Lunch With Apple
Yesterday, I had lunch with the original Big Apple, Ben Wynne. There are only a few guys in this old world where I’ve known them for over fifty years. Apple is one of them. He was in town to deliver a lecture on his latest book, “A Hound Dog Tale: Big Mama, Elvis, and the Song That Changed Everything.” I believe this might be his eighth book, all about Southern Culture, three, specifically about Southern musical artists.
Ben’s books don’t read like a history professor wrote them, although he is one. He writes history like a guy telling you stories while you play pool or try and catch fish. He writes like a guy who went to St. Andrews in the seventies and Millsaps in the eighties, which is pretty damn specific but might actually have meaning to the people who read my stuff.
One thing that happens when guys have known each other for a long time but haven’t seen each other for a long time is that they spend a few minutes updating each other on the tragedies that have happened since the last meeting. For instance, I didn’t know Chief had died.
A lot of us had names that weren’t ours: Apple, Mule, Ah Bah, Chief, Stubby, Count, Smedrick, and more. Mike Shepherd’s official designation at St. Andrews was to hand out the names. He was good at it. Mike had a sort of controversial reputation at St. Andrews. I was aware of it, but I still spent a great deal of time with him. Part of why I let some of his questionable behavior slide was that his sort of tragic backstory wasn’t exactly a secret.
Over-privileged white kids, all of us had career-driven parents, many of who were notorious in their own right. Tales of parental neglect weren’t uncommon. Tales of actual parental physical abuse were rare but not unheard of. I’m the kind of guy who usually tries to find the good in anybody and often does, but I don’t have much good to say about Buddy Shepherd. He was cruel to his children, and it damaged them. I don’t often lay it out that plainly.
Neil Brown’s dad had a reputation too. They called him “The Tyrant.” I have no idea what his real name was. Tyrant would sometimes come to watch us practice football. If he ever thought I was slacking, he’d yell across the football field that he was gonna kick my ass if I didn’t tighten up. I never knew if he’d actually do it or not, but I didn’t want to find out. Coach Myers heard him one day.
Mitch Myers was a Jewish boy from the Bronx who came to Mississippi to coach football and try to get into medical school. That sounds like a character from a Neil Simon play, but it’s real. He was and is a real person. I always watched him to see how our culture played out in his mind. Among other things, Mitch was the only coach I ever had to talk plainly about steroids (which I had a problem with) and stimulants (which about five of my teammates had a problem with.)
Mike even gave Coach Myers a name. He called him “Hebe.” I don’t think we had any idea how potentially offensive that was. Coach Myers never bothered to correct us and seemed genuinely amused by it. I used to talk to a Jewish Girl on the phone who was a few years younger than me. She let me know in no uncertain terms that “Hebe” was not an acceptable thing to call anybody.
I knew about the Beth Israel bombings when I was five, and I knew that both Goodman and Schwerner were Jews from New York, but somehow I hadn’t made the connection between that and my friend and coach until this ninety-eight-pound woman threatened me with violence if I didn’t stop calling him “hebe.” When Coach Myers heard Tyrant shout that if I didn’t haul ass, he would kick my ass, he laughed, blew his whistle, and said, “You heard the man! Haul all your asses!”
I was hoping for a real turn-out of St. Andrews kids, but nearly everyone lives out of town now. David Elliot showed up. Mike Shepherd gave him the name “Padre.” David is eternal. I swear he looks ten years younger than Apple or me. David has shown up at pretty much all the thresholds in my life. He might be an angel.
I consider two men my personal pastors. One is Clay Lee. Clay was the assistant pastor at Galloway when I was baptized. The Bishop decided to move Clay when I was still an infant to get him away from some of the bad racial stuff happening at Galloway in 1963. He was afraid that it might damage the career of a promising young pastor. He moved Clay from Galloway in Jackson to the Methodist church in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Just a matter of months after he arrived at his new church, Goodman, Schewerner, and Chaney were reported missing, and FBI agents descended on Mississippi like the Seaguls in Salt Lake City. Whatever the Bishop thought, clearly, the Lord thought Clay Lee should be in the middle of the racial conflict in Mississippi.
Many of Clay’s sermons stick in my mind. One Sunday, around Christmas, he explained the difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees in his sermon. It’s why I know who they were now. He told the story of Jesus in a very human way, which allowed me to enter the faith at a level that worked for me. I was lucky; that doesn’t always happen.
Most of Father Elliot's sermons that I remember involved music—not just any music, but my music, the music of my generation. That taught me much about making my faith part of my daily life. It also taught me a lot about music.
There came a time in my life when I began looking at how other cultures interpreted Christianity. In particular, I read about how some cultures interpreted missionaries teaching them about the Eucharist to mean that they should kill and eat the missionary. While that sounds like an anecdote, there are recorded instances of it, like Thomas Baker, who was killed and eaten in Fiji.
That didn’t fill my mind with thoughts that “primitive people are horrible.” It filled my mind with thoughts that, even though it’s symbolic, the Eucharist represents human sacrifice and cannibalism. Without judging those practices in other cultures, the question of “Am I worthy of that kind of sacrifice?” began to really bother me. Was my life worth the life of Jesus? In a genuine spiritual crisis, I stopped taking the Eucharist altogether. I didn’t feel like I was qualified to answer that question, and since I couldn’t answer it, I just stopped taking communion for more than ten years.
