The Comeback Festival
a Jackson Homecoming
A lot of people from here have given up on Jackson. Yesterday, after church, my sister drove me around this end of town to show me the homes of second and third-generation Jacksonians who hadn’t given up. As we drove past, I waved my blessings on their arbors from the window. One of them, in particular, because her mother loved us, a cluster of seventh-grade boys sat at the hospital waiting for her to be born. Now, her mother’s gone, and she has a family of her own. And so it continues.
For something like twenty years, I’ve been casually mentioning this idea to restaurateurs, thinking that the countenance of my brilliance would cause them to pick up the ball and run with it. That never happened.
I have this theory that there are a few key activities we use to transmit our culture to each other and to our children. These include things like religion, education, music, literature, art, and especially food. Food is possibly the first message your mother gives you about the culture you belong to, beginning with food made by her own body.
Many places have a very strong food culture profile. New Orleans perhaps has the strongest, but the delta has hot tamales, the coast has shrimp and oysters, Memphis has barbeque, and Nashville has hot chicken. Some foods are so closely associated with a particular place that they become part of the name, like a Philadelphia Sandwich.
It’s always been hard to pin down what the culture of Jackson, Mississippi, was. We used to call it the “Bold New City.” But that was because we had such bad press in the sixties that the city fathers, including some guys at Maris West and Baker, thought we really needed to do something to separate ourselves from the photographs of boys sitting in diners with food spilled all over their head by an angry white mob.
Many of these guys working their brains out to try and change what the world thought about Mississippi meant a lot to me—Guys like Leland Speed, Warren Hood, Bob Hearin, Bob Addams, Buster Bailey, Red Moffat, and more. I think they did change Jackson; at least for a while, there was a real sweet spot here; then came the Battle of Camlann, and the Lady of the Lake demanded her sword back.
I don’t know that “City With Soul” captures it. It’s a hell of a lot closer, though. We’re no longer bold, and we’re certainly not new. Recognizing that the legacy of the African slave has been part of our cultural identity for three hundred years is a start.
Food brings people together. It’s a touchstone that binds us. Thinking about trying to describe the culture of Jackson, I began making a list of foods people from here would recognize. Brownies from Primos. The Inez Burger. Pig Ear Sandwiches. “Veal” Cutletts from the Elite. Pimento Cheese from the Jitney.
When I was eight years old, Daddy took me to the Mayflower for lunch on Saturday. I asked Birdy about the salad dressing. “That’s so you’ll come back for more, Baby.” She said. Then, I saw a very unhappy man give Theo an envelope. I guess he didn’t know as much about football as he thought he did.
I did come back for more. I’ve been coming back for more for quite a long time. I’ve watched governors, senators, actors, comedians, musicians, bankers, and one hell of a lot of lawyers put Comeback Dressing on Saltine Crackers.
Some of you have been born and had children, and then those children have had children since the first time I had Comeback Dressing. If you live here, you’ve had it. It’s listed on the Food Network website. I’ve seen really good chefs play it down as just “another spicy mayonnaise,” but ya know, God created the good green earth so people can have stupid opinions. I’ve also seen really good chefs, like Andrew Zimmern, talk about how great it was.
Jackson used to be a festival-type place. Festivals usually started out as a way to raise money for something but then grew to be about the thing itself. When I was a child, we had the Mississippi Arts Festival, which brought actual Divas to Jackson, Mississippi, to sing. When I was a young man, we had Jubilee Jam, where they served way more beer than I could drink, back when I could drink quite a lot.
Dinner on the grounds and church homecoming is an ancient tradition in Mississippi. At Galloway, we just had ours. One of the most powerful men in Democratic Politics grilled hamburgers with a seventh-grade boy who’s a pretty good pitcher while the preacher played bluegrass on the lawn of the Mississippi State Capitol building.
The little Bethel Independent Methodist Church, outside of Hesterville, Mississippi, where my grandfather was baptized, usually has theirs in July. The Bethel Methodist Church made two big mistakes that I never understood. One is that they broke from the larger Methodist Conference over segregation, and second, they decided to have a picnic outside in Mississippi in July. My cousin Robert Wingate was the thinnest, fittest member in the history of the Campbell Family, and even he had ribbons of Mississippi sweat rolling off his bald head while we made our annual visit to the graves of the long-ago dead.
Since a good eight or ten Jackson restaurants have their own version of Comeback Dressing, my idea is pretty simple. We have a contest. Serve comeback on saltine crackers and have TV personalities like Walt Grayson, Howard Ballou, Maggie Wade, Wilson Stribling, Melanie Christopher, and Megan West Allen taste and rate them.
I hate we never got to try the idea when Bert Case was alive. I used to see him at George Street hotboxing some members of the House or Senate. I don’t think Bert was ever off the clock.
Since we’re gonna eat, why not have some bands, and maybe sell a few beers? Local artists could set up tables to sell their wares like a flea market. Since we’re already testing food, why not throw some hot tamales in there for a little side action? Comeback on Hot Tamales is pretty damn good if you’ve never tried it.
The idea of “Come Back To Jackson” could have legs. It’s really hard to get people who were born here to stay here. The big world has an awful lot more opportunities than Mississippi can keep up with. They never forget us, though, and they keep warm feelings in their heart about us. A Jackson Homecoming could be a welcome thing.
We have the Medgar Evers Homecoming, but that’s a very specific thing with some very specific and sober ideals, and I think we should probably keep it that way. Celebrating Evers apart from anything else should continue, at least as long as there’s breath in me.
So, here I am again, putting this idea out on the wind, hoping somebody will pick it up. I’m not the guy to organize this. My idea of a good party is a case of beer, chickens on the grill, and a bowl of boiled peanuts. There are people here who are genuinely very good at this, though. All we gotta do is get them to believe it’s a good idea.
