The Return of Allan.

That title's been sitting in my draft box since last week. He made me a prophet earlier this week by logging on to complain that, seven days into the season, there had been no talk of SEC football on the blog.

In response, my complaint is that there has been no Allan on the blog since January...hardly. Even as The South, which we, both proud sons of the Confederacy, cherish with equal fervor, has taken up so much space here. We've talked of beauty...a philosophical issue that can't help but butt up against perfection, an area in which he has earned the right to be called Doctor...silence. We recounted, with horror, an episode that nearly saw me killed by an exploding Cokecola bottle...no concern.

To think....he used to care.




So, if we want Allan around....and surely we do...I reckon we better talk about some football.

Tomorrow, the Florida Gators have the pleasure, the honour, of welcoming one of the two new members into the SEC.



Unlike JenniferQ...whose idea of a proper welcome is for the Aggies to be brutalized by every team in The Conference...I wish the Aggies well, after tomorrow.

We'll follow all the action right here.

Change of plans...thanks to the Sister, me and the Big Man have tickets to the Ole Miss - Texas El Paso game tonight. We will be on our way to Oxford while the Gators are pounding Texas A&m.

We could ask Allan to provide play by play but, we tried that in the past and all we got out of that was an irresitable target for Russian bots. I have know idea why but that thing gets about 100 hits a month from Russia and the Ukraine.



















For those of you who don't care about SEC football...they'll be flinging telephone poles and tying knots down at the Ag Museum all weekend...Mississippi Celtic Fest.

Arab Strap - The [Last] Big Weekend.



An old favorite..."I thought she had been quite pretty until Matthew informed me she had in fact been a peyg." Hahahahahah

Delta Gold

The work day started in Belzoni (Bellzona)



...Catfish Capital of the world.

Used to be a Turner Drugs on this corner...Easy Pay across the street. Radio stations from Yazoo City and across the Delta used to broadcast live sets from this spot...including sets from Elmore James.



I wasn't there for all that though...well, I was but that's not why they're payin' me. I was there to find a restaurant that didn't have a sign. I walked right by it...

"'aaay."

Stickin' out of a door was the face of a goodin'...round and jowly with drooping blue eyes. An aloof expression under the bill of a ball cap. He had on, what looked like a dark blue work short and an old pair of jeans. I followed him inside...short fella and round but, spry. Maybe it was the puma racing shoes.
That was the first flare I noticed.

When we got under the lights of the bar I realized his work shirt was actually herringbone. Swanky but, not nearly as swank as his ball cap. The front of it glowed like the end of the rainbow. There was a cotton boll about the size of a child's first above the bill...covered in gold glitter. Delta Gold it said.

That's the Delta. The most Southern Place on Earth...so flat water wont run. Every town has the same rows of two story buildings. You'd pass right by the whole thing and never give it a second thought. You'd never guess those scruffy store fronts hide some of the best restaurants in the state...posh boutiques, book stores and art galleries.



Little Fred loves the Delta.

According to statistics it's the poorest place in the United States outside of an Indian reservations but, it's got some of the oldest, stinkiest money anywhere. This was the Victorian middle east....the cotton that fueled British textiles. Yazoo City, the southern point of the Delta, was originally called Manchester. When Southerners and Britons "cotton on" they are cottoning on to Delta cotton. It's also the source of nearly every popular music form in the Western World.



And you can get Catfish fish and chips here....



Nasty.

Anyway, that's where I'll be today.

The Price of Sugar.

Because of my job, I spend a lot of time standing outside of places...smoking, looking at the clock on my phone, smoking. Sometimes I catch conversations on the sidewalk...

"You seena price uh shuga'?"

The old man was wearing a straw fedora and a pair of square rim glasses that were so big they almost stuck out past the brim...his face was split by a beak. He leaned forward and spit over a huge jutting chin that was smooth and red as an apple...like it'd been blowed it up and polished. When he leaned back up there was an oily streak runnin' down the center of it. He pulled a stained handkerchief from his back pocket...

"Awmost ain't worf it."

