Squash Eudora

In the introduction to her splendid Southern Hospitality Cookbook, Jackson epicure Winifred Cheney states that a signature dish is “a tribute in the field of cookery.”

Here Winifred misinforms. A signature dish is a recipe that identifies or is directly associated with an individual chef or a particular restaurant. For instance, one could say that blackened red fish is a signature dish of Paul Prudhomme’s, or oysters Rockefeller of Antoine’s.

Dishes named for people, either in honor of them—as in the Rockefeller—or made for them—as with Melba toast—don’t have a specific term of reference. They’re just recipes named for people, which are (predictably) created constantly. Winifred herself created two dishes in honor of her neighbor Eudora Welty: apples Eudora and squash Eudora.

Winifred is notorious for her tedious, voluptuous recipes with expensive ingredients. Such is the case with her apples Eudora, which she describes as “tart apples cooked in a delicious syrup, drained and baked in a rich custard, then filled with an apricot rum filling and topped with a dollop of whipped cream.” If that doesn’t wear you out just reading it, cooking it’s going to make you bedridden. Then she gives us squash Eudora, which is absolutely wonderful, and certainly somewhat less tedious.

Wash but do not peel two pounds tender yellow squash. Slice thinly and parboil with a pat of butter until tender. Drain and season with black pepper and salt to taste. Drain and wash a half pound (8 oz.) livers, cut into halves and sauté in butter with a bit of Worcestershire.

Drain livers and set aside to cool, then mix with squash, about a cup of chopped green onions, a teaspoon curry powder, one egg lightly beaten and a half cup grated Parmesan. Spoon mixture into a shallow casserole, dust top with more Parmesan, and bake at 350 until firm.

Winifred says that you can substitute a pound of lump crab meat for the livers. If you’ve got the bucks, go for it.

Barry

I took Barry’s first class at Ole Miss as an undergraduate. The class was held in Bondurant East, second floor, overlooking the Williams Library. Donna Tartt was in the class as well, a very pretty young lady who turned in a wonderful short story about a woman held captive by a man whose passion was orchids. I turned in a brutal little story about a woman who had murdered her husband in front of her youngest child that Hannah found “just a little bit over the top, Yancy,” since the child later went on to commit suicide as an adult.

“Murder and suicide both in less than five pages?” he asked. He looked at me, shrugged and grinned.

Barry was drinking heavily at that time, and it wasn’t a week later before he showed up just as drunk as he could be. The entire class just sat in their seats, dumbfounded, as he rambled on about poetry, fiction and flying around the Gulf of Mexico shooting tequila with Jimmy Buffet. We were dismissed early.

My friend and classmate Robert Yarborough told me to stay after class and help him get Hannah home. I drove Barry’s car, Robert followed on his motorcycle. First stop was to a supermarket, where Barry gave me a wad of money and told me to buy a steak (“I need protein!”), then to the run-down duplex he shared with Robert on Johnson Avenue.

At the next class we were on pins and needles wondering if Hannah would show up, but of course he did, apologized, told us to forget about it, and delivered one of the best lectures on the craft of writing I’ve ever heard before or since.  Before the class, he had written POETRY across the blackboard. He never referred to it during the lecture, but we knew it was there.

“You’ve got to write, write, write” he said. “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it.” Trite, I know, but when Barry said it with that raffish grin of his, he made it stick. He taught us to listen to ourselves, and that was a great and painful gift.

Later on that semester, I was sitting in the Gin having a few beers and scribbling on a pad when Hannah walked in. I nodded a greeting, and eventually he ambled over and we started talking. He asked about the short story I’d written. I told him I’d gotten the title (“A Roof of Wind”) from Faulkner,, and for some reason this infuriated him. I got the impression that he was sick and tired having his mule and wagon stuck in the Dixie Limited wheelhouse. Not knowing what else to do, I apologized and left posthaste. He never brought it up again, and I certainly didn’t.

Like Morris, Hannah was subject to the fawning of fans, but while Willie reveled in holding late-night, dissolute salons where he was the center of the attentions of a cadre of hangers-on, Barry kept a somewhat lower profile and a more select company. I knew many people who traveled in those circles, and they enjoyed regaling those of us who weren’t members of said cliques with their second-hand wit and wisdom.

On reflection, it wasn’t a good time for either Morris or Hannah. Neither published anything of matter those years; Barry began bottoming out with Ray, while Willie was churning out even worse froth in the form of Terrains of the Heart. But unlike Morris, Hannah pulled out of it, wrote, and wrote well. He had to, and he did.

Hannah was the finest Southern writer of his generation, eye, ear, and voice. Oh, he was a bad boy to be sure; he had the witting arrogance to be vulgar when the situation presented itself, but Hannah was a singer.

Keepers of the House

In the summer of 1855, Miss Anna Sheegog died upstairs in the house in which I write. No token of hers remains, not even a hair ribbon; the grief at her passing was eased and forgotten long ago. Yet she is still fooling around up there, after al this time, and no wonder—she was only 16 and not ready to be done with life.

