Jackson's Lemon and Lee Out Lee In

Sometimes, though not often, a smooth solution appears for a thorny dilemma. In last week’s post, I wrote about the renaming of Robert E Lee Elementary School in Austin, Texas as a close-to-home example of the movement to erase things “Confederate” from the public domain--school names and mascots, statues in parks, on university malls, and on courthouse lawns, and the old Rebel battle flag just about anywhere but in a museum display.

So far, the political push has brought about changes in some places, and not in others. I’m half smiling as I report that Lee Elementary School in Austin will remain Lee Elementary School. But Robert E. is being replaced with Russell. It is now Russell Lee Elementary School. The school in question was built in the 1930’s, and lies just north of the University of Texas campus. Russell Lee lived in the neighborhood and served as the first Chairman of the UT Photography Department, a course of study which he initiated at the university. His own work with a camera is well known and he’s recognized as a Texas pioneer in the field of photography.

How nice is that little bit of serendipity and common sense on the part of the Austin School Board. Hoorah for them, and hoorah for whoever suggested Russell Lee as an acceptable compromise name. Regretfully, as with most compromises, the advocates for both sides will not be truly pleased with the outcome.

Moving on, how about this photo of Little Jackson sleeping. I know I’m not his daddy. But I am his daddy’s daddy.  I easily get all mushy looking at him and the daughters of our other son, especially when they’re sleeping.  What I really wonder, is what the little rascal is dreaming about to bring on that bare hint of a Mona Lisa-esque smile. I’d really like to know.

And now I wonder if ole Leonardo was painting his daughter’s daughter when he did the world famous portrait. If so, I bet Grandpa Leo been wondering for twenty years about her sleeping wisp of smile and just decided to let folks forever more worry over it, too. Such a smile on a sleeping babe is nothing but cute and precious. On the lips of a teenage girl, I expect it’s time for daddy to worry and keep the shotgun handy, or the crossbow in Leonardo’s era.

And a Jackson tidbit for a Civil War connection. We took Jackson to eat lunch yesterday at a café. His granny Nita gave him the lemon slice out of her ice tea. He grabbed it and licked the sour side all through lunch.

My Confederate historian friends will understand that our kids named Jackson correctly, because Stonewall Jackson is widely known for his love of sucking lemons during battle. I’ve twice visited Stonewall’s grave in Lexington, Virginia, and both times a bunch of bright yellow lemons were laying around his big tombstone inside the iron fence.

Finally, it’s Memorial Day Weekend, and today I want to remember the only two American soldiers from my generation’s war—the Vietnam War—who I knew by name, and who gave “their last full measure.” First was a classmate at Longview High School, Edwin Bodenheim, who was an Air Force pilot and died on a mission. The second was Robson Wills, an Army officer, who was my brother’s college roommate and close friend, who died in combat leading his infantry platoon.My hat is off and prayer said in the memory of their sacrifice.

And since Memorial Day began as Confederate Decoration Day, here’s to the memory of my great-great-great grandfather, William Gill, of the 6^th Mississippi Regiment, CSA, who died of his battle wounds in 1863.

William Gill’s death as a Rebel soldier is the reason the Todd side of my family landed in Texas. My granny remarried, and William's son, Elijah Gill, didn’t like his new stepdad. So, at age 12, he took Cricket--the family mule, and rode to East Texas from Chunky, Mississippi. Elijah must have been a tough little fart. He became a Texas Ranger for a couple of years and then a jailer. His daughter married a Todd. Here’s a photo of my mother, born Betty Lou Todd, who is now 90, and her great grandpa Elijah holding Baby Betty in 1925.

I hope everyone has a terrific holiday weekend and stops for a moment along the way to remember what this holiday is all about.

Grits, Toilets, and Robert E. Lee Elementary

Someone recently asked this question on the American Civil War Forum, an online site that includes discussion about most anything Civil War related:

What southern traditions really are in danger of disappearing as the political and cultural clashes continue over Confederate statues, schools named after Confederate heroes, and display of the battle flag?

