Grisham and Me

In my last post I wrote about what my friend, Paul Laughlin, calls the most surprising coincidence that he’s ever personally experienced. It was something that he and I experienced together, and I tend to agree, it was quite amazing when you come to think about it. It concerned a question Paul had regarding a brief passage in John Grisham’s third novel, The Pelican Brief, and how I was able to quickly supply the answer to that question by consulting my copy of Grisham’s pre-publication manuscript of the book. What Paul found so surprising, amazingly so, was that he just happened to mention this obscure, over-30-year-old bit of trivia to me, the one person in the world who had in his possession the definitive resource to resolve the question and that I was then able to do so in a matter of minutes. Obviously, Paul had no idea that I had that manuscript, so, yes, it truly was amazing. (If you haven’t yet read my prior post, you can access it here: Bagel or Beignet?)

Now, the question that many of you have been asking, just how did I come to possess that manuscript? The story here may not be based on a surprising coincidence; however, it has some pretty surprising elements to it. I think, at least for this country boy from Big Level, it’s even more amazing. Telling it properly requires a good bit of backstory. Indulge me while I fill you in.

Back in the summer of 1976, as I was finishing my MBA at Delta State University, I accepted a teaching position at Northwest Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi. Prior to my job offer there, I’d never heard of that small town in the northwest corner of the state. It turned out to be a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family. It was a small town, yes, but it was only 25 minutes from Memphis. Gena and I loved it and stayed there 32 years. Both of our daughters were born there. During my time at Northwest, I taught a number of different business courses and had various departmental and system-wide responsibilities, including serving as Director of the Academic Business Division for the last five years of my tenure. But early on, when the first personal computers started coming out in the late ’70s, I was instrumental in getting three computers for our department in the fall of 1980. They were Tandy TRS-80 Model IIIs, and were the first ever microcomputers on our two campuses. In case you’re wondering, this was a few years before the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh were released.  

The Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III was released in the middle of 1980. I cut my teeth on this computer. It was top of the line back then, with its two 5¼-inch floppy drives and 48Kb of RAM (not Gb or even Mb). It operated on TRS-DOS, Tandy’s version of MS-DOS, the operating system made famous by Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak who had recently founded Microsoft. That these two operation systems were so similar was a tremendous boon to me, as MS-DOS would soon be adopted by IBM for it’s history-making IBM-PC, opening the way for the PC-compatible marker.

Once our department had those microcomputers, I spent all my free time teaching myself about operating systems and just about anything to do with both software and hardware. I quickly learned the BASIC programming language, applying the limited FORTRAN programming skills I’d learned in the one and only computer course I had as a student at Delta State. Before long, I had programmed several useful applications, including a nifty little test-grading utility that I demonstrated at the first ever state-wide technology conference. That was in 1982. Word soon got around in the business community in Senatobia that I was the person to talk to about computers and software needs. In short, I was able to parlay this love of computers and programming into a successful side business. For over 25 years, up until 2005, I balanced this computer consultancy with my duties at the college. I was designing and coding business utility software, configuring office and home systems for word processing, accounting and tax preparation, and conducting personalized training for my clients and their employees. It wasn’t too long before I began building and installing PC-compatible computers, as well as wiring office buildings for networking and the Internet. I was stretched mighty thin at times, but it was very satisfying work, and I was proud to have been on the leading edge of the personal computer boom. (The reason I shut down the business in ’05 is a story for another time.)

My client list grew to include dozens of doctors, lawyers, dentists, CPAs, and a few governmental agencies, to boot. I was serving clients in 5 or 6 of the counties neighboring my home there in northwest Mississippi. I even had a few clients across the state line in Memphis. All of this business came to me, not through advertising, but by word of mouth, with one satisfied customer referring me to another. It was very much a domino effect. It was in this way that I began to sign on clients in the law community of Senatobia in Tate County and then in Hernando and Southaven in DeSoto County.

It was in 1986 that Bill Ballard, my first client on the courthouse square in Hernando, called. I installed two computers in his law office, one for him and one for his secretary. I used a network cable to link the two computers so that they could share files and the one typewriter-quality printer. That was my first local area network installation. I suspect it was the first PC LAN in all of northwest Mississippi. I had to fly to Atlanta to receive the necessary training to make it happen. I was quite proud of the result, though it all seems so crude and ancient now in this 21st Century wireless age.

Then Bill referred me to H. R. “Randy” Garner, whose law office was a few doors away on the square. Next, Randy referred me to Gerald Chatham, who’s law office was next door to his. I should say that Randy, who could be rather brusque at times, was the model for the crusty old Harry “Rex” Vonner character in Grisham’s A Time to Kill. Randy may have had that persona, particularly in court, but I found him to be kind-hearted and generous. He became a long-time and faithful client, referring me to several other lawyers and to his CPA, Danny Williams. By 1990, I had installed computers in most of the professional offices on all four sides of the courthouse square there in Hernando.

