Burial

Just 'cause I didn't get any Hound Dog Taylor today don't mean y'all should be deprived...



Un-touchable!

Disease Ridden Southern Spectres...Dusty, Organic and Psychic

(Indian Mounds, Pocahontas)



(Yazoo City)

(Perverted By Language is the greatest record ever recorded and I am unanimous in this...it is the pink album with the Link Wray reference.)

You would be forgiven for assuming that as I trailed through The Delta I'd have some sorta blues in the car but, you'd be wrong. That player has been jammed with Fall Cds for a month now...and last week was no exception.


(Inverness)



(Inverness)



(Indianola)
I can't decide whether it's odd or not but they seem right at home on 49.

Naw I Don't Need No Drugs

Hanna Ave, Indianola, MS

In the universal sign for "let me hold a dollar" a lanky black man lunges up to the car making a circular motion with his right hand. I roll the window down...

"You got a couple of dollars I can hold?"

I reached in my front pocket and pulled out a folded dollar bill that had been in there days.

"That's all I got...You gettin' my last dollar brother."

"You got 35 more cents?"

I laughed and dug it out for him.

"Man you ain't got another dolla?"

"I told you that was my last dollar...I need to get movin' brother. The poleese see my white face stopped on the street like this and they're gonna think one thing."

"You need some drugs man?"

"Naw I don't need no Drugs. I can't be monkeyin' around up here I gotta get back to Jackson."

"You goin' to Jackson? Today?...Oh hold on a second. Wait right here.."

Then he started off toward a house...

"Brother I gotta go. I'm workin'."

"A'ight...A'ight."

What on Earth he wanted me to transport down to Jackson we'll never know but, in my experience it could have been anything from nickle bag of dope to his Grandmama.



I was down there yesterday morning because the night before I couldn't get any pictures...there must have been 10 cops down there and at least that many people lined up on the sidewalk.

I've seen Blues Travel sites nonchalantly explain how easy it is to fly into Memphis, rent a car and drive down into The Delta...Clarkesdale, Leland, Indianolo are "just a two and a half hour drive." I'd like to hear how that's worked out for some of these folks in sandals, baggy short-pants, and Robert Johnson T-Shirts. I imagine being berated with shouts of "you ain't on Beale St. now" isn't the worst of it.



Church St.

Every town in The South, of any size, has a Church St. In Jackson it's Farish St...Memphis has Beale St. The old Black business district. Not just Jukes but, grocery stores, taylors, cobblers, ice cream shops, they had everything. What Church St. had that none of the others did was B.B. King.



I love B.B. King...who doesn't. It's not my favorite brand of Blues (though he's certainly my favorite Urban players and his voice...geeeeze.) but, it's the first I heard and knew. As a little kid I appropriated my Daddy's cassette of 16 Greatest Hits and carried it around in an old tape recorder...even to bed at night.



Anyway that's Idianola. So is this...



Before I let you go. We need to slip back to Leland. I mentioned that there were a few players from around there...and indeed there are and indeed they deserve mentioning.

Son Thomas...not only a Blues player but a renowned artist. They call him a "folk" artist but that's always seemed condescending to me.



You gonna tell me this fella was just ignorantly making sculptures without any sophisticated understanding of what he was doing...bah.

What about Johnny Winters?



Man...Kiss My Grits..that is good.

Booger Loves Sissy

I want our resident expert on the anthropology of emotions to explain this expression of Love as anything but Mystery and Truth.

Satartia, Mississippi is a collection of houses around a cotton gin in the Delta. There's a couple of churches and a Grocery...


(These are the places that The Shed with it's Christmas lights and license plates is trying to emulate. You can buy some staples and honeybuns, bait, and cokecolas in these places but, they're more like social halls. They serve meals and coffee...local musicians will play outside or in if there's a dance floor...pool tables, etc. .)

The place is owned by a woman that seemed perfectly sane but run by two young women who are crazy as outhouse rats (they insisted that they were Booger and Sissy)...I barely got out of that place without a mark.

It was one of the funnest calls I've been on in a long time.