Something is always stirring in old houses, for they murmur in their sleep as people do. So much happens, and none of it wants to leave; it is laid up in the walls, left to leak out now and then when someone is listening. Ghosts, we call it, though it is really only memory. I have listened here—in all weathers, in the bright noon and deep watches of the night—longer than Miss Anna was alive, and I know something of the memory of houses.

This one is called Rowan Oak, for Mr. William Faulkner called it that, and he lived here longer than anybody. Because he lived here it is a literary shrine of sorts; for 20-odd years pilgrims have been coming up the walk to see what lies in the white house.

I, too, was a pilgrim once, come by a long road begun in a railroad yard. One night a switchman, Frank Smith, pressed on me a book, of all things, a paperback, greasy and bent to the shape of his blue jeans pocket. “Read this,” he said. In the yard office after the train was gone, I opened it and began to read, and the world was never the same again.

Years later, when I was curator of Mr. William Faulkner’s house, I happened on a page of manuscript behind a drawer in the library. I knew right away what it was; lines from The Hamlet, written in this very house. It was no small thing to meet, and as the morning light fell through the tall library windows, I remembered another light; the glow of Frank Smith’s lantern on that vanished summer night, when he put his copy of The Hamlet in my hand.

Ghosts again, and, always, time. In Mr. Faulkner’s house, time is the sum of all senses. It is in the light, in all seasons softened to twilight by the trees. Time lies in the creak of a shutter, rain in the downspouts, in a step half-heard in the empty rooms above. It is in the very smell of the place, which is the smell of all grandmother’s houses, made of dust and mildew, old books and years of fried chicken—and that almost palpable memory that will not go away. It is the smell of time.

No wonder pilgrims sometimes speak in whispers here. No wonder children often cling shyly to their parents’ legs, flirting with something only they can see. Time conjures them all, as it conjures us, who are stewards of time.

There have not been many of us. Dr. James Webb, the first and best curator, will always be chief. In the early years Dr. George Street was here, and Bev Smith. I have worked with Danny Toma, Terrell Lewis, Keith Fudge. Winfred Ragland was the first groundskeeper, and then Isiah McGuirt, whom I watched rake the leaves of 15 autumns.

These were all Southern men who knew not just Mr. Faulkner and his work, but also what it means to love an old house and earth whence it came. They were all pilgrims, come here by their own long roads, each to find his own doorway to the past.

Once, on one of those days when the sky is deep blue and every leaf sharp and clear and shadows haunt the fence corners—once, on such a day, Isaiah walked out in the north pasture to work his turnips and Dany went along to swap lies. I wandered out by myself by and by and leaned on the fence and watched them. On the whole place there were only three of us. Their voices drifted to me across the morning. Now and then, an acorn rattled on the tin roof of the cookhouse, the loft door creaked, the house drowsed white and solid in the sun.

I should not have been surprised to find Mr. Faulkner at my elbow, leaning on the fence with his pipe, nor to see Miss Anna in the kitchen door—for the streams of time had come together once more, the old proper rhythms of life were in cadence, and all that ever happened on this place narrowed to an old man and a boy in the pasture, talking quietly under the autumn sky.

Occasionally, folks ask me what it is like to work at Rowan Oak. I do not know how to tell them about Frank Smith or Dr. Webb or Danny or the day Isiah went out to hoe his greens, but sometimes I try, and they are almost always satisfied. It is a good thing for pilgrims to carry away into the world waiting for them beyond the gate, for in that world ghosts are silly and magic is only for children. I don’t believe so myself, and neither does Miss Anna—but then, she is only 16, after all.

Howard Bahr lives in Oxford, Mississippi

A Cook from the Homeland

Calhoun County provides north Mississippi with a bucolic idyll between the burgeoning metro areas of Tupelo and Grenada. The Skuna and Yalobusha Rivers run east to west through Calhoun at equal distance into the Yazoo via the Tallahatchie, so geographically the county is divided into thirds. The land is typical of north central Mississippi; wooded hills creased by bottom lands.

Given the proximity to Oxford, the county provides a model (if not original) of Yoknapatawpha, but the county seat, Pittsboro, arguably the smallest county seat in the state, is a sleepy village, much the opposite of Faulkner’s bustling Jefferson. Pittsboro sits atop a ridge of hills that marks the southern edge of the Skuna River valley. To the south, the land slopes in a more leisurely manner to the Yalobusha just south of Vardaman, Derma, and Calhoun City.

Jo Brans is a member of the Reid family, who have lived in Pittsboro for time out of mind. Brans’ writings have explored many subjects, most in a much more scholarly vein, but Feast Here Awhile is a thoughtful examination of the changes in American cuisine from the 50s to the 90s. Feast Here Awhile (the title, by the way, is taken from Shakespeare’s Pericles, I,iv,107) is the story of her own culinary coming of age that takes her from the gentle hills of north Mississippi to Belhaven College in Jackson (which was strictly for young ladies until the year after she graduated, in 1955), to various locations in Texas, Minnesota and, finally, New York City as well as through two marriages, one to an American journalist, the other to a Dutch academic.

