Category: History

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A Lumber Town on the Skuna River

Dennis Herron Murphree (1886-1949) of Pittsboro, Mississippi has the singular distinction of serving twice as governor of Mississippi without ever being elected to office. He was twice elected to the lieutenant governorship, once in 1923 and again in 1939. In each instance, he succeeded the governor who died in office and completed the term of his predecessor. In March 1927, he became Governor of Mississippi after the death of incumbent Henry L. Whitfield and served for about ten months until Theodore G. Bilbo, who defeated Murphree in the Democratic Party primary by 10,000 votes, was sworn into office in January 1928. With the death of Gov. Paul B. Johnson, Sr. in December 1943, Murphree finished out the three weeks left in Johnson’s term, serving until the swearing in of Thomas L. Bailey in January 1944.

According to historian James M. Young, Murphree wrote/compiled his county history in 1928 but that it wasn’t actually published until sometime later. “Some references I’ve seen show the publication date as ‘unknown’ and some show 1948. I remember that The Monitor-Herald published it (in installments, I think) at least two times, and I suspect that the first time was in 1948 and that copies in the form of a book were also made at that time. The last chapter of Murphree’s history deals with the organization of Bruce and the last paragraph in the history is the one I sent you (the following text; jly) concerning the roads out of the new town of Bruce. Murphree’s version consists of 16 chapters. The first 5 or so (short chapters) were written by him, and then a section covering 1852-1876 which had been written by Judge J.S. Ryan was inserted. This was followed by a section consisting of a long letter covering the legislative creation of the county, written by Judge J.A. Orr (who introduced the bill in the legislature). A section covering the period 1875-1900 was written by Thomas Martin Murphree (Dennis Herron Murphree’s father) followed that, and the final section was written by Dennis Murphree and was titled “History of Calhoun County from 1900 to 1928”. The Orr, Ryan, and T.M, Murphree sections are heavy with who got elected to office. Dennis Murphree’s section has some of that as well but also lots of more interesting stuff; for example, he has a fairly detailed account of the murder of Robert Lee Crawford, Papaw Young’s brother-in-law, in the yard of the T.W. Young house across from the church at Ellzey. The section written by Thomas Martin Murphree was published by The Calhoun Monitor (in Pittsboro) at the end of the summer of 1904. 500 copies of the “booklets” (as Dennis Murphree called them) were printed and sold for 25 cents each.”

In order to tell the story of the “Skuna Valley Railroad” and the new town of Bruce, in Calhoun County, Mississippi, it will be necessary for me to go a long way back as to make the proper beginning.

It was, I think, in the year 1901, that a very smart, shrewd old Michigan lawyer first came into Calhoun County. His name was Roger W. Butterfield. Mr. Butterfield had watched the huge white pine forests of Northern Michigan fall relentlessly under the lumbermen’s saws and axes, and he realized that timber would sometime be a real item of value, and so having some money to invest, he looked about over the country for some places where timber could be bought cheaply and in bountiful supply. Somehow, he chose the South and Calhoun County, Mississippi as the base for his operations and investments. He sent several men of his own force into the county seeking to buy land and timber, employed Attorney J. L. Johnson at Pittsboro as his local attorney and then hired Andy J. Bounds of the Bounds neighborhood and one of the county’s best citizens to represent him as land buyer and local representative.

These people immediately entered on a land and timber buying campaign which lasted several years. They took their time, looked about, located land which was not expensive and which was covered with fine timber and then made the purchase. They did not seek to link up all the tracts, although naturally they preferred to buy in a block as much as possible. In the main, however, they avoided buying any in cultivation. They bought large acreage in the Schoona River Valley, and they bought many tracts in the hills. Most of their purchases, however, were north of a line which might have been drawn east and west through the center of the county. When finished the Butterfields owned some twenty-five thousand acres of timbered lands in Calhoun County and some three thousand in Yalobusha with a small amount in Lafayette and Pontotoc Counties. The average price paid for these lands was approximately $2.50 per acre.

It would be a real treat for members of the younger generation to see today the giant trees which made up a large part of the growth on these Butterfield lands. In the river and creek valleys the huge forked leaf white oak trees grew often fifty feet from the root to where the first limb appeared, and several feet across the base. Other hardwoods grew in like size and great abundance. In the hills, the old “virgin” pines dotted the hillsides and they too were a sight to behold, because they grew so tall, so straight, so uniform and with only a small cluster of limbs in the very top. On the hillsides too as in the valleys, grew every specie of hardwood likewise in great abundance. Until the coming of the Butterfields, these trees were valueless on the market. In fact, the first time in my life I ever knew about timber of any kind being sold was when some stave workers came into Schoona Valley near where we lived at Oldtown and paid $1.00 per tree for huge over cup and white oak trees several feet through, provided these trees would “split” after being cut down, meaning that provided they could easily be split up into staves six feet long. If the tree did not split well, they simply abandoned the log and went away leaving these huge logs, the kind which became almost priceless in later years, to rot where they fell.

I well remember that during the winter of 1902-3, Mr. Butterfield sent a young lawyer and a young lady who was an expert clerk, though not a lawyer, down from Michigan and they spent the winter in the old courthouse making abstracts of the land which Butterfield had up to that time purchased. These two people were a source of much amusement to the young people of that date, with their, to us, Northern accent, quaint expressions, unusual customs, etc. I am sure that on their part, they found us even more amusing. Time passed, and Roger W. Butterfield went the way of all mankind, but his heirs held on to the Calhoun County lands and timber and each year paid their taxes regularly, while from time to time, a few more acres were bought and added to their holdings. Along about 1920, however, these owners began to feel the urge to sell and dispose of their property. This was probably because timber prices had advanced to such an extent that they could secure a huge profit on their original investment; and, second, because with the cutting of canals in the rivers and creeks and the issuance of bonds for roads, schools, etc., their Calhoun county taxes, which in the beginning had been practically nothing, began to be a heavy burden.

I have related how that over all the long years, it had been the dream of the people in Pittsboro and the Northern section of the county that someday they would see the building of a railroad into that section. Along about 1921, it became known that the Butterfield interests would sell their holdings in Calhoun, and hope began to be revived as to the possibilities of a railroad being built out into our section in order to carry the timber. It will be remembered that this was in the days when the huge log trucks powered by gasoline and used over concrete roads were utterly unknown in our section. Much discussion was had between various citizens and firms seeking some plan to accomplish the result desired. Acting on instructions from an organization of Calhoun County business men, a meeting was arranged whereby representatives would go to Chicago and there meet with Mr. Markham, President of the Illinois Central Railroad, and seek to interest him and his railroad in the idea of building a short line of railroad either from Coffeeville or Bryant out to Pittsboro. Mr. H. H. Creekmore of Water Valley, a native Calhoun citizen, Mr. Jim L. Johnson and I were chosen by our people as their representatives on the proposed trip. This I remember it was in 1922.

