Courthouse Saturday                   

Charles Armstrong

He put on his straw fedora. Hitched up his pants.

“Lookie here” My grandfather opened the drawer slowly, for the full effect. My eyes got big. Dozens and dozens of pocketknives.  He scrabbled around in there and fished out a good handful. We Armstrongs are dramatic by nature. When I visited my dad ten years after his divorce from my mom, he still had her picture, and a little kid’s storybook, “Madeleine” -her name. So we come by it honestly.

We were going to town, on Saturday, just like we always did- just like my grandfather had done for fifty years. The backs of my legs stuck to the clear plastic seat covers. I didn’t mind, too much.

We putted up Highway forty-five in his lovely nineteen fifty-seven Chevy: aqua and white. The fragrant moist Mississippi air rolled in through the open window. I loved to ride with my head out the window- something I learned from dogs. The charm of it was that I felt like I was swimming through all the smells of the countryside-the scents of kitchen and barnyard and flower garden passed through my nose, filling me with joy. Solemn cattle greeted us as we passed.

Corinth, Mississippi, nineteen fifty-nine. County seat of  Alcorn County, site of one of the Civil War’s most horrendous battles, prelude to the mind shattering holocaust called Shiloh. Not one of the twenty thousand inhabitants, black or white, had forgotten that massive slaughter. We all breathed it. Played baseball over the bones of the participants. The soil of our gardens were fertilized with their bodies. The War (the ONLY war) was as fresh in our mind as if it had happened earlier this morning. Every kid had a stash of Minie balls picked out of streambeds and fields where they had fallen, spent of intent, on those bloody April days not so long ago. There were cast-iron signs put up by the Mississippi Historical Society marked out the precise location of this general or that skirmish- just exactly where famous men had died or slept or fought. The War and the sadness soaked down into the soil, along with the river of blood.

The courthouse was Neoclassical, a grey stone pile, home to pigeons and that strange desperate attempt to hold back time called the Law. 

The statue of the Confederate Soldier faced South, his back to the invaders. All around the square, facing outward, green wooden benches lined the edge. Ancient oaks, planted before the Choctaws were driven out, cooled and sheltered the crowds below. The south side of the square was for Whites, the side that faced the dime store and Boorum’s Drugstore, where ice cream came from. The north side was for the Coloreds. It looked out upon a row of rundown storefronts housing the taxi office, a garage, off-brand insurance offices. 

The square was the center of social life, business, entertainment, politics. Farmers backed their dusty pickups up to the curb, selling produce, livestock, home made furniture, their children staying close to their mothers- peering wide-eyed at the crowd. Some had never seen so many people at one time.

We arrived early, to get a good shady spot on the old scarred benches.

The old men sat down to talk and whittle and spit. (polite spitting: if you had to spit your tobacco, it was done in this way, you waited til there was a gap in the crowd, then, sitting on the bench, you propelled the expectorate eight or nine feet into the gutter, never on the sidewalk.) It impressed me no end. Spitting in the South is High Culture Man stuff.)

Whittling, too, was bound by ancient rules. It was considered  in poor taste to bring your own wood. The only wood I ever saw used was soft red Tennessee cedar. No one actually carved anything. The thing was to slowly slice off a long red curl of cedar, the longer the curl, the more capable the man.

The cedar was sold by an old black man, who was treated with old fashioned formal respect. He was called “Uncle”. Uncle carried his whittling sticks in a half peck peach basket. He didn’t call out his wares- that would have been undignified- besides, everyone knew where to get wood.

The knives would come out, the whittling would begin. At the end of the day, the fragrant shavings would be piled knee-deep all the way around the square.

My grandfather, Callie Armstrong, dressed in the uniform of a prosperous farmer: grey workshirt and trousers, straw hat and work boots, was a knife trader. It was his favorite pastime. Evidently, it was profitable, too, because intertwined with the trading of pocketknives, Callie would swap cattle, lies and land. After his death, the family discovered that he had traded his way into a considerable amount of land up on Pickwick Lake, the TVA  reservoir that served as a vacation spot for Corinth’s bass fishermen and waterskiers.

Atop of the noise of the crowd, we could hear strains of music. The crowd would part and there was the source of the music. An old raggedy fellow playing a guitar.

