by insects, in constant pain from headaches, toothaches, arthritis, pleurisy, melancholia, and for these no help but willow twigs and whiskey. They were surrounded by death in violent encounters and in their quotidian lives. The prick of a thorn might easily lead to blood poisoning; a woman had little chance of surviving childbirth, and the infant would likely die before it could walk. The specter of sickness–yellow fever, scarlet fever, cholera, consumption–lurked always in their minds, and suicide was a common escape for people who could no longer bear the sorrow or the fear[8]. Nighttime was a stygian dark, an abyss of silence that tortured the imagination. By light of day, they broke their backs at labor and grew old before they ought. They lived at the mercy of horses, mules, milk cows, the weather, wood stoves, fires, spoiled food–and on the frontier, what they ate, they had to grow or kill for themselves. Their food, heavily salted and overcooked, was empty of vitamins and short on calories, and there was rarely enough of it. On the frontier, people were closer to the natural world, more in tune with its rhythms and moods, than anyone alive today, and they were not immune to its beauty. Yet, for them, the natural world was no Garden of Eden; it was hostile and threatening, and in every way their adversary.

We, who dwell in such ease and comfort, must allow those people their own lives and condemn, as outlined above, only those who deserve it.

Thus we return to the men in the Alamo. What they knew and how they perceived the world is unavailable to us. How they actually viewed slavery and nation-building and Negroes and Mexicans and Indians is forever beyond our grasp. We can only examine the facts, among which is this: the defenders of the Alamo fought with the certain knowledge that their lives would be the price for something they believed in. We cannot know how they saw their sacrifice: that belongs to them alone. They were deeply flawed, but for me–and I hope for you–they remain brave and honorable. They gave us Texas, and men like them gave us America for better or for worse.

* * * * *

I have said–and I believe it true–that The Woke have no interest in discussion. I will add here that The Woke are not only dismissive of, but immune to, criticism. They are at the helm, and whatever voices might be raised in opposition–including my own–will go unheard by them. How and why that happened is beyond the scope of this brief exercise. Instead, and despite the futility, I will conclude with a few paragraphs entitled simply,

A Message for the Woke.

The cruelties and inequities of the human experience are nothing new to historians who, since at least the 1960s, have struggled to temper romance with reality[9]. Nevertheless, you believe–or behave as if you do–that you are the very first to be woke (awakened?) to the realization that some people got left out of the American story. Your attitude might have been forgiven–are we not supposed to challenge the status quo?–had you striven honorably to recognize voices heretofore silenced and to illuminate inequalities (the list is long) heretofore ignored. Such an approach might have healed old wounds and made possible a genuine reconciliation among antagonists.

Instead, you have embarked on a path that leads only to greater antagonism and separation. On behalf of minorities you cannot possibly understand, you have chosen to erase the memory of people you cannot possibly understand, who lived in a time you cannot possibly understand–all this to spite others whose view you do not wish to understand. You have shattered the old Metanarrative into a swarming pool of micronarratives that may themselves be divided into fragments, each one jealous of the rest, each one insisting on its true place as the one and only axle of the universe–and this in the name of Equitas.

Your belligerent righteousness has won the day. Soon, no one may point to an ancestor with pride, nor to any place where his kinsmen acted bravely and well. You will teach your children to be ashamed of whence they came, and pretty soon they’ll stop caring, for you will teach them that as well. The old stories will be banished and in time forgotten, and you will have no stories of your own, for, in the world you are creating, it is unlikely you will ever do anything worth telling about. Then one day, after all the monuments are pulled down, all the buildings and towns and landmarks renamed, all the long narrative of humanity purged–on that day you will look down from your moral Gibraltar and discover that you yourselves are forgotten. Or, if your movement is remembered at all, it will be as a pale, pathetic, humorless blur whose cowardice was masked as virtue, whose pandering was disguised as sympathy. You have rung the Passing Bell for others; you do not see that it tolls for thee as well.

This Message for the Woke is delivered from the ramparts of the Alamo, the Rebel trenches at Petersburg, the field of Union dead on Marye’s Heights. I speak for Jeff Davis at Monterey and Pat Cleburne musing in St. John’s churchyard; for all the unknown dead who gave up their lives for causes they believed in–and for my pals Neumeyer and Rudisill, killed in Vietnam, and for my Old Man Charlie Bahr and my daddy Gene Hereford and my Uncle Bill Gleaton who helped whip the Axis in World War II, and for my Great Grandaddy Josiah Hereford who fought in every battle of the Army of Northern Virginia, and finally from my own once-upon-a-time self, crouched on the stern sheet of a landing craft in the Tonkin Gulf.  For these and for myself I speak, and for the myriads who had the great good fortune to live out their lives before you came along.

–Howard Bahr
The Mean Summer of ‘22

NOTES:

[1] Actually, I have yet to see enlightened comment on the Vikings–but they were mostly white, Nordic even, so their time is coming.
[2] For the nature of Presentism, I am indebted to an old friend, the historian Michael Bradley. Another old friend, Frank Walker, introduced me to Chesterton long years ago.
[3] By this means, we excuse the reasonably intellectual and the myriads with more to worry about than the historical canon.
[4] This phrase is not original to me–a Woke Female of my acquaintance once used it in a media posting. Columbus as a piece of shit? A marvel of reductivism to stun the intellect!
[5] Presumably white themselves if illustrated Bibles are to be trusted. And The Almighty too, and Jesus and Mary and Joseph–the whole crowd save poor old Gaspar the Moor, who was no doubt oppressed and forbidden to vote.
[6] I challenge the reader to assemble, from all the resources of the language, a more succinct phrase to identify this fundamental human quality.
[7] I am aware of no woman of any class or color who has fallen under the disapprobation of The Woke–a curious omission in a movement–indeed, a generation–hyper-sensitive to gender equality.
[8] We are often told that God gives us no burden greater than we can bear, but, Believer, consider this:  Your husband left weeks ago, and you can no longer hope he will return. Snow sifts through the chinks in the cabin, and the weight of it will collapse the roof pretty soon. You can’t remember how long it’s been since your child died; she is turning black, her eyes are glazed, and she is beginning to smell, but still you clasp her to your breast–you simply cannot let her go. The wood-box and pantry are long since empty. Every night, more and more wolves come to snuffle and scratch at the door, and it’s only a matter of time before the Kiowa or Comanche find you. Now, in a felt-lined case lies your husband’s Dragoon pistol. You take it out, see that it is loaded and primed as he taught you. What do you say to God now? Do you pray for His help, His intervention, His protection? Do you pray for a miracle? No. As you cock the pistol–it’s hard, for the spring is strong–and press its cold muzzle to your temple, you pray only that it will work. This was a reality of life, once upon a time.
[9] An instructive example is Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star (1984). While his titular subject is George Armstrong Custer, and the central event the Little Bighorn fight, Connell presents both in the wider context of the Nineteenth Century. I think no better demonstration of historical ambiguity can be found in the language.