Agreeable to plan, we three went to Chicago and had a lengthy and friendly session with Mr. Markham. We found him very sympathetic to the proposal. Naturally so, since it would mean an immense amount of tonnage to be hauled by the Illinois Central Railroad after it had been brought out to their main line. However, Mr. Markham would not agree to undertake the building of the short line. He promised that IF we could get some timber manufacturer or sawmill company to buy the Butterfield tract and the railroad right of way and do the grading for the new railway, the Illinois Central would furnish the steel rails for the road and when finished would also furnish the locomotives and box cars to use on the new railway on a very long time sale plan with a low interest rate. Our people were very well pleased with the report of the Committee, and then began an effort to try to interest some timber company or manufacturer in buying the timber and building the railway. This kind of effort went along over a period of two or three years. I remember that on my own personal expense and with the consent of the Butterfield folks, I placed an advertisement costing a neat sum in the Manufacturers Record of Baltimore, briefly outlining this situation. I had a number of replies and furnished each with quite a bit of information. I had nothing to do with the making of the deal between the Bruce Company and the Butterfield heirs when the timber we have been talking about finally passed out of the Butterfield hands. I have always thought, however, that it was easily possible that all the planning, talking, advertising and publicity which I and others in Calhoun County had been doing, had something to do with bringing this matter to the attention of the Bruce Company folks and therefore the ultimate result.

Anyway, about 1924 or early 1925, the Bruce Company of Memphis, Tenn., purchased outright all of the Butterfield holdings in Calhoun and adjoining counties. Soon thereafter it began to noised around that their plans included the building of a standard gauge, common carrier railroad, from Bryant’s Spur, located four miles south of Coffeeville on the Illinois Central Railroad, up the Schoona Valley to the neighborhood of the old town of Pittsboro. In my service as Lieutenant Governor, I was often called on to serve as Acting Governor on those occasions when the Governor left the state. On one of these occasions, for me a very happy coincidence, Attorneys H. H. Creekmore and N. I. Stone, came to the Governor’s office, bringing with them the proposed Charter of Incorporation of the “Schoona Valley Railroad.”

M&SV_Map-1 blogThe Attorney General of the state, who was Hon. Rush Knox, himself a native son of Calhoun county, but at that time a citizen of Chickasaw, approved this charter and at ten o’clock A.M. on the 1st day of June 1925, as Acting Governor of Mississippi, it was my sincere pleasure to sign the Charter for this railroad for which along with many other Calhoun folks I had worked for and hoped for so long. I pause long enough to say that later on, by amendment, the name of the railroad was changed from “Schoona Valley” to “Skuna Valley”. This, I think came as a result of effort made by Will C. Bryant, who had always claimed that “Skuna” was the proper way to spell the name of the Valley. Personally, I think “Schoona” is correct, because all of the old records, manuscripts, etc., which I ever saw in Calhoun County spelled it that way. Slowly the new railroad was built, and during the year 1926, progress was made in laying off and planning the new town. The name decided upon for it was “Bruce” because of the fact that the Bruce Lumber Company of Memphis, Tenn., was the force behind the plan.

Governor Whitfield became ill during the summer of 1926 and spent almost all the rest of the year in a hospital in Memphis. So I was very busily engaged during the period acting as Governor during his absence. It is my recollection that in such capacity I also signed the Charter for the new town, but of this I am not positive. Anyway they named one of the streets in the new town for me, for which I have always been grateful. Governor Whitfield returned to Jackson in February, but rapidly grew worse and died on the 18th day of March 1927. After the Constitution, I succeeded him, and on taking the oath of office became the 35th man in our state’s history to be Governor of Mississippi. It has not been my intention at any time to clutter up these pages with stories of my various political campaigns. I will say again, however, that Calhoun County people have never failed me, and I have carried the county by a large majority in each and every race that I made. This has always been a source of much pride and gratitude to me. By force of circumstances, I was “pitchforked” into the race for Governor in 1927. I had not planned to run, and felt always that I would be defeated but after Governor Whitfield’s death, it became necessary that I run or forever be branded as one who was afraid to try. In July 1927 my Calhoun County Campaign Committee planned a huge barbecue and political picnic for me and chose as the spot for this great gathering the location of the brand new town of Bruce. I think that it was on July 4 1927. The location was what is now the public square at Bruce, which at that time was only an old field with only one or two houses. Thousands of people from all over the state attended, and it was truly an enthusiastic and heartwarming affair. This was the very first public gathering ever held in Bruce, Mississippi.

The new town of Bruce grew rapidly. Besides the huge Bruce Company mill, several other timber manufacturing plants were established there. A number of people from over the county moved in and set up various lines of business. Too, there was in influx of immigration from several of the northeastern counties of the state, particularly from Tishomingo and Alcorn counties. These new people settled largely in the Bruce area and many of them still remain in that section. Another thing which contributed to the growth of the new town was the policy adopted by the Bruce Company of selling off its valley lands as soon as they cut the timber. The land bought at a reasonable price was immediately opened up for cultivation so that now, for miles up and down the Schoona Valley, where I had as a boy hunted for squirrels, turkeys, etc., there flourished the finest farms in the country. New roads began to be projected: one going east toward Houlka out of Bruce, another west down the Schoona valley toward Coffeeville; another toward Water Valley. Neither of these roads has been fully improved as deserved, but all hope that they will be in good time. Laying out of these roads had an odd effect on the old time traveler who returned to view the section. Oftentimes he found himself “lost” in a neighborhood or area where in former years he was absolutely familiar.

(Photos courtesy of the Calhoun County Mississippi Historical and Genealogical Society, Timber: A Photographic History of Mississippi Forestry, by James E. Fickle, and msrailroads.com)

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The First Memorial Day

Widely acknowledged as the precursor of Memorial Day, observance of a Decoration Day began shortly after the end of hostilities in the Civil War, when citizens began decorating the graves of fallen soldiers. Many cities claim to be home of this observance, including Waterloo, NY, Boalsburg, PA, Carbondale, IL, Columbus, GA, and much closer to home, Columbus, Mississippi.

In their 2014 book, The Genesis of the Memorial Day Holiday, Dr. Richard Gardiner and Daniel Bellware state that according to the Veteran’s Administration, at least 25 cities across America claim to have originated the Memorial Day holiday. While numerous historians feel that the true history may never be known, this book rejects that claim and explores the factual history of the holiday and shows that most of the better-known stories are mere myths and local legends.

