After my first year of school our neighborhood was "re districted" meaning that from first grade on I was bussed across town to a different school. (In Mississippi they call it redistricting. I'm pretty sure the rest of the world would call it something else) At the far end of my hour long bus ride, through neighborhoods full of lean too shack houses and old victorian farm houses, on the bypass, was Rudy's Old Hat; an impressive junk shop.
I went home that first day talking about Rudy's Old Hat. My first trip to shop with Rudy was for my sixth birthday, not long after the start of the school year. My mom bought me a painting of a boy with one arm sitting in an elephant's trunk and a glass elephant candy dish (both still favorites.)Rudy was a hoarder by any definition. He likely got most of his "junk" from trash bins and road side heaps. He lived at the front of his store and kept a mess of cats and kittens living in the iron heap that was his front yard. There was a very narrow path through the building and all of his treasures were stacked from floor to ceiling and hanging from the rafters. The prices were usually outrageous but the experience was worth it.
I loved Rudy's Old Hat. I loved everything about it. It was dark and dingy and ever changing. It was welcoming; a constant. And it was full of treasure. Once I reached driving age Rudy's Old Hat was a regular stop for me. Some days he was in a visiting mood and he would play harmonica and I would sit on the hood of my car and play with kittens. He had the finest collection of all things bizarre. What especially impressed me was the Rudy knew his junk. He knew what shelf it came from, the price he wanted for it, and how long he'd had it. Several times I saw people try to con him on his prices. He had none of it. If you went often you recognized that he cleaned his "store" regularly. One of the best treasures I found there was a siamese cat perfume bottle with a single rhinestone eye. I payed him eight dollars to take that specimen home.
Rudy died several years ago. Someone came in and hauled his treasures away. They bulldozed the area around the shop. The kitties all ran away. Learning of his death impacted me more deeply than I expected. Being plucked from the deep south and living in a different land is difficult for reasons that have nothing to do with sweet tea or fried chicken. Growing up in southern Mississippi is like a living time capsule and being at Rudy's was like a microcosm of that. The culture, living among the physical history, creates what I can only describe as a "Mississippi aesthetic". There are too many incredible artists and musicians from that area for it to be happenstance.
That "Mississippi aesthetic" is ingrained. Now more than ever I appreciate what that means.
So consider this a very late toast to Rudy Montgomery for an early art education in the appreciation for the bizarre and eclectic and the knowledge that I am more like "others" than I am not.
*Someone else made this video but it perfectly captures Rudy and his life (I confess it made my heart hurt and my eyes leak watching it). It states that it was in Petal I don't buy that. During my 24 years in Hattiesburg the bypass was still part of Hattiesburg.
