It is tough to tell where a conversation with Jim Lacey will go, but the information one can glean from sitting with the unofficial historian of Canton is both fascinatingly compelling in its content and often overwhelming in its width and breadth.
Walking up the drive to Lacey’s house on Academy Street you cross a white bridge and enter the shade of a large porch. Lacey meets you at the door and bring you into an expansive house filled almost entirely, it seems, with books, papers and photographs. Some are from his days as a newspaperman, which started at the Reflector student newspaper at Mississippi State.
His career started when he was backup catcher for the then-Maroons.
“We had a game during a break and I had to be in town for practice. The sports editor had not assigned anyone to cover the game so I did,” Lacey said. “And I fell in love with writing.”
Lacey is the author of about 600 “History Bits” about Canton and Madison County he has had printed in two volumes. Many ran in the Madison County Journal and many more were printed before the paper began.
Lacey’s memory is sharp and he can pull a wealth off facts and figures off the top of his head.
After combing through a few stories dated November of 2002 from the beginning of his second volume that include the City of Lights getting their first traffic signals in 1938 “can you imagine what the old timers thought about Canton’s first traffic lights…” that bit begins and he describes the traffic in the previous 105 years as “catch as catch can.”
The next story involved an Italian woman who thanked local veteran, Harold Hillebert, and B-52 pilot for his “accurate bombing” during WWII “I’m sure glad you were accurate with your bombings and didn’t hit us.”
But the story that really brought a light to Lacey’s eyes involved trains titled Railroads steam engines took a lot more work to keep them running- and a lot more work.
In this particular bit he talked to a man named Burnett S. DeFrantz, who died in 2010.
“Intercity trucking did not get started until the 1930s, and so for 75 years every bit of freight that came into town came by rail,” reads one the opening line.
Trains first rolled into Canton in 1856 and traffic remained steady till shortly after World War II when flat Delta land became available and used less fuel than chugging through Mississippi hill country.
Lacey notes that steam trains required constant service to roll up and down the tracks. He said when a train would come into town from Memphis, Nashville or New Orleans they would often need service, but to keep their schedule they would have to roll a new engine into place that was “hot and ready to go.” Lacey paints a frantic scene involving hundreds of workers and dozens of trains at the Canton Roundhouse “cleaning the engines and firing them up so there would be one hot and ready to go.”
The story says 10-12 passenger trains and that many freights came through daily which meant nearly every hour of the day steam engines were being serviced in the roundhouse.
“Canton was big during the era of steam railroad engines-and railroading was big in Canton at the time,” Lacey wrote.
In its heyday, the City of New Orleans and the Panama Limited trains would roll into Canton regularly and would draw quite spectacle. The trains kept many hotels and restaurants alive in Canton and ensured every man had a shot at a good job.
More railroad lines were planned through Canton, about six by Lacey’s count, but those plans were halted after the onset of the Civil War and were never revisited. After the war many trains were rerouted through Jackson.
In modern days rail is still important. Lacey said of the roughly 70 percent of the cars made at Nissan leave by rail.
Lacey said the anyone interested can catch the Nissan train most mornings around 10:30 a.m.
Railroads hold such a special spot in Lacey’s heart he sometimes tears up talking about them.
“When you are old like me you never know what you will get emotional about,” Lacey said, fighting a few tears and a quivering lip. “But I just love to hear those trains go by. They thrill me to death.”
