{"id":31388,"date":"2016-02-10T11:52:54","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=31388"},"modified":"2016-02-10T11:52:49","modified_gmt":"2016-02-10T17:52:49","slug":"the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-9-1993-schooled-by-rule-in-holly-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-9-1993-schooled-by-rule-in-holly-springs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Magnolia Vagabond No. 9 \/ 1993: Schooled by “Rule” in Holly Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some two decades after first hiding in a bedroom closet\u00a0in the middle of the day \u200bwhen some Betty’s \u200bhusband\u00a0came home unexpectedly (pure Ang Lee<\/strong> “Ice Storm,” \u200bthe great American suburbs of \u200bthe Nixon Administration, medicine cabinets full of \u200b”Mother’s Little Helper,”) I learned what “jumper on the line” means in the reckless world of hanky-panky.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was a guest at Burnside<\/strong>‘s North Mississippi\u00a0home in the hill country a\u00a0dozen years before his death, passing the Great Magnolia State en route to Antelope Valley, California, to see where Frank Zappa<\/strong> went to high school. It was February and near the wood-burning stove in the Burnsides’ living room I asked about the title of a song he performs in the 1992 documentary Deep Blues<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Mister Rule, what does ‘I got a jumper on the line’ mean?”<\/span><\/p>\n

All I could think of was trying to land a great fish, \u00e0 la Hemingway<\/strong>‘s Santiago.<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth swims closer to a mermaid.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Burnside picked up his guitar and sang:\u00a0“See my jumper, Lord, oh hangin’ on the line. . . yes, I see my jumper, oh lord, a hangin’ on the line. . . when I see my jumper, you know there’s somethin’ on my mind. . .”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u200b<\/em>And then explained that in blues lore (and the old black South it preserves) if a married or otherwise predisposed woman hangs her housecoat or “jumper” on the clothesline, it’s a sign to her lover that the coast is clear.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gas clothes dryers – ubiquitous by the time I began to roll and tumble – cannot convey the same\u00a0vital information.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some two decades after first hiding in a bedroom closet\u00a0in the middle of the day \u200bwhen some Betty’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":31398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[7078,6025,7794,642,4,909,3819,3,753],"class_list":["post-31388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing","tag-creative-writing","tag-great-magnolia-vagabond","tag-jumper-on-the-line","tag-ms","tag-oxford","tag-r-l-burnside","tag-rafael-alvarez","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2016-02-10-greatmagnoliavagabond.jpg?fit=650%2C390&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}