Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes (20 page)

Now he regarded me narrowly and with exaggerated concern, like one of the old eccentric actors of the silent screen.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded, in German [
Was ist los?
] I don’t have much German actually, but I do know enough of it to recognize that he spoke the words in the harsh nasal twang of our own Texas and the Great Southwest. This was unmistakable, and yet the knowledge did not seem to give me any real advantage. Despite this I took him up abruptly, as though not to be put off: “I’ll tell you this much, Davis—if you really
are a Negro,
or rather, if you are
Negro,
I’d ask you to fall by my pad, you know what I mean, like we could dig Bird and Orville and turn on a few joints of some great Panamanian green. Later, of course, you could cut out, or, like, split.”

He looked past me and slowly around the room with intense apprehension, knitting his brows fiercely.

“Who dat who say ‘NERO’?”
he demanded.

Whether it was a slip of the tongue, or a deliberate distortion, I was not able to determine, because he suddenly began a song and dance. The dance was common enough, a simple two-step, but the song was remarkable: it began as a Benjamin Britten-Elizabethan type thing, of no particularly deep feeling, but with great surface complexity; and yet, at about the third bridge, it picked up the wailing funk of Ray Charles, blasting
“It’s a Low-Down Liberal, Low-Down Liberal Shame.”

And then when the silence began to close in, somewhat like a shroud, he went
“Ooh-scubee-doo-bop”—
very softly, that’s how hip he was.

I
N AN AGE GONE
stale through the complex of bureaucratic interdependencies, with its tedious labyrinth of technical specializations, each contingent upon the next; and all aimed to converge into a single totality of meaning, it is a refreshing moment indeed when one comes across an area of human endeavor absolutely sufficient unto itself, pure and free, no strings attached—the cherished and almost forgotten
l’art pour l’art.
Such is the work being carried forward now at the Dixie National Baton Twirling Institute, down at the campus of Ole Miss—a visit to which is well worthwhile these days, if one can keep one’s wits about.

In my case it was the first trip South in many years, and I was duly apprehensive. For one thing, the Institute is located just outside Oxford, Mississippi—and, by grotesque coincidence, Faulkner’s funeral had been held only the day before my arrival, lending a grimly surreal aura to the nature of my assignment . . . namely, to get the story on the Baton Twirling Institute. Would reverting to the Texas twang and callousness of my youth suffice to see me through?

Arriving in Oxford then, on a hot midday in July, after the three-hour bus ride from Memphis, I stepped off in front of the Old Colonial Hotel and meandered across the sleepy square toward the only sign of life at hand—the proverbial row of shirt-sleeved men sitting on benches in front of the county courthouse, a sort of permanent jury.

“Howdy,” I say, striking an easy stance, smiling friendly-like, “whar the school?”

The nearest regard me in narrow surmise: they are quick to spot the stranger here, but a bit slow to cotton. One turns to another.

“What’s that he say, Ed?”

Big Ed shifts his wad, sluices a long spurt of juice into the dust, gazes at it reflectively before fixing me again with gun-blue-cold eyes.

“Reckon you mean, ‘Whar the school
at?,
don’t you, stranger?”

Next to the benches, and about three feet apart, are two public drinking fountains, and I notice that the one boldly marked “For Colored” is sitting squarely in the shadow cast by the justice symbol on the courthouse façade—to be entered later, of course, in my writer’s notebook, under “Imagery, sociochiaroscurian, hack.”

After getting directions (rather circuitous, I thought—being further put off by what I understood, though perhaps in error, as a fleeting reference to “the Till case”) I decided to take a cab, having just seen one park on the opposite side of the square.

“Which is nearer,” I asked the driver, “Faulkner’s house or his grave?”

“Wal,” he said without looking around, “now that would take a little studyin’, if you were gonna hold a man to it, but offhand I’d say they were pretty damn near the same—about ten minutes from where we’re sittin’ and fifty cents each. They’re in opposite directions.”

I sensed the somehow questionable irony of going from either to the Baton Twirling Institute, and so decided to get over to the Institute first and get on with the coverage.

