Janis Owens

           The guards were local, middle-aged or older, and looked like they’d never seen a plate of cornbread they hadn’t sampled. The place was deserted and when I walked in, their faces lit with a light of sincere welcome. We all called, “Hey” across the big room, and when I asked directions to the tax office, they gave me vociferous directions, then watched my hind quarters go up the stairs with great enjoyment. I took not a whit of offense. I turn fifty tomorrow and will take a compliment when I can get it.

The second floor was even better. There was no line. A talkative blonde clerk took my stuff, checked my eyes, made me a license and apologized for how much it cost. When she handed it over, hot off the press, she advised, “Baby, look it over before you leave cause I might a pressed a wrong button - said you’se a man or something. You’ll find it when you git home, then you’ll be mad.”

I checked it over and assured her it was perfect.

In fact, the whole visit was perfect. When I left, the guards paused in their conversation and waved merrily. I waved back and yelled, “Bye! Thank yawl!” and they returned my thanks – and I swear I’m not imagining this: looked positively grateful to be the public servant of such a winning public. 

            On the way home I stopped at the Archer Branch Library and stocked up on free magazines and a book. It was Cracker kismet and I’m telling you what: I’m on the verge of making a vow to never step foot in a town with a population over a thousand again.

Viva la Bronson.  They have renewed my faith in mankind.

I am trying not to take too much a whiny tone about it, but I seemed to have fallen in a glitch in our country’s national security. Seems that thirty years ago when I married, I somehow developed a divergence between the name on my driver’s license and my social security card. Neither the tax collectors, nor anyone else, have been too upset over the discrepancy, till the state of Florida passed some sort of new national security measures, which meant I had to spend the afternoon in that particular corner of hell known as the Florida Highway Patrol office, trying to talk them into renewing my driver’s license. I had been forewarned to bring plenty of ID, and came loaded for bear with original documents of my marriage, birth, electric bill, mortgage, original social security card and a few other things I just threw in the folder for good measure.

I had an appointment and was making my way through the seven stages of enlightenment – or whatever you can call the different rooms and hallways they make you wait in – and had even passed the eye exam when something must have popped up on the computer that indicated I was not to be trusted. The clerk actually made a noise of dismay, then looked at me, then back at the computer, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He told me he was unable to put anything further into the computer till I went to the security office in person and changed my name. I pointed out that the IRS had been happy to take my money all these years and that it was the Highway Patrol who’d apparently made the initial error, but he was unmoved by argument and I was forced to descend to the next stage of torment known as a visit to social security.

Out here in the hinterlands, we have been greatly limited in where we can go for anything connected to government. We used to be able to hop over to Trenton and deal with white haired country women who called you Shug and stamped your forms without too much of a hassle. Now we have to shuffle into Gainesville and fight the traffic to a central office which is guarded at the door by a young man who told me to turn off my cell phone, then asked me if I was carrying a concealed weapon. I had on a dress and was carrying nothing but a hand-me-down Coach purse from Mama. I wanted to tell him if I’d come there to harm someone I’d do it in a more pleasurable way, with a knife, but doggone if I’m not afraid to be handcuffed and deported anymore. I just obeyed with a minimum of complaint, then went to a little computer, which spit me out a number which resembled a gas station receipt. It said:  wait time sixty minutes. I sat down at a table next to a black guy who looked to be about as close to the end of his rope as I was. He looked at my number and asked, “How long is your wait time?”

I told him sixty minutes, and he grimaced. “I been here twenty minutes and my wait times says seventy minutes. How can that be?”

I just shrugged, but made him feel better by telling him the unhappy story of my afternoon at the highway patrol, and social security misprint. “They been taking my money thirty years – suddenly it’s a big deal.”

He showed me his printed out number and repeated, “Seventy minutes. Look at it. Seventy. Minutes.”

I’m not too much of a political creature but must say that as I sat there, I did entertain myself with the notion of starting a new grassroots political party, open to all races, religions and creeds, dedicated to the proposition of abolishing waiting in line.

I think that dog will hunt.

Out of the picture boxes of Alabama has sprung a family mystery that is driving daddy crazy. Uncle Howard gave me the picture below, taken somewhere around Opp, Alabama, sometime around 1940, of an elementary classroom which included daddy and two of his many brothers.

The Johnsons were tenant farmers and moved around a lot, even at mid-point in the school year, so a lot of these sorts of pictures were taken, always with the boys sitting in overalls, easily identified by their “jet black” Johnson hair. Daddy can usually pick out a few friends and all his brothers, but for the life of him, can’t quite get a grip on this one; can’t figure out which of the overall-clad boys are him. He has narrowed it down to the front row, and is positive he is either the boy at the far left corner (obscured by a crease) or the boy three to the left of him, or the boy next to him. He claims they are all Johnsons and if they’re not him, they’re one of his brothers; of that, he is sure. They are either: Wilbur and Howard, or Wilbur and Wayne, or Wayne and Howard. Mama complicated the confusion by suggesting the corner boy is Uncle Grover, Daddy in the middle and Uncle Wilbur beside him, which has sent him into even more spasms of uncertainty.

