God Save the Sweet Potato Queens

The Million Queen March

The Wannabe Wannabes are women—and men—who had written to me after reading
SPQBOL
. I answer all e-mails, and when I wrote these wonderful folks back, I invited them to come to the parade in Jackson in March. More and more and more of them started writing back that they were indeed coming, so many of them, in fact, that we started calling it the Million Queen March. They came and they came and they came. They filled up hotels, they filled up restaurants—especially Hal and Mal’s—for days. Jim Dollarhide, the official cinematographer to the Sweet Potato Queens, spent several days at the Edison Walthall Hotel in downtown Jackson, just riding the elevator up and down, interviewing and filming Wannabe Wannabes. (The video is available on our Web site—
www.sweetpotatoqueens.com

We had a big party for them all at Hal and Mal’s on Friday night before the parade. Saying we were unprepared for the numbers is, well—what would you do if you turned on the bathtub faucet and Niagara Falls spewed forth? They came from near ’bout everywhere—New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Colorado, California, North Dakota even. We think this is significant. I mean, it is one thing for someone in North Dakota to find, buy, read, and like a book about a bunch of crazy women in Mississippi—that’s pretty special in itself. But for that person then to take time off from work; buy plane tickets, hotel rooms, and food; conceive, design, and manufacture costumes; and convince their friends to do it with them, just to come to Jackson, Mississippi, of all places, in order to dress up funny and walk down the street with a bunch of other crazy women, well, we think this tells us a whole lot about these folks. Namely that they are highly motivated, easily led to the better things in life, and have a disposable income, possibly too much time on their hands, and an unquenchable zest for living. And man alive, were we ever glad to see them! For one thing, it gave us great leverage and credibility here in our hometown: See? It’s not just us—there are a lot of other crazy, fun-infected folks out there! And by the way, we have invited them all here, and whaddya know? They all came!

Everyone was invited to come dressed as the Queen of Whatever They Chose and march in the parade. We had the Queens of Crude, the Blue Margarita Queens, several factions of Turnip Green Queens (we feared there might be an altercation, but all went smoothly), the Pink Flamingo Queens, the Florida Navel Orange Queens (they threw oranges and had a motto: Keep Your Navel Queen), the Missouri Ozark Raspberry Queens (picture giant Carmen Miranda–type headdresses), the Peach Pit Queens, the Ghouly Girls, the Cabbage Queens, the Princesses, the No-Regrets Majorettes, the Honeybee Queens, the Brazen Strumpets, the Menopause Mafia—to name just a few. I know whoever I left out will be pissed off big time, and I apologize right here and now and will find a way to make it up to you next parade, I promise. Sonny Gilmore at Crosshaven Books in Birmingham, Alabama, chartered a bus and brought fifty-three Wannabe Wannabes to march. He said he had such a waiting list, he’s already reserved three buses for next year. I call that one brave man. One group from Lakeland, Florida, had T-shirts made that read: “To hang with us—you gotta be a hip-hopping, gum-popping, forever-shopping, margarita-drinking, fun-loving, chocolate-craving, out-a-pocket, road-tripping, promise-making royal pain in the patootie!”

Well, now, that reflects our sentiments eggzackly. Those women who came, and the four jillion e-mails, cards, and letters we’ve gotten, indicate to us that we have struck a deep, harmonic, universal chord—that, in fact, it isn’t just us and there are literally millions of people out there who either are just like us or certainly aspire to be just like us, and they are desperately seeking opportunities and, more important, leadership. This is where I come in. Because, as you know, I am not just
a
Sweet Potato Queen—I am
the
Sweet Potato Queen, Boss of all the Sweet Potato Queens, and as such I have, in my opinion, done very well by my charges: provided excellent leadership and elevated them to an exalted position of power and status, which is, of course, their rightful position in this life, and I do believe with virtually no more effort on my part, I can do the same for all of you. There’s nothing to this Queen business really—just do like I tell you and you’ll be fine. I promise.

A Fabulous Journey

To a great extent this book presupposes that you have read
The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love
. It is not an absolute necessity, but it would help, so go do that now if you haven’t already. I am not going to retell all that stuff just to save you twelve bucks.