Brans moves from her mother’s kitchen through college cafeterias, Texas eateries and European fare on to DeNiro’s TriBeCa Grill. She also moves through (predictably, since the book has a pronounced literary bent) Child, Beard, and Rosso, managing to mention Proust, Welty, and Kerouac on the way. Indeed, Brans is somewhat of a compulsive name-dropper, both of the famous and the near-famous, but I was infinitely proud of her for managing to squeeze in Ernie Mickler and his wonderful White Trash Cooking.

In short, Feast Here Awhile is a personal encapsulation of the American culinary experience in the second half of the twentieth century, and a compelling read from any standpoint. It helps, of course, to be up on the literature, culinary and otherwise, but Brans is an excellent writer and rarely boring. I would recommend this book for any Southerner interested in food and cooking, more specifically Mississippians of that bent and particularly the good people of Calhoun County itself.

In preparation for this article on her, I attempted to get in touch with Brans for an interview, but countless attempts to discover her publisher or literary agent failed. Finally my friend Michelle Hudson, who heads up the reference department at the Welty Library asked, “Have you tried the phone book?”

Well, no. Sure enough, in minutes Michelle gave me a number to call. When I did, early on a Saturday evening, a polite young man answered the phone and said he’d pass my message on to Jo. Within an hour Ms. Brans called. After making sure I was from Calhoun County (that didn’t take long at all) we chatted. She said she’d think about my request and let me know. Some three days later, I received her reply. I reproduce it here as evidence of her talent and grace.

Dear Jesse,

  After serious reflection, I have decided that the project you propose is not for me.  I enjoyed writing Feast Here Awhile. I am pleased to find that it has found favor with readers, including, especially, you. Many folks, over the years since its publication, have looked me up (“on purpose,” as we Southerners say) to offer thanks and to relate their own pleasures at the table. I would have had material for several sequels.

  But no, I thought, and think, not. Essentially I have said in Feast what I have to say about the changes in American eating over the last five or six decades. It’s all there, from  the joys of good home cooking and the family dinner table to the more complicated pleasures of Julia Child and those whom she terrified, taught, and liberated–usually all three–and beyond.

  Feast Here Awhile is also a personal odyssey, if that’s not too highfaluting a term for just growing up. I ate my way from childhood in a small Southern town through various stops along the road to life in New York City, and recorded the trip, hit or miss, in “The Food Book,” which became Feast. Though food was the focus, I was always aware as I typed away that I was recording the arc of my own life. No news for either of us there: that’s what writers do.

  Jesse, I’m flattered that you want to work with me, but don’t be content to retread. I really like your piece about Sambo Mockbee and I suspect, from our brief communication, that you want to be a writer, not an editor. If I’m right, cut loose. My way in was food. Maybe yours is food, too, but your food, not mine. Find your own way in. Tell your story. And send me a copy when the book comes out.
  Good luck and God bless,
  Jo Brans

Thanks, Jo. I will.

Letter to a Young Scholar

Banner is a hamlet in Calhoun County some three miles north of Bruce, Mississippi. In 1975, Tom Yancy, a junior at Bruce High School, wrote a letter to Eudora Welty, who responded.

Dorcas Reilly, The Green Bean Queen

Most Southern holiday dishes are home-grown recipes of family favorites, but unlike Grandma’s sweet potato pie or Aunt Sally’s ambrosia, the ubiquitous green bean casserole was developed in 1955 in the Camden, NJ test kitchens of the Campbell Soup Company by home-town girl Dorcas Reilly.

A 1947 graduate in home economics from Drexel University, Reilly began working at Campbell’s in 1949 as one of two full-time staff members in the company’s home economics department. Reilly became something of a prototype for today’s culinary celebrities in the sense that she was among the first to use multiple media outlets for marketing.  Not only did her job with Campbell’s involve creating recipes from the company’s products, but she also sent press releases to print media, prepared food for photo shoots and cooked live on television. The difference lies in that Dorcas was not promoting herself; she was promoting Campbell’s Soups, which was a good way to make a living.

“It was really a lot of fun,” Reilly later recalled. “Each Thursday, I would travel to New York to meet with the ad agency. They would tell me what I was to prepare for the live commercial breaks during The Henry Aldrich Show in Studio 3B on NBC. I did everything from shopping for what I needed to preparing the food on the set. Campbell’s sponsored the show from 1951 until it ended in May 1953.”

Since the show was live, Reilly prepared the dishes in a makeshift studio kitchen on two heating elements near a utility sink. When time came for the commercial to air, she would bring the hot dish to a table in front of the camera.

“Most times there wasn’t time for me to get out of the shot, so I would hide under the table until the commercial was over,” Reilly said. Reilly led the team that created the green bean casserole in 1955. She says the casserole was invented as a recipe involving two things most Americans always had on hand in the 1950s: canned green beans and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.

