PAXTON PEOPLE---JESSIE PAUL GRAHAM

Jessie Paul Graham sells Avon, raises a big garden to sell vegetables, and has two dozen chickens, all with names.   She also paints little scenes with acrylics on country things like saw-blades, bird houses, old pumps, and boards from torn-down barns and tenant houses.   She’ll stand right out there in your driveway and paint your mailbox, and bring you some home-grown tomatoes, while she’s at it.

Every year, she gets up all the art and craft projects for Vacation Bible School and the two week Day Camp that the Boy Scouts run up at the park for all the boys in the area.

She once got into a bidding war with another crafty painter at the once-a-month Bring-It Auction in Expedia—one of those ladies who always puts in apostrophes when she paints people’s names on stuff---and they just wouldn’t stop raising on a rusty old crosscut saw til the other lady’s husband grabbed both her hands and held them til the gavel fell, to keep her from bumping the price up to $60.00.    Only the little scatter of applause kept everybody in the house from hearing the losing bidder hissing through clenched teeth, “Billy Clyde, you turn loose a me, and I MEAN IT!”

Jessie Paul sanded that old saw, and painted it in a little down-the-road scene on each side---one looking out at rows of corn like comb-tracks in a little boy’s wet hair, and on the other, a long-distance look at a little farm, all laid out like a grits Grandma Moses, with tiny bright brushtips dobs of white cotton on the knee-high rows of green.

 

   It came with two small painted bike-brackets, so you could hang it up easily, then switch scenes---take your pick any time.    She got double her money and then some at the next Art Fair up in Clarksdale, where people really liked all those country scenes.

She stayed the weekend with her cousin up there, and they had reservations at The Madidi on Friday night.   She took a nice dress and some pumps, and they dressed really fancy for that wonderful evening.  

She and her cousin had a martini, and about the time they started on their Shrimp and Grits, they were disappointed to find out that Morgan was not in town.   So they had another martini and got home in time for a Housewives.  

Jessie Paul made $602.00 that weekend---Delta folks sure have taken to those gussied-up sawblades.