At first Daddy lied to me, but finally, he admitted I was right. They thought I wouldn’t remember because I hadn’t seen him for so many years. I wanted to call him right away, but Daddy said it would be much better if I never let him realize I knew who he was, he was so ashamed of himself for drinking so much and disappearing like that. That’s why he had pretended to be dead all these years. Daddy had always known where he was. Although Grandpa hated Daddy, he trusted him not to tell. He said that Grandpa used to call him about once every six months to see how I was doing and he had all my school pictures from the time I was six. Imagine all these years he was just up the road in Tupelo.
August 17, 1959
Mr. Curl, who is the manager of the State Theater in Tupelo where the pageant took place and who knows Daddy, called to tell him what really happened the night of the pageant.
My other granddaddy, who still isn’t speaking to Daddy, is president of the stagehands’ union, and the men like him a lot When they found out Blondie Harper’s granddaughter was one of the finalists, they decided to do him a favor, so they went out and got three extra spotlights for the booth, and every time I came out onstage, they hit me with four spotlights! A reporter put in the paper that “Her smile lit up the whole audience.” No wonder! They had screwed up the mikes, glued Willima Sue’s dummy’s mouth shut and unplugged Betty Lee Hansome’s organ and everything.
The reason Kay Bob Benson hadn’t been able to hold onto her batons was because two of the stagehands had put axle grease on their hands and made it a point to go up and shake hands with her right before she did her number. And I thought they liked her!
I tell you, I can never say anything unkind about organized labor as long as I live.
We also found out when the judges went in the manager’s office to pretend to vote, the owner of the theater had gone in and told them if they didn’t let me win, the audience was going to rip his theater apart, and it would be the last year they could hold the pageant there. Mrs. McClay got in a huff and said she didn’t care if they ripped his theater apart. The Miss Mississippi title was not going to white trash whose daddy ran a bar as long as she was in charge, and I would be Miss Mississippi over her dead body. Then Madame Albergotti said, “I don’t see how we could possibly give the title to a girl who screamed FUCK into the microphone.” Mrs. McClay got mad and told her to shut up, Margaret Poole had not screamed FUCK in the microphone. The mike had been broken. It just sounded like she had said it, that’s all. Mrs. McClay yelled it was her pageant and if they dared give me the title, they would have to kill her first.
She must have scared them, because she was winning her point. Just then Darcy went around to the side of the theater and delivered the judges a note:
Dear Mrs. McClay and Judges,
Please don’t make me Miss Mississippi, because I am secretly married to a Negro and I am pregnant. I feel that it might be an embarrassment to the pageant.
Regrets,
Margaret Poole
They say Mrs. McClay screamed and hollered it was a lie and she was being sabotaged. But the other judges said their reputations were on the line. They all had good names in the community to protect and couldn’t afford to take a chance on it being true. Mrs. Buchanan was the only one who held out for Margaret Poole. When they finally had to go back out to the judges’ box, they left Mrs. McClay on the couch prostrate with grief and a cold rag on her head. The last thing she did was to raise up and say to Mrs. Buchanan, “Don’t let them do this to me, Peggy.” Then she fell back in a dead faint.
So that’s what the big fight had been about. The judges were so upset they got everything screwed up. Linda Horton, the marimba player, wasn’t even supposed to be in the top five finalists, much less go to the Pasadena Playhouse and be on Death Valley Days. Anyway, Mrs. McClay quit the Miss Mississippi pageant forever, saying she was betrayed by a nest of adders and she wouldn’t go to Atlantic City with that piece of white trash, meaning me, for anything. I feel kind of sorry for her. I didn’t win fair and square, but Jimmy Snow said for me to forget it, that I owed it to myself to just get the hell out of Mississippi.
Here I thought I didn’t have any family, but all these people were out there pulling for me. I have so many people to thank I just have to make good.
Since I’ve been back I’ve been interviewed on the television station where I got fired, and received letters and telegrams from people all over the state. The governor sent me a letter of congratulations and a couple of senators wrote. I’ve heard from everyone, including the International Order of Rainbow Girls, who sent me a telegram saying how proud they were that one of their girls was Miss Mississippi. I guess they forgot I had been thrown out. I wrote and thanked them for their good wishes, anyway. Pickle and Mustard wrote. She has another baby. I even heard from Billy Bundy who’s in some prison in Tennessee.
But the letter I got today means more to me than any of them. It said:
Dear Miss Harper,
I enjoyed meeting you. You are a nice girl.
Your driver,
Cab No. 22
August 21, 1959
I go to Atlantic City in fifteen days!
Jimmy Snow has renamed his plane The Miss Mississippi and is going to dust crops all next week in my honor. Daddy painted a big sign over the door of the bar that says, “Official Headquarters of Miss Mississippi.” Mrs. McClay would die if she could see that. The other day I went down to Gamble’s Department Store and had my official “Miss Mississippi” portrait made. They wanted to photograph me in my white evening gown, but Mr. Cecil said I should wear something other than a white gown because that’s what all the other girls would do. So I had my picture taken in a brown suede jacket. You know Mr. Cecil. He is going with me to Atlantic City and all the Cecilettes are coming on the same train. We should have a ball. You’d be surprised how people treat me now. I was even invited to the Hattiesburg Country Club on the twenty-sixth for a dinner in my honor by the Junior League. I am going to take Daddy and Jimmy Snow. I have to go downtown with Mr. Cecil tomorrow and help him pick out his Atlantic City wardrobe. I swear you’d think that he was the one who was Miss Mississippi.
