So, I’m standing twenty-people deep in line at the post office—shout out to Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.”—with heavy-ass boxes that I’ve been meaning to mail since December. However, since I don’t celebrate holidays or birthdays, it is what it is. Yet, what it is in this Clinton, Mississippi, post office is crowded as everyone is masked-up and crankier than wet and famished babies. I’m not as cranky as everyone else because retirement—along with making me broke but happy—means that I ain’t really got anywhere else to be. Thus, to paraphrase that great philosopher, Morris E. Day, “I’m cooler than Santa Clause” while everyone else is upset.
In the midst of folks huffin’ and puffin’, eye-rollin’ and complainin’, in walks a bearded white man who is wearing everything except the confederate flag to indicate his southernness. Whatever stereotype that y’all have of a red neck, he fits all of them like a pair of extra-small tighty whities. Just watching him saunter, I could hear the theme music to The Dukes of Hazzard and The Beverly Hillbillies. (Wait—am I also hearing the dueling banjos from Deliverance? Damn, maybe I have been in this line too long.) As the pale magnolia man enters the building and sees the length of the line, snaking its way down the hallway and out the door, his eyes buck, his face turns shrimp pinkish, and in a slow as molasses in the winter drawl, he releases, “All man, if this don’t beat all.” After about a fifteen-second pondering of the situation, he announces to nobody in particular, “Shoot, I’ll come back later.” As he wheels to leave, he makes eye contact with me, I see the imprint of his smile extend underneath his mask, and I think, “What the hell is about to happen?” He points directly at me and proclaims, “Man, I love that mask. Prince—that’s my heart, man; that’s my heart!” (Keep in mind that Prince’s symbol
not his name, is on my mask so this man knows his Prince.) Then, he moseys out the door not waiting for a response from me. Sadly, as he left the building and disappeared down the sidewalk, two Prince songs immediately came to mind: “Race” and “Black M.F. in the House.” If y’all ever listen to the second song, y’all will know why I say sadly.