My wife was very dissatisfied with my decision not to take communion. I think it embarrassed her that I went to church with her but wouldn’t take communion. She also never liked seeing me in emotional distress, and I was in distress over this issue. I don’t know the details of what happened next. I strongly suspect Cecil Jenkins was involved, but Minka Sprague and David Elliot began working on me on the communion issue. On days when my leg wasn’t cooperating, they would bring it to me and counsel me on the issue. Minka, in particular, discussed the different philosophical and metaphysical issues surrounding the Eucharist. I take Communion now, but I’ll always have doubts about whether my life is worth the life of Jesus. I feel like, because I went through this spiritual crisis over the issue, what can be a sort of numbly repeated ritual has much more meaning to me than it has for most people.
Most of Ben’s lecture was about Big Mama Thornton. He didn’t get to the Elvis stuff until nearly the end. I was first exposed to people like Big Mama Thornton and Sister Rosetta Tharp by listening to Charles Evers on the radio. Although not part of the lecture, Tharp greatly influenced Elvis.
I first became aware of Charles Evers (brother of Medgar) when he ran for Governor of Mississippi. I became aware of him as a human being when Mike Shepherd decided that our gang of misfit friends called “The Travelers” should drive down to his radio station and hang out. Mike was not the kind of guy I would ever say was progressive on the issue of race. If anything, he was the opposite, but because of him, I got to meet guys like Ernie Ladd, Jobie Martin, and Charles Evers. The Lord works in mysterious ways, I suppose. With him, I saw Ernie Ladd eat an entire fried chicken cooked by Jobie Martin one night, and then Mike told me to pay for it, which I did. Seeing a man eat a whole chicken was worth the six bucks.
While it’s unusual to see anyone under fifty at a History Is Lunch presentation, all the ones I’ve been to were pretty racially diverse. Some of the audience questions involved Elvis and cultural appropriation. That’s always an issue when discussing Elvis. Apple pointed out that Thorton had a hit with “Hound Dog,” but she didn’t write it. Two Jewish boys wrote it, and other acts covered it between Thorton and Elvis. I don’t have any answers to those questions, but I think it’s important to ask them.
While Apple shook hands and signed books, I went upstairs to the museum to see the special exhibit on Mississippi flags. From the balcony, I watched a bus from Jackson State University unload what looked like a hundred black kids in matching T-shirts. Their manners were impeccable as they sat at long tables set up for them at the Nick Wallace Cafe. A Top Chef winner, Nick is a client of Millsaps Elseworks, who developed a marketing plan for him.
I’ve never been to the Two Mississippi Museums when there wasn’t a group of young black students to see the Civil Rights Museum. I think it’s important that they learn of their history. Clearly, their teachers agree. I’ve never seen a group of white students there, though.
There’s this theory that teaching white students about Civil Rights history will make them feel guilty about being white. I don’t think that actually happens, though. I’ve known a lot of white kids who became educated about Mississippi’s true history, and they’re still pretty OK with being white. It may have the effect of making kids uncomfortable about being a conservative, though, at least in the way conservatism is often interpreted in Mississippi, and that might be the root of the problem.
Unfortunately, that statement encapsulates a fair amount of political power. In 1974, James Loewen and Charles Sallis wrote the first Mississippi History textbook to include anything about the Civil Rights movement. The Mississippi Textbook Adoption Committee refused to authorize the book so that state textbook funds could be used to purchase it and place it in schools.
My father was the president of the Mississippi Textbook Depository and the Chairman of Millsaps College, where Sallis taught, at the time. When Loewen and Sallis sued to have their book adopted, Dad was put under great pressure from people on the Textbook Procurement Commission, the Mississippi State Department of Education, and even the Mississippi PEER committee to use his position at Millsaps to pressure Sallis to drop the case. I feel certain that Daddy probably did talk to Dr. Sallis about this issue, but nothing came of it. Dr Sallis remained at Millsaps until his retirement. Dr. Sallis had tenure at the time and was the heart of our History Department.
When the case was not dropped, and when the plaintiffs won their case, Mississippi School Book Supply Company was immediately investigated and audited by the PEER committee. My father was not without political influence of his own. Even though the investigation from the PEER Committee was intended as a punitive move, in their official evaluation, they called School Book Supply a “paragon of efficiency,” and “Mississippi History, Conflict, and Change” was adopted.
I learned Mississippi History from the Sallis Loewen book, as did all of my classmates. I’ve spent many hours discussing race, history, and Mississippi with my classmates, and so far, none of us have expressed any guilt or discomfort over our whiteness. Some of us are even Republicans. I was—for a while. Most St. Andrews Republicans are William F Buckley Republicans, not MAGA Republicans, although there are a few.
I have no influence on this sort of thing, but I’d like to see more white students at the museum. If the members of the Mississippi Private School Association have really changed their stripes as they say they have, then maybe they could lead the way. History, even Mississippi’s history, shouldn’t frighten you. Knowing what to avoid might be something white Mississippians could find useful.
I don’t know what Apple’s next book will be about, but I’m enjoying his books about music. I had the pleasure of meeting his child, who explained how her Nintendo Switch functioned. The way she explained to me how to hot-wire the game’s memory to put in any game you want suggests she may be the brightest one in the family. The next time Apple gives a lecture, I hope we can get more of the old gang together. St. Andrews Episcopal Day School scattered its seed to the wind, and we’re all over the world now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t convene from time to time.
