Wanda Bullard - Small Town Prisoner

 

I'm here today to tell you a story about my father, George Bullard. He was born in 1900 in a little bitty area up in the northeast corner of Mississippi. That's very rural. Most people would call it hillbilly country. They just call it paradise. [audience laughter] So, he was one of nine children. He married when he was 20. He and his wife had two children, and his wife died. So, he raised those two daughters. And then, when they were grown, he married another woman who turned out to be my mother. She was about 20 years younger than him, and they had two daughters and I'm the last of the last. He was about 50 years old when I was born, but an incredible influence on my life. 

 

One of the things that he did, mostly what he did to make money, was to raise and train bird dogs that hunted quail. And if the bird dog business got slow, he'd paint a house or two. But when he got late into his 60s, someone talked him into running for office, this bird dog raiser. And he ran for Board of Aldermen, which is like city council. He was elected. When he went to the first meeting, he found out that his assignment was that he was the fire commissioner. 

 

Now, every previous fire commissioner had gone to meetings, and made political decisions and voted and did those kinds of things. But my father didn't quite understand. And so, he went down to the fire department and said, “Now, how am I going to know when there's a fire?” [audience laughter] And they said, “And you need to know?” Because he said, “How else can I know where to go until I know where the fire is?” And they said, “Mr. Bullard, you intend to go to the fires?” “Of course, I'm the fire commissioner.” [audience laughter] 

 

They didn't have the heart to tell him that he was taking a step in a new direction from fire commissioner. [audience laughter] And so, they went along and they hooked the fire department telephone to our telephone at home. I was a teenager. [audience laughter] And every time the phone rang at the fire department, it also rang in my house. [audience laughter] Not a normal ring, one long continuous ring until you picked it up. And then you didn't say anything, you just listen to find out where the fire was. And then, my father would hop in his little Datsun station wagon and head for the fire. 

 

Now, one downside to it was, he didn't see so well at night anymore, so he didn't drive a lot after dark. So, as a teenager with a driver's license, my new job was when the fires happened at 02:00 in the morning, I got to drive him there. [audience laughter] I had to keep my jeans and my sneakers by the bed in case of a fire that we had to go help fight. 

 

Now, he knew nothing about fighting fires, understand? But he wanted to encourage those young men who were out there doing a valiant job. [audience laughter] Well, after serving two terms, he was past 70 then, and some people were saying, “Well, you still going to go on?” I discouraged it a little bit. He said, “Okay, he'll let some younger fellow come in and be the fire commissioner.” So, he stepped down. But he decided after he retired from being the fire commissioner that he missed being around the fire. 

 

And Booneville is such a small town that the fire department and the police department are right in the same building. You can walk from one to the other just between a door. So, he'd gotten really close to all the firemen and also the policemen. They considered him like a grandfather. So, they tried to figure out how they can keep him hanging around, because they loved my father. So, they asked him if he wanted a job with the police department. Well, he's 70 years old. He's never done that. He said, “Sure, what can I do?” They say, “Well, when someone say or needs to be off the day, you could come in and fill it on the radio. You could be the dispatcher, take calls, call out to the cars and tell the policemen where to go, that sort of thing.” He said, “I could do that.” 

 

I'm never sure how they maneuvered this. They paid him to do this. So, he was going along really normal with that job, and everything was looking good. And then, one day, he got to work and found this most amazing thing. They had a prisoner. [audience laughter] Now, in all the months that he'd been there, they had not had a prisoner. So, this intrigued my father. So, he'd work on the paperwork a little bit, and he'd go back and talk to a prisoner. 

 

And by noontime, he was liking this young man, even though he had hair way down here, which my father hated. [audience laughter] So, when he went out for lunch, he brought the young guy back a couple hamburgers and went back and talked to him some more. And he said, “Son, why are you in jail?” He said, “Well, I had a little too much to drink last night, Mr. Bullard, and they arrested me for public drunkenness.” My father said, “Well, that's not too bad. Why doesn't somebody come and pay your bail?” He said, “Well, I'm from Corinth, Mississippi.” Now, that's about 20 miles up the road from Booneville. 

