I Called On Miss Gandy Yesterday

There are some occasions when all that was best about the "Old South" floods back over your awareness like a gentle changing tide on the Mississippi river.  You just sense the lift and the inescapable  pleasant contentment  that it brings.  Only someone who knew her and loved her can ever truly understand the bittersweet experience.  The "Old South" will always be feminine in our remembrance, because, I suppose,  Southern Ladies epitomized all about which I am speaking.  There was a gentleness, a sense of propriety, a firm conviction in the "way things ought to be", that characterized the externals of Old Southern society.  And it was not the least bit hypocritical, though it is easy to think it was by those who never knew her.  But that which made the gentleness, the sense of propriety and conviction more than mere gloss, was the tempered steel which provided its foundation.  The Old South, at its best, was the conviction that civilization meant moral conviction and apart from that conviction, barbarity reigned.  And barbarity simply was not allowed.  It 'twasn't nice.  Nowhere was that more evident than in Southern womanhood and hence, the Old South is "she."

I had an occasion like this yesterday when I paid a social call on "Miss Evelyn" Gandy.  She is certainly of an indeterminate age.  She was tied with a lady in Tennessee to be only the second woman ever to be elected to a state Lt. Governership back in the '60's when I was in my teens.  Her political career was one of national dimensions.  She was appointed to the U. S. Naval Academy Board of Visitors by President Jimmy Carter.  She was very nearly elected governor of Mississippi later on.  Yet Miss Gandy has never strayed one inch from being a Southern Lady  and what that means more than anything else, is a sense of family and community.  I and my family were neighbors to her and her family, and as such, there is an intangible bond that unites us, both between our respective generations and the generations that have preceded us, because in the Old South, the past is never dead.

There are certain expectations when one pays a social call .  Our appointment was for "Saturday morning, sometime around 10 am."  Which meant, that I was to ring her door bell as the second hand swept through the 12.  One does not ever cause a  Southern lady to wait although the reciprocal relation is not binding at all. But to be early is equally questionable.  One must not be presumptive.  Further, though it was already 95 degrees outside on its way to 101 in the afternoon, yet attention must be paid to dress.  A casual social call means that one does not wear a coat and tie but the idea of blue jeans and tee shirt would have been a disgrace.  Neither does one make a social call empty handed, so I had a potted plant from my mother's porch as a house gift.  It spoke of the the tie between our families, the same tie which brought Miss Gandy to my mother's funeral a few months previous. 

Miss Gandy met me at the door dressed as a proper lady would receive a gentleman: her hair perfectly done, with make up and a summer dress of exact propriety.  Her old country house has been modernized but the high ceilings and antique furnishings were not the result of remodeling, they were the continuity of generations.  And it was these generations which we discussed.  No one could give me a more far reaching assessment of the direction that Mississippi is headed than she, nor of where the property values in our particular area were headed.  So we spoke of things near and far.  But the conversation was never in terms of business.  Property in our community was addressed in terms of family:  the "old Travis place" or Mr. Grayson's property, or the land which used to belong to the Wainwrights.  You see, the community was what mattered and community and property are never separated in Southern thinking.  The soil is or was as much a part of the family as the children.  To let a property "run down" was to concede the degradation of the family's moral fiber.  To live apart from one's neighbors was to generate questions about one's character.  What mattered was community and the stability that community brings.  And, rich or poor, personal pride and integrity was what was respected.  Sitting in those comfortable old chairs with a bright woman who still maintains her office in her law firm, but who yet is capable of evoking that fast receding society, reminded me again of how much we have lost.

There are those, usually who did not grow in that era, whose views of the South are colored only by the caricatures most often used to depict it.  This is especially true of Mississippi.  It is the only state still under the 1964 Civil Rights act even though it has a higher percentage of African Americans in positions of authority in the state than virtually any other.  And there is no denying the truth of the bigotry present in the old days of "separate but equal" segregation.  It was never separate and it was never equal.  But I can remember as a 10 year old boy, sitting on a curb  with a similarly aged black boy, selling newspapers to passing cars in down town Hattiesburg.  We would talk and race to the cars who indicated that they wanted a paper, first one there made the sale.  We lived in different worlds although my family was just as impoverished as his.  But that did not prevent an ease of intermingling that was far more respectful in most cases than one would realize.

Miss Gandy and I spoke of Mr. Vernon Dahmer, another neighbor, whose house was firebombed by out of state KKK red necks and Mr. Dahmer killed.  They have put up an historical marker in front of his house now and I will stop and take a picture of it before I return home.  I will never forget the night that it happened, nor the crowd, whites and blacks that gathered at the site.  Mr. Dahmer was wealthy by Mississippi standards and owned a saw mill.  My father did some work for him.  And he would often stop by our house and visit with my mother and dad.  In these later years, his children would visit with my mother as she sat on the front porch and when she died, there was a knock on the door and there stood Mr. Dahmer's son with two bags of ice, for the family to use during the time of gathering.  That is the way it was and it was not all bad.

My call on Miss Gandy lasted almost exactly one hour.  There is a point where one must not be overly familiar.  That's all part of it also.  There is a balance to social grace which allows for many things to be done and not only not be a burden, but a delight.  In closing our conversation I asked if she has commissioned her biography or commenced an autobiography yet.  She laughed in that gracious self-depreciating manner which acknowledges nothing more than the fact that  one does not dwell too much on one's own achievements, and told me that many others are asking the same question.  I replied that it would be an honor to some day possess an autographed copy.  I know, because that is what neighbors do, that if it ever gets written, I shall have one.  It will be a story well worth telling about an extraordinary world and an extraordinary woman who made a difference in it, a world that is probably gone for good. 

With the passing of that world though, the last vestiges of true civility may be lost forever, and for me,  that means this world is not entirely a better place.