RIDGELAND, Miss. (March 16, 2021) - “The Road to Pickletown – A Southerner Confronts Cowbells, Clowns, Cuba, Christmas, and Mississippi,” written by longtime automotive and auto racing journalist William Jeanes, is not what one would expect to come from the pen of a car guy.
Yet, here it is – a selection of the many columns he’s written over the years, including for the Northside Sun, a “prosperous and principled” weekly newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. Jeanes was born in Mississippi, grew up there in the ‘50s and ’60s, then left for the Navy and later for Manhattan. He returned to Mississippi in 2001 to reside in Pass Christian and eventually Ridgeland with his wife Susan.
"Pickletown" showcases the Jeanes wit and humor that characterized his writing for automotive magazines such as Car and Driver and in mainstream publications such as Playboy, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and The Saturday Evening Post. Several of these national columns are included, but the newspaper columns that tell of Mississippi and comment on national issues form the backbone of "Pickletown." Some of both do talk about cars.
Who else but the co-creator of Bolus & Snopes, a 1970s auto racing team that some believed to be fictional, could earn such stature in the auto racing world as well as among the masses? Jeanes has done it with “Pickletown.”
Despite its lunatic publicity, B&S actually existed. Furthermore. it won a number of Sports Car Club of America races and two regional championships. Never mind that it claimed to own a blimp and to have a sorrel mule named Dick Johnson as its mascot.
Beginning with a foreword by political satirist and journalist P. J. O’Rourke and ending with Jeanes’ acknowledgments to friends and pillars of journalism, the book recounts the often humorous home life and school experiences of a youngster growing up in the South amid racial tensions, strange local lore, fried SPAM and Mom’s collard greens, meatloaf and “beet pickles.” He also takes the reader through some adult adventures.
“[William] does this with deft use of those ever-cheerful Bobbsey Twins of style, brevity and wit,” wrote O’Rourke. “He seems able to listen to you as he writes….You the reader are there with him in his prose.…'Pickletown' delivers every pleasure of good conversation.”
“Being a newspaper or magazine writer in Mississippi is like being the possum in a petting zoo – people know you’re there but don’t want much to do with you,” Jeanes said in his introduction. “Some of the columns draw on my experiences as an advertising executive, an editor, a diesel mechanic, a bartender, an amateur actor, a veteran of the Cannonball coast-to-coast race, and a traveler who has seen all seven continents and more than one hundred countries.”
By the final chapter, the reader will have learned how Pickletown, Mississippi, earned its name, and why an automotive journalist’s heart, soul and down-home reminiscences are rooted deeply in the Magnolia State.