His buddy weren't young but he was younger than the old man. He stood with his hands in his pockets....thumbs stuck out, rockin' back in forth on the balls of his feet. The old man gave the impression of a hawk on a pole...his buddy was jolly lookin'.

To get his hands in his pockets he had to bend his arms out around a gigantic, perfectly round belly. He looked like he was pregnant with an elephant. The last two buttons on his shirt probably hadn't been fastened for a decade. Every time he rocked forward I was sure he was goin' on his face.

His hair still had some blonde in it though and his eyes were clear blue. Of course they were buried behind bright red rubbery cheeks. He never said a word.

The old man stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket and slowly cracked a smile...

"Awwwmost."



White Lightnin', Mountain Dew...Moonshine.

To be continued...

Huh?...WHAT? What the.....

I got the swimmer's ear y'all. Feels like I'm pregnant on the left side of my head...it hurts to chew. Any movement of my outer ear is a lightining strike. I guess I wont be able to give the Carol Burnette tug on my way out the door that all the clients love so much.

Maybe I am pregnant in the head or, maybe I've got one of these molting in there...



I know we've got at least one lurker who just shut down his computer and crawled under his desk. HA.

It's the annual cicades...not the periodic, red beedy-eyed, noise makers that pop up every 13 years down here. These do a pretty good immitation though. You never heard such persistant racket. Of course, these aren't the actual bugs. They'll shed their skin anywhere they can latch on. I pulled one of these off my tire.

They have to fight with the lightining bugs for space...



We got more of these in the yard than grass blades right now. Oddly The Boy will help me gather cicada skins but, he won't stay in the whole wide yard if he catches sight of one of these.

"Boy that lightining bug ain't gon' do nothin' to you."

"I think that one...he's trying to do somethin' to me."

They're freakin' lightining bugs man...of all the things to worry about around here you gon' worry about a lightining bug. It's not like it's a butterfly (I hate those things...*&^%$ creepy the way they flitter around like half of a memory).

Maybe he's been dreaming about lightining bugs or maybe it's the fact that he's not takin' naps anymore but, not matter how hard we try to wear him out during the day, he's having trouble going to be lately. This is a new one for us.

Last night he just didn't want to go down...back there cryin' and carryin' on like somebody cancelled his birthday. I went out for a smoke, to catch a break and discovered we had a visitor on the car port. One that I thought the Boy would love to have a look at...so, me and his momma decided to bribe him.

"We wanna show you somethng outside but, then you gotta come back in and go to sleep...no more whinnin."

He agreed...face all puffy. It's amazing what forcing tears will do even to a four year old's skin.

We get out there and I tell him to go around one end of the car while I go around the other...I hadn't passed the bumper when I heard him shriekkkk!

"Mom-MAH!...aghhhh...aghhhh MMOM-MUHHHH!"

He was terrorfied.



A turtle...a &^%* trutle.

"Why was he stikin' his head out?"

"He goes in his shell to protect himself."

"I hope he goes back in his shell forever...he was tryin' to crawl all over me."

It was the first thing he asked me about this morning. Got gators around here that could bite him in half...snakes that could swell his up bigger than his head and swimmers ear...just don't mention turtles around him.

Finally...Monday!

The five day work week is often touted as one of labours great innovations. My response to that is who wants to work 40 hours a week? There's nothing liberating about being tied to a clock. Sometimes I work 50 hours a week...sometimes 30. Besides, who the hell makes any money working 40 hours a week...unless, of course, you can arbitrarily inflate your own wage.

Like most modern innovations the "weekend" is an empty promise...a fantasy. Liberties that are taken on Thursday aren't restored for the weekend. Petty annoyances don't take Saturday and Sunday off. People don't become better drivers at 5 on Friday...and you're far more likely to jump in the club pool with your iphone on a Sunday afternoon than you are on a Tuesday morning.

Nothin' 200 bucks can't fix.



All you need to know about Saturday is this...at one point, I had to get dressed. By my reckoning that's a huge fail.

