Radio Grown Folks: Local Radio

Y'all know I spend a lot of time on the road...and if you're a careful reader you know I do a lotta diggin' on the radio. I've got my i-tunes but, nothin' beats a pleasant surprise.



One of the great things about being in Mississippi is that more often than not, the best things to come across the airwaves are the local products.



It's been almost a complete shutout in last few days as I've crisscrossed the fish bowl that this part of the world has become.

Not just songs either...Jerry Clower will often get some air time, in a city with any traffic, around rush hour. An obvious attempt to curb people's nerves...which, when you consider the amount of traffic we're talking about, demonstrates just how low the tolerance for interference of any kind is around here.



They broke mold...lotta broke molds around here.



We end with an appropriate highlight...we are sleeping in Slidell, Louisiana after all.

Discuss

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.

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.

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...

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.

Bude

Bude, Mississippi.

Nothing in the sky today except for the sun...nothing to impede the beams. The dingy gray concrete has taken on a yellow glow. The the tin roofs across the street become elusive white streaks on the back of your eyelids when the brain takes evasive action and shuts your eyes. Across me is a white cinder block wall...a giant sheet of flourescent light.

I'm at Shell Station across from King's Discount Pharmacy and B&B Foods...where 98 dead ends at 184. There's no town to speak of. Ten unremarkable structures at an intersection suurounded by oaks. The only thing taller than the trees is an ancient lookin' antenna that can't possibly serve any purpose other than target practice for lightning.

Lots of small commercial trucks groan to a stop and then wind back up headed to Brookhaven or Natchez dependin'...

There's nothin here y'all. Don't think anythings ever happened here...at least until today. Less than a thousand folks. The majority are black. Many places across the US that would be a novelty...in Mississippi it's pretty typical. There's nothin' to tell...no reason to run the place down but, nothing to recommend it either.

I'm only here for one reason...I'm waiting' on a tow truck.

Bravo Sierra

I've been writing about Southerners, and Mississippians in particular, for almost two years now.


Here's what Nancy Pelosi's spawn wants you to know about it.




I don't pray for the dissolution of this country. That would be tacky.

I do; however, long and hope for it.

Be Jealous - Cheese Straws and Black Coffee

I'm having cheese straws and black coffee for breakfast...and not doing much else.



http://www.deepsouthdish.com/2008/12/cheese-straws.html

A coworker made 'em. He got his Grandma's recipes when she passed. There's some pecan fudge in there and something that taste like a homemade Rollo...but it's the Cheese Straws.

These are sharp ones with heat you can taste. The coffee's bitter and cuts the tang. Like a piece of candy made with cheese grits and heavy cream. I've had bites of filet that weren't this satisfying.

A frigid Cokecola would be even better...but what can't be improved on is the music.



The fella that wrote the bio can be forgiven for referring to R.L. Burnside as an American musician...the writer doesn't seem to be from the U.S...when he is quite obviously a Southern musician. Show me connecticut's or minnesota's answer to Burnside and I'll eat my words like a cheese straw.

What can't be forgiven is the insistence that he is a Delta Bluesman...or has any special connection to The Delta whatsoever. He didn't...full stop. He was from the Hill Country and he played Hill Country Blues.



Aside from the usual brilliance (check that blossoming ring toward the end...the trance he's inducing is only a set up, preparing your mind for a look behind the curtains, for a whiff of transcendence)...this is a bit of a put on too. Before Robert Palmer and Fat Possum...the few folks that came down to record RL Burnside and some of the others wanted the acoustic guitar. Matthew Johnson was very clear when they got Fat Possum together about presenting these players as they were on Sunday nights in Mississippi...plugged in and lewd.

"The Blues ain't nothin' but dance music," R. L. Burnside.

The ethnologists often have a very specific, preconceived idea about the Blues and the people that play it...a very Delta idea (*&^% Delta). This is the same bunch that had a litter of kittens when Mississippi Fred McDowell picked up and electric guitar and...THE VAPORS!!!...brought on a white bass player. The American Studies Department at Yale had to shut down for a week.



Look at the pictures and the difference between the staged photos and how he presented himself on stage. It's the same issue I have with the concept of "folk art"...the suggestion that these people don't have a sophisticated aesthetic understanding of what they are doing...that it really boils down to dumb expression brought on by material pressures.

And cheese straws are just a poor man's attempt at cheezits.

Kiss My Grits!!!

BOO! It's Books.

A lotta talk about the books on blogs this week.

I think there are a couple of reasons for this...one, people like to read. Two, a lot of people live in places where they're about to be shut in for the next couple of months.

I like readin' too I reckon. Mainly I like buying books but, what I really love is tormenting my friends and family.

This post isn't so much an effort to claim a tea cup at the book club, but to put Martha and Allan on the couch. Both of whom love books...and have a clinical obsession with order.*

Wackos.



That's me sittin' outside Beckham Books in the Quarter...burnin' one before I go in.

I needn't have bothered...they never have anything I want in there. Even for the book sniffers there's nothing...too many dirty cat boxes. I'd tell you to skip it but, if you're the kind of person that goes to these places...you're gonna go anyway.



Crescent City Books. We've been here before but the last picture wasn't nearly this crappy...and it didn't have a cat in it.

On this particular day I paid 25 bucks for a book on French Imperialism in Senegal. I found the same book for 10 dollars later that day but, that place didn't have a cat to feed.



Here's where the magic really happens...Arcadian Books. The place can't be much bigger than your dinning room....



...and this is the glorious result.

Relax you two...it's just a picture. You aren't actually there and the room isn't actually spinning.

Besides, this cat's got it under control.



Just ask 'im where something is. Besides, even though he's only got about a tenth of the space, it's still not as bad as Choctaw.

Speaking of books and Jackson...dig it.



This old place used to be a favorite of Mississippi legislators...evidently the state was practically run out of there at one time. According to Harry down at Choctaw...a blind drunk William Faulkner was often tucked into bed there by Eudora Welty.

The coolest thing about the Sun-n-Sands was the dance floor. Six by six parquet floor in front of a juke box. It would've been an effort to get two people on it at the same time...but worth it I'm sure.

Anyway....
________________________________________________________

Aside from books, there's also been a lot of talk of malaise...a lack of inspiration.

Look how easy it is y'all...just post some really bad photos and make a few asinine remarks. Failing that you could draw inspiration from your surroundings...which I'm assuming for some of y'all is gonna look a lot like this til April.



Night.

*I've got my fingers crossed that Adam also falls into this category. I think it's a safe bet.

Go State! Go State! Part II

It gets dark in Mississippi. Pitch black dark.

The State's nearly the size of England with a population of less than 3 Million... most being congregated in three spots. Jackson in the middle, Southaven/Olive Branch (this is the Mississippi part of Memphis) in the north and The Coast.

If you got yer map out, and shame on you if you don't, you'll notice that Louisville (sanely Anglosized as Lewisville in this state) and Carthage are not among these population centers...and between those two there is nothing more powerful than a reflector on a mail box to illuminate the night...and those need headlights to work.

There are the headlights...and the black top, yellow and white strips racing at the car out of the dark. With nothing on the periphery but darkness...it's hard to tell whether it's the car or the road that's moving at an 80 mile an hour clip.

Saturday night, just as I turned south on 25, passing Louisville, turning into the dark...the Highway 61 Project at Ole Miss unleashed Junior Kimbrough on the night.





That's Junior at his friend and acolyte Charlie Feathers' house...both from the Holy Springs area, Feathers said music began and ended with Junior Kimbrough. Who'd argue with that in the middle of the night?






Gives me goose bumps every time I hear it...

That's Mississippi.

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.

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.