That being said, Jackson, Mississippi offers substantial proof that the first Decoration Day was held on April 26, 1865 in the historic cemetery in downtown Jackson now known as Greenwood.

As the story goes, citizens of the Confederacy were well aware of the strategic importance of Appomattox; those in Jackson, Mississippi were already shaken by the fall of Richmond on Apr. 4, 1865, and news of Grant’s victory reached Governor Charles Clark some days later. In her diary his daughter recalled the telegram being passed around: “Yes, it was all over. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox! Like a thunderbolt it fell on all of us. We were stunned. I remember feeling astonishment that we were not all dead.”

Many if not most were already resigned to defeat and were shocked by the assassination of Lincoln less than a week later, so it was a somber group that assembled on Tuesday evening, April 25 at The Oaks, home of former Jackson mayor James Boyd on North Jefferson Street. Just before midnight two couriers arrived with the news that Confederate Lieutenant General Richard Taylor and Union Major General E.R.S. Canby had agreed to a truce in Meridian, darkening the mood. Among them was Sue Langdon Adams, a Missouri native and niece of Mississippi’s Senator Robert Adams. A nurse, Sue had infiltrated Union lines bringing medical supplies back for Confederate forces and informing Confederate authorities of Union troop deployments.

When the news of the truce came, Sue was reading Plutarch’s Lives, where it’s mentioned that the graves of fallen soldiers were adorned with wreathes of laurel. Fearing that the reoccupation of Jackson was imminent, she tore out a blank page and penned an appeal to the women of Jackson to gather the next day at the city cemetery at two in the afternoon and adorn the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers. One of the young couriers took the note and raced to the office of the newspaper, Mississippian, just in time for it to be printed in the next morning’s edition.

The next day, a large group of citizens gathered in the cemetery soon every soldier’s grave was covered with floral designs of every kind. Troops led by Colonel McFarland marched through the cemetery as their band played Handel’s “Dead March” from Saul. As Adams moved through the rows of graves, she saw some that were unadorned and asked why there were no flowers on them. Told they were the graves of Union soldiers, she replied, “I will garland them with my pink roses for mothers and sisters sobbed prayers over them as they marched away. Maybe they fell in the riven flags in the battle of West Jackson.”

Adams later moved to California and married a Judge Vaughan. She died in Arlington, Virginia in 1911 and is buried in the Mount Olivet United Methodist Cemetery there. Her memorial efforts were acknowledged in an inscription on a monument which was unveiled on the Jackson Capitol Green in 1891:

“It recks not where their bodies lie,
By bloody hillside, plain or river,
Their names are bright on Fame’s proud sky,
Their deeds of valor live forever.”

Decoration Day Originated in Jackson, Miss. April 26th 1865
By Sue Landon Vaughan

Text by Cecile Wardlaw, based on research by Peter Miazza

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Yellow-Meated Watermelons

While working in a Florida restaurant, I kept having trouble ordering a yellow-meated watermelon from my produce guy. He said he could never find one, even though I’d seen them in local markets. Finally it came out that with my heavy hill country Mississippi accent he thought I was ordering a melon from some mythical specialty locale in California: “Jala Meadad”.

He even wrote it down that way on his order forms.

Here in the Deep South yellow-meated season is short; you’ll rarely find them marketed before July or after August, and you’ll almost never find them sold in supermarkets, usually only at roadside produce stands.

The variety of yellow meats I find most often here in central Mississippi has broad dark green and light green stripes, though over in Clay County, Alabama, where they have the Clay County Yellow Meated Watermelon Festival, the eponymous variety is an almost uniform light green.

The flesh can range from pale yellow to deep gold. The best contain large brownish black seeds, seeds being an essential ripening agent for the fruit, whose flavor I find sweeter than the reds, offering notes of honey, apricot, and vanilla.

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The Pearl River’s Gold Coast

During the heyday of Prohibition, the speakeasy districts of New York and Chicago became dazzling gathering places, filled with music, dance, and drink–as well as a few bullets, mind you–as did similar areas in the South, notably Beale Street in Memphis and of course the French Quarter in New Orleans, which doesn’t shut down for a damned thing.

In Jackson, Mississippi, it was the Gold Coast. Also known as East Jackson or even “’cross the river”, the Gold Coast comprised the area of Rankin County directly over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge at the end of South Jefferson Street. Though barely two square miles, its infamy was nation-wide.

In 1939, H.L. Mencken’s The American Mercury, published a rollicking account of the Gold Coast, “Hooch and Homicide in Mississippi”, by Craddock Goins. “There is no coast except the hog-wallows of the river banks,” Goins wrote, “but plenty of gold courses those banks to the pockets of the most brazen clique of cutthroats and bootleggers that ever defied the law.”

Goins cites Pat Hudson as the first to see the possibilities of lucrative gambling near the junction of the two federal highways (Hwys. 80 and 49) across the river from Jackson where before then there were only gas stations, hot dog stands and liquor peddlers. Then San Seaney began selling branded liquor at his place, The Jeep, which soon became a headquarters for wholesale illegal booze.

Others sprang up like mushrooms. The sheriff of Rankin County did his best to restore some semblance of law, but as soon as he cleaned out one den of iniquity another opened. Not only that, he was severely beaten and hospitalized for two weeks after one raid, and he simply bided his time until his term ran out. Goins reported that whites and blacks were often together under the same roof then, albeit shooting craps and whiskey on the opposite sides of a thin partition.

This lawlessness did not pass unnoticed in the nearby state capitol. Governor Hugh White, who in December of 1936 ordered National Guard troops into a business on the Pearl owned by one Guysell McPhail. Liquor was seized as evidence that the place should be shut down, but a Rankin County chancellor later dismissed the case, ruling that the evidence had been illegally obtained and at any rate the local authorities, not the governor, should handle law enforcement

The Mississippi Supreme Court later overruled the decision, but by that time liquor was flowing and dice were rolling. The governor bided his time.

In the late 40s, a thriving black nightclub culture was in place. Places like the Blue Peacock, the Stamps Hotel (the only hotel in Mississippi that catered to Negros) with its famous Off-Beat Room, The Blue Flame, the Travelers Home and others, where national jazz and blues acts performed. These establishments ran advertisements in The Jackson Advocate, including one that offered a special bus from Farish and Hamilton.

By 1946, Rankin county was paying the highest black market tax in the state., but these high times came to a crashing end one hot day in August of 1946, when Seaney and Constable Norris Overby met at place called the Shady Rest and gunned each other down. Others had been killed, of course—often that big-ass catfish you hooked turned out to be someone you hadn’t seen in a while—but this double homicide so inflamed public opinion that illegal operations never dared be so blatant.