Dixie’s Blue Cheese Dressing

Chef and author Dixie Grimes lives in Water Valley, Mississippi.

This sinfully delicious and beautifully iconic blue cheese dressing will make your mouth water and your taste buds sing: silky and salty with a hint of sweetness, a perfect showcase for your favorite Maytag or Stilton. It is a beautiful thing; that is, until you have had to make it for a fine dining restaurant on the fly.

This recipe is by far one of the most temperamental that I have ever used. Everything has to be just right, including proper alignment of the stars and planets, and even then it might not work. However, I highly recommend giving it a whirl. The depth and flavor of this dressing is not like anything I have had before or since I worked at the Downtown Grill. We eventually retired it, and I came up with an easier alternative for the prep cooks to make; it would do, but it’s nowhere near as good as this one.

I started my professional culinary career at the Downtown Bar and Grill. I was a prep cook which meant I was the low man on the totem pole, the grunt; it was my job to do whatever the chefs needed me to do and get yelled at constantly for either not doing it properly or quick enough or both. That being said, I could hold my own and for the most part the guys gave me as much respect as a chef will give a prep cook (which ain’t much). I was allowed and expected to make everything and anything the guys needed for service, except of course the blue cheese dressing. Why would they not let me make it? And why did I never see it being made and why was only one person allowed to handle this recipe?

I would soon find out when I saw my name on the prep sheet aside the blue cheese dressing on a football Friday of an Ole Miss home game, in other words no room for error. Had I finally moved up to the upper echelon and was so bad ass that I was going to be allowed to make the sacred and secret blue cheese recipe that only Alison Wilkes was allowed to make? Alison was the Queen of the Downtown Grill and the most difficult recipes were given to her and her alone. It was at that moment I realized that for the first time during my shift Alison was off that night; she had worked earlier in the day and during the chaos the blue cheese was overlooked. The chef forgot to put it on the prep sheet! It was not the call to greatness I thought I had earned, it was out of pure necessity that I was allowed to make this recipe for the first time, much to the trepidation of the chefs as well as me.

There was really no room for failure now, all eyes were on me. I had no idea of the tediousness of executing this recipe, how everything has to be perfect: the measurements, the order of the ingredients as you add them, the temperature of the kitchen and the weather (not even kidding). I had no idea that this recipe had a 99% failure rate for anyone who tried to make it besides Alison. As I was reading through the recipe I remembered two things that Alison had told me prior to my employment at the Downtown Grill when we were just lifetime buddies. I remembered Alison talking about this recipe and that it gave her great pleasure basking in the joy of being only 1 of 20 people in a professional kitchen who could make this dressing that the Grill was so famous for; I also remembered her telling two key pieces of information as to why her always turns out, two things that were NOT written in the recipe. One, that there are three separate ingredients which are incorporated in one at a time, and they have to be added in alphabetical order: EOV; eggs, oil and vinegar. Two, everything has to be basically the same temperature, the bowls for the mixtures, the ingredients, air temp, all the same. Again, these instructions were not included in the recipe, so who knew? Well, Alison, of course.

So armed with this key information, I started the process, praying the whole time; please God let the dressing turn out. As I added the final mixture of vinegar the angels started to sing. ‘Holy crap!’ it’s working, I thought. I could see it coming together. To my surprise, I had done it, but instead of jumping up and down and screaming, which is what I wanted to do, I quietly tucked into my corner, not saying a peep, just getting the sacred dressing ready for service and storage. Then I casually walked up to the chef, container in hand. “Here you go chef. Do you need any on the line?”

Y’all, his jaw literally dropped. “What the hell!” he said. “You actually got it to turn out! We were planning on cussing at you for your futile attempt to make something that couldn’t be made.”

“Guess I just got lucky chef!” I said, remembering something else I learned from Alison: “Never tell the bastards anything.”

Downtown Grill Blue Cheese Dressing

2 eggs, whole
2 cups vegetable oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon dried mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon white wine
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
a generous slash of Tabasco
6-8 ounces blue cheese

Using a blender, whip eggs for a minute, then slowly pour in the vegetable oil, a teaspoon at a time, until it starts to come together, then trickle in to consistency. Add a vinaigrette made with all the other ingredients. Mix for a minute. Pour dressing in a bowl, stir in crumbled blue cheese, and refrigerate.

L.W. Aloft

by Howard Bahr (as told to Ms. Kate Kirkpatrick)

So far, I have written hardly anything to make you smile, which I certainly like to do, so I will tell a story featuring our late pal L.W. Thomas, one of the funniest boys who ever lived and a very nervous character who owned many peculiar phobias. For example, he was afraid of milk in any form. Also, when he bought a six-pack of beer at the Jitney Jungle, he would not touch the can with the price-tag on it (this, of course, was when things had price-tags). You could be sure L.W. would have a beer for you at his house, because there were always fifteen or so cans with the price-tag in his icebox. For Thomas, flying in an airplane was out of the question. Once, when he and Randy Cross and I flew on Delta Airlines to Washington, D.C., we had to render him comatose with three Ativan tablets before he would even get in the taxi to the airport.

