Monk Sighting

Folks up in the Pacific Northwest are always on the look out for a big hairy and deeply secretive ape called bigfoot. Down in the Southwestern part of the USA everyone makes a big to do over some nusance to livestock called a chupacabra...or something like that. On the east coast they have a skunk man...which reminds me of the time a few years back when Lance Russam and Billy Ray McNealy went hunting for possums off the north river road, but that's a story for another day. Well in the greater Commonwealth of Tallamingo County we have our own mystery beast. We just call him the Monk, for that's all anyone can figure to call him. Every story about him has him wearing some dirty black robe with a sort cape or hood or some such thing about the shoulders. Now monks are unusual enough creature as far as that goes and they are rare enough in all Tallamingo County where you can close your eyes spin around three times, throw a rock and six times out of ten hit a Baptist in the back of the head. Three times you would hit a Methodist and one time if you are lucky, maybe a Presbyterian. The only ones who ever claimed to have a monk is the little Orthodox chapel down the Indian way in Gaza. There might be thirty or forty of them on a good day. They worship in a little church house called St. Barsanuphis of Gaza...which is where their community got its name. Barsanuphius was just to much of a mouthful for anyone but them to say.

During the Civil War a few boys from the New Orleans Home Brigade go lost in the Honey Island Swamp and when they came out, it was from Big Leaky Swamp. That's our swamp...and its a peculiar one. About half century before them a band of Choctows entered the Neshoba County swamps and came out of the Big Leaky too...of course they meant to. What is now Tallamingo County was always a sort redoubt/refuge area for them from way back before even they remember. There are paths in Big Leaky that lead to places one would not expect them to lead to, and paths in other places that lead into the Big Leaky that are likewise not what one would expect. Well those Home Brigade Boys stumbled out the swamp half dead and just as smelly. The Choctaws took care of them and they decided to stay and marry in, which they did. However these boys weren't your normal Baptists or Methodists or even the Catholics one might expect from New Orleans...they was some other kind of far eastern Catholics who called themselves Orthodox, newly immigrated from God knows where. These boys and their families built themselves a little chapel, had lots of children between them and that's how Gaza got started. Well about 1875 a brace of brothers that got tired of their people having no priest to look after them decided to do something about it. One went off for a few years to get trained as an Orthodox priest...wherever they went back then to do that. His Choctaw relatives had taught him about coming and going through Big Leaky and the few other paths that lead into or out of what is now Tallamingo County. Now to make sure God looked after his brother real good the other brother for his part turned himself into a monk. I'm not sure how they do that, but he did, and lived off by himself somewhere in the edges of Big Leaky and only came to the Church on Sundays and special occassions. The older he got the less frequently he came until three or four years might go by before anyone saw him again. Somewhere around 1930 everybody just figured him for dead, God rest his soul. Now since then his brother's family has always had a boy grow up to follow in his daddy's footsteps and take over doing whatever Orthodox priests do to pastor their flock at St. Barsanuphius of Gaza. That was until 1954. It looked like the line was going to fail, their priest at the time having five beautiful daughters...well four beautiful and one about average daughters. The youngest, Helen was twelve and it looked like there would be no sons born into this family. Which was an unfortunate irony since the family name was Boychild.

That's where the story migrates from sad to strange. According to Hellen Mingo, nee Helen Boychild, who was the youngest daughter of her father, the priest. One night when she was twelves years old, she recalls being disturbed by a dream and going to her parents room to seek comfort. When she opened the door she saw the dark outline of a man at the foot of her parents bed in which they were fast asleep. For some reason she said she was not afraid...terribly courious, but not afraid. He made the sign of the cross of over the bed and then walked with her back to her room without word and tucked her in. Next morning she woke up and thought that this must have been all part of her dream and she put it out of her mind, and it never occured to her again until two months later when her mama announced that she was was with child, and that somehow beyond all reason she was very sure that it would be a boy. And so it was.

Ever since then at least every two or three years somewhere in the vicinity of Big Leaky people claim to see an old man in a black robe crossing the road and disappearing into the brush. And I mean disappearing...for no one that tried to follow him has ever found him. Even if the one who saw him jumped out of the car and ran right after. Some say its a ghost. Others say another one of them Chocodox done turned monk...Chocodox is sort of their local nick name. And still others say its the same old monk...but thats ridiculous to believe such a thing. He would have to be at least 130 years old, if not more. Of course then there's Mammy Bess...who will tell you if you believe her that she once took a switch to the monk when he was a little boy and got her sheets dirty by running down the wash line with muddy hands.

Now if this were all, it would make for an interesting story of local color and that's all. It seems though that seeing the monk is kind of a blessing and curse. It means something bad is going happen to you, but you will survive, maybe even prosper...but calamity will happen first. For example back in 1961 Brett Mason had gone fishing down to one of his favorite spots in Big Leaky and on his way back saw the old monk cross the road. He stopped to tell the sheriff about it and left his car running. Well it so happened the sheriff's office had been painted that very day and the painter, the current Sheriff Mingo's father had dropped a paint rag in the parking lot...and back then a lot of fine paints were still made with tung oil. This rag happen to be laying right up under Brett Mason's muffler. Lets just say, before the conversation with the sheriff was finished the volunteer fire department was putting out the blaze in his car. It is a strage smell the mingling of burning upholstery, petroleum products, and baking fish. Poor Brett tried to salvage something from the front seat, but only ended up catching his hands on fire. So he had to go to the hospital to be tended to. And that's where he met his wife the nurse changed his bandages for a month. It's true the back of Brett's hands were a little unsightly for a few years, but no one can argue that he doesn't have the best marriage a man could ask for. If they had died and gone to heaven two people could not have been better suited for each other.

If that had been the only time it might have been called a coincidence, but there have at least twenty or thirty sightings that I know about since then. And all those that I can verify share the same general profile of events. Loren Sutter saw him four years ago and a two days later a tornado ripped through her old barn and scattered it all across the county. In picking up the debris. Loren found an old coffee can from her great grandfather's time stuffed full of old coins and bills...collecter's stuff. She drove all the way to Memphis to locate someone who could help her sell it proper and she made over three-hundred thousand dollars. It let her put two of her grandchildren through college, got her a new car, and built a brand new barn, and she still has a little mad money left over. And back in 1970 Melvin Nash saw him one night...almost hit him in the middle of the road. It scared the pure pee out of that boy. He was headed to Dogwood to hang out at Lulu's Cafe with his friends from high school, but instead he was so shook up he went home. Just a hour or so after he got back his father had a heart attack while watching TV, and Melvin was sitting there with him. His mother had already gone to bed. If Melvin had not been there, his father would have likely died alone and without help. As it was Melvin put his father in the car and sped all the way to the hospial; caused three wrecks on the way running stop signs...but he saved his father's life. Ed Nash lived another ten years.

I could tell dozens of stories just like those, and one always wonders what the sighting will bring. But I guess we shall soon find out. Samuel Butler has just returned from Business School and has a position lined up run the business end of Colonal Coughman's latest enterprise...catfish farming. Samuel neglected to tell anyone while away that he gotten married to a pretty young miss who will sooner or later have to learn of Tallamingo County's little secret. They was out and about in his new Mercedes...which he did not buy locally, and he was giving his new bride the big tour. On their way back from visiting the quite beautiful, if rustic little chapel in Gaza they saw an old man in a black robe cross the road.

I hear Samuel is back home sitting in a new recliner rocker getting dead drunk, which is more tragic than it sounds since Samuel has never been much of one to drink.

The Internet Comes to Tallamingo

Today marks the twenty-ninth day that the internet has been in greater Tallamingo County Commonweath. It is also the twenty-ninth day we have had cable TV. Whether either shall prove a blessing or a curse time will tell, though if the experience of those outside Tallamingo is any indicator, they will be both.

Some may wonder what took so long as both cable television and the internet have been generally available for a number of years. The simple answer is Miss Amy Blanchard. She headed the Tallamingo Department of Licensure and Certification. It wasn’t a big department, just Miss Amy and her secretary Pearl. But if anyone needed any kind of business license or permit to do just about anything, it had to cross Miss Amy’s desk. And Miss Amy did not certify anything she considered a frivolous or immoral enterprise. Having seen the light in her youth she considered it her Christian duty to safeguard the moral standards of the Greater Commonwealth of Tallamingo insofar as it lay within her power. When her first cousin on her father’s side, old Mayor Fred Gillet, God rest his soul, won the race for Mayor of Dogwood, the capital and principal city of our fair commonwealth, back in 1968 that power became considerable. The former chief occupant of the Department of Licensure and Certification had been a Mr. Royce Windham of the Chiquapen Ridge Windhams, who are not to be confused with the Winham Hill Windhams to whom they are most certainly related by common ancestry about six generations back but not by much of anything else since. Royce executed his office honorably, if without particular distinction for 20 years and decided it was time to retire. Miss Amy had just turned thirty-five and had given up all prospect of finding a husband, and her dear cousin Fred needing to consolidate his power within the city government put forward his poor spinster cousin to head what was generally thought to be minor post of limited authority in the general government of the Tallamingo County Commonwealth. Mayor Gillet was wrong.