In the 50s, black businesses withered in the backlash against Brown vs. Board of Education, and the Gold Coast became dominated by a white gangster named “Big Red” Hydrick, who brought area as securely under his suzerainty as a corrupt satrap. Red’s little kingdom withered with urban sprawl.

Beale Street is back–sort of–and the French Quarter will–Dieu merci!–always be the French Quarter, but the Pearl’s Gold Coast is gone, lost in a little enclave under the interstate, a puzzle of gravel, asphalt, and weathered walls.

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Prudhomme’s Original Blackened Seasoning

When Paul Prudhomme came barreling out of the bayous in the early 80’s, his cuisine had an enormous impact on the restaurant industry. The Cajun rage prompted restaurants as far away as Seattle to place jambalayas, gumbos, and etouffees on their menus. But the one dish that inspired a genuine craze was his blackened redfish.

Prudhomme first served blackened redfish at K-Paul’s in March, 1980, serving 30 or 40 people. It was an immediate hit; within days the restaurant was full, and within weeks, there were long lines. The dish became so popular that redfish (aka red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus) populations in the Gulf were severely impacted. The fish were sucked up in nets by the truckload in the bays, passes, and inlets from the Florida Keys to Brownsville, Texas, nearly wiping out the overall redfish stock. Fortunately, intensive conservation efforts were put in place—one of them being the founding of the Gulf Coast Conservation Association—and the redfish rebounded.

Blackening is an ideal cooking method for fish, but you can also blacken meats and shellfish, even squash and eggplant. Foods to be blackened are dredged in melted butter, coated in the following seasoning mix, then seared in a super-heated skillet. Do not try blackening inside unless you have a commercial vent hood, and if outside you must use a gas flame. Prudhomme’s herbal measurements are excruciatingly precise, so I usually quadruple the recipe to make it less tedious.

1 tablespoon sweet paprika
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground red pepper (preferably cayenne)
¾ teaspoon white pepper
¾ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves
½ teaspoon dried oregano leaves

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An Interview with Elbert Hilliard

Sometime in 2018, I began working on a profile of Charlotte Capers, and in the course of my research was fortunate enough to get an interview with Elbert Hilliard..

The interview was held on March 21, 2019 in a conference room on the second floor of the William F. Winter Building in Jackson, Mississippi. Also present was De’niecechsi Leyton, Head of Reference Services at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Though the purpose of my interview was to gather information about Mr. Hilliard’s brilliant predecessor, Charlotte Capers, Hilliard spoke of many other things, most notably about his outstanding career as a historian and director of MDAH.

* * * * *

I think Miss Capers shares what a lot of people share, is that once you’re gone, then you tend to be forgotten to a degree, plus the fact that, I hate to say it, but probably the vast majority of citizens don’t do a very good job of keeping up with history of studying history of remembering people in the past. Now, of course, when you say, Miss Welty, that’s different. She was a prolific author, yet Miss Capers, had she had the time, probably could have written books that we would still be reading today. As you’ve already stated, she was a very capable talented writer and very capable and talented person.

I did not meet Miss Capers until the spring of 1959, when I was at Mississippi State in graduate school studying history. And truthfully, I had never heard of the Mississippi Department of Archives & History until I was in graduate school. Sadly, though (the Department) has grown, and we have a wonderful publicity department, you con probably walk down the street here outside, go down a few blocks and ask someone how to get to the Department of Archives & History, we may or may not get an accurate answer.

But getting back to Miss Capers, that was when I met her in the spring of 1959. Probably the first time that I heard her name mentioned was in a conversation I had with Dr. John K. Bettersworth. He was head of the Department of History at Mississippi State when I was in graduate school, and I’ll always be indebted to him because he took a chance with me and approved a graduate assistantship for me. Clara and I were married on August 3, 1958, and we went up there the 1st of September, 1958.

After Christmas, when we got to the second semester there, we started thinking about jobs, and apparently Mr. Bettersworth was thinking the same thing. He came by my desk are there in Lee Hall, second floor, and I told him we were going to be contacting the top school districts in Mississippi. He said, “You also ought to contact Charlotte Capers at Archives & History.” By that time, I think I was smart enough, having been told by Dr. Glover Moore about the Department of Archives & History, I put two and two together and concluded that she was the director. Of course, he said “Charlotte Capers”, and here I am, eighty-two years old, and she’ll always be “Miss Capers” to me. I loved Miss Capers.

I did contact her, I can’t remember the specific dates, came down to Jackson and met with her in her office in the War Memorial Building. You went in the front door, you turned left, and then you made the first left, this north wing of the War Memorial Building was the Archives & History Department. They had just initiated or were in the process of initiating the restoration of the Old Capitol. That was a crucial moment in Miss Capers’ life, because here she is, Director of the Department of Archives & History, and as you noted earlier, it was a very small department with a very, very small staff, probably at that time less than 10 people, I can go back and check that, but I think it’s right. Years later, after I came into the department, we became very close and she would tell me stories. One day she told me her telephone rang, and the conversation went something like this:

“Charlotte? This is J.P.” (Gov. Coleman; they had been in school together at Ole Miss.) “Charlotte, the building commission just met.” (Back then, Jesse, the governor was the ex officio chair of the building commission, and when I say “ex officio”, depending on the nature and the personality of the governor, he was the chairman of the building commission. And that was the case with Gov. Coleman, because he was a strong, forceful leader, and fortunately he was very interested in history.) “And we have voted to restore the Old Capitol, to become the state historical museum, and we also voted to have you be responsible for doing it.” This was probably early 1959. (cf.: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/69000087_text) They started restoration work in 1959.

She said, “Elbert, I almost collapsed of apoplexy there on the spur of the moment.”

Well, you can imagine. Here is a lady who, as I said, in this small department, had nobody to help her on this. They’re not allocating any extra funds for staff people for Archives & History, so she had had no former experience in museum work, and certainly not museum planning or restoration details. She had high blood pressure as well!

So she took than on, and she was smart enough to know she needed to contact the top people, so she contacted the top people, so she contacted the American Association of Museums and the National Park Service and got some experts to give her guidance and advice. Well, as the process went along there, one of the things she recognized was that the museum needed to have written policies outlining the purpose of the museum and the scope of the collections because what had happened was that the museum function of the Department of Archives & History had been started back in the very early days by Dr. Dunbar Rowland, who was the first director.