Like all recipes typical of the period, the casserole requires minimal number of ingredients, takes little time and can be customized to fit a wide range of tastes. An estimated 15 million households will serve Dorcas’ green bean casserole this holiday season. The Campbell’s Soup Company estimates that $20 million worth of cream of mushroom soup are sold each year for use in this recipe alone.

In 2002, Reilly, then living in Haddonfield, NJ, appeared at the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame to donate the original copy of the recipe to the museum. In 2008, Alpha Sigma Alpha, Reilly’s sorority at Drexel, honored her with the Recognition of Eminence Award, and in 2013 Drexel established an annual $1,000 scholarship in her honor and bestowed her with its inaugural Cultural Contribution Award.

Dorcas died on Oct. 15, 2018 in Haddonfield at the age of 92.

With Stan and Joan in Meridian

In March, 2017, Joan Didion published the notes of her jaunt forty-eight years ago through Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi in a slender book, South and West (Knopf). We’ll take a much more in-depth look at the book in a later entry, but first let’s focus on the passage in which Didion meets with the legendary “Voice of the Rebels” Stan Torgerson, in Torgerson’s home town of Meridian, Mississippi.

Bear in mind as you read that the month is June, the year is 1970. Nixon is in the White House for his first term. The nation as a whole is in a somewhat less turbulent mode after the riotous Sixties, but no section is more complacent than the South, where the key word had become progress. This passage is in essence an examination of the ongoing homogenization of the South as seem through the eyes of a transplant from the upper Midwest (Torgerson) and told to a visitor from California.

At times Torgerson sounds like a one-man chamber of commerce espousing racial harmony, social equality and industrialization. When Stan says, “We’re not as inbred as we used to be” he’s referring not (necessarily) to genetics but instead to the influx of people and ideas from outside the South; when he says “we don’t wear crinolines any more” he’s telling Didion that Old South is gone. But though he says, “If there were elm trees hanging over the street it would be very midwestern,” as they drive through residential Meridian, the issues of race and poverty he discusses are those of the South.

This section from Didion’s work appears here in its entirety not only for the more compelling reason that it needs to be read in toto to grasp its exhaustive effect on Didion and to understand more fully Didion’s comments in context—particularly the last line—but also on a somewhat sentimental level because those many of you–as I do–remain familiar with Torgerson’s voice from his 17 years on air with Ole Miss sports might recollect his voice in the cadences of the quoted passages.

When I called Stan Torgerson for lunch at his radio station, WQIC, and asked him the best place to lunch, he said Weidmann’s, “but it wouldn’t win any Holiday Magazine awards.” In fact it had, and was not a bad restaurant, but everyone in Mississippi begins on the defensive. “I’ll be the biggest man in a green shirt to come through the door,” he advised me. He was, at lunch, wary at first. He said he didn’t think I knew what I was doing. I agreed. He refused drink, saying he wasn’t in New York City. Stan Torgerson came out of the cold North (Minnesota, I think) and headed to Memphis, where he went into broadcasting. He worked in Miami, and then, for a year, in San Diego, living in La Jolla. He felt ill at ease in La Jolla—his neighbors kept to themselves, had their own interests—and he wanted to get back south. His son had won a football scholarship to Ole Miss. He was worried about his children and drugs in California. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I just haven’t reached the point where I think pot is a way of life.”

When the black radio station in Meridian came up for sale he bought it. He also broadcasts the Ole Miss games, something he began doing when he was in Memphis. “That’s right,” he said, “I own the ethnic station, WQIC. In its thirteenth year of serving the black community here.” He programs gospel and soul, and reaches 180,000 in several Mississippi and Alabama counties, the thirty-second largest black market in the country, sixty miles in all directions and forty-three percent of that area is black. We serve a major black market, program soul music and gospel music, but what does that mean? A month ago in Billboard there was a survey pointing out that the Top 40-format stations are playing basically soul. Jackson 5 with ‘ABC.’ ‘Turn Back the Hands of Time,’ that’s Top 40 but it’s soul. Once in a while we throw in some blue-eyed soul, like Dusty Springfield with ’Son of a Preacher Man.’ We don’t play rock because our people don’t dig it. We don’t play your underground groups like the Jefferson Airplane . .. We have goodly reason to believe that ten to fifteen percent of our audience is white; some of the phone calls we get in the afternoon for dedications, they’re definitely white voices. We get thirty-six percent of the audience.”

He said I was probably wondering why he came back to Mississippi. “I came because I dearly love this state. I have a son—he’ll be a senior this fall—playing football at the University of Mississippi.”

