The Rocky Springs Tiger Trap

Forty burgeoning adolescents, four parents, one teacher, and one bus driver, in the woods, with a ghost town and a graveyard overnight; what can possibly go wrong? 

The tiger trap is a device said to be of Indian origin, consisting of a deep pit dug in the ground, then covered with enough vegetation to hide it.  Tigers would walk on the leafy covering, and fall into the pit below where they couldn't escape.  The Viet Cong used the tiger tap with some success against our forces in Viet Nam.

Antebellum Graves in the churchyard

Rocky Springs is a ghost town attached to the Natchez Trace in Claiborne County, Mississippi.  The State of Mississippi maintains a popular semi-primitive campground there.  

My Scout Troop used the site a year before, and I learned you could use a burning ember from the fire to light your own farts.  There's no merit badge for that, but there should be.  

My Junior High Class had a very loving and very optimistic parent group who got the idea that we could manage a co-ed camp-out there and make it back home with everyone intact.

Mr. and Mrs. Lyle were itinerant and experienced campers.  They would keep us alive.  Mrs. Seargent was our young history teacher.  She was who all the boys dreamed about, and all the girls wanted to look like.  She must have loved us because she took us to Washington DC by bus the following year.  I hope someone reading this can remember the name of the school's Haitian bus driver.  He was a super sweet guy who also drove us to football practice every day.  Rounding out our team of fearless leaders was Mr. and Mrs. Jones.  They tried to get me to call them Tim and Sarah for forty-five years.  It's still not happening.

The plan was to take the bus from school to Rocky Springs, make camp, have lunch then explore the old trace.  We were to have dinner while the sun was still up, then visit the ghost town at dusk, come back to camp for the night, have breakfast the following day, and take the bus back to Jackson.  That was the plan.  We were never that great at sticking with the plan.

Early on in life, I recognized there was something about Mr. Jone's eyes telling me he was a fellow member of my tribe.  He must have noticed the same thing because we had a few adventures together.  

In the little abandoned town of Rocky Springs was an old church with an ancient graveyard.  The plan was to hike as a gang from our campsite to the old cemetery at dusk, have a spooky adventure among the antebellum graves, and return to camp with flashlights in the dark.  That was the plan.  

Mr. Jones had the idea that he and I would sneak ahead of the bunch and hideout so that as they were hiking back in the dark, we could jump out and scare the bejesus out of them.  It would be so funny and so cool.  That was the plan.

On the way there, we spied a circular split-rail fence with a placard saying "Old Homesite"  with some bushes and kudzu overgrown in the center.  That would be my hideout.  This was a great plan! 

The old church and graveyard among the Spanish moss dripping trees was a pretty great adventure, with lots of giggles and dares as we awkwardly tried to figure out the best way to navigate inter-gender conversations in the dark surrounded by confederate ghosts.  

With the sunlight fading, Mr. Jones and I sprung our plan into action.  We quietly slipped away from the rest and headed toward the fenced "old homesite" to set our trap.  "Hurry!" he said before the rest of the class began their way back.

This was going to be SO COOL!  They were gonna be SO SCARED!  With a hop, I was over the split rail fence.  One step, two steps, one more, and I'd be hidden in the bushes, ready to pounce!  This was such a great plan!

By "old homesite," they meant this was the site of an old home as part of the little town of Rocky Springs.  The wooden structure was long gone, but the root cellar remained.  Nobody told Mr. Jones or me about the root cellar.  That eight-foot-deep root cellar lay completely hidden among the bushes and kudzu.   The split-rail fence was supposed to keep us out of it.

One step!  Two steps! Three... WHOOSH! and I was in total darkness with a thud.  I can only imagine the look on Mr. Jones's face as I vanished into the greenery.

"Boyd?"  I could see him looking over the edge down at me with his flashlight.  "Are you ok?"  I was absolutely unhurt.  The bushes and kudzu vines themselves cushioned my fall.  It took a few seconds for my brain to process what happened, then I bust out in uncontrollable laughter.  So did Mr.  Jones.   

