BARS: Jack's Nest near Farmville, VA

In 1980, I got a job teaching at Hampden-Sydney College, just outside of Farmville, Virginia, which was midway between Richmond and Roanoke, fairly close to the North Carolina border. 

Before I left for that job, I had had a “Southern dinner” with my friends John and Georgie Cooper.  Georgie was one of the most erudite persons I ever knew, and a wonderful musician.  More importantly, in this case, she was from Greenville, Mississippi.  Knowing that I’d never been to the South, she said she wanted me to learn what grits were before I went.  But what she really wanted was to give me some advice.  Here’s the gist—and I truly wish I could replicate her Delta accent, since she always managed to wring about five syllables out of “Glenn.”  That accent gave her advice a shitload of gravitas.

“When you’re in Virginia,” she said, “eat some Smithfield ham.  Have a bowl of Brunswick stew.  It should have squirrel in it, but probably will just have chicken.  And this is really important, kiddo.  If some old red-neck tells you to mind your own bid-ness, you mind it!”

When I got to Farmville, there wasn’t a lot of action for a dashing assistant professor of composition, but pretty soon I managed to find a roadhouse about four miles out of town.  It was called Jack’s Nest, and it was owned and run by an older black man whom everyone called Jack, although his actual name was Pernell.  When I say “older,” I mean he was probably in his 60s.  He had grown up in Newport News, and then made his bundle as a liquor distributor in New Jersey.  To me, this background suggests that he was not intimidated by anything or anyone on earth.  Even so, he was friendly and easy-going, and a lot of fun to talk to if you didn’t mind his occasional looking-away smiles.  I amused him—sometimes as I intended, quite often not.

His wife was the nurse at the public high school, which was 99% black.  She was gorgeous, and they had two gorgeous kids, then in their early teens or pre-teens.  After being a nurse all day, she’d come to the Nest and be the waitress in its small dining room.  I would sometimes say to her, “You know, if we left right now, we could drive to New Orleans and get there in time for dinner tomorrow.  What should we have?”  And we’d plan a menu.  It’s my favorite game.  We also pseudo-dined in Chicago, Albuquerque, San Francisco, New York City, and several other exotic places—exotic at least from the perspective of Farmville VA.

Although Jack was black, his customers were 100% white.   It was a strange dynamic, because many of his patrons young and old would treat him like their best pal when he was tending bar, and then, when he was out of the room, would use the word “nigger” freely.  At this stage of my life, I was pretty well aware that people could harbor and act on antithetical attitudes and behaviors; even so, I could never figure out what was actually going on in the social milieu at Jack’s Nest.

At one point, Jack had a black singer/guitarist from Roanoke come in on Saturday nights to play for entertainment and dancing.   I was always impressed at this musician’s repertoire, which was inexhaustible and thoroughly multi-cultural.  He could and would sing any song ever sung by anybody, from a grinding blues to a current, perky, inane pop favorite.  And for dancing, he could set down a throbbing beat that led to outrageous slow dirty-boogie dancing that you had to see to believe. 

[You go on to the next paragraph.  I’m thinking about that dancing.]

The biggest ovation every night would come when he played a rousing country version of “Under the Double Eagle,” whereupon the crowd would happily stomp away deep into the night.

After he’d played at the bar quite a few times, some young black people began to show up, and for couple of months things went pretty well.  I was told that Jack’s Nest was the only bar in Virginia where such mixing occurred, which is hard to believe (now, at least), but it was certainly the only place like that anywhere near Farmville in 1980.  Back then, tensions could be pretty high at these integrated barroom entertainments, and eventually there was a bad scene in the parking lot late one night, and after that there wasn’t a black singer/guitarist on weekends anymore.

It’s important to remember that Jack’s Nest was in Prince Edward County, which gained fame by closing its public schools rather than integrate—and kept them closed until 1969.  Yes, 1969.  At that time, by court order, they created a public school system.  At the same time, they maintained the 100% white Prince Edward Academy.  When I was there, mainly just blacks attended the under-funded public schools (except for a handful of white children whose parents were liberal professors at Hampden-Sydney College), and the all-white Prince Edward Academy continued to flourish.  Since a few Hampden-Sydney faculty members were on the Academy’s school board, this led to some interesting interactions at faculty get-togethers. 

So that was the local atmosphere around the roadhouse called Jack’s Nest.

At one point, Jack had his sister-in-law come in to tend bar.  Though her complexion was nearly jet black, she had striking, naturally red hair, and she was one of two people in south-central Virginia whom I spoke to nearly every day, but felt that I understood only one word out of any two or three.  The other largely unintelligible talker was white.  Both had almost completely impenetrable accents.  I did a lot of nodding in those days.  “Yeah…well…you know…is that so?”

One night, I went into the bar and the sister-in-law was serving—and the only free stool at the counter was next to the white guy whom I couldn’t understand.  He and his pals had pretty clearly knocked down quite a few Old Milwaukees. 

After a while, he said something to the sister-in-law bartender, and she said something back.  This exchange was repeated several times, each time with harsher emphasis, until finally he said, or may have said, “I don’t need the opinion of no red-haired nigger.” 

I was appalled, but quietly continued to drink my beer, feeling, with some justice, that I didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation. 

Eventually, the guy turned to me, having noticed my quietness, and said (possibly) “That don’t mean nothing.  That’s just the way we talk down here.”  I continued to drink beer, let us say, impassively, and a few minutes later the guy said “Really.  We’re okay with it; it’s not a problem.  Isn’t that right?” he said to the sister-in-law bartender.

She replied, or may have replied, “You could die right now and nobody would care.” 

Though the actual sense of their remarks to one another was not at all clear to me, the general import was an obvious and mutual hostility. 

So I continued to drink my beer without responding or even looking at him—just minding my own bid-ness.

Apparently driven by inexpressible doubts about me or perhaps himself, however, he wouldn’t or couldn’t give it a rest, and continued to lecture to me about the natural, traditional, time-honored ways of communication in southern culture, getting more and more vociferous in making his case.  Pretty soon a bunch of his friends were standing around me, too, saying stuff like “Yeah, he’s a good guy, he don’t mean nothing by it, everything’s fine” and so on.  Eventually, their comments led them to some very excited shouts and even some cursing, so I left and went back to my apartment. 

The next day, I got to the bar around 4:30 to have dinner.  Whatever Jack had prepared for the night’s entrée and side dishes was baking or bubbling unattended, and Jack was behind the bar, cleaning and re-stocking.  I edged onto a stool.

“Pernell,” I said, “the damned-est thing happened last night.” 

He laughed and said, “Yeah, I heard about that.  Don’t worry about it. I told them ‘Don’t be upset, he’s just a white boy from Kansas.’”

Now, to be frank, I could accept the fact that he identified me as the cause of the situation, because I really was an ignorant oddball in the South of that time and place—not that subsequent years and different places have made much improvement.  But, for a native Angeleno, that “from Kansas” really cut to the quick.

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Georgie, though you’re gone and I miss you, I want you to know that I did eat some Smithfield ham, and also had some Brunswick stew with chicken.  As for that third bit of advice, you’ll have to be the judge.

Georgie Cooper with her son Jack