He pointed out that Meridian was timber country, hill country. Pulpwood is the backbone of the agricultural product. He pointed out how progressive Meridian was: its three new hospitals. “In most southern cities there is a much stronger tendency to old-line money . . . Southern retailers stayed in business privately, home-owned, until very recently. In most cases the retailer has just begun to feel the competition from the chains. There’s the greatest business opportunity in the country right here in the South . . . We don’t have a McDonald’s in a city of almost fifty thousand people, don’t have any of these franchises here yet. You give one corner of one intersection in Jackson, Mississippi, or you give me the whole ball of wax right here in Meridian, I’d take the whole ball of wax and I’d put a McDonald’s on one corner, a Burger Chef on the other, a Shoney’s Po’ Boy (sic! jly) ‘cross the street . . . “

His voice kept on, weaving ever higher flights of economic possibility. “There is and must be,” he said, a “continued turning to the South by industry. The climate is certainly one reason. Another is that the South wants industry and is willing to give a tax advantage to get it. Another, of course, is that there is a relatively low level of unionism in the South. Lockheed assembles tail sections here and ships them to California for assembly . . .

“Atlanta is the magic city for the young around here, across the whole social spectrum . . . The great migration out in the past ten years has been black, they get these glowing letters, and of course they’ve got relatively liberal welfare programs in some of the northern states . . . No doubt, too, there appears to be greater opportunity in the North.”

More on the progressive nature of Meridian: “Our radio station has probably got as fine a list of blue-chip clients as any in town, black or not. We’ve got all four banks, and anyone in retailing who’s interested in doing business with the black—the black’s dollar is very important. The minimum wage was probably the most important thing to happen along these lines, and then food stamps were a good dead, I would say they added millions of dollars to the economy.”

“We are in a transitional phase. There’s a tremendous push to education on the part of young blacks. The schools here are completely integrated. Of course, neither you not I can change the older black, the forty-year old, his life patterns are settled.”

“Ole Miss has its standards to keep up. As more and more blacks get an educational advantage, you’ll see blacks at Ole Miss. There’s a feeling among some black leaders that because these kids have not had advantages they should get some kind of educational break, but basically what has to happen is the standards have to stay up and the people come up to meet them.”

We were driving through town at night, and Stan Torgerson interrupted himself to point out the post office. “There’s the post office, the courthouse where the famous Philadelphia trials were held, the trials for the so-called Philadelphia deaths.”

“If there were elm trees hanging over the street it would be very midwestern,” Stan observed as we drove through the residential district. He pointed out his $29,500 house, a two-story frame, “twenty-eight hundred square feet, with magnolia, dogwood and pecan trees.” He pointed out Poplar Drive the “Park Avenue of Meridian, Mississippi, all the houses built by the old-line families.”

Fervently, he kept reverting to the wholesomeness of life in Meridian. His daughter, who would be a high school senior in the fall, had “her sports, her outdoor activities, her swimming. It’s a quiet, pacific type of living, which is one of the reasons I wanted to come back down here. The kids are taught to say ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am.’ I know it’s very fashionable to poke fun at the South, but I’ll pit our slum area any day against the slum areas where the Cubans and Puerto Ricans live in Miami, Florida, and Miami’ll lose.”

Meridian is the largest city between Jackson and Birmingham, and there is a naval base there which means a great deal to the community. At apartment buildings largely inhabited by the navy there are cars with plates from all over the country.

Some random social observations from Stan Torgerson included: most of the local children go to college within the state, at Ole Miss or Mississippi (sic jly): the other country club, built with federal money, has a membership which includes “assistant managers of stores and some navy people’: most of the subdivisions in Meridian feature “custom houses.” Torgerson paused dramatically, to emphasize the versatility of the new blood in town: “A fabric store.”

I asked if some of the children did not leave, and he allowed that some did. “Nothing here for the kid with an engineering degree. And of course the girls go where they marry. Southern girls are notoriously husband hunting, but I guess that’s the same anywhere.” It occurred to me almost constantly in the South that had I lived there I would have been an eccentric and full of anger, and I wondered what form the anger would have taken. Would I have taken up causes, or would I have simply knifed somebody?

Torgerson was would up now, and I could not stop his peroration. “There’s been a great metamorphosis in recent years in the South, the Volkswagen dealership for example comparable in size to anything you’ll find anywhere.”

“The KKK which used to be a major factor in this community isn’t a factor anymore, both the membership and the influence have diminished, and I cannot think of any place where the black is denied entrance, with the possible exception of private clubs. We don’t have any antagonistic-type black leaders working against racial harmony. Since the advent of black pride, black power, there is a little tendency to be self-segregating. On our station, we have a program we call Adventures in Black History to point out the contributions black people have made—a black minister does it. I have blacks working in the WAIC Soul Shop, and there’s a black druggist here, a man eminently qualified, who is a local boy who went north and came back, received his training at the University of Illinois. We have a certain degree of black business, including this gas station here, which is owned by a black. The key is racial harmony, and education, and we’ll try to provide our people with both, ‘cause we’re gonna live together a long time. Every major retailer hires black clerks, Sears has a couple of black department heads, there’s a black business college here, and a black and white Careen Training Institute.

“Of course we have transplants, too, new ideas, like any other hybrid we’re generally stronger. We’re not nearly as inbred as we used to be. We’ve been withdrawn in this part of the South for many, many years, but we’ve become more aggressive, and as people come in they’ve helped us become more aggressive—we don’t wear crinolines anymore, no we don’t.”

