Feist Dog and The Farm Report

An hour and a half before the alarm clock goes off, I'm giving up sleeping through the night for Lent. When I was little, this was the only time I was allowed to sneak into bed with Momma and Daddy. Around five, I'd hear him sit up, then see the cherry orb of his first cigarette move up and down in the dark. He never sat up until the last minute when his radio started.

In the silence, I hear momma breathing and his tobacco burn as he inhales. I'm pretending to be asleep. His alarm clock told the time by rotating a drum and flipping little cards with numbers painted on them. In the silence, I hear them flipping fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, then a bigger flip and Five a.m. Good morning, feist-dog. It's time for the farm report. The cigarette goes out, and daddy gets up to pee. I watch him shave, and momma stirs and makes her way to her bathroom. One of the luxuries of moving from the Northside drive house to the Honeysuckle Lane house was that Momma and Daddy had separate lavatories. Daddy's lavatory was spartan, but Momma changed the wallpaper on hers regularly. Mother had a thing for walls. When Martha moved out of the house, she insisted on texturing the feature wall in her dining area. She didn't do a terrible job, either. I wonder if the new owner kept it.

Being alone in Momma and Daddy's bed meant I could get up and watch TV in the den. Sleeping in didn't become part of my life until adolescent depression started sinking in. Even then, I'd still wake up before Farmer Jim came on the radio, much like I did today, but I might not stay up. Sitting up in my own bed, sneaking my own cigarette in the dark, I'd consider whether or not the day was worth it. My wife hated it. "Go OUTSIDE. You're supposed to go outside." then she'd lay back for a few more precious sleeps.

Where I am now, the nurses change shift in an hour. I hear them gossip as they gather near the door. I'm not the only resident awake, but only a few of us who are awake are aware. The light is on under Dr. Amazing's door. She's probably reading.

She went to the Methodist service in the chapel yesterday. I normally do, but yesterday I went to a poetry reading instead. I met coach Culpepper's wife. We didn't recognize each other at first. It's been forty years. Once she explained who she was, it all came back to me. I remember when they were just dating.

Listening to guys read their poems, who not only let other people read their poetry but manage to get people to print them in books. I write free-verse poetry. Nobody ever reads it. I don't know if I'll keep it that way. This piece is kind of free-verse, but it's more of an exercise I usually describe as cracking open the egg and seeing what's inside. The words slip out of my brain shell onto the skillet and begin to fry. This isn't precision cooking. It's catch-as-catch-can.

If only I could travel in time as easily as my mind does when I write. What would the nine-year-old me say to the fifty-nine-year-old me? Farmer Jim's been dead a while now, but feist-dog is still with me. He's been more loyal than all the women I've loved. Probably too many. I try not to think of the number, but I remember their eyes, every-one. Their hands. Holding hands and looking into a woman's eyes while you talk in a restaurant is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in public, even though the communication through my fingertips into the well of her hand can be absolutely filthy. It's a secret. Feist-dog looks away. "Not this again."

The sky is purple now.  Trees stand out black against it.  I'd like to finish my painting today.  I haven't had the urge for the past three days.  That's annoying.  Soon blues and grays will creep into the sky and cars will begin to move.  

Today, I begin the process of closing one apartment and moving to another.  My beloved Standard Life building is for sale.  I was kind of expecting it.  Covid killed the viaduct end of Capitol Street renaissance dead.   I'm hoping Jerry will open the Mayflower for supper before I go to the Ash Wednesday service.  From what I understand, he doesn't open every day anymore.  I miss his dad.  I miss his cousin Theo.  I miss a growing, optimistic Jackson.  Maybe if I work really hard, I can leave that to the next generation.  The second generation after my generation.  Honestly, that's kind of fucked up.  About half the girls I held hands with in the paragraphs above are grandmothers now.  To me, they're still beautiful.  Their tiny hands still remind me of fairy's wings, but we're old now.  I don't feel old, even though my back hurts and I have to pee about a thousand times a day.  

I thought being old would come with a feeling of confidence, a calm reflection that I am the river's master.  It didn't turn out that way.  I'm as nervous and unsettled now as I was at sixteen.  The river laughs at me and changes its meanders while I sleep when I sleep.   This is my home.  I was made to think I could be its master, but all I can do is throw words at it.  Words, words, words, maybe there's an idea in my scribblings that will ignite a discussion that might change a heart.  Maybe changing a heart here and there as the river flows by is the only way.  I've seen guys trade tens of thousands of acres of real estate and have less impact than a properly placed idea.  

