I used to love reading Bill Minor. If there’s a list of the top five most important journalists in Mississippi History, he’s on it. This is a piece he wrote in 1985 about the Mayflower Cafe. It appeared in both the Clarion Ledger in the social section and in the Jackson Daily News in the opinion section. He casually mentions Brum Day, who I treasure and miss. Most of the article comes from an interview with Bertie the waitress, which, for the Mayflower, was probably the most appropriate person to talk to.
In 1985, I ate lunch with my Daddy at the Mayflower a couple of Saturdays a season. At night, I would take a blonde girl from Memphis there because she was having a bad day.
Jackson's Mayflower Cafe: Where Mississippi bigwigs rub elbows with rednecks
JACKSON Miss —
The Mayflower Cafe on the corner of Capitol and Roach marked its 50th anniversary the other day still going strong. That In Itself Is worth noting In view of the ephemeral nature of decent eating places In Jackson.
The Mayflower Is unpretentious to say the least and unless you knew better you would take it for just another greasy spoon corner cafe It's not
More than anything the Mayflower is a Mississippi social and cultural phenomenon built around good food.
On any given day you could find a collection of diners at the Mayflower ranging from some scruffy drifters just off the nearby railroad tracks munching a blue plate special while nearby the town’s biggest bankers doctors lawyers businessmen or politicians devour broiled speckled trout in lemon butter sauce
Or you may catch a visiting Broadway stage star digging Into a Greek salad chockful of fluffy white Gulf Coast crabmeat while at the next table a gaggle of proverbial Mississippi rednecks wearing baseball caps down beer and oysters on the half shell
“It's a club not a cafe You meet all kinds of people there And their fish Is as good as you can get anywhere" That view comes from Frank Day a Jackson banker reputed to be the wealthiest bachelor in the state and a 15-year habitue of the Mayflower
At the same corner since 1935 the Mayflower has withstood the scourges of economic change and decay that have taken a heavy toll on the Capitol 8treet I remember more than 30 years ago The King Edward once the favorite hostelry of state lawmakers is gone The Heidelberg from whose roof on the 12th floor music and revelry once enchoed above the city is no more
Seven days a week from 5 am to 2 am the Mayflower continues to serve a varied clientele Not surprisingly the Mayflower is known to many visitors who ceme from far away places
In the “old" days before liquor was legalized legislators used to do their nocturnal imbibing with free booze in si room stocked by lobbyists at the King Edward Hotel Then down to the Mayflower for a late evening meal Often dinner guests at the Mayflower were the courtly House Speaker Walter Sillers and his wife reigning over the evening gathering of politicians in quiet dignity amid the dinner plates
A humble country judge from DeKalb named John Stennls with little campaign financing was a darkhorse In the November 1947 special election for the United States seat left vacant by the death of Theodore G Bilbo
After au exhausting day of campaigning Stennls would find his way back to Jackson and the friendly confines of the Mayflower and a meal on the house
“We all liked Judge Stennls and we decided to support him” recalls Mike Kountouris one of the three present owners of the Mayflower who became a partner in 1938 John Stennls Senate career is now Mississippi political history
The Mayflower has been owned since its beginning by the Gouras and Kountouris families now in the second generation
Of course the Mayflower would not be its unique self today If It were not for Bertie McNabb waitress non pereil who presides over the whole affair She has been a fixture at what some have called “Bertie’s corner" for the past 42 years
Bertie will quickly remind you that she has served every governor of Mississippi at the Mayflower beginning with Paul Johnson Sr some of them long before she ever thought they would become governor
Bertie treats everyone alike no matter if they are a bank president a ditch-digger or even a famous Broadway composer like Sammy Cahn who was a guest at the Mayflower back In 1976
Asked by Cahn if she was “the famous Bertie I've heard about?" Bertie allowed she was and fired right back “Whatcha gonna have?"
Cahn Inquired what “LB sauce meant “What else? “Lemon butter" Bertie replied and kept writing on her little order book
One good friend Bertie has acquired is Hal Holbrook the noted Broadway and Hollywood character actor who first came to the Mayflower in the late 1960s when he was at the Mississippi Arts Festival “He ate with us every night for a week and he has sent lots of his friends in show business to us since" Bertie says
Fashionable Jacksonlans didn't discover the Mayflower as an “in" place for Friday or Saturday night dinner until the 1960s and early 70s Not only could you dress as comfortably as you please but you could bring your own wine to go along with excellent broiled redflsh broiled shrimp seafood Norfolk or any of several other fresh salt water fish
Actually there are two “In" crowds who come regularly to eat off the Mayflower’s plain formica topped tables and sit In uncomfortable vinyl-covered chairs and booths ’One is politically conservative and very well-heeled The other is more liberal politically
For a long time the conservatives came on Friday night and the liberals on Saturday night Often now there is a good political mixture
Politically Bertie is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat I mean a Yellow Dog Democrat (Once back in 1978 when I had my own weekly newspaper and endorsed Thad Cochran in the US Senate race Bertie wouldn't speak to me for more than a month) She doesn't talk politics to all her clients and won’t cuss Republicans unless there is a friendly ear
There’s one little footnote in history that the Mayflower may not care to remember Byron De La Beckwith had lunch there with two other men before he started out to New Orleans with a ticking time bomb he planned to deliver to the doorstep of a New Orleans Jewish leader formerly involved in anti-Klan work in Mississippi
Beckwith was intercepted by police when he arrived in New Orleans and later was convicted and sentenced to a term in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola What Beckwith didn't know was that one of his luncheon partners at the Mayflower was an FBI Informer.