Dr. Rowland had started the museum over in the first floor over on the first floor of what we call the New Capitol. Archives & History had moved from the Old Capitol to the New Capitol in 1903; Archives & History was founded in 1902, started out in the Old Capitol, and then was moved to the New Capitol in 1903. I’m sure he planned it that way, but he cited the fact that he was the last person—he was very proud of the fact—the last person to leave the Old Capitol. He then began to call for its preservation as a shrine—that was his word for it—to Mississippi history. He sent out that call in 1903, and it took a long time to be answered. That’s the way we do things in Mississippi.

After he (Rowland) became director, he began to assemble a museum collection. The approach that he took was common to most entities back then that were involved in museum work which was that they collected virtually everything that was old and unique and different. There were no written policies. That led to the department acquiring many historical artifacts but it also led to the department acquiring a number of artifacts that had nothing to do with Mississippi whatsoever. For example, there was an artifact associated with Lafayette’s visit to Natchez in 1825, there were all sorts of Civil War swords and pistols and so on, some of them belonged to prominent people. Then you had things with no connection, for example the hair from the mane of Stonewall Jackson, who never set foot in Mississippi. There were bricks from Independence Hall in Philadelphia. There were a pair of size 21 boots worn by a Negro soldier in 1901.

And then perhaps the most acclaimed one was the Egyptian mummy. And that’s a story in itself related to Miss Capers and me as well. As the years went by, if you were to conduct a poll of the museum there in the New Capitol and asked them what was their favorite artifact, they would have chosen the Egyptian mummy. They lined up to see the Egyptian mummy. Miss Capers told me that as a child they would skate through the New Capitol; they lived a few blocks away.

Anyway, this is what she inherited, that and the fact also that there had never been an official curator of the museum. The department was just so small. Dr. McCain succeeded Dr. Rowland, and Dr. McCain went off to war twice, so the museum was just sort of frozen in time then. I forgot to tell you also that Miss Capers had this great sense of humor and—this was after I’d been there and worked with her for a while—she told me some of the things that I’ve told you there about the museum collection. She said that the practice (viz: to collect virtually everything, jly) had been under Dr. Rowland, and it had probably been majorly curtailed under Dr. McCain and her, but Miss Capers said that one day a couple appeared in her office there in the War Memorial when she was director, and they said they had something to donate.

She asked, “What is it?”
And they said, “A stump.”
“A stump?”
“Yes, ma’am, a stump.”
“Well,” Capers asked, “What is the historical significance of the stump?”
She said they looked at her straight in the eye and said, without hesitation, that it was the stump on which Adam and Eve sat in the Garden of Eden.
“Oh,” Capers said. “Well, where did y’all find the stump.”
Again without hesitation, they replied, “Madison County.”
Of course, those of us who live in Madison County have always felt that we live in the Garden of Eden. But I asked, “Miss Capers, what did you do?”
“Well,” Capers said, “Dr. McCain told me never to alienate anyone, so I accepted the stump, and after a proper passage of time, I had it burned.”

So that was the type of thing she had to deal with, and as I said there was no curator, there were no professional museum standards, there was no catalogue system, so when I came with the department in July of 1965—I’ll catch up with that later on—what I found when I got involved with the state historical museum in the Old Capitol that they had instigated a professional cataloguing system. Now, what predated that was simply somebody years ago back in the early 1900s had simply gone to the exhibit cases, looked at the exhibit cases, saw what was in there, probably with a typed or handwritten label, had written that down and produced a page-by-page typescript that listed each artifact.

So here it gets to be 1960 or thereabouts and that’s what Miss Capers was dealing with was to get a professional curator on board who could then train the staff to catalogue the collection, which involved having a bound accession book, a catalogue number for each artifact which was entered and put on each artifact with indelible ink and sealed appropriately. That had to be done and then you had cards, object and donor cards so that you could find things in case someone came in and said, “Years ago, Great-great Grandaddy did this, do you have this?” What problems would develop from time-to-time was that in the early days prior to the restoration of the Old Capitol, there were no contracts of gifts that people signs, so Miss Capers had to start that, composing a contract stating that the donors were giving these items with no limiting restrictions or conditions. They became the property of the Department of Archives & History. Anyhow, she deserves credit for doing the research, recognizing what had to be done to have a professional museum, and getting the staff to implement that.

As I said, the first time I met her was in the spring of 1959, and I came in, of course I was a little nervous, since I’d never met her. That was not the first time I’d come to the Department of Archives & History; the first time would have been in the early fall of 1958 to do research on my thesis, a biography of Fielding Wright. That was my first visit, and of course I was impressed with the department, but the first thing they told me was that Gov. Wright’s papers had burned in his law office in Rolling Fork. That was a disappointment, so I had to find a way to get enough material to put together the thesis. I did not meet her on that occasion. So here I am coming back in the spring of ’59, and told her that Dr. Bettersworth recommended I come and talk with her. Now, it helped that Dr. Bettersworth was on the Board of Trustees of the Department of Archives & History. That kind of gave me an entrée. She said that she was interested in talking with me, but that she did not have a position at that particular time.

Back then, the state was on a legislative biennium, meaning that the legislature only met every two years. Of course, they’d have special sessions as needed, but they only dealt with the budget every two years. She said that they had a request before the legislature for a position, but added that they did not know how that was going to turn out, so they’d have to wait and see. Well, here Clare and I are, Clare had taught a year before we married, so she had a little money saved up. I was getting $100 a month teaching two classes at MSU, American Civilization survey courses, and so I knew that we couldn’t take a chance on waiting to see if this position would open.

So I sent letters to the top three (paying) school districts in Mississippi at that time: Jackson, Natchez and Meridian. I heard back from Meridian and Natchez, didn’t hear from Jackson. I never did get my nerve up, years later when I got to know Kirby Walker, kidding him about missing out on such a talented young man. I loved Dr. Walker. He was a delightful gentleman. Anyway, being in Starkville, the first appointment we made was in Meridian, then we’d go on to Natchez. In Meridian, I interviewed with Dr. Ivy. Now, this tells you something else about schools at that time. We’ve named the top three (sadly no longer the top three), but the difference is, who is interviewing us? The superintendent. This tells you that back then superintendents were hands-on managers.

Dr. Ivy was a very learned and erudite gentleman, held in high esteem in education circles in Mississippi, but when you started meeting and talking with him you quickly came to know that he knew that he was erudite and scholarly and held in high esteem. Dr. Ivy said that he would take us under consideration. So we went to Natchez, which I was familiar with because my sisters had worked there. Clare hated the smell of the paper mills. The superintendent was Mr. D.G. McLaurin. He had asked the president of the school board, Mr. Brent Foreman, a prominent attorney, to meet with us. Now, when you met with Mr. McLaurin, as opposed to Mr. Ivy, you realized you were in the presence of a servant/leader and a very special gentleman. I don’t know if you’ve ever been with Gov. Winter, but when you’re with Gov. Winter, you know you’re in the presence of a servant/leader and you feel comfortable. When Mr. McLaurin finished interviewing us, he asked Clare what she thought about Natchez and Clare, being one who always says exactly what she thinks, she didn’t have to work with the legislature, said, “Well, it’s a beautiful city, and the historical architecture is magnificent. But that odor is terrible.” I though to myself, well, we’ve blown it now, but he just smiled and said, “Well, down here we think it smells like money.”