“By the way,” I asked after we’d started, “where can a man get a drink of whiskey around here?” It had just occurred to me that Mississippi is a dry state,

“Place over on the county line,” said the driver, “about eighteen miles; cost you four dollars for the trip, eight for the bottle.” I see.

He half turned, giving me a curious look.

“Unless, of course, you’d like to try some ‘nigger-pot.’ ”

“Nigger-pot? Great God yes, man,” I said in wild misunderstanding, “let’s move!”

It soon developed, of course, that what he was talking about was the unaged and uncolored corn whiskey privately made in the region, and also known as “white lightning.” I started to demur, but as we were already in the middle of the colored section, thought best to go through with it. Why not begin the sojourn with a genuine Dixieland experience—the traditional jug of corn?

As it happened the distiller and his wife were in the fields when we reached the house, or hut as it were, where we were tended by a Negro boy of about nine.

“This here’s a mighty fine batch,” he said, digging around in a box of kindling wood and fetching out unlabeled pints of it.

The taxi driver, who had come inside with me, cocked his head to one side and gave a short laugh, as to show we were not so easily put upon.

“Why, boy,” he said, “I wouldn’t have thought you was a drinkin’ man.”

“Nosuh, I ain’t no drinkin’ man, but I sure know how it suppose to taste—that’s ’cause times nobody here I have to
watch
it and I have to
taste
it too, see it workin’ right. We liable lose the whole batch I don’t know how it suppose to taste. You all taste it,” he added, holding out one of the bottles and shaking it in my happy face. “You see if that ain’t a fine batch!”

Well, it had a pretty good taste all right—a bit edgy perhaps, but plenty of warmth and body. And I did have to admire the pride the young fellow took in his craft. You don’t see much of that these days—especially among nine-year-olds. So I bought a couple of bottles, and the driver bought one, and we were off at last for the Institute.

The Dixie National Baton Twirling Institute holds its classes in a huge, sloping, fairyland grove on the campus of Ole Miss, and it resembles something from another age. The classes had already begun when I stepped out of the cab, and the sylvan scene which stretched before me, of some seven-hundred girls, nymphs and nymphets all, cavorting with their staffs in scanty attire beneath the broadleaf elms, was a sight to spin the senses and quicken the blood. Could I but have donned satyr’s garb and rushed savagely among them! But no, there was this job o’work to get on with—dry, factual reportage—mere donkey work, in fact. I decided the correct procedure was to first get some background material, and to this end I sought out Don Sartell, “Mister Baton” himself, Director of the Institute. Mr. Sartell is a handsome and personable young man from north of the Mason-Dixon line, acutely attuned to the needs of the young, and, needless to say, extremely dexterous
avec les doigts.
(By way of demonstrating the latter he once mastered a year’s typing course in a quick six days—or it may have been six hours, though I do recall that it was an impressive and well-documented achievement.)

“Baton twirling,” he tells me straight off, “is the second largest girl’s youth movement in America—the first, of course, being the Girl Scouts.” (Veteran legman, I check this out later. Correct.) “The popularity of baton twirling,” he explains, “has a threefold justification: (1) it is a sport which can be practiced alone; (2) it does not, unlike other solo sports (sailing, skiing, shooting, etc.), require expensive equipment; and (3) it does not, again like the aforementioned, require travel, but, on the contrary, may be practiced in one’s own living room or backyard.”

“Right,” I say. “So far, so good, Mister Baton—but what about the intrinsics? I mean, just what is the point of it all?”

“The point, aside from the simple satisfaction of mastering a complex and highly evolved skill, is the development of self-confidence, poise, ambidexterity, disciplined coordination, etcetera.”

I asked if he would like a drink of nigger-pot. He declined graciously: he does not drink or smoke. My place, I decided, is in the grove, with the groovy girls—so, limbering up my six-hundred-page, eight-dollar copy of
Who’s Who in Baton Twirling,
I take my leave of the excellent fellow and steal toward the sylvan scene below, ready for anything.

The development of American baton twirling closely parallels the history of emancipation of our women. A larger version of this same baton (metal with a knob on the end) was first used, of course, to direct military marching bands, or, prior to that, drum corps—the baton being manipulated in a fairly straightforward, dum-de-dum, up-and-down manner. The idea of
twirling
it—and finally even
flinging
it—is, obviously, a delightfully girlish notion.

