The farther I live from Mississippi, the more Mississippi I feel.
Three decades ago, in my first job, I worked with a guy from Texas who was ever happy to talk about what he saw as the many inherent superiorities of that state. If Texas is so great, I finally asked him, what are you doing here in Mississippi?
“Missionary work,” he responded.
He has long since gone back to Texas, and my path has carried me steadily north. Since 1998 I’ve lived on Long Island, which I probably couldn’t have found on a map before my first trip here that year. It’s a perfectly serviceable place and allows me to have a yard and enough square footage to house my considerable stuff. Manhattan, where I work, would not.
But there’s no mistaking it for Mississippi, just as there’s no mistaking me for a New Yorker.
I lived in Nashville for eight years and never became a Tennessean, either, though I suppose I could have at least passed for one. Just as, in some respects, Tennessee passed for Mississippi - but a Mississippi with more people, more money, and more scenic views.
I felt no particular need to proclaim my Mississippi-ness; I had, in effect, just moved next door. I still pretty much sounded the same as everybody else, looked the same, ate the same food.
Not now.
Now I’m the guy with the accent, asking the waitress at the local diner if they serve grits (they do!), looking for turnip greens and black-eyed peas in the grocery store. And I’ve bought two sweatshirts and a long-sleeve T-shirt proclaiming my alma mater, Ole Miss, the first time I‘ve worn anything like that since I walked off campus more than 30 years ago.
I even have an Ole Miss mouse pad at work. And in the basement hangs a Mississippi flag, in bold (though private) display. I might even make more use of it, if it didn’t incorporate the Confederate battle flag. I have considerable ambivalence about that feature.
I talk up Mississippi when I can, looking for positive news items and pointing to current (Eli Manning) or past (Elvis, Eudora Welty) claims to fame. I don’t deny the lingering issues of racism and its impact, but I note the progress and point out that Mississippi (and the South in general) doesn’t hold the patent on problems like that.
I go home when possible to get my Mississippi booster shots from family and friends, to eat gumbo at the Jackson County Fair, a shrimp and oyster po-boy at Big R’s, or meat loaf and peach cobbler at CS’s. I soak up the hospitality and ambiance, and try to bring some of it back with me when I leave.
And I’ve made plans, when my days on earth are over, for one final trip to Mississippi.
And so might come the same kind of question I used to ask my friend from Texas: If Mississippi is so great, what am I doing here in New York?
Not missionary work. I’m not looking for converts.
I’m an ambassador.
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