Straight from the Heart

Alum writes book based on Mississippi upbringing

Jennifer Farish



U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills stands in front of a painting by Lamar Sorrento, one of several folk art paintings adorning the walls of his Oxford chambers.

The brightly colored folk art adorning the walls of U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills’s otherwise formal chambers are a testament to his love for his rural upbringing.

With a hint of humor seeping through his voice, he reads the inscription under a painting by Rev. Johnny Ace titled “William Faulkner Encounters ‘The Lost Generation.’” The painting, which creates a bright rainbow on Mills’ dark-paneled walls, depicts Faulkner surrounded by some of his contemporaries, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and T.S. Eliot.

But the paintings are just a small part of the eclectic collection of art and books—ranging from works on Van Gogh and Dali to novels by Ernest Hemingway—in the otherwise traditional-looking chambers.

In keeping with those widely varied literary and artistic interests, Mills has penned a book that does not follow the line of works written by most attorneys and judges. Instead, Twice Told Tombigbee Tales offers a unique look into the childhood and political career of a self-described “Mississippi boy.”

“Coming from Itawamba County at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, I was blessed to be around good storytellers when I was growing up,” said Mills (JD 80). “I realized how much of an influence so many of those storytellers had on me, and I developed an appreciation for the richness and liveliness in the way they told stories.”

Mills captures that same richness in his Twice Told Tombigbee Tales, whose title rests on the fact that the stories are pulled from real experiences and the lives of real people.

“It’s homage to where I came from,” he said. “I borrowed the best of the stories I knew and that I felt like I could publish.”

In the preface to the book, Charles Reagan Wilson, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at The University of Mississippi, says Mills’s triumph is to return to the people who are descendants of a particular streak of humor seen in northeast Mississippi.

“Unlike his nineteenth century literary ancestors, he is not distant from the people about whom he writes,” Wilson writes. “Indeed he intends his book to pay tribute to them. And they are a colorful lot—gentle but demanding schoolteachers, shrewd lawyers, down home hog hunters from bottomlands, inspirational coaches, and politicians everywhere.”

Dean Samuel M. Davis said, “Twice Told Tombigbee Tales is at times hilarious and at times very somber and moving, but always it is about life and growing up in the South with the ‘characters’ and others that all of us remember. Even though I did not know any of the characters he talks about in his book, I knew somebody just like them where I grew up.”

Mills nearly took a much different path in life before being convinced to run for a seat in the Mississippi Legislature in 1983. Thinking he wanted to go into construction, politics seemed like a drastically different world.

Mills earned degrees from Itawamba Community College and The University of Mississippi before being elected to the state House of Representatives in 1983. More than 30 years later, he has worked his way from a member of the state House of Representatives to the position of chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, having served first as a Mississippi Supreme Court Justice from 1995 to 2001 and as a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1984 to 1995. In addition, Mills received his LL.M. degree from the University of Virginia Law School in 2001. Since 2001, Mills has been an adjunct professor at the law school, teaching Law and Literature and the Legal History of Slavery.

A blues enthusiast, Mills has studied the art form and lectured on it. He has also been published in several legal journals, and his short story “There’s Pow’r in the Blood” received an award in the 2001 Tallahatchie Riverfest William Faulkner Writing Contest.

For Mills, Twice Told Tombigbee Tales is an effort of love and of preservation, as he explains in the opening of the book.

“We preserve the past through stories,” he writes. “I write to speak, in a fashion, with a great-grandchild or time-distant niece or nephew or some little cousin, or maybe a friend, whom I shall never know in this life, but whom I love already. That you may know something of the fellows and folk who toted it down the road a bit for you. And lived and loved along the way. Folks who make do and did the best they could with the snatches of life they found around them. That you may pick up the burden, and with a knowing chuckle and kind heart, help another along the way.”

Where to get a copy

To purchase Twice Told Tombigbee Tales (Bench Chief Papers, 2007), visit www.tombigbeetales.com. The book also is available through Amazon.com or Square Books in Oxford.

“The Sun-N-Sand Years”

from Twice Told Tombigbee Tales

A word about the Sun-N-Sand. I roomed at the downtown Jackson Sun-N-Sand Resort Motel for several legislative sessions. Located one block West of the Capitol, the Sun-N-Sand was home away from home for roughly one-half the House membership and one or two Senators. Practically all the Northeast Mississippi delegation roomed there. (Many Senators, sensitive to preserving their enviable status as members of the upper house, tended to rent more expansive quarters elsewhere.)

The Sun-N-Sand Resort Motel and Restaurant lacked sandy beaches, crashing waves or cute tiki bars, though it did have a pool which was heated in the summertime. The inside amenities, like many of us, were a bit common. The bedroom walls were paper thin and all units were heated and cooled by a central thermostat. The complimentary soap and plastic courtesy cups, furnished once a week, were surplus Holiday Inn supplies. And ambience! I waked each morning to the smell of stale cigarettes, courtesy of the community cooling and heating system. In their defense, the hotel management stubbornly battled this irritating problem. In the afternoons, our rooms smelled like oranges. Apparently the room service ladies were instructed to spray the rooms with some sort of tropical spray, consistent with the motel’s sunny, beach-front resort theme. As a bonus, the spray masked not only the cigarette smoke, but also the funk rising from the 1950s era low shag carpet.

Taking a shower in a Sun-N-Sand bathroom was a real adventure. Alert bathing habits were some of the most important skills a young legislator could develop. First one learned to rise early for morning ablutions. Many of my fellows at the motel were, shall we say, country boys. They were early risers by nature. Consequently, by eight o’clock in the morning, most of the hot water was gone. I am a reasonably quick study. After two or three mornings of cold nine o’clock showers, I adapted to the country boys’ ways. I became an early riser. I soon learned that the hottest water was available between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. Which led to another growth opportunity.