“Mississippi, My Mississippi”
T. Bubba Bechtol
As a boy growing up in southern Mississippi,
people on both sides of me in Alabama and Louisiana always said, …“Thank God
for Mississippi”…meaning that no matter how low they might rank nationally in
education, per-capita income or standard of living, Mississippi would surely be
lower! While it was true that I grew up
in extreme poverty, in a dysfunctional family, I was happy. Much of what shaped my youth…indeed, shaped
American culture in the 20th century, came from Mississippi.
Mississippi
statistically could shame most other states with its minimal per-capita crime,
its cultural maturity and its distinguished alumni. It was there that doctors performed the first lung transplant in
1963, the first heart transplant in 1964, and the most widely used medical
textbook in the world was authored by Dr. Arthur Guyton of “Ole Miss.”
I know that the
Natchez Trace is the second most traveled parkway in the nation and that one
only has to visit the state to “feel its history!”
Mississippi’s music
is only one of its many gifts. From the
King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo, to the Father of
Country Music, Jimmy Rodger’s home in Meridian, music washes over us. Just to know that Jimmy Buffett, Tammy
Wynette, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Conway Twitty, Faith Hill, Marty Stuart, Johnny
Russell, Muddy Waters, Skip Jones, Robert Johnson, Jerry Reid and the first
black Opera diva in America, Leontyne Price , are all Mississippians…makes me
want to sing!
Just pick up a book
by William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, Walker
Percy, Ellen Douglas, Willie Morris, Margaret Walker Alexander, or John Grisham
and know that they are all “pure Mississippi.”
This warm feeling makes up for the slander of the 60’s that was so wrong
it made me feel inferior as a teenager.
Mention just one sport, football.
The greatest runner in the history of the NFL, Walter Payton, the
greatest receiver in the game today, Jerry Rice, the likes of Archie Manning,
“Chunking” Charlie Connerly, the great Dunnaways, Legendary Lineman all,Bret
Farve and Jim Weatherly all learned to play the game on the green grass of
Mississippi. Baseball’s Dizzy and Daffy Dean, and others…oh, there is not time
to mention all the Olympic champions and heroes of other sports!!
Beauty and Grace were
exemplified with the nation’s first back to back Miss America’s: Linda Lee Mead and Mary Ann Mobley. Greenville’s Jim Henson made the world smile
with his Muppets, Actress Stella Stevens, Actor Morgan Freeman,has moved back
to Mississippi and I went to high school with Gerald McRaney of T.V. Fame. Oprah Winfrey grew up in the Delta and
proved that it doesn’t matter where you come from, only where you are going!
All of these and many
more came from the “most illiterate 47,639 square miles in America.” I know, however that Coca Cola was invented
there, that Jefferson Davis’ home still stands on the Gulf Coast to remind of
the “Old South” and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue runs through Jackson’s
downtown representing the “New South!”
It was in Vicksburg that the killing of the Civil War ended, because two
Generals, one from the North and one from the South, sat down and talked. From the White shores of Gulfport-Biloxi to
the Muddy Mississippi just below Memphis, it is to America what the poet
Michael Swindle said it was, “The Ireland of America”…Mississippi is to America
what Ireland was to the British Empire:
woefully behind in the norm in virtually everything held by civilized
standards, yet producing more genius per-capita than Athens did under
Pericles”….I agree!
As a
comedian-humorist, it makes me proud to know that Mississippi produced the
founder of the National Speakers Association, Cavett Robert, and some of
America’s greatest storytellers and salespeople in Zig Zigler, Howard K. Smith,
Jerry Clower, and may I humbly add to the list, J. Terryl “T. Bubba” Bechtol,
yours truly!
Long may she continue to produce the “stuff” that America is made
of! Yes, “Mississippi is Burning”, but
today she is on fire for America…My Beautiful Mother Mississippi !!!
Born in Biloxi, Educated in Long Beach, Perkinston and Hattisburg, Married in Wiggins,… I am a True Son of the South and I am proud of Mississippi.