Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

As you know, Tom and I spent four days last week traveling up through north central and northwest Mississippi, coming back down through the vast Mississippi delta region on our trip home on Saturday.  Today I want to talk about that. 

First, let me write a bit more about being at Ground Zero Blues Club Friday night in Clarksdale.  Blues aficionados have long held that the junction of Hwy. 61 and Hwy. 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi is the place the Black Delta blues all began.  That is where blues legend, called the father of rock and roll, Robert Johnson, is supposed to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for being able to play his guitar and sing the blues.

We went in Ground Zero a couple of times and met some very interesting characters in there, including one older black man, Puddin’ Nate Turner, who did tricks with his dice.  He could flip them from snake eyes to buck eyes in the fraction of a second, which Tom said was because he had trick dice.  Even so, he knew how to use them and was a wonder to behold.  He didn’t try to conn anyone or be a nuisance.  He was just fun to watch and talk with and showed us a couple of photos taken of him hanging on the big square post next to the table where he was sitting.

We didn’t eat at Ground Zero, but the food is supposed to be down home soul food, so we hope to eat there next time we go.  

One unique place we checked out (for next time) before we left Clarksdale was the Shack Up Inn, which is actually a series of old sharecroppers’ cabins that have been moved and set up as a make shift tourist court, so to speak, on the site of an old cotton plantation, Hopson Plantation, with its own cotton gin no less on the premises, which has also been converted into tourist "bins," as they call them.  

We went in the old plantation Commissary out on the premises and talked with one of the owners of the place and found out that the cabins are very reasonably priced and named after old blues singers and various old artifacts (there’s a "Cadillac" Cabin).  We really want to go back up there and stay at the Shack Up Inn and spend some more time in Clarksdale because there is lot’s going on there, in a laid back kind of way.

On our way home, we drifted down through the Delta on old back roads and went through a lot of little towns that are mostly dead, with very few inhabitants remaining.  In fact, we drove for three and one half hours on Saturday without seeing one restaurant/cafe where you could go in and eat even a down home meal and were greatly surprised, although I guess we shouldn’t have been.

It wasn’t until we got to the very edge of very old Yazoo City, which sits right on the edge of where the Delta meets the looming Mississippi rolling hills, until we found even a little greasy spoon in which to eat a late lunch.  But the fried catfish plates we both ordered (after the deep fried dill pickles, which we scarfed down) turned out to be really good and we even had some catfish to bring home.

By the time we got home late Saturday afternoon we were tired out.  It had been a lot of fun, but we stayed up really late the entire time and were ready to be home, even if it is a small townhouse/apartment.

Our thoughts throughout the entire trip focused on the poverty we say and the dead end lives so many of the people in Mississippi live.  The Delta region of Mississippi has mostly black residents and they don’t have much at all.  They live apparently dead end lives in dead end little towns and it looks as if it must be very difficult, if not impossible, to rise above.

I must say – and Tom and I both thought this over and over – many times you don’t appreciate what you have until you see people with a who have a whole lot less.  I mean, Picayune is a small Mississippi town, but it’s a very vibrant, thriving town full of people and small businesses, places to eat around town and lots more places to eat just down the road a piece in Slidell.

The growth in Mississippi, as far as we can see, if much like it is everywhere across this country.  It is in the urban areas, Interstate access/crossroads areas and the university cities where all of the growth is taking place. 

Jackson, the state capitol, is located on the interchange of Interstate 20 and Interstate 55 and is rapidly expanding for miles and miles in all directions from the downtown center.

Picayune, itself, has the advantage of having two exits off Interstate 59, the main Interstate system running up across Mississippi at an angle from Louisiana (Slidell) to I-20 near Meridian and has the further advantage of being near New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast, but up on higher ground.

There has been a dramatic influx of people from both the gulf coast and New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina and this county – Pearl River County – has had one of the largest increases in population in the past couple of years in the entire nation.

That’s it for today, y’all.  Things to think about in how blessed your life is just to have a computer to sit in front of to access the internet and lively people online in blogs such as this one (right?!), among other things.

So y’all take care today and have a very blessed day!  Dee