Early into a touching funeral message by the Rev. Mark Benson, pastor of First Christian Church, honoring Leonard “Buddy” Bennett, a child’s term caught my attention: “big windy.”

 

The term was a stand-in for tall tale, of the sort Buddy often told with a straight face, enjoying the ruse.

 

Buddy was the husband of my cousin Cindy for 46 years, and died recently following pneumonia complications. Both raised in Meridian, the couple had a proud collection of sons, grandchildren and in-laws. They relished times at their stout old farm house and an adjacent daycare they ran out in the county, and were deer camp loyalists.

 

“Buddy worked for many years cruising timber for the buying and developing of land,” said the pastor at First Christian, a historic stone church in downtown Meridian that my wife and I attend, thanks to past invitations from the Bennetts.

 

“After his retirement a few years ago, he spent time helping Ms. Cindy in the daycare operation—driving the bus, helping to take care of the kids, even serving as the unofficial storyteller.”

 

Benson added: “Reportedly, one little girl overheard one of Buddy’s stories, and told Cindy, ‘Mr. Buddy tells a big windy!’ Cindy had to tell me that a ‘windy’ is a tall tale.”

 

I was jolted with the realization that Buddy was perhaps an unrecognized art figure. Across the Deep South and in other American frontiers, the enthusiastic, carefully measured telling of stories not quite based on fact is indeed an art form. Nearly every Mississippi creative figure of note taps this tradition; for me, writer Willie Morris and comedian Jerry Clower immediately come to mind.

 

Adults and children alike need to be on their toes when individuals like Buddy are talking, not unlike innocents attending a political rally.

 

One illustration shared by Cindy (days after the funeral): Buddy once injured his face when he stumbled into a fireplace column, and subsequently “told everyone I hit him with a frying pan.”

 

Growing up on 25th Avenue in Meridian, I was immersed in the tall tale, or big windy, culture. As kids we couldn’t wait to visit a somewhat older neighbor, Sambo Mockbee (who later would become a famous architect) to hear his scary stories about a monster who lurked at the edge of Boy Scout camps, or about ghosts who hung around his creaky old house.

 

My mother, a theater instructor at the community college, embraced the white lie as a way of avoiding big trouble that might come with being completely truthful. And I’m certain that our “show and tell” mini class presentations in elementary school were rife with exaggerations. Sometimes, that story from home needed a little juice to win over a difficult audience.

 

Some academics actually celebrate the tall tale. In an article titled “Lying, Truthtelling, and Storytelling in Children’s and Young Adult Literature,” Illinois English professor Anita Tarr writes, “Even though we instruct our children not to lie, the truth is that lying is a fundamental part of children’s development – socially, cognitively, emotionally, morally. Lying can sometimes be more compassionate than telling the truth, even more ethical.”

 

I’m not sure about the tall tale’s varied applications, but I am proud to know that Buddy was a fine practitioner, probably having honed this skill around buddies at the deer camp.

 

As an art form, this veers off the paved road, but in a good way. Maybe one day the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience can invite some of our best living yarn-spinners to a competition, honoring my relative with the event title: “Buddy’s Big Windy: Mississippi Storytellers.” It would be quite entertaining, no lie.