Southern Road Trip: Part 1

Memories, and making memories

Oxford, Mississippi. University of Mississippi. John Grisham Law School Library.

Even as I write these words, it’s Monday May 20, 2013, and I’m sitting in the John Grisham Law School Library at the University of Mississippi. Janice is with me and she admires the beauty of this wonderful library as I put these words to paper. Oxford, the pride of Mississippi. The State of Mississippi. So much beauty and yet so much poverty. So much progress and yet so much remaining to be done. But, let me start over, and tell you what brought us to this place and at this time.

It’s Saturday, May 18, and Janice and I start a western trek following the same route that Bobby Jones, Jerry Wilson and Jerry “Do-Tricks” Horton and I took almost exactly 50 years ago – June 1963. We get on Highway 96 at Fort Valley, pass through the outskirts of Columbus, cross the Chattahoochee River, go through Phoenix City and Opelika and make our first stop in Selma, Ala., just as Do-Tricks, Wilson, Jones and I did on our 1963 trip. It’s impossible for me to describe the flood of memories and my feelings.

This was the second time I’d ever been to Selma, but because of its national and international prominence in the civil rights story, I know more about it now than I did on my first trip. So, when we cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, we cross back taking pictures of the bridge and the big sign that has the Pettus name, but really seems to say: “This is an important place in America’s history.”

Selma is sad. Yes, it’s only my second visit, the first being 50 years ago, and only for an hour, or so then, but to me Selma is dowdy and a ‘dowager’ of a city. You can tell it was once significant, a bustling and energetic place “in its day,” but now it’s tired and appears to be struggling to survive.

Small things often become big in your memories. This is what happened in Selma in June, 1963. I will never forget. The four making that trip then went to a drugstore (it had a fountain and grill) for lunch. After eating, or perhaps after ordering, “Do-Tricks” decided to play pool on a table in the back of the store. As he started to play, he was interrupted by the storeowner and asked his age to which he replied, “20.” “Well,” said the storeowner, “you’ll have to stop playing, because you have to be 21 in Alabama to play pool!”

I started trying to find the drugstore in which we ate and in which morality was served by refusal to allow “Do-Tricks” to play in this “River City.” There are three drugstores on the same main block in downtown Selma. One of the stores is now a Rexall Drugstore, but its front door is closed and chained. The second store which I entered just doesn’t seem to have “the feel” of ‘our place.’ I talk to the owner and he sends me down the street to Swift Drugs. As I walk in the front door (Janice initially waits in the car), I say to myself, “this is it.”

Buddy Swift is waiting on a customer, but soon he and I are engaged in conversation. Buddy is 63 years old. His grandfather started Swift Drugs, which is now 96 years old. Yes, they had a grill and fountain. Yes, there was an area in the back where his grandfather “had two slot machines during the Depression, trying to do anything to keep the doors open,” and “pinball machines in the ’60s”, but no, he doesn’t remember a pool table and, “I would have remembered it, if it had been there.” I’m disappointed, but not totally convinced.

Perhaps the table was only there a short period of time, perhaps it was more trouble than it was worth and quickly removed, perhaps a youngster like “Do-Tricks,” attempting to play, though not 21, caused them to remove the table. Perhaps Buddy Swift just doesn’t remember. I conclude that this was ‘our place.’ I make it, in my mind, ‘our place.’

Swift Drugs, Selma, Ala., has t-shirts for sale with the “Swift Drugs” name and logo. Janice suggests that we buy one for Jones, and we do. I wish that Wilson and “Do-Tricks” were still alive so we could get one for them. Memories of them makes me sad, and I know that all three of these great guys would like to be here, today, May 18, 2013, with Janice and me.

As we start west and leave Selma, I have a feeling about the sadness of this place – what it was, what it is and what it could have been. Buddy Swift’s words ring in my ears, “…we used to have 14 wholesale grocers down at the river, and now there are none … we’re just trying to hang on.”

Next week: Jackson, Vicksburg, Oxford, Yazoo City, Tupelo and other places that were the Old South and are part of the new.

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