Capt. Jung and his trusty Taylorcraft

Another late friend of ours, Captain R.A. Jung, owned a 1943 Taylorcraft tail-dragger (an old Army spotter plane) he named “The Yellow Peril.” She was canvas-covered (painted bright yellow) and could accommodate two persons in tandem seating. For instruments, she had an altimeter, an air-speed indicator, a horizon bubble, and a compass. That was it. We all enjoyed flying in this antique crate (sometimes we’d buy two or three bags of flour, then go hunting along the Illinois Central for a train to bomb), but, as you might expect, L.W. steadfastly refused to have anything to do with her. Finally, one evening at the local tavern, Captain R.A. Jung beguiled Thomas with the news that he had just installed a radio in the cockpit of “The Yellow Peril.” (Heretofore, the ship had been incommunicado, which meant the Captain could only land at strips without a tower.) This apparatus, claimed Captain R.A. Jung, made the old bird safe as a Chevrolet station wagon. L.W., girded with the bravado of a half-dozen draft beers, and no doubt embarrassed by his legendary reluctance, uttered the fatal words, “Why, there ain’t nothin’ I’d rather do than scale the airy heights with my old pal, Captain R.A. Jung. Excelsior!” After that, there was no turning back.

Next afternoon, a Sunday, the boys gathered at the Oxford airfield to see L.W. Thomas off on his maiden flight in the Taylorcraft. Having steeled himself beforehand with a half-pint of Cabin Still (no Ativan or Xanax in those days, and, at the moment, none of us had any reefer), Thomas squeezed into the cockpit and buckled himself in the rear seat, clutching to his chest a Gideon Bible he had swiped from some fleabag motel back down the line. Present as observers were Frank Walker, John Schorfheide, Steve Cook, Tommy Freeland, and I, each man enjoying the balmy day, each man uttering words of comfort and encouragement to our jittery comrade:

“C’mon, L.W.–if you crash, it won’t hurt–you’ll be killed instantly.”
“Don’t listen to him, pard–you’re back aft and may only be injured for life–”
“If that happens, man, try to keep your arms and fingers so you can play the
the guitar on the sidewalk by the bus station.”
“But . . . what if he’s only injured and the wreckage catches fire?”
“Good point! Lotsa guys survive a crash, only to perish in the flames.”

Meanwhile, Captain Jung ran through the pre-flight checklist:

Flaps: OK
Horizontal Stabilizer:  OK
Rudder: OK
Brakes: OK
Fuel: OK
Loaded Revolver Under Seat: OK
Peach Brandy: OK
Cigars:  OK
L.W. Thomas : Sitting quietly hating the Wright Brothers; hating Mr. Taylor who designed the Taylorcraft; hating all of us who, safely on Terra Firma, could afford to make light of hideous injury and death; most of all hating Captain  R.A. Jung who, when satisfied of the craft’s readiness spoke up as follows:

“Awright, girls–knock it off and pay attention.” He rummaged around under his feet and produced a mare’s nest of wiring from which, after a few minutes of muted invective, he extracted two sets of headphones fitted with throat mics. The leather earpads were cracked and dry, like the antique Bakelite mics and the confusion of black wires that connected one apparatus to the other, then disappeared beneath the instrument panel where, presumably, they were somehow connected to the generator[1]. Captain Jung explained that, while the device was not exactly a radio, it was a revolutionary, if makeshift[2], intercom system assembled from genuine WWII Naval Aviation components he’d discovered in a surplus store in East St. Louis, Illinois. As a result, the Captain pointed out, those in the cockpit would no longer have to scream at one another over the clattering of the engine and the wind howling through the wires and wing struts. L.W. Thomas–lucky boy!–was the first passenger to show up since the installation, and this flight would be the intercom’s initial trial.

Thomas revealed later that, in that moment, he did not feel lucky; his confidence was further eroded by the knowledge that Captain Jung had installed the rig himself. Not that the Captain wasn’t handy! It was he who built a muzzle-loading black-powder cannon from a length of steel pipe, so effective it could fire a dirt-packed tomato sauce can clear across the Mississippi River. His work with plunger-activated black-powder aerial bombs was pure genius.[3] However, the Captain’s craftsmanship was generally applied to automobile repair, heavy machinery, and crude explosive devices; his experience with electricity was limited to hot-wiring cars in his youth. Thomas was aware of this deficiency, but his thought was, What could possibly go wrong with an intercom?

Now, to start the motor of the Taylorcraft, a ground crewman had to turn the propeller until he felt pressure on the pistons, whereupon that person would announce “Contact!” whereupon Captain Jung would flip the magneto and reply “Switch on!” whereupon the ground crewman would grasp the propeller blade and give it a heave counterclockwise. This is a very old-timey way to start an airplane, but she was a very old-timey airplane. After the engine was started and the prop spinning, pilot and ground crewman would exchange a hearty thumbs-up and “Cheerio!” (see illustration below), Captain Jung would take a draught from his flask of peach brandy, and off he’d go.

Capt. Jung in the cockpit, the author giving him a thumbs up.

So it went on the day of L.W.’s first flight. We watched the little machine trundle onto the grass runway–in a moment, she began to roll forward–Captain R.A. Jung opened the throttle–the mighty sixty-five HP engine began to buzz–the tail came up–and in a moment “The Yellow Peril” was gracefully aloft and disappearing southward over the trees. Meanwhile, the boys walked back to the office to drink coffee and listen as the airfield manager, the late Mr. Jeff White, told us tales of flying in World War II.

