FunSeekers Radio Network

I just returned from a trip to my hometowns of Laurel and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I mention both towns because I spent the first twenty-nine years of my life in that area.

Patricia and I own a house there that our son lives in while he's in school at Southern Mississippi. I needed to get the driveway culvert worked on because the concrete had collapsed and was blocking the ditch from draining. I called the City of Hattiesburg and asked for the person in charge of culverts. I can't tell you just how surprised I was when a man actually returned my phone call within 24 hours. It was the supervisor of the department that handles culverts and such things. We had a short and pleasant conversation about what needed to be done and he assured me that someone would be out to check on the culvert.

Now, here is the strange part, a foreman and crew knocked on the door the very next morning. I said, it was the very next morning! Have you heard of such a thing happening?! They promptly got to work with shovels--actually, it was one shovel and four workers, but you get my point--and replaced the broken concrete with a nicely poured, smooth, brand new piece of fresh concrete. It really looked good. I couldn't wait for it to be dry enough for me to carve my initials and the date into it. I thanked the crew, they drove away, and then, within seven minutes, the sky fell. The dangest downpour of rain I have seen in years. It was a frog strangler. It was raining cats and dogs. It was a gully washer. It washed away the new concrete.

I suppose you could say that I did not really expect to ever see those guys again. I mean, really, how could I be so bold as to think I could get this whole process going again. The next door neighbor had already told me that I had somehow accomplished more in twenty-four hours than he had been able to get done in twenty-four years. It ain't exactly a miracle, but the crew did show back up the next day and redid the whole job, and I wasted no time after they left in scribbling a large "A" and the date in that fresh smooth concrete. Well, it was smooth before that anyway.

All this got me thinking about how this would have been handled when I was growing up in a more country area. It was out in the county where we didn't even have street numbers. The mail carrier just knew who lived in what house. There was no fire department, not even a volunteer one. The policing of the whole county was done by the sheriff and a few deputies along with a constable in each "beat", which was kind of like "wards" in a city. We just did not have any services that city folk enjoyed. We didn't have their taxes either.

There was an elected Supervisor in each beat. I grew up in Beat One of Jones County. Getting elected Supervisor was a pretty good job. It was prestigious. It was powerful, and it paid really well, both above and below the table.

I remember when my daddy needed a load of gravel for the driveway all he had to do was call the supervisor. Realistically, it would be my mama who would make the phone call. Daddy never used the phone in those days. But the gravel would be delivered in no time and before you knew it, a road grader would be there, smoothing it out like a new gravel road. "No charge, Mr. J.C.!"

Those days went away. That "under the table" part of the supervising job caught up with one of the supervisors in one of the counties and the whole danged "Beat system" of government was pretty much shot to Hell. I guess they still have something similar on paper, but I bet you won't get a load of gravel unloaded and spread with a simple phone call to just one person anymore. I wonder how much a load of gravel is these days.