hat’s tough is calling Sam
Scott to see how he feels
about lunch on Friday and
then remembering that, along with
Sam, the number is out of service. It
would be good if a friend could just die
all at once, but with close friends, it
takes a while. It will soon be a year
since Sam died, and I’m only now be-
ginning to believe it.
We were friends for 55 years—
since we were History majors at Mill-
saps College and took our oral compre-
hensive exams together. Sam said that
they gave orals to pairs in case one
student passed out from fright.
After graduation, Sam went to law
school at Ole Miss and got married,
and I became a Navy officer and did-
n’t. Sam embarked on a distinguished
legal career and I got under way with
a resume that epitomized Attention
Deficit Disorder.
Time passed. I married. Sam and
I decided to form a sports car racing
team and call it Bolus & Snopes. We
later both divorced and ultimately re-
married.
Sam practiced law for more than a
half-century. He was my attorney, my
brother’s attorney, and my late
mother’s attorney. He was the attor-
ney for a number of my business un-
dertakings and was the embodiment
of intelligence and calm when I often
wasn’t.
After Hurricane Katrina, I moved
to Jackson, Mississippi, where Sam
was the in-house counsel for Southern
Farm Bureau Insurance. In close prox-
imity with each other for the first time
since our racing days, we often
lunched at Ruth’s Chris’ Steak House
on Fridays.
Sam’s drink was a vodka martini
on the rocks, Grey Goose with three
olives. Mine was Acrobat, a California
sauvignon blanc. Shrimp etouffe was
the favored entree. Our lunches were
golden times, hours that allowed Sam
to display his superb talents as a sto-
ryteller and his equally superlative
skills as an observer and interpreter
of human nature.
Sam grew up on a farm in what we
Mississippians call the Delta. Cotton
country. His dad was in the insurance
business but also farmed. Outlanders
would call him a planter. Sam liked
nothing better than telling stories
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 46
– William Jeanes
W
Bolus & Snopes rogues’ gallery [
left to right
]: William Jeanes, Bob Boileau, Sam Scott
and driver Bob Mitchell. The car was a GT350 Hertz, 6S1828.
1937-2015