Sunday was particularly irritating...the church was swarming with striped rags. There probably weren't that many surrounding Vicksburg during its destruction. I'm not saying there's no place for a kind of patriotism in the church but, what exactly are we supposed to be celebrating this July???? The destruction of Vicksburg, Friars Point, Meridian, Oxford, Greenwood, Jackson, etc...or maybe more recent events like the fruition of lincolnism and the final destruction of state sovereignty?

In a nave that is, de facto, C of E,..."My country tis of the...land of the pilgrims pride"...you mean the Church of England hating, smuggling, self-rightious pilgrims of new england?...Pound Sand. Despite the presence of people in Virginia for eons, despite the fact the, so called, Revolutionary War was financed through Charleston or that George Washington and Tom Jefferson were Southrons...these witch burners have convinced themselves that they invented the country. Of course, as it stands now...it is their invention and has been since 1865.

No rest at home either...there's an open house to get ready for. I've got 20 minutes of sweeping...roof, deck, drive...and 10 minutes worth of battery for the blower. All in 100 degree heat. I'm pretty sure the Boy saw me fling the blower arcross the yard. Sue me. I have a pathological hatred of mundane tasks...and surly tools.

The Boy was a big help....

"Pick up your toys Boy."

"No...I'm...Not..A...Boy...I'm...A...Bad...Robot" ...choppin the air with his hands as he's walkin' off into the kitchen. Passin' gas the whole time.

Martha was up to her elbows in toilets and had no patience for my dissertation on the inevitable dissapointment of machines...given the conflict between thier promise and what they can actually deliver. She didn't exactly tell me to shut up, but...I went ahead and got a broom, went back to my sweeping.

Eventually we get loaded up for the pool...where, of course, I dunked my phone.

No lounging in my pajamas lazily reading blogs and corrresponding with friends...no NCIS marathons or window shopping on Ebay or Abebooks...just a maddening kalidoscopic series of interlocking frustrations.



Thank goodness this weeks "holiday" falls on a Wed. I don't think I could've taken a third day off.

Post #24

Green Peanuts and Brown Bananas

Among those that know me...I am known for self control and restraint. Master of my appetites, I am a paragon of sobriety...typical Southroner.

Having said that, there are two things I am powerless to resist...and I gorged myself on them this weekend.

One is boiled peanuts...



I will eat cold boiled peanuts until they run out or I pass out.

*

Then there's banana pudding...



and the less we say about that the better...people from my church read this blog.

Besides...what more could be said after this.



We've talked this bunch before...the trashier little sister of the B-52's who was given a bottle half full of corn liquor and a copy of Cracker Culture for a pillow but, otherwise neglected and left to her own devices.



A reader set me off on this jag by mentioning something that had nothing to do with Southern Culture on the Skids on her own blog. You know who you are...Kibber.



Perfectly Southron weekend.

*While looking for a picture of a peanut stand I came across an article in a new york paper encouraging people to eat boiled peanuts. The author called it strange...then said it was strange again to boil peanuts..."unlike the traditional roasting." It would be like me saying it IS strange but people in Japan use soy beans to make a sauce. Not that it may sound strange to us where peanuts have little to no impact on our culture...it IS strange. Morons.

Who Are These People?

Yesterday on my way home from Meridian* I stopped at the Doolittle Cemetery in Newton, Mississippi.



There are over one hundred Confederate soldiers buried there. Most were sent to a hospital in the area from from the Siege at Vicksburg. About sixty of 'em are unknown. Like so many, they gave not only their lives but their existence to assert the independence of The South...to live free from what they rightly saw as an imperialistic United States increasingly dominated by rapacious industrialists.

Yet what do I find at Doolittle Cemetery yesterday?



This demented gesture again...the stripped rag!

I'm willing to concede that who ever You are...You at Doolittle, You at Okolona,...meant no harm. I'm sure, standin in line at Walmart with these tacky plastic flowers, you felt it was a magnanimous gesture you were making. We're all Americans now...these boys should be recognized as the great Americans they were, etc. Of course logically this could only mean that they were being forgiven...can you not see that?