Moments later, the rest of the class caught up to the site of our misadventure.  I could see their shocked and amused faces peering down at me over the edge of my pit with a dozen flashlights illuminating my predicament.    

I was already over two hundred pounds by junior high school and bench-pressing over three hundred.  Getting me out of this tiger trap wasn't going to be easy.  As we had no rope, a human chain made by nearly the entire class was chosen as the best option for rescue.

Soon, Mrs. Seargent's hand reached down for me.  In her twenties and deeply tanned, Mrs. Seargent was just about the prettiest thing I ever saw.  Touching her hand was way out of my pay grade, but I had no choice.  

With a solid tug in unison, my class rescued me from my antebellum dungeon.  I plucked kudzu leaves from my hair, pants, and shoes on the way back.  The plan was to scare the class, but in the end, the only ones who got scared were Mr. Jones and me.

And, that's the story of how the eighth-grade class saved me from my own eagerness and an ancient tiger trap. 

Photo By Kim Wita

photo by Kim Wita

The Pearl River Reservoir

I don't use the phrase "Ross Barnett Reservoir."  I don't use it because Ross Barnett was an asshole, and I"m embarrassed of him.  It's difficult to convince people Mississippi is changed and evolved beyond our racist past when they hear the largest body of water in central Mississippi is still named for our most famous racist.

Ross Barnett wasn't a great man and certainly no great leader.  What did he ever accomplish as governor other than fighting to keep Mississippi segregated?  The only reason I can imagine that anyone would want to name anything after him is that there must have been some guys in the legislature who were still pissed off about Washington forcing Mississippi to integrate, and this was their "fuck you" to the Kennedys.

Barnett approved the plan to send Freedom Riders to Parchment, ordering them strip-searched to humiliate them and taking their beds away to intimidate them for the crime of sitting in a bus station. Barnett hated the black-and-tan Republicans and fought any development of a two-party system in Mississippi.

Barnett would have you believe he fought integration with every fiber of his being. If you listen to the recordings of him and John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy's recollections of the Meredith affair after the fact, it's clear that Barnet knew he couldn't win.  He hoped to use the whole matter to ingratiate himself with the anti-integration factions in Mississippi.

It might be a legend, but the story goes that after the court order to admit James Meridith to the University of Mississippi, Barnett stood at the door to the registrar's office at Ole Miss, with scores of white protestors and even more white national guard troops beyond.  Meridith ascended the steps to complete his court-ordered registration, flanked by white guards and white lawyers.  When he reached the door, Barnett reportedly said, "Which one of you gentlemen is James Meridith?"

Showboat, all of it was a showboat.  Barnett had no intention of leading Mississippi; he only wanted to ride the wave of our hate and cultural shortcomings to enrich himself and inflate his legacy.  

After his term as governor, Barnett sought to rebuild his previously successful plaintiff's law practice.  He sued my dad when a fella ran into a truck making deliveries to the Crystal Springs furniture plant.  We made a fair offer to settle, but Barnett refused.  "While I was serving the great state of Mississippi, my law partners stole every bit of my practice, and I need a big victory to restore my reputation," Barnett told the judge.  The judge advised Barnett to reconsider and settle because Bill Goodman was making a fool of him in court.  Barnett settled.

I've heard noises through the years of re-naming the reservoir, but nothing ever came of it.  I don't know if there was ever a bill to rename it.   None are pending now.  I've heard the opinion that the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District board could rename the reservoir without legislative action, but I have no idea if that's accurate.  If they can do it, they should just do it quietly one day and let that be that.  Until someone makes an official name change, I will continue to call it "The Pearl River Reservoir" because it's accurate, and there's no adverse history associated with that name.  

Tarzan Not Talk Like Frankenstein

 Tarzan not stupid.  Tarzan learn English and French from book before Tarzan meet Jane.  Movie Tarzan very different from book Tarzan.

Seriously, I don't know how Johnny Weismuller became so popular.  Besides the jungle setting, Weismuller's Tarzan is nothing like the character in the books.  Come to think of it, the creature in Shelly's Frankenstein didn't talk like that either.  Maybe audiences in the 30s had a thing for mute strongmen.  

