Matters Familia - Photos of Annet Munger Pritchartt

Click on photos to enlarge.

Matters Familia - The Fabric of Time

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been going through the house my great grandfather built in 1900 on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.

He was a purser on the Anchor Steamship Line. When he settled in Natchez, he wanted a house from which he could watch the river he loved so dearly. His great niece and my cousin, Annabelle Rupert, found the following items about him: 

Name: William Howard Pritchartt. Newspaper article from St. Louis Newspaper about 1885 "SURPRISE - Among the many gallant and courteous gentlemen who do service in the offices of the various steamboats coming to this city, and particularly those of the Anchor Line, there are none perhaps more courteous, polite and efficient than Mr. W.H. Pritchartt, of the steamer Arkansas City. 

As a proof of his popularity, and the esteem in which he is held, especially by the ladies who are fortunate enough to secure passage on this boat, Mr. Pritchartt was presented, on the last trip to Natchez, with a beautiful stool or ottoman cover, exquisitely finished, and wrought in various colors. To say that the fortunate gentleman was surprised would be putting it mildly. 

The fair donors of the handsome present were Mr. Capt. C.B. Ziegler, Mrs. Oscar Moore, and Miss Anne Mounger, all of St. Louis. These ladies are making the round trip on the elegant steamer. Mr. Pritchartt is proud of his treasure, but cannot realize how the ladies managed to resurrect Joseph's many colored coat of ancient fame, with which the dainty piece of work is finished." 

 Excerpt from his obit in 1934 - Natchez Democrat: 

". . . For a time he was connected with the Anchor Line steamboats on the Mississippi river. When he came to Natchez in Sept, 1889, he went into business with the late Captain S.E. Rundle. In 1905, with W.R. Wade, he organized the firm of W.H. Pritchartt & Company and was connected with it until 1916. ............" William Howard Pritchartt was born in St. Louis in 1856 and died in Natchez MS 1934. He married the lady Annie Munger that made him the stool. 

His daughter, my great aunt, Annet, lived there her whole life. She was a spinster lady who died when she was about 97 years old, way back around 1992. Our family is cursed with sentimentality, sometimes to the point of -- well, let's just say -- eccentricity? 

 Even though my brother has lived there for the past ten years or so, none of Annet's things had been touched. "Oh, I hate to get rid of them," he'd say. "They remind me of coming over here when I was little." The clothes were still in the closet in her bedroom; her shoes tucked neatly away beneath a table by the door; her hairbrushes, jewelry, medications, powders and creams still sitting on the dressing table. And over all was a thick coating of dust and spider webs. It reminded me of Miss Haversham's house in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. 

So I finally decided to take matters into my own hands, and I've been cleaning out her things. It has been a journey both of adventure and discovery, but one that leaves me sad at going through the things that tell of the life of one I loved so dearly, disposing of what no one would want, and saving all the flotsam that would tell stories of our family's past. 

Annet was a woman before her time -- keenly intelligent and independent in an age where neither was particularly encouraged. She went to Stanton College for Ladies here in Natchez, and then on to Barnard and Columbia University in New York where she majored in history. After school, she took a trip to Europe, alone, sending home postcards and letters that had all been lovingly saved and preserved. 

Although history was her major, she had a knack for mathematics, which she taught at Braden School in Natchez for 40 years. I've been told that through her tutoring efforts many a boy was able to enter West Point with grades so high, they weren't required to take math. I remember she once told me that the lowest grade she'd ever made was in calculus, and that was an A-minus.  Alas, I didn't share her talent with numbers. I still count on my fingers, can't do simple subtraction and division is a soul-sucking impossibility. 

But I loved her dearly. I remember many a time going over to her house and entering to the smell of homemade applesauce on homemade melba toast. I found the grinder she used to grind the apples with, scraping it off the sides into a big pot she'd set on the stove with spices. She made pull taffy and fudge and always came for Thanksgiving with a batch of uncooked cranberry relish with orange rind. 

Animals seemed to sense that her house would be a refuge, and even two of my own pets moved to her house, just because. One day she went out onto the back porch to find a fully grown rooster crowing on the top step. As it turns out, the neighbor behind her, Mr. Logan, had owned that chicken and planned to make dinner of him. He escaped with his head intact, however, and went straight to Annet's house. 

 We brought him to our house and he lived the happy life as head of his own little harem for many years to come. We named him Mr. Logan. 

Yesterday, I went into a trunk in the hallway and found scores of little Victorian dresses -- dresses that Annet had worn as a child, a Mardi Gras outfit dating back probably to about 1904, and even the dress she wore at graduation. That's Annet in the dress on the front porch of the house. 

 I'm terrified to disturb the items, and am trying to determine what should be done with them. I suspect one of the small girl's dresses is the one she's seen wearing in a book of photographs that was published by Dr. Thomas Gandy called "Norman's Natchez." She's about two years old in the photograph and is a beautiful, angelic-looking child in a white dress. 

 As soon as I have access to a scanner, I'll scan it for you, Readers, to see. A woman in Natchez whose name I can't recall made a doll that looked just like the photo. It's nearly life-sized, and I'm thinking it would be really nice to dress the doll in the original dress and donate it to the Natchez Historic Foundation or the Mississippi Historic Archives. In the meantime, I'll dig further and let you know what treasures I find. *Thanks to Annabelle Rupert for sending the photos of Annet.