So spontaneously, he offered us contracts for her to teach at the institute school and for me to teach at Washington High School. We were running out of money, so we singed the contracts. We came back to Starkville, and about a month later the telephone rang and who would it be but Miss Capers. She said, “Mr. Hilliard, I’m just checking back with you and wanted you to know that the legislature has approved a budget, we have a new position and I was wondering if you were interested in coming with us. I said, “Miss Capers, I am greatly interested in coming with the Department of Archives & History, particularly in working with you, but we have signed contracts with the Adams County school system.”

Well, this was 1959, back when contracts meant something. It wasn’t long after that when Paul Dietzel, who was at LSU, broke his contract, and that kicked off a great furor, but nowadays things have changed completely, and nowadays contracts don’t mean anything. So I told her I felt obligated to honor that contract, and she responded that she understood, to stay in touch and down the road if I was still interested in coming, to get back in touch with her.

There I am in 1959, and at that point I’m concentrating on finishing my master’s, getting to teach, and then my high school coach and history teacher had come that year from Anguilla to Madison/Ridgeland to be the principal. He was my first hero, and he started working on me to come teach and coach basketball and baseball there for him. I tactfully declined at first, but as time went on—as I said he was a hero of mine and I loved basketball and baseball part—we agreed to do that. I had to tell Mr. McLaurin that spring, and he wanted me to stay and to go into administration. I just wanted to follow this dream I had of teaching and coaching. So we came to Madison/Ridgeland, that would have been around the first of June in 1960. There were about 700 people in Madison, about 1100 people in Ridgeland. And those were five wonderful years. It was a different era altogether.

In the late winter of 1964, I began to wonder what to do with my life and what all was happening with the school system, so I sat down and wrote Miss Capers, “wondering if you might remember me” or words to that effect, and enclosed an updated resume. A few days pass, here comes an envelope with the Department of Archives & History letter head on it, “Dr. Mr. Hilliard, I am in receipt of your letter and am interested in your working with us, however the updated resume you mentioned was not enclosed.” Fortunately, she didn’t hold that against me, and scheduled a meeting. She grilled me thoroughly, and it was just luck that I had written at a time that she had just gotten a new position that she called Curator of History, who would serve not only as the curator of history but also as the administrator of the State Historical (Old Capitol) Museum.

She said that the person she had hired to come onboard to guide the development of the museum, Robert S. Nietzel—I guess the ‘S’ was for Stewart, since people would call him ‘Stew’—was an archaeologist, that he was very talented and that she wouldn’t have been able to get the museum going without his help and leadership. He is an interesting gentleman, she said, but that he’d just “burned out on me”. She said that she wanted me to go over there and motivate him. She said that he had excavated the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians with a National Science Foundation grant, that he’d supposed to have written a report on that which he had not done, and that he had not finished the exhibit on the Natchez that he was supposed to do.

I’m hearing her tell me all this, and then she asked me what my salary was at Madison/Ridgeland. I told her it was $5300. She offered me the job at $5400. Years later, after I’d worked with her for a while, I asked her if she remembered what she’d offered me and told her I’d often thought that I should have looked her straight in the eye and asked her &7800. She said, “That wouldn’t have done you any good, I wasn’t making that much myself.” I’m guessing in all likelihood that as a female agency head, perhaps at that time the only agency head, I’ve not researched that. If she was not the first, she was one of. Miss Cook was there, but anyhow, what with her being a lady her salary might not have been as good if she had been a man. She said, “I am literally exhausted.” The museum opened in June 1961. (She was 52.) She said that the Board had agreed to give her the summer off, that she was taking an Aegean cruise and would be back in September. She said, “You will come in when I’m gone and will start work July 1. I am going to start you here in the Archives and will ask Laura (Drake Siderfield) Harrell to train you.” (Sister of John Siderfield).

Laura was a diminutive, beautiful lady, the research assistant, and she was also what we would call today the managing editor of The Journal of Mississippi History. She started out in the basement of the War Memorial Building in one of those big old double desks that dated back to Dunbar Rowland’s era. It was piled up through the sky; I used to tell her she trained me how to pile up a desk. I was fortunate in having her because she was kind, and helpful. One day, she gave me a letter and said, “Elbert, I just don’t have time to work on this.” It was from a 92-year old lawyer up on Canton named Herman Dean seeking information on the Treaty of Hobukintoopa, which I was unfamiliar with though I knew many others. So she referred me to The American State Papers on Indian Affairs and Clarence Carter’s papers. Back then life moved at a slower pace, so I was able to work my way through that, to pick up clues until finally I could document that Hobukintoopa was the Indian name for Ft. St. Stephens on the lower Tombigbee.

I wrote it all up and showed Miss Harrell, sent that to Mr. Dean. I didn’t hear back. But when Miss Capers came back to the office in September, she called me into the office to talk with her, and she reaches in her desk, pulls out a letter and reads, “Dear Miss Capers, In all my years of legal research, I have never seen anything surpassing that done by your young Mr. Hilliard.” Bless Mr. Dean’s heart, he got me off to a good start, and Miss Capers said, “Elbert, you’re going over to the Old Capitol now, and take over there.”

Fortunately Mr. Nietzel was gracious enough not to be resentful of this young man who knew absolutely nothing coming in. He and I had a good relationship over the years and after he left the department, Dr. McLemore was director, I got him to come in and head up another excavation of the Grand Village when we were developing it as a state historical site.

Elbert Hilliard (seated) with William Winter in the State Archives, Oct. 2003. Photo courtesy of Chris Goodwin
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Aunt Jesse’s Heirloom Red Velvet

Great cakes don’t come out of a box. No, they come from handwork, sacks and shells, from old tried-and-true recipes and those who have made them. Such cakes are not only worthy of serving to family and guests, but they’re also fun to make.

Most of the best of them involve complicated procedures that aren’t that time-consuming at all if you’re a dedicated home cook in the first place, and everyone should experience the magic of taking a perfectly-cooked cake from the oven. After beaming at your creation for a few minutes, you get to decorate; the cake is your canvas, and you are the artist of this most temporary of masterpieces.