They are in need of no forgiveness. What they deserve is respect for the sacrifice they made. Not only is this gesture highly disrespectful...it's disgusting. That flag has been slapped on every Southern thing that its representatives have deemed worthy of taking...from our towns to our music, our books, our food and our booze. These men were not Americans...like the blues, William Faulkner and Cokecola....they were of The South, they were Southroners, and they deserve to rest in peace as such.

It may come as a shock to You...but there are those, many of us direct heirs of these men, who don't give a fig about the U.S.A...U.S.A. Who don't see it as anything other than an imperial construct...a phony "nation." Without malice, we see no genuine ancestoral, cultural, or historical ties that give any meaning to the idea of a Nation that stretches from Main to Arizona...Michigan to Mississippi.

Whoever You are, if it's possible, think before You decide to do something like this again. In fact it's best you do think about it...twice.




*“Meridian with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists.”

General..W.T. Sherman, U.S.

The Last of the Mississippi Jukes

Yesterday I's in Merigold...north of Cleveland and just south of Mound Bayou. If you're on 61 travelling north...take a left when you see the Dollar General on your right. Almost immediately you'll come to a trailer on your right that's sitting in the middle of a cemetery that hasn't had a burial since the 1880's...there are decaying tombstones in the front yard of this trailer. Take a left down the gravel road...and shortly you'll come to Po Monkey's.



To the delight of American Studies types, it still sits on the edge of a cotton field...where it's been for 50 years.



I've never had the pleasure actually. As much time as I've been spending up here though, we should be able to fix that.

I tell where I have been though...where we had a lot of good nights...The Subway Lounge in Jackson on Pearl St.



Of course, it's gone now. Robert Mugge made a documentary about the place in 2003...Last of the Mississippi Jukes. It pops up on IFC and other cable channels every now and again. I think at the time they were trying to save it but...it had been a death trap for decades.

Some times I hated the place. There could be this smug air, at the long table, of young Democrats slumming so they could tell their kids they used to hang out with black people. Very unfair and really kinda ridiculous on my part...but the loosened ties, awkward head shakes and table taps made it hard not to be a little skeptical.

Mostly I just loved it.

The last time we were there...me and Martha emerged on to Pearl St. with the sun in our eyes. Watched as the drummer was dragged out onto the sidewalk and waited to see him hauled in the back of an ambulance.

The place closed daybreak Sunday morning. They served beer there til around midnight. After that you had two options...bring your own booze or buy cans of Bud from the house next door.

I thought about the place yesterday as I sat in the car across from Po Monkey...and thought about Tom Schweers. He was a good buddy of mine...was a groomsman in my wedding. Until a couple of weeks ago, last I knew he was an officer in the Navy. Now I don't think he's with us any more. I ran into a mutual friend, J, the last time I was in New Orleans and the news wasn't good. Tom's daddy died of Huntington's disease and J said he had been diagnosed too. When they last they spoke he was in bad shape...that was five years ago.

There were no signs of deterioration the last time me and him were in The Subway Lounge...except for that brought on by Irish Whiskey. Man he loved that stuff. I tell you what else he loved, evidently more than life itself...lily white brunettes jittering in short red britches.

The place could really get rowdy after about 2am...really. That night it was laaate and we were standing...propped up...on the back wall when right in front of us, this girl jumps up and starts shaking like she's gettin' paid for it. Tom, high as a Georgia pine, locked in and, completely ignoring the two gigantic brothers that were with her, made a bee line for her. I grabbed him, pulled him back against the wall but...he was on a mission. Her friends I taken notice and after the second lunge, I dragged him up the stairs and out.

Since neither of us were in any shape to drive there was nothing to do but walk back to his place in Belhaven...after buying another six pack, of course. You'd really have to know Jackson to know just how extremely dangerous that walk was but...not as dangerous as the certain clobbering we were facing inside. We left a trail of freezing beer cans all the way home. I'm not even sure if we opened any of 'em. Fools and drunks...his sister never spoke to me again. I always got the blame.

I hate it that we got separated. I hate it that the Subway's gone. I reckon that's just how it goes.

Cats in the Barn

Another Saturday night...another party.