 

He said, “I think if I could see my father face to face, he might loan me the $200 to pay my fine, but I'm not sure how he's going to react to a call from the Booneville jail.” My dad mulled that over a little bit. He was a real good muller. And he said, “Now, if I were to let you go, could you go up to Corinth, find your daddy, borrow the $200 and be back here before my shift ends at 05:00?” [audience laughter] The young man was liking the direction of this conversation. [audience laughter] He said, “Mr. Bullard, I appreciate it, but they impounded my car, so I don't have any way to get to Corinth. It's 20 miles.” My daddy said, “Well, is it a blue Chevrolet?” He said, “As a matter of fact, it is.” He said, “Oh, it's out in the parking lot. I can find the keys.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, with no authority to do anything but type on the radio, he searched through the desk, found the keys. And not only turned the prisoner loose, gave him a getaway car. [audience laughter] About 4 o'clock, the policemen started coming back in off the shift, and they went back to check on their prisoner. They weren't used to having a prisoner either, and they discovered to their dismay, they didn't have one. [audience laughter] And they said to my father, “Mr. Bullard, what happened to the prisoner?” And very nonchalantly, because he just didn't see that he'd done anything wrong, he said, “Oh, I turned him loose.” [audience laughter] “You, what?” “I turned him loose.” “Why did you do that?” “Well, he just seemed like such a nice young man, and I told him he needed to go get his $200 and come back and pay his fine.” They said, “Well, how's he going to get the car in?” He said, “Oh, I gave him his car.” 

 

So, they're sitting around mulling around, saying, “Okay, what are we going to do to make this go away?” Because they didn't want my father to be in trouble. They wanted him to be able to continue coming in, and hanging out and working on the radio. So, they decided, one man said, “You know what we'll do? We'll remind the chief of police that George Bullard helped get him elected.” Another one said, “I got a better idea. Let’s just tear up all the paperwork, the arrest report, everything, and let's just pretend none of it ever happened.” 

 

Now, my father's standing over in the corner listening, and he said, “No, we're not going to do either of those things. That young man will be back with the $200. I'm waiting here until he gets here.” One policeman observed, it might be a pretty long wait. But my father's thinking about that young man and how they had bonded in those few hours. He remembered telling that young man as he left, “Now, if you can borrow $200 to pay your fine, get a few more and get a dern haircut.” [audience laughter] That was my father's only parting advice to him. 

 

So, the policeman stood around, and 4 o'clock came and went. 04:30, 5 o'clock. No young man. Nobody was surprised, except my father. My father said, “Well, he's just running a little late.” And they waited till 05:20, 05:30 and they said, “Mr. George, your shift was over at 05:00. Why don't you go on home? We can take care of this.” My father said, “Didn't I tell you I was waiting till he got back?” “Yes.” So, they just started off. 

 

The guys that had come in at 4 o'clock wouldn't go home either. Their shift ended. They wouldn't go home. The new guys were coming in, they were trying to fill them in on what was going on. And all of a sudden, strange looking young man walked through the door, nice clothes, clean cut, short hair. He walked up to the counter and he stopped. Nobody paid him any attention. So, in a minute he said, “Excuse me.” And one of the policemen went over and said, “Can I help you?” He said, “Yes, sir, I'm here to pay my fine.” And he said, “What fine?” Nobody recognized him but my father. And he said, “$200. You guys arrested me last night. My fine is $200, so I'm here to pay it.” He's counting out twenty-dollar bills. 

 

Nobody in the room is making a sound. They're all stunned, except my father, of course, he knew he was coming back. They ride him out a receipt. He's looking around the room at all the policemen talking to each other in quiet voices. He's imagining what the atmosphere was probably like before he returned. So, as a parting thought, when he got to the door, he turned around and said to my father, “Mr. Bullard, I'm sorry I was late getting back. I had to wait in line at the barbershop.” Thank you.