
Sheriff Buford Pusser’s Home and Museum
I’ve tried to talk Dick into visiting this site on several previous trips, but this time we’re staying close by, at Pickwick Landing State Park- so it’s now or never. I have to admit being silly about it. I say the name, Buford Pusser, and I usually wind up giggling hysterically. I feel guilty about that – I know he was one tough, stick-wielding sheriff who took on the Dixie Mafia and the state-line mob, that there’s a movie, Walking Tall, based on his life (and many not-so-accurate sequels). I know he’s someone to take seriously.
The brochure we’d picked up tells us he was Sheriff of McNairy County, that he was shot eight times, knifed seven times, killed two people, that his wife was shot and killed in an assassination ambush when she went with him on a disturbance call, and so much more. But, frankly, we have no idea of what to expect when we pull up here.
What we get, after sitting on a couch for a video presentation on the TV in the living room, is a personal tour, with a nice older woman who went to school with Buford. We’re alone with her in the house, which is filled with original furnishings, photographs, newspaper articles and mementos, so we can ask any questions we can come up with, and she tells us all about what happened here from her local vantage point. She shows us where Elvis came in through a side door and sat in a bedroom, not wanting to cause a commotion at Buford’s funeral, which was attended by many big country music stars. She shows us the funeral guest book and Tami Wynette’s guitar flower arrangement. She tells us that when Buford’s jaw was shot off in the incident that killed his wife, he had to have 16 reconstructive surgeries and couldn’t eat solid food for three years – this for a man who stood 6’6″, and weighed 250 pounds. She’s suspicious about the circumstances surrounding his death in a fiery car crash the day he announced, at a press conference in Memphis, that he had agreed to play himself in a new movie, “Buford” for $2 million. We see the burned out wreck of his modified Corvette in the downstairs garage.
Later that evening, we want to stage a little Buford Pusser scene of our own. We had a really beautiful, private campsite in Pickwick Landing State Park and we’re planning on having a big fire, champagne and anniversary gift exchange after a nice dinner at the park’s restaurant overlooking the water. The campsite is paid for, our Campsite Occupied sign is by our post, but we return to find somebody’s set up a pop-up camper and taken over our site. The campground host knocks on their door, but no one’s there. So we have to find another site in the dark, which isn’t so easy because many of them aren’t level and we don’t want to have to put out blocks. Plus, we’ve lost our lovely setting and our firewood. Stick-wielding is out, but we do think about leaving them a note. The next morning as we leave, we decide to just leave justice in the hands of the campground “sheriff”.