Postmodern Daddy
traveling in time time time
I’m awake at quarter to five on Saturday morning. Farmer Jim comes on the air at five. It’s 1968, in a few months, I’ll be six years old, and a few months after that, it will be 1969. They’ll send me to school, though I haven’t learned my letters yet. My cousin Margaret knows her letters and words and can read “Hop On, Pop” by herself.
On Facebook, my beautiful and brilliant protégée has been writing and commenting since four am. I’m lost in time again. The past is the present is the future, is dreams, is reality, is memory, is hope, is pain, is love, is life, is loss, is words, is pain, is truth, is redemption.
I’m forbidden to use the actual name of protégée’s mom in my stories. I haven’t successfully resisted her since 1975. Let’s say her name is Angel. Last night, I shared with Angel stories about her dad that she hadn’t heard before. For just a brief window in the time stream, it’s like we’re nineteen again. My heart swells. I loved her dad. It’s not just that he was brilliant, though he was, but he was also kind to little boys like me. Not everybody had the time. Time. Time. Time. See what’s become of me.
The year that Angel, Janie, and I graduated from Millsaps, The Bangles release their cover of Paul Simon’s “Hazy Shade of Winter” for the movie “Less Than Zero.” From the moment I first saw her on MTV, I remarked to my cousin Libby, in Miami, how much Susana Hoffs looked like a shorter version of Angel. Some of you are saying “Ah ha!” Libby just said, “Who?”
“Just a girl from school,” I said.
Time, time, time See what’s become of me While I looked around for my possibilities I was so hard to please Look around Leaves are brown And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
“I never got to know your Daddy,” Angel says. For a moment, my giant troubled mind creates an alternate universe. Daddy didn’t die in his chair in his office. Angel and I never quarreled. I never left her side like I promised I wouldn’t. When she began working for the government, I’d still be lobbying for my father. We’d steal time for an early supper at Mayflower. Daddy, Rowan, and Rowan’s new girl, Suzanne, would surprise us by taking a table nearby.
“I never got to know your Daddy.”
“Me either, darlin’. Me either.”
I sit in the dark, in the corner of Daddy’s room. I hear Momma breathing like a little dog. The clock radio comes on.
“Good Mornin’ Mississippi!”
Jim Neal is on the radio and in the Mississippi House of Representatives. He sometimes fishes with Charlie Deaton and Daddy. That’s why Feist-dog sometimes has adventures with Daddy and Rowan Taylor. When you’re five going on six, and the man on the radio says your Daddy’s name, in association with Feist-dog, it leaves an impression.
In the House, Neal’s pet project is the state hospital in Whitfield, Rankin County. I’m not yet aware of the overwhelming influence mental health will have on my life—but I will learn.
“I see you, Buddy.”
“H...h...hey, Daddy.”
“Did you sleep in your bed?”
“Yes s...s...sir.”
Daddy sits up in his bed for the first cigarette in the dark. Momma rolls over. She used to try to have breakfast at five thirty before Daddy left, but she couldn’t get my brothers up. It was just me, Daddy, and Baby Sister wearing her corrective shoes, drinking milk from a plastic cup shaped like a cowboy’s sidearm. Now she gets an extra hour of sleep, and feeds us at seven after daddy has left. He’s not much for drinking coffee from a cup shaped like a six-iron anyway.
“What are you gonna do today?”
“Play.”
“With Johnny?”
“Yeah, and M...m...m...ugzy.”
Mugzy was a gift from Doby Bartling. Monday, I introduced protégée to Buddy and Linda Bartling at the Millsaps Christmas Party. Linda taught second grade, and Mary’s grandmother taught third grade. I think about the world we’ve created for Mary B, Collins, Campbell, and my Boy Jack on the other side of the world. If I’m honest, I’m not proud of the work I did. Despite everyone’s expectations, I got off my deathbed to take another shot at it.
Doby Bartling raised Prize cocker spaniels. Mugzy was supposed to be this big deal AKC dog, but his Daddy wasn’t who he was supposed to be, so he was a mutt. Doby was so embarrassed, but it was too late; we’d already imprinted on the puppy. Exploring the backyard, Mugzy got caught between the slats in the fence between our house and Martha Hammond’s. It leaves a scar on his side. The dog hair never covers it.
