Velociworld

WHERE'S YOUR NUTHOUSE?

Rankin' Rob's reference at Kelley's to Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia in Milledgeville jiggered loose one of those few random memory particles ponging around my brain bucket.

I believe most children were told by their parents that, if they did not cease and desist a particular activity, it would drive Mama to the nuthouse. Or, in my parents' case, they would threaten to send ME there for a little discipline at the hand of The Negroes in White Uniforms, who would surely lock me in a cell first, with The Man Who Ripped Apart Kittens, for a little softening up.

Growing up in Savannah the asylum was in Milledgeville. Around Jacksonville I'm told the local asylum was in Macclenny.

Once when I was driving from Memphis to Shiloh for a little reminescing I passed a magnificent lunatic asylum in Bolivar. It was a huge, stately institution set atop a hill with rolling lawns and grave, melancholy oaks. I believe every asylum ever depicted in cinema was based on the West Tennessee Hospital for the Insane. One could practically see the escaped mental patients wandering the grounds in their nightgowns after slaughtering and devouring the guards, and feel the thump of Michael Myers on the roof of the car.

So: where was your childhood nuthouse? Where were you driving your poor mother with your incessant whining, pleading, bedwetting, smoking, drinking, drugging, cavorting with carnival workers, or whatever you did to put Mom over the edge?