Attached to it a myriad of other instruments- a kazoo, washboard, rubber bulbed horns, a cow bell. Tied to his belt was a piece of wash line rope that led to a child’s red wagon. Built up on the wagon was a wonderful array of drums and cymbals, all roped together to form a crude mechanism activated by strings tied to the musician’s ankles. As he moved about the square, dragging the contraption around and around, the drums would pound out an accompaniment for the guitar, kazoo, etc. Usually he played the blues or an old gospel tune. All day the sound would swell and fade, as this one man band marched around the block.

Sometimes as election time came on, a candidate would bring in a flatbed truck with a sound system. A string band or gospel group would air that sweet-sour harmony so dear to the ears of all Southerners. After a while, the politician would make a big speech. If you didn’t listen to the words, just the tone, you might think he was preaching the Lord’s Word. The only public speaking most folks ever heard was preaching, so to catch the ear of the voters, the hopeful politician had to perfect that fire and brimstone style. To hear it from the speakers, Alcorn County was exactly like Babylon, or Sodom, or Gomorrah, all festering with sin, greed and perversion. What to do? The only way to fend off the holocaust was to elect the candidate. Huey Long cast a long shadow in Mississippi.

Classism, then as now, was important. Then as now it was buried like a dead dog under the front porch of Historical America. All Americans (white Americans) were free to make what they could of the bounties of the nation. TV wasn’t the overpowering force it is today, so perhaps the culture was more intact than it is now. 

The structure of society had spaces in it, places for the odd to hide with some semblance of dignity. Homosexuals, the mentally diminished, certain types of criminals all had a place to hide in the fabric of the town. Even worthless drunks like Shug and Dynamite, homeless illiterates, could dig in the garbage cans and fight at the top of their lungs all along the alleyways with the blessing of  everyone. “There goes Shug and Dynamite-what in the world are they fightin’ about now?” I never found out whether the man was Shug or was it the woman? She had a powerful enough persona to be Dynamite. Her aura was one part outrage and three parts Bay Rum Hair Oil. This product was based on grain alcohol or maybe it was kerosene- I’m still unsure. I would discover the empties in an alley downtown, stashed in cozy nests built up out of cardboard boxes,

Johnny Shootey was Corinth’s number one paperboy. He was about fifty, short, round and jolly. Everyday he’d fling The Daily Corinthian on his rounds from an old bicycle dressed up in pinwheels and American flags. He wasn’t aggressively brainy, but what style!

Johnny Shootey had playing cards clipped to his bike spokes with clothes line pins to make that highly satisfying motor sound. He wore sneakers and blue jeans and a wide striped t-shirt. His hat was made from an old felt fedora cut up to look like Jughead’s- you know, Archie and Veronica’s classmate in the funny books. Johnny Shootey was welcome everywhere, all sorts of important people protected him from the slings and arrows of the adult world. We kids just worshipped him. If there was ever a “grownup” we all wanted to emulate, it was Johnny Shootey.

When we played baseball, over at the YMCA, the Hot Tamale Man would appear, pushing his home made cart painted with red letters sloping and straggling down the side, proclaiming his tamales as the only and original. He would call out, “HOT TAMALE WUFFAMEE!” Hot tamale with meat- he’d said it so long, the words were worn down from use.

When you’d finally hustled up a quarter, the Hot Tamale Man would pull one of those spicy things out of the   dark interior of his cart, and a spicy rush grease-laden steam would engulf you, causing a frenzy in your mouth. You must understand, most of the kids standing around with their tongues hanging out had never even heard of tamales. We actually thought The Hot Tamale Man had invented them. 

These tamales- the only tamales- were a foot long and three quarters of an inch thick.They were rolled in wax paper and tied at each end with cotton string. The accepted way of consuming these lard-laden tubes of ambrosia was this way: you’d bite the string off the end, then delicately close your teeth on the tube, Then drag the wax paper between your teeth, allowing the contents to slurp out of the paper. Clear orange grease would run down your cheeks, the chili burning there. Heaven!

