[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]
After heavy rains gave Dad’s cotton crop a much-needed soaking and halted fieldwork on his Mississippi Delta farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird offered to take my cousin Calvin and me fishing. The night before, we pitched a tent in Jaybird’s yard, knowing the old black man, a master storyteller, would entertain us with terrifying, hair-raising tales as we sat around the campfire.
Once during my college teaching career, the dean told me to complete a course that lost its instructor. When I complained that the semester was almost over, that I had no idea what had been covered, and furthermore that I had never taught that course before, the former Marine drill sergeant pointed to the door and dismissed me with the same words he no doubt growled to countless terrified recruits: “Like it or not, you will do whatever must be done.”
Until Jaybird joined his Heavenly Father just shy of his ninetieth birthday, my boyhood best friend and mentor enjoyed good health, although the beloved old black man’s lifestyle was not entirely healthful: After a long day’s work, he would often relax by smoking a cigarette or two, along with a few cold beers, but never beyond moderation, for as he pointed out, “Overdoing pleasures makes a man slave to pleasures.”
While handing over the money, Jaybird muttered, “Boy, you’re a sucker for advertising. This money — a loan, mind you — will be wasted on yet another lure as fish-frightening as the Pearly-Eyed Wobbler you foolishly had to have and that I foolishly loaned you money to buy — just another piece of junk designed to catch fishermen, not fish.”
Ignoring the wise old black man, my boyhood mentor and best friend, I hurried to Clyde’s bait shop, hoping he hadn’t sold all of bass-fishing’s hottest lure: the Big-O. Angler fanatics like myself had never seen anything like it. Made of balsa wood, the body’s top half was green, separated from its ivory belly by a black line. The most innovative feature was a transparent, spoon-shaped, protruding lip, positioned so that a few reel cranks sent it diving to the deep, murky depths where the biggest bass lurk.
One warm, sunny April morning, while my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird and I lounged on his front porch, enjoying cornbread chunks in cold buttermilk, and gazing across my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, he said, “No work is going on, planting time is a few weeks off, and we’ve got nothing to do. Let’s try those big black bull battling bream in Blue Bottom Bayou.”
When I opined that bream, so delicious when fried and eaten with hush puppies, probably weren’t bedding yet, he said, “Maybe, maybe not. Some years bream bed early, fixing to spawn, and that’s when they battle at their best.”
As we left the tiny country church near Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird asked, “Son, as much as you love to sing Christmas carols, why didn’t you sing today?”
The old black man was disappointed. He loved my caterwauling, as I sang gleefully, “Joy To The World,” “Silent Night, Holy Night,” “O Little Town Of Bethlehem,” and other carols.
Once spoken, unkind words cannot be unspoken. A few days before, as I entered the school bus, Mr. Smith, the driver who always shared our church pew, quipped, “You love to sing in church, don’t you, boy?” Expecting praise, I chirped, “Yes, Sir.” With a frown and stern look, he said, “Well, your singing sounds more like a hungry calf bawling for his mama.”
While growing up on Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird often took me to The Old Rugged Cross Chapel, a tiny country church a short walk from home, which was always packed on Sundays. I remember the towering, trumpet-voiced preacher, Reverend Moses Malachi McGee, whose sermons balanced hell-fire-brimstone admonitions with soft-spoken, impassioned pleas beseeching sinners to do unto others as they would have done to themselves.
According to humorist Will Rogers, good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. Combining this truth with the common sense admonishment that folks ought not mess with creatures that aren’t messing with them explains why, from what happened on the way to church one day, I will always avoid angering armadillos.
When my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird accepted Ajax, a four-month-old Airedale puppy from a neighbor who was moving away, man and dog soon became inseparable. For Ajax, a dog’s life was heaven. His luminous eyes shone in quizzical, mischievous anticipation, his mustache-framed mouth smiled permanently, and his wiry coat glowed like amber. He had rocket fuel energy and an anvil’s tolerance for pain. With Jaybird’s constant love and care, he grew quickly from puppy-size to pony-size, and had three modes of action — eat, sleep, attack. Anything that moved was prey, especially cars on a nearby road.
The date: September 11, 2001.
The old man behind the country store counter clasped my hand with eagle talon strength, squeezing tighter and tighter, his pained, bloodshot eyes locked with mine. Panicking, wishing I had not stopped for a cold drink, disregarding change from the bill on the counter for payment, I struggled to free my hand and flee.
