Working For My Dad

Sometimes people wonder how I could have screwed up working for my dad.  That seems like such an easy and obvious gig.  My job for my dad was to find and hire and work with very talented people to do very creative things and pay them to do these things for Missco.  That was my job, and I was paid well.

That my dad gave me that job told me he was trying pretty hard to hear when I talked about what I wanted from life but that I might be doing a pretty crappy job of explaining what I meant.  I knew what I wanted to say.  Even in those days, words were my weapons, but I felt like I needed to keep that hidden.  It made me too different. 

I was meeting and working with people who knew and understood all the things that were important to me in life, and I was spending a great deal of time with them, but I was getting more and more lonely because I was a bird paying other creatures to fly for me.  I used a twelve thousand dollar computer to arrange and organize and execute other people's work, and occasionally use chatrooms to try and find people who understood me.  

My dad loved me and thought he was offering me a way to be happy, but whatever gifts God gave me were dying from the inside out, and I didn't know how to make it stop.  I was in trouble and I knew it.  He did too.  

"What are we gonna do buddy?" he would ask.

"I don't know pop.  I really don't."

My other problem was that I inherited a trait from Jim Campbell that whenever I heard the cries of anything or anyone in trouble, I'd jump in with both feet to fix it, acting like I was more invincible than Superman.  That I wasn't actually invincible was immaterial.  This was the Campbell way.

The problem is that, when you're twenty-five, there are a lot of people with a lot of problems you can't do a goddamn thing about.  Whatever time, money, or effort I was spending was immaterial because what I wanted to accomplish wasn't happening.  I was failing over and over at something that was very important to me.  To make matters worse, in the eighties and nineties, these voices of people in pain were often ladies, and as a Kappa Alpha, I had literally sworn to protect them with my life just a few years before.  Most were sincere and genuine, nearly all, but there were a rare few who saw this as an opportunity, one I felt like I had no right to deny them.  I felt like companionship wasn't meant for me.  I was a different sort of creature.  Those were difficult days.

I ended up in a situation where many people knew about me, my picture was in the paper, and my name was in print, just everywhere, and I was invited to everything, but there were maybe five people who knew anything about me, and even if they didn't understand why, they knew I was in trouble and sinking fast.  When Dad died, and the control of Missco went berserk, I felt really bad because I knew this was my escape plan.  

Escaping from Missco meant I had to spend a few years in the belly of the whale and a few years wandering the desert after that.   Seeking out wise men, I found Brent Lefavor, who became my Chiron, and he taught me I could slowly break away the plaster covering my own wings.  Now, I'm old, but I'm free, and I CAN FLY.  

What Happened To My First Three Books

 When "The Secret History" came out in 1992, I read it.  Then, I threw out about a dozen 3M 3.5-inch data disks containing three books I'd been working on for about ten years.  Tartt's work was so clear, powerful, and self-assured that I felt there was no point in trying to make anything of the confused assembled scribbles I was working on.  

I was already a little nervous about Beth Henly being from Jackson and just eleven years older than I was.  Tartt was six months younger than me and from a house just a few streets over from my cousin Robert in Greenwood.  Did the world really want to hear from an over-privileged white boy of my generation when there were so much clearer and more interesting voices to choose from?  Then "The Help" came out from Kathryn Stockett, who's just six years younger than me and from the same neighborhood.  I'd visited her Grandfather often, who mainly only wanted to talk about my namesake, who was his peer.  

After that, this writing thing, I figured, just wasn't for me.  I was surrounded by it.  It was in the air I breathed, but they were so good, and I was barely able to read books with chapters before I was thirteen, and even now, without computers, it's very difficult for me to put a sentence together properly.  

The creative process, I learned, was wrought with self-doubt.  If it's not, you're probably an asshole, and eventually, it will show in your work.  Comparing my work to others isn't fruitful or helpful.  My goal is not to compete with someone else's work but to get these ideas in my head down on paper so they'll leave me alone.  