“And about our politics, well, George Wallace got a lot of votes in Indiana, let’s face it. I’m not saying I’m going to have a black minister come home to dinner tonight, ‘cause I’m not. But things are changing. I had a man the other day, owns an appliance store, he never believed you could send a black repairman into somebody’s house. Now he can’t find a white … He asks me if I know a black man who makes a good appearance. That’s progress . . .”

Of course, there’s a tremendous lack of skilled blacks, and the problem is training and education. It’s no longer a matter of lack of opportunity, it’s a matter of lack of skills. We’re still two generations from full equality, but so are they in Chicago, in Detroit, and have you ever been in Harlem?”

Glazed by the two hours in which this man in the green shirt had laid Meridian out before us as an entrepreneur’s dream, a Shoney’s Po’ Boy (!) on every corner and progress everywhere, even at the country club, I dropped him off and drove through the still-deserted streets of the downtown. A few black women were on the streets and they carried umbrellas against the sun. It was almost five o’clock. In the middle of 22nd Avenue, the main street of Meridian, there was a man holding a shotgun. He had on a pink shirt and a golfing cap, and in one ear there was a hearing aid. He raised the shotgun and shot toward the roof of a building several times.

I stopped the car and watched him a while, then approached him. “What are you shooting at?” I asked.

Pi-eagins,” he said cheerfully.

In this one demented afternoon Mississippi lost much of its power to astonish me.

The Man Who Loved Christmas

First published in the Calhoun County Journal Dec. 20, 1984, this memoir of my father, Jesse L. Yancy, Jr., was written fourteen years after his death by his friend and political partner, Sellers Gale Denley. Jess Jr. was a remarkable man in a difficult time, colorful, vibrant, and generous, his life a vision of community, unity, and compassion.

If there was ever a man who loved Christmas, it was the late Sen. Jesse Yancy of Bruce. The word “loved” is used advisedly. For there are those who might be said to “enjoy” Christmas, “respect” Christmas, “anticipate” Christmas, etc., but Jesse loved Christmas. His enthusiasm might have been regarded as extreme; except that was the way Jesse was about most things. He worked hard. Then he played hard. More than likely this approach to life was a primary cause of his untimely death on Aug. 26, 1970, at the age of 44, from a massive heart attack. Prior to assuming the senate post he served as district attorney of the third circuit court district for eight years and was city attorney in Bruce for 17 years. So it wasn’t unusual that the new city library was named in his honor.

And the way that Jesse launched the Christmas season was not particularly unique or unusual, either. It began with a big party with his friends at the Bruce community building. Funds were solicited for a live band and a case or so of assorted spirits and goodies, with a few dollars left over for another project. You see, Jesse had a secret Christmas vice. He liked to dress up in a funny red suit, hide his face behind a mask of white whiskers and, on Christmas Eve, visit the area in South Bruce where most black citizens lived.

Before each of these visits his automobile was filled with candy, nuts, fruit, toys and firecrackers. In the early 1960s it was all the Christmas some of the children had. The ritual started in the ’50s when he dressed up to play Santa for his own children. His family decided he should also go see the children of the black woman who worked for them. His appearance was an immediate hit. It was the Christmas of 1960, when I started helping him with the project, that he said he realized back then on his first trip that most of the black children had never really seen Santa Claus. So it became an annual event, growing in scope each year, to make the Christmas Eve appearance. The addition of toys and other goodies was a part of the evolution. The project was financed with any excess funds from the party, plus contributions from several of us who usually helped, with Jesse taking up the slack. It started each year with several trips to area wholesalers to purchase the large volume of goodies needed for some 250 to 350 children.

The bounty would be hauled in and the Yancy children—Cindy, Tom and Lee, often assisted by cousins Bill and Bob Cooper—and others would assemble individual sacks. Then, on Christmas Eve, Jesse would put on his Santa suit, we would load up a vehicle or two—the most memorable and utilitarian being a dark green Mustang convertible— and begin the appointed rounds. There must have been a lookout, for as soon as the first vehicle crossed the railroad tracks, which marked the boundary of the black community, several young boys would take over the lead position. With wide-eyed excitement they would precede the caravan down Murphree Street shouting: “Here he comes. Here comes Santa. Here he comes.” And for the next hour or so Jesse would be in his Christmas glory.

He handed out presents to those close by while keeping an eye out for those too shy to come up to him, so he could seek them out later. He knew quite a few of them by name. And almost all of the parents knew Jesse and whispered their thanks. But if the children knew him they didn’t let on. And neither did they let on if they sometimes got a whiff of the Old Charter Santa and his helpers found useful in warding off the cold and other miseries.

The custom died with Jesse. The party lasted another year or two, and some of us talked about continuing the Santa Claus visit. But, we rationalized, it was 1970 and the children were being encouraged to visit Santa on the Square, sponsored by the city as a part of the Lion’s Club Christmas parade. So we didn’t.  It has been 35 years, but every Christmas about this time I begin to get a little bit anxious. Like you feel when you know there is something you probably need to do. Like you feel when you know there is something you probably will never get to do again.

