1950 Letters To The Editor
One of my favorite things is going through old newspapers. There's a service called newspapers.com that allows me to do it through the internet, searching for anything I can imagine. If there's an angel that watches out for children with ADHD, I figured this is her gift to me.
These are letters to the editor of the Clarion Ledger in 1950. In this case, the editor is my uncle, Tom Hederman, Jr. Uncle Tom was a polarizing character for some people. I loved him, but I understand why he was polarizing. Where men from Mississippi are concerned, it’s rare when you can make an uncomplicated summation of their character.
The first letter references the "Miss Quote" collum that ran in the women's section and purported to be a sort of society column, but it really was this beautiful collection of regional short stories written by Charlotte Capers. Some of her friends collected enough of her "Miss Quote" collums to make a book, through the University Press, called "Caper's Papers." It's available in print and on Kindle. You don't have to be from here to love it, but if you are from here, you really should read it. Her best friend was Eudora Welty, who wrote a preface for the book. Capers and Welty formed the backbone of Jackson’s cultural elite as long as they were alive—anyone who has pretended to do so since is the slightest shadow of the real thing.
The other letter amused me because it was from a guy who was obviously not worried about letting the whole world know he was a grumpy old bastard. I imagine every kid in town knew who he was.