So Rose the Dead

I'm cleaning out things that should've been cleaned years ago at my great aunt's house on the bluff. In my cleaning adventures yesterday, I ran across a typewritten copy of the following article, whose date I could not ascertain. It is so delicious, I don't think it needs further introduction. Enjoy:


Chicago Herald Examiner
A Sunday Edition

Culture of Natchez
Old Mansions Invaded by Tourists
By Thomas Craven

The spirit of the old South, the languorous, magnetic South, lingers on in the little city of Natchez. Situated on the Mississippi, with wooded hills and a magnificent view of the river and the low green fields of Louisiana, Natchez is waging its last fight against the irresistible forces of the changing world. As a commercial center, the town is a tomb, a plaintive echo of past opulence, as the sacred citadel of culture with its aristocratic embellishments. It is a landmark in the history of American manners. Here uncontaminated by the encroachments of modern life, you will find mansions, gardens and great estates and the ancestral pride which is the outstanding glory of the ancient regime.

Natchez is famous for its gardens, and that fame is abundantly justified on every hand, but the old houses, with two or three exceptions, are architectural messes. The houses erected from the fruits of slave labor and in the old days staffed with a retinue of black servants are enormous structures with endless balconies or galleries ornamented profusely with grilled ironwork.

You will see in these time-eaten mansions, some of the finest extant specimens of English silver, old chairs and tables of excellent design and incomparable craftsmanship, and occasionally, family portraits painted by real artists such as Audubon and Gilbert Stuart.

The peculiar appeal of Natchez is not based on the intrinsic excellence of its showplaces, nor can it be attributed to any superiority in matters of taste and artistic discrimination. It arises from the legendary appeal of the Old South; and that lure, critically examined, is rooted in snobbery and fantastic notions of superior breeding. Snobbery, of course, is not the exclusive possession of the South. We find it permeating the cultural aspirations of Americans of every locality driving our heightened artists into complete subservience to European standards. But as concerns the actual traditions and deposits of slave-holding lords, the South is still esteemed as the cream of American culture.

For this reason, Natchez attracts to its hallowed atmosphere an annual pilgrimage of culture seekers. Conscious of its superiority and literally bankrupt, the town, in plain language, has been forced to sell its most cherished possession, its culture, to outsiders with money to spend. Every spring a week is set aside for the exploitation of inherited treasures and family pride. The far-famed old mansions are thrown open to the public – admission twenty-five cents: visitors are fed and quartered at reasonable rates in houses which, some years ago, could not be penetrated for love or money: the skeleton in every is exhibited for a small consideration; and there are other sources of revenue – costume balls, parades, festivals, and garden parties.

Last spring the PILGRIMAGE netted the town about $40,000 and enabled the mortified aristocrats to carry on another twelve months.

After the curiosity seekers have departed, laden with cultural baggage and sometimes with antique chairs and soup tureens, the aristocrats close the doors of their august abodes and meditate on the glories of a vanished society -- the life described by Stark Young in his fable. SO ROSE THE DEAD.

I couldn't ascertain the date of the publication, which I estimate at sometime in the 1930s.  "So Red the Rose" was published in 1935, so it had to be after that.

The author, Thomas Craven was an art critic with a decidedly jaundiced eye.  You can read about him here.

Enjoy!  It's kind of mean, which is probably why I find it so delicious.

*Photo "Saragossa" by Lee England, Echoes Photographic Gallery

Green Sky at Morning

I love Sunday mornings. There's no place I have to be, nothing pressing that has to be accomplished. So this past Sunday morning, I was all piled up on the sofa playing on the computer. It was supposed to rain that day. I knew about it because I've got this application on the computer called Weather Bug that alerts me whenever there's something going on.

If there's a weather alert, Weather Bug lets me know by chirping like a cricket. I love the music of crickets. It's peaceful and pretty and reminds me of summer evenings sleeping on the screen porch at Annet's house. My little Weather Bug cricket had been chirping away all morning, and I was thinking how it would be doubly nice, not only having a Sunday morning, but having a nice, rainy Sunday to stay inside and be a bum and listen to the rain on the tin roof at Shantybellum. I'd spent the previous 27 years living in Los Angeles, and the thing I missed more than anything about living in the South was rain and thunder and the smell of ozone in the air after a cloudburst.

It was about 9:45 a.m., and I was thinking maybe I should get up and see about starting the day when I heard Tommy in the next room.

"Uh, oh."

I peeked around the corner to see what was wrong. He was staring out the window towards the bluff. I looked to see what he was looking at and had a very distinct this-does-not-compute moment. I couldn't see anything outside. Nothing. It was as dark as I've ever seen it, even in the middle of the night. Suddenly, we were enveloped in a deafening roar. Rain was blowing down in sheets. Thunder was intense and constant. Then the hail arrived, ranging in size from marbles to ping pong balls. And the air turned a strange shade of green.

I've heard about green skies. They usually signal a tornado and/or hail. I dashed into the bathroom, the only room in the house without a window, and jumped into the tub.

"Wow," said Tommy. "I can't believe this wind. You should see the front-porch swing. It's sticking straight out...."

"Get away from the window," I shouted, "and get in here!"

Men. Here we are, about to die and all he wants to do is stand and look at how cool the storm is.

Finally the spell was broken and he came back into the bathroom with me and we waited. The noise was incredible. In a couple of seconds, the lights went out. We sat in the dark and listened to the roar of hail on tin and thunder and wind. After only a few minutes, though, it quieted down. Gingerly, we emerged from our shelter to look outside. Green had given way to a strange sort of amber. Water seeped in under the front door. I opened it to look outside and a pile of hail collapsed inward. Leaves were plastered against the house. The streets were completely covered in tattered leaves and hail.