Before you get to Satartia, comin' from Jackson, you gotta pass by Bentonia...



Home of the Blue Front Cafe and Skip James...



I wish I'd gotten a picture of the two convicts being hauled up to the top of a flag pole to change light bulbs...in the bucket of an excavator.

I spent the rest of the day gettin' further into The Delta...


(Allan II)

Holly Bluff, Delta Grocery...where the owner has a cast iron cross from a Confederate grave that must be almost 150 years old. It was surrounded by rattlers that had been taken off snakes he'd killed.

A Grocery in Mayerville with a shag Budweiser rug nailed to wall over the dance floor.

Glen Allen on Lake Washington...where things are slow goin'.



My last stop was in Leland. It's home to it's share of Blues players but, it's also the birthplace of...



Time to start day two...Greenwood, Ita Bena, Morehead, Indianola, etc.

The Title has been fixed...as ISBW keenly observed "who calls themselves bogger?" :)

At first I thought it was a typo...but I did it twice.

King of the Road

Work was a little squirrely yesterday...I went from Slidell, La to Vancleave, Ms, Ocean Springs (I had an important call to make there)...



Gulfport...then back to Slidell, La to work with my favorite knucklehead in South Louisiana (he really is a knucklehead and he really is my favorite)..then back to Gulfport followed by a return trip to my room in Slidell.

Lot's of radio time though...I heard Ring My Bell by Anita Ward yesterday. Did you?

The Highlights...





And the greatest song that ever came over the FM...



I couldn't help but wonder, as I was beating on the steering wheel and breaking out in goosebumps...if Elvis had to deal with haters when he was becoming the King of Rock n Roll the way I'm having to as I become the King of Painting.

Who knows?

Alright, back on the road today and home to Martha and The Boy tonight.

Holla!

ishouldhavegotsometogo

It's funny how the internet works. A woman in Brighton, England..the author of an outstanding blog*...made my supper plans for me on Monday night.**

That afternoon, I was on my way down to the Coast...



I stopped in Magee to have a cup of coffee and kill some time on the blogger. When I got into my account I saw that she had a new post...another installment on her recent trip to California. During this particular leg she had finally gotten to eat something she had only heard about...pulled pork.

Normally when I'm down there I get a pizza from Newk's or a cheeseburger from Five Guys and take it back to the room...watch Law and Order reruns...like clockwork. Not that night. Once the notion of pulled pork had been put into my head the only way I was gonna get it out was to eat some.

Lucky for me I'd be in D'iberville about 10 miles from Vancleave and this place



The Shed.



A ramshackle collection of buildings right off of Exit 57 on I-10 at the gate of a campgrounds...where they smoke hog and the wallpaper's green.



The decor has almost reached the point of parody...almost. It's not a gag but, it's not really a country grocery either. Somebody's playin' a g'itar there most nights but, it's not the next Asie Payton. The place has been on T.V and they have a handful of locations now.

If the food wasn't good it would be a joke but, the food is good...



The pork's got just enough of texture for you to put your teeth on it right before it melts into smokey butter. And that flippin potato salad is lights OUT...like Corkey's without the bacon.

I've had better I reckon...Ubons comes to mind and Full Moon in Hoover, Alabama is my favorite (sadly the Tuscaloosa location was erased during last months Godzilla attack) but it definitely rates.



It's like I'm afraid somebody's gonna try and take it.

Thanks ISBW...the meal was delicious.***

*The Blog is ishouldbeworking...and you should be reading it. I don't know how to do links but it's in my reading list. It's fantastic.

**I should also point out that Adam in Lancaster has..if you add it all up...has cost me about a weeks worth of work hours with his internet obstanence.

***I realize it's a little wacky to unpack things like this...I have analytical issues. Just be glad you aren't in my mind, along for the ride as I'm reading these nonsensical had written signs at restaurants all day....more on this later.

No Smoking at the Old Absinthe House

New Orleans.

I had a call in Chalmette yesterday and after it was over I went down into the The Quarter.