From his office on the university lyceum building’s top floor, Junior gazed at the hustle and bustle below. It warmed his heart to see bright-eyed, energetic students in “Gar U” sweaters rushing to classes, and from every car waved the school flag, bearing the university mascot, a toothy, evil-eyed gar.
When brisk fall weather overcame summer’s hot days and football was in the air, Junior, Jaybird, their wives and children — sons Garland, Garfield, Garner, Gartley, and daughters Garcinda, Garsilla, Gardenia, and Garlissa — sat in box seats in Gar Stadium and watched their team, the Gar Giants, slaughter young warriors from opposing universities.
Jaybird and Junior were atop a world of gar mania and were soon as wealthy as Johnny D. Rockefeller and Andy Carnegie. But still, they were just good, honest ole country boys at heart, and agreed that they should share their great fortune in some way. So, they decided to establish a university.
After choosing an ideal location, Good Grief, Mississippi, a sleepy, dusty Delta town, the population of which never numbered more than a few hundred folks, they met with the municipality’s mayor and other prominent citizens. Junior laid the proposal on the table and explained that because Good Grief was a quiet, secluded, picturesque village, it would offer an ideal environment for a center of learning.
One day, a wealthy gar pond patron asked the gar men which lures gars preferred above all others. Since Junior was an expert whittler and carved lures to catch any kind of fish, he opened a huge tackle box, and said, “I’ve got quite an array of jigs, crank baits, spoons, spinners, and top-water lures that I’ve whittled to perfection over the years to catch whatever kind of fish for which I was angling.”
Jaybird needed help maneuvering his way through the onslaught of capitalistic opportunities coming his way, so he turned to the man who always did his heavy thinking for him. Holding up a giant gar he just fought and landed, Junior had the answer: “Simple. Banks and other commercial lending institutions will jump at the chance to finance this enterprise, so we need to borrow whatever amount is necessary to build more ponds.
Near each pond, a holding tank would be stocked with the gar’s primary food source — minnows. Knowing gars prefer injured minnows because they are easier to catch, Junior’s blueprint included submerged, multi-bladed industrial fans through which the hapless minnows would have to pass. With culverts attached to their inlet and exit sides, the fans would blast a minnow-filled torrent across the ponds’ surfaces when activated. Most of the hapless little fishes passing through the fan blades would be injured, turning them into gar haute cuisine.
Like a fierce-eyed fowl, the brutal sun that torrid July day glared down on Jaybird and Junior, and the Mississippi Delta humidity was so high that breathing would have been easier with gills. After loading their boat on Loretta, Junior’s beloved old pickup, they opened two soda pops, crawled into the cab, and headed down the road back to their farm.
They were content. In addition to a nice mess of bluegills, crappie and bass, Jaybird caught a fine specimen of his favorite fish: the speckled blue catfish. With the wind blowing in his face as they rolled along, the old black man gazed wistfully across the neat, rectangular catfish ponds along the roadside.
When I told my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird that I no longer wanted to play football, the old black man, knowing how much I loved the game, knew I was lying. After each preseason practice when we drove home, I described to him everything the team did. When I confessed that my attitude toward the game changed when Coach Ruscoe assigned me to the third team, he said, "Son, Satan has many tools that he uses to prevent the Lord's children from maintaining positive attitudes, but the one he uses the most is discouragement."
The group of people waiting anxiously in the hospital room that day years ago could not see the angel among them, but her presence was certain, almost palpable. She was mother to three of those in the group, wife to one, mother-in-law to a nervous husband holding the hand of her daughter, and was soon to be grandmother to a baby girl about to depart her home in the womb for nine months and go to an earthly home filled with loving care and tenderness.
Shortly after we tractor drivers finished cultivating Dad’s cotton fields, which spread across a remote corner of the Mississippi Delta, a long, steady, soaking rain set in — just what the cotton plants needed to finish filling bolls with fiber. As we waited for our paychecks and watched the thirsty earth drink its fill, we knew it wasn’t just a “sharrain” (Dad’s way of saying “shower of rain”) or a mere dust settler, but what he called a “sho-nuff chunk floater.”
Often during boyhood, whenever Dad warned that stubbornness would prevent me from succeeding in life, I protested that he was confusing stubbornness with persistence, to which he replied one day, “Since you work with Jaybird, I’ll ask him about all this persistence you profess to have.”