After awhile the phone rang. It was a friend of Tommy's up in Indianola who had heard about the storm. Trees were down all over town. I grabbed my keys to check Annet's house on the bluff. Everything seemed okay from the front, so I decided to drive down the alley in back to see what was what in the backyard.

That's when I noticed the Foley's house, directly behind Annet's. We had been neighbors of the Foleys when I was growing up on Linton Avenue. We played with their children, and Glen, who spent many weekends with us at our cabin in the woods, still comes to see my dad when he's in town. Like my own parents, Glen's parents are growing old. My father's muscled frame and the strength that had awed Glen as a child has given way to the atrophy of aging, and the parents who were our heroes are now fragile and fallible.

A huge tree had blown down, taking out the back of their kitchen and crushing the carport with the two cars in it.

I went to the door and rang the bell. Mrs. Foley's shellshocked visage peered out. She looked very small.

"Hi, Mrs. Foley. I'm Elodie Pritchartt. Are y'all okay?"

"We're all right," she said. "But come see my kitchen."

The tree had come through the back of the kitchen, which was where she and Mr. Foley had been standing.

"I saw it coming through the window and I dove underneath the table," she said, "and yelled for Bob to run. I was under the table and could feel hail hitting my back."

I can't imagine how frightened she must have been. Fortunately neither of them was hurt. It will be quite a job removing the fallen tree.

I'd heard of straight-line winds, and that's what this storm seemed to indicate, at least to me. The trees down all over town seemed to have been shoved, not twisted, and all in the same direction. On Monday, I saw the following item in the paper:

INTENSE DOWNBURST IN ADAMS COUNTY MS...

TIME OF EVENT: 945 AM 5/3/09
LOCATION: NATCHEZ
RATING: WINDS 80-90 MPH
FATALITIES: 0
INJURIES: 0

SUMMARY OF DAMAGES:
INTENSE DOWNBURST WINDS ASSOCIATED WITH A LARGE BOWING LINE OF
SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS IMPACTED MUCH OF THE CITY OF NATCHEZ. HUNDREDS
OF TREES, BOTH HARDWOOD AND SOFTWOODS, WERE SNAPPED AND UPROOTED
ALONG WITH HUNDREDS OF LIMBS. TREES FELL ON AT LEAST 41 STRUCTURES
INCLUDING HOMES AND OUTBUILDINGS, CAUSING MAJOR OR MINOR DAMAGE.
MANY POWERLINES WERE SNAPPED BY THE WINDS OR TREES/LIMBS FALLING ON
THEM. THE DAMAGE WAS SCATTERED OVER A LARGE AREA AND MORE INDICATIVE
OF STRAIGHT LINE WINDS.

http://www.weather.gov/view/prodsByState...

And today, I learned a new term -- derecho. A derecho is defined by Wikipedia here. And ABC news reported on our Sunday morning derecho here.

It's now Wednesday, and although we got our electricity back by about 7:30 that evening, my father still has none. Several main thoroughfares through town remained closed yesterday while crews continue to removed debris and repair electric lines.

My friend Courtney Taylor called yesterday to say that our friend Sessions Hootsell had a funny story about the storm. His housekeeper had been at church when the storm hit, and was outside cooking chicken on several small, portable Coleman barbeque grills. When the wind came through, the grills lifted up and levitated in the air. Then the chicken levitated, too. Then, whoosh!

"Chickens flying! Chickens flying!" she was reported to have screamed. Well, I'd have screamed, too. I wasn't even outside, but I was ascared aplenty, and if a plucked chicken had come sailing through the house, crying, "The sky is falling," I'd have taken its word for it.

*photos and post by Elodie Pritchartt

A Shanty. And a Delta Blues Epiphany

As promised, Tommy, Courtney and I returned from our road trip through the Delta and now we're ready to share what we did and saw. We had a blast. I took pictures, and Courtney wrote about it. In addition to being drop-dead gorgeous, Courtney Taylor is a talented gourmet, writer, actress and all-around smart Southern girl. I've known her since she was a kid, but this was the first time I'd gotten together with her in a professional capacity. Okay, well, I have a hard time thinking of it as professional since we had so much fun. Is that allowed?

And Tommy? Well, I'll let Courtney tell you about Tommy, our hometown boy who found beauty in the music of grief at the end of a man's life on a Lousiana levee, how it led him to Nashville and back again, where he works to make it mark new beginnings for the people and the place he calls home.

Read the article here in this month's Country Roads Magazine.

*photo and post by Elodie Pritchartt

Cherry Grove

All around the old place,
the dead visit. 

The day he opened up the trunk
of that sweetgum tree,
and before we saw the
horseshoe hanging inside,
something brushed against
my face. 

 I heard a nickering
far away, and the smell of oiled
leather and candlewax.

A few days later Lloyd
found an anvil half
inside an oak tree, back
by the old barn. It was ten
feet up that tree, and
the color of storm clouds
when the air smells like metal
and electricity breaks
it right in two. 

They say
a shipwright lived
there once. I know.
I've heard him hammering.

That was before the rumor
of the slave revolt across
the road. Nineteen men killed,
tortured, all for the sake
of a child's tale. A child
named Obey. 

 No excuses.

The crape myrtle we cleared from
the back forty bled claret-
colored sap, and stuck inside
one old, stubborn knot
was a skeleton key.

The silver lying all around,
tarnished forks and bone-
china plates. Daddy said
she burnt that house a’purpose,
took the tram to the train
and left town. 

Nobody ever saw her again.
But to be frank, I don't
believe it.

I saw her walking in the fog
one morning, early. Picking bones,
rearranging bricks,
breaking twigs over and over.

