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My grandmother had a Dashboard Jesus in her car. Peering from the dashboard perch of a brown 1964 Rambler American. For protection as she maneuvered through the gears of a stick shift on the steering column, negotiating roads from her Josephine Street home to church. Towards the end of her driving career, I was kind of surprised that the statue didn’t come alive with its eyes bulging from the eye sockets with concern for its safety or raising its hands out of fear. A lot of memories from oh, those many decades ago, resurrected once I was reminded that those Dashboard Jesuses were created right down U.S. 61 in Walls, Mississippi. Reporter Brandon LaGrone looked into the origin and its connection to the community just south of the Mississippi-Tennessee line in an Ask the Memphian this week. As LaGrone reported, the statues were the product of the Sacred Heart Auto League. Christened in 1955, they coincide with an increasing number of vehicles on America’s streets and commuters moving faster across the country with construction of the interstate system under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. So, the combination of more cars and faster speeds made things a tad more harrowing on the roadways. Having a representation of the Son of God riding shotgun provided at least some bit of comfort. The prayer that accompanied the statue added another layer of help. And just to be clear, Gram probably had a visor clip of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, in the old Rambler too. The statue gained a following from a song written by Ed Rush and George Cromarty a couple of years after the Dashboard Jesus was introduced. The statues grew even more after Paul Newman sang the song in “Cool Hand Luke.” One thing that always puzzled me though; why did people put the Dashboard Jesus facing into the front seat? Wasn’t that backwards? Wouldn’t he have better served you by staring out the front windshield to see where you were going and what dangers were approaching? Rather than staring back at the driver as they navigated the road? I really like having stories about things that used to be part of our local landscape. That’s the reason we have written about Lakeland’s days as an amusement park. The lost golf courses around the county, and the past when Maywood was the summer destination for a swim in chilly waters. It is really kind of interesting to talk about things that have disappeared and what occupies that particular spot today. Of course, the Walls, Mississippi version of Dashboard Jesus is past. Heck fire, dashboards aren’t even metal anymore so that magnetic base wouldn’t hold it in place. Safety features are much more prevalent from blind spot sensors on sideview mirrors to backup cameras, thus avoiding collisions with a car passing behind you in a parking lot. Maybe there is actually a need for the Dashboard Jesus today. With high-performance motors, I can imagine having one on the dashboard of a car drag racing along Interstate 240 or Germantown Parkway. With the statue coming alive, arms raised to cover its eyes as the speedometer spins towards 100 mph. — Suburbs editor, Clay Bailey
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Decades ago, drivers planted a plastic Jesus on their car’s dashboard to provide a bit of religious safety as automobiles became more prevalent on the road.
By Brandon LaGrone II
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