One lady wrote in that manners are at great risk, evidenced by Southern children no longer being taught to address adults by “Sir” and “Ma’am.” She also mentioned children addressing adults as “Mr.” Phil or “Miss” Nita, putting an adult’s first name with a “Mr.” or a “Miss” to show respect, and yet not be too formal with an adult who the child knows well. Good reply, I thought.

My answer of a disappearing Southern tradition is grits. That is, grits for breakfast as a side serving.

Twenty years ago, our preacher told a great grits story. A salesman from the North was traveling through Mississippi, well off the interstate highway, and he stopped at a small town café for breakfast. He ordered breakfast eggs and bacon. When the plate arrived the eggs and bacon looked just fine, but a blob of mushy white stuff was on the plate, too.

He called the waitress over and asked what the white pile was. She answered, “Them’s grits.”

He replied, “I didn’t order grits. I don’t even know what they are. And I’m not going to pay for something I didn’t order.”

The waitress jutted out one hip, and patiently explained, probably while chewing gum and scratching her bubble of dyed red hair with her ballpoint pen.

“Honey, you don’t order grits, they just come, and you don’t have to pay for them, neither.”

Our preacher’s point was that God’s grace is like grits. You don’t have to order grace, it just comes. You don’t have to pay for grace, Jesus did that already, for all of us.

I’ve enjoyed retelling that little story for two decades now. I hope it was new to at least a few of you. But my point is not quite the same as our preacher’s.

Sometimes, the way folks behave, I fear that along with breakfast grits, human grace, not to be confused with God’s grace, is also disappearing.

I watch the abrasive political squabbles over silly stuff, like which school restrooms should be open to which kids. As an old high school principal, I have to laugh in dismay at the idea of teenagers showing their birth certificates to a potty-guard in order to gain entry to the approved toilet stall. To the politicians, I say, please, spare us all from this nonsense. Schools have more important matters, matters that actually matter, to impart to our teenagers.

And, in thinking what just happened in Austin, Texas, I shake my head sadly when a school that functioned just fine for sixty years while as known as Robert E. Lee Elementary, is suddenly renamed, banishing public recognition of venerable old General Lee.

I think I’m sensitive to both sides of the debate about how Confederate heroes should be remembered. I do see the huge irony of African-American kids going to schools named for Confederate generals. That’s not hard to recognize as inappropriate.

In the pre-integration years of the early 1960’s, my wife attended John B. Hood Junior High in Dallas, built during the centennial years of the Civil War to serve white kids. I can’t imagine the school board in Dallas, or anywhere, naming a new school built for black kids after General Hood or any other Confederate leader.

But, desegregation and white-flight--the departure of the white middle-class from urban school districts--including Dallas, have changed who is “qualified” to have his or her name over the doors of big city public schools.

That doesn’t really ruffle my feathers in anger. I just regret that so many white parents reacted to public school desegregation by moving to all-white suburbs, so their kids could attend all-white public schools, or all-white private schools. What a sad commentary that has been for fifty years now. What a lost opportunity to show the world that we are still a melting-pot nation, that black and white, they are all our kids, who should be sitting elbow to elbow in the same schools.  

Our wonderful nation would be better if every school was naturally integrated, full of students of all ethnic groups who live near each other in the same communities. Sadly, the white-flight train left the station half a century ago, and I don’t see it coming back.

I freely admit I feel sorry for Robert E. Lee, who is losing his shine as a role model for all Southern children. By all reports, he was an honorable man whose memory deserves better than to be erased off school signs. Nonetheless, if I was an African-American parent, for the obvious reasons, I’d not want my kids to attend a school named after General Lee.

I don’t feel so sorry for General Hood. I’m a student of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, and I’ve not yet forgiven him for the Battle of Franklin. It still breaks my heart to think about that day.

Back to breakfast grits. While the unordered white blob of mush may be on the way of the do-do bird, shrimp-and-grits are surging across the South. I’ve ordered them in nice restaurants from Washington, DC to my little hometown of Lockhart, Texas. Every chef seems to have his own take on how to season and garnish shrimp-and-grits to make his dish memorable.  