It's just what we do between the end of SEC football in January's National Championship game and the start of another season at the end of August. Carwfish Boils begin in March, graduations...then the weddings start. We were at three cookouts last weekend. The Boy's been to five birthday parties in the last three weeks.

Last night was a wedding.



Mmmm...mmmm...mmmmmmm.

Obviously very different surroundings than last week's bonfire. There weren't enough go-carts for The Boy...



...I wouldn't say there were no fireworks though.



Any time you have a room full of women prancing around, and no woman ever pranced like a Southern woman, well....heeheehee.

We had the pleasure of spending the evening with these lovely ladies.

Listen...the best thing about being a man, hands down, is the company of women. I have a few of male friends...and I cherish them but, without a different perspective existence would be dreadful.I'm sure I'm guilty of "othering"...and while all this sounds cute, it's really a latent expression of sexism. Whatever...real or precieved, I love the difference. Not only is it one of life's great pleasures...it has practical benefits too.

I'll give you an example from this morning. We're having an open house today. That means I have to clean roof off and the yard up...which meant I had to deal with this...



I had already broken the limbs of when the next door neighbor sticks his head over the fence and offers the use of his chainsaw.

"Excuse me? I may not be the most fastidious yard keeper but this is my yard...guess you're hoping you'll have to tell me how to use it? What's next? You wanna come throw the football with my son...maybe take my wife dancin'? Keep your tools in your yard."

That's what I was thinking anyway as I told him thanks, but..."I'm just gonna break it. It's pretty dry."

After three attempts at trying to break it, I got fed up and went for a square. As I returned to the back yard and still not able to reconcile myself to borrowing another man's chainsaw...I see Martha with it in her hand.

"Look honey...the neighbor's letting us use his chainsaw."

Thirty seconds later the limb was cut into managable peices and the chore was finished.


Y'all can laugh...but you ladies have got some peculiarly feminine quirks. None of which tickle me more than this business of being catty.

Let's return to the ladies above. What do you reckon they're talkin' about? It couldn't possibly be another lady at the party...certainly not the tiny dress she's wearing...or, as J.Q. described it "a tunic."

"I think I just saw her butt cheeks."

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA...perfect.

Cookin' With Gas

That's how you light a bonfire.



Y'all remember my boss?



I don't work for him anymore but...nobody I've worked for since has really been as boss. He's the boss. I painted houses with him after I got out of the service and while I was an undergraduate. We've always been close.

Three or four a times a year he'll have a bonfire, a party at his place...play the host. We grill* hamburgers and set things on fire. There's a couple of go-carts..."go-carts" with motors that could run a Fiat and easily break the 40mph mark (which feels like 80 when you're out in the open, 2" off the ground). Fireworks! Usually illegal fireworks. I don't know maybe they're not illegal in Alabama. He's buyin' 'em somewhere.

One of the funniest things I ever saw...took part in...was when his dog knocked over a lit mortar before the first charge had left the tube. It was a moment that only Wilferd Owen could fully appreciate...these weren't fire crackers they were shells. They ricocheted off trees and exploded under cars. People reacted according to their insticts...some ran, some hit the dirt, some just laughed. It was chaos and pure unadultrated redneck fun.

Last night The Boy got to go to his first bonfire at Mr. Mark's.



I was glad for it...one, I knew he'd have a good time and he did. He played with the dogs. He got his first ride in the front seat of anything and there were drums...



Two, The Boy comes from good redneck stock...or, more specifically, Cracker stock, but this is not time to be pendantic. Only difference between last night and gettin' together with my Momma's side of the family is that a gun was usually involved and often an old appliance was destroyed.

I want him to know every direction he's come from and learn to be comfortable with...to love it all.





*That thing you pull out in your back "garden" is a GRILLLLL...not a BBQ. BBQ is smoking...not grilling. Usually I let the insanity pass...if you want to drive on the wrong side of the road, that's your business. If you want to kick a ball around with your foot and call it football...that's your insanity. This is a sacrid rite....this is the hog. NO. Stop it.






:) but stop it.

"I Tell You Whachya Don't Do."

"You don't fire a gun in Bogalusa Park."