Legend has it that the original recipe for the red velvet cake is from the kitchens of the Waldorf-Astoria, but there’s no solid opinion on that. The cake became popular here sometime after World War II, when the South began to become much more a part of the nation as a whole. Me, I think that the red velvet cake is a variation of the old devil’s food cake and that the name changed because many good religious women were just not going to bring Satan’s bounty to their tables. It has the same texture, and while no cocoa is used in the icing, the cake’s primary flavoring is cocoa.

This is a family recipe, one of the dozen or so I still have from my mother’s hand. I’m almost sure she got it from her grandmother Eula, who came from a line of exceptional cooks. Her sister, my Aunt Leila, became legendary for her cakes, pickles and preserves. They were all very strict Baptists, and I suspect they were among the ones who would simply not feed their folks devil’s food; doubtless they didn’t want to nurture what they knew was a genetic predisposition for devilment.

(It didn’t work.)

Two elements of this recipe betray its age. First is that it employs a “boiled icing”, meaning an icing that is produced pretty much in the way you would make a sauce or a gravy, by heating starch in a liquid. In some cookbooks, this is referred to as a “roux icing”, but it’s a very raw roux indeed. The advantage to this type of icing is that you don’t have to warm it to ice your cake (in fact it needs cooling), and it tastes so much better than that lard and confectioner’s sugar gloop you get at the supermarket.

Second is the leavening, which involves that chemistry set action of putting baking soda in a bit of vinegar and watching it foam. The acidic buttermilk in the batter provides additional frothing and the end result is, well, velvety. Many of you will probably take issue with the amount of food coloring involved, but try to relax; besides, it’s so much fun dribbling that red food coloring into your white batter and swirling it in.

The absolute best part of course is eating it. If you really want it good, wrap layers in wax paper individually overnight before frosting.

Batter: 1 cup vegetable shortening, 1 ¼ cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring, 2 ¼ cups plain flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon cocoa, 1 cup buttermilk, 2 ounces red food coloring, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1 tablespoon vinegar. Cream shortening and sugar, and add well-beaten eggs and vanilla. Sift flour, salt and cocoa three times. Add dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk. Blend in food coloring. Dissolve soda in vinegar, and fold into batter. Bake in 3 layers at 350 degrees.

Frosting: 1 ½ cups milk, 4 ½ tablespoons flour, 1 ½ cups butter (3 sticks), 1 ½ cups sugar, 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla flavoring. Gradually add milk to flour in double boiler, stirring constantly until it is thicker than pudding. Remove from heat and stir until cooled. Cream butter and sugar for at least ten minutes, then add vanilla and continue creaming until fluffy. Add flour and milk mixture to creamed butter and sugar and beat at least ten minutes or until no grains of sugar can be detected. Frost and sprinkle with crushed walnuts or pecans.

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Halcyon Soup

Homemade soups should grace our tables more often; they’ve fed body and soul long before canning came along, and a good soup made with stout stock and proper care is a measure of the cook.

Gazpacho is a king of cold soups, an easily-made, refreshing and to most minds somewhat novel way to serve fresh summer vegetables. Old recipes of this dish always include bread as one of the basic ingredients, usually melded early on with oil, salt and garlic into something resembling a paste. While my recipe does not include bread at that juncture–to me, it gums up the soup–take it from someone who crumbles cold cornbread over his, bread is a service requirement, and any well-textured bread will do.

This recipe is from my halcyon days in Oxford, which was an intoxicating environment, doubly augmented by the wine of youth itself.  I was desultorily studying for a degree, diligently exploring my capacities for vice, and desolately working in a string of eateries, among them The Bean Blossom Bistro, by some reckoning the first health-food restaurant in Oxford. It was located on Jackson Avenue across from the old telephone exchange.  The Good Food Store, Oxford’s first health-food store—then in its second incarnation—was on the corner next door. Carol Davis opened the Bean Blossom in 1978. We had worked together at the old Moonlight Café, which Betty Blair had opened up in the Hoka a couple of years earlier. Carol and I became fast friends during that time, and when she opened up her own place, she brought me with her.

The Bean Blossom, like so many small restaurants, was founded more on good intentions than experience. I don’t think we ever seated more than fifty people at one time, and usually far, far less. The kitchen could barely hold more than three people. Our menu changed daily, though we could always whip up a tofu burger, or a veggie stir-fry or a great salad any time you wanted it. Carol introduced me to a lot of new foods, including adzuki beans, which I cook like cowpeas, and tofu, which I of course deep-fry.

She also brought gazpacho into my world, and for that I am evermore grateful. I remember dipping the soup from a bucket in the bottom of our double-door refrigerator, a sheen of oil glistening atop the mixture. We served it with a variety of breads, and each bowl I eat now is a serving of nostalgia. Like memories themselves, this soup improves with age.

Bean Blossom Gazpacho

Take two or three cloves of garlic, mince very, very finely and mash in the bottom of a glass or enamel bowl with a teaspoon of salt and about a half a cup of olive oil. If you want to try adding bread, now is the time, but I can’t make a recommendation as to what kind. Add in fine dice one yellow onion, three very ripe summer tomatoes, two peeled cucumbers, two ribs celery (with leaves), and a sweet pepper if you like, though be careful, since the pepper can overpower the other vegetables; a sweet yellow banana pepper works well. If you want to add a hot pepper such as a jalapeno, fine, but I don’t recommend heat; this is a cooling dish, and should be refreshing rather than pungent. Likewise, starchy vegetables such as fresh corn or peas seem out-of-place to me as well, though there are countless variations.

Add another teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of fresh basil, a heaping tablespoon of freshly-chopped parsley, a teaspoon of coarsely ground black pepper and a bit more olive oil, perhaps a tablespoon. Add a vegetable juice such as V8; tomato juice is too thick. Let this mixture sit for a couple of hours in the refrigerator in a sealed non-metallic container overnight. An hour before serving, add more juice if needed, a little fresh chopped parsley, adjust the salt and pepper and return to the refrigerator. Serve in chilled bowls (freshly chopped chives are a nice touch) with good crusty bread.

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Faulkner at Churchill Downs

That Faulkner wrote about the Kentucky Derby for Sports Illustrated should come as no surprise, nor that his essay “Kentucky: May: Saturday” is not only about what happened on May 7, 1955, but a masterly  examination of the Derby as a quintessential American event and of the sport of kings itself.

The assignment was his second from the fledgling Sports Illustrated (founded by Henry Luce the previous August), his first being an exercise in dissonant apposition. That January Faulkner attended his first hockey game, one between the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Rangers, and in “An Innocent at Rinkside” wrote: “It was filled with motion, speed. … discorded and inconsequent, bizarre and paradoxical, like the frantic darting of the weightless bugs which run on the surface of stagnant pools”. The poetry of hockey eluded the Mississippian.

