The GREAT COUNTRY CLUB of JACKSON RAID of '66: Bootleggers, Junior Leaguers, THE HELP, Mrs. World, & a COUNTRY SONG! (Madison: sales)

[GrandviewGloria]

The year was 1966. Cadillacs were entering 'The Age of Elegance', but were stuck in that awkward transition between tailfins and sidehumps. The '66 models had been out, since October of the previous year, so there were plenty of those new Cadillacs, pulling up to the gorgeous new porte-cochère of The Country Club of Jackson - not just cheap little Calais and Deville Cadillacs, but dignified Fleetwood Broughams, owned by Judges, Senators, Governors, and Industrialists: http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/stati...adillac-01.jpg .

America was rid of Kennedy, and Jackie was no longer the nation's arbiter of style. Instead, America was enthralled with regal Audrey Hepburn. Who wouldn't want to look like HER? Hepburn's ballgown, in My Fair Lady, had ushered-in a wave of Neoclassical elegance for women's gowns: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...efce40b17c.jpg

One can only imagine the stunning rhinestone (some, surely, set with real stones) choker necklaces (https://itsallfrosting.wordpress.com...estone-choker/), and the regal upswept coiffures of the ladies, as they glided into the Jackson Junior League's Mardi Gras Ball, THE event of the season. However, we shall never know for sure. All known photos, plus motion picture footage of the evening, have been destroyed - some in an oddly-convenient fire.

Jackson was a town whose 'Old Families' were an odd assortment, descended from Carpetbaggers, Scalawags, Bootleggers, Rich Rednecks, and just plain Rich White Trash. (the Antebellum Aristocracy having fled for their lives, during Reconstruction) So, Eliza Doolittle, in My Fair Lady, was more, for those women sweeping into the Country Club, than just a fashion plate. She was a role model: someone who'd shed her 'Skawtch-Arrrrrish' dipthong (or odd intonations emanating from the slums of Kiev, the slums of Athens, and the slums of Marseille), and learned how to "talk like they do", and "do like they do". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVmU3iANbgk

The Gold Coast, in Rankin County (Jackson Jambalaya: The Gold Coast of Rankin County), the location of the bootlegger's "outlets", the gambling dens, and the brothels, was still going strong, in '66. I was reading about a particular bootlegger, someone oddly similar to my own childhood boss, when this post about the raid on the Country Club, in some comments, caught my eye: Jackson Jambalaya: Remembering Big Red

I'd never heard about this - not one word. And we were 'insiders' - special pets of the powerful, recruited to live in Eastover - given first dibs on a juicy foreclosure, with a fortune in profit potential inherent in the distress price. So, HOW did I never hear of THIS?!!!! Here's the odious Bill Minor's take on the affair: BILL MINOR: Forty years of legal liquor: It's mostly ho-hum - Daily Journal

Please note that the Governor was supposedly offered two MILLION, to veto the bill ending Prohibition, by "liquor distributors" in Louisiana. That's in the neighborhood of TWENTY million, today. Politicians are generally way cheaper than that. WHO made the offer? Some 1960s Goldrings? (Goldring redraws plan, but avenue mansion still faces wrecking ball | The Lens The new place: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9288...7i13312!8i6656) Or, did somebody from Palermo - via Tunisia - make the offer? Why so MUCH? PRESIDENTS are routinely bought for less - adjusted for inflation, WAY less! Was there that much money to be made off illegal sales to Mississippi? Or, is that amount just another figment of Bill Minor's imagination?

Plenty of Jackson's "first families" got their starts, doing illicit things on the Gold Coast. Lots of people just appeared in Jackson, with money. Their daughters were trying to get into sororities, into the deb cotillions, and into the Junior League. You could start school at Southern, pledge Chi Omega there, and then transfer to Ole Miss (until that loophole got closed, in the Nineties). But the League was harder to crash. Jackson's League was barely a quarter-century old, in '66. 'National' had been wary of letting Jackson into the fold, because of the notorious rawness of the town. The fictional Hilly: elbows-on-the-table, finger-lickin', pie-smackin', nasty, scheming, taking-with-food-in-her-mouth, Rich-White-Trash-Bible-Thumpin' Hilly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaWfoNPDz74) - is probably EXACTLY what 'National' envisioned and dreaded. In fact, The Help captures the crudeness of Jackson Socialites, back then, though it does portray them as being a whole lot WASPier than they really were, in the early years. I have to wonder if the party (had the Sheriff not interrupted) would have looked like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBS-mKNEEoA

And this started me thinking about the Country Club of Jackson - and booze - and the club's role in this tragic event, when two fledgling physicians had their lives snuffed-out, when two socialites, reportedly tipsy following an event at the CCoJ, veered into their lane. Jackson Jambalaya: Karen Irby case Too, there was CCoJ resident, Pam Nail (Mrs. World), was arrested by police in Madison, apparently after drinking a bit. There was a great video of the arrest interview. But it's been scrubbed from the Internet.

