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Bruce, Miss., is hardly a vestige of the Old South. Scarlett would run screaming at the profusion of double wides and Jim Walter homes that dot the landscape.
While nearby Oxford boasts a bustling courthouse square, the only places in Bruce that show signs of life are the Sonic drive-in and Rex Jarrett's Cavalier Shoppe. Yet, the two towns are inextricably linked.
In Paris the slaves to fashion look to the shops of Rue du Faubourg St. Honore for inspiration. In New York, Madison Avenue is the epicenter of au courant styles. But on the streets of Oxford, especially among the white, undergraduate students of the
University of Mississippi, the Cavalier Shop is the citadel of segregationist chic.
Until recently I had no knowledge of the Cavalier Shoppe's existence. Over the course of a year's residency in Oxford, I had seen more Confederate flags than I could count. I expected that; I had been warned. But, no one prepared me for daily Confederate fashion show.
Confederate flag belts, umbrellas, hats and cummerbunds; Confederate flag polo shirts, sweatshirts, turtlenecks and night shirts; Confederate flag dog collars, dog
jackets, stuffed cats and bubble bath; Confederate flag Santa Clauses, baby bibs, fanny packs and swizzle sticks; Confederate T-shirts by the dozen; I had seen them all. Surely, all this Confederate camp didn't come from one place?
My curiosity got the best of me this summer while waiting in line to use an instant banker. The boy in front of me was wearing a T-shirt that I had never seen before: a black and white line drawing of the U.S. Capitol with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. printed beneath -- "I Have A Dream." Nothing out of the ordinary there. As he pulled out
his wallet, (which was emblazoned with a Confederate flag), a
flash of color caught my eye. There, atop the Capitol, were the stars and bars of the Confederacy.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
His reply overwhelmed me. "The Cavalier Shoppe, down in Bruce. You mean you've never heard of it?" I professed my innocence. To my surprise he rushed to his car and retrieved a Cavalier Shoppe catalog. Like a prepster in training who had just discovered Brooks Brothers, he showed me the 44-page catalog.
Every item, every stitch of Confederate apparel, had come from one place -- the Cavalier Shoppe. If evil had a Southern source, then surely this was it. Mississippi, in 1996, is a mighty complicated place. In the past, we Southerners have relied upon wars over state's rights and civil rights to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Now, things are different. Now, issues are not depicted in terms of black and white, or good and bad, only shades of gray.
Of late, I've grown tired of this ambivalence; show me good or show me bad. Give me Emmett Till. Give me Bull Connor. Just don't give me equivocation. And so it was that I found myself driving the 25 miles between my home and Bruce on a quest for the "unholy grail" of Southern culture.
Jarrett met me at the door with a complimentary 6 and 1/2 ounce bottle of cold Coca-Cola.Each visitor is met with a firm handshake, a polite inquiry as to "who are your people" and a bottle of Coke. Jarrett goes through almost 300 Cokes a week.
His manner was downright charming. Could this be the same man who, when I called for directions, told me: "Come on down to see us at the Cavalier Shoppe. We'll treat you like a good white Southerner."
He talked -- a lot, and I listened. I wanted to believe him when he told me that his sole interest was in preserving the heritage of his forefathers who lived and died for a noble cause.
"I run with the big dogs," Jarrett said, "and urinate on the tall weeds, but what I'm doing here has nothing to do with racism."
Sitting on a Confederate flag-draped bale of cotton, as the strains of Dixie echoed throughout the store, just beyond eyesight of a signed picture of Sen. Trent Lott, I sat talking to Jarrett -- a man who claimed to "have a pure heart, cleansed and washed in the blood of Christ," yet made his living by selling goods which many Southerners, myself included, would characterize as patently offensive.
To my left I spied a bottle of "Dixie Soothing Peppermint Foot Massage." To my right was an "Ole Miss Sweater Vest" with a built in chime that played Dixie. Tacky maybe, but patently offensive? Perhaps I was being a bit hard on Jarrett.
He was careful not to say anything inflammatory. He spoke of fine men's
clothing as his first love and of all the Confederate memorabilia as being a political and entrepreneurial response to "those who would deny me my heritage."
Yet, there were some not so subtle hints that his heart wasn't as pure as he would have me believe.
"I wouldn't do anything that doesn't honor God, country and the CSA," Jarrett said. He spoke of his abhorrence for the mixing of cotton and polyester with the same fervor that white Mississippians of a generation ago showed toward the mixing of the races. No matter what he said, I couldn't quit thinking about his telephone promise to treat me "like a good white Southerner."
And to make matters worse, as we talked, the "I Have A Dream" T-shirt that had first lured me into his store, loomed above my head. Had I found something truly evil?
As Jarrett droned on about "honoring God, country and the CS of A," I welcomed ambiguity like an old friend. Hate and compassion charged my thoughts like an alternating current, though I remained
sure of one thing: Rex Jarrett"s "Dream" was my nightmare.
Located at 205 Calhoun Street in downtown Bruce, the Cavalier Shoppe is hard to miss. Look for the Confederate flags. For information call
800-227-5491.
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