Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss

by Douglas Gray

  “Let him go!” Joan demands, coming onto the front porch as I’m conducted to the squad car. “Daniel, do you want me to call someone?”

  I try to shrug. Anyone I know who might be able to help me is out of town.

  “Watch your head, boy,” Hacker cautions, hoisting me into the back seat.

  We’re at the station house a few minutes later. Hacker leads me through the front door and past the on-duty officer, into the back. Lots of people gathered around a table loaded with cookies, pies, potato chips, Cokes. They seem to be having a party.

  “Goddamn, Roy.” The Sheriff’s voice comes from behind us. “I told you to invite him, not arrest him.”

  “More fun, my way.”

  The cuffs come off, and I’m massaging my wrists.

  “If you want to file a complaint . . . ,” Claprood offers.

  “No harm done,” I say. “I can take a joke.”

  Hacker takes a big bite off a brownie with a laugh.

  “I thought you might enjoy a little company, what with all your buddies off in Denver hunting Tamburlaine,” Claprood says. “Who, by the way, is definitely not in Denver.”

  “I appreciate the kindness,” I say.

  “Well, peace on Earth, joy to men of goodwill. That includes hippies.”

  “He’s got a girl living there,” Hacker says. “You want to bust him for cohabitation?”

  “Nobody’s getting busted for anything,” Claprood says with weary patience. “We’re all friends today.”

  “Being friends with hippies is one more thing that’s going to lose you the post of sheriff.”

  Claprood waves me toward his private office. “Let me freshen up your Coke, son.” He closes the door and lifts a fifth of Jim Beam from a desk drawer, pours two fingers worth into my paper cup. “Happy New Year.”

  “What did your deputy mean about losing your office?”

  Claprood takes his seat in a swivel chair behind the desk, grins, scratches his jaw. “Going after the beer ordinance seems to have proved a misstep. A number of prominent citizens have quietly made a lot of money keeping Lafayette County dry, and now they’ve quietly set a recall election in motion.”

  “Sorry to hear that. You know you’ll have my vote.”

  “Thanks, but don’t let that be generally known. Your endorsement isn’t likely going to improve my chances.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Friday, December 31

  I spot Joan sitting at James’ shortwave radio. “2, 17, 9, 43, 16, 8, 2, 17, 9, 43, 16, 8, 2, 17, 9, 43, 16, 8,” it repeats.

  “He listens to this all night?” she asks.

  “Sometimes all day, too.”

  Joan sighs. “What’s happened to all of us? I feel like everything’s turning out wrong. Remember how happy we used to be? James and I were together. Nick and Suzie. You and Melissa. Garrett and what’s-her-name, his fiancée?”

  “The bitch that dumped him for the frat boy. Ethel.”

  “Everybody falling in love, and waiting for the revolution. Look at us now.” Joan switches the radio off, stilling the obnoxious voice.

  “It’s not 1969 anymore,” I agree. “It’s like once the Earth closed, everything went to hell.”

  “Even the shops at Overton Square aren’t the same. I hardly recognized anything that night you and I went to the Looking Glass.”

  “Overton Square?” I ask. “You and I went to the Looking Glass? That was you?”

  “Of course it was me. We went dancing. We went to a horrible movie called Count Yorga, Vampire, and laughed our heads off. Don’t you remember?”

  “Actually, I don’t. I only have a glimpse of that night – sitting in a restaurant. Next day, I found a Looking Glass matchbook in my pocket, so I knew I must have been there with someone. That was actually you?”

  Joan studies me for a moment. “Okay, you’re beginning to scare me now. You really don’t remember?”

  “Well,” I admit, “I have been having blackouts. Memory losses. I’ll find myself being somewhere, doing something, without any recollection of how I got there or what happened afterward. Last week I found myself having an argument with an attendant at the Gulf station on South University because he wouldn’t sell me two bucks of gas. It turns out I didn’t have my car. I’d walked in and stood by the pump.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Five months? Off and on, since I died up in Virginia.”

  “Man, you’re messed up.”

  “Let’s go back,” I say. “Back to Memphis. Not tonight. It’s late, and all the drunks are out on the road. But sometime next week, let’s head back to Overton Square and have some fun. This time, I’ll remember.”