Satisfied he had our attention he sat down on a milk crate...got 'im a dip of snuff and settled in for story time.

"Man ever' cop in Washington Parish swarmed on that park."

Given where we live and the time of year...there's only one reason that you'd fire a gun in a public park and it become a humorous anecdote.

That's right...it's our arch-enemy, Satan's lei...



The Cotton Mouth.

"I was down there fishin...standin' on that old fountain. You know they took that fence down from around it. So, I was standin' on it castin' in the creek. When I got ready to go...that's when I saw 'im there on the concrete. Ghad D...and ever'time I'd move he'd strike out toward me."

These snakes are mean y'all...they have no flight response.

"There was a fella across the creek...I hollered but he couldn't hear me. After about 20 minutes I said damn this ...pulled out my pistol my pistol and put an end to it."

"Then all hell broke loose...WOOO WOOOO WOOO. It was John Shelly got to me first."

"David. Did you fire a gun in the park?"

"Yes I did."

"Why?"

"I reached down and pick up that snake by the tail and held it up."

"Don't do that again."

"Well keep the damn snakes outta the park."

I don't know if he caught any fish.

"Why Don't Y'all Deal With It?"

Y'all can thank the good Dr....in a round about sorta way...for this interlude.



Robert Lee Burnside...the Greatest of All Time Ever!

Listen to what he heard...then pick your mouth up off the floor.



He took that one to his grave.



There's no point in trying to resist the jagged beat here...just know that at about 1:25 you're heading on a one way trip to Jupiter.

An irreplaceable Southroner.

Radio Grown Folks - Dockery Farms

We're gonna take a break from April...I don't think the blog can take it.

Besides...



I'm in The Delta this week and it always deserves some attention.



About halfway between Ruleville and Cleveland on 8 you come to Dockery Farms.



If you were looking for the beginning of the Blues...the birthplace...this is about as close as you can get. Charley Patton worked here and played his guitar.

There are speakers planted all around these buildings. You push a button and you can hear Patton and others as you walk around the grounds.



Patton's a fascinating character. He embodies all the complicated murky issues that surround the music and it's origins...race, identity, proprietorship. He was black, white, and Cherokee...he played what we'd call country music too. He weren't born in The Delta...he was born down in Hinds county between Edwards and Bolton.



BUT...everybody from Robert Johnson to John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters came to hear Charley play.

Did somebody say Muddy Waters?



Un******touchable! Makes me want to kungfu chop the desk in two.

Hopefully I'll Rolling Fork today.

More April...Really?

North to Tupelo...through the Golden Triangle via Big Daddy's in the Delta.



Two yankees, a Canadian, an Australian and a Brit. Nevermind a Mississippian, there's not a Southerner in sight...just the writer.

While Oxford can boast the omnipresence of William Faulkner and R.L Burnside...Starkpatch has to settle for Tennessee Williams and Howlin' Wolf. Well actually Williams is from Columbus and Wolf is from West Point. So, unless you take in the whole Golden Triangle Starkville doesn't really come into the picture at all.*

Though, Johnny Cash did spend a night there.



Unlike Faulkner and Burnside both Williams and Wolf eventually moved away from Mississippi. Neither man seems to have really left though...maybe it was because of their Mother's. Williams' was a well known mess and she can be seen all over his work...the obsession with appearances and status. Issues that, even by Southern standards, wield and inordinate influence in Mississippi.

As does religion. Wolf's mamma never left Mississippi and she never forgave him for becoming the devil's bard...



and he never got over it.

She was hard but it just shows the level of respect that people have for the power of expression..and music in particular. How could it be otherwise in a place like Mississippi...



It's here that Saturday nights were first infused with the power of Sunday morning. Go down to that clip from Chase the Devil and then back to them girls in Tupelo.

Elvis grew up in the Pentecostal church too.

Southern Culture is complex but, it's not really complicated. Yet confusion about its roots and shaping abounds. Some of the confusion is deliberate...because so much of what is considered to be American culture is actually Southern culture...and not everybody is comfortable with that.

To me, one of the most absurd examples of how this phenomenon works is the notion of Southern Rock....



