| Biographical Non-Fiction posted May 24, 2024 | Chapters: |
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A typical Mississippi man in preintergregation days.
A chapter in the book At Home in Mississippi
My Uncle Willie
by BethShelby
My grandmother’s brother, Uncle Willie, was an interesting character. People are complicated. Like everyone, they aren’t all bad nor all good. They are a product of their environment. If I tell you things I remember about him, some of you may see him as dislikable. He was my great uncle, and living so close to us, I was around him often. I saw his weaknesses and his strengths. I accepted him as flawed but still with likable traits. You can draw your own conclusions.
My records of the Simmons family are accurate for several generations leading up to the Civil War. The family came to Mississippi from South Carolina by the way of Georgia and were one of the first families in the area. They fought on the side of the Confederacy, and a number of the young Simmons men died in the war. Willie’s father was eight and one of eight children left behind when his grandfather died in the siege of Vicksburg. This branch of the Simmons family were land owners and farmers but not slave owners. They were members of the Baptist Church and attended services regularly.
Willie was the second son in a family of five. His sister Alma, my grandmother, was married and his older brother was also married. A sister two years older than Willie died in her teens of yellow jaundice which is now known as hepatitis. He and Eva, who was ten years younger than him, still lived with their parents. The flu epidemic of 1918 took both of his parents.
Willie was drafted in his twenties near the end of WWII. He only served four months, during which time, he almost lost his arm from an infection caused by the typhoid vaccine. He received an honorable discharge and was sent home to recover. Since his parents had passed away. Alma and Ebb took him in.
Eva was already living with her sister, Alma, and attending school with my father, Glover. Since Ebb and Alma were providing a home for the two Simmons children, it was agreed the land which his father had owned would become Weir property and my grandfather, Ebb, would take care of the property taxes.
Willie continued working the land for a while, but he had other ambitions. He enjoyed hunting and decided he wanted to learn the art and skill of taxidermy. He sent away for instructions which he studied but also got pointers from a man he knew in the trade. He worked with small animals like fox, squirrel, raccoon, and bobcat. After a while, Willie lost interest and decided to try another kind of project.
This time, he turned his attention to molding statuettes. Again, he sent away for books to teach him the art. He purchased molds, and materials for the statues. The materials for molding the statues were things like alum, silicon, glitter and a synthetic resin. The figurines were white and beautiful.
All his molds were of religious figures. I remember a manger scene. Most of the figures were Biblical saints. At first, his sisters were thrilled. They were proud to display his art. Then, someone told Eva and Alma the religious figures were idols. “The Bible says we are not to worship idols. We are Baptist. Only Catholics have those kinds of things in their homes.”
Of course, Catholics don’t consider themselves worshiping idols. They see the statuettes as icons to remind them of the saints they pray to. When Willie’s sisters told him they couldn’t have his art pieces in the house, he gathered them all up with his molds and materials and dug a hole and buried everything. I’m not sure if he was afraid of offending God, or if it was his sisters he had to walk carefully around.
His next venture involved selling hamburgers. I doubt if he’d ever cooked before, but he learned quickly. He rented a small stand near the bus station and started a new career. This time, he had picked a winner. The stand did well. He earned enough money to buy a piece of land and build a stucco building in which to house his burger business. With a larger business, he asked his sister, Eva, to come work with him. She agreed, and this became their daily profession.
A short distance up the road from my grandfather’s house was a house owned by an old man and his wife. The wife died first, and the old man decided to sell his house and move in with his son. Willie purchased the house, added a room and did some remodeling. At that point, he and Eva moved in together and my grandfather’s house was left with only the two of them there.
I was probably around ten by the time all of this took place. Later, The Corner Cafe would become a memorable part of my life since it was where I first met the man I would marry. That is all part of another story. This story is about Willie.
Willie loved beer. There were beer cans and bottles discarded everywhere. I never saw him drunk, but he always seemed mellowed out from indulging in his favorite drink. Another of his vices was smoking cigars. He enjoyed going to fairs and winning prizes at games of skill. I never knew him to have a lady friend, but my mother told me there had once been one who my grandmother had gotten out of his life.
I tried to ask Grandma about Willie’s lady friend once. Her reply was, “Oh she was just some old piece of trash. He didn’t care nothing about her. I told her I didn’t want to see her coming around him again.” I assumed if it was someone who mattered to him, he wouldn’t have listened. He wasn’t a bad looking guy other than being bald.
He had friends who he hunted with. Fox hunting was one of his main sports. He was also into the politics of Mississippi, and he had a great admiration for the Mississippi state senator Theodore G. Bilbo. Bilbo was an extremely racist segregationist who influenced the political climate of Mississippi for 40 years. Mississippi was a Democratic state in those years.
Bilbo had served as Governor of Mississippi twice. He had been elected twice to US senate and in 1947 was challenging his right to be seated when he died. Bilbo considered himself a proud member of the KKK. Willie owned a book which Bilbo had written, and he believed every word of his racist rhetoric. He thought all the black people should leave the state and go back to Africa.
I don’t think Willie was ever a member of the clan. At least, I hope he wasn’t, but his attitude was typical of many white men in the state. He admitted to me once he had attended a lynching. He and I argued constantly about his racist views. Although I didn’t have much personal interaction with the black race, I was horrified at the way they were expected to live.
Uncle Willie’s café had two doors. The front was for whites only and the rear door was for colored. That wasn’t unusual. Even the doctor offices had a back door for their black patients. All Mississippi schools were segregated. There were separate drinking fountains and restrooms. They were required to sit in the rear of the bus and nice restaurants were off limits.
People tend to fall in line with the way things are. Willie lived his life with the thinking of those around him. Other than his racist views, he thought of himself as a Christian. Although he didn’t talk about it, he couldn’t resist buying Bibles. He owned several, and one was almost too heavy to pick up. He loved country music and constantly fed nickels into the slots of his café jukebox. He had a good sense of humor and enjoyed laughing and joking with his customers. I don’t remember ever seeing him angry.
He was a part of my extended family and although I didn’t agree with him, I still cared about him. He owned the Corner Café until he died in 1964. He was seventy-five. He left his land to my dad.
 Recognized |
I'm encluding this character sketch of my uncle to show what many white men were like in the forties in Mississippi. I wlll probably use this in the book Growing Up in Mississippi.
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