Now for just about anyone else the office of Director of the Department of Licensure and Certification would have precisely the minor position that it heretofore had always been. It was just a way to collect money from those who wanted to start new businesses, obtain permits for special events like Robert E. Lee’s birthday parade or fireworks on Plebiscite Day, June 23 unless that falls on a Sunday then its June 24th. Generally speaking this wasn’t much of a problem since most of the businesses of Tallamingo County had been established prior to 1935, and the parade and the fireworks…well that was tradition and you didn’t mess with tradition. That is until Miiss Amy. She began protecting the morals of the good folk of Tallamingo first by refusing to issue temporary business permits to fireworks vendors who smoked, cussed, wore earrings, had long hair, or any tattoos visible or publicly known. Since children frequented these fireworks stands she wanted to be sure they were not exposed to any wanton or otherwise unwholesome influences. And in 1968 these restrictions did not seem any kind of undue burden. They made a certain amount of sense. Smoking in close proximity to fireworks is probably a bad idea and smokers were a high risk to do such things. And ear rings and long hair on men well that was just an outward sign of being a rebellious and rowdy sort who lived irresponsibly and put wild ideas into impressionable children’s heads. And tattoos…well that was just against the Bible, and no one who so visibly thumbed their nose at the Bible should be permitted to spread their poison with the blessing of the government. Free speech was well and good but there was no law that said the good people of the greater Commonwealth of Tallamingo County had to endure their government allowing the morally delinquent to parade their evil ways under the auspices of the Commonwealth’s good name. No siree bob. Miss Amy saw too it only those who business enterprises benefited both the moral and the economic bottom line ever got their licenses and permits certified. That was how it started, but by the time times and minds had changed, Miss Amy had become an institution…a tradition of sorts in herself…and you don’t mess with tradition, especially if that tradition is named Miss Amy Blanchard.

Offering cable TV service had been the one time dream of J. D. McNealy back in 1982. He was the middle son of Horace McNealy whose family had started and run half the businesses in Dogwood. Anything dry goods related was a McNealy enterprise one way or the other. It didn’t matter if it was files, fabrics, furniture, or firewood the McNealys owned it outright or had a major stake in it. Groceries, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics belonged to the Thorntons. Gillets were the bankers, lawyers, and petty bureaucrats when they weren’t Blanchards or Windhams. The Butlers had staked out a claim on machinery and mechanical services, owning two service stations, and the only combination car and tractor dealership in Tallamingo County. The Coughmans handled most big farming and timber. Well one could go on with other professions and the families most closely associated with them, but the thing to remember is that out of all the business and professional families, the McNealys were the most business savy and the most well to do. For some reason they just seemed to breed true to the McNealy clan’s original progenitor in Tallamingo, old Silas Judah McNealy, 1823 to 1891, who first opened a trading post that grew into an emporium which was replaced in 1938 with McNealy’s Department Store at the corner of East Constitution and Main.

Well after WWII J. D.’s Father, Sorghum McNealy spun off a radio and record player shop down the block which he built into an appliance store. Sorghum wasn’t his real name, its just what everybody called him. His real name was Joseph. The only one who probably who can still remember where he picked up Sorghum Is Mammy Bess. Now Mammy’s not a term cottoned to much nowadays, but that just goes to show how old she is. Nobody knows her by any other name, not even her own people. It is said she is the last daughter of one of the old Butler slaves and a Choctaw. There’s no telling with Mammy Bess and she ain’t telling. She never tells all she knows, and she knows plenty. Mammy Bess is another Tallamingo tradition safest not to mess with. But back to Sorghum and his appliance store. After his boy J. D. got out of Jr. College Sorghum wanted help him out and they looked for a business opportunity that had not yet been seized upon by some other family or kinsman in greater Tallamingo County Commonwealth. In J.D.s college dormitory they had this thing called cable T.V. and it seemed to be the growing thing in cities and towns of any respectable size in Mississippi. And it was very entertaining to boot. Imagine getting fifteen or twenty channels on the TV instead of just the two and sometimes three the folks of Tallamingo could get by aerial. It looked like a gold mine of an opportunity for anyone with the wherewithal to pursue it. And the McNealys had the wherewithal. In a couple of months they had a business plan, and suppliers all lined up, had begun to take applications for linemen and office personnel. They had figured every angle but one, Miss Amy.