*I'm cracking jokes for the benefit of someone who doesn't even read the blog anymore. I guess J.Q.'s still around.

April. More Parts

There's a lot you should know about Natchez but for now it's enough to know that Fat Mama is there...



Which is exactly where I headed as soon as the car was back on the road...see Spliff, I told you there'd be food.



I don't think I've ever eaten there without burning my fingers...I just can't hold back.

But even better than that...Natchez is the birthplace of Hound Dog Taylor...



We haven't traveled 60 miles between these fellas....and 100 miles back you get to Jackson.

All roads lead back to Jackson...and that's where you'll find the tap root of Taylor's inspiration...or at least you would have back in the 50's.

Elmore James....



will crush you.

A lot of folks from this town could.

From Sweetness...



...to Eudora Welty.



I could listen to them two talk all day...especially after the young lady gets over her nervousness and the accent settles. It's a treat to hear actual Southern accents on tape...these are two precious Mississippi examples.

I mean it's not Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor but...

April in Parts

I seen a little too much of the road in April...even for me. From Memphis to Gulfport...New Orleans almost to Texas around Leesville...Tupelo to Pascagoula just this side of Alabama...



Then there was Bude with this joker while a couple of good'ns dug around under my hood.

I logged so many miles last month that I drove right through my own wallet. In fact it was the unscheduled...last minute as a stand in for my boss...trip to Ft Polk, Louisiana that not only blew up my water pump but my gas allowance as well.

Anyway...you can't get from Bude to Ft. Polk without going through little Ferriday, Louisiana. Home of this force...



...and his cousin.



A kinda force in his own right.

It should come as no surprise that both men grew up in the same house holds and churches...



Shocking that you'll find a group in the same theological neighborhood that has banned all dancing of any kind any where...Shocking.

I'm gettin' distracted here...Before you get to Ferriday, or Louisiana for that matter, you gotta cross the river at Natchez.

Rest in Peace

The situation at Okolona Confederate Cemetery...



has been handled.



After talkin' with the right people...it was clear that nobody knew who had done it or why.

There was some speculation that the VFW may have planted them on Memorial Day but, I doubt that. Of all people...certainly veterans would know better. Besides the only foreigners involved in the War were the invading yankees.

These boys gave their lives, their very identity, but there's one sacred thing they took to their anonymous graves...they died citizens of a free and independent Dixie. It should be obvious to anyone, with a cat's ability to empathize...no matter how they feel about the conquest of The South, the Confederacy, and on...that this was a bad gesture.

I have a theory...and I reckon it's as good as any other.

Yesterday mornin' I left Tupelo and headed up to Brice's Crossroads near Baldwyn.




On June 10, 1864, there was a pretty serious scrap there. The place may not come immediately to mind when thinking of the War...the way Gettysburg or Vicksburg might. Two reasons for that...one, in the overall picture of the war...there was no strategic gain for the victors. Secondly, and more to the point the invaders got their asssssses kicked at Brice's Crossroads by Nathan Bedford Forrest.*

The yankees had a 3 to 1 advantage in numbers but...Forrest was a Jedi. He back-flipped into the middle of those bitches and scattered 'em like quail..or, maintaining the simile, like those fruity robots in the bad Star Wars movies. He took 1,500 hundred prisoners there...the rest ran in a panic back to Memphis.

It was so bad that there's a special "Rationalizing the Defeat" section on the Wikipedia page. The locals were uncooperative and it was really hot...ha.

No victory comes without sacrifice...



These graves have not been molested by anything other than the restless soil in that part of the state.



Unknown markers are moving...but a spot like this has its own profound sense. You can read the names...Bean, Stuart, McMorris, Jones, Davis, Harper, Spencer, Barham...they've all got the same date, June 10, 1864.

I left the cemetery and headed toward Baldwyn. There's a visitors center and museum there. I was hoping to find some flags that would be more "appropriate" for the cemetery in Okolona.**

I was greeted by a tiny old lady with a kinda chirpy Southern accent that was beginning to creak a little bit under the weight of decades. She asked where I was from....I found what I was lookin' for. As I was diggin' in my wallet to pay I heard the question again...

