Presybeterian Dummies

My mother believed Jesus could help me, if only I would agree to meet him. I had trouble communicating and I had trouble paying attention. There were very few moments in my childhood when I forgot that there was tremendous social pressure not to be those things. I resisted attempts to fold me in with other children. That’s the main reason I never really engaged in Methodist Youth Fellowship functions. It meant being left alone with other kids. If Margaret Key or Dr. Ross were there, I would accept those terms, but otherwise, good luck getting me to stay.

First Presbyterian Church, which would become a feeder organization for Jackson Prep, was holding a day-long event for kids. My mother began a bribery campaign to get me to go. Mrs. Lewis would be there to take care of me, she argued.

Mother had been dutifully attending my father’s Methodist Church since they started dating at Central High School before America engaged in the big war, but in her heart, she remained Presbyterian. So did her mother. She would occasionally engage in conversations about pre-determination and other Presbyterian dogma. I think she continued this clandestine attempt to get us to see Presbyterian points of view until the day the Presbyterian Youth Group at Jackson Prep put my sister on a prayer list because she refused to “accept the lord” even though she was at Galloway United Methodist Church more often than most of the ministers.

It was summer. I was pretty bored, and the subtle bribery continued. My grandmother was brought into the campaign to get me to go, so I agreed to participate in the day-long adventure among the Presbyterians. Decked out in short pants and a number eight Archie Manning Ole Miss jersey, I waited at the street for the Presbyterian School bus with flowers painted on it to pick us up.

Herding a bunch of first graders to introduce them to Jesus sounds like a nightmare scenario to me, but you’d be surprised how often it happens in Mississippi, both in 1969 and today.

They broke us up into groups for crafts in the different classrooms. Christian crafts in the sixties and seventies almost always involved popsicle sticks. That day, we made a thing called a “gods-eye,” which involved popsicle sticks and yarn. It was actually a form of hippie macrame that evolved from the Buddhist and Hindu influence on the hippie movement, but on that day, it was a message about how much God loves us and watches over us ALL THE TIME. I had misgivings about this arrangement as a child who liked getting away with things when they were not being watched.

Lunch was peanut butter sandwiches, chips, and milk in little cardboard boxes, and some teenagers sang to us about Jesus. It seems like teenagers were forever singing to us about Jesus. At the Methodist version of This Day With The Presbyterians, one of the teenagers who engaged in playing guitar and singing to us turned out to be my personal doctor and one of the most important doctors at St. Dominic Catholic Hospital. Mississippi is mostly about different groupings of people who want to talk about Jesus.

After lunch, they got all the kids to gather in a courtyard area for a “special presentation.” The mothers and their teenage helpers seemed pretty sure that whatever happened next would impress us. That’s often a bad sign.

They introduced our next representative of Jesus. Let’s say her name was Julie. She was “Miss Julie and her friend Buddy!” Only, there was no Buddy, just Julie, and a suitcase.

I was seven, and Julie was twenty. The difference between us was incalculable, but even at seven years old, I could tell everything about her personal presentation was meant to stir something in me. Tight Dress? Check. Voluminous hair permanently fixed with Aquanet? Check. Long fingernails painted with vivid colors? Check. Shoes with heels that would break your ankles? Check. Lipgloss and Eye Shadow? Check. False eyelashes were still very much en vogue in 1969. Hers could almost have been considered a pet.

It would seem that Julie had been third runner-up in the Miss Mississippi pageant and was ramping up for her second attempt. In Mississippi, in 1969, young men went to Vietnam, and young women went to beauty pageants.

Julie waved with a slightly cupped, perfectly manicured hand and mouthed “Hey y’all” through her nearly intimidating toothy smile. She set her suitcase down and started asking us rhetorical questions like “How are y’all?” and two score seven-year-olds would answer. “Would y’all like to meet my friend Buddy?” She asked.

I had seen Charlie McCarthy on television and even one of his old movies. The Sears and Robuck Christmas Wish Book had Ventriloquist dolls sized and priced for little boys like me, and the Christmas before, I got one! At seven, I knew everything there was to know about Ventriloquism.