She saw me too.
We've been talking
back and forth, she and I,
between the branches.

*photo and post by Elodie Pritchartt

mmmhellooo?

Lots of strange goings on in our little corner of the universe lately. Friday morning I was leaving my dad's house around 10:30 a.m. Daddy was doing his usual thing -- pushing stuff around on the tractor and playing the part of Eddie Albert in Green Acres. When I pulled out of the driveway there was a little silver convertible mustang idling across from our driveway. The person driving the car was obviously a man, white, and fat with a large, blonde wig and sunglasses. For a moment, I could've sworn it was Betty Butterfield.

When I drove past, I looked in the rearview mirror to see what he was going to do. He very slowly eased forward and stopped again. Hmm. This was just too strange. We live in the country and with no one else around, I wasn't leaving my 83-year-old father at home by himself, even if he can still chop down 200-year-old trees without help from anyone, so I turned around. When he saw me turn around, he drove off down the road. I followed him until I could get close enough to get a plate number. After about a half a mile, he turned back around and went back towards our house. By the time I turned around again, he'd gone.

I called a friend in the sheriff's office and asked him to make a report and gave him the plate number. So far, the mystery transvestite hasn't reappeared, at least that I know of. A famous author lives across the street, so maybe it was just some weird fan trying to get a gander at him.

So that was bizarrity number one. Now for number two:

Tommy and I have been attending tourism conferences lately to learn about social networking on the web, and making it work for Shantybellum. Everyone's told us we need a Facebook group, a blog (what you're reading right now), a Twitter account and a Digg account. There are others, too, but I can only spread myself so far.

So I set up a Twitter account to let people know when things are going on, when I've made a blog post, etc. For those of you who've been living on Mars and don't know what Twitter is, it's kind of like a mini-blogging site where you post short status updates, and people who are interested in hearing from you sign on as followers of your Twitter blog.

Whenever someone decides to follow me, Twitter sends me an email to let me know about it. So far I know most of the people who follow me. But yesterday I got an email from Twitter telling me some guy named Roberto was following me on Twitter. Since I didn't know him, I looked at his profile. I figured if he was following other Natchez people, it's probably someone I've met and don't remember. So I check to see who he's following, and he's following a whole bunch of women named Elodie. Sheesh! Creeped me out. Needless to say I blocked him. But that coupled with the fat cross dresser just...I dunno. Weirded me out.

Well, that's about it, all I wanted to say. Another day in paradise. And for those of you who've never seen Betty Butterfield? Be sure to look her up. She's a Southern, drinkin', prayin', substance abusing middle-aged woman who's searching for a church to fit her pocketbook and a doctor who'll dispense the pills she wants (somethin' with a vee in it) without asking too many questions.

She's played by Chuck Knipp, a Southerner who went to Ole Miss and has done real-life stints as a nurse on a mental ward and a unitarian minister. The first time I discovered him, I played Betty Butterfield videos all day and got the best dose of endorphins I've had in a looong, looong time.

If you need a laugh, check out the mad, maudlin world of Betty Butterfield.

Picture This

In addition to being all-around brilliant and humble, Elodie works at Echoes Gallery in downtown Natchez. Echoes offers a variety of beautiful black-and-white archival photographic prints, many of Natchez and the surrounding area as well as Europe and Morocco, by photographer Lee England.

Lee sells his prints direct from the gallery as well as online at www.englandphotographic.com and at www.bambooks.biz.

A Surry with the Fringe on Top

What's cuter than a group of drunk, middle-aged women in obnoxious Easter Bonnets? Nothing!


The day before Easter found some of the most fun wimmens in Natchez at their annual Easter Bonnet Parade, organized by the ever indefagitable Kathy Sizemore, partier extraordinnaire. It was a whirlwind trip around town in two buggies with two tired, irritated horses that wanted nothing more than to go back to the barn.

But there were songs to be sung, milk punches to be drunk, and merriment to be had!

This was Elodie's first year in the parade, and she did not understand the importance of sporting a decadently flambouyant bonnet. Nevertheless, she showed up with a rather plain-Jane bonnet, and took photos of the others.

The parade started out at City Park on Main Street when all 18 wimmins, primed with milk punch, started singing the Easter Bonnet Song, albeit to a rather low key begun by Anna Watts, who might want to think about giving up the late nights and bourbon. Ahem.

Even though they each had a copy of the lyrics, they all forgot the tune in the final refrain, but were happy to fill in their own, which made for a pretty awful rendition.

Everyone came out on the street to see the group of middle-aged, middle-spread women who thought they looked, um, hot, and who were trying to convince themselves that black is a good color for Easter. The mustaches and sweat beads battled for the strategic positions of their upper lips.

At Andrew's Bar and at Biscuits and Blues, people swarmed out onto the sidewalk to see the colorful caravan. When they arrived at The Corner Bar, however, all the doors were closed.

"They're closed!" someone said.

"No, they're not," replied another. "I see people at the bar."

Soon the door was opened and someone who shall remain nameless, (cough! Meredith) yelled, "Let your people go!" before realizing that the man standing in the doorway was African-American.

The parade ended at Bowie's Tavern where the bartender awaited behind a line of milk punches, shaking her head and mumbling, "I shoulda made milquetoast for this bunch of elderly idiots."

The Kiss-lookalike band waiting to play music that evening kindly posed with the ladies, who still thought they looked hot.

At any rate, a grand time was had by all (except the horses). No matter. What happens behind the horse's ass stays behind the horse's ass. Right, girls?

Happy Easter, everyone!