Which all leads to this highly danceable song about the big night: https://tferrell.bandcamp.com/track/...ntry-club-1966

I think I need it as a ringtone.

[Rock Climber]

This is art. You have a gift!

I watched most of The Help on Youtube after reading this.

[deb100]

I am dubious, also, about the fabulous amount of money that was involved in bootlegging. A typical small rural county supports a couple of hole-in-the-wall liquor stores that employ maybe half a dozen people in all. Yet people claim that during prohibition this illegal business was one of the most powerful forces in government.

[Jardine8]

It really is weird how Jackson and Rankin County have basically switched places in the last 50 years; now, Rankin County is the place to live (well, Madison County obviously as well) and Jackson is the backwoods hellhole.

[GrandviewGloria]

My link, in the Original Post, to a description of the raid, by Bill Minor, seems broken (though the article is still easy to find). That link was rather critical to understanding the story (I should have quoted paragraphs from the article) But today, Kingfish has posted a pretty good article of his own. Jackson Jambalaya: When the Country Club of Jackson was the battlefield for booze

Maybe he's reading my threads? Anyway, he's added new information. Remember, this is EXACTLY THE SAME CROWD - right down to the women's organization hosting the event - during EXACTLY THE SAME TIME PERIOD depicted in the ballroom/charity auction scene in 'The Help'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBS-mKNEEoA

Oh, and here's the late Warren Hood's home in Eastover http://www.eastoverneighborhood.com/history/ (The most prominent attendees at that ill-fated ball, the Hoods were kind, lovely people, and their home was the definitive estate, for those who appreciated restraint and dignity in a dwelling: and surely, it sold for WAY more than that miniscule 'Zestimate'. Asking, I believe, was 4.5 million). https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4.../3060021_zpid/

Here's the refreshed link to the Bill Minor column I found, after reading a mention of the incident, in comments following one of Kingfish's articles on bootlegging on the Gold Coast: http://www.djournal.com/opinion/bill...8bcfe3aca.html

[Madeline2121]

What a great read! My Grandaddy was a bootlegger on the side with the sheriff of that particular county back in the day. I'm pretty sure he did it more to make sure he had booze for himself and his friends and family more then for any real profit.

[GrandviewGloria]

Originally Posted by Madeline2121

What a great read! My Grandaddy was a bootlegger on the side with the sheriff of that particular county back in the day. I'm pretty sure he did it more to make sure he had booze for himself and his friends and family more then for any real profit.

I knew we had SOMETHING in-common! As you've surely read in my other posts, my first "real job" (instead of hauling trash cans and pulling weeds, for elderly ladies, for enough change to buy corn meal), was counting money for our county's 'Boss Bootlegger'. I was still a kid, and his wife was amazed that, at such an early age, I was able to distinguish between weeds and desirable plants. So, he took a chance, and let me ride in the car with him, as he made his rounds, collecting payments. Men would come out of the weeds and bushes, on all those narrow, barely-paved and unpaved roads, and hand him grubby wads of cash.

The Boss Bootlegger had a Black Talisman Edition Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham - TRIPLE BLACK, with the black padded vinyl roof, AND black crushed velvet on the inside. And there was an 'Executive Armrest Console' in the back, which is where I royally planted my bloated-from-malnourishment tuchis. http://jimhaileyclassiccars.com/wp-c...8-1024x682.jpg (sorry, I can't find a pic of a black one) I was so proud!

He'd hand the money back to me, and I'd count it, make a notation in my handy secretarial ledger, and stow the cash in the compartment beneath my butt.

I wonder if my boss knew your Grandaddy...

[GrandviewGloria]

Just as happened back in '66, the police refused to do the job the Sheriff eventually had to do. Sheriff Tyree Jones showed-up and did his duty. Jackson Jambalaya: What Does it Take to Get Arrested in Jackson?

Sheriff Tyree, by the way, is one of the sexiest men alive. If they could put that voice in a bottle, I'd be spraying 'Tyree' all over myself. He looked better, though, before he grew his current beard - presumably to fit-in with Jackson's Mayor's milieu.

[supfromthesite]

This thread has been an excellent read. Well done.