But getting back to my main story, it was in the summer of 1990, that John Grisham first called me. He was still practicing law at the time, with his office in Southaven in the upper part of DeSoto County. He wanted to computerize his office and said that Randy Garner had recommended me. I drove up and met with John and his secretary, and then a few days later I came back with a proposal for two networked computers and one laser printer along with software and my fees for installation and training. He balked at the total cost of over $9,000. Mind you, while this may have sounded like a lot of money to him, it was not an exorbitant price tag. Computers and peripherals were considerably more expensive then than they are today. I quickly reworked the proposal and sold him on two stand-alone PCs and one inexpensive dot-matrix printer. For word processing, I installed WordPerfect, which in the 1980s and ’90s was the leading PC-based word processor and the de facto standard in the legal profession. That product is ancient history, too. I suspect many computer users today have never even heard of it, or Visicalc or Lotus 1-2-3 or dBase III. But I’m digressing. Back to John Grisham.

John was not the world-famous, best-selling author back then. His first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June of 1988 after his manuscript was rejected by over two dozen publishers. That book, with a limited printing of 5,000 copies, didn’t sell very well initially, despite John’s efforts to beat the bushes around the state, speaking at bookstores, libraries, and for other various groups. As it happened, my wife, Gena, was president of the Senatobia Friends of the Library group in 1988. She invited John to speak at the public library a few weeks after the book came out. Only seven people showed up. I was not one of them. John has said that he gave away many of those first 5,000 copies and sold the others out of the trunk of his car. But things would quickly change. I don’t need to recount much of that part of the story.

By the time I was first in his office, in mid-1990, John had completed the manuscript for his second novel, The Firm, and it was in the hands of an agent who was shopping it around for a publisher. As John tells it, bootleg copies of that manuscript found their way to Hollywood without his knowledge and began to circulate in all the big movie studios. Shortly, John’s New York agent called informing him that Paramount had agreed to purchase the movie rights to The Firm. I was in John’s office doing some WordPerfect training when a FedEx truck stopped outside. The world started spinning a whole lot faster when John’s secretary opened the overnight letter containing Paramount’s cashier’s check for $650,000. After the movie deal, a bidding frenzy started with all the major publishing houses wanting to publish the book. And, again, I’m sure you know the rest of that story.

Grisham is on record in multiple interviews available on YouTube and elsewhere, saying that the movie contract was for $600,000. I’m not going to quibble with him over this, but I was there, too. Call me as an eyewitness, John, and I’ll swear that I saw Six Fifty on that check.

This is the autographed title page from my copy of The Fim, John’s second novel. It was published by Doubleday in February of 1991. The inscription states: "To Russell Lott — thanks for the computer — the words are coming off quickly. All the best." and is signed by John on April 17, 1991.

John wrote both of these first two books in longhand on a stack of yellow legal pads. His secretary then transcribed them on a typewriter and made photocopies to send to publishers. John had already started on The Pelican Brief in this fashion and had rented an old Wang word processor for the secretary’s use, when I was brought into the picture. She was struggling trying to learn the system and hadn’t gotten too far with it. She confided in me that she was the one who begged for the PC. John later admitted as much. They scrapped the Wang and she retyped those early pages and all of the remainder of The Pelican Brief in WordPerfect on my computer.

A few months later, when the draft for that book was nearing completion, I began to talk to John about how bad the final copy would look when printed from that dot-matrix printer. I finally convinced him that it would look so much more professional if we used a laser printer. Surprisingly, he still didn’t want to purchase one, as I had originally proposed, I’ll say again, even though he was now a multi-millionaire after signing a muti-book contract with Doubleday.  However, when the draft was finished, I did convince him to let me take a floppy-disk copy of the book home with me so that I could print it on my laser. I promised him that I’d drive back up and deliver it to him the next afternoon. John said, “I’ll save you a trip. I’ve got to see an attorney in Senatobia tomorrow. I’ll come by your house when I’m done and pick it up.”

I drove home that evening thinking what a great trust he had put in me. And after supper with my family, I started printing the manuscript, all 489 pages of it, reading the pages as they came spitting out of my little HP laser. It took over three hours for the manuscript to print, and I stayed up way past midnight trying to finish reading it. I finally went to bed and finished reading it a day or two later.

John did, in fact, come by our house late the following afternoon. He absolutely loved the look of those laser-printed pages, saying, “Russell, you were right, it looks great. It looks as if you retyped the darn thing!” Before he left, I rather sheepishly handed him the extra copy of the manuscript’s title page that I had printed for myself, and asked if he would autograph it. He graciously did so, and then asked if I had also made a copy of the book for myself. I admitted that I’d thought about it, but that I certainly didn’t want to do so without his permission. He then surprised me by saying, “Well, why don’t you; it might be valuable someday.” Understatement of the year! I don’t think he or I, or anyone else, really, had any idea of what was to come.