*photos by Elodie Pritchartt

Happy Easter, Everyone

photo by Elodie Pritchartt

What a cold front looks like

One morning a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on the porch at Shantybellum, enjoying the warm, balmy weather, when I looked across the river and noticed the air looked...well, strange. It was very dark on the Louisiana side. I couldn't even see Lousisiana, come to think of it. It just didn't seem normal.

So I grabbed my camera and headed over to the bluff. As I was walking toward the bluff near Learned's Mill Road, I looked down at the river and noticed a diagonal line that seemed to divide the river. I'd only been there a second or two when suddenly the air on the northernmost side of me turned cold. That's when I realized it was a cold front.

I'd never seen one. The temperature dropped in half a second from what was probably 75 degrees to maybe 50 degrees. For just a second there, I could still feel the warm air on one side of my body and the cold on the other.

I started running down the bluff toward Silver Street but soon realized the front was moving much faster than I could ever possibly hope to move. So I snapped a couple of shots. Just in the nick of time, too, I might add. Anyway, this is a photo of what a cold front looks like.

*photo by Elodie Pritchartt

Matters Familia - Dying People Don't Eat Duck

J. Balfour Miller

What is it with my family? From as early as I can remember, my grandmother was a dying woman. I’d call her on the phone or go see her and she’d scowl:

“Why haven’t you called me lately? I’m a dying woman, you know. I might not be around much longer.”

“Um, I just called you.”

“Well, you should do it more often. I might die.”

Sigh.

Way back in the early 80’s my (then) husband and I were running a restaurant. (We lost our behinds with that, btw. Never, ever again.) But I digress. Anyway, the phone rang and it was my grandmother calling to see what we were having for the daily special.

Ring, ring!

“Broadway Station,” said spouse.

A pitiful groan, followed by, ‘Hellooo?” Who is this?” Cough, cough! Sob.

“Oh, hi, Bessie Rose,” said spouse. “It’s Jeff.

“What do you have today, dear?”

After awhile she’d forget she was dying and start talking in a normal tone of voice.

“Oh, we’re having duck à l’orange. Would you like me to send you a plate?

A gasp followed by retching and coughing.

“God, child! Don’t you know dying people don’t eat duck?? Sob!”

My great uncle Balfour was a hypochondriac, too. No matter what time of day or night it was, he could always be found in his bathrobe and slippers in the TV room with a twinkle in his eye, a drink in his hand and spittle in the corners of his mouth, insisting on a kiss from the ladies. Out of deference for his age, most of them would comply. Well, okay. Maybe he was kinda cute.

When he was in his twenties, he predicted he’d be dead by thirty. When thirty passed him by, he decreed he’d be gone by forty. But somehow, he made it into his fifties, certain that someone that ill would never make it to his sixties, which is when I came along.

He spent his sixties with the Grim Reaper knocking at his door, and his seventies with one foot in the grave. It was about then that he started showing up at the hospital ICU, suitcase in hand. He’d pick a bed and climb in, and when the nurse asked him what he was doing there, he’d reply, “Well, I’m waiting for the doctor, of course.”

“But, sir. You’re not a registered patient here. We don’t have a doctor for you.”

“Well, then get me one,” he’d reply.

In the meantime, he’d call his favorite saleslady at Godchaux’s and ask her to bring a case of her best jewelry. There she’d sit on the side of the bed showing him brooches, rings and other assorted baubles, which he’d buy and give to his wife and her friends. It wouldn’t do to die without leaving something to remember him by.

By the time he reached his eighties, he and the Angel of Death were on a first-name basis. Rather than show up at the hospital, he had a hospital bed brought into his bedroom.

I remember a conversation I had with him when he was about 90. He said, “You know, when I turned seventy, I figured I’d better write my will. I knew I was going to die within a year or so. You know what I just realized? That was over twenty years ago.”

He was baffled.

But you know what? He was right. Hypochondria finally did kill him when he was ninety-three. He died in 1985 saying, “I told you I didn’t feel good.”

He’d even purchased a tombstone and had it engraved, “One of Natchez’s prominent philanthropists,” which now that I think about it, was awfully similar to the monument that had been erected for J.N. Carpenter, who did so much for the city of Natchez. Talk about keeping up with the Joneses.

One day, my great aunt Annet and her friend Lillie Vidal Boatner were driving through the cemetery. They passed Balfour’s stone.

“Oh, look, Annet,” exclaimed Lillie Vidal. “They’ve misspelled philanderer.”

Come to think of it, I think maybe Uncle Balfour was a bit of a narcissist...and a philanderer.

But enough about him. Let’s talk about me.

A few weeks ago, I suddenly started aching. It started with a sharp pain in my right knee. Then it migrated to the left knee. Then it went to my hip. And then sometimes I noticed when I woke up in the morning the joints in my fingers hurt.

So I’ve given it a lot of thought and have narrowed it down to two possibilities:

a. Lupus

or

b. Lyme Disease


Oh, gosh! I think I might DIE! Of course, it could just be that I’m just getting old and fat.....nah.

On the Road

Tommy and Elodie will be taking a road trip with Courtney Stacy-Taylor on Thursday to do a story about touring the Blues Highway 61. Y'all stay tuned.









*photo by Elodie Pritchartt

Cool Cats at the Shanty Shack

Shantybellum has been adopted by two feral kitties, who aren't so feral since Elodie, the cat whisperer, worked her magic on them. We saw them last summer when they were just a few weeks old, but couldn't get to them on the other side of the fence before Mama kitty stole them away to unknown places. Three little kitties - a calico, a long-haired gray, and a solid black.

About six months later, Elodie saw Bella, the calico, in the backyard and set a trap.