“It’s ok, pu…pu…puppy. I have scars too.”
Angel wishes me good night. I send cherubs and moonbeams to sweeten her dreams.
I don’t sleep well. Never have. Instead of the reading I assigned myself, I’ve been streaming “Mad Men” instead of sleeping. The world thinks Mad Men is about advertising and sixties fashion. I know it’s about the clash between modernism and postmodernism. It’s also about my father. Every moment of it. This show is my earliest memory.
If you were a student in the eighties and nineties like I was, you were so fucking sick of people talking about modernism and postmodernism. Austin Wilson used to drive me crazy with it.
Emerging at the dawn of the twentieth century, modernism introduced the world to Art Deco, Diesel trains, abstract art, frozen food, jazz, and the atomic bomb. Postmodernism emerges in the years between Korea and Vietnam, when guys like my dad, Leland Speed, and Ivan Allen begin to realize they’ve been lied to. Allen is between the ages of Speed’s dad, Mayor Speed, and my dad. He’s a huge part of the evolution of the South, and hardly anyone has heard of him.
Angel wants me to collect my stories into a book called “Mississippi Camelot.” Actually, just like when we were in the fifth grade, she said I would do it, and that was that. I hope to have paste-ups of the book by Christmas. I’ve always let her tell me what to do because she’s smarter than me and she’s always had my back. Besides, her mom figured out why I couldn’t read. I wouldn’t exist without that.
I call the years spanning the seventies, eighties, and nineties “Camelot” because I’m a romantic fool and see the entire world through the haze of chivalry. Hi, my name is Don Quixote, and I’ll be your host. What really happened is that, at least in Mississippi, at least in Jackson, postmodernism won the struggle with modernism. Cronus ate his children to prevent his downfall, but Zeus tricked him.
In Mississippi, modernism perpetuated the nineteenth-century ideas about “our sacred traditions” and “our treasured way of life,” all euphemisms for racism and the mask of a gentle face to cover the hate and poison at the center of our society.
Postmodernism recognized this for the lie it was, setting up a battle between men like Ross Barnett and William Winter, my Father and his Uncle Tom. I loved Tom Hederman. He was brilliant, and he was kind to a little boy who talked funny, but I knew what he was. I knew what he represented.
Daddy and Uncle Tom were in the Capitol Street Gang together, but from different generations. My Beloved Uncle Tom was a modernist, Daddy was a Postmodern upstart. They practiced a sort of détente between them. Détente was a French word used to describe the stalemate between the USA and the USSR (CCCP). They had the power to destroy each other (and us) with a button. It was a word Angel and I heard often when we were nine and ten.
Rowan Taylor had a reputation for being an asshole. Even though he’s dead, he probably still does. Rowan said what he thought, and he didn’t care if it harelipped the navy. My cousin Robert is the same age as Robert, and he joined Robert as my dad’s mentor and best friend.
Like me when I was younger, Daddy tended not to speak out unless he thought things were really going wrong. Then he spoke like a lion. Rowan and Robert weren’t like that. Neither of them ever hesitated to say, “Boyd, what the hell are you doing?”
One night at Amerigo, Rowan pulled me aside.
“Boyd, you know that girl is married, don’t you?”
“Separated. They sign the papers next week.”
One thing I felt pretty strongly about is philandery. I’ve never done it. I never will. I’ve kissed lots of divorced girls, but the papers had to be signed.
Philandery is a significant theme in “Mad Men. It’s how they introduce feminism into the show. It’s a show about men in advertising, but all anybody wants to talk about is the women. Besides the drinking and the smoking, which I did quite a bit of, my biggest problem with my dad’s generation, and postmodernism, was its attitude about philandery. Rowan made sure I wasn’t running around with a married woman, but the principal issue of his divorce was infidelity.
I love Suzanne Marrs more than I love little baby ducks, but it made me sad to know Mrs Taylor wouldn’t be part of the gang anymore. Rowan met Suzanne several years after his divorce. Even I could tell he was roaming around Jackson, hoping to meet somebody. We started to worry that Ro would die alone. When Momma told me about him and Suzanne, I just said, “She’s the perfect one.”
