My sister Karole and her partner, the great Misssissippi artist H.C. Porter, gave me and my book a wonderful event in their gallery and loft in downtown Vicksburg last night. Well over 200 people showed up to listen to me read from Mississippi Sissy and Karole, who had ordered 100 books, sold every one of them. I enjoyed meeting new friends and seeing old ones and signing all the books. It was a night I’ll always cherish and I’d like to thank Karole and Chris (H.C. to all you art buyers) for their hospitality and their love. Even The Simpson Lady and her son, Ken, showed up. For those of you who’ve already read the book, you know what a wonderful surprise that was for me although I was a bit apprehensive as well to discuss their roles in my life story with them. But they could not have been more gracious to me and understanding why I had included them in the book. And The Simpson Lady is still a looker! The three of discussed the pivotal scene that they are involved in - I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t read it yet - and she said that though is was still traumatic for her to think about what had happened she understood that it was my story I was telling in the book and I had a right to tell it. I was thrilled to see them after all these years - well, over 40 - and if they are reading this blog right now then I want to let them know seeing them last night was one of the best parts of the evening which had so many wonderful aspects to it. (The best aspect? When Karole gave me my father’s baseball glove I didn’t even know she had kept all these years. It is the glove I’m wearing on the cover of the book. I couldn’t help myself. I broke down and cried when I realized what was in the gift wrapped package. I am sitting here right now staring at at the old glove where I’ve placed it on my hotel room desk. I’ll place it - a relic of remembrance and a father’s fierce yet unconditional love - on all my hotel desks on this book tour.) The crowd last night really loved it when I told them, before the reading, that a good buddy of mine had bought 20 copies of my book to give to his diverse circle of famous friends, including Nancy Reagan. (There were a lot of Nancy Reagan fans in the audience.) If you had told me to name the last person in America I thought would be reading my book, Nancy Reagan might have been the name to pop into my mind. But I love the idea now of her knowing who Matty May is. And I bet she was even friends with Arlene Francis, whose son now teaches law out at a university in San Francisco. A student of his discovered the book and brought it into class and told him about my love of his mother and how the book was a valentine to her. He read the book and was quite moved by it and called the documentarian, Jackie Sanders, who is making a film about his mother and told her about it also. She then called me and now wants me to be interviewed about my love of Arlene in the film. I’m honored.

I wonder what Nancy Reagan is making of Aunt Vena Mae in the book. I dreamed last night in my exhaustion that they were having dinner and Mrs. Reagan was rolling her eyes as so many of us did at the lovingly exasperating Aunt Veence. Karole drove me over to Neshoba County today to do a signing in Philadelphia, where Aunt Veence lived for her entire adult life. The Store on the Corner sold out its entire stock in an hour and Karole and I had a great time hanging out with some relatives we hadn’t seen in many a moon - Margaret Francis and her naughtily witty husband and her sister Carol and “Little” Rita. A nice, slightly shy, rather sexy resident of Tupelo, where the book and I were banned by Jack Reed, Jr., from his department store’s book section, even drove all the way down to Neshoba County to buy a copy of the book. So I’d like to thank him here on the blog for doing that. I was quite touched. At one point at the signing, Stanley Dearman, who had been the Editor of the Neshoba Democrat newspaper for forty years, came in to get a book signed and sat down to shoot the breeze with me. Again, I was honored. Mr. Dearman is a an old-time gentleman of the south who has begun to read lots of Henry James and Edith Wharton and Anton Chekhov in his retirement and is thinking about writing his own book. I hope he does. I think he has a lot to say. We talked about writing and all the things he’d been told off-the-record in his years as editor of the newspaper there since 1966. Dearman is a rather Chekhovian name for a dear man like Stanley

Karole drove me back to Jackson where I am right now at a hotel close to Jackson-Evers Airport. It’s named for Medgar Evers, something I never thought I would witness since when I lived down here the airport was named for the racist mayor of Jackson when Medgar Evers was shot. Maybe Mississippi has changed. Let’s hope. After reading online for the first time the extended NY Times Best Seller List - it finally seemed real that Mississippi Sissy was on it when I saw it with my own eyes - and yet being disappointed that my Amazon number seems to be losing traction though I haven’t given up hope yet to get it below the 100 mark at some point in the future (I know: tiresome but it means a lot to me) - I walked down the road to eat dinner at a restaurant with Grill in its name. I sat next to a table of high school kids, the boys in their sherbet-colored tuxes, the girls in their sequinned gowns, all eating dinner before they headed off to their prom. After dinner and telling the kids I hoped they all had a great time but to drive carefully, I walked down to a movie theatre in a local mall. There was nothing I wanted to see so I walked back over to a drive-through Starbucks and had a double expresso and madeleines and watched the long-haired boy who had served me go get his skateboard and ride it outside the window where I sat. He slung his hair back and glanced over at me with a slo-eyed knowingness. His slim hips kept balance on the skateboard as he road back and forth, back and forth. I was mesmerized by his skill, his hips. One Mississippi, I began to count to myself as I watched him each time he passed by me while I slowly finished my last madeleine. Two Mississippi. He gave me another slo-eyed look. Three Misssissippi. Tomorrow I’ll be in Alabama.

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