The ideas I was working on when I threw those disks away are still inside me.  They probably will be until I make something of them.  I don't feel like anything was lost.  I just had a tantrum because I was scared.  That happens sometimes.  It happens to me a lot.  I'm learning that if I tell people I'm working on something, I can't destroy it in secret when I have moments of self-doubt or frustration that my vision hasn't focused itself yet.  It's a little trick to keep me disciplined and hopefully prompt me to keep moving forward, even when the doubts start to creep in.

Mississippi Women Are More Durable Than I

Everyone called her Babe.  I'm not going to tell you her real name.  I didn't know it myself until her funeral, and I don't remember anyone ever using it.  She was a Brady girl.  Politely called a "maiden aunt" in Mississippi parlance because she was never married, Babe was one of my favorite people in the world.  

Because my uncle became the Boyd Campbell you've heard about, most people in my life told stories about the Campbells and the Boyds up in Attalah county, but I was equally and sometimes more interested in my Mother's family, the Bradys of Learned Mississippi, in Hinds County.

That my Grandmother and her sisters loved me was never in question, but learning to drive increased my utility where they were concerned considerably because they could not.  Having my own car, no matter how old, changed everything in my life and theirs.

"Can you take me and Babe and Edith to lunch at Primos?  I'll buy you a hamburga."  I'm not sure why "hamburger" had no R, but it was common for people of my grandmother's generation.  My grandmother was "Sistah," but we called her "Nanny." Babe was "Babe."  I'm not sure why Edith wasn't assigned a sobriquet.  She was generally considered the more fancy of the three, mainly by the other two.  

My cousin Robert set his mother Edith up in a nice apartment over by Parham Bridges' Park, where I had swimming privileges any time I wanted and was told some pretty girls lived there, but I never saw any.  Nanny lived with us, so she sat in the front seat with me driving the Ford LTD, and we picked up Edith and headed to Babe's.

Babe lived in a duplex apartment behind the laundry on North State Street, what we now call Fondren.  You could tell it had once been a pretty fine home, but at some point, an owner converted it into a duplex, and it was becoming a bit threadbare.  One advantage of a home that old was that the Oak and Magnolia trees in the yard were enormous and mature.  

Once at Babe's apartment, I was asked to move the refrigerator and stove so they could sweep under them, hang two pictures, replace four light bulbs, tack down the carpet in the hall and move some of her livingroom furniture so she could navigate her home with a little more ease.  Besides me having the ability to drive, which none of the three had, it was becoming clear that this adventure had the primary purpose of getting me to help maintain Babe's apartment.  There were advantages to having a nephew with shoulders like mine.  I didn't mind.  Being useful made me feel safe and wanted.  For a shy kid, these are pretty important qualities.  Besides, I loved Babe and would have done anything for her.

With my chores accomplished, it was time for "hamburgahs", so I drove the three sisters north down highway fifty-one to what was then known as the new Primos, but hasn't been called Primos at all in a while now.  Lunch was pleasant.  I told about football, my classes, books I've read and when asked about girls, I had nothing to report, other than that the girls I knew were all very nice and polite, every one.  

Never married, Babe's career was babysitting children, which didn't make very much money, so her sisters made sure she was cared for, which nobody minded because they loved Babe.  I did too.  When I was an infant, she accidentally poked me with a diaper pin, which traumatized her, even when I was sixteen, and had no memory of it besides her telling me about it.  

Dropping Babe off at her place, I headed toward Edith's apartment to drop her off.  I'm not sure why they picked me, but there were times when Edith and Nanny had me alone; they would burden me with family secrets.  A lot of it, I thought, was more like gossip, but some of it was pretty tangible and difficult to hear.  The Brady clan endured some pretty rough times, quite a contrast to my generation.

"Babe sometimes doesn't like to drive with men alone.  When she was thirteen, a man took her on a buggy ride and didn't bring her home."

I was stunned.  It took a moment for my brain to work out what my Nanny was suggesting.

"Pappa and Uncle Joe went to see him and straighten it out,"  Edith added.