"Whur yeeeh frome suurh?"

It was a round fella...transparent coloured, sorta featureless really. It was obvious he weren't from around here...

"Shuh-Kaaago, Ill-annoy."

A tourist...there's lots of 'em...thousands of 'em. Understandably I reckon, many people in America are almost obsessively fascinated with the War. This fella's people might not have been on this continent in the 19th century...but the subject draws all types of folks from everywhere in the US like a magnet.

Maybe it was one of these tourists...a misguided fella, from a place where empathy isn't known to be a natural characteristic, from a place that never doubts itself,...maybe this was a magnanimous gesture on their part. To show there was no hard feelings.

Gee thanks.

I don't know...at any rate...it's fixed.



*On the off chance that any of you would...don't start on Forrest here...please. I don't ask very often but, we can have that discussion on another thread.

** This place has its own serious flag issues.

For the Love of Hoe Cakes...

I'm in Tupelo for the next couple of nights.

I come through Okolona, on my way up, like I always do and stopped at the cemetery.



You can see there was the usual arson...though it was explained to me recently by an apologist for the empire that hospitals, evne those abandoned by the military one would have to assume, were legitimate military targets.

Considering the size of it, and that it holds soldiers from all over the South...it's not looked after like it oughta be.



More than likely there are soldiers from my ggGrandaddy Garbett's unit. They ended up in north Mississippi before heading on to the Carolinas. Southroners from Texas to South Carolina have people buried there...many of them unknown.



It's these fellas that got my attention today because for some unfathomable reason...some misguided, or worse, soul has placed U.S. imperial flags on the graves of many of these unknown soldiers.



Unless this was a deliberately malicious act...and who knows...I can't begin to comprehend the thought process. They gave their lives and their identity...leave them their dignity!

I was so beside myself I did something that I still feel gross about...I registered a complaint. I emailed the head of the Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans to inquire if they had any idea what the....was going on at the Okolona Cemetery.

Hopefully I'll hear something between now and Thursday because if I don't...them flags wont be there on Friday.

I got lots of things to write about y'all. My Daddy's been up and I been with him. This was not on my agenda.

One of the things that's gone without mention around here that shouldn't have was the passing of Levon Helm...from just over the river in Arkansas. At the risk of appearing overly dramatic...this seems like as good a moment as any to fix that.



*



*Worth noting I think that it was Robbie Robertson,a Canadian...with the help of Levon in getting the story right...that wrote this beautiful and utterly respectful song.

Yankees at Mack-Donalds

Sometimes I get a hankerin' for Mackdonald's Big Breakfast...pancakes, sausage, biscuit. It's good but, I'm always partial to the vacuous smell of clean when I'm putting things in my stomach.

That limits my options 'cause I wouldn't feel comfortable chewin' bubblegum in half of 'em that I walk into...and right back out of. Sadly, I've run up and down these roads so much that I know which ones are clean enough to eat in.

In Ocean Springs that'd be the one on 90...next to the Sonic...in front of the Walmart. It's new...the manager brings potted plants from home...and it has no unexpected, inexplicable odors.

Unfortunately, what it does have is five or six geriatric yankees that meet every morning to drink coffee and berate one another.

No statement goes unchallenged...

"If I was ganna travel...I'd fly into Ackapukuh*...

"NO...not Ackapukuh."

No? If he, with a desire to fly into Acapulco, sat down to make his own travel arrangements...he would not decide to fly into Acapulco? Really?

Their favorite subject is old age benefits...

"Ya ahtamaticaly quaalify fa that..."

"I didn't. They said I hada sign up fa it."

"Sambady lied to ya."

"'m nat ganna ahgu wit ya abat it.**"

Ha.

All I can say is they must love it...just a peculiar form of amusement for 'em I reckon. I've never been in here when they weren't at it.

Maybe I shouldn't be so hung up on stink.

* pronounced Ahhhhhhh-caaah-po-cooo in Mississippi.

**I have spared the reader here by not giving a more accurate description of the sound by making every sentence one word.