For our Mothers Day lunch a couple of weeks ago, Nita and I followed a shrimp-and-grits recipe from Southern Living magazine. Salsa verde, heavy on the basil, much like pesto sauce, was the crowning touch to our crustacean and hominy delight.  That colorful photo is our Mothers Day meal.

And the nap that followed the shrimp-and-grits lunch wasn’t so bad either.

TMI

Sometimes, less is a lot better than a lot. TMI. Too Much Information. 

Historians love TMI. It lets them cherry-pick just the best pieces of historical fruit to include in their books. Writers of historical fiction sometimes hate TMI, because having too many known facts sets us on a restricted plot line.

Sometimes discovery of one sentence telling of a scantily recorded bit of history is grist for a better chapter than is the diligent study of a whole book of detailed facts about a more important happening.

For instance: On May 6, 1864, Longstreet’s corps, led by the Texas Brigade, arrived at the Battle of the Wilderness just in time to literally save the day for General Lee’s Confederate army. The Texas Brigade was “first in.” It was such an important day in the Civil War and the role of the Texans was so vital to the outcome, that every book about the battle includes a full description of the Texas Brigade’s last-minute arrival, rapid deployment, and heavy casualties. Over the last 150 years, I bet more than a hundred writers have written tens of thousands of words about the Texas Brigade’s performance on May 6, 1864.

That meant when I described the Wilderness Battle in Defiant Honor, I had to keep my narrative tightly in accord with the well-established facts. I admit it is fun to dig around in several books, and primary source accounts that are easily found online. It’s fun to pare down TMI until I’m left with a set of details that fit my characters’ actions and my novelist’s need to tell an exciting story. But, TMI makes writing historical fiction more akin to detective work than freewheeling writing.

But not always. Jump ahead just one month to June 17^th, to the next time the Texas Brigade charged the enemy. I’ve found just one modern historian who has written about it. In 1970, in Hood’s Texas Brigade: Lee’s Grenadier Guard, Harold Simpson wrote, “Annoyed by the constant sharpshooting, skirmishing, and shelling to their front…the Texas Brigade spontaneously charged from their earthworks with one of the grandest yells heard in a long time.”

Now that’s a description that this writer of historical fiction can run with. It’s not an event that a dozen eyewitnesses recorded for newspapers back home, nor one that old veterans wrote about in their foggy memories decades after the war ended. It’s just a bare-bones account that leaves me lots of creative wriggle room. The term spontaneous  provides a rare opportunity for my fictitious characters to jump out front.

Writing fiction is full of spontaneity. Fiction authors just follow their noses and create the plot as they go. History writers are hide-bound to do the opposite. Historians have to stick with the known facts. When they get spontaneous and start speculating, they lose their academic credibility, and their next book doesn’t sell well.

Writers of historical fiction are in a nice middle ground. We have to stay within the known historical facts, but we’re free to toss in fictitious people and fictitious actions by real people, as long as we don’t mess with the known history.

So, today I’m putting Captain McBee’s company into the cauldron again. They’ve been in battle after battle, their numbers have been halved and halved again by disease and battle casualties. The Confederate army is down, but not out.

The remaining men in Company C are lean and mean, accustomed to deprivation and hardship. They are committed to staying the course, but secretly fearful the end is near. They are not dumb, they have eyes, and their bellies are empty more often than not. After three years of soldiering, they have little patience for bullshit or Yankees.

It’s a fine time for High Private Rafe Fulton, Lieutenant Hubbard, and Corporal Jason Smith—all fictitious soldiers—to lead the Texas Brigade’s historical June 17^th spontaneous charge at a little-known place known as Howlett’s Farm. The Yankees better watch out, because my spontaneous juices are flowing.

You Are NOT Going to Cut Off My Legs

I almost let it slip by, again. Today, May 6th, is a day of personal remembrance for me. I don’t indulge in the Chinese sort of ancestor worship. I mean, it’s not a religion for me. But I have adopted one old McBride as a personal project. It’s hard to honor a man who died in 1879, never married, and has no direct descendants.