Money, for a little kid, was always a problem. Our parents had grown up in The Great Depression and had never even SEEN money until  V-E Day. Asking these people for fifty cents for the movies was to call down upon your head a recital of hardships that would make Charles Dickens blanch with horror. I can’t quite remember it word for word, but the main elements were: 1. Had no shoes. 2. Ate lard and biscuit sandwiches for lunch at school, causing life-long shame. 3. Christmas consisted of one-ONE-orange. Which they SAVED! 4. Shoveled coal and trapped possums for spending money at the age of three, etc. As I say, a tough crowd to panhandle.

Going to the movies at that time was like a great migration of wildebeest. As we walked downtown, more and more kids would join us until there was this huge jostling crowd rumbling through the sleepy streets- sort of like the French Revolution.

The first stop was a small unpainted frame hut on Cruise Street. Two little old ladies served up teeny-tiny hamburgers- FOR FIVE CENTS. My Mom said,”Those things are made of sawdust and lard- how can you eat them?” She forgot that in the mists of ancient time, she, too, had eaten ‘em.

The ladies were so nice and kindly. If you were broke, as was usually the case, they would allow you to CHARGE some burgers. Out would come the blue spiral bound notebook, where they would write down your name with the amount of your purchase. Since everybody in Corinth knew everybody else, there was just no question of defaulting on the debt. The next time the old ladies saw your Mom- well, you just paid up, that’s all.

After loading up on burgers, the next stop was The Pickwick Theater. Located next door to Jim Droke’s dad’s  jewelry store, endless ecstatic afternoons spent there in the dank front seats. The floor was slanted- no carpet (this was the trashy movie house. Real, adult films were shown around the corner at the Coloseum. That’s where we saw “Gone With the Wind” each and every year.)

In that paleolithic age, soda, all soda was called Co-Cola. No matter what flavor, it was all Co-Cola. It came in bottles, exclusively. We’d finish the bottle and then roll the empties down to the front. They would rattle and bounce under the seats. The noise was tremendous.

The lights would dim, as we sat in the fetid air redolent of unwashed floors and Pine-Sol, stale popcorn grease and  usually some dead pigeon scent, our bellies awash in burgers and Co-Cola, roiling with excitement. The sound would start up like an old farm combine,”Rrrrrr” speeding up until you could make out the words, wobbling, “The March of Time!” The news reel, emceed by the Voice of God. Next came Coming Attractions. Then, a serial, Lash LaRue, the Cisco Kid, Batman-wow! Then, the feature, usually a John Wayne Republic Production about cattle rustling and Indians on the warpath. Whenever The Duke would have to kiss the heroine, we all would be ready with our weapons- empty Sugarbabies boxes neatly closed up with one end jammed into your mouth. If you blow real hard, a high screeching sound would cut the air. With two hundred kids all blowing like mad, it sounded like dozens of eagles give out a war cry. Even now, when I kiss, I can still hear that sound, faintly wailing.

After the picture show let out, we would wander our separate ways, stunned by sugar, grease and magic darkness. My favorite place to recover was an enormous magnolia tree on the corner of Cass and Cruise Streets. The builder of the house there had trained a branch to swoop down to brush the ground of the side yard. It was a perfect ladder up into that dim green world. The smooth prehistoric limb formed a wide seat where a kid could curl up to relive adventures of horses and gunslinging. Sometimes, I would dream of the Alamo.

I would often fall asleep in odd places. Many times I would hang around the school playground after school because it was the ideal place to fish for chickenchokers.

Chickenchokers are the larval stage of some unidentified moth. The grub would be laid in a tiny hole in the hard-packed red clay of the playground, and in the spring, when the wild onions were out, we would poke the slender onion stems down in the hole, delicately “fishing” until the grub would awaken to seize the stem in it’s strong brown mandible. They were dogged, those chokers, and would not give up their hold. If you were a good fisher, you could pull them right up out of the hole.

Now this fishing required  a close proximity to the hole, so like as not your face was down on the clay of the schoolyard for a long time. It was so pleasant, to wake to the long purple shadows of evening. So peaceful, just napping out in the open, for an hour or so.

One morning, twenty years and more later, I awoke in my bed in Oregon, two thousand miles from Corinth, just as the first strings of dawn filtered through the window. Somewhere between waking and sleep, I saw my grandfather, Callie Armstrong, standing at the foot of my bed. “Grampaw, what are you doing here so far from home?” He said nothing. He just looked at me. I could feel the good strong current of his love washing over me. He faded away as I awoke fully.