Feist-dog wants me to get up.  The alarm goes off in a moment.  My fingers race to type out the last words before it does.  Good Morning.  It's time for the farm report.

Elseworks At CS's

 I'm a pretty big Virgi Lindsay fan.  Tonight she was gracious enough to come talk to an Elseworks and Midtown Business Association meeting at CS's.  Growing up in Jackson, there were about six guys who could tell you everything that was happening anywhere in the city.  If you didn't go to church with them, your momma went to high school with them, or they were one of our cousins, and if all that failed, you could go to Dutch Bar or Geroge Street and find one of them to explain whatever you were interested in.  

That hasn't been true in a while.  Jackson is a very complicated city now.  Our water system is under federal receivership, our sewers are under a consent decree with the EPA, policing has been mostly taken over by the state, and the Mayor and the City Council are in a suit with each other that neither side can talk about until there's a hearing.  

It used to be that everybody trusted the Mayor, but nobody trusted the City Council.  Today, that situation has flipped.  Virgi is part of why.  Her credibility is pretty high, and you could tell it by how the gathering responded to her.  She made me feel better about a number of issues; there is improvement on the horizon, and we just have to dig it out of some of the crap left over from the past few years.

Turkeys and Missing Fingers

Because of its proximity to the railroads, the fortunes of Jackson's Midtown always rose and fell with light manufacturing. Not so much now, but there was a time when there were at least a dozen small or mid-sized factories and shops going at Midtown.

After Pearl Harbor and America entered the war, my Uncle Boyd wrote a letter to the newly installed Jim Eastland to ask what Mississippi School Supply could do to support the war effort. Eastland wrote back with a mimeographed list of things the War Department needed, with orders to pick an item on the list and get to work.

One item on the list interested my Uncle Boyd, and one item interested his brother, my Grandfather.  Boyd saw where the airforce needed a specific size of ammo box to be manufactured by shaping sheet metal.  Boyd had never been a machinist, but his father was, even though he had only one hand.  The loss of the other hand was related to an infection from a childhood injury, not being a sloppy machinist.   

Boyd procured a warehouse in Midtwon with access to a railroad spur and began setting up shop, purchasing most of his equipment from companies that made metal roofs.  The depression was still pretty strong in Mississippi, so buying used equipment at a good price was not very difficult.  Soon Daddy and several of his high school buddies were employed to work under the legendary Jim Woodson to unload the sheet metal for the new Ammo Box Shop.  

Finding experienced machinists who weren't in danger of getting drafted meant that the Ammo Box Factory was primarily run by old men.  Daddy said nearly all of them were missing all or parts of their fingers from their many years of operating metal presses.  Meeting airforce officers come to inspect the work convinced Daddy to switch his aspirations from Army to Airforce.  He and most of his friends were convinced they'd end up in the war, but most of them ended up in Korea instead. 

My grandfather, on the other hand, was attracted to another item on the list:  Boil and Can Turkey meat.  Although he'd been Jackson twenty years by that point, grandaddy still missed the agricultural life.  Of all the Campbell children, he was considered the best with animals.  He rented a couple of empty lots on Monroe Street, where he and Jim Woodson set up chicken wire fences and commenced to raise turkeys.  Somewhere in my sister's house is a picture of Granddaddy squatting down amidst about a hundred turkeys.  Once grown, he had a place in midtown where they would slaughter, clean, boil, and can the turkeys and ship them off to feed our boys overseas. 

Neither of these ventures survived World War II.  By the end of the war, nearly all government military contracts were taken up by larger industrial concerns, pushing the smaller shops out of business.  Instead of Ammo boxes, Missco shifted its manufacturing focus to the laboratory future needed in all the new schools required by the baby boom and acquired General Equipment Manufacturing, and set up a factory in Crystal Springs.  

Millsaps has a pretty dedicated effort to reignite economic activity in Jackson's Midtown.  So far, they're having pretty good luck, even without a mimeographed list from JO Eastland.  

My Second Church

Today was pretty active.  For the day of rest, I left the house at 8:30 am and returned at 6:30 pm.  After Sunday School and Church, my plan was to impress everyone and myself by making my way from Galloway to the Westin by myself in the wheelchair.   Turns out, it's not that impressive when the path from Galloway to the Westin is about 85% slightly downhill.  In a wheelchair, slightly downhill is kind of like floating in an innertube down a lazy river.  Some effort is involved, but not much.

Lunch at the Westin was really good.  I had the Lox & Bagel Eggs Benedict.  Even though it was almost one o'clock, there was just one table left open for me.  They had a guy playing sax with a music box accompaniment.  He was playing "It's a Man's World" when they seated me.  Good choice.