Just as stanky as ever. Bourbon St. runs through the middle of the quarter like an open sewer line. It produces this violently acrid cloud of stale beer, urine and vomit that grudgingly dissipates the closer you get to the river.



Of course, state law prohibits you smoking in The Old Absinthe House so you needn't worry about your health down there. Get blind drunk and pass out on the steps of one of those dank strip clubs ridiculously billed as a Cabaret...your plans of living forever will not be affected.



That's Bourbon St. though and despite it there are some lovely places in The Quarter.



You can even get books down there.



Crescent City Books.

Of all the bookstores around...Square Books, Lemuria, Choctaw (Allan's favorite...they use a peculiar shelving system there that really puts his mind at ease and allows him to linger so he can find the title he's huntin) are all great and all have their specialties. Crescent City caters to mine. That's the British History shelves (complete with the mandatory separate section for Winston Churchill). Africa, India and the rest are well represented too. I've got a book in my bag from there now...The Rise and Fall of the Asante Empire. On my shelves at home, among others, are a copy of The Pro-Boers, a review copy of The Seed is Mine, and a collection of Boer primary documents translated into English (you try to find it). I love that place.

I'll tell you what else I love.... muffalettas!



There's no better place to get 'em than Central Grocery.



You just can't beat the place...that's all.



I had a half...washed it down with a frigid root beer.

Then it was time to go.



I've got a few calls in Picayune, Mississippi...which means one thing.



Paul's Pastry.

I'm a little worn out with the road and can't wait to get home to the boy and Martha...but, I reckon there are worse places to be away from home.

The Real Florida?

Your travel agent doesn't have any deals for these places but, this is Florida.



A spring that feeds into the Swanee river. It's actually two pools with a cave that connects them. The Northern part of the state sits on a spongy mixture of sand, clay and roots...over a honeycomb of caves and underwater rivers. Sink holes are a common problem.



Don't know what's up with the date...it's an old camera.



There's Bambi.



Blue Springs on the Withacochee. Even I can remember before it became a State Park and you could dive out of the trees.



Not anymore. This is, as the sign says, the Real Florida...a state full of bureaucratic fundamentalists. I don't know what that jibbersh means and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone would think I'd have access to it.

Over the decades, a certain group of people have come down and invaded Florida and tried to shape it into the sorta busy-body nanny states they come from. You can't smoke at the Yella Pine Truck Stop because some lady from New Jersey, down in Boca Raton can't sleep at night thinkin' about it.

I love to visit, I was born there, but you couldn't drag me there to live.

Even for Me it's Gettin' a Little Ridiculouls.

6:21 pm Central Time Zone (Zulu 6.00)

Mack Donalds on Government St. in Mobile, Alabama.

Forced off the interstate by traffic. I've come this way 855 times in my life and I've never seen anything like it. It's a parking lot 20 miles from the tunnel. 'Course Government and Canal are starting to back up now too.

Mostly the usual in here...20 minutes in line to get a cup of coffee that's so hot I have blood trickling down my chin. I have to say...it's the first time I've ever been asked if the coffee was "for here or to go." Funniest thing though was the yankee in line with us...you can spot them immediately in these situations. All you have to do is turn around to see who's breathing down your neck. They really can't help it, especially the northeasterners, there is no space where they live...personal or otherwise. Plus people will cut your throat to get in front of you...even if it's just for a mcnugget. This dood...geeze, his man boobs were almost brushing the fella in front of me (I was a respectable two feet off to the side...just like the good'un that came in behind me...we are loath to do lines.

Before Carrying On

This...



Somewhere on 49 S between Camp Shelby and Wiggins I heard a thumping sound for a second...followed by a flopping sound...then a grinding sound.

It's a horrible sound anytime you've got a steering wheel in your hand but on 49 it's particularly dreadful. It's the main highway between Jackson and The Coast...and it has no shoulder. I ground along, the pit in my stomach getting bigger, until I came to a little bridge with just enough room to pull the car over on level ground with about 2 foot between it and the highway.

First I had to find the jack...which turned out to 8" tall...who the...the car is barely 8" off the ground when the tires are inflated. So between packs of cars screaming by at 70 miles an hour...I would dash out and try to find a place to put the jack. It was my left front tire...which in the U.S. puts it right out there in traffic. Just I had finally found a place to jam the jack in, a very nice couple pulled up behind me with a scissor jack and we got it knocked out.

I would have gotten the car jacked up and would've gotten tire off without BUT, I would never in a million years have gotten the spare off if they hadn't been there. It involved a rod with a square end, a tiny hidden hole and a cable. All I can say is thank God they showed up. I'd probably still be there now propped up under a pine, gnawin' on a piece of frozen chicken, throwin' rocks at cars.

There was a Kangaroo station just up the road...I pulled in to get air in the spare and change my britches. They were filthy. Once a gain, my glamorous life on the road had me half-naked in a public restroom.

All This and a Link Wray Reference - Part 1

I burned a lot of rubber in the last few weeks...



From Pascagoula to Holly Springs and a lot of in between.



Usually I spend my time in the car turning the dial trying to find Brittany and Pink songs...or searching in vain for the rowdy preacher I once heard in L'usiana. He was givin' a sermon on sess and pawnografry. He got so fired up describing his former wicked ways that he completely lost track of his Amens and Hallalujahs ...

"I read yo Playboys magazeems, AMEEEEEEEEENS...and yo prenthouses Halllujjjhaaaaa!!!"

In South Louisiana I can pick up Catholic radio programs (not too many of those in my neck of the woods) which are interesting...don't usually hear a lot of discussion on transubstantiation...or hear well reasoned arguments against birth control. I spent an hour once listening to a fella explain how the prohibition against birth control was not a ban on casual hanky-panky within marriage.

I heard Hunka Burnin Love twice last week...with a steering wheel in your hand, that's livin'.

I love the radio but, sometimes I need a break from it...I can only turn the dial on With or Without You, Sweet Emotion and Tom Sawyer so many times before wanting to punch it...screaming about a conspiracy to ruin my road trips.

So sometimes I bring CDs...zip into the office here at the house and grab a few off the shelf without much thought. This time I saw a familiar pink cover and sitting on top of it was this....



I don't know how I feel about Captain Beefheart as Captain Beefheart...there are moments of blues brilliance like the above, pure genius and then there's weirdness for the sake of being weird...like I rapped the vegetable satellite with a chocolate covered cue stick...or whatever. It just seems so contrived...or worse desperate to be different. Then there's the voice...I don't know if an intimate familiarity with Howlin' Wolf makes it better or worse...sometimes it sounds like a brilliant reinterpretation. Sometimes it sounds worse than George Thourogood doing One Bourbon One Scotch...

All that's not much of an issue here. Safe as Milk is a transition record and there's plenty of fuzzed out straight up R&B left on it to get past some awkward moments...and its got Ry Cooder.



Fantastic record and it'll have me breakin' out The Make Up by next week...



Hey Don...and Frank...especially you Frank...that's what truely strange imagery sounds like.

Next up the pink one...it deserves its own post.

Colonizing Egypt in Hattiesburg Mississippi

Dry Ice, Road Rage, Forms, and Post Colonialism...squares and coffee.

Baton Rouge, L'uisiana

I had the gator.

The money was in Baton Rouge this week.



Our first exit in the Pelican State.

Britney Spears was born just up the road from Exit 61 in McComb, Mississippi but she was raised in Kentwood, Louisiana.

Aside from the Pumpkin Center/Baptist exit there's not much else along the interstate 'til you get to Baton Rouge and it's Live Oaks...



If left alone, the limbs'll get so long that they bow down and start to grow along the sandy ground. There are whole neighborhoods and roads canopied under these things draped with Spanish Moss...it's one of the most beautiful sites in The South.

Of course the most beautiful site in The South is one of these....



Tiger Stadium, Death Vally, where it never rains and where in 1988 the fans caused an earthquake to register at the geology center after a game winning touchdown against Auburn.