Well, I started out with the intention of telling about the time our friend S. Cragin Knox beguiled L.W. Thomas into accompanying him to Texas to work on an oil exploration crew, and the foreman out there gave Thomas the job of driving the dynamite truck, which made Thomas very nervous indeed, especially when, one day, and without thinking, L.W. Thomas flicked his cigarette out the open window of the truck cab–but now I am all tangled up in the story of L.W. Thomas and the Taylorcraft. However, as I think about it, the two stories have a similar narrative thread. As a modern person (no offense), and especially a modern person (no offense) married to an Air Force fireman, you might question the wisdom of L.W. Thomas smoking a cigarette while driving a dynamite truck. Also, you might contemplate the photo above and ask yourself, “Should Captain R.A. Jung really be smoking a cigar in the cabin of a fabric-covered airplane swirling with gasoline fumes that is about to sail into the Wild Blue Yonder?” This behavior was perfectly routine in those times; today, it would most likely be considered poor judgment, if not moronic.

(At this point, I should insert an apologetic parenthetical. Beloved niece, you could not be blamed for assuming our gallant band were naught but a crowd of dissipated low-lifes and scoundrels. In fact, we were all in college at Ole Miss, save Schorfheide [a railroad detective on the Cotton Belt RR in Memphis] and Captain Jung, who, when he was not adventuring, worked as a millwright at a steel mill in Granite City, Illinois. Walker was an ex-Marine, Schorfheide and I were Vietnam veterans; Jung had served his Army time in Alaska as a ski-trooper; Steve Cook would become chairman of the graduate art program at Mississippi College. Tommy Freeland was a poet and intellectual from an old Mississippi family; he would grow up to become an excellent attorney, marry my ex-wife, and die of a heart attack at a tragically young age. S. Cragin Knox, in spite of his lowly beginnings slinging cable on an exploration crew, eventually became the State Geologist of Mississippi. As for L.W., he was a graduate student in theatre at Ole Miss, a musician, a restaurateur, and a fine writer. He died in his sleep at age fifty-two in ’02 as his beloved wife Jeanne watched by the bedside. Life was never the same for us after L.W. Thomas crossed the river, and I do not believe a man can own a higher accolade. The same can be said of Captain R.A. Jung, who was killed in the crash of “The Yellow Peril” on [fittingly] November 11th, 1976, just seven months after the events recorded here. These were lads who lived authentic lives, and I am proud to have been one among them, and I miss them greatly. Thus, though sometimes we were dissipated low-lifes and scoundrels, misbehavior was only part of the adventure.)

Anyway, since I am thus far into the airplane story, I will stick with it.

Time and again, we hear persons complain that Life is Unfair, and certainly it seems so at times. Some point to Fate; the Calvinist attributes every misfortune to God’s Inscrutable Plan; sensible people have no other recourse than to mutter the well-worn phrase, “Shit just happens.” Whatever one’s philosophy, it does seem patently unfair that events surrounding “The Yellow Peril” on that balmy April morning in ‘75 came to pass with poor ol’ L.W. Thomas, of all people, in the catbird seat.  (As a writer, you will recognize this paragraph as intended to “stretch out the story” and “build up suspense” in order to delay the climax of the tragedy, so I will mention the wholly superfluous fact that, like old-timey barnstormers, Captain R.A. Jung always carried a number of wooden tomato stakes and a rolled-up bundle of cord affixed with colorful pennants like you might see at the state fair, a used-car lot, &c. so that, should he land in a cow pasture, as he often did, he could stake out a perimeter of wavy little flags around the ship. Remember that cows, though not very bright, are curious creatures; remember also that Captain Jung’s Taylorcraft was covered in a fabric treated with sealant [pilots call it “dope”]. Naturally, the local bovines would saunter over to investigate the big yellow insect that had buzzed down into their pasture; if Captain R.A. Jung neglected to set out a perimeter of wavy little flags to confuse them, the cows would commence to snack on the tasty, dope-covered fabric so that when Captain Jung returned from the nearby grocery with his sack lunch, he might well find a more or less portion of his fuselage gnawed down the the ribs[4]. I always wanted to use this arcane fact in a novel, but never found the opportunity.)

In any event, but a few minutes after takeoff found our intrepid aviators at a thousand feet and crossing over the Yokona River[5]. L.W. Thomas, of course, was not feeling intrepid. Below him lay the thin brown thread of the river, the greening woods, the checkerboard of cotton fields soon to know disc and plow, a sprinkling of white houses and, here and there, a wisp of cloud: truly a magical scene stretching to the blue hills and the world beyond. Alas, these aesthetic delights were not for Thomas. Later, he would freely admit that, from the moment the tail wheel lifted off the grass strip in Oxford, he shut his eyes tight and kept them shut. He white-knuckled the Gideon Bible and felt the rapid beating of his heart. He listened keenly to every variation in the motor’s rhythm and waited for the moment when it must surely quit altogether, all the while painfully aware that only a bit of wood and fabric lay between him and a thousand feet of empty air. Meanwhile, Captain Jung’s voice chattered amiably through the headphones clamped over Thomas’s Baltimore Orioles cap. Heretofore, L.W. had ignored the Captain’s observations, thinking them no more than the utterance of a madman indifferent to his own mortality. Now, high over the fields of Lafayette County, the Captain said something that made L.W. open his eyes and take notice: “Hey, man,” spake the Captain, “whatever you’re smoking back there smells like shit!”

This remark was an eye-opener for Thomas–first, because he wasn’t smoking at all, and, second, because he, too, all at once detected an unwelcome odor; i.e., the acrid smell peculiar to electrical fires. As the cabin began to fill with blue smoke, Thomas understood that the moment he’d feared was arrived at last, a realization confirmed by the Captain’s next announcement: “Well, hell, Thomas–we are on fire. Help me look for a place to set her down.”

