Sun-n-Sand, an Irreplaceable Piece of Mississippi's Political History
By Sid Salter
They offered cheap rooms, a heated pool, a decent coffee shop and an endless, gratis supply of bologna and crackers in the corner of the lobby and for a time, it was one of Mississippi’s most intriguing and influential political and governmental environments.
The first time legendary Mississippi newspaper man W.C. “Dub” Shoemaker of Kosciusko took me to meet with state legislators at the faux Polynesian Sun-n-Sand Motor Hotel one block from the Mississippi State Capitol Building, the place was in its prime and intoxicating in more ways than one for a young journalist who wanted to cover state government and politics.
Shoemaker, who covered Mississippi’s civil rights beat and the crime beat for the old Jackson Daily News before building his own weekly newspaper public company, knew the place like the back of his hand. Along with the loosely adjacent Patio Club – a watering hole for legislators, lobbyists, and politicos – Shoemaker said those locales provided venues to develop serious sources if a journalist could earn their trust and respect. How was that accomplished? First, politicians had to trust that a promise of “off the record” conversations were indeed off the record. Second, if the conversation wasn’t off the record, don’t misquote or embellish the information. Third, don’t play “gotcha” games and don’t burn your sources.
For back in the early 1980s, the Sun-n-Sand was the haunt of choice for most power brokers in the Mississippi Legislature and, at the same time, it was the place where I learned most of the lessons of value regarding any reasonable attempts at covering legislative news.
After years of reading about the nocturnal excesses of legislators, the supposedly endless parade of receptions and dinners and cocktail parties that made so many headlines, I was prepared to visit the Sun-n-Sand and see the bacchanal first-hand. After that first visit with Shoemaker, I was invited back by former state representatives Mike Mills and Billy McCoy. Mills is now a federal judge; McCoy is now the retired Speaker of the Mississippi House.
There, I found a bunch of married guys living in cramped hotel rooms, sitting around in their bare feet and undershorts eating popcorn, parched peanuts, hoop cheese, Vienna sausages, and sardines and crackers.
A few had drinks, but not many and not much. No small number were checking in with their wives and kids back home on the phone. There were card games, groups watching pro basketball, and more tall tales and bull sessions than one could endure. Laughter abounded as war stories unfolded. Most of the rooms had hot plates, dorm refrigerators, or other small appliances. As in most places where men oversee decor and house cleaning, the place smelled like a goat and was not in danger of making the cover of Southern Living. Rent was by the month.
Mills and McCoy had the rule “what’s said in here, stays in here.” If you want it on the record, say so and take your chances. If you go back on your word and burn us in print, we won’t talk to you “on background” about anything more controversial than the Capitol Buildings and Ground Committee deliberations, they said.
The Patio Club held other delights. Stiff drinks, good dance music from incredibly talented musicians like Mississippians Joe and Irene Martin, and the sight of former House Speaker C.B. “Buddie” Newman holding court in his tropical linen shirts and handing out souvenir coins or what he called “doubloons” bearing his own likeness. There were a lot of politicos in the joint that Newman only knew as “scannelbooga” (a term that Newman coined combining “scoundrel” and “booger”), but the most powerful man in Mississippi in that era knew and paid great deference to Joe, Irene, and the rest of the musicians.
There was no social media and no 24-hour news cycle. Cable TV was still developing. Newspapers were strong. Talk radio was no force at all in Mississippi in that era. For about 40 years, the Sun-n-Sand was the epicenter of Mississippi government, politics, and lobbying.
My late friend Willie Morris, who joined me more than once at Sun-n-Sand, wrote in his whimsical, telling book My Cat Spit McGee of his impressions of the place: “In the shadowy bar with Patsy Cline and Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn on the jukebox, or in the dining room at breakfast, the pols more or less passed that day’s legislation, merely to be formalized later on the floors of the Capitol.”
Taking a wrecking ball to the Sun-n-Sand would be like bulldozing Eudora Welty’s table at The Mayflower.
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