Christmas with Feist-Dog

taking a legal drink in mississippi

Good Mornin! It's thirty-four cold degrees in Jackson, Mississippi. Feist-dog told me to get up and work. I told him to do it himself this time.

Some of you woke up with a well-fed cat and a missing appendage. That's the way it is in December.

The Mississippi Legislature reconvenes on January 7, so you still got time to get that one suit cleaned and pressed.

The agenda, from what I can tell, is a lot of bullshit, and not that much meat, so not much has changed. If you're on the way into the Capitol building and you see Doug Carswell, spit on his shoes and tell him to fuck off. If you see Shad White, you have until April to pat him on the head and tug his ears for good luck.

Some of the most interesting stories I can tell involve all the shit that happened in Rankin County from 1908, when whiskey was made illegal in Mississippi, until 1966, when the Greenhorn Hinds County Sheriff tried to arrest Warren Hood and half the people he knew at the old Jackson Country Club.

It'd be another fifteen years before I could legally take a drink, but let's not split hairs. There used to be this place called "The Dutch Bar..." well, if you were there, you were there. One thing about growing up in Jackson was that, if your chemistry teacher caught you at the Dutch Bar, neither of you could say anything about it without getting in trouble.

One of my problems with telling stories about Rankin County is that the statute of limitations hasn't run out on some of them. The other problem is that I could tell the story about how grandpa took a million bucks from some Louisiana bootleggers and then said he had to take his own life or they'd take his daughter's, but three generations later, I'm just not the guy to ruin Christmas. A lot of my stories go into the "I don't believe I can tell that one" pile.

One story I can tell is how my uncle went to the trouble to get his medical degree and his residency to come home so Jackson would have doctors (there was a pretty serious shortage), but one night in Flowood, across the Woodrow Wilson bridge, he met a fella who challenged his honor, then committed acts of violence, acts of violence my uncle met with a pistol.

In the trial, he was convicted and sent to Parchman Prison, but federal agents came to Mississippi and offered him a deal to redeem himself, which he did. I love a good redemption story. For a while, I thought I could tape-record interviews with him, and that would be my first book. At fifteen, my thoughts weren't that organized, and he didn't live long enough to start the project well enough, much less finish it.

I know people who will tell you that Mississippi was full of so many good Christians, and that's why we were the last place in the Western World to make whiskey legal again. I'm pretty sure they know that's a lie, but they like to tell it again. The truth is, people were making crazy amounts of money off the deal, including some guys with Italian names living in Louisiana. You know how that goes.

When Mississippi passed the Free Textbook Act, a sure sign of the new-found economic growth after FDR, publishers contacted my uncle because they needed a textbook depository. They didn't stand to make as much money as they did, in say, Texas, where you could kill a president from the window of a textbook depository, but a good businessman doesn't leave money on the table—even if it’s just Mississippi.

My grandfather and my uncle were making more money than any other school supply outfit in the country, and they were doing it in the poorest state in the country. There's no real secret to this. Mississippi was too poor to have much competition, so things worked for them.

My uncle Boyd bought the building next to his and expanded it considerably to become the Textbook Depository. A few years ago, my sister called to say that somebody bought the old School Book Supply company with plans to turn it into a distillery.

"A still, huh?" I said.

There are generations of Campbells, now in the ground, who would have gotten a real smile out of this news. Except for my grandfather, we were acknowledged drinkers. My grandfather was honestly too devoted to football and Methodism to drink much, and probably in that order. The rest of us were more sensible about things.

Cathead Distillery was the first legal distillery in Mississippi. I've had legal booze made in Mississippi, and I've had illegal booze made in Mississippi. I have to say, Cathead does it better, and nobody had to pay off the mob, and nobody got murdered. I'd say that's progress.

Feist-Dog has tricked me into writing a story. I was just gonna eat my eggs and finish this here banana.

Good morning, Mississippi! It's now thirty-seven degrees outside. Cover your head if you go out. Feist-dog says get up and go to work; you got two days till Christmas.