The business license sat on her desk a solid three months untouched. And when Sorghum and J.Ds patience and chivalry had worn thin they approached Miss Amy ever so properly to ask if there was a problem or if there was anything they could do to expedite the process. Miss Amy said she was studying on the economic and social impact of such a business in the Greater Tallamingo County Commonweath. Everybody knew that was Miss Amy’s polite way of saying she did not approve of this business and hoped those trying to open it would catch the hint and forget about it. But the McNealys were not used to being denied at City Hall or at the County Courthouse…which in Tallamingo County were all in the same building. They pressed for a public meeting of the county commissioners, two of which were married to McNealys, to sell the benefits of this new service and build such a groundswell of support for cable TV that Miss Amy must simply capitulate.

The meeting was called for the following week, and Miss Amy and much of Dogwood as well as the neighboring communities sat in attendance. The people wanted 15 to 20 channels of television and they wanted to know why one old biddie petty bureaucrat had the power to say they couldn’t have them. There was an hour and a half of comment and discussion heavily weighted to giving cable TV a try. The Commissioners who also wanted cable TV felt they had done their duty. The public had spoken loud and clear and they were prepared to direct the Department of Licensure and Certification to approve the McNealy’s business license to establish a cable TV service in the Greater Tallamingo County Commonwealth. But decency and protocol demanded they give Miss Amy a chance to rebut the hue and cry against her exercise of the office of Director of the Department of Licensure and Certification. Miss Amy just looked at the gathered McNealy clan and at Sorghum in particular and asked, “Mr. McNealy, in your estimation how many outsiders would you have to hire to build your cable TV station, lay your cable, and maintain your enterprise?” Every head in the courthouse turned to hear his reply.

Sorghum did his best ever imitation of a beet, grabbed his coat and got out of there as quickly as he could. He left a defeated man. Nothing was more dangerous to the common good of the Greater Commonwealth of Tallamingo than outsiders, and he knew it as well as anyone. It wasn’t that outsiders are hated so much as they are just feared, and with reason.

What most folks don’t know from outside of the Commonwealth of Tallamingo County is that on September 23, 1864 a cluster of thirteen farming communities on the Tallamingo River saw that things were not going well for the Confederacy in general and Mississippi in particular…so they formed their own government and succeded from both the Union and the Confederacy, but to keep things from getting complicated with so many Federal Troops prowling around, they decided to keep it a secret…a secret they have kept to the present day. It is the one secret most men of Tallamingo would kill to keep. They count their liberty from both the United States, the now defunct Confederacy, and the great state of Mississippi to be too precious too lose. Too many outsiders visiting at one time makes it more than likely the secret would get out and that would make life complicated for every man, woman, and child of the Tallamingo County Commonwealth should the full history of Tallamingo County be made known to the wrong persons.

Miss Amy had won. But time marches on and it is not given to anyone, even as formidable a someone as Miss Amy Blanchard to live forever. And as of exactly three months and three days ago, Miss Amy went to her eternal reward and lies peacefully interred in the family plot at the Silas Road Methodist Church cemetery. Pearl Coughman, a second cousin to Sorghum on his mother’s side, was called upon to assume Miss Amy’s duties in the interim until a suitable candidate could be found to fill the office on a more permanent basis. This of course meant a substantial boost in salary for Pearl, and use of a government car. And it was understood that the county commissioners, four of which were McNealys by blood if not by name, were in no great hurry to fill that office so long as its duties were carried out in the best interest of the Greater Tallamingo County Commonwealth.

The Commissioners have also been given to understand that the internet upon which so much modern commerce depends is much more speedily and reliably accessed via a broadband connection which is only avaiable by cable such as cable television companies use and therefore cable and broadband internet ought to be available on a trial basis in Dogwood and the nearer surrounding communities. Also, the recent misfortune of Hurricane Katrina was an ill wind that blew little good for anyone but trash collectors and construction crews but as providence would have it, construction crews were suddenly needed in Tallamingo. Fortunately for the McNealys and for the Greater Tallamingo County Commonwealth a great number of the available pool of contruction workers are temporary hires from Mexico and other places in Latin America. It is unlikely anything they learn of Tallamingo County's history or its secret will matter one whit to them. The margin of safety was adequate and the first lines were hung the day after Miss Amy's funeral.

It was a beautiful service and everyone spoke well of her. Brother Aury (Aurileus) L. Swift from Silus Road Methodist gave the eulogy. The dinner on the ground that followed in Miss Amy's honor will be long remembered.