When we embarked on our careers as Sweet Potato Queens way back in 1982, we had no idea how far we would take it—or it would take us. As always, we just wanted to have fun, and we used what we had on hand to make it, which, quite often, was just what we happened to have between our ears.

We were all such Cute Girls back then. Cute Girls: redundant. Girls are like puppies—they’re all cute. It takes years of hard work, dedication, and skill, however, to become Fabulous Women. And make no mistake about it, we have worked long and hard and damn near constantly, too, to become the Sweet Potato Queens, arguably the most Fabulous Women currently living.
We
would certainly argue that point. My big old dictionary defines
fabulous
this way: “of or like a fable, legendary, hard to believe, incredible, astounding, very good and/or wonderful.” Well, that certainly describes us perfectly. We are all that and then some.

My goal will be to show you the Sweet Potato Queens as we have progressed from mere Cute Girl status to our current and ongoing Fabulous Women state so that if you are yourself currently a Cute Girl, you might be spared some time-consuming steps in your own process. If, on the other hand, you are past that stage but don’t feel that you are making any real headway in pursuit of Fabulous Womanhood, then this might be just the nudge you’ve been needing. My sister Judy thinks that some people are too far gone to hope to achieve Fabulous in this life but this just might elevate them to Adequate. A strong believer in redemption, I could not bring myself to agree with her. Suffice it to say that in all of us, there is room for improvement. We offer this book toward that end.

We feel that we can offer lots of advice regarding misspent youth. Having devoted ourselves so utterly to misspending our own personal youths, who is better qualified to teach you how to misspend yours? And fear not, if your youth has already passed without any misspending on your part, we can also teach you to misspend your middle age. That part is even fresher in our minds, since it is what we are doing currently. We like to think of the process as Building an Inventory of Good Stories to Tell in the Nursing Home. With just what we now have on hand, we are assured of being the most popular girls in the home. (Of course, being Southern, we will refer to ourselves as “girls” throughout eternity—we know what we mean.)

Today, whenever we are faced with choosing whether to do something outrageous or something predictable and boring—well, we don’t even have to stop and think about it very often anymore. Unless there is the threat of being sent to the penitentiary and/or losing custody of our children, we pretty much just wade on in up to our necks in whatever the foolishness du jour happens to be. We think that’s good advice for you as well. Occasionally there may be some other consequence that is slightly inconvenient or even mildly unpleasant, but if they’re not taking away our kids and putting us in the Big House, we think it’s worth the risk just to avoid being boring, not only right this minute, but also in the nursing home. You’ve got to consider your future. You don’t have to do diddly-squat to get older—matter of fact, you can’t even avoid that; but getting smarter—now, that can be a bitch if you try to go it alone.

One of the Queens, Tammy, used to spend summers at her beloved aunt Mary’s house. Aunt Mary, it seems, had a live parrot in a cage, and Tammy was mesmerized by this bit of exotica in the Mississippi Delta. She would stand endlessly in front of the bird’s cage until finally, unable to resist the temptation any longer, she would stick her finger through the wires of the cage, whereupon the bird, each and every time, would bite her finger, and Tammy would stand there, each and every time, with her finger in the bird’s beak, shrieking, “Aunt Mary! Your bird’s biting me again!” To this very day, Tammy is wont to repeat ill-advised behaviors multiple times, with the same undesirable results. We have been through this drill with her so often that now, instead of going into lengthy discussions about what she did
again,
and what happened after that
again,
we have a shorthand for it that saves us all a lot of time. We simply say, “Hmmm. Aunt Mary’s bird is biting you again, I see.”

Barbara Williams wrote to me to say that she herself was “older” and had suffered a broken back somewhere in her travels, but now she only wears her brace when she wants to sucker people into giving her extra help with stuff. For instance, it got her bumped up in the line at the bookstore when she was buying multiple copies of
SPQBOL
to send to friends (bless her heart), and the salesgirl (emphasis on
girl:
really young) looked at the title and made some light comment that she hadn’t read it yet but she’d always liked sweet potatoes. Well, our Barbara just snorted and told the little whatsit to read the book and find out what a blow job can really do for you, and with that she tottered on out of the store in her back brace, leaving stunned young persons in her wake. I am so proud.

