They say that associations make a man. I don't know if that's just, but it certainly was true growing up in Mississippi in the seventies and eighties.
In most places, political party would be an essential association, but it didn't matter much in Mississippi. Everybody but Wirt Yerger and Billy Mounger were Democrats, and Yerger and Mounger were generally considered mad priests screaming on the temple steps about this new Republican God. A political trick got Thad Cochran elected, but nobody thought this Republican business would catch on--until Ronald Reagan.
Mississippians loved movies with cowboys and war heroes, and Reagan made many of them. Reagan told America its biggest problem was welfare moms, and he took the guns away from the Black Panthers in California. Yes, Regan was for gun control--under certain circumstances. These messages resonated in Mississippi. The glacial ice around the Republican party began to melt. Yes, they were the people who burned Jackson to the ground. Yes, they were the people who imposed reconstruction on us for sixty years. Yes, they were the ones sending revenue officers to raid the parties at Crystal Lake. All of that is true, but ya know, he sure did show them Black Panthers what, didn't he?
We were a democratic family. Part of it was just business. The Democrats were in power all over our sales territory, and we made most of our money selling to public institutions. It was also a moral decision. Daddy felt, and I felt, that Mississippi is nearly entirely made up of poor people. This middle-class bubble we lived in wasn't the real Mississippi. The real Mississippi could barely pay their rent. They had poor health because, even if they worked, they had no insurance, and they had no education because that cost money, and nobody had any. Democrats were more interested in and more generous to poor people. Democrats also had a better farm bill than the Republicans. Reagan promised to "restore profitability" to Mississippi farmers by removing government intrusion. Boy, was he wrong.
Even though things weren't really working out between Mississippi and Ronald Reagan, this new Republicanism was quietly growing like a thief in the night. Young Republicans could be identified by their highly starched Oxford cloth shirts, and their numbers were growing.
From 1963 until the day Daddy died, every successful candidate for Governor of Mississippi had passed through my mother's doors to introduce the candidate to the new Capitol Street Gang. (Every one, except Cliff Finch.) I knew when Johnny Gore showed up in the afternoon with all of his bartending stuff, we were in for one of "those" parties.
William Winter and Herman Hines had alerted Daddy to this young fella named Ray Mabus. He was one of the "boys of spring" who were either hated or celebrated in Mississippi. He had a firm handshake and a burning intensity in his eyes. The silent promise was that he would finish what Winter had started.
The party at the Holiday Inn on Millsaps campus, the one owned by Mike Sturdivant (who also had political aspirations), was not my first political victory party, but it was the first where I was old enough to be expected to wear a tie, so I did. Ray's face was beet red, and sweat rolled freely from under his perfect hair. He grabbed my hand and my shoulder, like a German butcher sizing up a fresh ham. This was our new governor.
Mabus lived up to his unspoken promise and continued the work Bill Winter started. He was an education-forward governor, and he was winning. Mississippi adopted new history textbooks on schedule but had no money to buy them. Mabus made sure Mississippi school children had history and science textbooks written since we landed on the moon.
Politically, we were successful, and we were happy, but this Reagan thing was growing. Still, it had to be an anomaly. One day, Daddy and Rowan and my brother and Doby Bartling used our company tickets to attend an Ole Miss game at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson. The announcer said, "Please stand while the Rebel Band plays our National Anthem." Wich everybody did. "Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to our distinguished guest, the Governor of Mississippi, Ray Mabus!" I could see Ray and his Wife standing in their box seat and waving, but then a sound came from the Ole Miss student section. They were Booing the Governor of Mississippi, A Democratic Governor of Mississippi, A Democratic Governor of the State of Mississippi who had graduated Suma Comes Loudly from the University of Mississippi--and they were booing him. I looked at Daddy and said, "Are we in trouble?"