  Downstairs, we share a joint and turn on Johnny Carson. Half an hour in, NBC switches to live coverage at Times Square. Midnight reaches the east coast an hour ahead of us. Joan goes upstairs and returns in her robe, with her glasses on.

  “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” I lie.

  At midnight, we hear the courthouse clock chiming on the Square, and somebody in the neighborhood setting off a string of firecrackers. We glance at each other, a little awkward, until Joan takes the initiative of leaning forward for a kiss. It’s quick, chaste.

  “To a better year than this last one,” she wishes.

  “A better year,” I agree.

  At that moment, someone knocks at the door. I take the precaution of peeking through a window before opening, because it might be Hacker again, or James’ thug, or Skoll.

  What I see lifts my heart. It’s Ashley, her backpack and her bedroll strung over either shoulder. She’s through the door and in my arms a moment later.

  “Happy New Year, boyfriend.” From her I get an unchaste kiss, and full body contact. “I drove like hell to get here in time,” she begins, then spots Joan watching us from the parlor door.

  I make the introductions.

  “You’re James’ ex, aren’t you?” Ashley asks. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “That I’m the biggest bitch in Mississippi, no doubt.”

  “Actually, he mentioned every state in the old Confederacy. But hell, you can never trust what an ex says. I can’t imagine being married to James was especially easy going. I ran into the boys in Wichita, and they told me Daniel was here alone. I don’t mean to barge in if you two are . . . .”

  “We’re watching television, and I was just about to turn in.”

  “I brought some grass.”

  “I’ve smoked enough for tonight,” Joan demurs. “You two enjoy yourselves.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Saturday, January 1, 1972

  I wake sometime around 11:00 to the aroma of coffee brewing and bacon frying downstairs. I roll over and curl closer into Ashley, all soft and warm in the bedroll. I wake a second time to a knock on the door. Joan peeks in and, finding us covered, steps inside with a tray. Coffee, toast, eggs. A pile of bacon.

  “Breakfast in bed. I hope you’re not vegetarian,” Joan announces, glancing at Ashley, who’s sat up yawning and stretching with wanton immodesty. A fetching girl.

  “Unrepentant carnivore,” she admits.

  “Good. We’re supposed to eat pork today. And black-eyes, of course.”

  “Is that some kind of southern custom? I’ve never tasted black-eyes.”

  “I bought a can at the Jitney Jungle yesterday. We’ll have them for dinner. If, of course, you two plan to leave the bedroom today and keep a poor, divorced girl company.”

  “Keep an eye out for Citizen,” I advise Joan on her way out, “or he’ll grab that bacon for sure.”

  She glances back, puzzled. “Who?”

  “Citizen.”

  “Who’s Citizen?”

  “The dog.”

  “Oh, the dog,” she says. “I was wondering if he has a name.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Sunday, January 2

  It’s a bright, warm start to the year, and Overton Square is packed. Bikers line Madison Avenue, while street musicians f
ill the sidewalk along Cooper Street. I’m standing at the Triangle with Ashley and Joan, our three bellies comfortably filled with red wine and po’ boys from Pappy’s. Harley fumes waft our way, mixed with the scent of a dozen joints burning as one from the throng surrounding us, and the cops not paying it any mind.

  We’re debating whether to drop into Abercrombie & Fitch or Little John’s first, though the choice scarcely matters. We have the whole of the afternoon and evening to dawdle, me with Ashley on one arm and Joan on the other, thinking myself to be the luckiest, happiest boy in Memphis.

  “Isn’t that Amy Madigan?” Joan suddenly asks, lifting her right index finger toward the crowd strolling Cooper Street.

  I look where she’s pointing. Sure enough, it’s Amy, looking distinctly out of her element in a tea party dress, as if she’d somehow stumbled out of an afternoon meeting of the Junior League and onto this side street of freaks.

  But she’s not alone. A tall man in a herring-bone suit, graying hair slicked back from his temples, walks alongside her. Every few moments, he points at something or someone in the crowd, turns to make a comment to Amy, and shakes his head, as if in grave disappointment.