In my life, a good third of my friends had dads who were caught cheating and started another family somewhere. I saw what it did to the kids in the first family. Another third had dads who openly cheated on their wives, but never got divorced. One of them became the governor of Mississippi. I never knew Chelsea Clinton, but I knew what she was going through, even before her dad became president.
I can’t say that I hated these men. Some of them I loved. Some of them mentored me. But what they were doing troubled me deeply, for their children’s sake. The other third of my friends had traditional nuclear families where everybody stayed faithful.
Because my dad was out of the house so much, I got pretty good at secret detective work, so I’d know something about his life. I did it, not because I didn’t trust him, but because I was lonely and I missed him. There was so much I wanted to tell my daddy that I never could. We didn’t know it, but in the last year of Daddy’s life, I finally revealed my true form to him. I think he believed I would eventually come around and be like him, but for the moment, he accepted me as I was and helped make a plan to save me. Then he died.
It’s not that I didn’t trust him, but I really wanted to know if Daddy was running around. I tracked. Every rumor, and pulled every thread. While there were rumors, Daddy’s “official” story was the actual story. He fell in love at thirteen, and that was it. He was hooked for life.
I had an idea what that was like. I fell in love twice at thirteen. One hung herself, which always made me a bit terrified of the other. I never let her out of my sight, though, that is, until one day when I broke my vow and walked away from her. As you might imagine, that troubles my soul. With everything that ever befell her after that, my only thought was, “I should have been there.”
Going to college, I began working for Daddy. I also became his drinking buddy; we could drink a lot. Finally, I was welcomed at the table with Daddy, Rowan, Deaton, and Wingate. I still had to get them ice when they needed it, but I had ascended.
I’m not stupid. I know that beauty fell on my sister like a hive of honey bees, and they stung her on every spot. The bees avoided me entirely, but two serpents crawled into my crib and made me stronger than mortal men. You takes what you can gets.
My sister lined up suitors like teenage girls buying Taylor Swift t-shirts. I probably should have been nice to them, but, naaah.
I did like John Woodward and was nice to him. I loved his dad. John was there the night the police came to say Lee Kroeze was dead. That created a debt I’ll never be able to pay. As strong as I was, there’s nothing I can do about a dead teenager.
For a while, the prince of darkness would come to Jackson to woo her. He was attractive and had a pedigree, but no, just no. The first opportunity I had, I introduced him to Mississippi alligators and drunk peckerwoods at CS’s.
At a charity auction where they sold off bachelors, my sister bid on a disreputable Phi Delta Theta (aren’t they all?) and won. Pretty quickly, I figured out he was the one. It took her a while longer to agree. There was still the Prince of Darkness to consider and a few others.
Every so often, Jay would call and ask if he could buy me a beer. That generally meant he still wanted to be friends, but he was giving up on my sister.
One day, I called my mom. “Jay wants to have a beer. Either they’re breaking up again, or they’re getting married.”
“Go!” Momma said. I met Jay at Cherokee, already knowing what he would say. That left the big guy.
“Hey, Mr. Campbell, can we meet somewhere and talk?”
Standing in the kitchen, Daddy said, “Sure, Jay, buddy. Come by my office in the morning.”
Momma hit him with a dish towel. “Tell him to come over!”
“Hey, Buddy, come by the house. Now is fine, if you’d like.”
You’ve probably heard about Martha and Jay’s wedding, which was the largest in Jackson’s history. I know that sounds like one of my exaggerations, but it’s not. The record has been broken since then. God only knows how much they spent. Other than seeing his monkey married off, Daddy only cared about the whole smoked and poached salmon the Country Club brought. While Monkey and Jay Bear worked through greeting thousands of guests, Daddy and I shoveled in salmon, capers, and dill sauce on toast points.
Despite there being actual waiters everywhere, Rowan and Wingate came to me when their drinks were dry. Bill Goodman had the decency to get his own. Secretly planning my escape by the fall, Daddy died in the Spring. That story was over.
So, to sum up. Mississippi Camelot wasn’t romance and chivalry. It was the struggle between postmodern sons and their modern fathers. Mississippi hung in the balance. Daddy wouldn’t live past the battle of Camlann, but I would. The lady took back the sword. Without that, all was lost.
Time, time, time, See what’s become of me Hang on to your hopes, my friend That’s an easy thing to say But if your hopes should pass away Simply pretend That you can build them again
