Step Aside, Chicago! Jacktown is The REAL Windy City (Jackson: 2015, mattresses)

[GrandviewGloria]

And it had nothing to do with Kenneth Stokes or Enoch Sanders. Jackson takes the Windy City honor because it has the most 'wind events' (and no, we're talking about gusty zephyrs here, not the world-class mouth-running and epic flatulence for which the city's leaders are famed).

The windiest city in the USA might surprise you.

However, even though Chicago first got the honor because of its long-winded politicians, while Jacktown features better tornadoes, hurricanes, waterspouts, and dust devils (thou shall-ah reeeeap-ah tha whirl-ah-wind-ah..."), I'd put Kenneth or Enoch up against anything Chicago has to offer, in the way of politicos and demagogues.

As recently as the Nineties, Enoch was actually pretty HOT. Nice moustache... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhR8QRpIudA And I think he's even wearing that exact same camo outfit today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG269iQPEa0

But when it comes to telling the butt-nekkid truth, what would we do without Kenneth Stokes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x29WPOOWLg

And who can forget gone-but-not-forgotten FRANK, who managed to convince even Jeraldo Rivera that he was fighting crime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5ctMhnxQgM I only wish I could find one of Frank's televised editorials, as Owner of the television station, telling us about "spanking that boy". In light of later allegations regarding his special "hands-on" approach to troubled youths, that was some memorable TV!

And let's not forget the Governor's Mansion, on Capital Street. To get us started, here's a perky number from the glorious reign of Cliff Finch and his wife, Zelma. Just try to resist dancin'!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JDhJimTrl0 Don't miss the pic of Cliff in the heart-shaped bubble bath! If anybody can link to one of Cliff's speeches, please do!

Maybe the most windy of all the Govs, though, was the recent Governor Haley Barbour (aka 'Boss Hogg'), who grew up not too far from the Yazoo City home of comedian Jerry Clower. Their styles are similar: (skip the boring part, and start at 0:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH9KzYVoYC4)

The last actual aristocrat in the Governor's Office was John Bell Williams, who was cleverly repackaged as... well... NOT an aristocrat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgdF2uyiZ3k That repackaging won him the election. There's a story in the Delta, relayed to me by an elderly member of the state's dying political Ancien Regime, about the grandest of that region's Grandes Dames, a woman who was born into Mississippi's Third-floor Ballroom Class (people whose mansions had ballrooms on their top floors - her parents had TWO such houses). This was a woman who hobnobbed with northern industrialists, and sent her children to the nation's top boarding schools. Her butler became known as 'Too Sweet', because her other servants frequently heard her telling him, "Tout de suite!"

"You've seen 'Suddenly Last Summer'? Well, that actual, real-life Delta family always kept a mansion in New Orleans. Maybe Uptown, or in the Garden Quarter, or on Esplanade... Restless... Buying and selling... But they always had a presence there. The mother corrected the locals' French - even Mardi Gras royalty's French... didn't exactly endear her.. not to the Goyim, at least... WELL, they kept New Orleans mansions during the years when Tennessee Williams lived down there. And, of course, the son lived in Manhattan for a few years - while 'Tenn' was there... And they would have to have bumped into each other at Delta parties. People used to drive all over the Delta, going to those parties. I'm only sayin' this, because there is such a resemblance between them and the Venables - these supremely erudite GRANDEES, surrounded by all these Dixieland idiots. They even had a cousin who looked like Elizabeth Taylor... Tennessee Williams had to have known them in New Orleans, and Manhattan, too. Too much resemblance..."

Well, that lady's opera-singing-composer artist-decorator son ran in the same crowd as John Bell Williams (hint, hint...), and so this lady, who could sell anything to anybody, drove around the Delta, enlisting the votes of all the quality folk, because, she'd heard her son say, "John Bell Williams is ONE OF US!" JBW was hardly the first or last Governor who was "like that": but he was the last Aristocrat. Listening to the words of that campaign song, I wonder how much of what I hear is 'Freudian Slip', and how much is double entendre.

Anyway, passing yourself off as a Redneck is as important, for gubernatorial candidates in Mississippi, as it is for someone in Jackson selling mattresses to call himself "Doctor", or someone selling cars - or refrigerators - to call himself "Cowboy" http://www.dealerscope.com/wp-conten...h11.jpg?c373d9

But I guess I need to finish this with a tornado, so HERE! (with intro by Jackson's own VERY windy Courtney Barnes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q4zmLKvzJw And now, on to the actual weather-related winds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrkzBpeybkc