James Lutzweiler of Jamestown, N.C., has mailed me his new book, The Ballad of Salvation Bill, with Jeff Davis’ signature over a note that reads, “Best wishes, Gene. Lutz is right about the bird poop.”

I will tell you straight out that I never knew Jefferson Davis. Lutz, whom I know as “the Jamestown Jackass,” forged the former president’s signature on the fly leaf of the book. It was published by Schnappsburg University Press, an illegitimate offspring of Schnappsburg University. Schnappsburg U. is a diploma mill that Lutz founded for the explicit purpose of awarding himself phony diplomas to go with the many legitimate diplomas he earned at other places. His day job is archivist and rare book curator at Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. His avocation is feeding me column material, playing the piano, and peeking through the window blinds of history.

Why would Jefferson Davis bother to corroborate the Jackass’ bird-poop theory? Because Lutz, in direct contradiction of the president’s war address to the Confederate Congress, maintains that the Late Unpleasantness was all about the South’s quest for a southern rail route that would bring Peruvian guano (South American bird poop) from the West Coast to the exhausted fields of Dixie. With a century and a half of hindsight, Davis has now concluded that the Bird Poop Theory is better for his image than the actual facts.

To humor Lutzweiler, and to assure myself a mention in his book, I have conceded that he is right, and that the War Between the States had nothing whatever to do with the property rights of Southern planters. This does not negate my prerogative to take it back now that my name has been safely enshrined in his book.

Prior to its release, the “Jackass” bombarded me with numerous e-mails — material that he was considering as fodder for his dust jacket. My response is noted on Page 8: “This is the most entertaining dust jacket I have ever read. — Gene Owens, Columnist and second coming of Lewis Grizzard.”

It is one of the many inaccuracies in Lutz’s book. I am not the second coming of Lewis Grizzard. Grizzard was the second coming of me. I was writing newspaper columns while Lewis was still at the University of Georgia, trying to find his way to Sanford Stadium from Ag Hill, site of the women’s dorm where he often wound up after a night of conquest.

Lutz sent me the book in mid-December, and it has taken me this long to pinpoint the location of “The Ballad of Salvation Bill,” a poem written not by Lutz but by Robert Service. Lutz apparently regards Service as the greatest of all poets, living and dead. That’s because Service’s poems have rhyme, rhythm and reason, in contrast with most modern poems, which are to literature what abstract paintings are to art.

Service’s most famous poem is “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” which Lutzweiler has memorized and will recite upon the slightest provocation. For heaven’s sake, don’t provoke him. Having mastered that, he moved on to “The Ballad of Salvation Bill,” which, like the McGee yarn, is set in the Arctic Wilderness, pre-Sarah Palin.

Salvation Bill, whose real name was Jake Skilly, was a slave to tobacco. Once he rescued a missionary from a pack of wolves and took him to his shack, where he found that some varmints had chewed to shreds his stash of Argosy magazines. That was a tragedy, because the pages of Argosy provided the paper for rolling his Bull Durham into cigarettes. Desperate for a smoke, Bill talked the missionary into letting him roll cigarettes from the pages of the Bible. The missionary made one condition: He had to read each page before he smoked it.

Salvation Bill got as far as the book of Job before he decided that the Bible made poor cigarette paper. Shortly afterward, a police patrol arrived with paper for a thousand smokes. Salvation Bill was saved — at least in the temporal sense. He went on to become a preacher who would sock the jaws of anyone who refused to listen.

The poem takes up a dozen pages, one verse to the page, and if you don’t like Service’s poetry, you’ll probably like the illustrations by Arch Leean. And if you don’t like the illustrations by Arch Leean, you’ll probably go for the photograph of Arch and his wife, Mary, in bathing suits, on a snow-covered patio, having a glass of something Southern Baptists do not drink in front of each other.

The rest of the 84 pages are taken up by blurbs of praise and contempt; and assorted attachments, including the real meat of the volume: 25 pages of “frivolous footnotes” in which Lutz trashes the most glowing icons of American history, from George Washington to Abe Lincoln, to Dwight Eisenhower. He even leaps the Atlantic and goes behind the doors of Winston Churchill’s lou to trash the great PM. The only people who escape his calumny are Billy Graham and Jimmy Carter, both of whom share Lutzweiler’s Southern Baptist proclivities.

If you’re biased against Southern Baptists, don’t let that stop you from reading the book; It’s saucy and naughty and would never have earned the imprimatur of Jerry Falwell. Don’t buy it if you plan to use it to roll cigarettes. The pages are slick and stiff and high-class like the ones in those coffee-table books. Stick to Argosy for your smoking and buy Lutz for laughs. You can get your own copy for $30 if you order via e-mail at Lutzjscn@infionline.net.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson SC 29621 or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.