Tarzan of the novels was very articulate and possessed almost super-human intelligence.  He learned to read and write from the books in his father's treehouse, without any other human interactions.   When Tarzan visits America in the first novel, he behaves like an exemplary English gentleman, a far cry from Weismuller's nearly wordless interpretation.

Besides the fake ears they made for the Indian Elephants to make them look African, the best thing about Weismuller's first Tarzan film is Maureen O'Sullivan in her 1932 costume.  (Much more leather was added to her buckskin bikini by the next film.)  Subsequent films ended up almost a parody of the character from the first film.

Weissmuller's Tarzan introduced the trope of the chimpanzee sidekick, which actually isn't in the novels.  Although several chimpanzees have been reported as the original Cheetah through the years, they likely used several throughout the different films, as chimps get pretty dangerous to work with as they mature. The Cheetah you see on screen never seems to grow, even though sometimes a few years pass between productions.  Chimps are notorious poop-throwers and biters.  Many trained chimps had their canine teeth removed to make them slightly less dangerous.  Training methods often involved dramatic beatings and occasional drugs.  They solved this problem for 1984's Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, by having Rick Baker create all the apes using human actors.  Even today, Baker remains Hollywood's greatest gorilla man.

 Tall, attractive, and an Olympic athlete, Weismuller looked the part, but any resemblance to the Tarzan in the books ends there.  Much has been made of the lengths MGM sound designers went through to develop Weismuller's famous Tarzan yell, but Weismuller insisted it was his own voice, and in later life, he was able to perform it live.  It can't be too much of a stretch to believe it was his own voice; after all, even Carol Burnett could imitate it. 

I'm not sure what I would have thought of Tarzan if Weismuller was my first exposure.  Willis O'Brien's Skull Island certainly made an impression on me, so maybe the MGM jungle would have been as memorable.  My first Tarzan, however, was Ron Ely.

Ely's Tarzan was in color.  He was articulate and educated like the Tarzan of the novels.  He's why I picked up my brother's copy of Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1932) and never looked back.  

Ely's Tarzan was set in the modern-day (the 1960s) and sometimes featured very modern concepts.  One episode even had computers.  There was no Jane for his Tarzan, (but I was six, so who cares?) He did have a son character, who was written as an orphaned Mexican boy.  They never explained how a Mexican orphan ended up in Africa.  Manuel Padilla Jr. played several television roles before Jai on Tarzan.  He could deliver his lines, and child actors you could work with were pretty hard to find, so he got the job I guess.

There were 57 episodes of Ron Ely's Tarzan.  He performed most of his own stunts, and he had the scars to prove it, including more than one lion bite.  After the initial run, they played in a re-run every Saturday afternoon until I was twelve or thirteen.  By the time I did see a Weismuller Tarzan, I was already under the spell of King Kong and obsessed with 1930s adventure cinema, so I soon saw all of them.  (Thank you, Ted Turner) 

After Tarzan, Ely was never out of work very long.  The next time he caught my eye was George Pal's, Doc Savage.  I loved the Doc Savage novels and had about ten of them.  Pal intended to do a straight version of Savage like in the books, but the finished product was pretty campy and did poorly with audiences.

Pal originally wanted Steve Reeves to play Doc Savage, but he was too old and unavailable.  Ron Ely was only too happy to get the role. Initially, Pal and Ely hoped to make several Doc Savage films and end Pal's storied career on a high note.  Fate had different plans, though. Doc Savage was released in 1975 and bombed.  It never played a first-run theater in Jackson, so I had to get someone to take me to the drive-in to see it.  

Ely never stopped, though.  He even ended up taking over the job of hosting the Miss America Pagent in 1980 when Bert Parks retired.  

There would be many more Tarzans after Ron Ely, but he was my first, and when I read the novels now, it's his voice I hear.

What Is The Mississippi Delta

The good Lord made some people to heal us.  My new friend Jennifer gave me a copy of Delta Hot Tamales by Anne Martin.  Jennifer's mom runs Sollys in Vicksburg, so she knows a thing or two about Tamales.