Sometimes my brain doesn't know what to do, so the wheels just spin, and I don't say anything.  I didn't say much else after that.  Sensing I didn't want to talk anymore, Edith and Nanny discussed what they saw in people's yards and how it compared to the yards in 1937 until the car trip was over.   

Back home, I went to my room to draw and listen to music.  After supper, when momma had the kitchen to herself, I asked her:

"Did Babe get...Was Babe molested?"

"Something like that."  She said.

"She was just thirteen?"

"Something like that." She said again.

"Pappa was my great grandfather?  What did he and Uncle Joe do?"

"I don't really know.  I never asked.  Handling it their way was better than going through the sheriff they thought."  

I had images of them beating, maybe even lynching the man with the buggy.  I'm almost sixty years old and don't know the full story of what happened and probably never will.  Whatever it was, they saw it as better than going through the sheriff.  I suppose that saved Babe from having to say what happened in court or really ever mention it again.  I doubt if she ever knew I knew.

"Babe's so gentle and sweet.  I can't imagine anything like this ever happening to her."  I said.

"Bad things happen to good people.  You pull together, and you get through it.  Babe's family made sure she was taken care of and had a good life, even though her life ended up being different from her sisters." Mother said.  "I don't know why they told you."  She looked annoyed.

My broad shoulders and ability to move heavy things maybe made my grandmother believe I was stronger than I was and could bear more burdens than perhaps I really could.  I've wept many times over what happened to my Aunt Babe.  Writing about it makes me weep now.  Writing often does.  

Learned Mississippi bred some pretty durable women.  They were little old ladies by the time I knew them, but their stories betray a strength under the powder and lace.  They had a history very different than mine.  It taught me a lesson, though.  Weak doesn't mean weak.  Frail might be strong if you stick together, and pain doesn't matter if you endure.

In three weeks, Aunt Babe would be one hundred twenty-seven years old.  She was born on Halloween.  She survived the end of reconstruction, the beginning and the end of the depression, World Wars one and two, Korea, Viet Nam, the Spanish Flu, Cholera, osteoporosis, Theodore Bilbo, Ross Barnett, Richard Nixon, and a man with a buggy.  She held me as a child and changed my diapers and fed me, and read to me when I couldn't read for myself.  She survived without ever giving you a hint of how much of a survivor she really was.  Knowing her helped make me what I am.

  

Breakfast at Millsaps

From the day I was born until the day he died, my dad was intimately involved in the Millsaps College board.  In retrospect, he was probably too young for the responsibilities given him.  He paid a price for it, and so did we kids, but that was a different time, and he felt a genuine calling for it.

Of Millsaps College presidents, I heard about Ellis Finger my entire life (and still do), but I don't remember meeting him.  If I had, I would have been in diapers.  Dr. Graves, I only know by name.  He wasn't there very long, and I don't recall ever meeting him.  Again, I would have been pretty small.  

The president I remember the most in my youth was Eddie Collins.  He and my dad were about the same age, and his kids were about the same age as my brothers and me.  My most constant playmate and classmate was his son, John.  John had similar but less intense learning problems than I had.  That was something we shared, although most of our classmates knew nothing of it.  

Besides Millsaps, Dr. Collins and my dad had a lot of similar interests, so they became close friends.  When my parents had dinner parties, Mr. and Mrs. Collins were there.  Johnny Gore had me running drinks to the grown-ups I knew and breaking up ice bags for him.  

There came a time when the school wasn't doing so well.  In fact, we were in trouble.  The board decided to replace Dr. Collins, and the job fell on my dad to tell him.  It couldn't have been a pleasant task.  We never discussed it, but I never again saw him socialize with somebody he might have to fire one day.  

I don't remember any of their names, but I know there was a parade of guys vying for the open spot at the top of Millsaps.  From early on, George Harmon distinguished himself.  He had an idea to develop a program modeled on the Harvard Business school that would give Millsaps something to offer that no other school in the state offered.   I'm sure, at the time, the idea sounded audacious.  Millsaps, even then, called itself "the Harvard of the South," but everybody knew that was a reach.  Trying to actually do something Harvard was already doing was quite a stretch.  