James Street, the Mississippi minister-turned-journalist-turned novelist, was given the original 1955 Derby assignment, but Street died the September before the race. Sports Illustrated offered Faulkner $2000 plus a week’s expenses, including a $100-a-day chauffeured limousine; the kicker was a $500 bonus if the piece turned out to be as exceptional as they hoped from the Southern Nobelist. No fool he, Faulkner accepted immediately and after a trip to New York in April and the first days of May, he left the city for Louisville, where his publisher Don Klopfer sent him a note to the Brown Hotel informing him that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for A Fable.

“It’s an easy 500 bucks for you,” Klopfer write, “and we’re all mighty pleased, although I don’t suppose you give a damn.” On the contrary, Faulkner, who considered A Fable his masterpiece, was quite pleased and those visiting the handsome, nattily-attired writer in his suite found him puffing on a briarwood pipe, smiling.

Far from rinkside in Madison Gardens, at Churchill Downs Faulkner was in his element; his father Murry had been a livery-stable owner in Oxford, he enjoyed riding as well as fox hunting and he had a fine eye for horseflesh. In an interview with The Courier-Journal, Faulkner reflected, “It’s interesting that you have tried to train blood and flesh to the perfection of a machine but that it’s still blood and flesh.”

During his stay in Louisville Faulkner was accompanied by SI’s turf writer Whiney Tower, who was instructed “to try to see that our guest did not become so preoccupied with the available whiskey that he neglected his assignment.” To ensure against that seemingly likely possibility, Faulkner was to turn over 300 words each evening of their weeklong stay in Louisville for Tower to wire via Western Union to New York.

Tower, a legend in his own right and the nephew of Lexington horse-farm owner C.V. Whitney, found Faulkner to be “thoroughly professional”. “His knowledge of horses and their bloodlines went way back,” Tower wrote, “and I think the best part of his week may have been the day we skipped away from Louisville to visit farms in Lexington.

At Claiborne Farm, he was very much taken with Nasrullah, later to become one of the all-time great stallions, and sire of, among others, Bold Ruler, another champion sire. But no horse he saw in Lexington that long day entranced Faulkner nearly so much as a beautiful gray, Mahmoud, an Epsom Derby winner, then 22 years old and galloping effortlessly in his paddock at the C.V. Whitney farm. On the way back to Louisville, Faulkner napped, but near Frankfort, he awoke suddenly, nostrils twitching above his mustache. “He sat straight up, rolled down his window and inhaled deeply,” Tower wrote. “‘I thought so!’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t mistake that smell. There’s a distillery damn close to here.’”

As race day approached, Faulkner became more fascinated by the activity at Churchill Downs. Before his first trip to the press box, Tower wrote, Faulkner “asked in an excited schoolboyish way” whether he might meet acclaimed sportswriter Red Smith. The two proceeded to handicap the day’s races. Tower noted that Smith “relied mostly on past performance” in determining his bets, while Faulkner favored the conformation of each horse.

“Kentucky: May: Saturday” ran in the May 16, 1955 issue of Sports Illustrated. Written in five parts to accentuate the build-up of tension and excitement that exploded in the two-minute race that had drawn over a hundred thousand people from all over the world, the essay was not so much about the race itself as a—somewhat rambling; it is Faulkner, after all—meditation on what the Derby means, a piece so subjective that Faulkner didn’t even mention how “Swaps”, ridden by Bill Shoemaker, had held the lead from the start and won despite a thrilling challenge from “Nashua”.

“THREE DAYS BEFORE”, framed the event in historical perspective: “This saw Boone: the bluegrass, the virgin land rolling westward wave by dense wave from the Allegheny gaps, unmarked then, teeming with deer and buffalo about the salt licks and the limestone springs whose water in time would make the fine bourbon whiskey; and the wild men too — the red men and the white ones too who had to be a little wild also to endure and survive and so mark the wilderness with the proofs of their tough survival — Boonesborough, Owenstown, Harrod’s and Harbuck’s Stations; Kentucky: the dark and bloody ground.” He linked this past history with his own present: “And knew Stephen Foster and the brick mansion of his song; no longer the dark and bloody ground of memory now, but already my old Kentucky:​ home.”

“TWO DAYS BEFORE”, he turned to the race: “Even from just passing the stables, you carry with you the smell of liniment and ammonia and straw — the strong quiet aroma of horses. And even before we reach the track we can hear horses — the light hard rapid thud of hooves mounting into crescendo and already fading rapidly on. And now in the gray early light we can see them, in couples and groups at canter or hand-gallop under the exercise boys. Then one alone, at once furious and solitary, going full out, breezed, the rider hunched forward, excrescent and precarious, not of the horse but simply (for the instant) with it, in the conventional posture of speed — and who knows, perhaps the two of them, man and horse both: the animal dreaming, hoping that for that moment at least it looked like Whirlaway or Citation, the boy for that moment at least that he was indistinguishable from Arcaro or Earl Sande, perhaps feeling already across his knees the scented sweep of the victorious garland.”

“ONE DAY BEFORE” looked back to former races: “It rained last night; the gray air is still moist and filled with a kind of luminousness, lambence, as if each droplet held in airy suspension still its molecule of light, so that the statue which dominated the scene at all times anyway now seems to hold dominion over the air itself like a dim sun, until, looming and gigantic over us, it looks like gold — the golden effigy of the golden horse, ‘Big Red’ to the Negro groom who loved him and did not outlive him very long, Big Red’s effigy of course, looking out with the calm pride of the old manly warrior kings, over the land where his get still gambol as infants, until the Saturday afternoon moment when they too will wear the mat of roses in the flash and glare of magnesium; not just his own effigy, but symbol too of all the long recorded line from Aristides through the Whirlaways and Count Fleets and Gallant Foxes and Citations: epiphany and apotheosis of the horse.”

“THE DAY” began ruminating about the horse, which once moved man’s body and goods, but now moved only his money. Food-supplying animals would, he prophesied, eventually become obsolete, but not horses, since they provide mankind with “something deep and profound in his emotional nature and need, a sublimation, a transference: man with his admiration for speed and strength, physical power far beyond what he himself is capable of, projects his own desire for physical supremacy, victory, onto the agent—the baseball or football team, the prize fighter. Only the horse race is more universal…”

“4:29 P.M.” is emotionally drained, an analytic response to spent anticipation: “We who watched have seen too much… we must turn away now for a little time, even if only to assimilate, get used to living with, what we have seen and experienced.” He focused on the dispersal of the crowds and the disgruntlement of the losing backers. “And so on. So it is not the Day after all, it is only the eighty-first one.”