"Elodie, don't you be catching any cats," Tommy said, "We don't need any cats hanging around here. Besides, I'm a dog person," he added. He was promptly ignored.

She caught the gray first and took it to the vet, Dr. Gregg in Vidalia, to have her spayed. She was such a gorgeous cat, Dr. Gregg found her a home right away.

So then we caught Shanty, the black magic cat, and took him to Dr. Gregg's to be neutered. Next day we got Mama kitty. Off to the vet. No more babies for this tired mama, who had been seen bringing mice to her kittens when they were living in their secret place. Finally, we caught Bella, the calico.

No one wanted the three remaining kitties, so we brought them back, realizing they'd never be tamed, but willing to offer food nonetheless. Elodie started staying outside while they ate from the other side of the yard. Before long, they knew when she called, "Here, kitty, kity!" that meant dinner, and before long they were running at the sound of her voice. She moved the food a little closer. Finally, they agreed to eat right next to her as long as she wouldn't try to touch them.

Then one day, Elodie managed to stroke Bella's back.

"Ooh! That's feels, good," she said. "Could you scratch a little more to the right?"

Before long, Bella was letting Elodie pick her up and snuggle, although Shanty still had his doubts. Finally one day, she caught Shanty off guard and he realized that he might like to spend the rest of his days being fed and massaged. Those two cats can purr louder than the Evinrude we used to use out on the river.

Okay, well, Shanty doesn't like to be held, but he's affectionate to a fault as long as you leave him on the ground. The mama cat has completely disappeared, although Elodie saw her once last week for the first time in several months. She seemed well fed, so we're hoping she's partaking of our thrice and four-times daily feedings.

Oh, and Tommy? He's fallen in love. I think it's safe to say he's a cat person now. A cool cat person.

As much as we'd like to bring them both inside, we know all about the whole cat-allergy problem, so there's no need to get your dander up about cat dander. They're outside cats.

Y'all meet Shanty and Bella.

200 Years of Liberty

His small face illumined by the flames, four-year-old Robert Stratton watched, awestruck, as fire consumed the family home dark night in 1948. The house his ancestors had built in 1850 was a conflagration that filled the night sky. You can read about it here.

Stormy Weather

Way back in 1840 Natchez experienced some of the scariest weather possible -- an F5 tornado that stretched all the way across the river and still some, and was so powerful, it killed more people than it injured. If you've never read his columns on Natchez history and the surrounding area, Stanley Nelson provides some of the most well-researched, most fascinating accounts about this country's beginnings in The Concordia Sentinel.

The tornado story gives first-hand accounts in two parts, which you can read here and here.

Image ID: wea00218, Historic NWS Collection
Location: Near Jasper, Minnesota
Photo Date: 1927 July 8

http://www.tornadochaser.net/histphoto.html

The Garter, the Sword and the Veil

The Garter

“Guard this with your life,” said Stella Jenkins Carby as she handed over a scrapbook made for The Garter Girls, a group of women in Natchez, Mississippi, who began a wedding tradition around a bridal garter in 1946 that still continues. 

Stella’s daughter, Bettye Jane Carby, was the thirty-fifth girl to wear the coveted garter when she said, “I do,” to husband Charlie Roberts on December 13, 2008, at the Carby’s home in Natchez.

The garter was made by the late Mrs. Howard Pritchartt, Sr. for Buzzy Parker, when she married Bobby Crook in 1946. Buzzy and her friends, decided to share the garter, which would see them through marriages and births, war and peace, riches and despair, and beyond.

Rather than having the groom toss the garter, the girls decided it should be passed down to their children. 

They made some rules:

1. Can only be worn by a daughter or a son’s bride

2. Can be worn by Mabel (Raworth’s) children (an honorary member who was not part of the original group)

3. Can be worn once by any person to get married

4. Can be worn on 25th anniversaries (and now on 50th)

The first photo of the garter girls was taken by Mrs. Helen Jenkins, whose son, Sonny, was Bettye McGehee’s beau. He would later become her husband.

“She took the photo to send to Sonny in World War II,” remembered Sallie Ballard, one of the original Garter Girls. “He was flying the Hump in Burma. We were at the Beltzhoover’s pool at Green Leaves, and we were all sophomores, maybe juniors,” she added.

“The bigger girls at the pool all had cigarettes, so we all got cigarettes from them and posed. It was the first year two-piece bathing suits were available to the public, so it was kind of shocking.”

It’s too fragile now to actually wear, but is still reverently passed from one girl to the next, all descendants of the original seven girls, whose friendship lasted throughout the years — Mary Ann Brandon Jones, Bettye McGhee Jenkins, Virginia Beltzhoover Morrison, Sallie Junkin Ballard, the late Dunbar Merrill Flinn, the late Buzzy Parker, the late Mabel Conger Raworth and the late Alma Cassell Kellogg Carpenter.

“Once somebody had worn it, you kept it until somebody else needed it,” recalled Mrs. Ballard. “After [my daughter] Dix got married and the garter was hers, I remember telling [my late husband] Basil, ‘If by hook or crook our house catches fire, grab up all the family pictures and — whatever you do — get the garter.’”

Mrs. Ballard continued: “Basil looked at me and said, ‘I’ll go back into a burning house for family pictures, but not that garter. If it’s that important, you need to take it and put it in a lock box at the bank.’”

And that’s exactly what she did, as have many others burdened with the onus of such responsibility.

The Sword

“Be very, very careful with these,” said Joie Morrison as she handed over family photos. “Please don’t let anything happen to them.”

