A political tie means rolling the dice

By S. Gale Denley
Daily Mississippian Publisher

BRUCE -- Casting lots, divining water and conjuring warts:

"Casting lots" came up here when, after affidavit ballots were counted, there was a dead even tie for the school board seat in District 2.
  Section 23-15-601 of the Mississippi Code provides that in cases of a tie, "the election shall be decided by lot fairly and publicly drawn... ."
  As was the case 21 years ago when there was a tie for Justice of the Peace, no one was sure what a "lot" might be. One of the candidates had a pair of dice and one of them was rolled for the office. First roll was a "3," but the winner rolled "4."
  This month commissioners had the candidates draw from 10 slips of paper, marked "1" to "10." One drew a "3" and the other an "8" -- probably legal, but not necessarily historically correct.
  "Casting lots" is most familiar through New Testament references to the crucifixion: "And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots," Matthew 27:35 prefaced on Psalms 22:18.
  But there are other medieval and Biblical references to casting lots, which have survived.
  Thomas Paine in Common Sense referred to a British plan to select, by casting lots, an officer to suffer revenge for outrages against Colonials.
  From a criminal law class 40 years ago I recall references to spelunkers, trapped underground, drawing lots for who was to be sacrificed so the others might live. Were the survivors guilty of premeditated murder?
  Dr. Charles Nestor, minister at Bruce First Baptist, recalled that lots were different size stones or bones or such thrown by each player, with the winner determined by the pattern in which the lots landed.

On a recent Sunday night, after things quieted down, we noticed a new and unusual noise in the front foyer.
  Coming from inside the wall between the front hall and the laundry room, we guessed water leak. But there was no water. With some urging, I was in the back yard to turn off water to that part of the house. There were three cutoffs, but I found only two. Luckily one did the trick.
  After Terry Martin, who fixes this kind of thing for us, finished the repairs on Monday I asked him to help me locate the missing cutoff valve.
  We knew where it was supposed to be, but in a short while the back yard began to resemble Ty-ty's farm in Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre.
  Terry said his father used to cut a forked branch off a dogwood tree and "divine" or "dowse" for water, so I pointed to a dogwood up on the hill.
  After cutting the branch and twisting and holding the two forks under pressure, he began to walk north of the main line over where the lost line had to be.
  I saw the point dip and asked Terry if he had felt it. He admitted he had, but also said he was trying to ignore it.
  He backed up and again it dipped, exactly where we had calculated the line had to be.
  We dug some more in that spot, but to no avail.
  The line is still lost, the forked stick was thrown back in the woods, and we have lost interest in the search.

And then there is the matter of conjuring warts. I was reminded of this recently when a medical doctor with student health at Ole Miss was visiting in my office.
  I inquired about his bandaged finger, which it turned out was the result of having a wart removed.
  So I told him about how we used to have warts "conjured" off when I was growing up in Coffeeville.
  Big Homer Arrington, who ran the shoe shop next door to my uncle Chester Pate's barber shop, would cut an "X" in the center of the offending growth, mumble a few words, and a week or so later the wart would be gone.
  Telling Jo Ann this story, some 40 years ago when we were first married, she recalled a similar conjurer in Macon. Church Carpenter, a telephone lineman, dangled his fingers over the growth, mumbled a few words, and advised that if she believed it would come off, it would. She did and it did.
  At the Sweet Potato Festival recently Jim Blue of Vardaman said their local conjurer, Jess Ramage, would use a kernel of dried corn, which he rubbed over the wart. "He would then throw the kernel over your shoulder," he said, "with the caution that if you ever found the kernel the wart would come back."

S. Gale Denley is manager of the Student Media Center.