August 25, 1959
The hospital called Thursday. Jimmy Snow died at 5:47 that morning of a broken neck. His plane crashed in Madison County on Wednesday. Daddy and I went down to get him and bring him home. We buried him this afternoon. Nobody was at the funeral except for Mr. Cecil and a few men from the bar who had come to be pallbearers. Daddy has taken it pretty hard. When they put Jimmy in the ground, he stood there and cried like a baby. Jimmy was the best friend he ever had. I think he was the best friend I ever had, too. I don’t know what it’s going to be like without him. I thought he would always be around. It was sad he had no family at his funeral. I asked Daddy why he thought Jimmy had never married and had children. He looked at me real strange and said, “You’re the only person he ever really loved. Didn’t you know that?”
No, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that at all.
September 3, 1959
I’m all packed. I leave for Atlantic City in the morning. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, or if I will ever come back, but I do know I owe a lot of people a lot of things and I promise I won’t come back until I’m somebody.
And I won’t.
A CONVERSATION WITH FANNIE FLAGG
Q: Was there a particular person or event that inspired you to write Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man? Is any of it based on your experiences as a girl growing up in the South?
FF: Several things inspired me to write this book. While attending my first writer’s conference, I heard the great Ray Bradbury speak about all the books from his childhood that had inspired him to become a writer. Each and every book he mentioned were either adventure books or coming-of-age books about little boys, all written by men. As I sat there and thought about what I had read as a child, I realized there were very few books about little girls compared to so many books about little boy
s, it didn’t seem fair. Then it suddenly struck me that maybe I should try and write a book about a little girl! At the same conference we were told to write what you know and so yes, the book is indeed based on my experiences growing up in the South.
Q: How did you prepare yourself to get into the mind-set of a very young child? What challenges did you face making Daisy’s voice age throughout the novel?
FF: I had to go back in my mind and remember what it was like being a child and observing life without having the real story. I was very careful not to let the grown-up writing the story slip in and know or say things that Daisy would have no knowledge of. I was also writing the story on two levels. I was writing the story about what was really happening in the adult world and also writing what Daisy Fay thought was happening, which was not always the same thing.
Q: In both Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man and Standing in the Rainbow, you portray the 1950s. Is there something about that time period that you find particularly evocative?
FF: I suppose having been raised in the Fifties, I am particularly in love with that period and in reality they were pretty wonderful from the standpoint of a child. Not to be cliché, but it was a time of innocence and I suspect there is a part of me that would like to go back when we were not dealing with so many problems, like drugs, crime, and so much anger in the world. I remember never having to lock our doors or worry about our children. As I remember, America seemed like a safe place.
Q: Who is your favorite character in this novel?
FF: I think Daisy Fay is my favorite character because she is such an optimist, even when things are terrible in her life. I would like to be more like her.
Q: Did you ever consider ending the book a different way? If so, what would have happened?
FF: No, the book ended the way I think her life would have gone up to that point. She is headed into the world believing she will be somebody someday.
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The novel begins the day after Daisy Fay’s eleventh birthday and ends more than seven years later. How does the passage of time affect the way the story is told? Is the older Daisy Fay at the end very much like the child at the beginning?
2. In what ways is Daisy Fay a typical young girl and in what ways is she unique? What formative factors in her life stand out as unusual?
3. Do you agree that Daisy Fay’s parents should have separated? They both had their faults, but do you think more of the blame lies with one or the other?
4. Throughout the novel, Daisy Fay is drawn to people with certain characteristics, and she seems to form friendships effortlessly. How does she read people and assess their character? What is she seeking in her relationships, and does she always get it?
5. Why do you think the author uses the diary format for this novel?
6. Do you find any of the attitudes toward race that are expressed in the novel surprising? What is Daisy Fay’s attitude toward people she views as different from herself or from society at large?
7. Daisy Fay’s mother abandons her twice, once when she leaves Daisy’s father and a second time when she passes away. Do you think Daisy had a good relationship with her mother? In an era when women were predominantly homemakers, why do you think Daisy stayed with her father?
8. Do you think a similar story could have taken place in another part of the country? To what extent does the setting affect what happens in the novel?
9. A whole cast of colorful characters parade through the pages of the novel: Mrs. Dot, Peachy Wigham, Mr. Cecil … Can you think of someone like these characters in real life?
10. What is it about Kay Bob Benson that makes the reader love to hate her so much?
11. Why do you think Pickles and Daisy Fay stop being friends after Pickle gets pregnant? Do you think friendships can ever survive unscathed when people’s lives change dramatically?
12. What leads to Daisy Fay’s eventual success? What qualities does she have that make people warm up to her and want to help her?
13. For a large part of the novel Daisy Fay believes that her father and Jimmy Snow killed a man in order to keep her safe. To what extent do the people in Daisy Fay’s life protect her and to what extent do they act without regard to the impact their actions may have?
14. Who do you think is the “miracle man” in the title, and what miracle might he have performed?
15. While humor plays a large role in the novel, happy events are often tempered by tragedies that follow on their heels. How does Daisy Fay cope with unfortunate circumstances? Are Daisy’s attempts at humor always convincing?
16. In what way do you think Jimmy Snow was in love with Daisy Fay—like a daughter or more romantically? Do you think he should have told her?
17. Do you think Daisy Fay’s future after the novel ends will be bright? Why or why not? What might be in store for her beyond the last page?
FANNIE FLAGG began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers A Redbird Christmas, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes), Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, and Standing in the Rainbow. Flagg’s script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.
Fannie Flagg, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
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