The plan was to have a lazy lunch, then spend two hours at the Mississippi Museum of Art, then head to St. James for Evensong, where the Millsaps Singers would combine with the St. James Choir.  I might come back another time for dinner.  I kind of worried that the Westin might kill business for King Edward, being newer and closer to Thalia Mara and the Court House.  I guess it really did because King Edward is on the auction block.  Honestly, I blame city leadership for that.  They let the train station fall apart after that extensive remodeling, and they let the street racing on Capitol go on too long.  I get that they're short-handed, but come on, the police station is right there.  

At the Museum, there was like a seven-piece bluegrass band playing, including one of my friends from Sunday school on the mandolin.   Apparently, they play every third Sunday.  I'll have to catch it again.  See the video below for a taste of their performance.

Evensong was scheduled at four, so I ordered an Uber and headed that way at 3:15.  Returning to St. James, I knew, would be tough.  That was my wife's church, and I'd come to love it.  In the divorce, we never discussed it, and there was never even a moment's fighting in the divorce, but that was her childhood church, so I just quietly stopped going.  

I had my own history at St. James.  Pat Jeffreys, who ran the School Book Supply Company for my Grandfather for many years, lived across the street.  A lot of people from St. Andrews either worked there or attended there.  My wife no longer lives in Jackson, so it'd be ok for me to start making St. James a part of my life again; I just wasn't exactly sure how, and I'd been avoiding crossing that threshold.

I got the Uber to drop me off behind the church.  I saw the new rector.  We hadn't met yet.  I was about half an hour early, and I could hear the choir rehearsing.  I sat outside listening, not entirely sure if I was going to go in, when the Rector asked if I wanted to.  Why not?  I'd listened to both of those choirs reherse many times.

I love the organ at St. James.  I remember watching as it was installed.   My plan was to sit in the back where nobody would notice I was there, and I could sneak out without anyone seeing me, but Rector Elizabeth asked if I wanted to sit up front.  I said I was ok where I was.  

There were a number of faces I was expecting to see at Evensong, but Sister Dorothea was not one of them.  Sister Dorothea and the Late Sister Josephine have a unique place in my life.  Their appearance has an almost mystical weight, even though I was apt to see them at baseball games as much as any church.  Although my time at St. Catherine's is coming to an end, they literally gave me my life back, and Sister Dorothea is responsible for that.  

I was feeling pretty invincible after seeing Sister Dorothea.  Sentimentality wouldn't rule this day, I thought.  But, a face I knew appeared.

"Are you, Boyd...Campbell?"

Seeing Susie Baltz without her husband Richard or her brother Cecil blew the armor off my back in a moment.  I wasn't expecting that.  "Hey, how are you?" was all I could think of to say.

"I'm good.  I've been missing Richard.  He died two years ago, you know."  I did know.  I knew there would be an emotional moment.  This was it.  Sometimes, it's really hard for me to express how much I loved and missed someone.  I'd sat in St. James with Suzie and Richard and Cecil many times.   Tonight she was alone.  They won't join her any more.  If there was anybody from St. James I'd want to see again, it'd be Cecil.  His last phone call stays with me.  He said he couldn't remember why he was calling.  I said it didn't matter.  I was just glad he did.

Rector Elizabeth asked again if I wanted to sit up front.  I'm really not a sit-up-front kind of guy, but there was no way around it this time.  David Elliot greeted me when I got situated.  He had a Sweanee T-shirt on.  I never went to Sewanee, but a lot of people wanted me to.  Rob and Phoebe Pearagin would be returning there this summer, but they were at St. James this night.  

From where I was sitting, I could see Michael Beattie working the organ.  It fascinates me.  You play with your hands and your feet and your elbows and your nose, and there are at least a million buttons, and out comes this amazing sound.  St. James has always had a really quality music program.  Musically, I'm probably a lot more Episcopalian than I am Methodist (don't tell Bob.)  For many of the songs, I closed my eyes.  They have great acoustics.

It's been over fifteen years since I crossed the threshold into St. James.  For a while, it was my church, our church, I suppose.  I must have looked like a deer in headlight, but it was a good return.  On the way out, I saw James Anderson bragging on his improved health.  He looked pretty hale to me.  We'll be putting him to work on the Millsaps Players reunion soon.  I'm not exactly sure how Im going to incorporate St. James into my religious life.  I've made a pretty big commitment to Galloway, but I'm going to make room for St James at least once a month.  Part of me has always been there.  I think it should stay.