Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [5]
Once upon a time, Columbia was trumpeted across the state as the “City of Charm on the Pearl River.” Though hardly a bustling metropolis along the lines of Jackson (the state capital located ninety miles north), it was a location that—thanks to a cozy spot along the east bank of the river—served as an early twentieth-century Mississippi boomtown. A never-ending parade of vessels made the ninety-mile trek along the Pearl River from the Gulf of Mexico to Columbia. Upon arriving, the crews took advantage of Columbia’s restaurants, groceries, and appliance stores, then loaded their ships with lumber hauled from Mississippi’s vast spans of wilderness (and cut in one of Columbia’s handful of sawmills).
Columbia was a place where the camellias and azaleas were plentiful, where original colonial homes lined the streets of many of the fancier neighborhoods, where—thanks to the Gulf breezes—the summer days were mild and the nights surprisingly cool. Were one asked to predict a part of Mississippi that would thrive for years to come, he’d be hard pressed to pinpoint a better location than Columbia.
Alyne and Peter settled into a house on Short Owens Street—a small, white, ranch-styled home with two bedrooms, a den, and a tiny kitchen with beige tiled floors. All the neighbors were black, and a large handful of those were relatives. There was Aunt Helen, who was married to a preacher. There was Uncle Oliver—everyone called him Buck. There was another uncle, B. C., and a third, Uncle Clyde, who became a Muslim and changed his last name from Sibley to X. A cousin, Amos G. Payton, worked at the nearby church. Decades later, Paytons can still be found throughout Columbia’s White Pages.
In the summer of 1951, Alyne gave birth for the first time, to a boy named Edward Charles. She and Peter had been trying to have a baby for years, but with little luck. “Back then we didn’t have birth control,” she said. “I was ready to have a baby, but nothing was happening.” Shortly after Eddie’s arrival, the family moved to a slightly larger home at 811 Bluff Road. “It was a perfect location,” said Eddie. “It was right on the Pearl River, so you could walk outside and fish.” Thirteen months later, Eddie’s sister, Pamela, was born.
On July 25, 1953, the final child came along. He entered the world in the same way nearly all of Columbia’s blacks joined society: on the floor of the house, pulled from his mother by a black midwife. He was named Walter—Walter Jerry Payton. But beginning in his first days, nobody called him that. He was simply “Chubby”—an ode to his robust cheeks and a belly dimensionally akin to a large loaf of sourdough bread. “There weren’t many fat kids in the South, so he immediately stood out,” said Eddie. “Walter had a chubby face and a chubby body, and you couldn’t help but notice it. As he started to thin out a little, the nickname changed. Instead of ‘Chubby,’ we nicknamed him ‘Bubba.’ That one stuck.”
In the South of the 1950s and ’60s—and especially in the black South—children generally went by two names. Eddie wasn’t Eddie—he was Edward Charles. Yet Walter Jerry was rarely Walter Jerry. He was “Bubba,” and he was, from early on, the ultimate mama’s boy. Wherever Alyne went, Bubba followed. He cried when