If you’ve been reading my blog posts for a while, you might know already who I’m talking about. The ancestor is my great, great, great-uncle John J McBride, who was a lieutenant, then captain, then acting major of the 5^th Texas Infantry Regiment, CSA, in the Civil War.

He’s the man who inspired John J McBee, the main character in my three Civil War novels about the 5^th Texas regiment and the war in Virginia. I affectionately call him Uncle JJ.

Uncle JJ was twice wounded in two of the great battles of the Civil War. He was first shot in the shoulder late in the afternoon on August 30, 1862 at the Battle of Second Manassas (or Second Bull Run, as we Southerners prefer to call it).

Two years later, having soldiered through the 1863 battles at Gettysburg and Chickamauga unharmed, Uncle JJ was severely wounded in both legs, near his hips, at the Battle of the Wilderness early in the morning on May 6, 1864. 

That was 152 years ago today. 

I find Uncle JJ’s war experiences to be fascinating, but war service records are only a skeleton of facts. I wanted to bring his tale alive for others, but not just as bare-bones history. 

So, I’ve built personalities for the real-life McBride’s in the Civil War--Uncle JJ, his widowed mother Elizabeth, his brother James who was a Confederate cavalryman, and his real-life manservant Levi (his slave), who now has his own Wikipedia page for what he did during the Civil War. It’s worth a look. I even created a fictional love interest for JJ with a saucy woman named Faith.

Those books are why I started writing this blog, and why I keep putting out new posts.

So, around sundown today, I’m going to sit on our back porch with several other McBride’s. At least one or two of us will lift a cold Lone Star beer in honor of Uncle JJ, while I retell the story of the old soldier who 152 years ago today told the field surgeon:

“You are not going to cut off my legs. I am not going to die from this wound. The Yankee bullet hasn’t been made that’s going to kill JJ McBride.”

Or so it was reported in the Houston newspaper a month or so later.

Snarky and stubborn, Uncle JJ lived until 1879, walking on both legs after a long year of recovery, to die at the age of 60.

Here’s a photo of Uncle JJ’s grave in Palestine, Texas, and a post-war oil painting portrait of him.

I Hate Funerals, But...

I hate funerals.  I guess we are all supposed to.

Yet, to this day I regret that when a very good friend died nearly 30 years ago, a suicide victim, his family chose not to have any sort of service after his remains were cremated. The circle never closed. Whatever value or meaning his life had was never addressed to those of us who cared for him. It was a bad decision.

Yesterday we attended the service of a cancer victim, a wonderful lady who taught high school Spanish for many years and spent her 15 years of retirement volunteering in all sorts of Christian and civic activities. Her name was Pat Allred and her chosen portrait for the funeral service bulletin was at age 70, right before her cancer hit, standing in a jumpsuit and harness, waiting to take her first and only leap from an airplane. She was good-hearted and vibrant, a special person to many, certainly including my whole family.

When I was writing my first Civil War novel, Whittled Away, I made one of the two main characters born of a Mexican mother and a Scottish father. That character’s name is Jesús McDonald, and he is still probably my favorite character in all my novels. Anyway, I would sometimes want him to speak a few words or a phrase in Spanish, and Pat Allred was my go-to resource to see if the computer and I had it right. She seemed flattered to be asked, and I was really grateful for her help.

Pat was Episcopalian so her funeral was in her church sanctuary. In Lockhart, the Episcopal Church is the oldest church building in a town full of old churches. The sanctuary is quaint and small and dates to the 1860’s. Too many of us crammed into too few pews, but no one fussed about it. The music and the liturgy was high church, with a soft crystal-clear solo of Ava Maria sung during Communion. The sermon-eulogy was brief and well-spoken. The last song probably didn’t fit, but we all joined in to sing “I’ll Fly Away” to send Pat off.

Then we went outside to the little garden next to the sanctuary for her sons to put the brightly painted Mexican ceramic jar containing her ashes into the niche already holding her husband’s ashes.

Finally, most of us walked a block around the corner and had a reception-wake in an old storefront that is now Lockhart’s only wine bar-music venue. I don’t know if the whole thing was pure Texas, but it was pure Pat.