Standing in the hallway of a house that has been owned and lovingly cared for by her family since 1849, and surrounded by heirlooms such as bone china attributed to John James Audubon, a family Bible dating back to 1670, and old Natchez silver made by Natchez silversmith George MacPherson, it is clear that care should, indeed, be taken. The members of this family are keepers of the flame, stewards of history and tradition.

The story of the sword begins at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

“Unfortunately, this is all oral history, as the best stories always are,” said Ruthie Coy, Joie’s cousin and the niece of Joie’s mother, Virginia Lee Beltzhoover Morrison.

According to family lore, the sword was picked up after the battle of Waterloo by a French soldier whose grandson joined the Confederate army and was in Colonel Daniel Beltzhoover’s unit — Watson’s Louisiana Artillery. It was in Vicksburg where the grandson was mortally wounded, and as he lay dying gave it to “Colonel Dan.”

Can’t you just imagine the young soldier, mortally wounded, his lifeblood leaking out onto the Vicksburg soil, gasping, “Colonel Dan, suh…cough!”

“What is it, son?”

“Mah sword, suh. Please, take it. It belonged to mah grandfathuh at Waterloo. Cough! Suh, guard it with your life!”

Later, when Colonel Dan’s horse was shot out from under him, the bullet struck the scabbard of the sword and cracked the sword, itself.

“See, here’s the bullet hole,” said Joie, pointing to the scabbard. She pulled out the sword. “We still have the whole sword, but it broke it right in two.”

Still, the story has a happy ending: the family uses it to cut the family wedding cakes at Green Leaves.

“The first wedding that we know for sure it was used in was my mother and father’s [Ruth Audley Beltzhoover and Richard Conner] wedding in 1945,” said Ruthie Coy, “when he was on leave from the Army Air Corps during World War II. We have an account…of my grandparents’ wedding there in 1891, but no mention of the sword. The latest was my niece, Denise Conner Hiller in 2007.”

But if you want to use the sword to cut your cake, the keepers of the sword agree: get married at Green Leaves. The sword stays put.

The Veil

It was in 1848 when Fanny Turner married Lemuel P. Conner, wearing the beautiful lace veil that would also become a tradition at Green Leaves weddings.

“The weddings have been held at the church, in the parlors, and in the back garden,” said Coy. It was actually a Britton family [of Melrose Plantation] tradition, but then included us again when my mother and father married.”

Denise Conner Hiller, who was also the last to use the sword, was the last to use the veil, as well.

“Denise was the fifth generation to wear it,” said Coy, who included a list of all the family members who have worn the veil.

“My favorite part of the story is how jealous all her girlfriends were because she had all this fabulous ‘old stuff’ for her wedding.”

Ruthie recalled that when Denise wore the veil in 2007, the keepers kept careful watch.

“Oh, she didn’t wear it to the reception,” she said. “As soon as she walked back down that aisle, we snatched it off. Well, not really,” she laughed. She had wedding photos taken in it, but we weren’t going to chance it getting danced on.”

With their careful care the keepers ensured the veil will be here for future generations.

How does a tradition become a tangible link to the past and a generous gift to the future? 

You guard it with your life.

What's with those Tableaux, anyway?

After having lived in Los Angeles for 25 years, it was through a different lens that I watched the Historic Natchez Pageant on a visit home in 2006. It had been many years since I’d seen it – even longer since I’d participated.

As I watched and reminisced, it occurred to me that what had seemed like such a natural form of entertainment was really quite unusual. I wondered what the tourists thought about it. I wondered how the founders of the pilgrimage came up with it.

This year, opening night at the pageant will be free of charge to the public. If you’ve never attended, now is the time to go. And for those who are unfamiliar with its unusual format, I’ve done a little research and am pleased to share what I’ve learned.

I learned that not only is the pageant about history, but its format is based on a form of entertainment that was popular all the way back to the Renaissance and reached its heyday during the late 19th Century —the tableau vivant.

Before radio, film and television, the tableau vivant (often shortened to simply “tableau) was a popular form of entertainment where people would dress in costume and recreate a famous painting, often of an historic event. So it made perfect sense that in 1932, the founders of that first Pilgrimage would pick a form of entertainment they and their parents had enjoyed. And what better place to find illustrations of life during the 19th Century than Godey’s Lady’s Book, the preeminent ladies’ magazine of the 19th Century?

The magazine was best known for the hand-tinted fashion plate that appeared at the start of each issue showing the latest in women’s fashions, including an illustration and pattern with measurements for making garments at home. Thus armed, the ladies who organized that first pageant went about recreating historically accurate dress to depict scenes from the 1850s.

What surprised me most, however, was that the first year the pageant was actually a street parade sponsored and financed by the merchants of Natchez as an attraction to draw people of the surrounding countryside into town where they would tarry long enough to shop in their stores.

Originally based on agriculture and harvests, historically, pageants in United States all have same elements — queens, mock courts, Maypoles. That first pageant or “parade” was entitled “Under Many Flags,” and the floats depicted historic events of Native American, French, English and Spanish days. Because it was impractical to have parades every other day, the evening pageant replaced that first parade.

In addition to tableaux, dances were included. The rendition of old time spirituals was given by outstanding voices of the African-American churches and of the Natchez College, an African-American institution of the city.

Even though it was in the midst of the Great Depression, that first pilgrimage was a huge success, drawing people from thirty-seven states.

And now as we face another economic crisis, it’s a good time to remember that early success and learn from it. Please join us on Friday, March 6 for a free evening of entertainment based on history with eye toward the future.

