To mark my 20th year of being a cartoonist in Mississippi, I thought I’d dig out 20 tales from the past two decades. Some are funny. Some are serious. All tell the story of how I came to fall in love with this sometimes frustrating but always fascinating state we live in.
Senator Trent Lott and Senator Jim Jeffords (two of the Singing Senators) walked up onto porch of the Salter/Denley cabin. It’s on Founder’s Square, the epicenter of political gossip and hobnobbing at the Neshoba County Fair. The Fair is the self-proclaimed world’s largest house party and one of the last places where a politician can get up and give a speech for sport. Sid Salter, a longtime columnist and political expert in Mississippi, always has a steady stream of politicians coming to his cabin for lunch, Mrs. Denley’s banana pudding (to die for) and good conversation.
You can sit on a porch swing and get a Master’s Degree in Mississippi politics.
Senator Lott noticed me drawing and noticed I happened to be drawing him. I had Governor Fordice cursing career politicians then introducing his good friend Trent Lott, which he did. It was a moment of great irony. The senator noticed his square, block-shaped head and asked with a degree of incredulousness, “Is there anything my barber can do about my hair?
I shrugged my shoulders and said, “No sir. But I could draw it like Mike Moore’s”
Mike Moore was the State Attorney General and was known to love every camera he came across. Governor Fordice called him “Flashbulb Moore.” One day Moore complained about how I drew his hair. “I got a haircut,” he protested as he patted his head. The next time I drew it taller. He complained again. So I drew it even taller. And taller. See a pattern? Don’t think he did.
Senator Lott got the joke and thrust his hand up to make hair like Marge Simpson’s. And right as he did it, he stuck it into the ceiling fan.
CRACK!
The noise was grizzly. He wasn’t badly hurt but he pulled away quickly and held his hand. How he kept from howling is beyond me.
Apparently Gale Denley had a picture of that special moment. I thought, “Great. I killed Trent Lott.” I could see the headline now in the Washington Post, “Smart-ass cartoonist kills Senate Majority Leader.”
Senator Lott wasn’t killed and still has his hand. I still have a job and wasn’t arrested for first-degree hand maiming. I guess there’s not much else to report about that day long ago. But I miss Gale Denley. I enjoy my trips to Sid’s porch. I still hobnob and gossip. I eat too many lunches and spend time with friends. I look forward to Mrs. Denley’s banana pudding. My shoes are either caked with red dust or red mud. The stories get better as we all get older.
You never know what will happen on Sid Salter’s porch. But you can guarantee it will be a good story you’ll be telling over and over again.