So, folks, that’s how it happened. John soon closed his Southaven office and moved to Oxford, Mississippi, building a large home on the west side of town with a large office in a wing on the back for his writing. Before long he bought the Belfry, an old historic building on Jackson Avenue just off the Oxford courthouse square in which he located his business office. I continued to serve his computer needs for a few years, installing computers in his home for his family and at the Belfry for his business manager. And, yes, we put laser printers in both locations. But not before he called on me to print The Client, in 1993, his 4th novel. I have that pre-publication manuscript and the first five chapters of the uncompleted draft of The Rainmaker, as well. I also have an early draft of a screenplay he was writing called The Gingerbread Man. Many of these items are autographed.

It wasn’t too long, sometime in the mid-to-late ’90s John and family moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. I didn’t have much contact with him then, though one day, around 1999, I think, he called, out of the blue, from his home in Charlottesville. “Hey, Russ, it’s John Grisham.” As if I wouldn’t have recognized his distinct voice immediately. “I’m having trouble with my computer. You know, that first one you sold me almost 10 years ago.” I couldn’t believe he was still using that old thing. I suspected he had ditched it years before. Goodness, it was now the age of Windows and the World Wide Web. Hardly anybody was using an old DOS-based computer anymore. He said, “I think it has a virus. I want to send it to you. I figure you’ll know more about it than anyone I’ve got around me up here.”

After trying to troubleshoot the problem over the phone, and suspecting it was more likely age than a virus, we agreed that he would FedEx it to me and I’d repair it, if I could, and ship it back to him. He said, “There’s no rush. If it’s dead, it's dead. I’ve got my work backed up and Doubleday has given me an IBM ThinkPad, so I can get by. But I don’t like typing on that laptop. It doesn’t have WordPerfect and I’d much rather use your computer.”

Once it was delivered to me, I was able to quickly see that the CMOS battery had died, and as a result, the hard disk designation had been lost and had to be reset. Piece of cake! I had it working again in no time, and FedEx had it back to him two days later. He called when it was redelivered with his thanks and gratitude. That happened to be our last conversation. I’ve often wondered how long into Y2k he continued to use that old thing.  

By the way, I should point out that John was a fair typist himself, and soon ditched the legal pads. He completed The Client himself, typing it straight into the computer. And all of his later books and other writings he typed himself, I presume. While I can’t say I taught him how to write, I can unequivocally say I taught him how to type on a computer. And, as a result, he thought I was “the world’s greatest computer expert.” That, my friends, is my biggest claim to fame.

This is my most treasured autograph. John signed it on a sample book jacket for The Client, his 4th novel, which was not yet published. John rejected this version of the book’s jacket in favor of another. The inscription states: "To Russell Lott — world’s greatest computer expert — best wishes." Though not dated, it was signed by John in July or August of 1992, at his newly-constructed house in Oxford. By the way, a couple of scenes in the 1994 movie version of The Client were filmed in Senatobia.

Afterword

A few years back, in 2008, after retiring from my 32-year career at Northwest Community College, Gena and I moved to Hattiesburg, where we visited, and subsequently joined, University Baptist Church. On our initial visit to that church, Mike Ratliff, a local attorney, was the first person to engage me in a conversation. I’ve always appreciated that, Mike. Upon learning that I had been at Northwest and had done some graduate study at the Ole Miss law school, Mike mentioned that he had received his law degree at Ole Miss and that he was still good friends with his fellow law school classmate, Former Governor Ronnie Musgrove. He said, “Ronnie went to Northwest.” To which I replied, “Yeah, I know Ronnie. He was a sophomore student just finishing the year I started teaching there.” Mike then said, “Ronnie and I were big buddies with John Grisham. We three still get together occasionally.” To which I replied, “Is that right, I know John, too . . .”

A Word to Ponder

boot·leg:
(verb) to produce, reproduce, or distribute illicitly or without authorization; to smuggle
(noun) something bootlegged, such as illegally transported liquor or the unauthorized copies of copyrighted material.
(adjective) describing something that's stolen, smuggled, or otherwise distributed illicitly.

This term comes from the act of concealing a flask of liquor or other contraband down the leg of a high boot. It originated in English slang in the 17th Century and later become common in the American colonies.  It was a common practice for a horse rider, or horse-and-buggy rider, to purchase liquor in one jurisdiction and illegally conceal it in this fashion before traveling it into a jurisdiction where such liquor was prohibited and taxed at a higher rate.
Vocabulary.com & etymonline.com

Song of the Day

“Paperback Writer” by the Beatles (non-album single, 1966)