  “Who’s the old guy with the broomstick up his ass?” Ashley wants to know.

  “Never seen him before. Maybe it’s her father.”

  “I don’t know. He seems awful grabby to be her father.”

  Ashley’s right. As we watch, I notice how often he’s touching her shoulder or brushing a hand across her arm, as if casually accidental, but obviously intentional.

  “Not her father,” Joan agrees, “but certainly old enough to be. Look at that old lecher. You don’t suppose that our Miss Madigan has found herself a sugar daddy, do you?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday, January 3

  Dr. Goodleigh’s cats are outside, enjoying the day, so Ashley and I make quick work of filling their bowls with food and water.

  “What do you want to do today?” she asks as we return to the car.

  “Let’s go to Paris.”

  “I don’t think I’m dressed for that.”

  “You look great. And it’s a come-as-you-are Paris.”

  We stop by Tyler Avenue for wine and a blanket, and the Jitney for oranges, cheese, buns and grapes, then head south on Highway 7, merging onto 9W and straight into Paris.

  Apart from some cows in various fields, no one’s about. We drive through still neighborhoods of old houses, a few with tendrils of wood smoke issuing from their chimneys.

  “So this is Paris,” Ashley says. “Somehow I’d always pictured it differently.”

  “Paris, Mississippi,” I reply. “I hear tell there’s this place in France that also claims the name, but this is the original.”

  I find the turn-off to the cemetery. Every grave has been decorated for the season, the place immaculately weeded and trimmed.

  “What’s with this southern fixation with dead people?” Ashley asks, as we spread the blanket.

  “We envy them. Their ordeal of living down here is over. That’s why we reject reincarnation. The most comforting thing you can say to a Mississippian is that we pass this way but once.”

  We’ve finished the joint, and are on a second glass of the wine when a dusky green Ford pickup truck comes rattling down the gravel drive and halts with a squeal of brakes. A big man in overalls and a crew cut steps from the driver’s side, followed by a tiny hunched-over woman stepping slowly, hesitantly from the passenger door.

  I greet him with a pleasant “Afternoon” as he approaches, but he’s apparently not in the mood for courtesies.

  “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

  I have to shade my eyes with the flat of my hand to block out the sun’s glare over his shoulder. I probably look like I’m saluting him. “Oh, you know. Just having a picnic. Courting.”

  “Do you have family buried out here?”

  “I don’t. No, sir.”

  “Then show a little goddamn respect for those of us who do. Pick up your trash and git. Right now.”

  “My companion here is from the north,” I reply, attempting for courtliness. “You are not giving her a good sense of southern hospitality.”

  The old woman has finally caught up, stooped so far that her head is titled a full 60 degrees forward. She’s peering at us through rheumy eyes, but her voice, when it comes, is surprisingly young.

  “Are you children hippies?” she asks. “Oh, my lord, they are,” she continues, not waiting for a reply. “Henry, look – they’re hippies, just like we’ve seen on Walter Cronkite’s show.”

  “I know that, mama.”

  “What you children doing? Having a picnic?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re welcome to join us. We’ve got plenty.”

  “We have wine,” Ashley adds.

  “Oh, I’d like some wine!” She totters forward as Ashley finds another Dixie cup.

  “Mama, these people have got to leave!” Henry admonishes. “This ain’t no damn park. This is hallowed ground. What they’re doing isn’t proper.”

  “Fiddlesticks,” she waves her Dixie cup at him, like shooing something in the air. “People used to picnic here all the time. Your daddy and I did it when we was kids. It’s the Christian thing to do. Dead folks appreciate a little company.” She turns back to us. “You children come back in a year or two to see me, okay? My name’s Ettie Campbell. Can you remember that?”

  “Ettie Campbell,” Ashley repeats.

  “I’ll be buried right over there,” she points, “beside my husband. Pay me a visit. Bring another picnic with you.” She takes a sip of wine. “My, that’s good. Henry! Drive me home, son, and stop ordering these children around. I’m missing my story.”

  Later, back in Oxford, as we lie together in the bedroll, Ashley tells me she has to leave tomorrow. People to meet in DC. I’m bummed that her visit is over so soon.