I could tell that Julie’s friend Buddy was considerably more serious than my plastic Charlie McCarthy. His eyes moved, and he had real hair. Buddy probably set Julie’s daddy back a few hundred bucks. Through the years, I’ve known quite a few daddies who nearly went broke sending their babies through beauty pageants.

To win a beauty pageant, you couldn’t just be hot-looking, although that was a requirement. You had to have a talent. Singing was preferred, but if you couldn’t sing, you could play piano. If you couldn’t play piano, you could dance. If you couldn’t dance, you could twirl batons. If you couldn’t twirl batons, you could juggle. If you couldn’t juggle, you could do ventriloquism. Julie was a ventriloquist. Don’t laugh; girls have won Miss America as a ventriloquist.

Of all the attempts to engage me with talented teenagers so I would meet this Jesus person, somebody had finally hit on something that sparked my interest. “A Dummy!’ I shouted.

In the parlance of ventriloquism, the puppet or doll a performer uses is generally called a dummy. Charlie McCarthy was a dummy, even my plastic version of him. Dummy is also what you call somebody when you want to insinuate that they’re not terribly intelligent. That’s where I went wrong.

My calling Buddy a “dummy” was considered pretty funny among my more naturally Presbyterian seven-year-old peers. Pretty soon, they were all saying, “Hey, Dummy!” and giggling. Julie tried valiantly to get back on track with her practiced routine, but seven-year-olds can be pretty determined when they want to be. All they wanted was to call Julie’s friend Buddy a dummy and then laugh.

“Y’all don’t call Buddy a dummy. He’s here to sing you a song about Jesus!” Julie was a trooper. A couple dozen short pants demons weren’t going to break her concentration. Buddy even said, “Y’all don’t call me a dummy; you’ll hurt my feelings!”

I think Julie might have eventually regained control of her tiny audience, but one little girl stood up, put her hands on her hips and said “I saw her lips move.”

Julie’s enormous eyelashes began to flutter. Even at seven, I knew the signs of a lady in distress. “Y’all…” She pleaded for cooperation from seven-year-olds. That’s not a successful strategy, I’m afraid.

Southern boys have ideas about gentlemanly valiance bred into them. It’s in the food. It’s in the water. It’s in the air. A lot of boys learn to make themselves immune, but I don’t know how. More than a decade older than I was, my ladyfair was in distress.

I jumped up and put my body between Julie and Buddy and the aggressive seven-year-olds. “Y’all, he’s a VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY. That’s what you call ‘em.” I stomped my foot down and squared off for a fight. That’s when Mrs. Lewis swooped in and scooped me up, with the other mothers quieting the riotous seven-year-olds.

Pulling me to the back of the room, I began to cry because I knew I started this. With the army of seven-year-olds now quieted by the threat of wagging fingers and stern looks, Julie regained enough of her composure to finish singing her song about Jesus through Buddy. They exchanged a few seven-year-old compatible jokes about the bible. Buddy went back in the suitcase, and Julie started repeating her pageant wave in reverse and mouthing “Bye, Y’all.” while smiling.

Breaking free of the woman consoling and keeping me quiet, I ran to Julie and threw my arms around her waist. “Tell Buddy I’m sorry,” I said. I knew, of course, that she was Buddy, but in my seven-year-old mind, acting like I believed the illusion might make it better.

I’ve always been pretty good at isolating myself in a crowd. For the rest of the day, I found quiet corners to sit in until it was time to get back on the bus. Whatever they were trying to tell me about Jesus, I was really only thinking about Julie and Buddy.

Julie wasn’t her real name. She did better in the next Miss Mississippi contest but still didn’t win. She married a boy from Memphis whom she met at Ole Miss. They moved to Germantown, but she didn’t come back to Jackson very often. I would get to know her father through business connections. God knows how much he spent on Miss Mississippi stuff.

My interest in puppets stayed with me for the rest of my life. In time, I would meet Carol Spinney, who played Big Bird, Jim Henson of the muppets and worked with Peter Zapletal of the Mississippi puppetry guild several times. I even got to spend some time with Ray Harryhausen who is probably the most successful puppeteer you never heard of.

Julie’s got to be a grandmother by now. Probably several times over. In my mind, I imagine her trotting Buddy out of the attic every now and then to sing songs to her grandchildren and their friends up in Tennessee. At least, I hope so.