Looking “for a place to set her down” was not among L.W. Thomas’s various array of skills. He’d never needed to “set down” from anyplace higher than his own bed, nor supposed he ever would. In addition, obeying the Captain’s order meant L.W. would actually have to look out the window! This he tried manfully to do, but the attempt was cut short when he realized (as he would later remark) that the distant ground, scary as it was from the sealed double-paned window of an airliner, was a hundredfold more so viewed through a vibrating half inch of cracked and oil-smeared plexiglass howling with wind. Thomas, heart palpitating, closed his eyes again and exclaimed “Oh, Jesus!” just as “The Yellow Peril” made a sudden stomach-churning drop. The Captain had chosen a field of broomsage nigh the river, and toward this he descended with dispatch, at the same time banking the ship hard over on her starboard wing in order to land into the wind, which direction he perceived by the smoke of a burning brush pile. The little machine hit hard, bounced high, hit and bounced again, and at last found her footing among the muddy ruts of the field. In a moment, she had rolled to a stop, whereupon Captain Jung shut off the engine and bailed out of the cabin door, pulling after him the still-smoldering remains of the intercom system, including L.W.’s headset. To say that Thomas was not far behind is to diminish the speed and agility of his exit.

Later, L.W. would admit that, once free of the cabin, he fell to his knees, pressed his cheek to Mother Earth’s welcoming bosom, and promised never again to leave her. It was, he said, not one of his finer moments.

For a time, Thomas and the Captain lounged under the wing, sipped peach brandy, and basked in the warmth of danger passed, peril overcome. Luckily, the Taylorcraft suffered no damage beyond a little bubbling of paint on the instrument panel; the intercom system, however, was hors de combat. One can imagine how, in that field to this very day, fragments of wire and Bakelite are turned up by harrow or plow, unseen and unlamented, their history lost to time like artifacts from a remote civilization. Here we must leave them, and here we must leave our tale of two gallant flyers–save for a final contemplation. When you feel safe, when the world seems in order at last and the Almighty has apparently wrapped you in His protecting arms–then look out, for the Cosmos is about to slap you up side the head. L.W. Thomas was still congratulating himself on his narrow escape when Captain R.A. Jung stood up, brushed off the seat of his pants, lit a fresh cigar, and said, “Awright, buddy–you ready to go?” Only then did Thomas comprehend that “The Yellow Peril,” having landed, must now take off again. With him aboard. True courage means that, when you’re scared shitless, you go ahead anyhow. This Thomas did, clutching his Gideon Bible as the ship bounced across the muddy broomsage field and struggled aloft. The last thing Thomas heard before he fell asleep was the brush of the landing gear through the greening branches of the trees.

The author with the irrepressible L.W. Thomas

[1] The generator was fixed under the starboard wing and had its own little red propeller. In flight, the wind spun the little red prop, and the generator generated.
[2] When he told the story later, L.W. Thomas used a more colorful synonym for “makeshift,” i.e. “nigger-rigged.” Regrettably, the term has since fallen out of common usage.
[3] In fact, we only had one; it was stoppered by a wooden plug so wouldn’t disintegrate; It made a most satisfying thump when dropped on an empty field, but when we landed, we had to get in the car and go retrieve it. The bomb in its experimental form wouldn’t hurt anyone, unless it hit him on the head. However, should any bad guys–Russians, Yankees, &c.–invade North Mississippi, we were ready to provide air support. Today, we’d be arrested as terrorists.
[4] When I was a little boy in Primary School, certain children from poor families (known as “clay-eaters”) would eat library paste and even dirt from the playground to satisfy the cravings of vitamin deficiency. Perhaps this helps to explain cows’ tendency to chew on airplanes.
[5] Originally called the Yoknapatawpha and so named in Faulkner’s novels and stories.

One Direction Home

“South Jackson as a place begins at 2155 Terry Road, the address of the city’s oldest home. It is the last remaining plantation house in the area. Today, an anomaly, a handsome Greek revival structure with Doric columns standing near Interstate 20’s cloverleaf, commercial enterprises and the decay of the Highway 80 Corridor.”

And so begins One Direction Home: A History of South Jackson, by Dr. Vincent Venturini and former city commissioner Doug Shanks. Shanks recounts that the work began with a question: Were his fond memories of growing up in south Jackson just nostalgia, or was south Jackson truly a special place? The answer is, of course, yes and yes. There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, particularly that of the sort leading to such a wonderful work as this. At once scholarly and informal, poignant and piercing, One Direction Home entertains and informs on many levels.

U.S. Highway 51 splits in Jackson, ending on South State Street to the east, and starting again on Terry Road some two miles to the west. When Terry Road emerges from the cloverleaf south of Highway 81, atop a broad ridge sits the Carmelite monastery housed in the aforementioned Greek revival home formerly owned by the Myrant family. The Myrant/Lester home is a focus for an early history of south Jackson, which is integral to that of the city and of Hinds County. Terry Road (Hwy. 51) provides an axis for the geography of the area, which Venturini describes as, “somewhat porous, but we largely see south Jackson as beginning at Highway 80 and extending south to Lake Catherine and west to Mississippi Highway 18.”

“The eastern boundary is the Pearl River,” he added. We are also including Provine High School from its beginning until 1968. Although Wingfield High School opened in 1966 for students in the city’s southern section, those already enrolled in Provine were allowed to finish there. As pointed out in Doug’s Preface, Shoney’s is included as a south Jackson institution given the role it played in the lives of our contemporaries.”

And the time? While an early history is presented, Shanks claims, “What follows in the coming pages is a largely nostalgic visit to south Jackson as it existed between 1945 and 1975.” All Jacksonians will recall landmarks such as the Alamo Plaza, the “Chuc-Wagun”, the Frost Top, the Green Derby, Leavell Woods Park, Cook Center, Mart 51 and the Zodiac. They will also recall, among the many prominent south Jacksonians mentioned, Farmer Jim Neal of WSLI, Woodie Assaf of WLBT, “Skipper” Dick Miller of WJTV, Andrew Mattiache, and Walter Bivins.”

“The neighborhoods, the churches, the schools, the streets, parks, and other elements that compose a city are part of this wonderful weave,” he adds.