  “I’ll be back,” she promises. “And anyway, we’ll always have Paris.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Tuesday, January 4

  I’m holed up inside the house today with Citizen and the book of Li Po poems that Becky gave me for Christmas. He’s a charming old companion, Li Po. I make tea, and he tells me about mountain revels, jugs of wine, mist hanging at dawn in stands of bamboo by a stream, young brides, empty cabins that once sheltered his friends,melon patches outside city gates, and the rabbit in the moon.

  But his conversation doesn’t dull the ache of not having Ashley with me today, so I open another book, Nathan Poole’s Under the Yellow Arch, to page 32, and read about the time he and his love went to Paris:

  I remember Paris

  Mississippi

  I remember hydrangeas

  by the road

  the black Baptist church

  filling with locust hymns

  all that hot afternoon

  it was our Notre Dame.

  We strolled the Champs-Elysees,

  we lay on the left bank

  of the Seine,

  the old rail bed warm with the sun

  and with us

  love was

  everywhere

  we looked in each other’s eyes

  and the bells of Paris

  rang like sleepy cattle.

  I didn’t tell Ashley, yesterday, that our excursion was in part my homage to Nathan Poole and his tragic romance with the unnamed lady who’s present in every poem of this collection. The legend is that the bulk of them were composed in a sanitarium where he had been sent after an epic drunken binge brought on by a love that he’d lost.

  Poole was a senior at Ole Miss when he published it, and at 21 became the youngest writer ever nominated for a National Book Award in poetry.

  The man’s a legend in his own time, teaching now at North Carolina, and he returns to Oxford most summers for a quick visit, rekindling rumors and gossip over who, exactly, inspired these pieces, what woman fired his passion and broke his heart. I’ve tried a dozen times or more to learn
her identity from Dr. Evans, who surely knows. Dr. Evans was Poole’s mentor at the time, and the one who finally had him hospitalized to save his life.

  I suspect it was none other than Dr. Goodleigh herself, discovered in a scandalous romance with an undergraduate, and I’m not alone in this suspicion. Amy Madigan, for one, is utterly convinced. But Dr. Evans has refused even to hint at the truth with us, so the ldy remains an Ole Miss mystery.

  I feel restless after reading a few more of Poole’s poems. “How about a walk?” I ask Citizen, and he’s instantly awake, on his feet.

  We step out into an afternoon that’s much colder than yesterday’s, a light drizzle that threatens to turn icy overnight.

  We turn east on University, toward the center of town, ambling along in rhythm with the slow pace of an afternoon’s traffic until Citizen suddenly halts, somehow alerted to something of interest happening on the other side of the street. I spot activity around the old savings and loan building on the corner of 11th Street – delivery vans in the parking lot, workers milling about, and a sign in the window announcing the upcoming grand opening of the Rebel Buddha Chinese Restaurant.

  Jimmy’s inside, supervising the installation of a walk-in freezer unit.

  “Ocarina vermillion, man!” he calls, spotting me. “Welcome! Welcome!”

  I gaze about at the work they’ve already accomplished. “So this is what you meant. Everybody wins.”

  Jimmy slaps me on the shoulder. “Everybody wins,” he agrees.

  ~ ~ ~

  Wednesday, January 5

  Cold snap and a freeze overnight. After tending to the cats, I drive onto the empty campus to check the radiators in the Museum. I adjust the knobs – a little more heat at the south window, a little less on the north – lock the Museum, and reset the alarm.

  I’m on my way to Bishop Hall, to check Mr. Duck’s progress, maybe even offer a couple of hours apprenticing, when I run into Dr. Evans stepping out of the elevator on the ground floor.

  He’s carrying a box filled with papers and miscellaneous items that usually sit on his desk – a clock, ashtrays, whatnot. I inquire about his holiday.

  “It was quiet until yesterday, when the Board and the Chancellor decided to fire me. Well, not fire,” he amends. “I’m suspended for the semester, without pay. Moral turpitude, you know. The Board’s decision was only two votes short of being unanimous. The union wants to contest it. But I think, hell, this means more time to finish my novel.”