Some say Janet Neal “can burn up a piano,” but she says she plays like that “because I put my heart into it.”

Others know her as an accomplished quilter whose works have won her the viewers’ choice awards at local shows. She does all of her quilting totally by hand.

For scores of folks in the south end of Warren County, she’s the one who sends out the bills for the Yokena-Jeff Davis Water Association. She’s called — jokingly, she hopes — “the Water Witch.”

But don’t be surprised if she tells you “I’m an ex-Conn.” Her first husband, now deceased, was Jimmy Conn.

For almost 10 years, she’s run the water district office on Jeff Davis Road and that includes everything from bookkeeping to janitorial duties to soothing the ruffled feathers of a few disgruntled customers.

She came to Vicksburg 20 years ago, when she was 40, when her husband took on the duties as pastor of the Vicksburg Church of God. She grew up at Myrick, about 13 miles northeast of Laurel, in a family that loved music.

She can read a little music — slowly — but Janet began playing the piano before she started to school. She recalls hearing a song on the radio, then going over to the piano and playing it, “and my grandmother’s chin fell to the floor, and she called to my mother, ‘Come here! Come here!’”

In grammar school, she took lessons for a couple of years and one of her teachers, J.B. Coates, probably had a lasting impression on her: he’s the composer of “Where Could I Go But to the Lord.” Southern gospel music — along with country gospel and bluegrass gospel — are Janet’s favorites. They each have a slightly different sound, she said, but the country and country gospel have the same chord progressions. Don’t just put a piece of music in front of her — she does better if she hears it first. When she was younger, she could listen to a song one time and then play it, “But now it takes a little more than once.”

It was because of music that she met both her husbands.

Jimmy Conn was part of a church music group looking for a pianist on the Gulf Coast when Janet applied and was hired. After their marriage, they moved to Laurel and then to Vicksburg. She’s still playing hymns at the Lighthouse Assembly of God. Her favorite piano is the 88-key upright.

She hasn’t always wanted to play the piano, she said, and vowed as a youngster that when she grew up, “I will never play the piano again; I will never go to another singing, because my daddy used to make us go to those all-day singings and dinners on the grounds.” She and her two sisters would have to play and sing, and they’d argue because they couldn’t agree on how a song should be played.

Now, you couldn’t keep her away from the piano. She also sings, though “not the best. I love to sing harmony.” She misses the trios she once sang with, and said it’s hard to find someone who can switch parts. Though she likes traditional hymns, she’s known to “jazz ’em up a little.”

Though the piano is her favorite instrument, she also plays the guitar, the organ “just a little bit,” the steel guitar, the harmonica and the accordion “to a degree” — all by ear. Her bucket list includes more time for music because, “It’s fun. I just love it.” Despite those teenage misgivings about playing the piano, all the Walters girls (that was Janet’s maiden name) play differently. One is more traditional, and one has a degree in classical music from the University of Southern Mississippi.

What Janet doesn’t do — or can’t do — is write music, though she has tried several times, “and just ripped ’em apart, so I’m just sticking with what I know.”

Quilting is another hobby and her grandfather — “He was my hero” — is responsible. They were buddies and “every step he made, I made.” Her grandmother died in 1982 leaving behind an unfinished quilt. Janet knew none of the quilting skills, but she took on the task and finished, “doing the best I could,” and “I got hooked on it.”

After moving here, she took one class in quilting and, like music, it has been a good therapy. Her quilts are done totally by hand — no sewing-machine work — and though the patterns for the most part are traditional, “every time I make a quilt, I learn.”

She took an art course by correspondence several years ago, “cramming a two-year course into three,” and she wants to learn feather painting. When she was a child, all she wanted to do was “hang around with my grandpa, feed the hogs, chickens, cows, goat and rabbits. Now that I’m older, I want to learn the girl things, like how to sew.”

Her life took a drastic change in December 2000 when her husband, Jimmy, died of cancer. At the time, she was enrolled at Hinds, taking 24 semester hours, but “I just closed my books. I said, ‘I can’t do this. I have to take care of my husband.’” But her teachers — “the best in the world” — worked with her so that she was able to graduate in December, the same month Jimmy passed away.

In January 2001, she answered an ad in The Vicksburg Post and was called to come for an interview at the Yokena-Jeff Davis Water District office. When she got home, there was a message on her answering machine that she had been hired.

She laughingly says all she is known for is the lady who can have your water turned off. But in the almost 10 years she has been there, she can think of only five people who have really been belligerent.

“Some get mad and spout off at me,” she said, “but I don’t care. That’s why I have those bars on the window. It’s not to keep them off me, but to keep me from jumping on them.”

In her tenure at the district, she can think of some really funny things, she said, but she’d rather not record them for posterity. She told about one man who was angered by a decision of the board of directors. He came to see her, “smokin’ when he got out of his car. Kicked the tires, kicked the gravel, said he wasn’t going to pay,” and she had better not send anybody to his house. A soft answer turns away wrath, the Good Book says, and Janet simply smiled and said OK. Later, he called and apologized and showered her with buckets of fresh vegetables from his garden.

She might know the name of every household in the community, but most of the ones she knows personally are those who pay their bills in person or the ones who get their water cut off.

She’s made many good friends in the community, she said.

Vicksburg has become her home, she said, because of the people here. When Jimmy died, her church family came to her assistance, “and I will never forget them. They helped me in so many ways. I wanted to stay because they were my family. This was home.”

It was several years later that she got to know a man who lived nearby, Gene Neal. He came to church occasionally with his mother, but his conversation with Janet was basically, “Hello, how are you doing?”

Gene’s wife, Gail, a nurse, died of cancer in 2004. He, like Janet, loved music, and they eventually got to know one another. He plays guitar, and the music drew them together, “but we both said right up front that we never, ever wanted to get married again.” That was four years ago, and one day, “He proposed to me in front of his kids. What was I going to do? Say no with all those eyes looking at me? I can’t say enough about him. He is wonderful.”

Fact is, Janet said, “I have been blessed with two wonderful husbands — and a lot of folks don’t have one.”

Janet is quick with one-liners. When her husband asked her why she bought makeup, she had a ready reply: “I have to tone the beauty down somehow.” She enjoys a funny tale and believes, “Everybody should have a belly laugh every day.”

One of those laughs is what she calls her most embarrassing moment. She tells of her niece’s fancy wedding in Baton Rouge years ago when “I didn’t know nothing about nothing. I’m as country as cornbread, but I’m not bashful when it comes to food. So I went into the reception and fixed my plate and grumbled and grumbled about the blueberry cheesecake. It had no sugar in it, I didn’t know who made it, but I got a big piece (like a large slice of pie), and when I got through, my husband said that it wasn’t blueberry cheesecake — it was caviar.”

It looked like blueberries on top, she said, but I told my niece, “Christina, I am so sorry. I just ate $300 worth of your caviar.”

She’s still not a caviar person, Janet said, but she likes to cook for people who like to eat. She laughed that she hadn’t been invited to any more family weddings, and Jimmy told her, “I can’t take you anywhere.”

Janet said she doesn’t take for granted the good things in life, and she doesn’t believe in a self-made person, that what people accomplish, that what she is, is “only because of the grace of God. I love the simple life. I appreciate the way I was raised. I have a lot of good memories, and I’m going to make a good memory every day if I can.”

If she could sum up her life in one word, what would it be?

“Blessed” she said, “and with an exclamation point!”

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.