The book has scores of wonderful photographs, and has a reassuringly extensive and detailed bibliography with notes. One thing, though; Shanks and Venturini spend an inordinate time mentioning the proletarian reputation of south Jackson. This apologia is distracting, superfluous, and, most importantly, unnecessary. Let’s bear in mind that this is not Natchez, nor Vicksburg, but Jackson, Mississippi, a city no less a cosmopolitan than Audubon described in 1823 as “a mean place.” Sure, you’ll find people who will tell you one Jackson neighborhood is “better” than another, but many an outsider has found the entire city déclassé if not to say destitute.

While no doubt many former and current south Jacksonians will find flaws and omissions (that assuredly only they could detect) all can celebrate this loving portal to backyard barbecues, high school football games, and drive-ins.

Nature Guides for Mississippians

Mississippi stretches from the foothills of the Appalachians to the Gulf of Mexico, and her western border, her namesake, is one of the greatest rivers in the world. The state provides both residents and visitors with a wide range of natural environments: shady alluvial swamps, sunny beaches and barrier islands, rolling wooded hills, spacious piney woods and open prairies, all the home of a rich spectrum of living creatures. While this selection of materials does not claim to be definitive, it was created by Mary Stripling, who is uniquely qualified to make such a list of guides to identifying plants and animals in Mississippi.

Mary is now enjoying retirement, but as the librarian at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson from 1978-2010, she interacted with biologists in every realm of nature. Mary has been an avid birder and leader in the Jackson Audubon Society since the mid 1980’s, and has traveled extensively on birding ecotourism trips to destinations like New Zealand, Kenya, the Amazon and Central America, as well as to birding hot spots in North America. In each case she has used a field guide appropriate for each area. She has also utilized most of the other guides on the list while pursuing butterflies, dragonflies, turtles, freshwater mussels, insects, etc. and by helping museum guests identify all the various critters they find in the field or their backyards.

“Over the years there has been an explosion of nature field guides for North America, the eastern United States, Mississippi and surrounding states,” Mary says. “I’ve consulted with the biologists and botanists at the museum regarding the most accurate guides for each discipline. Some books included in the list are not field guide size such as Sibley’s Tree Guide, Fishes of Inland Mississippi and Birds of Mississippi, but all serious naturalists should study guides at home; you should be prepared to know what you might encounter before going into your own backyard.”

Mary includes asterisks by the titles most necessary for a Mississippi nature library. “These books will give you the most bang for your buck; for the most part the list is of selected general field guides, is not inclusive and does not include specialty guides such as guides for tiger beetles, wasps, warblers, hummingbirds, hawks, etc. I’ve included a few animal sound CDs for learning bird and frog songs and two are unique to Mississippi (the Mississippi bird and frog songs recorded by Bill Turcotte).” Mary was responsible for updating the original Mississippi bird and frog cassettes to CDs and revising the accompanying booklets. “No attempt has been made to include mobile digital apps for plant and animal identification, even though in the past few years apps have made a huge impact on nature watching. They are wonderful devices to take to the field especially for compactness, ease of use and for accessing sounds.”

But, she adds, “It is always great to curl up in your easy chair and enjoy a good read with your favorite field guide to get ready for your next outing.”

For a fuller appreciation of our state’s natural environments and their denizens, the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson offers an absorbing collection of informative displays as well as exhibits of living plants and animals. As a center for research and support, the Museum helps to preserve and protect the swamps, the barrier islands, piney woods, prairies and living things that Mississippi calls her own.

VENOMOUS ANIMALS AND POISONOUS PLANTS

Common Poisonous Plants and Mushrooms of North America
Turner, Nancy J. and Szczawinski, Adam F.
Timber Press; 1991

A Field Guide to Venomous Animals and Poisonous Plants, North America, North of Mexico
Foster, Steven; Caras, Roger A.; National Audubon Society; National Wildlife Federation, and Roger Tory
Peterson Institute.
Houghton Mifflin; 1994 (Peterson field guide series).

*Poisonous Plants and Venomous Animals of Alabama and Adjoining States
Gibbons, Whit; Haynes, Robert; and Thomas, Joab L.
University of Alabama Press; 1990

Poisonous Plants of the Southeastern United States
Everest, John W.; Powe, Thomas A., and Freeman, John Daniel.
University of Florida, Florida Cooperative Extension Services, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences; 1996

*Venomous Snakes of Mississippi, [pamphlet]
Terry L. Vandeventer
Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, 1994 (free)

BIRDS

Birds and Birding on the Mississippi Coast
Toups, Judith A.; Jackson, Jerome A., and King, Dalton Shourds
University Press of Mississippi; 1987; 303 p.

*Birds of Mississippi
William H. Turcotte and David L. Watts
University Press of Mississippi, 1999

*A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America, 6th ed.
Roger Tory Peterson & Virginia Marie Peterson
Houghton Mifflin, 2010.  (Peterson Field Guide Series)

Guide to Birding Coastal Mississippi and Adjacent Counties
Toups, Judith A.; Bird, Jerry L., and Peterson, Stacy Jon.
Stackpole Books; 2004; 168 p.

Mississippi Bird Watching: A Year-Round Guide
Thompson, Bill.
Cool Springs Press; 2004; 165 p.

*National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Dunn, Jon L. and Jonathan Alderfer.
National Geographic; 6th Rev Updated edition, 2011;  576 pages.

*Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America
Lee Peterson and Roger Tory Peterson
(Peterson Field Guide Series) Houghton Mifflin, 2008

*The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America
David Allen Sibley
Knopf, 2003

*The Sibley Guide to Birds, 2nd ed.
David Allen Sibley
Knopf; 2014

BIRD SOUNDS

*Backyard Bird Song [CD]
Richard K. Walton and R. W. Lawson
(Peterson Field Guide) Houghton Mifflin Co, 1991

*Birding by Ear: A Guide to Bird-Song Identification – Eastern and Central North America [CD]
R. K. Walton and R. W. Lawson
(Peterson Field Guide Series) Houghton Mifflin Co, 1989

Prothonotory warbler (photo by Bill Stripling)
Prothonotory warbler (photo by Bill Stripling)

Mississippi Bird Songs [CD]
William H. Turcotte
Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, 1985, 2008

TREES

A Field Guide to Eastern Trees: Eastern United States and Canada
Petrides, George A.; Wehr, Janet, and Petrides, George A.
Houghton Mifflin; 1988;  272 p.