It has been suggested that one can sometimes recapture the spirit of Christmases-past by recording remembrances like these. I am confident that Jesse would overlook my indiscretion in writing about it now.

Jess Jr. (left) with his brother-in-law Jim Young as Santa.

For the Love of Schlock: A Love Letter from Mykki

I had every intention to buy only one odd movie, but before leaving the internet shopping site I had purchased 151. The movies were cheap, less than 32 cents each; that was my enabler. Hello, my name is Mykki, and I am a schlockaholic.

Like any addict my biggest fear is running out of my addiction. I buy old movies in bulk, like a meth addict buys AA batteries and cold medicine. I once discovered a box of more than a hundred old horror movies with local commercials I recorded in the 80s from NYC and Philly television stations. Now I know how people in Mobile felt when bales of pot would wash ashore in the 70s.

Apparently one January night in 1989 I let my VCR record until it ran out of tape. On the tape, I discovered the second episode of Man from U.N.C.L E directed by Richard Donner and two episodes of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, which is creepy today because Eddie’s father has the same Bill Bixby understanding and calmness of Bill Bixby’s alter ego to The Incredible Hulk. I pray Eddie doesn’t make him angry; as their housekeeper/nanny, Mrs. Livingston would say, “You wouldn’t like Mr. Eddie’s father when he’s angry.”

I’m so grateful I was raised on real Looney Tunes when Bugs was a smartass and Daffy got his beak blown off. I saw the modern day Looney Tunes; Bugs and Daffy were singing about being healthy cowboys, eating stir-fried vegetables and measuring portions. I found it too disturbing, so I went back to watching Psycho on TCM.

Anthony Newley

Last night I saw Anthony Newley in the  role of Lt. Commander “Spider” Webb (great name, huh?) in X the Unknown (1956). When I was a kid in the 60s, I did a spot-on Anthony Newley impression, but by the 70s my impression was too obscure.

In 1969, I knew a 9th grader who had his yearbook photo listed as Myra Breckinridge. Kids were so sophisticated back then. 7-years later, I had my 11th grade yearbook photo listed as Gator McKluski, certain proof of society’s drastic decline. I remember when AMC was TCM, A&E was Ovation, Biography was History 2, BBC America was PBS and Fox was a walkie-talkie frequency.

My own past has had brushes with real historical celebrates, which I think is the correct term. My mother said her aunt and uncle by marriage (whatever that means) adopted a kid whose parents were killed in a car accident or something. It was rural Kentucky in the 1930s, so the parents may have been killed by Daniel Boone for all I know. Maybe it was Davy Crockett. I always get those two guys confused, so lets just say it was Fess Parker, the actor who played both men on television and in the movies.

So anyway, back to the story of that kid. His name was Harvey Lee Yeary, but with the emergence of Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, Barbara Stanwyck suggested Cousin Harvey change his name to Lee Majors and the rest is history. However, my grandmother denied any family relationship. I once had a brief conversation with Wayne Newton and he is convinced we are cousins because we have the same last name, and his family and my father’s family are from the same small area in Tennessee. However, for Wayne’s sake I deny any family relationship, and the rest is history. Along those same lines, I once wrote a letter to Bobby Goldsboro in hopes of discovering some answers.

“Dear Bobby Goldsboro,
For much of my life I have been troubled by a few questions only you can answer.
First, how did Honey die? You said she was young at heart, kind of dumb and kind of smart but what the heck. Was she hammering a nail with a loaded revolver that day when you were not at home and she was there and all alone and the angels came?
Second, did you bury her next to the tree? You seem to want everyone to see the tree how big it’s grown, but admit it hasn’t been too long, it wasn’t big. What kind of fertilizer do you use? Is it Honey?
Sincerely,
Your Biggest Fan,
Mykki”

My life can be summed up in the title of one movie… Cat Women on the Moon (1953). Holy Moly, this movie is deliciously bad. The cat women want to travel to Earth and have a Coke. That’s what one said…go on a date and have a coke. Once again, Coca-Cola’s marketing department rules the galaxy. This film proves what men have long suspected…all women in the universe can communicate telepathically. Cat-Women of the Moon also confirms a sci/fi B-movie rule of thumb…if there’s a woman on-board a flight to the moon, there’s always a giant spider waiting on her once she gets there.

I am a huge fan of Japanese kaiju films, more commonly know as giant monster movies although the Japanese to English translation in Godzilla Raids Again (1955) stumbles slightly on American slang.”Ah, shucks” = “Ah, banana horses.” At least that’s what it sounds like to me, so I have a new catch phrase. “AH, BANANA HORSES!”

I wonder if the Japanese make fun of Americans by laughing and screaming, “Ah! It’s Spiderman! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Spiderman…what a joke. WE HAVE GODZILLA!”