So, that was the day the Democratic Empire in the state of Mississippi fell. The dragons had arrived, and soon we'd have our first Republican governor. Party became an important association by which you judged a man. For a while, it was, at least. Lately, we basically flipped the situation that existed; all the white people are n the Republican party now, and all the not white people are in the Democratic.
Politics were one way to judge a man; religion was another. Wherever you went to church in Jackson, nearly everyone aligned themselves with five major churches. Three of them were on corners of the new Capitol Building. Galloway, First Baptist, and St. Peters. Beyond that was Central Presbyterian which was replaced in power by First Presbyterian and Beth Israel out in North Jackson. The other churches followed what these five did. One thing I'm learning in my recent studies is that St Luke's had all the same problems that Galloway had, just on a smaller scale. Don't let anybody tell you that Jews and Catholics had no power in Mississippi. Look at the names of the people who served on the boards of the banks. Jews from Eastern Europe and Catholics from Ireland were a force in our economic life. Look at the names of the stores. Names like Stein and Maloney.
That brings up the next most important way to judge a man. Banks. There were two. You had to pick one. You HAD to pick one. Deposit Guarantee had more assets. First National was more conservative—First National funded financials and retail. Deposit Guarantee funded an awful lot of real estate and light manufacturing. One day Jeanne Luckett considered the entrails of a sacred goose and renamed First National Trustmark National Bank, followed by one of the most extensive marketing campaigns in Mississippi history. Gone were the plastic frugal banks and all the trappings of the sixties. This was a new bank for a new decade. Mainly it was done because there were so many "First National" banks all over the world. It worked. Shortly after that, she reworked our image as well, and we got rid of those awful orange block letters and got a nifty stylized "M" to represent us.
What college you went to wasn't nearly as important as what college you supported in football and baseball. Daddy played football for two years at Millsaps and then two at Ole Miss. He enjoyed Ole Miss Football, but it was mainly a way for him to spend time with us kids. One of the problems with having a dad like mine was that it sometimes got really hard to spend any time with him. The only way to do it was to figure out how to fit myself into his schedule. We had tickets to every game at Veterans Memorial Stadium because we had installed the bleachers and were morally obligated to buy season tickets. Ben Puckett was one of his best friends. As much as Daddy was lukewarm about Ole Miss, Ben was very warm about Mississippi State.
Rowan went to Mississippi State too, but in a culture that was obsessed with the major public university football teams, Rowan Taylor was solidly in a secretive, invasive cult called Millsaps. I don't even know what lured Rowan into the Major's influence. Toward the end of his life, it was the woman he loved, but I never knew about how it started. He was deeply devoted to Eudora Welty. Maybe that was it.
Daddy enjoyed football at Ole Miss, but he loved football at Millsaps. You could tell because he'd skip an Ole Miss game if none of us went with him, but he'd go to Millsaps games alone, in the cold and the rain. He would never really be alone, though. If they were in Mississippi and in good health, Daddy would meet Rowan, George Harmon, and Jack Woodward at the same spot for every game. There's a balcony/deck thing there now. Then it was just grass.
"Get me some peanuts, buddy. Get one for Rowan. Here's five bucks; get five." I figured out if I was gonna get to know my Daddy, I had to meet him on his own turf.
So, of the houses and tartans of Mississippi, I align myself this way: Trustmark, Democrat (mainly because the Republicans are currently fuckin' nuts), Galloway, Ole Miss--but in the cult of Millsaps.
Our culture doesn't really go by these rules anymore. For one thing, When Warren and Elsie Hood retired, they sold off their Deposit Guarantee shares, so now they're owned by an out-of-state entity. That's a whole other story. I'm old-fashioned, though. I like to pretend it's 1982, and I'm eighteen, and Jackson is growing like a weed...
Not really. I'm pretty realistic about the world as it is. I still like to think about the way it was. That happens when you get old. "You Damn Millennials are gonna run everything!!" Actually, that's not true. I kind of like the Millennials. They have great potential.
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