Identification of Southeastern Trees in Winter
Preston, Richard Joseph
North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service; 1976; 113 p.

Mississippi Trees
Hodges, John D.; Evans, David L.; Garnett, Linda W., and Mississippi Forestry Commission.
Mississippi Forestry Commission; [200-?].(This book is free and updated every few years.)

Native Trees for Urban Landscapes in the Gulf South
Brzuszek, Robert F.
Crosby Arboretum; 1993; 11 p.

*Native Trees of the Southeast : an identification guide
Kirkman, L. Katherine; Brown, Claud L., and Leopold, Donald Joseph.
Timber Press; 2007; 370 p.

*The Sibley Guide to Trees
Sibley, David.
Knopf, 2009; 426p

*Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Louisiana
Charles M. Allen, Dawn Allen Newman, and Harry H. Winters.
Allen’s Native Ventures, 2002

*Trees of the Southeastern U. S.
Wilbur H. Duncan and Marion B. Duncan
University of Georgia  Press, 1988. Reprinted, 1992.

Trees of Mississippi : and other woody plants
Dukes, George H. and Stribling, Bob.
Poplar Petal Pub; [1997?]

WILDFLOWERS, MUSHROOMS, FERNS AND OTHER PLANTS

Common Poisonous Plants and Mushrooms of North America
Turner, Nancy J. and Szczawinski, Adam F.
Timber Press; 1991; 311 p.

*A Field Guide to Southern Mushrooms
Nancy S. Weber and A. H. Smith
University of Michigan, 1985

An Illustrated Guide to Tidal Marsh Plants of Mississippi and Adjacent States
Lionel Eleuterius
Pelican Press, 1990

Louisiana Ferns and Fern Allies  (out of print)
John W. Thieret
University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1980

*Louisiana Wildflower Guide
Charles Allen, Ken Wilson, Harry Winters
Allen Native Ventures, 2011

A Mississippi Woodland Fern Portfolio
George H. Dukes, Jr.
Poplar Petal Publishers, 2002

Mushrooms of Mississippi: and Other Fungi and Protists
George H. Dukes, Jr.
Poplar Petal Publishers, 2000

*Native Shrubs and Woody Vines of the Southeast : Landscaping Uses and Identification
Leonard E. Foote and Samuel B. Jones
Timber Press, 1989

*Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Louisiana
Charles M. Allen, Dawn Allen Newman, and Harry H. Winters.
Allen’s Native Ventures, 2002

Southeastern Flora
www.southeasternflora.com
A superior, searchable website done by John Gwaltney, Southeastern Flora is an online resource to assist you in identifying native or naturalized wildflowers you may find in the southeastern United States.  Currently there are over 1,980 species listed on this site and over 41,400 pictures to help you identify what you’re looking for.  You can easily identify trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous plants without knowing how to read a plant identification key. Simply define a few traits about your specimen, and the visual photo search results will help you narrow your selection to the exact species. Note the Plant Picks List, which is a valuable aid.

*Wildflowers of Mississippi
S. Lee Timme
University Press of Mississippi, 1989

Wildflowers of the Natchez Trace
S. Lee Timme and Cale C. Timme
University Press of Mississippi, 2000

REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS

The Amphibians and Reptiles of Louisiana
Dundee, Harold A. and Rossman, Douglas A.
Louisiana State University Press; 1989; 300 p.

*A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America
Roger Conant and Joseph T. Collins
(Peterson Field Guide) Houghton Mifflin, 1998

*A Guide to Mississippi Frog Songs, [CD]
William H. Turcotte
MS Depart of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, 1988

Mississippi Herpetology
Ren Lohoefener
MS State University Research Center, 1983 (Out of Print)

*Salamanders of the United States and Canada
Petranka, James W.
Smithsonian Institution Press; 1998, 587 p.

*Snakes of eastern North America
Ernst, Carl H. and Barbour, Roger William.
George Mason University Press; 1989; 282 p.

Snakes of North America: Eastern and Central Regions
Alan Tennant and R. D. Bartlett
Gulf Publishing Company, 2000

*Snakes of the Southeast
Whit Gibbons and Mick Dorcas
University of Georgia Press, 2005

*Turtles of the United States and Canada
Ernst, Carl H. and Lovich, Jeffrey E. 2nd ed.
Johns Hopkins University Press; 2009; 827 p.

*Venomous Snakes of Mississippi, [pamphlet]
Terry L. Vandeventer
Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, 1994 (free)

FISH

*A Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes : North America North of Mexico. 2nd ed.
Brooks M. Burr, John Sherrod, Lawrence Page, E. Beckham, Justin Sipiorski, Joseph Tomelleri
(Peterson Field Guide)  Houghton Mifflin, 2011

*Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Adjacent Waters
H. Dickson Hoese and Richard H. Moore
Texas A&M University Press, 1998

*Inland Fishes of Mississippi
Stephen T. Ross
University Press of Mississippi, 2001

MAMMALS

A Field Guide to Mammals of North America
Fiona A. Reid
(Peterson Field Guide) Houghton Mifflin, 4th ed., 2006

Black bears
Black bears

*Handbook of Mammals of the South-Central States
Jerry R. Choate, J. Knox Jones, Jr., and Clyde Jones
Louisiana State University Press, 1994

Mammal Tracks and Sign: A Guide to North American Species
Mark Elbroch
Stackpole Books, 2003

The Marine Mammals of the Gulf of Mexico
Bernd Wursig, Thomas A. Jefferson and David J. Schmidly
Texas A & M University Press, 2000

Mississippi Land Mammals: Distribution, Identification, Ecological Notes
James L. Wolfe
Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, Mississippi Game and Fish Commission, 1971 (free)

*The Wild Mammals of Missouri
C. W. Schwartz and Elizabeth R. Schwartz
University of Missouri Press, 2001

INVERTEBRATES (divided into categories)

»Beetles

*Beetles of Eastern North America
Arthur Evans
Princeton University Press, 2014

»Butterflies & Moths

Butterflies and Moths. 2nd ed.
Carter, David J. and Greenaway, Frank.
(Smithsonian handbooks series) New York: Dorling Kindersley; 2002; 304p.