Spiderman is a good superhero if you are a 15-year old kid being bullied because you have bad acne, but Superman, now he is and always will be the ultimate superhero. He has all the great superpowers, including being totally unrecognizable by wearing only a pair of glasses.

Ironman? I respect him. He spent billions constructing a suit so he could be more like Superman. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Batman, on the other hand, needs constant surveillance and therapy. As a child, he witnessed his parent’s murder, which understandably cracked his mind and turned him into a demented, murderous Don Quixote. Personally, I prefer my superheroes to be more down-to-earth like I Will Help You Find Your Keys Man.

For me, a sci-fi/superhero loses screenwriting credibility when the jet pack flying, fedora wearing, scientist hero activates his cosmic mega powerful radio space alien communicator and says, “Calling Bob. Calling Bob.” I’m talking to you, Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952). 

“He was always so keen on telling me about his experiments.” (Said every girlfriend of a scientist gone mad)

Lines I Hope I Never Have to Use in Real Life

5) “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
4) “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
3) “Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty apes.”
2) “Decepticons!”
1) “I see dead people.”

If there’s anything I know about motion pictures it’s that a crying woman driving a ’39 Chevy in the rain always ends badly. Movies have taught me never to trust anyone wearing a monocle. They are Nazi spies. That includes the Monopoly guy and Mr. Peanut. Well, maybe not Mr. Peanut but he is a giant peanut the size of a man and that in itself is just wrong. So I guess what I’m saying here is always avoid Nazi spies and horrifying genetically modified gigantic legumes. They are terrible people.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED FROM B-MOVIES

1) Prior to 1961, the decision of who will be the first man in space and/or on the moon is always made 5-minutes before liftoff of the atomic rocket. Mission Control is actually only four people, one of whom is always the astronaut’s wife or girlfriend.The only sounds in space are that weird EEE-OUU-WEE-OUU  theremin part of Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys, and the machine that goes “BING!”

2) Sometimes the actors are so terrible and the dialogue so awful, you root for the half man/half lizard creature to devour the entire town and emerge victorious over all mankind.

3) If your home is being attacked by a 60-foot spider, close your front door so it doesn’t come inside.

Earth vs. the Spider (1958)

Bullets are useless, so have your local scientist and/or professor ram the spider in the butt with a ’58 DeSoto to distract it. Giant atomically grown arachnids are attracted to giant car tailfins inspired by the jet age. Finally, have the scientist and/or professor build his failed experiment 50 times its normal size. For some reason the larger size makes the experiment function perfectly and that is always the only thing that can kill the monster.

4) The smartest people in town, i.e. professors and/or psychiatrists, have pipes they never smoke. They just like holding the pipe and occasionally placing it in their mouth. This is also the sign of an understanding father who believes the kids did see something out at the old Johnson place, Roy…maybe a spaceman, maybe a blob monster, but he’s sure his son and/or daughter is a good boy and/or girl who just wants to go to the big dance and/or gender reassignment surgery.

5) Vampires and mad scientists are totally unaware of the dangers of open flames. Inevitably, candles and/or Bunsen burns will tip over during a climatic moment, ignite curtains and/or demented and/or hunchback assistants. The flames spread quickly and the damage is not covered by most castle owner’s insurance. Thus, vampires and mad scientist cannot survive a fire.

6) If your dog or cat growls or hisses at your boyfriend or husband, he or she is a space alien or ghost or vampire or general member of the living dead. If this happens to you, breakup immediately or file for divorce or call NASA or Whoopie Goldberg or drive a stake through their heart or start screaming, “The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!” If none of those things work, you may want to consider trading the dog or cat for a goldfish.

7) Every film and small town must contain the following characters:

Doug Martin
Betty Morgan
Gramps
Kurt
Gas Station Attendant
Blond Stripper

8) Space women are ROCKIN’ HOT! Oh, you may find the occasional butterface due to too much radiation, but they always have smokin’ hot bods. Space men, on the other hand, are either total creeps, ambiguously gay or both. The gay ones are usually the BFF of the beautiful queen. That appears the case throughout the galaxy even on our own planet, so that my dear friends is why I welcome the coming space alien invasion.

Frankenstein meets the Space Monster (1965)

9) Only the greatest scientific minds have alligator habitats in their basements.

10) Prior to 1960, advanced alien life forms out to conquer Earth had no access to television and radio stations. Thus, they contacted the earthlings via public address systems at sporting events. Many of the world’s great scientists and military leaders were also hockey season ticket holders.

11) All low-budget movies about invisible creatures or humanoid space aliens have a costume/special effects department consisting solely of whenever the actors have in their own personal wardrobes.

12) In every pack of marauding zombies, there’s always a woman in a wedding dress. She’s not really a zombie, she just had too much champagne and Red Bull and got carried away in the conga line at the reception.

13) Selling islands to mad scientists interested in human/wild animal gene splicing experiments was a booming business for realtors in the first half of the 20th Century.

And just so you know, a crucifix does not work on Jewish vampires.

from Tales of a 5 & Dime Socialite
©2017 unedited
by Mykki Newton