Now, some forty-five years later, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every college in Mississippi would eventually copy the success of the Else School of Management.  Just the other day, someone asked me why Millsaps was trying to imitate Belhaven's business school.  I thought, "Brother, you got it all backward."

I don't know if I'd say this if he was still alive, but George Harmon was known for two things: being short and being stone-faced.  I'm not gonna lie.  Just a few inches taller than my Mom, George was pretty short.  He was also one of the best athletes I ever knew.  We both used the Downtown YMCA, and except for a few larger muscle group exercises like squat and deadlift, he could outdo me at just about every exercise.  I used to watch him play handball.  He'd invited me to play with him a few times, but I wasn't that dumb.  He regularly buried men half his age, to the point where it got kind of difficult for him to find somebody to play with.  

As to being stone-faced, he socialized differently from most folks.  Because nobody got up that early, most students never knew that Dr. Harmon ate breakfast every day in the cafeteria at the biggest round table, he could find in hopes that students would come to sit with him, which they almost never did.  

I tried to eat with him fairly regularly because I genuinely liked him and because the KA table was pretty much a ghost town in the morning.  Conversations with Dr. Harmon were pretty formulaic.  "How's your momma?"  "She's fine." In those days, her health almost never changed.  "Where's your daddy?"  "He's in Washington on Chamber business."  "Where's he eat when he goes there?"  "There's a little greek place across the street from The Madison, where he stays."  Inquiring as to one's relatives is a staple of Southern social interactions.  Despite his reputation for coldness, Dr. Harmon was well-versed in our customs and niceties.  That the answers never changed was immaterial; it was the asking that was important.

He had absolutely no interest in the fraternity life that dominated Millsaps.  He recognized I was involved in it, but that's about it.  Every so often, he'd see somebody and say, "Is he one of yall's?"  "No, sir, he plays baseball.  He's a Sig."  In those days, sports were pretty evenly divided by greek-letter affiliation.  The Pikes dominated soccer, The Sigs baseball, and only football was fairly well divided between the greeks.  Unless you counted sports betting and pool, the KAs never really dominated any sports.

The only student who would regularly join us was David Biggers, who was as tight-lipped as Dr. Harmon.  My pledge trainer, David, was one of my favorite KAs.  He would go to Johns Hopkins after Millsaps.  He was that smart.  Another regular breakfast eater was Jack Woodward.  Deeply involved in both Galloway and Millsaps, I can't really remember a time when Dean Woodward wasn't a part of my life.

Dean Woodward and I had a relationship that transcended business, Millsaps or Galloway.  There were a few times when I knew somebody was in trouble, and I'd sneak him some money to apply to their tuition, with the understanding that he'd keep it a secret, both from the student and from my dad.  Anybody who would help me keep secrets from my Dad, even when I was doing the right thing, was in my good book for life.  

His youngest son, John, was socially involved with my sister and distinguished himself from some of her other boyfriends by actually being likable.  John was there the night my sister's best friend and neighbor died.  One of the worst nights of my young life.  That next week, his dad made an effort to spot me on campus a few times, just to make sure I was alright.  I can't tell you if I was or not.  By that time, I had learned to bury my feeling so deeply nobody knew what they were.  

My dad's last major project at Millsaps was constructing the Olin Science building.  He almost lived to see it open. Not many years after that, both George Harmon and Jack Woodward would retire.  I stayed involved for a while, but the school was beginning to falter again, and I couldn't take it, so eventually, I drifted away.  This wasn't by design or by choice, but I felt like I couldn't do a damn thing to stop what was coming, and a lifetime of self-denial was beginning to make pretty serious cracks in my personal foundations.  Soon, I'd go into hiding, where I stayed for many years.

I'm back now, even though I feel like Rip Van Winkle, and Millsaps is again on the front of my mind.  Whatever adventures they have on deck, I'm in one hundred percent.  I might bring some ghosts with me if they're not already there.