*Butterflies and Moths : a guide to the more common American species
Mitchell, Robert T.; Zim, Herbert Spencer; Latimer, Jonathan P., and Nolting, Karen Stray.
Rev. and updated ed.
St. Martin’s Press; 2002; 160 p.

*Butterflies of Mississippi: a field checklist
Mather, Bryant and Dingus, Eve.
Mississippi Museum of Natural Science; 1994. (free)

Butterflies of the East Coast : an observer’s guide
Cech, Rick  and Tudor, Guy.
Princeton University Press; 2005; 345 p.

Butterflies Through Binoculars
Jeffery Glassberg
Oxford University Press, 1993

*Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History
David Wagner
(Princeton Field Guide series) Princeton University Press, 2005

The Common Names of North American Butterflies
Miller, Jacqueline Y.
Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press; 1992; 177 p.

*A Field Guide to Eastern Butterflies
Paul Opler, Vichai Malikul, Roger Tory Peterson
(Peterson Field Guide Series) Houghton Mifflin, 1998

*Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America
David Beadle and Seabrooke Leckie
(Peterson Field Guide Series) Houghton Mifflin, 2012

*Peterson First Guide to Caterpillars of North America
Amy Bartlett Wright
(Peterson First Guides) Houghton Mifflin, 1998

»Dragonfiles And Damselflies
Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East
Dennis Paulson
(Princeton Field Guide Series) Princeton University Press, 2012

*Dragonflies Through Binoculars: A Field and Finding Guide to Dragonflies of North America
Sidney W. Dunkle
Oxford University Press, 2000

Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Dragonflies and Damselflies
Blair Nikula and Jackie Sones
Little, Brown and Company, 2002

»Insects
*A Field Guide to Insects: America North of Mexico
Richard White, Richard White, Donald Borror, Donald Borror.
(Peterson Field Guide Series) Houghton Mifflin, 1998

*National Audubon Society Field Guide to Insects and Spiders
Milne and Milne
Knopf, 1980, 1996 992p.

*National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America
Arthur V. Evans
Chanticleer Press, 2007, 496p.

»Spiders
Common Spiders of North America
Richard A. Bradley
University of California Press, 2012

*A Guide to Spiders and Their Kin
Herbert W. Levi, Lorna R. Levi, Nicholas Strekalovsky.
Golden Guides from St. Martin’s Press, 2001

Ed’s Low-Down on Buffalo Wings

Much like the ubiquitous pork belly, which seems to find its way onto every upscale menu at an exorbitant price these days, chicken wings were once considered very much a poor man’s pick when it came to buying meat.

Wings then more often than not found their way into a stock pot, but sometime in the late 1970s, a wings recipe came out of Buffalo that took the nation by storm and has become a staple.

Nowadays, chicken wings cost more than any other cut of chicken in the supermarket, and more than most beef or pork; $3.10 a pound today in my local meat department.

I’ve known Ed Komara, a native of Buffalo, for a very long time, ever since he was the curator of the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi, so I asked him to give me his low-down on chicken wings, and here it is, in 7 points (no less):

REAL Buffalo wings are not battered, but rather deep-fried as-is. After frying, the wings are then shaken in a container with butter (or margarine) and hot sauce (in the cheap places, usually Frank’s Hot Sauce).

  1. The main effect of a true Buffalo wing is the immediate sharpness of the spicy heat, then a quick lowering of that spice.
  2. By contrast, the Rochester, NY version is battered and deep-fried, so as to hold more of the hot sauce (in a sticky/honey sort of variant) and make the spicy burn last for a long time in one’s mouth. (This is especially true of the wings made at Country Sweet in Rochester).
  3. In Buffalo, historically speaking, there are two main places for wings: the Anchor Bar, and Duff’s. The Anchor Bar was where wings were first served in 1964, to the owner’s son and friends as late-night munchies. The bar is located near the Allen Street, aka “Allentown” which is the bohemian arts section of the city. By 1990 when I went there, the “bar” became more like a restaurant serving some killer Italian food (including the richest pizza I’ve ever tried).
  4. Duff’s began offering wings in 1969. It is located conveniently on Sheridan Drive (on the cusp of city and suburb) for those who don’t really want to go all the way to Allentown for the Anchor Bar.
  5. There may be a missing link between the Anchor Bar and Duff’s. My dad remembered sometime in the 1960s that a couple of Buffalo Bills football players were partners in a chicken wing stand that brought wings to city pop-culture attention beyond the Anchor Bar. But I haven’t seen that documented anywhere.
  6. I don’t know where the heck the idea of including celery and blue cheese dressing with wings came from or why. It’s as gratuitous as applesauce with potato pancakes.

“Wing stands are pretty common in Buffalo,” Ed says. “Much less often seen are places serving beef on weck, the other distinctive Buffalo bar food. The ‘weck is short for kummelweck (or as the locals pronounce it, “kimelwick”), which is a salty bun. The one place among my haunts that served it was Anacone’s Inn (now closed, alas), which always seemed to have run out of beef on weck every time I arrived there (usually at 1 a.m.).

Here is the original recipe. Joint the wings, (discard the tips) then pat dry (IMPORTANT!) and deep-fry them until crispy. Toss in the sauce while hot. I used Crystal.  They’re superb.

8 tablespoons hot sauce (Frank’s or Crystal recommended)
8 tablespoons unsalted butter or margarine
1 1/2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
salt to taste