Getting ready for the big move, I went downtown to meet the movers. Since I was nearby, I went to the Mayflower for lunch. Since 1975, I've done this maybe seven hundred times.
I've known Jerry for something like forty years. In that time, there have been maybe eleven encounters when he didn't find something to complain about. His cousin was like that. His dad was too. Greeks are pretty straight shooters.
Jerry's complaint yesterday was that it was a beautiful summer day, a quarter till noon, the IBC was getting ramped up, and his restaurant was nearly empty. Judge Waller came in. His dad ate there every day since before he served as governor, so I guess he's just keeping up the tradition. A couple of three tops came in, and an out-of-town couple who didn't know to order anything with the salad dressing but somehow weren't connected with the ballet.
It wasn't Jerry's fault. My gumbo and seafood salad was as good as it was the three hundred other times I've had it. It wasn't the fault of the IBC. I met with a cluster of dancers having lunch at Millsaps, and they were having a great experience. Truth be told, parts of Jackson are dying. Jerry's restaurant is in one of them.
When Jerry was thinking about buying the restaurant from his dad and his cousins, we talked about it a good bit. He had a great strategy and good financing. It was a good deal. Downtown then didn't have any retail traffic to speak of, but it had a lot of people, and his tables were always full. Some fifteen years into it, Parlor Market moved in and brought Mayflower as much business as they had their own. It was a good time. That's when I moved downtown.
Jackson's biggest problem is jobs. There aren't enough. All the crime and dropping property values, and rotting infrastructure go back to jobs. If we had the same employment levels we had in 1980, the Mayflower would be packed.
In 1980, between Missco, McCarty-Holeman, McRaes, and Deposit Guarantee, you were looking at something like twenty-five hundred jobs. Maybe more. In 2023, those four companies hired zero people. That's a number that's kept me awake at night for twenty years.
Part of the problem is that we've had a massive accumulation of wealth in very few people since Jimmy Carter left office. The last major anti-trust action was Judge Brown vs AT&T. That ended in 1984. Just speaking for our own company, there was really no way we could compete with companies coming into our market with fifteen and twenty times as much capital as we had. Like McRaes and McCarty-Holeman, we formed a purchasing group with other companies our size. I was deeply involved in creating it. With that, we were able to have price parity with Office Depot and Staples for a while, but they had so much money for other areas of how that business reaches the market that we were really probably doomed to failure, no matter what.
The last time this happened, the situation was actually much worse, but we're getting there. What saved us was Teddy Rosevelt, a Republican, who became the greatest trust-buster in history. The moves he made and the legislation he passed made it possible for companies like the ones I mentioned to make a profit in Mississippi, which has been the poorest state in the union since the war, the Civil one, not the one in Europe.
A lot of people are going to disagree with the economics of my assessment, but I feel like the evidence is there.
A lot of times, when I mention doing things downtown, I get a handful of responses like, "Aren't you afraid of getting shot?" Well, I've always been afraid of getting shot. Hell, listening to TW Lewis and Ed King talk about what happened to them in the sixties, and I don't know that I've ever been safe.
Jackson has a crime problem that's undeniable, but over-inflating it isn't helping anything. The Mayflower is a hundred feet from the federal building, two hundred yards from the Governor's Mansion, and two hundred and fifty yards from not only Jackson Police Headquarters but now the Capitol Police Headquarters. I've lived downtown for fifteen years, and I've never had a problem.
Parts of Jackson are very sick. Parts of my body are very sick. Neither of us is dead yet. The Jackson Police, The Hinds County Sheriff's Department, the Capitol Police, and the Mississippi Highway Patrol have combined efforts to make sure that your experience at the International Ballet Competition is safe and enjoyable. While you're downtown, eat at the Mayflower and Ironhorse and King Edward and Hal & Mals. Don't give in to hate and fear. Even though I'm moving, you'll probably see me around.
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