 For tickets, contact Natchez Pilgrimage Tours, 640 S. Canal Street, P.O. Box 347 Natchez, MS 39121 601-446-6631, Toll-Free 800-647-6742, Fax 601-446-8687 Visit@NatchezPilgrimage.com.

*Posted by Elodie

Matters familias - Natchez Characters

Utter the name "Katherine Miller" in Natchez, and the reactions you get vary wildly. She's either the patron saint of Natchez or evil incarnate. Sometimes both. But you have to give the old girl credit, for it was Katherine Miller who spearheaded the formation of the Natchez Pilgrimage, which saved this town from certain doom.

During the 1930s, Katherine traveled the country with a projector slideshow of antebellum homes, inviting prospective visitors to see the plantation homes of the Old South. Because of the success of her campaign, people who were barely eking by in the great Depression were able to hang onto their homes in Natchez.

For over 60 years, she ruled Natchez society engendering fear, admiration, adoration and loathing in equal measures. Under her direction, grown men were persuaded to dress up like Southern planters and dance the Soiree for strangers. They even allowed their wives to smear rouge and lipstick on their sons, and dress them in lace and knickers and ballet shoes to dance around a Maypole with little girls in hoopskirts.

Sure for the rest of the year they wore camouflage, slapped each other on the back, broke wind, went hunting, played football and talked about the price of oil. But March belonged to the women. No disgrace was too demeaning to keep them from following the orders of the matriarchs of Natchez.

When General Douglas MacArthur visited Natchez after the second World War, a photographer captured a photo of him being told to look at the camera by the Mighty Katherine Miller. She was ascared of nobody, and her legacy lives on even now as every year March comes in like the lion....or lioness and goes out like the lamb.

It was under the shadow of this matriarchal monopoly that my father spent his childhood. His mother, Bessie Rose, was Katherine's sister and, boy, was she disappointed when her only child turned out to be a boy and not a girl. She'd had visions of playing dress-up with a beautiful little girl, and the fact that the child she'd produced turned out to be a boy was but a momentary disappointment.

Bessie Rose decided she'd dress him any way she darned well pleased, and that's exactly what she did. Every morning she'd send Howard off to school in these Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits where he'd get beaten up for wearing sissy clothes. When he got home, she would throw a temper tantrum because he'd ruined his outfit. He remembers one incident, in particular, when she ripped off his jacket and started jumping up and down on it in a fit of fury. It scared the bejeebus out of him.

Like my great aunt Katherine, Bessie Rose worshipped at the altar of high society. Starting when he was as young as two years old, she and my grandfather left him at home in the evening with his elderly grandmother so they could attend parties with their friends. He and the old lady took care of each other -- she would tuck him in at night and he would feed her milquetoast. It was a lonely time.

Once he begged his parents not to go out.

"Please don't go. Stay home, please?"

"You should be happy people want to see your mother," she replied. You should be ashamed of yourself."

So he grew to hate social events and all that they entailed.

Needless to say, the harder my grandmother and her aunt tried to teach my father the social graces, the more he rebelled. He never missed an opportunity to go out on the river with his friends, hunting and exploring the muddy banks and back bayous of the Mississippi.

Handsome though he was, he always felt at odds when dressed for a party, and never missed an opportunity to thumb his nose at convention. And now, he is a successful, self-made man who can't abide pretense and won't hesitate to point it out in ridicule, no matter whom it might offend.

One of his fondest memories is of his best friend, Johnny Ogden, sneaking into the City Auditorium the afternoon before the pageant with a dead fox he'd found beside the road. Dragging the fox by the tail, Johnny made his way up and down the aisles, over and under the seats of the room, laying down a scent and then slipping back outside. They roared with laughter that evening when during the tableaux for The Hunt, the beagles and hounds used for the scene broke their leads and climbed across horrified tourists' laps, baying loudly, drooling and peeing with excitement, as they tracked the scent of the long departed fox.

And now he's one of Natchez most original characters, 83 years old and living on 400 acres in a beautiful house with ancestral portraits on the wall, wearing a wife-beater t-shirt and driving his tractor all over the property, happily pushing things around, stopping to eat a can of sardines and a slice of bread, and feeding the deer, dogs, cats, birds, squirrels and other assorted animals that call his place home. He even fills dry mud puddles with water so the frogs living therein will be happy and wet.

And so, at last, with all that being said, I now offer you his original poem about Natchez, making no excuses for the portions of it that are politically and socially incorrect. Like his aunt Katherine, he's loved (and loathed) in fairly equal portions, but no one laughs louder or longer at Howard than Howard, himself.

Natchez

If you doubt your social fame,
get an old house and give it a name.
If you still lack social position,
have it put in the Pink Edition.

If your position is still not clear,
get it decorated by a Natchez queer.
But, really, the most important of all
Is finagle your brat into the Pilgrimage Ball.

But really the mostest, most ultimate thing
Is finagle the brat into King or Queen.

We're all aware of the social mystique

that sticks to the gal with the finest antique.

Ladies, ladies, let’s hold a quorum,
to see who’ll rule the Antiques Forum.
To us this is now our holiest cause,
since we’re all well into menopause.

So you give a luncheon and I’ll give a tea.
And I’ll snub you and you snub me.

And when it’s all over, we’ll make our amends,
pretending to be the closest of friends.

But when it’s all over, we’ll have to admit
The whole damned thing is a big pile of….
old furniture.

By Howard Pritchartt, Jr. Circa 1985

*photograph of Howard Pritchartt, Jr. on the left with Joe Remondet on the right, circa 1975.

(Please check back soon for a story about Joe Remondet.)

*Posted by Elodie