Among those most keenly interested in mastering the skill today are drum majorettes from the high schools and colleges of the South and Midwest, all of which have these big swinging bands and corps of majorettes competing during the half at football games. In the South, on the higher-educational level, almost as much expense and training goes into these groups as into the football team itself, and, to persons of promise and accomplishment in the field, similar scholarships are available. Girls who aspire to become majorettes—and it is generally considered the smartest status a girl can achieve on the Southern campus—come to the Institute for preschool training. Or, if she is already a majorette, she comes to sharpen her technique. Many schools send a girl, or a small contingent of them, to the Institute to pick up the latest routines so that they can come back and teach the rest of the corps what they have learned. Still others are training to be professionals and teachers of baton twirling. Most of these girls come every year—I talked to one from Honey Pass, Arkansas, a real cutie pie, who had been there for eight consecutive years, from the time she was nine. When I asked if she would like a drink of pot, she replied pertly:
“N
. . .
O
. . . spells ‘No’!” Such girls are usually championship material, shooting for the Nationals.

Competitions to determine one’s degree of excellence are held regularly under the auspices of the National Baton Twirling Association, and are of the following myriad categories:
Advanced Solo; Intermediate Solo; Beginners Solo; Strutting Routine; Beginners Strutting Routine; Military Marching; Flag; Two-Baton; Fire Baton; Duet; Trio; Team; Corps; Boys; Out-of-State;
and others. Each division is further divided into age groups: 0–6, 7–8, 9–10, 11–12, 13–14, 15–16, 17 and over. The winner in each category receives a trophy, and the first five runners-up receive medals. This makes for quite a bit of hardware riding on one session, so that a person in the baton-twirling game does not go too long without at least token recognition—and the general run of
Who’s Who
entries (“eight trophies, seventy-three medals”) would make someone like Audie Murphy appear rudely neglected.

The rules of competition, however, are fairly exacting. Each contestant appears singly before a Judge and Scorekeeper, and while the Judge observes and relays the grading to the Scorekeeper, the girl goes through her routine for a closely specified time. In Advanced Solo, for example, the routine must have a duration of not less than two minutes and twenty seconds, and not more than two and thirty. She is scored on general qualities relating to her degree of accomplishment—including
showmanship, speed,
and
drops,
the latter, of course, counting against her, though not so much as one might suppose. Entrance fees average about two dollars for each contestant. Some girls use their allowance to pay it.

In the Institute’s grove—not unlike the fabled Arcadia—the groups are ranged among the trees in various states of learning and scanty attire. The largest, most central and liveliest of these groups is the one devoted to the mastery of Strutting. Practice and instruction in Strutting are executed to records played over a public-address system at an unusually loud volume—a sort of upbeat rock and roll with boogie-woogie overtones.
Dixie, The Stripper,
and
Potato Peel
were the three records in greatest use for this class-played first at half speed, to learn the motions, then blasted at full tempo. Strutting is, of course, one of the most fantastic body-movement phenomena one is likely to see anywhere. The deliberate narcissistic intensity it requires must exceed even that of the Spanish flamenco dancer. High-style (or “all-out”) Strutting is to be seen mainly in the South, and what it resembles more than anything else is a very contemporary burlesque-house number—with the grinds in and the bumps out. It is the sort of dance one associates with jaded and sequin-covered washed-out blondes in their very late thirties-but Ole Miss, as is perhaps well known, is in “the heartland of beautiful girls,” having produced two Miss Americas and any number of runners-up, and to watch a hundred of their nymphets practice the Strut, in bathing suits, short shorts, and other such skimp, is a visual treat which cuts anything the Twist may offer the viewer.

The instructor of the Strut stands on a slightly raised platform facing her class, flanked by her two assistants. She wears dark glasses, tight rolled shorts, and looks to be about 34-22-34. She’s a swinger from Pensacola, Florida, a former National Senior Champion and Miss Majorette of America, now turned pro. When not at the Dixie Institute at the University of Mississippi, or a similar establishment, she gives private lessons at her own studio, for six dollars an hour, and drives a Cadillac convertible.