We don’t want to be those pitiful old ladies who sit in the corner nibbling on small bits of paper, never joining in any activities, never receiving visitors, never sleeping with the male residents. Nosirree, not us, we plan to be exactly like we are right now—only a whole lot older. People will be fighting to get into our nursing home, wanting to come before they’re even old enough to be there.

Back when we were mere Cute Girls, we thought a man was the answer to everything. We thought we had to have one,
the
one, Mr. Right, before we could even begin to live. We had to have a date, then we had to have a boyfriend, then we had to have a husband. Nothing would do till we got Mr. Right. Then, for some of us—too many—there came a time of being not so much disillusioned as just really pissed off big time. During this time, we still thought a man was the answer to everything. Only now everything that was
wrong
was because of a man. We thought he was the bringer of all things bad in our lives, and we were so mad about it that perhaps for a time we believed all men were the bringers of
all
things bad.

Now that we are within easy spittin’ distance of fifty—or as our friend Ray Lee says, “somewhere between forty and death”—we can see that there’s nothing wrong with men in general—even specifically. Most of them are just fine. Really. And while we don’t want them to be the sole reason for living (nor us for them), we don’t want to run them all off with a stick either. We hope we have learned a few things about choice-making. We’ll share some of our hard-learned lessons with you as well as some of our cunning solutions to relationship problems.

Life is in a constant state of flux, that’s for sure. One day you’re a Cute Girl shyly shopping for your first real plug-in vibrator, and before you know it, your kids are nearly grown, your mother lives with you, and you walk through the kitchen one day and there she sits with your vibrator, working on the crick in her neck.

Life isn’t over. Really. You’re just gonna have to make a few adjustments. And your criteria for making decisions will change, we hope. For instance, we have in our circle of acquaintance this absolutely precious Cute Girl. Mary Alice is probably all of twenty-three years old and she’d been married a little over a year when we met her. In describing her like-new husband, she used these words: “He is
so fine
.” Well, we all just about fell on the floor howling: “He’s so fine”? This is a reason to go to the sock-hop with a guy. If he’s “so fine,” all the other girls will be wild with jealousy. If he’s not also so
bad,
even your mother will be tickled because he is “so fine.”

I didn’t even know people still said “so fine.” Back when I was in junior high school, shortly after the earth cooled, we even rhymed it; he would have been “fine as wine.” Not that any of us had ever had any wine, fine or otherwise, in order to make such an analogy. If we had, we would have known how terribly many variations and gradations of quality that term would imply. When I was in high school, people were “so fine,” no rhyme.

Being “so fine,” however, is no reason at all to haul off and marry somebody. Even if it happened to be
us
who were “so fine.” Naturally, we
are,
but unless you can see and appreciate some of our other many fine qualities, trust me, you won’t be very happy married to us for very long. “So fine” just isn’t enough to sustain a relationship through anything past the first date.

We rolled around for about an hour, shrieking about Mary Alice’s like-new husband being “so fine.” We got off on tangents about our own ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends, about whom all of us might have used the words “so fine” at some early point. “Yeah, he came home last night singing ‘Rebel Rebel’ at the top of his lungs—again, with some stranger’s panties on his head—again, drunker’n even he’s ever been—again. Couldn’t even get the door open, I heard him scratching around with his key, sounded like a cat trying to cover crap on a marble floor, but I went on down there, and of course I let him in—again—because he’s ‘so fine’!” “I’m working three jobs now, on account of he’s not even working one, but I don’t mind, because he’s ‘so fine’!”

“So fine” just doesn’t carry the weight it once did with us, I guess. We can tell the difference between Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now. And this is my point. We think we’ve learned a thing or two in our sojourn. As usual, we’re just gonna lay it all out there and let you be the judge. Are we pushing the edge of the envelope? Wheeee! We hope so; but we know, by God, we are at least getting to the sticky part! It will eventually come down, as it usually does, to the age-old plea of “Lord, help us all!” and, yes, of course,

God Save the Queens!