My father has a great, ill-conceived faith in my ability to solve modern mysteries, and has called me three times to ask which boy might be him. I have pointed out that I was born in 1960 and never darkened the door of an Alabama public school, but that answer doesn’t seem to suffice.

“Well they all kind of look like you,” I speculated after a long look at the photo. “I think that’s Uncle Grover in the corner.”

“No!” he cried, “It ain’t Grover! He was nine years older than me. We never went to the same school!”

“Then maybe it’s you and Uncle Wilbur and Uncle Howard,” I said, which was apparently another impossibility.

“Then where’s Wayne?”

Of such uncertainty does Cracker insanity spring. If anyone happens to recognize daddy in the photo above, please do send in evidence. It will set my mind at ease and let my daddy rest easy.  

I’ve lately had the Lord send me a few messages via a mode of Divine communication dear to the heart of every Cracker: the roadside sign. One of them is on highway 41 just south of Archer - a movable aluminum sign with changeable letters, which sits in the front yard of an old house. It’s had the same message for the past year: “Expect Miracles” I smile every time I pass. One day I’m gonna stop and give whoever put that sign out a hug.

The other sign is below - don’t know location (though lady who sent it is from Taylor County.) The message speaks for itself:

There is a line in an old hymn: “In the rustling grass I hear Him pass; He speaks to me everywhere.” 

He does.  

         In my protracted youth I was too proud to stoop to the constant name-dropping of famous friends, but now that I’m 49 years and counting, I’m getting off my high horse and telling tales out of school, as it used to be called. The fact is that Pat Conroy – he of much greater fame than I will ever aspire – is my best old bud in the world. We talk just about every day and have since Doug was killed three years ago. Back then, it was a matter of survival by conversation, and over time, the daily calls became part of the fabric of our lives, and mutually satisfying, as Pat is not only a great story teller but a great lover of southern story. He and Doug were both fans of my particular Cracker oeuvre – not just the novels but the day to day life here in Newberria, with my children at home at first, then the empty nest, and now Lily living in my back yard. Someone once asked me if I was intimidated by talking to Pat and I said, well, no, not anymore than I am talking to daddy and mama or Burg or Wendel after he’s worked all day and is too tired to do anything but listen to my non-stop run of chatter. He and Wayne (Burg’s husband) are the reason Burg and I both talk this way, in rapid monologues of whatever-we’ve-come-upon in our day. When they were young men, they worked twelve hour shifts; Wendel on the floor at MCC, and Wayne in the heat in construction. They’d come home too tired to talk and would depend on their wives to keep them connected to the real world. Burg once asked Wayne if she was talking too much and he answered without opening his eyes: “No baby. I like to hear you rattle.”

That’s the nature of my conversations with Pat: a stream of consciousness rattle that is like a squirrel running through the woods, leaping tree to tree. We talk books, gossip, Bernie, children, editors, how my mama’s doing; how his book is going; why NY publishing has hit the skids, whether it will rebound. He is truly anti-name dropping but every once in a while some Big Name will arise and I will ask, “You know them?” He usually owns up to it if he does, and his comments are occasionally - or actually, frequently, unprintable, as he is well versed in the southern profanity paradox. He would cut off his arm before he’d so much as drop a damn around Mrs. Randel, but just talking among friends, reverts to the casual Marine air base blue streak of his youth, which is arguably the most profane conversational English on earth. Wendel does the same thing and between them, they’re turning me into a Sunday School teacher with the mouth of a deck hand. I actually used a curse word in front of Mama and Daddy at the dinner table a few months ago, making them pause, fork in air, and stare at me for ten full seconds, with these What-Hath-God-Wrought faces.   

But aside from the corruption of my vocabulary, I very much enjoy talking with the Poet Warrior, who has a poet’s eye for strange, telling detail, making even the most casual observation resonate. We also have moments of cell phone misery. My new Blackberry drops, on average, four times a conversation, and if neither of us remembers where we left off, we are back to square one. He claims he has told me the great secrets of his life and confided the esoteric mysteries of fiction but the call had dropped and he was talking into thin air. We also have the occasional middle-age blank-out. Last night, he was talking about a man who’d inspired the character of Chad Rutledge in South of Broad. He would remember the real man but for the life of him, couldn’t remember the name in fiction. He kept circling, throwing out what he could remember, trying to jog our memories.

“He was Something Rutledge the Tenth.”

          “Chad,” I supplied, but he wasn’t convinced.

          “No – that’s not – he was married to Molly.”

          I spent the rest of the conversation thinking I’d lost my mind. As soon as I got off the phone, I looked in the book and emailed him: “It was CHAD. Don’t make me think I’m crazier than I already am.”

           I’ve had a few jealous souls make unkind remarks about my unfettered access to one of the great lights of Southern culture, but hell, I earned it. I faced Harry Crews when I was a country girl of twenty-one, and lived to tell about it. I paid my dues, baby, and in the face of their green-eyed envy, just shrug and say: “It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it.”

           And for the doubters of the world, yes, I have pictorial evidence - see photo below, taken in Thomasville of Pat and some young women he was traveling with, whom he introduced as his neices (actually, can-can dancers from the FSU dance program.) That is a real Toulouse-Lautrec behind them.

See what I mean? Famous-er and famous-er.