Artifacts

As for him throwing sticks up into the country to knock the pecans on the side or never got behind a tree doesn't want it. The countries are not very easy to climb not like mimosa trees which branch. Yeah they are. They're the best. But you can tell when you hurt them because they skinned up like somebody. So you know what I was shocked is that mimosa tree that used to be right there is now been supplanted by a tree which was blown over last night. I don't know when I left you I didn't know that Miss Welty had lived in that house across the street when I lived here. A man who was the chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court a man named George Etheridge and the Judge Eckels used to walk out to the Supreme Court every day. It was really an old old neighborhood mostly occupied by older citizens. Yes I did the first Jackson library that I

went to the one it's in. On the other side of the Capitol building that's now been torn down I went there. In fact Eudora gave me a picture picture not long ago that she took in the 40s of that library and it has a line below it which says it's a line from one writer's beginnings our house was on the same street as the library and then below it she wrote. And your house was too. Well a lot of people I actually I can remember who lived in all of these houses when we got here in the late middle 40s it was a changing neighborhood thing. The houses were still intact but now you know what my parents and I came along and I'm 44 and then we left in 1955. But there were families there three just a lady named Mrs. Thompson lived directly

across the street. Some people named bass. There they were pharmacy. The house that's why there was always a rooming house. And in fact when we were young we used to be yellow and used to have a sign in front which said dial the number you used to always call it the dial house. That's all we ever on. The dial. And then some people named Marshall down and then some people named slash missing Mr. Slack which is an old Jackson. Former. Doctor stands up on the next block. Yeah it was a very old in some ways prestigious. Not as prestigious as. Its president once President was a more prestigious one time this was a wonderful. Time with anything else and oh interesting to see. This. Right. Now. Well you know all the time all the time I played on the capitol grounds. I have a knot on my hip not on my head from from from playing on the

Capitol grounds one time. And. There is still the Capitol grounds and the full arc of an old. Metal. Ship. Was just there today and it's on the. East side of the Capitol grounds and we were playing and we used to play it as though. Magnolia. Cones were hand grenades. And we would throw Magnolia cones in each other and once I ducked behind this thing and smack you in the head like that and I have in my head today somewhere permanent bump from that. He cracked in the brain on the Capitol grounds and you know the usual stuff the kids did in this neighborhood because there were so many. All people want people who are watching you all the time. Right. Oh I certainly do I painted that wall of the school over there with tar completely panicked tar nine hundred fifty. Three. Which. Miss Martindale came over to our house and and and and

told my mother that I was as I said in my talk whenever any bad happened I was the first suspect and she came over and said Mrs. FORD. And by this time my mother already knew her she had a queen Tara from a club which has done this and has a terrible kind of scandal you know I'm of a lower lower scale standard and we used to play ball out here and tried very hard to hit those windows and notorious. As hard as we possibly could. And from here many many times many many times with Travis when you broke out of the what if game was over. Because when the ball fell inside you onto a plane. No they're eligible though they're eligible I mean I haven't really written about Mississippi that much in the last 20 years. Because I haven't. Had other things. But it's very vivid and it lives in my mind. One of the reasons is I haven't had a take on it. I haven't had a. I haven't had anything in my mind to put in those details.

And also so much is so much wonderful has been written about Mississippi. I never thought that I had out of my experience very much to say that probably somebody else had said. To me Well he's been working all these years writing wonderful essays and you Doris with so many stories I just didn't feel like I had enough of. That essay that I wrote about my mother. It happens to be said in Jacksonville it's really something much more person specific like a. Charm. I hope so. I hope so. I would love to. Be a privilege to get to. Well. You know. When I decided that I was going to be a writer which was in 1900 i sed i wrote a book which is mostly set in Mississippi. And when I finished with that book. I really wanted to go on and do other things I wanted to quit writing about Mississippi but writing about the South for the reasons

that I said because I didn't think I had anything else to say. But I've used up all the stuff now in the meantime. So I come back around to it. I hope so. OK. He said. Write. Failure at everything else. And really a kind of an impulse to. To do something for no sense of obligation to do something not because I was supposed to and because it was a career choice but simply because it was. In some way. Simply appealing. I was thinking any sort of being for me at the time like looking at a blank wall which is what I was doing because I left law school. I had to get another job. I was about to get married. And it's as though a door opened in a otherwise blank wall and. When. It was on it

opened. And I don't know why. You know that was the one. I had always been a very good reader and. I got a degree in literature and never thought that the writer was anything I had any talent. I just like doing it as a hobby. And I know. You. Know all that you have to me anythings I think I think being a good reader probably is a huge help. Because it continually treats you the language. And you continually. Humbles you. In front of the wonderful efforts of others. And it always teaches you and pleases you as it does all those things. So. My reading good literature. You're given a high marks in a sense doesn't mean that you have to write like other writers do. But. I think. For myself I want to write for other people to. Hear in some way to please them in some complicated way not some simple minded one. And so you could certainly be pleased by literature. I certainly.

Did. Thank goodness. You know I'm not much of a futurist to own a car one of those guys who walks along with it. What was I going to say when his eyes on his toes. Yeah. Well. I guess I think the most important thing that's going to happen in Mississippi. If it's going to Mississippi like the rest of the United States is going to survive is some kind of. Economic Democracy is going to have to. Occur in this state which is going to make everybody able to earn a living. And. You know. In behalf of bad. Education cultural education in excess of the Four Hundred percent literacy.

I think the issue of racism is now while it still is alive and still. Is largely a function of what has always been a function of not racial differences but economics and economics is going to be what's going to solve the actual nation's history. In a day like today. Let you know that there. Things are separate races. Can be. Done away. Yeah. Right now no way. Oh sure I have a special relationship to you just being from Jackson because when I when I was a high school here. Those old famous blues man how the often. Muddy Waters used to play fraternity parties at Ole Miss for you know two hundred bucks a night. This is before they're there. Didn't the discovery by. Suburban white kids of the

blues which took place in the middle 60s and we I used to go up to Ole Miss to the. Two fraternity parties. And sit on how I will sample fire. And because I didn't know anybody I was just in high school I would go up there and he would be playing. The harp and they would be playing for the fraternity party and every want and while they take a break and I would get to sit and talk to him was just one of those and I knew at the time this is one of those great wonderful experiences because you couldn't be in his presence without knowing you in the presence of a great man. So I took that with me north when I went. To Michigan. Well I am back. Thanks. Thank you all. Thank you a lot of you. Thanks guys. Right.