New Year's on Commerce Street

I was just sort of joking about the Hal & Mals thing. As long as Malcolm and a few others are alive, I won't be the oldest bastard on Commerce Street, although I will miss some of the others terribly. I don't know what I'll do when Malcolm gets so old he has to be taken out of the roster.

I have a regular list of gentile compatriots that I normally call for this sort of thing, so we'll see how that goes. I used to call them "polite escorts," but that word got coopted to mean something entirely different.

I've taken New Year's Eve at most places in Jackson. Some were very expensive, and some very cheap. I took a girl from Vicksburg to the University Club for lobster and beef wellington. That was probably the most elaborate meal, but you can get in a lot of trouble for shooting fireworks in Deposit Guarantee Plaza. (Do they even call it that anymore? They better.)

There was a girl I knew that I was never really able to connect with, but she was fantastic company and really lovely. One year, she'd been really sick for a year, so I would call her a couple of nights a week just to talk. Sometimes, when people are sick, a phone call is like a night out.

New Year's came around. She'd lost a ton of weight and had taken to shaving what was left of her hair, so I asked her if she could eat Corn Dogs and if we could just drive around watching the fireworks and stuff for New Year's Eve. I was at a stage of life where I was trying to either quit drinking or cut way back. I figured that, by then, I'd drunk my quota.

By the end of August, she was gone. That's the second person I've spent New Year’s with who will never see another.

Sometimes, people say, "Oh, Boyd! You're not so old!" To that, I say, "Where the hell are my friends, then? I've done everything I could to absolutely ruin my body, and yet, somehow, I'm the guy who survived.

We celebrate New Year’s eve because we need a way to distinguish this year from last year and next year. We started calling it “Anno Domini” which is Latin for “In The Year of Our Lord,” even though we were completely off on the start date, and he never asked us to do that. We took to doing a lot of things for Jesus that he never asked us for. I always wondered what he’d think of that.

There was a time when I could pick any night of the week and go to Hal and Mal’s, and there’d be a better-than-even chance I’d see one of the top three most important writers in Mississippi. I’d see one of the two most important sports writers we’ve ever had in Mississippi, and there was a pretty good chance I’d see one of Mississippi’s most important investigative reporters who avoided a fight with Kirk Fordice but did fight three pit bulls and won.

They’re all gone now. I wasn’t expecting that.

I don’t know where guys from the House and Senate hang out now. I’ve heard they mostly quit going out when covid hit. I’d hate for that to be true. Those guys were legends.

When I went into the cave to rest, I thought, “Mississippi will be Mississippi forever.” meaning the good parts. When I came out, I thought, “Where the hell is everybody?” When I look at Mississippi now, I tend to think that we’re making the same bad mistakes we always did, but we’re not making hardly any of the good ones. Maybe I’m getting old and cranky.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps along at its…. STOP, it’s not that bad. Not really. As long as there’s somebody who remembers, then it ALL signified something—and as long as my words float around on the internet, whether some do or some do not find their way to the printed page, then there’s always the chance that somebody will remember the ones who left too early and the ones who never should have left at all.

The University Club, when it was the swankiest place in Jackson.