[em]Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled [strong]The Jaybird Tales[/strong].
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).[/em]
In a small town near my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, Purlene and “Ug” Upton, owners of a mom-and-pop store, paid top dollar for pecans. One look explained Ug’s nickname: A mule kicked him on the cheek, and his jaws no longer matched, giving his face an ugly twist. The blow also affected one eye, which focused momentarily and then roamed.
During my teenage years, I thought like most adolescent males: I was no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. During those turbulent years, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird taught me many life lessons the hard way: through experience.
Once, after he lit up a Camel cigarette while we were fishing, I reached over and took the cigarette case from his shirt pocket. The old black man didn’t say a word when I boasted that I was a man and could smoke if I wanted to. Shrugging, he passed me the lighter. I lit up, inhaled deeply, and picked up my fishing pole.
Only fools think money solves all problems,” my lifelong best friend and mentor Jaybird told me. One day while lolling with my pals on Uptown Avenue in our Mississippi Delta hometown, I ignored Jaybird’s advice about money, and learned its truth the hard way. I didn’t have a cent, and was certain money could solve a problem: coming up with twenty-five cents to buy an All-Day Sucker at Peach-Eye’s Grocery.
Deep down in his mute, cool, dimly lit domain, the monarch of the Mississippi Delta swamp hole lay in patient ambush while the terrified shiner just inches above him swam round and round in frantic arcs, desperately struggling to break free of its tether to the red and white bobber floating on the surface.
Of all the men with whom I worked during two decades as manager of my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, Ed Eddards was the strangest. Eerie describes him better. One day when my lifelong friend and mentor Jaybird and I were repairing a tractor’s flat tire, he appeared suddenly.
“I need a job,” he said abruptly, causing us to whirl around. Growling, Guv’nuh, my Doberman Pinscher, scooted close against my leg, and Jaybird whispered, “Something ain’t right about that man.”
One fine spring day, on my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, Jaybird, my boyhood best friend and mentor, told a story to a group of us children, a story he called “Easter Hands.” As the old black man slipped into the hypnosis of his bullfrog bass voice, we little ones clustered at his feet, leaning toward him like eager flowers toward the rising sun. He told us the story of Easter. We had heard Jesus Christ called different names — Savior, Messiah, the Nazarene, Son of Man — and our young minds were confused. Jaybird explained in a way we understood.
Glaring at the Volkswagen Beetle in front of the commissary store on Dad’s Mississippi Delta cotton farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird said, “That ain’t nothing but a coffin with wheels on it.”
When the caller asked if I would fly to the Gulf Coast and get his dead brother, I didn’t know what to say.
“He died while vacationing, but the local ambulance company charges too much for the trip,” he said. “If you’ll do it, I’ll rent the airplane and pay you $100.”
That warm, spring Mississippi Delta Saturday was ideal for doing anything outdoors, but the calamitous way it turned out was far from ideal. Nobody outperformed my lifelong best friend and mentor Jaybird in preparing delicious, deep-South cuisine, especially crawfish. When my friends and I asked the old black man to boil several hundred pounds of them, he said, “Boys, that will be a great way to spend this glorious day. Y’all load up my big cooking pot; let’s enjoy some country-style cutting up.”
When I complained to my father that the cotton gin’s crew and I shouldn’t have to work through the Christmas holidays, he said, “Son, we finished ginning last year’s cotton crop early, and you duck hunted all winter. Be thankful for that. Fall weather has been mighty unfavorable to the Mississippi Delta this year. Because of steady rains, we are way behind schedule. The gin must run nonstop until we’re caught up; this current dry spell will not last long.”
When my three daughters invited me to a crawfish cook, I was thrilled — nothing boosts my ego more than being with my pulchritudinous progeny. After enjoying the succulent crustaceans, we parted ways. I strolled homeward, reflecting on how blessed I was to be loved by those girls. I also thought about the first time I ate crawfish.
After saving for several years, I bought my first hunting vehicle: an old Ford Bronco. Even though my lifelong best friend and mentor Jaybird shook his head when I showed her to him, I was totally in love with the four-wheel-drive beauty I called Clara, named after my significant other at the time.
“Shoot, that rattletrap would get stuck in a mud puddle,” Jaybird mumbled. “Clara ain’t nothing but a clunker.”
If rereading novels in old age that were read in boyhood indicates regression into second childhood, I’m headed that way. Before my tenth birthday, I read everything Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote, especially the Tarzan novels. I even memorized the special language for communicating with jungle beasts taught to Tarzan by the gorillas that raised him, and preferred it to English, which drove my mother batty.
My brother and I were unalike as brothers could be. He steered clear of what I didn’t: trouble. Occasionally, though, his saintly behavior betrayed him, as it did when my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird captured a chipmunk. The old black man loved wild creatures, and if he trapped one that he thought could be domesticated, he brought it home. After transferring the creature from the trap to a large birdcage, he asked us to name him. I suggested Monk, but Jaybird preferred the good boy’s choice: Chippie.
My boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird agreed with Miss Lena about the motor scooter. “Yo’ mama is right,” he said. “Paying two hundred dollars for a scooter is foolish.” Then, after thinking a bit, he said, “However, if you justify needing it instead of just wanting it, she might feel differently, and I will, too. Find a job, repay the money she loans you, and prove that you know the value of a hard-earned dollar.”
In time I found a job riding the scooter while earning money to pay for it: an after-school newspaper route. Everything went great on the first run until I tossed a paper in a driveway that awakened a ferocious Rottweiler named Attila from his afternoon nap. By the time the scooter gained enough speed to escape, the enraged dog was within a jaw snap of clamping down on my leg.
From a bridge near Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, my three daughters used BB guns to improve their marksmanship. Standing on the bridge’s downstream side, they stood, locked and loaded, waiting to shoot balloons attached to small weights that I tossed from the bridge’s upstream side. As the targets floated beneath them, the balloon killers fired away, making chalk marks on the railing for each hit. Sodas and snacks at a nearby country store were their reward for bursting nine out of ten.
At her country store in rural Arkansas, Maya Angelou’s grandmother tolerated a few chronic complainers, but even in the toughest times, her attitude remained positive, a mindset she instilled in her granddaughter. Once, when a chronic bellyacher entered the store, she told Maya to listen. Sure enough, he whined about everything — work, money, weather, and so on. After he left, Maya’s grandmother spoke words of wisdom that became a guiding principle of Maya’s life.