The Old View
Starting today, I have an office. And to be honest, I’m pretty happy about it. At one point in my career, I would have killed for one. Now I am just glad I am inside the building. But since I looked out the same window for 16 years, I thought I’d tip my hat to my old view by recounting some of my top memories.
1. I saw a deer come back to life. A guy had one in the back of his truck that he had shot. It wasn’t dead. MSWFP officers had to come and put it down.
2. I watched Hurricane Katrina blow through Jackson. The parking garage on the Capitol Towers screams like bad brakes when the winds get above a certain speed. It screamed like a banshee that day.
3. Governor Fordice would walk past every day walking his dog Lance. The governor, still pissed about Bert Case’s ambush, was packing a pistol. I put a sign in my window that read, “Marshall Ramsey’s office” and had an arrow pointing to my old boss David Hampton’s window.
4. I’d watch people go back and forth to their jobs. I made up lives for them. It was fun to watch them change, get older, get fatter and thinner and move on with their lives.
5. The little office across from me was the Christian Science Reading Room. And then part of trial lawyer Don Evan’s office. And now it’s Scurlock’s donuts.
6. It was fun to watch Don Evans peek through the blinds when an ambulance would go past.
7. I saw traffic cops take down a man who was giving them lip. One of the Meter Maids should have been a Navy SEAL.
8. I watched them brick Capitol Street one brick at a time. A dude that looked like he was from Swamp People cut every single brick.
9. I remember great conversations with David Hampton, Sid Salter, Jim Ewing, John Hammack , Eric Stringfellow and Joe White. They’re all gone from the paper now. John has passed away. I miss them all.
10. I remember sitting back there by myself like I was in exile after being made part-time. By that time, I had cleaned all my personal belongings out. It was just a space at that point.
11. The old tornado siren used to go off and rattle my fillings. It doesn’t work any more. Being next to that much glass during a storm was unnerving at times.
12. I remember my kids driving by on the bus on the way to field trips. They’d love to see their dad at work. I felt like a fish in an aquarium, but it meant a lot to them.
13. From that spot, I created nearly 5,000 cartoons. I was a Pulitzer Finalist twice. Named a top 100 employee of the company. And made a difference in the community. It was a good spot.
I wheeled my drawing table over to my new place yesterday and have set up shop. I love my new space and think it will be the start a new chapter of creativity. But as I move excitedly move forward, I look back one last time and say thanks to my old window for the world that it showed me.
The artist sees everything that everybody else sees, but sees more, including connections, humor, paradox, and foibles. The writer knows how to express these views in a way that helps others to observe and draw inferences.
The cartoonist, however, has a special gift, that of putting all of the above into a frame whose whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Thanks, Marshall Ramsey, for being our eyes–and sometimes our conscience.
Such a prime example of blooming where we are planted, Marshall ! Bloom ON in your new space ! May God bless every step you make, every drawing, every word you pen as I know you thank him for each one !
A forever Ramsey men fan !
A beautiful collection of memories.
Years ago in Natchez, I gave an older black gentleman an intelligence test. His overalls were worn, tattered and clean. He didn’t have many teeth left and his hands were thick and calloused from 40 years of cutting pulp wood. He had lost his right leg below the knee after he cut his calf deeply with his chain saw. He told me he had stuffed a rag soaked with kerosene down into the cut and kept on working. Infection set in quickly and home cures couldn’t stop it so by the time ladies from church visited him to bring covered dishes the smell was unmistakable. The Christian ladies took him to the hospital. The hospital took his leg. Several months later he was sitting in my office to be evaluated for his potential to be retrained.
He was hard to understand with so many teeth gone but we got along well and he did his best to answer the test questions. I have never forgotten his response to a question that gauges abstract thinking: ”What do a poem and a statue have in common?” The highest score was given for the answer “they are both art”. The old man thought a spell before answering.
Then he answered, “They both hold memories”. I gave him three points but I’d have given a thousand points if I could have. This answer from a nearly sixty year old, illiterate pulp wood worker was profound and it lives in my mind and heart today. It made me see the world and myself differently.
Beyond art, satire, political commentary and humor, your drawings hold memories. That’s a very good thing.
That’s beautiful. Thanks.
Marshall, I do hope your stairs do nothing but go up from here. You have been on the down escalator for so long there. I pray God will energize you and give you more new insights as you press forward to the mark He has for you. Love you. CardinalLady
New office equals a new view of the world. I’ll just sit back and enjoy what creativity comes out. BTW, thanks for the memories. Which just started the brain to ask – What are the readers and yours favorite cartoons. I have two, the one of Jerry Clower passing and the one of the MS State player Nick Bell?) passing. Both were a tribute to their lives.