Baton Rouge is home to Louisiana State University...LSU, The Tigers, Bayou Bengals, founding member of the SEC. They're named after Wheat's Tigers. Recruited mostly from the waterfront in New Orleans they were a L'ousiana unit of zouaves in the Confederate army...so rowdy that they had to be dispersed after Wheat was killed. It's a legacy the LSU fans carry on with ridiculous enthusiasm.

Me and Martha went down for a game against Mississippi State a few years ago. The first thing we saw as we pulled onto campus was an actual gator hanging from the limb of a live oak. The president of the school regularly has to write letters of apology to visiting teams and their fans. While most schools in the SEC are known their sharp dressed fans (ties and cocktail dresses)...at LSU you'll find purple and gold pimps and Elvis impersonators.

First of all they're mostly Cajuns...it's just how they are. Secondly, it takes an act of congress or millions in tv loot to get 'em to play a game during the day. Saturday night in Death Valley is a brutal place to try and get a win...mainly because its 92,000 seats are mostly filled with Coonasses that have been drinking bourbon since before the sun came up.



Edit: I had to add this one...so perfectly over the top.


It's an unqualified blast.

The Money really was in Baton Rouge this week...or more specifically in Gonzalez. I love my job...that's all...and I found out just how satisfying it can be this week. I ride with sales reps. I bring new products and we talk to their customers about bringing them on. I spend a day or two with the reps and get to know them, their goals, about their families...and I get to help them make money. Wednesday, just a couple of hours after meeting a reps wife and daughters, he got a call from a customer we'd talked to that morning...they were going to buy.

He was so excited...jumpin' around, high fives..and then he thought about the money...got his calculator out, ran the numbers...2 grand in annual salary. That's what our morning turned out to be worth for him and his family.

Like I said I love my job.

Oxford, Mississippi

I was on the road again last week...



Oxford, Mississippi



One of the prettiest towns you'll ever come across.



It's not a trick...They named it after Oxford, England as part of a successful effort to have the University of Mississippi located in the town.





Ole Miss was founded there in 1848. Bones (not the actor :) ) from Star Trek is an alum, John Grisham, Charlie's Angle Kate Jackson...the school's produced three Miss America's...



and of course William Faulkner was a student there.



The school also produced The University Greys*, Company A of the 11th Mississippi Infantry...only 4 students showed up for class in 1861 after secession.



The other 135, along with much of the faculty, enlisted. They suffered 100% casualties during the war...that's everybody either killed or wounded. Got farther than anybody during Pickets Charge...and paid dearly for it. Gen Barksdale was killed on the second day of the battle leading his men from the front. One dumbfounded yankee was overheard saying "we don't have officers like that." Damn right they didn't...they were past-masters in burning and raping things...and slaughtering Indians though.

Ole Miss is a fine academic institution but, more importantly it's the home of The Ole Miss Rebels**...founding members of the SEC. It's been about 60 years since they were dominant force on the field....but, off the field, in The Grove, they're still champs.


"Don't win many football games but, they've never lost a party." ***

Lots of music around Oxford. It's the home of Fat Possum Records...R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough territory. The Silver Jews and Modest Mouse have recorded records there...Johnny Marr used to have a house there.

Books...Books and more Books...



Square Books is annually rated as one of the best privately owned bookstores in the country (along with Lemuria in Jackson...we are book lovers)...it's even too big for one store...



It's just a pretty place.

Grenada (that's Gre-nay-duh in Mississippi) is not really that pretty of a place but, I like it all the same. Had business in Kosciusko...so I stayed there Wed. night.

I ate my supper here...



Looks great...sorriest BBQ I ever had south of the Ohio River...pulled pork straight from a bucket. I've had better pork in a school cafeteria...place should be shutdown by the cops.

Should've eaten here...



or maybe here...



Anywhere but High on the Hog.

Anyway fortunately I made it home in time to see this...



Next week...Baton Rouge.


*That's GrEys...we spelled words correctly down here until after the war. Evidently a part of being reconstructed was learning a peculiar New England way of spelling English words.

**Let's not go there for now.

*** Sorry Jenny Q, Sister...I'll make it up to you after my next trip to Starkville.