Jill Conner Browne - The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love

Contents

To
my daughter Bailey,
who is my very heart,
and
to the sweet memory of
Beth Griffin Jones,
who believed I could write a
really funny book

MEN LOVE
THE SWEET POTATO QUEENS BOOK OF LOVE, TOO

Riotous, irreverent, and knockdown naughtya must for any man who has ever loved a spirited woman, and for any woman who is one.

Willie Morris

If everything in this book is true, Im going duck hunting with a rake!

Kinky Friedman

The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love is hilarious and great. If Jill Conner Browne will say the magic words to me, I will kiss her right on the yam.

Larry L. King

Funny and opinionated, The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love may be the hippest creation to come out of Mississippi sincewell, since me, quite frankly. The Sweet Potato Queens themselves are rather buxom and single-minded. So move over, Monica Lewinsky! Who needs cigars when you have sweet potatoes?

John Lypsinka Epperson

Meet the Sweet Potato Queens

F or anyone even remotely familiar with Jackson, Mississippi, the name Sweet Potato Queens instantly evokes sweet memories of beautiful, somewhat augmented female forms enveloped in green sequins, towering red hairdos, provocative dances, and the haunting refrain of Tiny Bubbles, as only Don Ho couldor would, for that matterdeliver it. If, as they say, you aint from around here, you need some enlightening; and your life will not be complete until you get it. Nor will it ever be the same after you do.

The Sweet Potato Queens are us. That would be me and eight or nine of my nearest and dearest. The Sweet Potato Queens were, however, my idea, and therefore Im the boss of the whole enterprise. This is unquestionably the best job I ever had in my entire life.

It all began back in the early 1980s. Having passed recently through a pretty thick patch of doldrums, I was feeling a mite antsy and looking for a new direction for my life. My friend Cheri told me her dad had bought some land up the road a ways in Vardaman, Mississippi, which claims to be The Sweet Potato Capital of the World. She said he had an old beat-up pickup truck on which he had meticulously painted ANGLIN SWEET POTATO FARMS. Farms may suggest to the reader an enormous spread, nothing but sweet potatoes as far as the eye can see. It was, in fact, twenty acres maxwhat he had was a fair-sized garden. The family thought it was pretty funny of him, and so did I. She went on to tell how Vardaman was into sweet potatoes in a big way, festival and all that. It occurred to me that they might need a Queen for that festival, and so I volunteered to be it on a continuing basis to save them the trouble and expense of selecting a new one every year. She said shed pass along my generous offer to whoever might be interested.

Somehow that interest never materialized, but I had a passing thought that I might have stumbled on to something. The prospect of being the Queen of anything at all struck a chord deep within me. But I let it slide until I got a phone call from my buddy Viv. (I was lolling about in the bathtuball the Queens love to loll about, in bathtubs and elsewhere; it makes us no never mind.) Anyway, I was in the tub lolling, and Viv called up to say that her husband, Malcolm, was going to put on a St. Patricks Day parade. With literally no hesitation, I spoke the words that would forever change our worldsI truly believe it was probably some sort of divine thing.

Im in it, I said emphatically.

What are you going to be? Viv asked, in a tone of mild disdain, as if I couldnt possibly have a plan already.

I am the Sweet Potato Queen.

Well, so am I, she said.

I said, Fine. And it was done.

That first year, 1982, was a confusing one for the 350,000 residents of Jackson, Mississippi. The parade was held on the actual Day of St. Patrick, which happened to be a Thursday, I think. We paraded through downtown Jackson, right at five oclock, so that all the folks getting off work could see us and be held up in traffic a little while longer. Were they happy. Prior to that very moment, St. Patricks Day had passed virtually unnoticed in Jackson. It took us a few years to get the participation of our indigenous folk, but they are quite taken with the idea now.

So Malcolm White has his parade, officially called Mals St. Paddys Day Parade, every year, now always on a Saturday in the general vicinity of the actual Day of St. Patricksometimes before, sometimes after, but always in March, I can promise you that. Other cities, I understand, are sticklers for March 17, but we, in our Southern way, are more concerned with the convenience afforded by a Saturday parade. I cant tell you what criteria are used to determine which Saturday. The only criterion that Im personally aware of is that the Sweet Potato Queens will be the focal point. That has never been a problem.

The newly crowned Sweet Potato Queens were the instant darlings of that first parade. Our first outfits, however, were not nearly so grand as the ones we wear today. There were four of us, and we all wore green ball gowns from family trunks or the Goodwill thrift shop. And tiaras. God, I love a tiara. Suzanne Sugarbaker of Designing Women was so right when she said, Theres just nothing better in life than to ride around on the back of a convertible with a crown on your head. Words to live by. We didnt actually have a convertible; we had a pickup truck. But we did have big dresses, tiaras, and long gloves. (Our first gloves were the no-longer-quite-so-white ones we found in our mothers forgotten wardrobes. Vivid colors would come in future years.)

And we had The Wave. That beauty queen wave, the Miss America waveback when Miss America meant something; namely, that you were the best-looking thing in the whole country and none of this ridiculous scholarship hooey. Look at the old films of the Miss America pageant. The wave changed when they started all that scholarship crap. Scholarship, my butt. Take the crown out of the deal, and see how many contenders you got left. Name me any other scholarship competition in the universe that induces full-grown women to have their back teeth pulled, bottom ribs removed, noses whacked, and titswell, brains will just never reach that level of popularity, now will they? Show me another scholarship contest that necessitates the application of Firm-Grip to ones buttocks to hold ones swimsuit in place. Thats so all those brains dont pop out on the runway, no doubt.

Call the thing a beauty pageant, and be done with it. Get honest. And let the winners get back to the traditional wave, the one that says, I am better looking than every last one of you! But I am humble about it, and I have compassion for all you little, ugly, pathetic people. I am up here, where I belong, above the crowd, so you can all see how very beee-yooo-ti-ful I am and you can see it from all angles and so fully appreciate just how much better looking I am than you. But even in my great beauty, I am still sweet and kind, and I will wave to the likes of you to prove it. See? I am waving and smiling.