You have to be careful with Delta girls.  They'll steal your heart, and you'll never get it back.  Lord knows, there are pieces of mine from Memphis to Natchez. I don't regret a minute of it.  Lightning can strike the same spot many, many times.

It begs the question, though, what exactly is "The Delta."   In season six, episode one of Andrew Zimmerman's Bizarre Foods about Delta cuisine, he covers Sollys in Vicksburg, but he also includes Jackson and reviews The Big Apple Inn and Walker's Drive-in.  Lord knows I love Big Apple Inn and Walkers, but is Jackson The Delta?  I never heard such, but The Food Network seems to think so.   

A geologist will tell you the Mississippi Alluvial Plain includes parts of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.  Flooding the Mississippi River as it goes into the Gulf of Mexico creates it.  It only looks like a triangular delta when it gets to New Orleans.  Is New Orleans The Delta?

Fay Wray with Debbie Reynolds
Tammy and the Bachelor (1957)

You've probably heard that The Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and runs to Catfish Row in Vicksburg.  Sometimes, it's the duck-pond fountain in the Peabody to Under the Hill in Natchez.  These definitions have been used so long that I"m struggling to find out who said it first.  It's often attributed to Twain, but I'm not ready to plant my flag there just yet.  

Fay Wray once told me she made a movie about The Delta with Leslie Nielson set in Natchez, so as far as I'm concerned, Natchez is in The Delta.  I'll take Fay Wray's side on anything. The film was based on the book Tammy Out of Time, written by Cid Ricketts Sumner, a Millsaps Alumni, and produced the hit Tammy's In Love, sung by Debbie Reynolds.  

Why the Peabody Hotel, though?  Before cotton was king, The Delta primarily grew tobacco.  Cotton was easy to grow but difficult to process. Ely Whitney changed all that with his Cotton Gin.  Once Mississippi started growing cotton, they had to get it to market.  The river flows north to south, so all our cotton and tobacco went downstream to New Orleans for many years, with growers cashing in there and making their way home with the profits as best they could by the Natchez trace.  

When the steam engine came to the Mississippi,  up-river was as easy as down-river, so the Cotton Exchange in Memphis became the financial center of the Delta economy, with the Peabody just scant blocks away.  Planters traded their cotton for coupons at the Cotton Exchange and spent them at Beal Street and the Peabody.  Don't ask what they spent it on.

So, does cotton define The Delta?  My great-grandfather grew an awful lot of cotton and corn outside of Kosciusko in Hesterville.  Is Attala county The Delta?  Many farms in The Delta don't even grow cotton anymore; soybeans are easier on the soil and often more profitable. What about catfish and rice?  India and China grow almost twice as much cotton as the United States. Are they The Delta?

Maybe The Delta is political.  Despite being yellow-dog Democrat for many years, the Mississippi Delta was one of the most conservative places in the United States.  Florida passed them years ago, and now the Mississippi Gulf Coast is far more conservative than The Delta.  

What about culture?  If you go by country of origin, Mississippi Delta citizens include African, American Native, French, Spanish, English, Scottish,  Irish, and Italian.  Toward the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, Jewish, Hispanic, Chinese, Indian, and East Asian peoples started populating The Delta.  Religiously, you'll find Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Methodists (united and independent), and don't forget about the Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, and Buddhist congregations.  

Shelby Foote is from Greenville, but some of the most famous writers about The Delta aren't even from there.  Eudora Welty is from Jackson, and William Faulkner is from New Albany. Is that The Delta?

If you're from here, you know many parts of Mississippi aren't The Delta if you're from here. There's The Coast, The Piney Woods, The Golden Triangle, and more.   But, If you're not from Mississippi, you probably think it's all Delta.

Maybe, The Delta is what you say it is.  Andrew Zimmerman and his producers seem to think so.  Try telling people not from here that Elvis was born in Lee County, not The Delta.    I don't want to start any arguments, and I'm not one to tell you how to think, but if you're from here, you really should have an opinion on this.